Non-Raiding Necromancers

/shrug. I have always been favor of using content to balance the game, not tinkering with the class design. It tends to be more fair and target the issue better. IE: addressing raid issues at the raid level where as they don't impact people who don't raid. There are other ways to take mana away besides beating on a mob for hours such as AE's or auras or whatever. Stuff they could build into the script if they wanted to.

Wish in one hand and poop in the other, though.

You might be right Langya. Maybe I am not as inventive in my suggestions. But the thing with DB hurting group necros I cant see is too bad, group necros are really powerful anyway...

unless you are in a group that is frontloaded with dps, then obviously a raid wizzy will always shine

They are powerful (group necros) but its a different kind of power. More like the wind and rain erode down a mountain top as opposed to just dropping a nuclear bomb on it. The "typical" group these days is always front loaded. If you have a good tank and healer than you could just have the rest of the group be wizards or one bard and 3 wizards if there is any way to top 4 wizards. Trash mobs in group content comparatively don't have many hit points. They could ratchet the HP up or the resists or whatever on group trash to favor a more sustained strategy but then people who solo or molo would get upset. Even that really would not slow down a group of wizards though.

I will not disagree with the fact that necros are kings of sustained dps. On raids that is.

On raids 2 things are happen that don't happen in the group game.

1st in raids necros are using different spells that is much more mana friendly.

2nd on raids necros have access to a lot more mana regen buffs/tools that your avg grouper is most likely not going have access to all the time.

I normal group with just my wife and small group of friends. In these groups its me(100 necro) my wife(100 zerker) 1 tank merc and 1 cleric merc with the last 2 slots being friends. most of the time its a 100 wizzard and his wife who has like 6 accounts and will play what ever toon she in the mood for. Between my wife and the wizard the mobs die so fast my dots/swarm pets don't last their whole time. I am never on the top of the pars except the rare named spawn. Same if you combine all the mobs in one. It one of them cause my spells don't do full damage.

I disagree, whenever I group with randoms I always get complimented for my DPS (wihtout parsing or anything) and thats as a berserker and doing like 20K DPS. your average grouper doesnt do much DPS, not because their classes cant, but because they play very unoptimally.

Most groups got like 50K DPS, which means mobs take like 30-40 sec to kill, and a goup necro can easily compete there. if the kill time goes down to 15-20 they are having trouble though, thats why I am saying frontloaded groups necros should and will always suffer.

Some people keep forgetting that we have no mana dump, unless you count funeral pyre. We HAVE to spam spells to stay competitive, so either our mana regen or our spell cost should reflect that need. No class should be running out of mana in casual solo/group situations - only in burn scenarios.

Million dollar question is whether or not tuning is being done these days with the assumption that players are optimizing their abilities or are more or less asleep at the wheel. That is both raid and group game. My guess: The devs are underestimating the skill level of players and making it too easy. Chances are I might also be leaning towards being a bit overly optimistic.

What we are seeing being said is "the entire necro community is wrong"

20 second fight are actually one of best fight lengths for a necro. It's the length of time when swifts will be at there peak DPS. Before and after that 20 second mark DPS will be lower. When to cast what is still open to debate and all depends on average fight length. 20 second fight go with swifts at start, 30 second fight go with two Pyres and then swifts, 45 second fight go with swifts at start then 4-5 normal dots then swifts again, past 60 seconds and its time think about dropping swifts and going with 12 non swift DoT's.

I doubt most necro's have a good grasp on maxxing DPS in the group game. Even the ones that are good at raid and solo DPS.

This was exactly what I was thinking. Then I realized they know more about necromancers then we do.

Prior to the reluctant benevolence nerf (also done for raid balancing), group necros really had something to add. You could use a necro, ranger (probably best because they cast a lot and have healing AAs) and just a secondary priest like a shaman or druid to cover your healing needs.

The current situation is just another example where a raid-motivated nerf mostly missed the mark and squarely hit the non-raiding necro.

Because raid necros group?.. Or are we only supposed to raid and we aren't allowed to do both. I even do more grouping then I do raiding /boggle
As for the other question. The 2 or 3 (depending if people use the 3rd) dots that allow us to "burst" I'm groups have a longer refresh time, so the dots actually have 12 seconds after fade were they aren't usable. There for actually dropping their dps lower.

Raid necros didn't "hold back" anything. We always dps as hard as we can. Unfortunately people think of gh dummy parses with a raid burn running that its the same. To even suggest that the entire class had a conspiracy against the devs and mechanics of the game is a joke in itself


At least raid necros are still necros... Unlike the warrior and bezerker I keep seeing post garbage

Not a raid necro. But even a raid necro is better than someone that doesn't play a necro nor know anything about them filling up space.

Its not how good we are for a giving fight time. The Db nerf dose nothing to effect that. When we use db it dose nothing to increase our dps at all. It has no damage boost part at all. What it dose is effect how long we can keep it up before we get so lom that we have 2 things to do.

1. keep going at max and run oom and have to sit out for up to 3 mins to get back to fm.
2. reduce the number of spells we cast so that we can go longer before oom.

Both of these things results in the same thing happen, less damage being done to mobs. this means it takes longer to kill a mob. longer time killing each mob = less mobs killing in a giving time frame = less exp for the group over said time frame.

Now as for the raiding necros in here well. We maybe raiding necros but we still group outside of raids. We are going try and help each other out lol. It was said in beta that this change was targeted at raiders. But we have said and proven that it hurts non raiders more then raiders.

Piestro,

With all due respect, community relations is a two way street. We are voicing facts, complaints, concerns, displeasure, and even rage quitting over this issue and the only response is that you will continue to forward feedback? How about providing us with some direct information from the Dev's?

You say that you do not have the tools or the time, how about getting a Dev or two in here to rationally discuss the issue. I really believe if there were a solid argument/reason for this nerf from a Developer point of view (and not just hear-say) we would be much more receptive to change, even if we did not agree with it.

I don't group in fast kill groups because of my limited play time with grad school and work but I see two things that could arise with fast kill groups.

First, the fast dots have a recast timer so you can't chain them every mob to significantly "contribute" to kills that are happening in 20 seconds. Second, even if you get a couple dots on the mob, if the server tick hasn't occurred, and then the mob dies (because of burst dps from the group) the necro did 0 damage to the mob. Yet the necro still drained mana by casting the spell.

Personally, I dislike the timer change but it isn't the end of the world for me when doing group content. I haven't read the whole tread but the main thing I don't like about it is how the target was supposed to be for raiding necros (going off posts I saw with Elidroth's comments) yet it is hurting the group game. I don't really have a problem with going OOM before an event is over so the change seems to be really off base with what was stated.

Correction, the tools given to necros for grouping both swift dots and the skeletal swarm spells have refresh timers.

He has already talked to you mutiple times, what more can he do?

Except the devs have said why they did it. Just because you do not agree with it does not mean they need to make up some other reason until you agree with them the fact is you will never agree with them on it. Nothing they say to you will make you happy so move on.

Maybe Piestro can borrow a friends Necro and see what has happened for himself first hand. Maybe he has his own Necro since if memory serves, he actually plays this game.

The devs might actually play occasionally but more than likely they spend more time looking at server side analysis than actually loading up toons and playing. Even if they do load up a toon, it will be some beta-fish type optimization that might be running scripted (rather than actually played) that doesn't require anything but the data sans the visuals. As in all they see is the math and not the actual player world or the animations etc. Their approach might be more academic than "boots on the ground" where some spreadsheet or read out tells them everything is roses but in reality...its dandelions. That's what "the devs have tools and the time" translates to me. Some kind of abstraction that is supposed to tell them everything that is going on, but doesn't go as far as to actually spend much time on a live server interacting with the variables only the players themselves can introduce. Ignoring what is going on with the actual players and instead devising some simulation is about the only way that the devs could have gotten this one so wrong.

So what can Piestro do? He can see it for himself or encourage the dev team to actually play through the results of their efforts on real characters in the game world. You would assume that they do already or they might say that they do, but that is doubtful given this. Chances are they listen to other players and occasionally get burned. Past players who have had agendas to push probably burned a few bridges between the player community and dev team. Thus, we get what get. Maybe we as players should be more mindful that trying to burn other classes to boost your own is wrong and this is what you get as a result.