Non-Raiding Necromancers

Most of the time I do just raid, and solo for my AAs.. But I have been in good high DPS groups.. A good group can easily get me as many (or more!) AAs as me soloing. When DB was much faster recast, I could hold my own, using swifts, swarms, and occasional DoT or Nuke if they were on cool down.. With recast of DB more than tripled, I would not be able to do that now. I don't like it when I'm not pulling my weight, it was hard enough in high DPS groups to do it with DB at 3 min recast. At 10 min recast, I won't be able to cast near as much without sitting out every once in a while to get some mana.

Do you usually quote people but twist what they have to say so as to be taken out of context? Please don't do that. Kinda a BS thing to do, don't you think?

Just so you understand, I am not implying that this nerf is a good thing for anyone. If anything I did bring up that the typical fast kill group is more often than not something that raiders put together and reflecting that stating that the problem is most noticeable when doing mass/fast kill groups is not really accurate for group only players. That it is not the "norm" for group content exclusive necros as far as what they do when they log in. Noobieguy is a fulltime raider, but has noticed a drop in his output for groups due to having to manage mana more closely. Granted, no one has mentioned what the make up of these fast kill groups are for their own purproses. It might be tank/healer and the rest wizards or maybe just a monk pulling whole zones of light blues while a mage beams it all down.Those looking to round up max exp...tend to be raid players.

How about when soloing or doing missions with friends? That is what most group necros do. People have been placing emphasis on this fringe case, typically centered around raid players who are raid geared (and also where the necro might be in direct interaction with wizards and the usual P-ing match applies) and yet how much attention has been paid to the whole group play spectrum? As in what group geared only necros do when they are playing with their group geared only friends in their casual/family group only fellowship or guild and how this effects them?

Several group folks commented in this thread already. Myself, I've seen quite a few unflattering comments about DB in necromancer channel on my server and I am sure other servers are the same. Dissatisfaction is out there but not everyone is reading/posting here.

I am not sure I understood your comments correctly; it seems you imply that group players are somewhat .. ahh... slacking and perhaps not playing their character to its full potential? I know some group only people with detailed knowledge of the class. Perhaps I misunderstood what you meant.

I wasn't trying to twist your words. I wonder how you know what is norm for necromancers though. My typical group is Pally tank, Cleric Healer, Mage, Wizard, Me, and Shaman/or SK/or Monk/or ranger/or Beastlord... the first 5 are pretty standard.

Also no necro is concerned about their performance in a swarm killing group. In those cases, everyone is being carried by the swarmer. It is the constant pulls always a mob in camp type groups. And really I seem to believe the opposite of you, that most groups fall in that category. Whether they are doing xp in some hotzone, or an instance, or they are trying to burn through a mission, or HA, or pulling all the placeholders and inconvenient trashmobs to clear the area camping a named, the faster one's group kills, the more one's group can get done in that playing session.

Necros are not irrelevant in EQ, and no necro on this thread has said, or even implied that we are. We are trying to say in this Ubiquitous (not fringe) style of playing, grouping, the class has been pushed back in time to where we were second (third?) class citizen's in the group game. Where a necro got a group only if every other base was covered, including DPS, or there were no other classes that could split mobs available, or they were your friends, and liked chatting with you and your contribution wasn't as important. And the reason we were given for this nerf is that Mana needs to be a resource for Necros in raids. As stated over and over again, this is barely a blip for necros on raids, it is very adversely effecting group necros, to the point of cancelling accounts, because it is not fun anymore. The nerf missed its mark in my opinion.

Necros have fought this nerf off 2 other times that I can remember, and each time Eli has come talked to us, and we have shown him, if our raid DPS is the issue, if our "Burst" DPS is the issue, then mana regen is not the cause, and he has agreed to the point of not carrying out the nerf those previous two times, instead letting it stagnate. Just like many on this thread, I think he keeps forgetting that for necros (or any dot class), more mana does not equal more DPS. We always have mana, because except in the group situation we cannot use up all our mana in the length of time it takes to finish an event, where DD casters could cast even more for more damage and DPS, this isn't a possibility for necros, once we have reached the most dots we can have on a mob without them fading, all we have left to increase our DPS, is activated abilities. We then have a constant slow drain on the mana tank, we can't push the accelerator and use more. In raids, DB is used to recover from a death most likely, and this is why it is just a blip.

Not at all. Raid necros DO tend to have access to better geared and or/skilled tanks and healers however. Its not a matter of skill or whatever. Gear and who you know counts for a bit and if there is anything about not playing to one's full potential its the fact that a raid geared player in group content has more potential just from the gear and access to powerful raid geared friends. My point is though that if this is a problem hitting group necros the hardest, than that is where the context should be. Not a raid necro doing group content with raid geared friends or whatever. A good raid geared warrior with a good healer CAN tank 4-5 mobs at once where as a group geared warrior might need some CC or more careful pulling which might move a "fast kill group" into the neighborhood of just being a "normal" group which might better serve itself by doing what they do in a mission. Maybe I don't get this whole deal but from my angle "Group" players are primarily those who play Everquest but DO NOT RAID. As opposed to a raid player who does group content with or without their guildmates (who are also raid geared with raid spells/discs). The group content is tuned for group players in group gear with group spells. Raid equiped people will have an easier time of it and in most cases, don't need to play as well as a true grouper or solorer.

People have been using examples of raid players doing grouping (the fast kill groups) but it would drive the point home better to the dev team to site more examples of how group only players have been effected by this since that seems to be where the injustice is.

Yes, and that was basically what Artemis posted in his original post, that group geared people will get shafted with this change, and they did.

As I said, unhappy folks are out there but if they don't frequent these boards, you will not see their feedback.

Well, the word needs to get out that if people are unhappy with a change, than they need to express it to those who can effect the outcome and they need to come armed with facts/data taken in the appropriate context. Math nerds rule our modern age and you have to speak their language or you get nowhere. Otherwise the devs will listen to people like Beimeith who will always offer empirical data as to why whatever needs to happen should happen and in this world data trumps people's word every time, even if the data is not used for a fair outcome. Beimeith's intentions don't even have to be noble. He might just want to keep wizards on top and everyone else knocked down a peg or two in the P-ing contest but if he has a sound argument with compelling data....? All he has to do is offer numbers and he wins. Give the numbers as to why Beimeith is wrong or the devs are wrong and you gain some traction. Have them come from multiple sources and corroborate? Even better.

Beimeith isn't involved in the DB mess, he is mucking around in the damage components. Which will ultimitly hurt necros more, but let's leave him out of this discussion.

And the data is out there. What we are saying is, that the assumptions about what the data says is wrong. We are constantly compared to DD casters and their mana consumption when they should be looking at Dot casters and their mana consumption. They are two different beasts, and the wrong conclusions are being drawn, in my opinion. The conclusion is being drawn from things like necros on raids are not running out of mana, therefore they must have infinite mana, therefore their DPS is so high and they still have mana.therefore they have infinite mana. If we were using DDs, this assumption would be mostly true. But we don't run out of mana on raids because we use dots, and reapplying dots before they are about to run out adds nothing!, So the best we can do is stack as many dots as we can, without having any fade, and that is it. In raids, that is why we don't run out of mana like wizards and mages can, who are also going full bore. It has nothing to do with infinite mana, which is a fallacy.

Yes, he has no DIRECT link to this DB issue, but what he does seems to work. People need to duplicate that.

Beimeith was used as an example of a player who is very persuasive and skilled at effecting an outcome. For what it is worth and regardless of people's opinions of him in addition to the fact that he didn't need to be mentioned by name, he is well known to the point of being a good reference of what to do versus what not to do if you actually want the devs to pay attention. Call it meddling or looking out for the over all health of the game, it makes no difference. Producing verifiable data works. Saying "Oh NoZ I are teh nerfed" doesn't work. The devs are just going to reply "No S, Sherlock. We are the ones who nerfed you to begin with. You think we don't know that? How about you show us exactly where we went too far and maybe we can go from there."

If the dev team get data and then ignore it, than at that point take your money elsewhere and they can explain it to their bosses as to why a decision they made is costing the game money. Money always talks and BS always walks.

With how close my mage is to my necro in a group setting it shocks me that the group necro got even more of a hit.

My necro is ROF tier 2 raid focus. Mage is all group except for a cultural arms I just made with the fire focus 40-100%. Even before the new arms the mage and necro were a little to close dps wise (sustained over a 4+ hour session of grinding)

Mage was my raiding main for years so I do know a bit about the class. Necro is now my "main" however, that being said it shocks me in groups and raids how some classes kill necro in burst and there sustained is VERY close to necros. (granted in my guild we don't have many enc/bards to go around).

I love many classes in EQ but necro didn't need a mana nerf (in groups) we need more tools to be better group dps.

i encourage all necro's to send your parses to dev's and upper mgmt..grouper's / soloer's

i will be doing so and i encourage other necro's to do the same thing

show them how this and other nerf''s have hurt us

If raid geared necros are having issues with this in groups. Then group geared necros are having a worst time with this. Us raid geared necros have better mana pools, focus effect for reduced mana cost, better mana regen, and other things that a group geared necro is not going have access to.

Your observations are shockingly close to my own.

Neither of my casters have raid gear. My necro is pushing 10kaa with all the best available for groupers. My wizard has under 5kaa with similar focus, but lower gear quality.

-my wizard burns harder (it should) ... Much much harder.
-my wizard nets higher sustained dps over time
-after the DB nerf, my wizard regains his mana faster
-after the DB nerf, the wizard also sustains this higher damage

The only time my necro holds a sustained damage advantage in this day is comparing a 30 minute lesson burn where I bail on grouping and go tag team it with my trusty pet 'Boner' ... But only because I can use high efficiency spells and kite em 3-5 at a time.

Yep, my king of mana regen is now bottom of the barrel.

Lol

I, for one, have never taken issue with Beimeith. He's been an effective CRT and has helped mash out the math with EQ for a long time. There will always be cross-class sniping (at least there has always been for the last dozen years), but I've never seen bad math come from him. The results are always open for interpretation ... But the foot work and research is always there.

Interesting anecdote. The point some might take away is that the dev team still acknowledges your input. Even if it is "No", pretty safe to say most players with an issue do not even get humored with a response of any kind. If you are being blamed for some game development issues, than you are more plugged in than you give yourself credit for. You might want to explain your angle actually, as you and Aristo have been fingered on some other things that have incited anger. Typically PLAYERS do not get blamed for nerfs, other than idiot ones that cause abuses.

Probably because they pm the spell/disc Dev aristo who responds to no one. You want to be heard DO NOT PM HIM.

I was hanging around these forums (not logging in) for a while, not wanting to play with these changes. I made the decision today to cancel my two Gold-status accounts due to the Deathbloom nerf.

Alas, Necromonius level 95 Necromancer 3k AA - FV
and Dirkadirka level 95 Mage 3k AA - FV

are officially retired. Will re-sub maybe if the changes are ever looked at. See ya guys later, good times

So you wanted nukes to work like dots do with focus, despite the tuning and balance for base spell damage and what on demand mods we have for them all being based on the way focus works currently. In the process, whether you intended it or not, you got the limited devs and dev time spent investigating the internal workings of dots that were not broken because your data and questions are often taken at face value most times. Which lead to a pretty big hit unless they do fix faycites and the bp clicks to work as they were for dots. During beta when lots of other stuff that related to beta could have been worked on.

Its amazing that there were not tons of necros parsing this all out, looking for nerfs related to dots and how they work with focus effects, faycites, robe clicks, songs and auras during beta. Instead most that hadn't quit or at least weren't mia were fighting an epic nerf, a deathbloom nerf, working to get stuff in beta tuned or changed like spells, spell tuning, aa's added or adjusted, etc. So silly of them to not be looking for these ninja nerfs related to the basic function of how focus effects have worked on dots since inception, had they only known sherlock was snooping at dots coding and encouraging devs to do the same. Maybe people would have noticed.

Or you could actually read what I said, because it is pretty much the opposite of what I just read from you, lol.

For that to happen you must repent your Sin. Right now you lack credibility, at least with one class.