Necros in fast groups

Discussion in 'Casters' started by Kalipto, Apr 17, 2020.

  1. Kalipto Augur

    Hey necros, I'm just coming back and torn between two classes. Last time I played necro my only complaint was that they're kinda boring in fast groups. For pretty much all group content I saw, trash mobs die in under 30 seconds, often times less.

    Back when I played my fast group line-up was mostly 2 swarm pets and a nuke. I felt like I did "okay" for the tools I had. But I was always at the bottom of the parse (except vs lazy players).

    Has that changed at all for necros? I already know we shine bright like a diamond on long fights so no need to defend that aspect. =)
  2. Sneakytoon New Member

    Welcome back
    You can now only use one swarm pet spell. The swarm pet spells now share a timer.
    There was a Youtube video..blah blah blah...nerf bat.

    DBG has been pretty clueless about the Necromancer class. They seem to hate we solo and hate we group.
  3. Protagonist Tank

    The necro spell revamp is (finally) on the near horizon. Whether that fixes things or not remains to be seen, though.
  4. Beergoggles Elder

    Yeah it's rough in high dps groups. I'm really hoping they reduce necro base cast times on dots from 3 seconds to .5 or 1 second and add a couple combination dots. Doing so would help ramp up times a lot, although such a change may not fix the issue completely but would go a long way to helping. Our swift dots are nearly useless at the moment since they aren't focused by enhanced decay. A few normal dots do more damage than swifts now so swift dots need some tweaking damage wise to make them worth casting or allow enhanced decay to work on them.
  5. Ravanta Suffer Augur

    Necros are just fine in high dps groups, as long as it's not the type of group that pulls multiple mobs, but relies on mezzing all but one of them. (I've seen lots of boxers do this because it's easy to focus damage onto one target and mez the others) No, we won't really be great damage in these types of groups.

    If it's a group that is actually engaging multiple targets, which is simply how the game should be played nowadays, it's really not hard to do well as a nec. We have no mana concerns, sphere is good, klraggrek and the like do not have a rest timer, chaotic power is easy to maintain in these types of groups, and our pets/zerg pets also do well.

    In ToV, far and away the best groups I have ever been in were 2-3 necros, a baller SK, healer, and a random other class (enchanters for chain stun for example) that can contribute in some way to ae killing. Pull 40+ mobs in GD and go to town.
    Tucoh likes this.
  6. Sneakytoon New Member

    Ravanta, thanks for that input.

    My experience is limited to 105 max level. I stopped buying expac's.

    I had never even heard of pet walls before they nerfed the swarms. I used them for locking down adds.
    My work around was the 3 tick mezz line. It's not sexy but it gets it done.
  7. Beergoggles Elder

    The main problem with what Ravanta said is that in trying to defend that necros are fine in high dps groups he sort of proves the point they are not. Just by having to state they are fine in high dps groups as long as a specific condition is met points out the glaring problem. Not to mention big AE groups like that are not the norm for the majority of the eq population, and probably isn't his typical every day group either. What he is basically saying is that if you have a raid geared/skilled sk and cleric in your group in a tier 1 zone such as GD there will be big enough pulls for you to stack dots on and have ae spheres running to do good damage in a group. I'm not saying necro's should be topping parses in fast kill groups nor do I think they should be, it would be nice if they were a bit better than they are now. In a game that has moved to a much quicker style of kill gameplay it makes little sense to have a dot class with a base 3 second cast time on their dots casting 1 dot at a time trying to compete.
    Waitwhat likes this.
  8. Ravanta Suffer Augur

    Don't get me wrong, I don't think any grouping necro would complain about having less of a ramp up time for dots. You state that you would like to see dots go from 3 second base to 1 second. Sure, it would be fun. But here's the thing...it would mean spell foci would be unnecessary for us. 1 second casting time is better than the 3 second base + the reduction from tribute/casted foci obviously, but I think it's important to remember that buffs and foci being able to make your character better is a good thing for the game.

    Whenever I have grouped with or stumbled across random players it was common to stick around for a bit. I never really saw many necros on Xegony, but there are things that I tended to notice from what I would guess were the casual players. They didn't use their full set of tools. No blood casts, no buffing with venoms during downtime, never using burns except for when a named was in camp, and a whole slew of other little things that they should be doing to assist the group to it's end goals that they wouldn't.

    It's really easy to come across as an elitist snob when talking about that kind of stuff, but what I'm ultimately getting at is there's nothing wrong with our (or any) class not being stellar at everything. There are some classes that are stellar in all settings...and in my opinion they are boring.

    From a grouping and only fighting one mob at a time perspective, (and again, that play style in ToV seems less common, it seems most groups commonly engage 2 or 3 mobs at a time) I do think it's a little funny that enhanced decay AA ends up with our hardest ticking dots no longer being swifts. Personally I only really found a use for swifts in ToV in the velks mission. I came close a couple of times to posting a suggestion that swifts should be bumped up a bit. I just couldn't make up my mind on what the numbers should look like.

    TLDR: It seems to me that most groups in ToV are generally not engaging only 1 mob at a time. More often than not, it is 2 or 3. We do great in these types of settings. If we use our tools. I think you got blinded by my passion for AE groups.
    Scornfire likes this.
  9. Scornfire The Nimbus Prince

    Plenty of DPS to be had stacking FTV/FTP and Bestow, using the 3 combo DoTs to forceproc them, in conjunction with chain swarm pets/aura and gearing your pet if mobs are dying too quickly for your liking
    Ravanta Suffer likes this.
  10. Waitwhat Elder

    So... fast group or slow group, necros are fine?
  11. Magickon Augur

    Some players think all they have to do is cast a couple of spells.

    It's no different than a rogue or monk who thinks all they have to do is auto-attack.

    Those types never parse well.
  12. Tucoh Augur

    You had me until you started talking about pulling 40+ mobs in GD. I'm presuming you mean simultaneously and not 40 unique mob spawns or whatever.

    It's hard to pull 40+ mobs in any zone because they start to zoink out after about 20, and GD doesn't have the mob density to do this anyway. Last year I leveled a group from 1 to 95 or so using sphere using huge groups, it was pretty ridiculous.



    I'm guessing the SK was pulling closer to 10 mobs at a time, at which point the necro sphere that puts out some uhh, 40k? DPS per mob? starts to really do some work. When I play with a necro I try to engage as many mobs at a time just so their sphere can sink them. They can spam swift DoTs which does great too.


    Normally, however, a necro's value to a group decreases with the kill-speed of the group. A normal group that kills one group of 1-3 mobs at a time but ices a mob every 15 seconds just does not utilize a necro very much.
  13. Ravanta Suffer Augur

    The comment about the numbers starting to zoink out after 20 is a bit surprising. You seem to specifically say GD doesn't have the mob density for it which would only be true if you were in a different area of the zone, the zone had more people clearing in it than what it was when I've ae'd there, or perhaps you just get lag with large pulls. Is that related to playing more than one toon at the same time? I wouldn't know.

    But you're completely incorrect when you say that you guess the SK was pulling closer to 10 mobs at a time...we made a sport of out seeing how many mobs could be killed by our group at the same time.
    Kizant's parser makes it really easy to get mob counts, we started competing with ourselves to raise the number. Sounds like you have not had that kind of fun in GD yet.

    I recommend it! It's a great way to work on evolving items.
  14. Ravanta Suffer Augur

    Forgot to add, your last statement is 100% correct.
  15. Ravanta Suffer Augur

    Other than 3 mobs being killed at a time, with one dying every 15 seconds means that for one mob a nec has plenty of time to do plenty of damage on second and third mob. Drop sphere, use pets, and don't use assist. The nec could also pull...making it a lot easier for them to make one mob in particular the last to be engaged. (snare it!)
  16. Ibudin Augur

    This right here..


    I've had this same discussion on this forum before with necros wanting more grouping tools in fast kill groups. Use what you have available to you, and see how it goes. Its pretty good, no were not Zerkers, but we can do more than Zerkers overall (tank pull dot)...its a tradeoff. I prefer to group with multiple necros if there is no tanking class available for max DPS, but like Ravanta states above, the majority of the necros I'd randomly group with either on Xeg or Bristle - never cast dots as the mob is incoming, they wait way to long to land the first dot, and hardly every land 4 ...to proc alliance. They never roll burns, its frustrating. Then I presume those same necros come to this forum asking for changes.
  17. Ibudin Augur

    error - lol forum is as laggy as EW raids are.
    Ravanta Suffer likes this.
  18. Ibudin Augur

  19. Jhinx Whimsical Chinchilla

    What gives you the impression that it is about to be addressed Protagonist?
  20. Szilent Augur

  21. Jhinx Whimsical Chinchilla

  22. Tuco Augur

    Sounds fun. Next time you are pulling and AEing 40+ mobs in Great Divide or any other current content zone take a vid, I'd love to see it.