Necro DoT Revamp Level 1-65 (Proposed Changes)

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by Vedian, Jan 6, 2022.

  1. Vedian Lorekeeper

    I should probably start by saying that I have never mained a necro but I have played one a bit. In an attempt to learn the class as well as I know some of the others, I came across some obvious inconsistencies and decided that I wanted take a look at what the level 1-65 DoT revamp could possibly look like since I had gathered so much data already. Note that all spell values here are base spell without any focus effects.

    To start, I wanted to compare to shaman. Partly because they share 3 similar lines (poison, disease, curse), but also because some of the spells actually overlap between both classes (specifically Venom of the Snake and Envenomed Bolt in poison, and Scourge and Plague in disease). The shaman curves are beautiful, smooth lines from level 1 right up into 75 and beyond. A couple of outliers, including the extra efficient Ancient at level 60, but for the most part each line is very consistent.

    [IMG]
    [IMG]
    [IMG]


    The level 70+ Necro revamp has already taken place which provides some additional challenge to smooth out that transition. As I will show below there is inconsistency until the 75+ game (not just 70). Therefore, in order to revamp the 1-65 lines, some adjustment to the 70 set is also required in order to account for the earlier spell stacking that still takes place at 70. With my proposed changes it will look smooth like the shaman curves from level 1 to 75+.

    Some necro spell lines overlap with the shaman lines as noted above. Since my assumption is that a spell cannot belong to more than one spell stacking group, this can’t be fixed. Therefore, some try hards might mix those old and still decent spells into their rotation for maximum burn, but note that this comes at a time and mana cost and lower mana efficiency. If it was possible to prevent stacking between the shaman/necro lines and pure necro lines that would be preferable for balance though.

    There is also no way to tell how these changes will play out due to the complexity of the class even with consolidated DoT lines. If these curves are too shallow the level 60 and 65 DPS could be too high, or conversely if they are too deep the DPS could be too low. There would also be more options on whether a necro chooses to burn more stackable DoTs or add some utility to their spell bar. There is certainly still the opportunity for additional spell sets to maximize play even with the changes I’ve proposed, but the prime DoTs would fit into one spell set with a bit of room for utility.

    Poison Line
    The poison line is inconsistent. In the charts below, 2 spells are Blood of Saryrn line, 2 are Visziaj's Pallid Haze for 70+, and 3 spells do not have a stacking group. Notably, the Blood of Saryrn spells are significantly better than others, and there is a significant jump at 75.
    In the revamped version, these 3 ungrouped spells are grouped at the start of the Visziaj's Pallid Haze line of spells. The Blood of Saryrn line would still stack with the expanded Visziaj's Pallid Haze line and provide some flexibility in certain situations. New DPS values and mana costs were curved using the Blood of Saryrn line and level 75 spell. Additionally, mana cost was manually increased at 65 and 70 to balance the damage/mana ratio relative to existing necro and shaman values.

    [IMG]
    [IMG]


    Disease Line
    The disease line basically has the same issues as the poison line and the same logic in balancing using Breath of Ultor and level 71. There was no manual mana cost adjustment since the damage/mana ratio was as expected. The 2 ungrouped spells would be added to the start of the Eranon's Decay line. Level 1 Disease Cloud had an additional manual adjustment to the duration. The Breath of Ultor line would still stack with the expanded Eranon's Decay line.

    [IMG]
    [IMG]


    Curse Line
    This one has similar start and end values as the shaman line at similar levels. Therefore, the shaman line was used as the basis of the curve for the adjusted mid range. There was a notable jump at 72 that has been smoothed out. Additionally, some minor tweaks were added to improve the efficiency of the level 70 Ancient. Previously all 3 of the ungrouped spells would stack. Spells from 67-72 are in the Curse of Mortality line and the revamped version would expand that group to the lower curse spells.

    [IMG]
    [IMG]


    Fire Line
    Similar issues to the three previous lines with inconsistency and a large jump at 73. The curve was smoothed by using the first 2 spells and level 73 end point. Previously all of these spells would stack. The revamped version would include all of these spells in the Pyre of Mori line.

    [IMG]
    [IMG]


    Disease and Debuff Line
    No proposed changes to the line since it looks good as-is. These do not currently stack but for consistency they could be added to the start of the Grip of Mori line.

    [IMG]


    Lifetap Line
    The lifetaps all currently stack. To balance this line, each previous rank was added to the current rank for damage and mana. The recourse healing amount would be adjusted from 100% down to 82.5% to match the future ranks. These would be added to the start of the Dyn`leth's Grasp line.

    [IMG]
    [IMG]


    Snare Line
    This one is a bit of an oddball compared to the rest. While I would prefer to avoid a nerf, it seemed reasonable to tone down the mid range spells in this line which would even out with some of the other buffs. The first 3 and last 2 were used to smooth the curve. These spells do not stack currently and do not appear to lead into an existing stacking group.

    [IMG]
    [IMG]


    Additional Ungrouped and Unchanged DoTs
    Eternities Torment – Undead DoT, doesn’t appear to be in any group
    Auspice – Disease resist life tap, doesn’t appear to be in any group
    Zevfeer's Theft of Vitae – Group Recourse disease resist life tap, could be added to the start of the Dark Leech line without any other changes
    Splut – unique progressive DoT, doesn’t appear to be in any group

    Comparing DPS
    Current level 65 Shaman DPS during PoP with Bane, Blood of Saryrn, and Breath of Ultor should provide 320 DPS for 2828 mana.

    The current 65 necro rotation with 8 spell slots and 2 clickies, assuming perfect uptime on all 10 spells, would provide 333 DPS for 3056 mana. A marginal best-case improvement in DPS for over 3x the effort.

    The revamped 65 necro rotation with 6 spell slots (poison, disease, fire, curse, disease debuff, lifetap) and 1 clicky would provide 454 DPS for 4258 mana. This is approximately in line with the DPS of a wizard with spell haste chain casting Shock of Magic without any crits or focus effects. The revamped version would provide about 40% more DPS than a shaman for over twice the effort and 50% more mana. This would be one of the higher burn rotations and couldn’t be sustained for long considering it takes nearly half the average mana pool in this era. Some casting downtime would almost certainly be required to FD the agro. Decisions could be made to drop certain spells for better mana efficiency or add flexibility on utility. Any resists would be a significant blow to the DPS and mana cost. It would give the prime DoT class the opportunity to parse more appropriately for the effort required on raids and in groups considering the faster pace of modern play, while maintaining a lot of the complexity of the class.

    Summary of changed database values below. Blanks indicate no change. SG# indicates the Stacking Group rank, with new values shown and the old values in (#), where applicable for existing Stacking Groups. Stacking Group rank changes would need to be extended through the entire line of spells where spells are added to the start. Spell levels don't change and are listed for reference.

    [IMG]

    *note that all Dyn`leth's Grasp lifetaps could also be adjusted to 82.5% recourse.

    So there it is. If someone asked me to revamp necro DoTs that’s probably where I’d start.
    Kalipto likes this.
  2. Tweakfour17 Augur

    You've put a lot of effort into this, nice job.
  3. Xeris Augur

  4. AtomSmasher New Member

    You left on the biggest thing when it comes to DPS, and that is resistances, you make it seem like all the shaman dots will land on the target while we know that's not the case. Necro resistance vs Shaman spell resistance is day and night of difference. I don't even think shaman gets a single negative resistance check dot pre-65 (probably wrong) but I know necros get a ton for -200 fire dot lines and -100 magic dot lines.
    Duder likes this.
  5. birdsong_pawn Augur

    Nice work, indeed. I'm guessing that you put more work into this than Darkpaw put into the necro dot revamp so far.

    But the original necro dot changes were never finished. I haven't played for a couple years, but I remember that some of the spell lines were never done. (Things like the Oblivion line really need to be included.) They also made the swift dots completely useless -- I'm not sure whether or why they still waste time and resources on these.

    The original revamp needs to be completed before the kinds of changes suggested here. Since we're going on three years since the changes started, I wouldn't count on either happening.
  6. Triconix Augur

    While this post has good intentions, it is narrow sighted. The DoT revamp intent wasn't to increase dps and boost classes. It was a solution to an ever growing issue with the debuff limit on live. Having two necros and normal debuffs on a raid would take up the debuff limit on raids. The goal was to shrink the amount of spells on mobs to help allow others to use their spells that were being virtually ignored. To further encourage the usage of these spells, their damage was boosted even more to make them viable (potentially at the expense of some of the lesser necro spells).

    This issue doesn't exist in early eras of EQ. There's no need to boost necro DoTs from 1-70. This post also doesn't account for mods, AAs, resist adjusts on spells (heavy advantage to necro right here). You also start getting into 70 and beyond spells. Now you need to account for necro 2.0/5 and their COA bp click (a 12%+ uptime 40% boost to crit rate is massive).

    Any necro that is worth their salt already disliked the neutering of their class. The weaving and stacking of all their DoTs gave the class one of the most unique experiences in the game, with a steep, rewarding learning curve.

    While on live you still need to stack a significant amount of DoTs on a mob, it's not nearly as involved as it was. Early era necros will become so incredibly boring if you take away their DoT stacking. It will also further increase the issue of massive player power creep. Most raid mobs from Classic - OOW (all I've seen in a TLP) just flop over now. Increasing damage to necros will make it happen even faster, to the point where their DoTs will most likely not even last the full duration, which already happens sometimes.
  7. Vedian Lorekeeper

    Firstly, I don't really care why you think the revamp was started or wasn't finished. It's irrelevant since this was "what if" exercise more than any suggestion that they have to do this, although I think the game would be better off if they did. I read a previous thread with people arguing over the precise use of language when they first started revamping DoTs. Seeing people analyzing the wording of a dev post as if it should be interpreted like some literary masterpiece was one of the dumbest things I've ever read.
    The consolidation that I came up with above is not intended to boost necro DPS, but it is a possibility as a side effect. However, the mana intensity wouldn't allow them to sustain that DPS very long or during a fast moving raid. Decisions would need to be made rather than derping your way through every DoT in the spellbook.
    It actually does take into account the mods because it uses existing DPS and comparisons to other classes as the basis. Shaman can get Burning Affliction and so can Necro. Everyone gets AAs.
    Resists are not a heavy advantage to necro. They have to contend with more resists to land their spells so any resistant or immune mob automatically cuts into their potential. Poison and disease lines have no adjust until PoP, and even then its small. The curse line only has a small adjust. Disease+debuff line and most of the snare line have no adjust. Fire has an adjust - great, the worst DPS line gets to land easily. The lifetap line has a large adjust - good, it is the least mana efficient line if the necro doesn't need a heal. The Scent debuff line has no adjust and therefore probably won't make it into the spell bar for a necro working in every possible DoT.
    Nothing is changed above 70 in the spells above. Only the level 65-70 entry into the stacking groups get adjusted to account for the fact that earlier spells would no longer stack.
    All that said, if DPS really was consistently too high, it would be virtually no work to go back and do a small percentage decrease to damage and mana values at 60 or 65 or 70.

    I would ask them about this but they literally do not exist. I haven't seen a single necro main in years on Agnarr. Maybe 1 or 2 lasted a couple weeks? Nobody wants to work multiple times harder than a shaman to maybe approach the same DPS in an ideal situation, and get 0 raid utility on top of that.
    And this wouldn't be dumbing down the class significantly. There would still be more spells that a necro could want to use than they had room for. I can think of at least 9 DoTs that would stack, plus any utility or nukes. But if a necro went that aggressive on DoTs they would be OOM for the next fight and hurt their overall DPS. It would actually add some strategy to the class, which I guess might be offensive to the necros that think chain casting lots of garbage spells makes them good. Suggesting that it's a good thing that necros can spam every DoT in their book to achieve DPS so low that they don't even need to load FD is absurd.
  8. Loratex The Ridiculous Necro

    I don’t recall having mana issue back in the 65-70 era. Did the Dot revamp really stack the previous “lines”. Fire doesn’t really take off until dread pyre. Blood of Thule was the power house for a long time. Did they change dot ext pre 70?

    I’m not sure why any one would use a snare over dooming Darkness (27) until they get the snare aa.
    Are you talking in a groups/soloing/ raiding aspect?

    All of this matters.

    We used to cast 21plus dots on raids and only 7? When not raiding. Kiting 75 plus I used all of 4 maybe 5 dots per mob and moved on to the next.

    You seem to be looking at single cast dot/duration vs dps. They pretty much got necros to a total damage of the spell.

    Remember other players couldn’t see dot damage until after lvl 75

    The haze line is not the most power poison dot line 70-75 the venom line is.
    Pyre of the (name) is the lesser damage longer duration fire line compared to the dread pyre line.

    Ideally we did
    Fire short
    Magic short
    Venom line
    Fire long
    Magic line (splurt)
    Haze line
    1 disease line
    Demand blood dd
    Recast short fire/magic
    Disease line 2 tap.

    Rinse repeat.
    If the dot extension change takes place already at this level you are talking excessive amount of damage compared to these numbers.
    Also I’m pretty certain necros have more dot Aa than shaman do. All of theses are taking into consideration when these spells were l designed.
  9. Vedian Lorekeeper

    There shouldn't be mana issues currently because everything is tuned so low and so many of the spells are from previous eras, and it takes forever to cast them all. The way that I adjusting things would keep the same damage/mana ratios or be very close. They also align closely to the shaman values, and you can compare to those. At 65 a couple of the revamped shaman DoTs are around 1000 mana. High DPS output should take a lot of mana.

    Shaman poison line averages around 5 damage/mana. Necro is currently about the same before and after my changes.
    Disease is more like 6 for shaman, 7 for necro before and after.
    Curse is around 4 in all three scenarios.
    Lifetaps start around 1 and end up around 3 by 65 for necro before and after.
    Fire starts around 3 then jumps to about 6 before, same thing but would be a smoother change after.

    I chose Pyre of Mori because it is available earlier and it has 54s duration like the spells leading up to it (which actually progress from 36 to 54 as level increases). The first rank if Dread Pyre is 30s duration.

    Haze line was also chosen because it is available earlier and the lower DPS of this line keeps the total DPS of the necro more balanced. The damage/mana ratio is also closer to the rest of the line.

    It's hard to believe Blood of Thule (65) was a powerhouse considering that at 37 DPS it's actually worse than the level 50 Envenomed Bolt at 55 DPS that is shared with the shaman Blood of Saryrn line.

    I chose to clean up the snare line but it would be virtually useless on raids since most stuff would be immune. After the changes it would have a damage and mana progression that might make the later spells worthwhile, but there is a choice between epic, cheap snare, or higher dps snare in the solo or group game.
  10. Loratex The Ridiculous Necro

    If I’m understanding this right, when they changed to the newer stacking system a necro line won’t lane if a shaman uses theirs? Does this mean if you have 4 shaman and 4 necro only 1 dot between the 2 classes (potential of 8) lands?

    I distinctly remember using blood of Thule and funeral pyre going into tss. Though it may have been just because we could.
  11. ForumBoss Augur

    If you look at the dps over time plots for the two classes, you will see that the ramp up time is much longer for necro since they have to cast so many dots to reach comparable dps. The time of that ramp up is significant in terms of total damage applied even on some of the very long luclin fights.
  12. Triconix Augur

    This isn't why "I think" it started. It's straight from the initial developer post. It's literal fact. By you not caring, it means you don't understand the entire reason why DoT revamps were done.

    I won't bother reading the rest of your post. If you don't want to accept why DoT changes occurred, the rest of your argument is nullified.
    Kobra likes this.
  13. Vedian Lorekeeper


    There is no conflict between multiple players stacking the same DoTs. You could have a shaman and two necros all land Envenomed Bolt at the same time.

    What happens with the new stacking is that a player can only land one spell in a given spell line on the same mob. So a shaman can't land their 65 poison DoT and also add a level 60 poison DoT.

    When the DoTs were revamped they increased the damage and mana cost of each spell but no longer allowed the same line of similar spells to stack. So you could get the same or better damage by casting fewer spells.

    I don't know what year you are talking about but Blood of Thule is now inferior to the level 50 Envenomed Bolt because Envenomed Bolt was improved when it was revamped as part of the shaman Blood of Saryrn line of spells. Currently you would get more DPS using the level 50 spell over the 65 if you had to choose between them.
  14. Xeris Augur

    In Agnarr era (pop/ldon), what I have to do as a Necro is stack:

    - splurt (vt click)
    - funeral pyre
    - pyro (elemental leg click)
    - Saryrns kiss
    - horror
    - blood of Thule
    - envenomed bolt
    - dark plague
    - ignite blood/or cessation of cor/or plague

    That's 9 dots that you have to constantly keep up to maximize the DPS, and maybe you can sneak in a few lifetaps. Shaman casting 3 spells is pretty much the same dmg. Considering Necro is "the" dot class, it's pretty wild that their kit is so underwhelming.

    Based on how fast pop era fights go, Necro feels utterly useless on raids. In many cases it's unlikely you can even get a full dot rotation before a potime boss dies.

    One thing that I think would be really cool for necros would be to give them dot crits in POP. That would feel on brand.
  15. Forcallen Augur

    Thats not exactly true, it was stated they wanted to reduce debuff slots (they failed) AND they wanted to up the dps/ramp time on a class by class basis. Lower revamp likely was back burnered because they simply didn't have time and or it wasn't handled well for anyone right from the start.

    "DoTs Improvements

    Over the past few months, we've been reviewing the way DoTs work and how we would like to improve them going forward. As most of you know, there's a limited number of debuff slots available on any given NPC, which conflicts with DoT classes wanting to layer as many spells as possible on any given NPC in order to maximize damage. This layering has contributed to a lot of problems over the years; most notably, it takes a lot of spell slots away from players who want to maximize DoT damage, and it uses up many of the limited debuff slots available on raid targets."

    "We're planning to make this same transition for all classes that use DoTs over the next few months. Other classes probably won't see the same boost in base damage that Beastlords have, since they have fewer innate boosts to DoT damage than other classes, but we expect everyone to be doing more damage, ramping that damage up faster, using more mana (though more efficiently), and using fewer debuff slots on their targets."

    I don't think the intent was ever hey this level 50 poison dot will be the gold standard for necros (because it was revamped with shaman dots at low levels) and necros later level 65 version is worse because it was left untouched.
  16. Triconix Augur

    Translation:
    "We are consolidating dots to try and fix the ongoing debuff limit problem.

    Bst dots were garbage so we decided they also needed an additional boost.

    Not everyone will get the same kind of boosts that Bsts get, but there is an unintended and welcome effect which is everybody may experience dps increases and shortened ramp up time to reach this dps."

    That statement is a lot different than:

    "DoT classes need to have boosted dps so we consolidated DoTs and another benefit is it frees up debuff slots"

    Do you see how people completely altered the intent [help free up debuff slots] of the post to fit their wants [increase to dps]? Their solution to the problem at hand had an indirect benefit of increased dps for DoT classes, which they acknowledged. They never said the issue was damage output, but players got it regardless and now want more, even though their primary objective was to solve debuff slots. It also must be noted, this was posted on live server announcements so it's quite clear this was a live server issue. You don't have issues with the debuff limit in early eras so reasonably one wouldn't expect the DoT revamp to take place at lower levels. Doing so led to just further complaints because the devs threw the players an extra bone and now they want the entire carcass.

    Thule is 60 dps. EBolt is a shade under that. Thule has a resist adjust so it's resisted less often.
    Kobra likes this.
  17. Loratex The Ridiculous Necro

    Yeah I’m aware as to what they did I didn’t realize they did it all the way back to level1. Clearly the Blood of Thule/envenomed bolt need to be adjusted. That was clearly and over site.
    Triconix likes this.
  18. Triconix Augur

    EBolt is stupid overtuned. There's a reason why necro is the go-to class in classic for krono farming anything of value. It's a one click ticket to outdpsing anything and everything.

    Using the most OP spell in classic/Kunark is a terrible reason to promote further DoT revamps.
  19. StarLord69 New Member

    I commend you for writing this amazing OP, however my heart tells me it will fall on deaf ears.
  20. Forcallen Augur

    Your statement was:



    I shared Aristo's exact words from the dot revamp post. Youre doing what you accused the OP of doing which is spinning aristos words and intent to fit your narrative. He flat out said every dot revamped will be doing more damage and ramping up faster. That is more dps.

    Regardless, the revamp was handled bad since day one. You can look up my posts on the matter for years. Leaving sub 70 dots untouched and a few live dots are the result of not enough time and still not understanding how or what they did wrong so being leery.