Necro DoT Revamp Level 1-65 (Proposed Changes)

No one mains necros on your server because its designed to run as many raids as possible get the lewts before next spring. If a group of players intend to maximize time and loot, they would not use necros, probably zero in fact. If thats your argument, we all know this already.

But the premise of this thread is do they need a revamp for 1-65? nah

I promise there were plenty allll the way up until Luclin (lvls 1-60). Yes during Luclin-PoP-all the way up to SoD really, you wont see many casters in raids. Its usually just the few mains who play casters no matter the era.

You're asking for a revamp to support more necros during 4 months of PoP on a seasonal server.

I like the logic of this.
Problem is identified, solution applied. Power can be saved with LEDs so changing the most used lights to LEDs makes economic sense. But then, a secondary benefit is identified, the lighting looks better.
Triconix logic would have the most used lights changed and those rooms like brighter and nicer, while the rest of the house looks dingy in comparison because that wasn't the original goal of saving money and reevaluating decisions or setting new goals is an absolute impossibility.
If you switched every light or even most lights in your house instead of only the highest usage rooms your logic would follow that the necro DoT revamp should be completed. Some lights simply were not necessary from a purely cost/energy savings perspective.

You clearly know nothing about the server but thanks for confirming that. It's hard to imagine a description of the state of Agnarr to be more wrong than this.

The premise of this thread is what would the revamp look like. You've derailed it into a question of should or shouldn't it be done.

I don't play on any truebox servers (Lol)

Funny I didn't see this thread when your server was in vanilla..

I feel you like wanted to main necro, or even did but you realized how much easier the gameplay is with literally every other class for the same reward. No argument here! As i said in my first response necros kinda like that.

Your first post was well thought out, had graphs and looked pretty slick. Every post after that has been pretty agressive, not sure if you are intending that or not.

To your light bulb analogy maybe I would swap them all out, or maybe there is a point where its good enough. Do I go in the furnace room enough to care if the lighting is better? Thats not a very fair comparison to levels 1-60 I suppose, so let's say would I care to go swap bulbs in the playroom in the basement? Sure my kids spend alot of time down there, but they also spend alot of time just playing video games in the dark and don't care, I could do it for completion sake but also most of the people using that room wouldn't care at all so might be wasted time.

The premise of this thread is what it could look like, it could look completely different and not fit in with your plan due to whatever the dev's vision is. Heck, it might already fit their vision which is why its not changed.

Longer form thoughts on this topic.

1) I think it would be nice if this idea was implemented. I like that it was well thought out, data driven, and also has some actual logic applied to it.

2) Whatever the current state of the dot revamp is, or what DBG's intent was (whether they're done with the revamp or plan on doing earlier levels at some later point) isn't really relevant.

I think most people who have played TLP servers from classic through Luclin would agree that necros are actually incredibly strong for most of this period. There's a bit of a lull during Kunark but Necros are pretty much able to compete with top DPS consistently throughout Velious and Luclin. I remember easily topping Vulak parses and many VT fights. I think this is a factor of how long the fights take. Necros who can sustain uptime on their dots over a long enough period of time are going to do some serious damage.

Necros face a major issue in the PoP/LDON era in my opinion because of 2 things:

1) As heroic stats begin to be introduced in PoP, melee damage sees MASSIVE spikes. I don't have hard data to support this, but my intuition says that the impact of heroic stats on melee DPS is significantly higher than the impact of focus effects on nukes and dots.

2) Fights in POP/LDON are much shorter which inherently causes Necro damage to suffer. Anecdotally, on Agnarr most potime boss fights last around 2-3 minutes tops (avg time of 2.4 mins per boss on our potime raid just tonight). Because of this, a good necro can barely get off 2 full rotations of 9-10 dots and the 2nd rotation of dots probably won't finish before the boss dies. Compare this to Luclin and VT when fights were lasting 10+ minutes and you can see how necro damage suffers greatly in this era.

Further, a big area where classes stack damage in PoP is during trash clears (Phase 3 and Phase 5). Mobs die so fast it's almost impossible for necros to do anything useful. Their lifetaps suck compared to other nuking classes, and you can't even get a full duration on any dot before a mob dies. A recent potime raid from Saturday saw a necro who had one of the highest spell cast counts in the whole raid net about 130 DPS. Comparatively, a wizard with the same number of spell casts had 220 DPS, almost 100 dps higher for the same amount of effort. Even if the necro in question was not being the most optimal with their spells, nothing would have given them +100 dps.

I think what creates some frustration for necros in this era is the Shaman comparison. Shamans cast 3 dots: Ultor, Bane, Blood of Saryrn, that do slightly less damage than 9 stacked necro dots. Necros have to cast 3x more spells literally to do essentially the same damage as a shaman going full burn. Effort vs. reward in this era is just super bad for necromancers. Their additional utility is also not that important in this era (I.E. mind wrack, twitching, etc). It's super understandable that necros feel underwhelming to play, and it's why there are so few of them in this era.

Finally, necros to a certain extent have to trade utility for damage. If you're trying to land Scent or some of the other necro debuffs, those are dots you're losing out on, or you have to be swapping spell sets mid fight to land debuffs, then swap to dots. With how fast fights last, you essentially have to choose between raid utility (debuffs) and damage. Shamans can do both without any consequential tradeoffs. Almost every class has major resist adjusts on their debuffs. Scent of Terris doesn't which makes it super annoying to land on many boss fights in POP/LDON era. Have you ever been a necro in potime and had Scent resisted 5-6 times, and by the time you get it to land or give up, the boss is half dead and you haven't even started your dot rotation? Feels bad.

Now ultimately, what many people would say is, "EQ isn't necessarily meant to be completely balanced, and Necros in later eras are literal gods, so who cares." Sure. I actually agree with this sentiment. I don't think the game needs to be perfectly balanced and I think if the devs tried to do that the game would lose a lot of its luster for me. That being said, if the devs decided to further revamp Necros, I'd 100% support it.

In this specific era (POP/LDON), it's just not a rewarding experience. In Velious, I'd grind the necro super hard and be rewarded when I saw myself at the top of the parse. In POP, I'm grinding hard to be 35th on the parse, when a 3rd box /autofire ranger is 20 spots higher than me for 99% less effort.

Thematically, necromancers are supposed to be the "DOT" class. One would expect them to do the most damage by dots, but they're pretty much outclassed by Shamans, and dots are the 2nd/3rd role of a shaman behind heals, buffs, and other general raid utility. It'd be like if Druids were better healers than Clerics. That would be weird and not make sense, and make playing a cleric feel odd.

Aside from the DOT revamp, I think it would be really interesting if DOT crit AA's got moved to the POP era. Give necros a 10-15% (or whatever the right number is) chance to crit their dot ticks. This would make the experience more fun, give necros a little more power in this era, and give them something more unique in their kit during this era. As it stands, the 1 thing they can do with their kit, a Shaman can basically do equally well.

Long time necro main here and I recently went through this era on Rizlona server.

The last time this subject came up I was against it and I still am. The last time this came up and I posted parses I was told my guild sucks. Well I went and joined the top guild on the server and I was still parsing near the top with some of the sweatiest melee on the server even beating them on occassion which I was told was impossible. As for shamans lol no shaman will ever beat a necro in dps, they have no way to drop aggro. After re-experiencing this era I came to the conclusion once again that necros are capable of parsing well if played by the right person. So far that only seems to be me as no other necros I have been guilded with are able to do what I do which goes for live and TLP, I am just way better.

And that is the crux of the issue for me. Long time necros don't want the class dumbed down so all the drooling morons who play melee switch. I play necro because its not easy to parse well, because I like making second by second decisions to max my damage. If I wanted to get into wheelchair races I would play a monk.

Lastly, here is the problem with your spread sheets and formulas. Its all theoretical. None of it matters in the actual game. I heard this crap all the time even from other necros that the class is so bad and yet when I show up and show them how its done will they admit they're bad at the class? No its the lack of a dot revamp, their internet was lagging, their cats on fire etc. I have heard every excuse imaginable.

I will admit that when the 70s era hit the wheels fell off the balance train. Do I think casters could compete in the 70s era? Maybe if the resists on mobs were lowered. Even with full debuffs (malo, tash, bard songs including GoD ancient, and both scent debuffs) bosses are just straight up immune to entire spell lines and if your spells do land there are anti necro mechanics like hp locking.

If they adjusted monks down the game would be fine, there wouldn't be a 100% go to class in every situation. It would take them a lot less time to adjust the melee AA versus doing a dot revamp for eras thats not needed.

Agnarr players should not be allowed to share opinions about class balance on the forums, you guys are wasting a ton of time asking for special tuning for a dead server almost no one plays on and that is different from every other server Live or TLP in EQ. Just stop. You're almost as bad as the PvPers.

Necro is fine 1-70; moreover, the primary purpose of the 1-70 classes in modern EQ is to play on TLPs, and a driving motivation the last 5 years on TLP (you can see this with almost every TLP change they've implemented) is an attempt to make the early eras "more like" the original experience. Removing quests that were out of era, gear that was out of era, trying to make the bosses function more like they should have before all the power creeps, removing focus effects before Luclin etc etc. They want TLP to be a reasonable illusion of early EQ (it will never be quite more than an illusion, which is fine), so DoT consolidation in early eras goes directly against that. The old style of Necro play somewhat lives on in the early level ranges because of the fact they didn't do a DoT consolidation in that range, with EBolt being an outlier because it's a shared spell with another class.

It needs left exactly as it is, with no changes whatsoever.

Necro decline relative to melee, this is simple math, in PoP and LDoN; but anyone who said you could not even be competitive on parses was not correct. In those eras, depending on a number of factors, Necro should still be competitive. There are a couple LDoN raids out there with really dumb resist mechanics that might make it impossible, and a few other exceptions (there's also a few fights that are really bad for melee as well.)

In the 70s Necro and Mages actually still parse well on something like a target dummy, but in real raids it starts to get troublesome because they aren't scaling as much with all the aDPS a good guild will stack with melee and the fact they randomly have several bosses in most of the major raid zones in the 70s who are stupidly resistant to most spell damage and no comparable limiter on melee output. Even in the 70s you can still decently parse sometimes on some bosses, though. But overall the game isn't great in terms of like core mechanic / fight design, scaling with aDPS etc in those eras (some of it gets better later on, although some is a permanent design choice--like in modern casters can be quite competitive, but they still don't scale as well with gear as melee at any point, which creates for some an unexciting itemization loop because you don't feel rewarded by gear from raiding like a melee raider does.)