Test Update 11/22/2022 - Patch Notes and Discussions

You seem super salty for someone who mains the most op class in the game. In one of your posts you mentioned about fighting a blue con and making sure all discs were available.. That might be more of a you problem vs class problem tbh. My sk is just an alt but I definitely felt more powerful this expansion swarm pulling 20+ mobs in maidens eye (38 being my record) or being able to molo ctg mission. I know I wouldn't be doing that on my paladin. Moreover, if you could post a damage breakdown we could see how much your dot dps is really accounting for and then we can compare how big of a loss it is (personally to your play style) on the new upcoming raids. I'm willing to wager it will be marginal.

I guess I must be missing something obvious, I've only been playing an SK since '99, but how on earth are you tanking 38 ME mobs at one time ?

When I'm grouping in vex for example, if we get more than say 5 mobs in camp things start looking dicey, 38 mobs would be a quick trip to bind.

And honestly, "the most op class in the game" ? Have you never seen a well played necro ?

I saw very few attempts but I take it you agree with the current change? If so, then I don't think we have a lot to disagree on. And I'd make the same suggestion to any class in that same situation.

And speaking to this, I parsed a 5.7% increase to weapon DPS with this change.

Variables:

• Magelo in signature: Max AA, max crit rate, best-in-slot 2HB and dmg augs
• Max lobby buffs, zerk aura, battle leap.
• No other buffs (bard stuff, etc.)
• Level 120 dummy with base stats, attacked from the rear

This probably won't be "enough" for balance, but once we see some Live raid parses after we get new weapons, AAs, discs, etc. in the next expansion, we'll see what's necessary.

When Sancus put all his data in a few posts back (thank you), he cherry-picked a "BIN" that DOES NOT represent the VAST DOT table necros use. The 9.2% "decline" overal is a joke (based on the 17% decrease and NOS upgrades). All of our best DOTS fall into the 20-21% decrease. Figures lie and liars figure. The NOS aa upgrades that necros got are a joke. We got NOTHING other than Reluctanct Benovelence and 2 ranks of the focus per spell line, which apperently does very little.

Also NOT everyone will have the FULL extent of max raid focus upgrades. Some WILL not even get the new expansion for a while or at all. Nor will ALL necros have the benefit of having full updated ADPS all the time which "might" mitigate some of these changes. How is this only a RAID thing??

A Necro's job is to DUMP DOTS on a mob -- NOTHING else -- FULL STOP. There is no ADPS (other than dinky synergy). We bring nothing to the table OTHER than DOTS.
Also saying "mitigated by ~20-25% of damage coming from procs and pets" is a total over-reach.

How is it that Sancus and company know all these "BINS" and breakdowns but no one else does? Should this not be a job for the DEVS to discuss and deliver? Do we really have players that talk to the devs and bring their puppets and point to where it hurts and cry about this or that? How about you just play your class.

If wizards (and melee) were so bad, JUST give them something special. It's been brought up ad nauseam -- we get it. This "balance" is like someone with a great job posting vacation shots of amazing things they are doing and enjoying life, and then everyone replying with "must be nice " when they have a crap job.

You must not be counting the worn focus upgrades? By my calculations the typical rank 3 version of Pyre will drop by around 12.2% and after factoring in that only 75% to 80% comes from DoTs I get a similar 9.15% to 9.76% range for the decrease. And on beta raids we're seeing about that much of a difference. Obviously, the group game and people who don't get the newest expansion will have a different experience but there's nothing wrong with that estimate.

Xellen, a solo/molo necromancer on test server is parsing out a 17-20% dps decrease for group geared necromancers after NoS spell and AA upgrades. That seems like a pretty crazy nerf to me. Where such a thing really stings is that it makes us weaker to previous expansion content too.

Thats not to say that a molo necromancer can't do what we need to do in group content, because we can. Xellen was able to take out named mobs in NoS, albeit a bit more slowly, but its fairly demoralizing to think that we will buy the new expansion, complete it, and be objectively weaker than we were the previous expansion.

Thats why I'd rather other classes be buffed up. Gets us to the same balance in current content, but doesn't make it harder to do older content.

And this is basically what has happened with every recent expansion!
Any 'upgrades' from new spells, new AAs, new gear, etc is immediately nullified by the insanely over the top increases in NPC abilities.

It gets old!

e.g.
New expansion, woohoo!! Players get 50k HME and a bunch of new stuff.
NPCs get 50 million HME and new abilities that nullify anything that players received.
Players get 'stun resist', NPCs get a new stun with an increased resist debuff.
Players get 'fear immunity', NPCs get a 'run away' ability that is not 'fear'.
etc.

Just once it would be nice to have an expansion where us players could work hard and actually feel more powerful.

But who am I kidding...[/quote]

It only got harder for necromancers and other damage over time classes.

It got easier for physical classes like rogues, monks, berserkers, etc., who got better even without buying the expansion.

That was the intention. The balance was way off. So it needed to be corrected. Does this mean old content becomes harder? Yes, if your main damage was coming from necromancers. But it got easier if your main damage was coming from rogues, monks, berserkers, etc.

The trouble with improving every class to the level of necromancers is that 1. it requires inflating monster power to a new balance standard and 2. it requires changes to literally every class in the game, because every class does damage.

That's a lot more work for developers than just bringing down necromancers.

Some numbers for you all:

NoS T2 named with a proper burn rotation:

Xellen vs Skitter
Total 390,687,856
Time 335
DPS 1,166,232

Xellen vs Brute
Total 392,198,748
Time 368
DPS 1,065,757

Xellen vs Flail
Total 390,685,476
Time 324
DPS 1,205,819

Xellen vs Stone Chitin
Total 392,463,988
Time 330
DPS 1,189,284

NoS T2 named have 20% more hp than ToL T2 named. I have no NoS spells because as per usual no one beta tested the game and scrolls are set to level 255. I have full NoS focus AAs.

This is me going all out constant Proc for Blood, constant swarm pets, never letting a DoT drop. Using two robe clicks and intensity. This was an effort. To compare it to ToL T2 is a joke. My videos will show similar numbers, 1.1 to 1.5 million DPS but the effort to get those numbers was half the effort to achieve the numbers I'm doing on NoS named. Maybe that's the goal?

Concerning T2 trash mobs, I have to use Wounds now and fights always last long enough to require a recast of our AA snare. That should tell you the drop in DPS. +20% HP on mobs and -20% DPS is so fun.


EDIT: Forgot I added Restless Focus potions to the mix after the nerf, so maybe it's higher than 20%


There's a lot of back and forth above, and I get both sides of it. I hate nerfs in any game of any type. Heroes, Items, DPS, whatever. I don't understand why other classes were not brought up. As you can see I can still solo anything. 100 bucks says all the classes that could solo pre-nerf will still be able to and the classes sitting in GL playing Overseer and LFG will still be doing that.

Issue: Mobs seeing through walls then aggro is gained on pull, mobs are in a different tunnel section and should not be aggroing.
Zone: Paludal Depths
Area: Tunnel going down to the named Arly Golyek [ -428.48, -224.05, -119.67 ]
Reproducible: Yes, over and over again -- Pull "a recondite roughhouser" up the tunnel, then the mobs in a tunnel next to the current one listed in the /loc aggro, causing a classic EQ train over and over.

Anyone parse the Wizard after the changes?

Just casually dropping top tier necro parses with your alt nothing to see here! Not going to out nerd you and not trying to nit pick.....


If 50-60% of dot dps comes from the 5-8 bucket, more in multiple target settings, then a median would be showing that buckets impact at a 21% hit.

Your pet is doing a much higher % of your dps than what I and others see. I am guessing this is some combination of better Funeral Dirge, Sk debuff and auspice chains as well as some major mage pet know how. 8% of my dps would be on the high side for me on those events and you're at 10.55-14.42%.

For your proc % if you are using Coalition you're shifting another 1-2% of dot dps to this category as many others gain the same from more dots.

Yeah, median wasn't the right term. To be more precise/verbose: my goal was to choose a bucket that saw an impact that was reasonably close to the damage-weighted average change (18-19%, and for the purpose of proving that the change was still a nerf after NoS upgrades, rounding to 17% made more sense than rounding to 20%).

Pet DPS is mostly a function of factors within the owner's control (buffs, equipment) and whether or not you have a Bard. I did have a Bard for those parses, but I wouldn't think raid-level ADPS was particularly out of the ordinary (it was an open raid).

No Coalition casts on those parses.

The % difference will vary from duration of event and raid strategies. This is a petty argument to be having about exactly what % change this nerf had. I would be more interested to see how necros compare with mages now. Also, how druids and shaman do compared to all other DPS classes.

Would love to see some NoS parses to see what the new rankings are. Conceptually it's hard to argue with the strategy of reverting to the mean when you've got a standout DPS class and a few underperforming DPS classes. Easier to get to a balanced state by giving a modest boost to the underperformers and take the top performer down a peg than to just boost everyone.

They nerfed dots some but they still ignored raid design favoring spells over melee and dots over nukes in general.

Honest question, do we have any idea about the new spells power wise or how they'll scale? I've seen ~20% nerf thrown around an awful lot but if there's a new pet or something akin to Dicho's again, won't we see some of what was lost made-up?

actually yes i can solo multiple blue cons at the same time(4-5) with out a merc but i would still like to not be nerfed when my dps is already poor

It's a good plan but still needs more work. Things aren't too different than last year except for Mages being the clear winner now.