Help with Necro burn

I’m coming back after a 3-4 year break and a couple questions.

The first, swift dots now seem completely worthless, like no situation to ever use them. Is this right?

Second is for my big burn, is funeral pyre ever used? It seems like there’s never really a situation to use funeral pyre but again I’m not sure and that’s why I’m here asking.

As for my spells I use during my burn:
3 fire dots, 2 poison, disease combo, wound, ecliptic and sprinkle in assert. How often and when do you assert? Is pet swarm worth using either during burn or not?

I pop hand of death, twin cast, life burn, frenzy undead, pet swarms, any other AA that does dmg.

Thanks

Necro discord is here and the folks here know way more about modern necroing than I do https://discord.gg/eRBhhAfPJP

Swift DoT's are terrible, don't even spend the plat to buy the spells.

Funeral Pyre can sometimes be useful if you really want to finish off a mob quickly and don't care about mana preservation.

Blood nuke when xp grinding I generally throw it in late in a mob's health when my DoT cycle is already running, basically hunting for chaotic procs for the next mob.

Life Burn is best paired with spire, also if you don't already have it make sure to get the Anguish robe to use when your crit rate isn't otherwise maxed out by other class adps stuff.

This guy has specifics on video for Necro burns, order, approach, etc: https://www.youtube.com/@XellenEverquestTestServer

arent swiftdots needed in alot of groups so that the necro can feel like they are contributing?

No, they're super duper bad because they're too fast for the Enhanced Ruin AA to work on them. That leaves them dealing damage as if they were nukes with those base damages instead of dots. Wholly unproductive spell casts.

This was true a long time ago. Swift DoTs were a major part of my grouping kit during like House of Thule through Rain of Fear eras on live servers. They no longer function as originally designed, and continuing to even put the spells on vendors is just a newbie trap.

What should necros use if in a group where things die in 25-30 seconds?

In a group where mobs are dying quickly, and especially if that group contains a necro, they should be pulling several mobs at once. Bring in a pack of mobs, slap big fire pyre and magic pyre on all of them, then max level poison DoT, etc. Basically casting your highest damage per tick DoT on each mob and then repeating with the next highest damage per tick. Work in burn cooldowns as often as possible. Hunt for chaotic power procs by nuking with blood on mobs that already have as many DoTs as you want on them but just aren't quite dead yet.

As a puller, if the necro says "burns going" that means get a serious pull, and probably go get another serious pull when that first one is half dead.

If you're stuck in some kind of lameo group that's pulling one mob at a time, then you should probably just go "accidentally" pull more so your DPS has a chance to function, or find a better group.

If you're stuck in that kind of lameo group and you also don't want to pull or leave, then I guess you just throw your biggest pyres on each mob as they come in and call that good enough.

Funny thing is, your statement is no longer true. The swift dots were changed...again. Look at it from the same perspective, as a player in House of Thule. The spell data was changed again...they are much better now than they were previously. In some very specific settings, some of them can be very good. Burlabis's swift venom for example, is the best of them at this level.

And no, you don't use these spells during an actual burn, which is the topic the OP spoke about. I'm just saying they are situationally good to use.

TLDR: You probably have not played in HoT since then is all. Also to complicate the matter, some of the swift dots are bad, because they are "swifts" of the lower dps spells. Yes, those ones are bad.

The swift dots were not changed independently of the longer form dots they don't stack with. They all had their base damages boosted in May 2020 when dot consolidation made them not stack with lower level versions of same.

In HoT, Burlabis' Swift Venom juxtaposes with Argendev's Venom. Since May 2020, they both have 3677/3861/4054 damage per tick, for ranks 1/2/3. Comparing rank 2s, Burlabis' hits three times for 1047 mana , Argendev's hits 8 times for 3663 mana. So the efficiency is nearly identical, too!

…at first glance.

The issue is that Argendev's Venom, even though it has "the same" damage per tick, benefits from Enhanced Ruin AA. In a modern run through HoT, Enhanced Ruin boosts the base damage of 42s duration dots by 34%. It boosts the 12s Swift dots by 0%. So when both have ticked 3 times (one run of the Swift. after dealing damage three times, the Swift will need recasting), Argendev's will have done a whole extra tick's worth of damage!

On top of that direct benefit to per-tick damage, the Tribute benefits of Visions of Suffering for raid-tier mana preservation, and Twinge of Pain for raid-tier spell haste, and the potion benefit Tonic of Efficiency Affinity for +1 tick duration, and the worn focus for +1 tick duration all require 18s duration to kick in. So the overall efficiency suffers by comparison, and it's tougher to get your dots in early, and overall efficiency suffers more if fights aren't over before the dot ends

As expansions go on, Enhanced Ruin gets more ranks, making the situation just killer for the Swift. (this is worth observing since OP isn't stuck in HoT. Heretic's Twincast is called out in their burn sequence). By Live, real Venom dot is benefiting from 102% base damage boost, and the Swift counterpart forever 0%. Casting the real dot is literally as good as Twincasting the Swift just on the Swift's duration, plus it runs 3x as long, if the target survives past 20s. Swifts are bad