Hiya folks, I played EQ a bit last year and heard that Necro's were getting some king of dot revamp. Has that happened yet? If not, any idea when and how much would it improve our dots? Thanks!!
It hasn't happened yet. Most likely April 31st. Based on what we have seen so far necros are gonna get screwed over. Only classes that had very few dot lines and minimal tools to amplify them are making out. Necros will probably see very minimal gains because of our burn tools putting us at a disadvantage any time else (casting 3 dots to keep pace with what some classes do with a single dot any time we aren't burning something). And despite blocking older versions of dots will still end up having to use 15 dots because we have that many lines. Only difference after will be necros go out of mana faster and will continue to have less debuff slots on mobs because more people stack their stuff on mobs then before this all started.
No one really has ANY proof or idea of what/when it will happen. The only fact is that it will happen, and that is a strong "probably"
I would not hold my breath, we have been promised the revamp for over a year now and nothing has been done. They have not even bothered to deal with SK dots and those should be a no brainer as SKs rarely load more than 1 dot (Bond).
I would not allow daybreak to operate my toaster without supervision. good luck friend on any incoming changes.
I'm not sure what necros can expect, but pre-75 shamans took it up the on our poison line. Besides losing the capability of stacking them (which would of course have been fine if the dots actually did more damage) we received the following dot nerfs: Envenomed Breath now does 35% less damage. Venom of the Snake now does 35% less damage. Envenomed Bolt now does 27% less damage. Bane of Nife now does 48% less damage. Ancient Scourge of Nife now does 38% less damage. Blood of Saryrn now does 19% less damage. Blood of Yoppa now does 20% less damage. Vengeance of Ahnkaul now does 10% less damage. Vengeance of Ahnkaul Rk. II now does 9% less damage. Source: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1L68cCHgj-XoNB99VMvwnyQRCwNCKo0noz4_ifh3LpqM/edit#gid=0
Thats kind of ignoring the fact that shamans went from being comparable with healer mercs for dps, to becoming a bonified dps class now.
As glad as I am that DBG is tackling the challenge of a DoT revamp, the initial DoT damage they gave shamans shows how poorly they are able to estimate or model damage and balance. They corrected it of course, and because of the shaman class not being necessarily focused on damage they have a lot of error margin between too little and too much, where less than a cleric/bard is too little and more than a berserker is too much. Necros don't have that kind of wiggle room, they need to be just OK at initial DPS and top-tier at sustained DPS and I think everyone is just waiting to see where DBG throws the dart at the dartboard. That they can't see. Using their feet.
He has winged it with every single class. This is evidenced by enchanters still having a 28k base dot. All this revamp has done so far is boost classes who didn't rely on dots previous quite a bit while only serving to make the debuff cap problem worse via more classes wanting to dot now for both the dot damage and for the other debuff eater alliance spells.
What sucks is even if they give Necros the exact same DoTs as Shaman (thus cutting the number of DoTs lines in half and giving them a smaller overall boost) we will get nerfed soon after. Even after their nerfs Druids and Shaman are easily number 2 and 3 in DPS when top tier players are given the opportunity to play them solely as DPS toons with full aDPS. While that is relatively rare, Necros are played as 100% DPS toons, tend to get that aDPS, and have more tools available to boost their DPS. While I will initially enjoy and LoL at the ridiculous parses for the first month or two after the revamp, I'm pessimistic about what comes after all the tears and nerf threads that start a week (I'm being generous) after that patch happens. Heavy handed DPS nerfs that will seriously effect the raid and group game, constant battles with other classes for debuff slots on raids, still swapping spell sets on raids, serious mana issues, and a complete lack of versatility to adjust for resists. Irony of the whole situation is that the entire DoT "revamp" could have been done in a single day and achieved all their intended goals without causing any of the craziness that has resulted. All they had to do was change Swift DoTs (10 lines total - 5 Necro, 3 Shaman, 2 Druid) to work on raid targets and remove their shared timers for current expansion versions. That was asked for year after year and offered as the solution to the every increasing issues with the debuff cap, the use of older DoT lines, the use of multiple spell sets, etc. but they were adamantly against. Necros would be using a 10 DoT rotation so the debuff cap would no longer be an issue, no multiple spell sets, and no using older versions of spells. Rotation would top 5 Regular DoT, followed by the 5 Swift, repeat the 5 Swift, rinse and repeat. Using current spells that would have resulted in a 10% increase in Necro DPS. They wouldn't have had to change any of the regular DoTs for any of the classes and no one would have missed what they never had. Allas, what could/should have been easy (the above which was done) they made as complicated as possible (adding all the other changes) and that ship has long since sailed given the changes over the past year and a half to numerous classes and the uproar that any reversals would cause.
Zerkers are brutal on humanoids. Even at 105. Anyway. Doesn't look like necros were all that effected in the balancing act. But they sure screws the ranger. Only 1 dot at a time now with them. All on the same timer. It's just another step in the forever task to make characters more balanced. You can't please everyone all the time. It just won't happen. However, I'd try not to piss off the small player base that still exists. Just because we now pay for 3 accounts so that we can box trash mobs in the newest expansion doesn't mean there's still a huge following :-(
Just because enchanters in total don't throw out insane parses now doesn't change the fact of how powerful having a dot with that much base power is. In any setting that you are not burning ie the majority of time or when you can light up multiple targets with a single cast each its beast mode. A single cast is a giant part of their overall dps profile now.
And what does it matter? Enchanters still don't outparse necros on fights longer than 30 seconds (and not any length if the necro is burning). Is your entire point of contention that someone has a larger dot than necros? Isn't that like warriors whining that someone has a bigger sword? (maybe thats not the best example, as warriors are the biggest primadonna's in eq)
Because yes they can and do out parse necros at their own game in some real game settings. It should not take 3 - 5 casts per target to catch up to someone elses dot power. The point of contention was if the actually knew what he was doing then that power should have been split up between their 2 or 3 dots. If he knew what he was doing enchanters would not have a 28k base dot.
Dude ranger dots were terrible before. There was literally no reason to cast them, they went from 0 worthwhile dots to 1. That's a gain.
