Necro DOT Revamp!

Prathun, help us necros out here. I really would love the revamp that was promised me years ago. I don't know if you even have a dev dedicated to spells at this point or if it is currently a community effort. You would forever be our savior if you helped spear head this thing.

If they saw Necros as a primary dot class they would have been done by now, or maybe they would have even started with them. Surely they would be done before classes that are meant to serve a healer or buffer role primarily, and definitely ahead of hybrids (/s)

Just Kidding... Are necros the only class that hasn't had its dot's revamped at this point? Seems very odd considering they were the reason behind it all along. At least you can still feel useful on a raid against tall mobs that can't be taunted... ignite bones FTW

Necros (the only primary DoT class) are the only ones that have not received their promised revamp.

You are beating a dead horse... we have been asking now for over 21 pages. I am convinced they have not done the revamp because they realized that it would break the game more than patching...

https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/nec-sk-dot-revamps.246446/page-21#post-3713514

It is also not a TLP specific issue. Try the veteran's lounge.

They aren't required to do the exact same changes to necro dots that they did for other classes. (They should make different changes instead)

Simply condensing the damage into a shorter duration on a few key DoTs would reduce the number of debuffs per mob because they will be expiring faster and needing to be refreshed instead of stacking more.

Any DoTs longer than, say, 30 seconds are particularly good candidates for this.

This would also mitigate the issue of needing to battle mem spells which is extremely degenerate and unfun gameplay.

Technically swapping spell loadouts counts as doing more than just twitching clerics.

Consider this mercy.. *flies away*

Ya, I assume the issues that arose after the other DoT revamps left a bad taste in their mouth. They don't want to create any more headaches.

If thats why they are not doing it, I would 100% be behind a lesser revamp, as you described.

I'm honestly kinda thinking/hoping they are doing it, and saving it for the 20th anniversary TLP's changes. They always seem to make some key design changes each TLP now, and this would be perfect.

Since i'm at it, i'd also love to see some weapon drops added for melee before kunark. Melee are trash in classic. So many people roll casters, then switch to melee right before Kunark. Its pretty silly that we have to do this to not feel awful.

I'd like to see some sort of change to solo exp also. Its so garbage vs. grouping to the point of being comical. Grouping should be best, of course, but geez.

If it coincides with the 20th anniversary TLP, it will be purely coincidental. These revamps never had anything to do with the progression servers, other than incidentally impacting us. They were 100% aimed at live balance.

Maybe they need an-out-there solution...?

Necros get a massive raid-only dot that blocks the cool downs of all other necro dots. Unresistable, starts good and ramps up to massive (so more benefit to guilds not fast-burning everything) damage over the really long haul.

So the raiding necro only mems one dot, and plays with the rest of the tool kit. (which may mean uncoupling some of the debuffs and such from dots and/or creating a "super necro raid debuff. Necro-tash... we'll call it NASH").

Basically don't revamp them at all, just give necros a reason to not use the usual dot rotation on raids... Then you don't break the rest of the game.

How will this effect Twitch?

Just disheartening to see that

So again, the dot revamps have been largely based on live. The spells that have gotten revamped are the ones where the spell lines continued all the way up to level 100+. For necromancers more than for any other class, even the basic dot lines have had effects changed and nuances added over time so that revamping the whole line together is hugely difficult. This isn't just a matter of "stop the stacking, and add up the last 2-3 in the line and make the new version equal to that."

Take a look at the current live necro spells, level 106+, and not too many of them are even recognizably the same spell lines as any of the current TLP necro dots. A few here and there, but by and large, what live necros need revamped has very little to do with the TLP's, at least not until we get to eras much closer to live.

The "usual dot rotation on raids" does not exist, when you consider that the necro dot rotation changes almost every expansion, with major revamps every second or third expansion, and there are 25 expansions now. The usual dot rotation for a live necro currently doesn't even remotely resemble anything the current TLP's have seen to this point.

Add on that the complexity itself is one of the things that draws people to the necro class. When you can keep 16-20 different dots on a raid mob as a live necro, and no two necros pick exactly the same ~20 dots in the same order, simplifying it down to one big "I win" dot on raids would be insane, and would destroy the class.

It's no wonder they have been hesitant to attempt anything.

^I likely concede all your points, but let's pretend the "I win" concept has merit:

-some live necros complain that the "fun" of memming and casting 2 sets+ of dots is a false sense of fun
-if the raid dot (or two... can't do 5 or you defeat the point of doing something because of debuff slots) was tuned for live you just have to era-set a couple of lower damage versions for progression (say level 60-65-70-75-85-95)
-then there is the toolkit, which can't be 7 new versions of debuffs because debuff slots. Maybe a (one) super debuff can fit in
-so what about the other spell gems... a raid nuke that shares cooldowns with the non raid dots could be tuned in. Sure you could pet tank, tap tank in non raid situations with it (unless it was flagged to only hit raid targets I guess) but at the expense of being able to roll your dot rotation.
-recourses have always been a necro thing, so something really nice (could be 2 or even three versions one melee dps, one caster, one healer --have tactical reasons for putting necros in different groups or wanting more than one necro)
-some other new idea like a necro buff that goes on pets and lives in the song window...


or a completely different idea such a necromancer owns a single debuff slot and can pile whatever they want onto that slot. Then you aren't messing with the class at all and are just spending the time tuning the way debuff slots work.

Even if they started small with the fire dot (heat blood line), that would be a welcome change. My old 83 necro always had 3 different fire dots on my bar.

That's a nice slippery slope you have there.

I don't think anybody who has thought this through at this point is suggesting they merge necro dots exactly how they did with the other classes.

We need to be talking about incremental changes because those are the only changes likely to actually happen.

We can start by condensing the duration of any DoTs longer than say 30 seconds. You can still have a perfectly rich level of complexity stacking a full live spell bar worth of DoTs where they actually wear off and can be recast instead of the ridiculous hot swapping situation that currently exists based on some DoTs lasting as long as 2 minutes.

The only DoT that has any business being that long is snare.

That wouldn't do any good, though. For live necros, that eliminates two dots out of the sixteen or twenty they currently use on raid mobs. But, those two fire dots would just get replaced by two different dots. There are so many options.

Did you read snailish's post to which I was replying? That is exactly what he was suggesting. Merging ALL dots into one super dot.

Fair enough, i guess. But that doesn't mean we should throw the baby out with the bath water.

There is still a serious problem that needs to be addressed or at LEAST mitigated as much as possible.

Do you agree that it essentially all comes back to long duration DoTs being fundimentally flawed?


Long Duration DoTs

leads to

them still being ticking when you have finished casting all your spell slots

leads to

mem more dots

leads to

new DoTs are balanced around this

leads to

mobs running out of debuff slots and frustrated players

I agree there is a problem. Or rather, two problems. On live, the problem is not with the dots themselves, or the play style of the necro. Really it boils down to the dot cap on mobs, that due to it there are restrictions to which classes you can bring and what dots they are allowed to use. I am not sure, absent that, that the dot revamps ever would have started. Most people who don't like the thought of keeping 16+ dots on a mob at one time have long since switched classes.

On the TLP's, the issue is class balance and necro dps being abysmal on raids. This is highlighted by the fact that most of the other classes that can dot received a boost in dps from the dot revamp, but necros didn't. While at the same time melees got a boost from the innate aa's, but necros didn't. Those changes hurt necromancers, wizards and mages the most, in terms of relative power. Wizards were near the top to begin with, so have faired a bit better overall than necromancers or mages. Class balance is almost universally ignored on the TLP's, but I think in the case of necromancer, they are bad enough for long enough that there really ought to be some changes.

I am not familiar enough with the live raiding scene to know if the class balance issue is as big an issue currently on live as well.