Necro DOT Revamp!

They can probably balance around it on live to an extent because they are constantly developing the new spells with the knowledge of the current situation, which just makes it a big fricking ball of twine.

But it's a ball of twine they fricking should have know existed when they started this process.

I wouldn't suggest any changes to necros except that it is a long-looming incoming change. I don't want the class to sort-of work in raids better and be broke for all the other ways many of us like to play them.

It comes down to debuff slots. In hindsight... could or should they have focused on a way to increase those and/or a single player only locks down one slot rather than retuning all sorts of spells? Dunno, because I don't know what is feasible. Have to assume they chose the most practical to do approach.

Because they have taken the "superdot" approach, and in the meantime necros aren't as wanted on raids because they still eat up debuff slots being a necro (and underperform on progression?)... that's a dangerous spot to be sitting in.

The "raid only" as in it really only makes sense to cast this superdot on a raid suggestion (use your normal dot rotations as-is for everything else) was meant as a "how can they meet the debuff issue without wrecking the class" Sacrificing a full weave of dot casting on raids to not lose that flexibility in the rest of the game is probably a fair trade if it means necros are more-wanted in raiding.

Giving other raid things to do, as mentioned (nuke, recourses to group, etc.) makes sense because casting one button every 5 minutes seems a bit dull. Tuning a superdot down through progression should be relatively easy to do.

Other classes got superdots replacing everything. I don't think that works for necros. I'm mulling the idea that raid-use superdots and leave everything else as-is now could work for necros, raids and the overall game. It may even be less work... since they aren't taking anything out to do it that way (just overlapping cooldowns so you either play weave dots or use superdot and related toolkit).

Basically it creates a raid "stance" of necromancer play. It's a concept... I'd be happy see see a better calculated solution.

IMO they should have STARTED with the necromancer class and balanced all other DoTing classes around them. But they didn't, so here we are. This issue isn't going to go away. This needs to be addressed. Consolidating some of the long duration dots into fewer 30 second dots would definitely be an improvement, and maybe they should start with that. They don't need to do it all in one shot, the could adjust a couple lines and balance them, then a couple more, etc until we have a class that is competitive in raid DPS in each era, doesn't take up a million buff slots during raids and keeps most of it's flavor and appeal.

As far as raid-only abilities, this looks to be far more work that needed. This would involve creating a whole new mechanic and making it work with the current code. It isn't likely.

If this is going to get done, we need to think in the most simplest of terms. Start with a couple dot lines, consolidate them, drop the duration to 30 secs and balance them, then move forward. We necros have been patiently waiting some attention. Ngreth and Prathun, please help us out.

Again, that doesn't fix the fundamental problem though. Because the problem is the debuff cap. If you consolidate 2-3 lines of necro dots so they have four or six less dots to stack, they will just replace those with four or six dots from other lines. They have plenty to choose from.

Less dots to cast = more twitch time.

+1

Uhhh. The idea would be to consolidate all of their lines, so they only cast 1 dot from each line. So they would only be casting 5-6 dots total, less on mobs resistant to certain things. All of the other classes had all of their lines consolidated.

So you're telling me there's a precedent?

Perhaps you didn't read the post to which I was replying. He suggested they start with 2-3 lines only.

Also FYI, live necros have upwards of 16 distinct lines of dots, just counting the spells and not aa dots. Not all of them get used on raid mobs currently, but if you just consolidated all the dot lines as has been done for other classes., they'd still have sixteen dots to cast.

No, not really. The "precedent" is so far different from the situation with Necromancer dots as to be completely irrelevant.

So... necromancers on a raid drop a Hug doll totem.

They cast their dots on the hug doll, and the hug doll ripostes the damage onto the raid target as melee damage.

Then necros are only taking up debuff slots when they cast actual debuffs...


^probably a crazy pointless idea.

Revamping necro dots to all be 30 second duration and just adjusting the mana cost down to match might be a solution in a sense. Downside would be there are times in gameplay you lay on the long dots and back off and med and let the slow burn down do its thing. All 30 seconds = constant weave in pretty much all situations. Not sure that is a good thing, particularly to soloing necros --especially on progression without ooc regen and other modern helps.

30 second dots might be a good start, not sure it would fix the problem. A live necro can still get ~12-13 dots landed in 30 seconds.

30sec duration, 3sec cast time unaffected by spell haste. There ya go, since there is a 1 or 2 sec cooldown between spell casts (forget which) that should limit them to at most 6 dots up at once.

12 or 13 is my target number, actually. Live necros have 13 spell slots. 12 is ideal because it leaves one spell slot to reserve for lifetap or whatever.

Necro debuff slot usage will be reduced by 20% or so if they do this. At least in SoF era, we are already stacking 12-13 and not running into debuff caps.

And if you take into account resists, they might not even get to 12 or 13 in 30s.

If they increased cast time, they would have to buff them significantly to maintain existing dps. Balancing it would probably be difficult.

Not to mention it's already hard enough to channel DoTs in many cases.

Like i said above, 12 isn't even a problematic number of DoTs anymore, imo.

Well, to get them all down to 30sec they will have to re-balance them anyways, I don't see it as a big deal to take cast time into consideration too. (No idea at ALL what their cast times are on live, sorry I'm assuming they are NOT instant cast.)


Also, if mages and wizards can channel their nukes, and healers can channel heals; necros should be able to get these off too. (or are everyone's spells on live instant cast with cooldowns? Its been RoF since I was on live)

For the umpteenth time, how things are on the TLP's is not the consideration for the dot revamp. They are aimed at live. A live raid necro can stack at least twelve dots in 30 seconds.

Here is a video of a guy landing 11, and he isn't super efficient about it. Look at the 30 seconds from about 9:22 to 9:52.

and where in my post did I mention anything about TLP? in fact I admit to ignorance of the cast time/cooldown between casts on live. My suggestion was along the lines of several others to revamp some dots to a short duration/higher dmg so necros would be casting fewer total DoT, but still having to keep up a non-stop rotation to not lose DPS, while maybe also occasionally casting something besides a dot.

Go back and re-read your post and my reply in the context of your post... (wanders off shaking his head)

So, as you noted, you admit to ignorance about the situation on live, but you still want changes to them. Where else do you draw your information but the TLP's then? Those are the two types of servers. If you don't have any idea what the cast time and cooldown situation is on live, maybe don't call for changes to it. Your whole argument is built on assumptions based on your experience on the TLP's, even if you didn't mention them explicitly.

I guess the person I was replying to should be quiet as well. Since the post that seems to have your knickers in a twist was a reply to someone stating that someone else's suggestion was a good start but would still let them get 12-13 dots on a mob. I simply suggested a way to force that to be fewer.

In any case, I'm done bickering with you. Your free to reply to me, of course, but just like the DEV's -vs- most of our suggestions, I'm also free, and likely, to just ignore you

Maybe that's why they're posting in the TLP-specific forums. LOL.

Some, I imagine many, players on the TLP forum care exactly 0 about live. Looking at the player levels as well... TLP's seem to be a popular thing!