Here are some of my wishes in no particular order. Most of them are minor. 1: Pet haste should be a permanent buff on the pet, once it is casted on the pet. (This should be true for other pet classes as well. The tricky part is that this should only apply to summoned pets, not charmed pets for obvious reasons. 2: The call to corpse aa needs to work to level 110. I have no idea why it's capped at level 105. This fix should not cost any additional AA points. 3: Unless the intention is to phase out gift of deathly resolve, it should also be raised to work on level 110 spells. 4: The various spells that summon items such as essence emeralds or dusky orbs should have the items automatically placed in our inventory. We shouldn't need to make a hotkey for /autoinv. Sure, we can map a key that is also mapped to another action (such as moving backwards) to do /autoinv but that seems sloppy. 5: The range on eradicate magic, scent of terris, encroaching darkness, pestilent paralysis, and other aa's should be enhanced by our focus effects. Can't think of how many times I have been frustrated that I can't use an aa click to pull because it was slightly out of range, but a spell works. Well balanced throwing knives are a nice workaround, it does feel weird using them though. 6owersources should go on bandolier. I've seen some other classes request for belts to be added to bandolier as well. I can sortof agree with the belt thing, but powersources definitely should. 7: This one will probably never be possible, and will also surely be likely to cause some tragic bugs, but the spellbook and spellgems could use some improvements to sorting. I remember when the ability to use spellsets were added, and everyone cheered. It's great, don't get me wrong. But spellsets and the spellbooks are micromanagement intensive, especially if you are leveling fast. In the spellbook, it would be nice to be able to automatically sort spells by total damage, dps, type, or something. Perhaps even some filter options to arrange them by dots, nukes, lifetaps, our two highest level pets and any pet buffs. And this applies to memorized spells as well. 8: The effevium line is great. Scourge of fates is also a fantastic spell. I'd like to see annhiliation and inevitable end also do additional damage to undead mobs. 9: The imbue ally line could have the damage of the lifetap proc increased a bit. Since this spell wears off in about 5 minutes (to have the chance at gifting an EE) we have to choose between dedicating a spell slot for it, or constantly swapping it out. The amount of the damage does not seem worth it. 10: Flesh to venom and flesh to poison should only do damage to you if you are in combat. Mercs will thank you as well, because they just love to constantly heal you with it on, even if it's completely unnecessary. Here's a more important wish though...give us an AA that is similar to mortifier's unity that casts our highest rank of flesh to venom or flesh to poison. 11: The funeral pyre AA could potentially be changed to something that can be toggled on and off at will, instead of a "use it every once in a while, for a short period of time." 12: Cascade of decay is an interesting AA line, I kinda like it. However, the "your cascade of decay spell has worn off" message needs to be removed. We want to see our other dots wearing off in our chat window, but this one is just spam. It's too bad we can't place certain effects on ignore. 13: Come to think of it, with the chat filters being as wonky as they are, everyone should be able to place certain things on ignore. This may be an easy small fix to some of the chat spam problems that many people have, especially with things that are in the "other" category. 14: When embalmer's carapace fades, it shouldn't break feign death. 15: Probably my biggest gripe is that there's no convenient way in the UI to see what spell effects are on a target, that are OURS...quickly. Unless I'm really mistaken, it seems we have to rely on the "Your amazing dot spell has worn off" messages in order to tell what dots to recast. Habit and repetition makes some of that feel natural after a while of course, but when you are in an area with different resist rates, it can throw all of that off. It would be nice if there could be some enhancement to the target window to perhaps only show OUR effects on the target. The simplest way would just be to show the icons as they are now, but perhaps even an option to toggle showing the names as well. This is probably my biggest wish, due to the number of dot spells we cast on every target. One of the key things to our class is keeping all of our dots on of course, but the options for confirming what dots are on a target are pretty terrible. Using a complicated GINA trigger system seems to be a clunky but effective workaround...but this feels terrible. 16: Regarding the sphere of destruction spells...I have a love hate relationship with them. Incredibly powerful/useful. These spells are just so different to our others. I guess I want to be able to click off the sphere if needed. It doesn't last long of course, but if I see 4-5 mobs coming my way, that I do NOT want to put them into summoning mode, I'd like to be able to get rid of it. 17: It was really saddening when I started grouping/soloing in chardok that I couldn't charm the undead yet. Even the lower level ones. I'm level 109 now, I'm assuming the level 110 charm would work on the lower level undead, but what is the harm in letting a necro who wants to charm in the zone while they are leveling? On another topic...I specifically remember being able to charm the reanimated dragoons in the original chardok. It's a shame we can't do that now, (they are too high level for the spell) 18: Intervening Divining Aura needs work. This AA used to be so incredibly OP it wasn't even funny. Nerfing it into the ground was not the way to address it. I do wonder if returning it to it's former glory would be such a harm though, it would be a nice bone to throw us with all of the non-snarable summoning mobs in RoS. 19: Increase the range of whisperwind. 20: Combine cloak of shadows and innate invis to undead please.
2 - easiest way to change this "casts the highest rank you have of summon corpse spell" 3 - GoDR works just fine (just great, that is to say) on 110 spells as soon as you train the level 108 rank of the AA. 11 - the Hand of Death AA is what you're looking for, for now. Funeral Pyre ain't good, and fixing it is wasted effort ahead of any more general attention to dots 16 - you can totally get rid of it. keep your Aura window up; the toggle hotkey is alt+A by default, you should right click the window to disable "'esc' to close" and then likely eliminate the toggle hotkey itself in Options. your Sphere appears there when you cast it. right click it to Remove Aura early
Oh! Wonderful. I must have forgotten that when I was checking out the upgraded ranks. I'm working on making an AA purchase plan, I'm behind on AA since I have been away for so long. I think I need to pick up the upgraded GODR ranks earlier than I was originally planning. Good to know about being able to click off the aura. Your guess was absolutely correct, I did not have the aura window up. I'm a little curious about your statement about the funeral pyre AA though. I'm not saying it's the best, but it looks at least worth using when it's up...provided you don't mind the mana cost.
The mana cost is not its significant penalty. While it's running, it reduces the duration of dots you cast. Developer intention when it was made was to trade efficiency for dps, not to raise overall damage per cast. In practice, due to how the lowered duration disrupts dot stacking, it doesn't even increase dps except in very short (like 1 min, tops) battles - in which you're better off casting Swift dots anyhow. It's stuck in a design snarl that's very much not worth sorting. Also, the damage focus doesn't stack with Hand of Death.
That's just the thing...in the solo/grouping game, there's plenty of fights that only last for about a minute. If Hand of Death is down, FP can be used. I think the AA has it's place, even if it's not going to be clicked by someone looking for an absolute maximum in a 10 minute fight.
The basic story of whenever we were advocating for those spells was the targeting system from Vanguard opened up a lot of movement and room and the targeted life taps from Vanguard were awesome. So in essence, yes they were derived from the idea of life taps more than likely twice over. First time mechanically from Brad McQuaid and his team on Vanguard ( or whatever their inspiration was) but also from us, in cleric class, that could see what the mechanic could do for us was a direct comparison. But ya, whenever I talked about it I used the term targeted lifetaps back in 2008 or so and in discussions that's how they were described as well by others. So the comparison is more than fair, at least on the idea end prior to implementation. However, the adaptation for necromancers is different evolution of a class with different needs and so forth. Anyway, you get the point.
As of the change during Beta to enable it on Swifts, it reduces the duration of those as well, dropping them from 3 hits to 2. Since the +40% stacks additively with your gear, it's a bigger net loss on a swift than you'd first think. It'd be a 6-7%ish true loss if it was multiplicative. But additive, even looking at group gear, it's a 17-18%ish loss per cast. You only gain something if the target would only live long enough for 1 or 2 ticks of that Swift. No use with long term DPS, and no use with swifts squeezes the ability even harder. I think the only unambiguous positive use for it would be if for some reason you didn't have access to any SPA 124, didn't have anything to do for 2 minutes after your current target died, and everything you wanted to use on it was either already on, or couldn't possibly run out. If they refunded the ability, I would probably be happier that I never had to worry about someone I was playing with using it than I would be upset about losing any potential super narrow use case. Otherwise it's in re-work or ignore territory.
I'd just like the ability to click off the buff and have that forcibly trigger the DA. No loss of whatever was intended for the new automatic functionality. No adding back invulnerability to the pet while it actually tanks. I just kinda liked being able to use pet classes to park a small blob of mobs somewhere for an AoE pickup or AoE CC if I could time all the movements in the span of 18 seconds. Often didn't actually benefit me much, but it was a fun way to do it sometimes. The way it currently works allows either for mercs to do stupid stuff if you don't passive them, or the health trigger % to be blown through completely. Add to that it rarely coincides with DAing at any point you'd actually see any benefit from, and it has definitely been torched. If an AE procs it, you can't heal the pet unless you click it off, and there's not a ton of chance that the AE would repeat that fast. DA's in general don't stand up to modern DoTs. If the pet was tanking something, losing the aggro randomly isn't good. And they went in a decidedly stupid direction with spells on the mobs this expansion, making most stuff pierce DA. And also be un-curable, un-reflectable, un-dispellable. While having no problem with mobs being able to negate player activity. That's generally backward. We're the players, they're the mobs. It's perfectly reasonable for me to Charm a mob for 20 minutes. It's not ok for a mob to charm me for 20 minutes. Player choices and agency is relevant if it makes for fun gameplay. Mobs don't have agency at all. Every mechanic shouldn't be made with the intent to be endured or evaded and only the chosen one. Especially group mob type stuff that could very easily support either.
Call to Corpse has a 72 minute recast and works in the current zone on your own corpse. I used to heck out of this back in PoP. Summon Remains has a 60 second recast and summons all corpses from all zones from any targeted group member (including yourself). This makes Call to Corpse obsolete (like Dire Charm). Should Call to Corpse work, yeah. But use Summon Remains.
Call to Corpse and Summon Remains work differently. And neither of them work as how they should in today's Everquest. Call to Corpse summons your target's corpse to YOU. The target can be ANYWHERE in your CURRENT zone. Summon Remains summons your target's corpse to YOUR TARGET. The target must be NEAR you and in your CURRENT zone. The added benefit being the corpses can be from any zone. Today's EQ should have a spell/AA that summons your target's corpse to YOU, and the target can be in ANY zone as long as you are grouped together.
You know, I mostly play alone so I didn't think about it.. but I have said to a friend "once you get here I'll summon your corpses" so I did know that (and yes I left out that detail). Would I love to be able to summon other player's corpses to me without them being "live" in the zone next to me, heck yeah. But in the context of Call to Corpse, Summon Remains can completely replace it because you can target yourself (and cast it much more often).
No it doesn't. Call to Corpse is still useful if the party member and their corpse are in very different places, and you are in a third different place in the zone. I can call the corpse to myself to rez it (ye olde necro coth), which I cannot do with Summon Remains if the party member is out of casting range. I agree with menown. Call to Corpse should allow me to summon a group member's corpse to me, regardless of what zone they or their corpse is in, and Summon Remains should allow me to summon a group member's corpse to *them* regardless of what zone they or their corpse is in.
You can use the Call to Corpse AA to summon other people? I always thought it was self only: http://www.raidloot.com/Spells.aspx?id=2764 [2764/2764] Call to Corpse Classes: NEC/254 Skill: Melee Target: Self
Has there ever been talk of of instant cast dots? I've been playing a few other classes recently and instant cast dds and dots have really stuck out. We seem to be a class that casts through molasses with our cast times.
in particular, the Swift dots for use in the group game should have 0.5s cast, as the druid Sun/Horde dots do. Instant isn't necessary, that's for melee classes that have to do their stuff while positioning to hit mobs. Really though that's all subsumed by the greater need for dot revamp / class rebuild. And kinda not the sort of addition that comes with non-level expansions. Gotta come with the fabled revamp
Call to Corpse works (theoretically) the same as the memorizable spell, which is also "self only". It's just that it was never extended to include characters above level 105. So now, instead of being able to use the AA, I have load Shadereaper's Proclamation.
Reluct Benev update: After this next patch it will fire 30% of the time on taps and 15% of the time while casting a DoT. Progress......
Another proposed functional change to this AA would be to give the necro a 7 counter buff along with the initial Lifeburn, instead of the leech DoT. The counters would fire from any damaging spell you cast, and the buff would last for about 1-2 minutes. This is the exact same functionality as our current RoS Robe. Benefits include saving debuff slots on your target, saved damage for if target dies early (due to duration), and more control over where the damage gets applied. Stealing an idea from the bard section, but if we get a new Remote Sphere upgrade, I would like to see a "Bestow Aura" type of ability. Allow the aura to be placed on your targeted Player/Pet within your group. This way, the aura will follow/'be targeted around' the player/pet until the 30 seconds expires. I can see this being placed on you, your own pet, or your groups tank. -Bite of the Undead: Places a buff on you or pet. Procs Smoldering Bones. Unlimited counters. Has the chance to turn your target undead (zombie themed). As a buff, you can decide when to use this ability. In most raids, I'd prefer druids using Skin to Sumac.
