Test Update 02/10/16

Good job, devs. You already went ahead and nerfed mages into oblivion, so obviously it is necros turn to get beat to death with the nerfbat. Seriously, as others pointed out, Flesh to Poison was deliberately given a 10 mana cost for procs to help with Gift of Deathly Resolve. THAT WAS THE WHOLE POINT OF ADDING THAT SPELL IN THE FIRST PLACE. But hey, if that wasn't enough, lets take grouping necromancers down a notch from their OP status (LOLOLOL) by essentially taking away one of their most valuable DPS tools for groups. You do know that 3 swifts + at least 3 swarms is how we are able to make the meager contribution to group DPS that we currently do?

I think a lot of us figured the changes to Manaburn were eventually coming, but these other changes in conjunction with that is just way too much. I so do look forward to Wizards, all things beings equal, being the best caster DPS in literally every situation in this game.

Mages and necros should re roll to Paladins and SK's after this patch.

I may swap to my druid or bard from warrior myself.

Hludwolf said:

I checked my gear and didn't see any stat increases or differences between what's on Live and Test on bows or non-visible raid gear.

That's essentially the same deal here for me. Since it was mentioned earlier that it's not a widespread problem I wonder what the commonality is between us and the other affected systems.

I think that note might be old or something or it didn't go in this patch

Pet agro is twice as bad now as it was. I have "taunt" turned on and aggro is all over the place.

Chanter is pulling aggro from nuking a couple times...shaman is pulling aggro off a handful of dots...

Does this change mean that when we don't want a character to have auto-attack on assist it will have to be turned off even if it is currently turned off?

You will have to turn it off again if you want it off since the default is on and it's getting the setting from a new place so for everyone it will be the default value, which is on.

Did you somehow tie pet aggro to the pet owner?

Theres some serious weirdness going on with multiple pets in group. If I have pet taunt turned on with either my enchanter or shaman then both toons will randomly pull aggro off of the mage pet. If I turn pet taunt off on those toons it doesn't happen.

I can send in pet on either of those 2 toons and be in the high 90's on the aggro meter without casting a spell (with taunt on)

People are also missing this means that the doom dots from Mortifer, Pern and Necrotizing can no longer be twincasted with GoDR now.

Mana burn was to be expected but these other changes are a huge hit to both grouping and raiding necros.

It is Test after all, so there's still time for change, but:

• Holy **** Necromancers got nerfed bad.
• Need a lot of testing on new Knight changes to see how they work with their other abilities. A straight copy of Warrior http://spells.eqresource.com/spells.php?id=41088&source=test is going to make them the new best tanks, I think.
• From the sounds of it, pets are not fixed at all, so pet classes got all their hopes up for lelz.
• I'd encourage Live people to copy over to test TBM content changes, as Test doesn't have a lot of TBM players.
• As much as Warriors are complaining about the Knight changes, all it actually results in is all three tank classes being > everyone else. What you ought to be glad about is that you're not playing a pet class because pet classes are completely **** now.

Yes but what your linking is only showing as a Warrior AA, lets see what it does over the next day or two and if there are any changes.

Also consider the lack of Dev communication, who knows what their plan is....pet agro is amazing I hear.

Can the devs please explain why any raid guild should carry necromancers or mages anymore if all these changes go in?

• A wizard will out dps them in both burst and sustained. The mana burn nerf to no longer work for dots means there will be tons of more counters for wizards to utilize for even more damage.
• A wizard requires less gear to get up to speed since focus means jack to them, they just need more mana. Which they are also superb at regenerating as they no longer go out of mana.
• A wizard requires less spells to get up to speed. What is it 3-5 spells then done for expansion?
• A wizard requires less support to get up to speed. Give them an enchanter and druid and they are 95% set, so you can stack 4 of them in good group for max return. Unlike necros and mages who need an enchanter, bard and druid to be up to speed.
• A wizard has no stacking issue at all, a guild is free to recruit and is rewarded for using 16 of them in a raid.

All of this applies to the group game as well. How were mages and necros on your radar for fixes when wizards have blown the mold of a balanced dps class for going on 4-5 years now?

But, but, Mages can molo!

Wizards burn has gotten so nuts that they can kill just about any named solo as well. And as I said their baseline dps output is so much better than any other caster in any situation now that they really only need to duo with any class that can serve as a tank.

Just tested with a beast in group as well. With 4 pets on mob all with taunt turned on and with no characters casting any spells whatsoever, all 4 players were taking turns pulling aggro.

You have pet aggro directly tied to the pet owner....

I hope somebody reads this before you push it live.

I know, just making fun of the usual response from Wizards when Mages ask for DPS. Regardless, even the "molo" side is now irrelevant, because they just:

• Nerfed Necromancer molo/solo ability into the ground. I don't even think Necromancers are going to be able to molo rares now, not unless they're way above the content.
• Nerfed Mage/Beastlord molo/solo with the pet changes.

Welcome to Wizards and Warriors: now with Knights too!

Well... we had Enchanter nerfs for months -> Mages then took center stage for half a year (and counting) -> now Necros (very surprised).... so... I wonder what caster is next!

Ok who talked???...turn in your Necro card, your out!

People knew about it, I just didn't think they'd change it, considering they've said in the past that they didn't care about moloing and such. But yeah, given that Wizards were and are the top DPS, the only cause for changing Necromancers swarm pets is that they didn't want them to use it for killing rares by themselves.