Test Update 02/10/16

Mage earth pet also now has some weird ranged pulling abilty that it never had before as well.

It also allows him to pull singles every time where as I used to get 2 and 3 mobs at the same camp when pet pulling.

Spellhold is on.

(This bug is actually kind of fun )

OK, i need some help understanding something. everyone is all up in arms over the 'necro nerf' but from what i'm seeing here about the changes made, it just doesn't look like a big deal to me.
my wife has a necro, and i play her necro often ( my main is shaman). i'm not a top end uber necro, but i know my way around moderately well, i think. from what i see it looks like a significant nerf to insignificant things.

can someone help me understand why i should be angry, so i can explain to my wife why she should be angry?

If you are planning on doing these silly changes to the necromancer class, which isn't broke and currently working properly. I think you need to fix the Blood nuke line and give it an instant cast with a faster refresh rate so we can at the very least compete with our competitive dps on raids and group content. Also, add in 12 more spell gems to our spell bar for necromancers so that we do not need 30 spell sets (max) or give us higher damage dots to use for less spell sets. This way we are able to keep up with other dps classes. Because lord knows we bust our chops swapping sets to even stand a chance to be equals on raids. While your doing all that, fix the amount of dots that can go on a NPC so we can raid 5 - 6 necromancers without getting buff locked because 75 slots seems out dated. Especially if other classes dot with us which is essentially forbidden on raids but it happens.

Thanks BB

It is being worked on, it will probably be updated before Live.

That spell didn't change too much.

Slot 3: Shield Block (15)
Slot 10: Increase Melee Mitigation by 30%

Everything else on the spell was dumped.

It is also the only version in the spell file so Warriors and Knights will both use it, and the language in the descriptions for it removed all cases of Warrior.

double post

It's easy to test the ability in any case: equip shield + sword, test max hit, then switch to two hand, and test it again. Two hand doesn't change max hit. They removed the other **** because they're no longer required.

Sure it is, to provide the "intended" increase over the previous tier of armor. **slides a 2-4 case of beer to devs (please do not provide definition for the word intended)**

Screwed up typing, didn't proof read

Update on the pet pulling issue with mage earth pet.

Its a single pull every time. Even with mob running right past others and being pulled out of a heavily populated area mob comes single. As soon as I hit pet attack (even from far away) the mob aggros and starts heading for the pet and its alone every single time.

<----is willing to live with the borked up pet aggro for this pulling ability

*Edit* It seems that Beasties have this new pulling ability now as well.

**Edit** Chanter pets do not have this unique ability

Sounds like pet taunt does not have a range attached to it so you engage pet,it taunts and mob comes running solo because you are out of proximity aggro range??

In order of biggest deal to smallest deal, the changes to Necromancers were:

• Swarm pets being on the same cool down. This is a large nerf to Necromancers' ability to kill monsters that summon. I'll explain why: the standard way for Necromancers to kill difficult monsters was, different from that of Mages/Beastlords, not to pet tank but to use a wall of swarm pets. These pets don't tank very well but because they're on different cool down, you're able to get so many of them up that the mob doesn't have the ability to take them all down before the next swarm comes, unless it has area of effect attacks that instant kill the pets. You then use aggro control abilities to do DPS while the pets are holding the monster. The nerf also affects their DPS - see below.
• The 10 to 100 change refers to what's needed for a specific spell strategy. The exact strategy is to use http://items.eqresource.com/items.php?id=114391, which adds an additional poison spell to damage over time spells, in combination with http://spells.eqresource.com/spells.php?id=32399 to get a lot of http://spells.eqresource.com/spells.php?id=32398, which then allows you to double your damage over time for as long as it lasts. This saves the Necromancer from having to cast actual direct damage spells, which are bad. Now, had swarm pets not also been nerfed, that could be a way to replace it in the strategy, because swarm pets count as direct damage, but as they've been nerfed as well, Necromancers now have to use bad spells. This lowers max Necromancer DPS.
• The change to the Wizard ability, http://spells.eqresource.com/spells.php?id=48954, which used to affect damage over time spells. A lot of Necromancers saw this coming because it was adding a huge amount of DPS to damage over time spells. This is again a hit to max Necromancer DPS.

Devs: Can we get an update on the status of the insta-crash when connecting to test?

Another bug....I currently have Symbol AND Surety on me at the same time.

I have 3 accounts. I'm not running Windows 10. I can not login to Test on any of the accounts. I also can not login to Live on any of the accounts. When I select Live instead of Test it patches as normal then it only gives me Test as an option to go to on server select. Either way I go I don't make it past server select. I either completely crash if trying to go to Test directly or I get an Error message saying to rerun patcher if I pick Live but then only get Test as an option for server and then try to login there.

You have to love blanket nerfs. It is so good that other classes are taking it now along with us mages. Welcome to the party.

The swarm pets suddenly being linked is a huge hit to necro group dps as well as impacting their ability to solo in some settings. Necros warrior pet is pretty weak compared to other pets yet it always gets caught up in the pet nerfs to mages. Swarm pets offset this until this nerf to them.

Your wife just had 50% of her twincast ability counters removed and she lost the ability to twincast 3 of her most powerful dots. Manaburn was also changed to not work for dots which is a big hit but everyone saw it coming.

As I say you have to love blanket nerfs I do feel bad for necros. As a Mage it has really stunk to read any kind of patch notes that they push out for the last two years. I really don't have much faith that pets will ever be fixed but we can hope. Over the last couple of years we as a player base have done nothing to help each other seeing as all we do is attack another class when they can do something we don't like. I know it's gratifying seeing that knights will soon be on par with warriors for tanking after what the Warriors did to us mages but in the end we all lose with blanket nerfs.

1. I understand the changes made to manaburn for necromancers. Though now we can't utilize any procs from it.

2. I understand the changes to swarm pets. This was easy mode for soloing names. Though now we lost even more group game dps.

3. I DO NOT understand the changes to Flesh to Poison. The spell has no utility without the ability to proc the Necromancer Twincast AA. This spell already DoTs the caster for about 1000 dmg per tick for the entire duration of the spell, only has 24 counters, and has both an initial mana cost and mana cost per cast. I have to recast this b**** like every 2 minutes. Not a fun buff to keep up.

4. Pet agro is still not fixed.

*Necro's will suffer in all aspects of the game because of these changes.

Could you, DBG, fix the necromancer class.

Possible fixes for the group game:
a) Unlink all the swift DoTs. We get 5, but can only use 3. Make them instant cast. Give them an initial DD as well.
b) Improve our Blood DD. Make the proc work on all our spells (DoTs, Swift DoTs, and DDs), not just DoTs.
c) Increase the DPS on our 1 usable swarm spell.

Possible fixes for the raid game:
a) Change our Twincast AA so we don't have to jump through a flaming hoop on one leg during a lunar eclipse.

An update would be nice...I changed back over to live and was able to log in with no problems once I switched back to test I got the same thing crashing before character select screen.

I hate to break it to you, but Knights becoming as ridiculous as Warriors is not Warriors getting nerfed... It's the rest of us getting nerfed, in the long run, because the content is going to be harder to tank, except for by tank classes.