What expansion if any should Necromancers start being treated as a legitimate DPS class instead of..

i did a TLP from start to finish, we had necro's that always were top or very close to the top dps, we also had necro's that could not beat rangers on auto archery that were afk all night. it's all about the person at the keys ( and still is at live )

What is the finish of a TLP?

Sounds like you had some melee dps that either didn't know what they were doing or had a raid leader that didn't assign the aDPS correctly

So then not always???

just because a class isn't the best it doesn't mean they stop being a dps class. What kind of logic string you using? In English, what you're claiming is a false dichotomy.

You have quite the obsession with me. You got a not so secret crush?

On Selo where we did all of the expansions over a two year period, Necros were definitely decent for the entire stretch. They became overpowered in VoA (not because of anything specific to VoA--that is the expansion we were on when the Necro DoT revamp hit, which in the level 95 era actually increased their DPS by a significant level), and stayed overpowered until the end.

A well-played Necro could still do "well" after PoP, but there's a ton of caveats to that. One of the big ones is the four level 70 expansions have several fights that are basically hardcoded to be bad for casters, with high resist rates and other mechanics that are bad for casters with no real corresponding blocker for melee. The other caveat is that while a min/maxer Necro who glyphs, plays very aggressively etc is still going to have the ability to say, parse well, their ability to win a parse or even get in a top 10 is not "controlled solely by them" in those eras. It is controlled by the roster in which they raid and the raid groups they are in. In my guild we had a ton of min-max try hards who went Monk, we had something like 12 monks in the 70s expansions (we raided two split raids.) We also had a few serious berserkers, a good Mage, etc. In that era of EQ if a Monk is given the best aDPS group, and is also a min-maxer, it is going to be very hard for a Necro to beat them. However not all melee DPS are created equal--every guild has people who snooze through fights on auto attack on a TLP, the question is how many people do you have like that? If that's a lot of your melee, your ability to parse goes up. All aDPS is also not created equal, in those eras (and really all subsequent eras) the main thing about aDPS is the aDPS class player being awake during raids and knowing when to pop burns and paying attention for the time to synchronize burns. If this is done reliably, it gets harder for a Necro to have any serious chance to beat melee. If your aDPS is a Bard running melody AFK and a Shaman who "sometimes" remembers to click his Epic 2.0--your Necros are going to stand a better chance vs melee.

Essentially--Necros aren't terrible in the middle expansions but you can't conclude just because you as an individual saw a Necro high on a parse that they are theoretically better than Monks in that era. They could be better than the Monks in the raid they are in--which could be due to poor Monk play, poor aDPS assigned to the Monks or other things of that nature.

Probably the same expansion you learn to make thread titles.

The real answer, they are good dps. They were better dps in luclin/velious, but they're fine now. They take much more effort to parse well. They, like every caster, will be crap in LDON and suffer a bit in the 70 era, due to resists. 75+ they will do great.

Necros will also start taking off around 85-90 and no one will touch them (assuming adps and player skill is good).

Necros can reliably top parses on a number of raid targets in kunark/velious when they are arguably also at peak mana battery status. In luclin they get more powerful because most of the raid targets don't resist any of their dots (they can put everything on the mob). Luclin is also when they get mindwrack which makes them arguably even stronger as a mana battery. After that their utility as a mana battery falls off a cliff- twitching does almost nothing to move a mana bar in POP (for a properly geared caster) - mindwrack is also heavily resisted. Dot resists come back with a vengeance, and other dps (melee) gets alot stronger as well. I wouldn't say its that they aren't real dps in pop (honestly raid leaders asking necros to twitch in pop onward are idiots), its just that other DPS gets a lot stronger relative to them and its only when their dots start to crit and later when they get twincast that they become a dominant dps class again.

Basically after luclin and until twincast and dot crits they live in the shadow of melee dps. That doesn't mean they aren't 'real' dps, they face alot of the same problems that wizards do in this era but they can still put up healthy numbers if played well.

finish of a tlp is live of course, sadly we broke up in ToV ( CoV was current ) since we lost too many key players at that point. In the later stages of a tlp server, you make do with what you have btw, cant be picky with classes when you have 40ish people left. It was a great journey though with a couple of awesome people and top players.

The game has changed a lot since original oow-->hot.

You could not do that today.

Right.. and that doesn't make necro's "bad" either..

Long story short: Necros should and are always considered a dps class. If you or your guild treats them as mana batteries than you or your guild is bad.

A rogue in classic is terrible dps. They are still a dps class.

Classic thru SoL, which is all I really play anymore, necros are literally god-kings.
There's like 2-3 raid boss fights where they turn into mana batteries simply because of mob resists and being a mana battery is the next best thing.
I believe AoW is one of these fights...?

While there are certainly situations where when a raid is under healed on one of the long velious fights necros will become mana batteries to offset that- I feel like a lot of the twitching happens during the trash killing of NToV. There is so much AE, regen and FT is so bad/non-existent, that twitching is sometimes the only way to keep the raid moving even once the raid gets lcea's. Really on most of velious bosses (even AoW) necros can put up pretty good dps (especially considering the fight durations tend to be very long), its really just the trash clearing that they become significantly weaker and their utility becomes twitching. I think when raids are heavily leaning on their necros to supply mana in boss fights it is really just a sign that they need additional clerics, need to work on cleric gearing, or healer efficiency is an issue. Twitching can supplement under healing, but it is a crutch.

Or your raid/guild has bad healer turnout/roster. The only time a necro should be feeding is if its necessary to keep healers going.

All expansions. Mana battery is for terribads.

Hello,
I am the Raid leader that assigned the aDPS on Roxa's guild until the end.
The end means Torment of Velious, since Rosengard III made the journey up to Live expansions. Our journey ended last year.

Now that you got some context. Yes, he is right, necro is the best-overall-dps class if you take into consideration the whole journey; from classic to live.

Sure, monk is fotm during what? 5 expansions. EQ got 28 expansions.

While I made Rosengard III groups I gave aDPS to all the melee players that deserved it, we had excellent monks, rogues and zerkers, best of the best that I have seen, even comparing to live current guilds.

Necros beat melee during almost all of the expansions, necros were so good that for the last 15 expansions I assigned bards to necros too, but some would say that bard aDPS to a caster group is crap, but well, Rosengard had the privilege of having many main bards so I rewarded our excellent necros with bards.

If I were to reroll the best dps class to make that journey again I would roll a necro, nothing would beat it.

If I wanted a melee I would do rogue, they turn into best melee class and they are fun.

And of course, my asseverations involve the whole journey, classic to Torment of Luclin. I have as experience my guild raids, US guilds raid that I assisted and open raids that happened through the "eras".

If you are the usual TLP player that quits before TSS... sure... roll a monk, don't make a necro.

Necros can hit the AoW just fine but depending on the raid force the battle can be long. So, we're back to supplementing the clerics. It's not the necro's weakness but rather his utility that sometime requires his mana. I also regularly "twiched" CoTH mages and buffing classes to help move things along.

Try like... 10+ expacs lol

agreed.
Just because you don't top parses doesn't make the class bad.
Necros are really good for a time in raids and always good at soloing/ksing.

I raid led on Aradune with a casual guild, two days a week, 4h per raid. TOV/VP needed twitch from a few but not all necro. We would have 2-4 any given raid.

Classic Naga/Vox - Twitch needed = yes
Classic Innoruuk etc - No twitch needed
Kunark all OW dragons etc - No twitch needed
Kunark Trakanon - Twitch needed albiet slightly** on avg.
Temple of Veeshan - Twitch on most fights = yes
VP = No twitch needed
Sleepers Tomb = No twitch needed unless farming
Luclin all bosses = No twitch needed