@Caith All of these complaints are due to a reduced reuse bug. And to eliminate these complaints, it is enough to fix the bug. And so it happened and the bug was eliminated which reduced the dps of the horde by 2 times. And the duration was also cut off, which also led to a 2-fold decrease in the horde's DPS. If the rest of the skills of the necromancer were balanced, it would not be so scary. And so the DPS of all native abilities with a small reuse for the necromancer tends to zero. I used all spells 1 time on training dummy and get next results Highlighted abilitis - native abilities of necro (except Elemental Toxity from AA). Compare it with new spell Boil Blood or Blighted Horde!!!! 10-35 times less. Their damage needs to be increased 5 times and this does not even compensate for the loss of damage from the horde. Casting these spells would not make sense if it were not for the procs. I consider myself an experienced player and I see the difference in classes. With the same gear necro was almost good as wizard in solo target. And necro the worsest dps class in group/AOE fights. After fixing horde DPS of necro now 20% less then wizard, if we remove procs and ascention spells from parse - difference will about 30-40%.
A l A lot of people feel like this. Even those who didn't buy thousands of real life dollars in pay to win...they used their pre-order celestial scroll on Blighted Horde because they looked at their parse and opted for what was hitting the best. They can't get those back, can they? Then come to find out the content was incomplete, untested, broken and misleading? Now that their class is rendered useless, they can't even easily change classes because all of the preorder junk is already used on their raid necro...who is now half the toon it used to be. Is this considered bait and switch? It's unacceptable business. Half way through an expac every necro is now just supposed to climb up and take their spot on the garbage heap with bruisers, brigands, and guardians? What do you expect us to do? Betray? Reroll? Quit? Two of those options mean a whole lot of income for the game, don't they? I find that interesting.
Compare numbers of necro spells with inq AA ablities and compare stats. Inq combat arts have 5 times more Damage and casting time 0.25s. Their usefulness is 10 times greater then native necro spells. Give the necromancer a buttons! We don't want to be three-button players.
Necromancer Enhance: Blighted Horde TLE Effect Improves reuse speed by 2 seconds All Effect Increases duration by 1 seconds All Effect Max Tier: 1Decreases the base reuse of Blighted Horde by 1.2 seconds. All Effect Min Tier: 2 Max Tier: 2Decreases the base reuse of Blighted Horde by 2.4 seconds. All Effect Min Tier: 3 Max Tier: 3Decreases the base reuse of Blighted Horde by 3.6 seconds. All Effect Min Tier: 4 Max Tier: 4Decreases the base reuse of Blighted Horde by 4.8 seconds. All Effect Min Tier: 5 Max Tier: 5Decreases the base reuse of Blighted Horde by 6 seconds. So this is taken from RoS Launch Notes.. If the duration increase was never intended, why was it not taken off way back in beta? Why were the rest of necro innate spells not brought up to line to compensate for this lack of damage? Top 3 on any necro's parse is Blighted Horde, Boil Blood, and Soulburn. Nothing else comes close to those in terms of damage output. I guess it was nice seeing the high numbers while it lasted.
A response from the person we all wanted, but did not hope for. First - thank you. Unexpected, but such events need to be noted to counter-balance every time we dismissively say it won't happen. Second - a clarification, please, since it's not clear-cut for me from your response. Are you saying additional 5s duration on Blighted Horde from the AA (Enhance: Blighted Horde) was intended only for TLE servers? That's how i'm reading it. If so, mind sharing details of your thoughts why that's the case? Third - the meat on the bones of the issue. Caith, I'd like you to level with the Necro community please - when you were making this change, did you know in one swift stroke you'll be nerfing the class's outgoing dps by 20%? I suppose "didn't think about it" is a possibility also, but let's say for ease of communicating that falls under no. If yes, you did know - did you feel that Necro dps was so absurdly out of place from where you envisioned it should be that this result was a good byproduct of the change that was needed anyway? If no, you didn't realize - like you said, EQ2 spell system is a scary, scary place - and i believe you - so honestly it'll just help us understand how these meteoric changes come to life without a discussion about it first and at least cope, I believe. Then, any plans to counter-balance the change back to net-zero dps-wise since in pre-nerf world Necro dps was just fine and needed no adjustment relative to the rest of the dps-classes-field? Clearly you can file that last statement under subjective opinion, and fine if you do (or can ask me why i think this), but if you decide to dismiss it as such, can you then please supplant it with how you feel about necro dps pre-nerf; that way we're at least playing with the same deck of tarot cards your time replying to this thread was much appreciated
Are you saying the duration change alone was meant to cut damage to less than 25% of what it was or that the this is an unintended nerf botch job and necros should hold out some hope for a reasonable adjustment?
I will not cut out a single word.. BEST FEEDBACK FROM A DEV for AGES! @Caith Thank you! now to keep up that level of communication, you've set yourself a high bar!
The "it was unintended" is the line the company has used for nerfing classes from the beginning of time. - people complain, devs read and find the hardest hitting stuff and nerf it to help prolong content. There is always some mathematical reason given for the nerf. However this time, without corrections a lot of players will be lost and some already have been lost. Especially when another ptw item is thrown out there. It would be wise I think to walk this nerf back some.
@Caith - Excellent response and we all appreciate it very much. Hopefully you find this constructive and I kindly ask that you forgive me for being somewhat direct. "...was setting the base duration down from 60 seconds to 28.8 seconds. Which is obviously incorrect..." - The duration was never 60 seconds with or without an AA. Thinking you mean reuse; the time in between when the spell can be cast. "...a single abilities percentage of a parse is not as important as a classes overall parsing in multiple scenarios..." - Necros are poor at AOE in general. Necros are poor at trash clearing due to lack of fast casting high damage abilities (such as the 6+ high damage blue AOEs scouts get). Blighted Horde in it's past iteration allowed competitive damage on single target raid encounters, and supported sustained DPS during jousting, so that was the niche we fell into. Thinking the issue is that the duration and reuse were adjusted in one pass, when either change by itself would have been crippling enough to clearly separate us from other DPS classes in a fair fight. This needs more attention. I worry that you looked at something "briefly", made broad sweeping changes to it, incorrectly described the changes in the patch notes, then improperly described them to us again in your post.
Let me actually address this part of Caith's response in particular:: Be it as it may, competition between other classes is a part of grouping/raiding. In the grand scheme of things, it's a driving force that compels us to do better and who we choose to take on said group/raid. Now, make no mistake, apples are not oranges, but how they taste is everything to a chef. x class vs y class does need addressed for the bigger picture. In my case, while I'm somewhere in the top 3 of the parse, I am now in the lower end where the wizard and rangers who are not P2W who do not have ancient/celestial level spells are now caught up to me. I'm hard P2W, not super like my guild's top wizard and ranger, but I'm up there because I want to stay competitive and given this fix, it's now become more difficult. Maybe I need to get the mount buff and the new merc to get up there, but it's depressing seeing my parse drop dramatically to the point where now I feel like I'm no longer needed. It just so happened during raids, I felt like wasted space for the first time since I've been back. Part of it, I know, is my stats where I still need to get the new merc and mount buff, but the significant drop in DPS is absolutely depressing.
So it is no bug but only a 20% nerf of a necromancers DPS. Early in the add on necromancers were on the top of many parsings and I still herar the whining from many players. Making 40-50% of this high DPS with only 2 spells must be a bug. So I expected this big nerf for months. I always thought the necromancers top DPS will change later on when the mobs will die faster and so it came. Already before this nerf it became harder to reach the DPS of other classes like predators or wizzards, especially in short fights. So why the nerf bat now so late in the add on? It was already posted that a necromancer is weak in aoe fights against trash mobs. But who cared? The next weakness is the lack of burst DPS. The strength of a necromancer was his constant DPS in long fights. After the actual nerf this (only) strength is gone too. What remains? 1. A class nearly without tools for a raid. Very poor buffs/debuffs. Powerful mana hearts but i expect a nerf here too. 2. A class with very weak (almost useless) class spells. 3. A class with no burst DPS 4. Little hope that the limited man power oft he devs will balance the class after breaking it with this patch. It did not feel great to play a 3 button class that did not need much skill to play. But i always accepted that there is no man power left for a real revamp/class balancing in this very old game. However, it became more and more difficult to change your class in the last years. Acension Spells, Ancient spell system, rare master spells, crate items, infusable celestial items……. After it became so difficult and expensive to change your class, i can understand everyone who quits now after the devs broke their class.
Very accurately said, I am the only one in our raid who has all 4 p2w items and I would like to see benefits from this and not change to another class. It's easier to quit than to get it all
You can bet quitting is 100% easier than rerolling a class esp if P2W items are already in place. What you fail to understand is people ARE quitting because rerolling is not an option due to crate rare items being one character only. Apparently the quartly margins are more important than a happy community. Such is the life of gamers having to take hits on the chin with a weak response from a developer and not having more of an in depth investigation regarding classes.
I am pleased to see (finally) a well worded response from a dev to an acknowledged problem. We all acknowledge the convoluted problems within the game around class balancing, and to paraphrase, "the funmaths" that go into spells and CAs, etc. What I'm having difficulty grasping is why this change wasn't tested first and discussed with the players who are in a position to understand the implications around the problem. That's not a jab in the mouth; the fact is, I can't think of a single manufacturer of a product that doesn't test it first and more so, the more complicated the product is. You don't have to test a sheet of paper, but you don't start selling a car you haven't tested yet to make sure it's operating as intended. Given the complexity and inter-connectedness of the classes, their spells, interactions, I think we can agree there's going to be issues any time you make changes to a class that isn't eye-candy. We've seen it time and time again. And yes, we're all aware of resource issues at DPG. That said, when it takes almost 6-7 months to make a name change to a necro pet, why would you release a change to a class without some relentless testing and feedback? Or as we used to say years ago in business, if we don't have time to do it right in the first place, what makes us think we'll have time to go back and correct the issue? Again, Caith, really appreciate your well worded response. That said, the implications of major class changes need to have a higher priority on the discussion and testing phases while they're being contemplated, not after the nuclear bomb goes off.
It’s easier to ask forgiveness rather than permission. This was not a well rounded change nor was it a well thought out change. At least nightshade is nightshade. From every original dot to the AA’s besides the EoF change to Lifeburn, necromancers do not have enough damage to compete with any class anymore. This change hurts deep. Playing a necromancer since 2006 has been incredible fun for me. It had become such a pilgrimage to find a universal class that could do it all until making a necromancer. Soloing heroics was the best challenge until PoP and tank scripts were introduced. I can still solo some RoS heroics as much if a challenge it is at times which makes the game fun. Unfortunately this last change was a breaking point, at least for me. I would have gladly tested this change as long as needed with constructive feedback had done been given the opportunity. I guess the developers or just Caith thought the game needed more bards and did not want to fully give players control by “feedback”. Huge quality of life mishap for the class. I sound like a broken record now so, done.
Seriously just tired of it all. Would spend the time to go in depth if I thought it would make any difference. It wont. Membership expires early January of next year. I have deleted my credit card and will not be buying the next expac. Have played since 10/17/2007. It was fun for awhile. Best of luck to everyone.
Don't know that I'm ready to quit yet but I haven't done the weeklies this week and that is huge for me, I've only been on one day since the nerf and have no desire to log in. Again I say I should be thanking them, my life and wallet will be better off without daily play.
So what are the next steps? My understanding is there are no "Class Leaders" like back in the day to funnel feedback through appropriate channels, and obviously developers don't believe in testing changes before they make them (hopefully only in some cases...?). Shall we consider this last week the testing phase, or is this intended to be left where it is? For me the change was one thing - a needed adjustment was made too far in one direction. The other thing is a much, much bigger deal - the description of the methodology of how the change was made, then the way it was communicated shows a disconnect among the staff, lack of class / ability understanding by the developers, or perhaps both.
So this was unintended and we are waiting for it to be sorted? Or the 80% nerf to our top native necro damage spell was meant to be this way? This was our only necro spell that was effective, as opposed to AA and procs and such. It was already impossible to parse anywhere near some scouts or sorcerers, now we are up against T2/utility classes. Thanks a lot.
