FYI -- Pet changes intentional and staying -- More nerfage on the way (- 1 DPS teir)

The thing im worried about is how the nerf will effect regular grouping. I raid a little but mostly i group and in group situations i can barely cast 1 of our fast dots before a mob drops much less use a life tap or a dumbfire. I hate to see the entire class nerfed in all situations when clearly there is only some imbalance in very specific situations on very well equipt people. I would think that not all of us have masters ( i know i dont even have one) and atm i only have 1 adept 3 due to the price of moonstones on my server and the lack of time to spend harvesting. Granted i do plan to upgrade everything to adept 3 .... someday ... but to nerf everything now will make me fairly gimpy.

so have summoner spells do 15% less damage against any x4 mob.
that doesn't affect grouping at all.. where things are equal at the moment. and that will lower summoner DPS on raids where everyone in sceaming like little brats about their numbers.

These are all very well thought out responses to the "promised" upcoming nerf.
But I have to ask, why shouldn't necro's be among the top damage classes for sustained fights while other classes shine during the shorter "burst" battles?
There is a long-set precident for this, not only through the entire course of EQ2, but well throughout EQ1 and many other MMO's and even paper-and-dice versions of fantasy role playing games. It seems obvious that Scouts and Sorcerers should own the 1-2 second keyboard-mash nuke spam battles that make up the majority of encounters in EQ2, while Necro's should shine on the long sustained fights where our abilities have an opportunity to work together for extended duration to achieve maximal effect. I don't think this is broken at all.
However, what I do feel is somewhat broken is our current ability to "finger mash" quick twitch damage on the majority of EQ2's short attention-span tailored encounters. If a "nerf" is inevitable, I, for one, would gladly trade the 4sec duration/recast high damage dot (essentially a nuke) for a slower acting dot that scales up damage as the duration extends (Splurt anyone?).
While I would love to have the full capabilities of an EQ1 era Necro here in the world of EQ2 (darkness line, fear at lower levels, root, etc. that don't all break when I sneeze in a Mob's direction, mez, charm, etc.) with it's better graphics and much better story and quest lines, I realize that may be a bit much to ask. What does seem to make sense, however, is that Necro's _should_ be great damage dealers on sustained encounters. This is a necro's well known nitch in the world of fantasy games. It is my hope that this does not change in this game.

Great - a 1 hour message deleted by the HTML bug. I'll rewrite when I can be b othered.
Message Edited by Sarkoris on 04-12-2006 10:05 AM

Question...

How would people feel if they made FD kill all pets, but droped us completely from the mobs hate list immediately?

Good point !

The thing is (Note: i say necros not summoners, necros != conjurors),

1. necros should be t2 dps in groups

2. necros should be t2 dps for short fights

3. necros should be t2 dps for raid mobs with AOE

4. necros need a more compelling utility for raids to compensate for t2 dps as most raid mobs have AOE

5. necros should be t1 dps for raid mobs without AOE


What really makes me angry is people post parses in situation 5 and call for a blanket nerf. That's why i posted parses for situation 3 to show thats not always the case.

Now if you look at what Blackguard had posted by mistake it looks like a blanket nerf. People who don't understand a thing about this class or rolled a necro after LU13 and have only seen the good times for necros don't understand that we will have a broken class with that nerf. It wasn't balancing points 1-5, it was a blanket reduce damage this and reduce damage that.

If that happens without properly fixing 4 the necro class will be a broken class not needed anymore on raids.

WOW, Price posted something I agree with!

The end of all days draws nigh!

hehe anyway, I hope you aren't refering to me. A agree with you, but I think T1 is different than T1 Turbo Max.

This would sound about right... Um, actually, what is the point of FD if it doesn't do this now?

I (obviously) agree completely. We need utility to make up for the prevalent AOE aspect of most raid encounters these days. Back in the day, Necro's used to have (EQ1) a roughly equivalent ability to COtH (that meerly required the target to be dead) called Summon Corpse. With the removal of any significant death penalty, this could be a great bit of utility if SOE wanted to throw us a bone, so to speak. This, single target evac, FD, and Rez made necro's handy to have around in the case of Raid wipes. And if all else failed, there was always mana-feeding

2 things different.

1. Pets don't die when you FD. One way to do more damage in a raid, esp vs non AoE avoidable mobs, is to send in all pets, and chain cast nukes and dumbfires, and when you get agro... and unless you have good agro reduction skills/gear, you will... Just FD and stay down the rest of the fight. I've stayed FD 1/3 of a fight and still been top 2 DPS. hehe! I think if you FD, you shouldn't be doing DPS while you're for all practical purposes in no danger.

2. The flip side of that is that once I gain agro from pets and FD, its [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn] near impossible to loose the agro. I usually stay down a pretty long time, and sometimes I can stand up 30 seconds later and still pull the mob... some will say who's my tank... whatever... You shouldn't need world class tanks to loose agro after you FD. I say that as a sacrifice to loosing pets uppon FD, that you immdediately loose all agro or at least drop to the bottom of the agro heap as soon as you FD.

Currently, pets stay alive and FD doesn't diminish agro. I'm asking if switching both of these would lower our raid DPS appropriately and not hurt all that much. Meanwhile I think a FD that immediately removes all hate would be an improvement.
Message Edited by Zald on 04-12-2006 11:53 AM

Dont mess with FD. Its fine the way it is. I think we are the only class with a 100% chance.

The reality is we will get nerfed, we always do, it sucks. They only issue I have is what would be the excuse for not balancing conjurers. They kick our tails in dps, and not by a little bit. Now maybe the trade of is they die way more.

And who said anything about changing the 100% part?

Sheesh... its people like you that make SoE randomly swing in the dark. Instead of TRYING to present ideas that might support everyones desires, you close your eyes and just sing la la la no changes needed, and then when SoE goes too far, you whine they don't listen. hehe

Honestly, I'm not sure yet what I would think about that. I can see pros and cons of both the current method and the one you've suggested.
It's true that your suggestion would be useful in some situations. Like with raids, or groups taking on tough content, when we peel aggro - I've done the same thing mentioned many times, where I get to lie down for awhile, trying to gauge when the tank has probably built up enough hate again that the mob won't just turn back to me. In that situation, I'm not sure that letting the pet continue to do damage is all wrong though - after all, we're only faking our deaths to fool the mob. And we're good at it - as Necromancers, we know for what death should look like, I guess.
Although, I've also noticed that the process of deciding when to get back up is very similar to the process of trying to gauge damage output to not peel aggro in the first place - it relies on feeling out the situation, knowing your groupmates abilities well, and playing it accordingly. I kinda see it as the same tactical decisions for hate management - a Wizard or Warlock may make more of these tactical decisions up front to not peel aggro immediately, where our hate is built up over time, and our tactical decisions come afterward. We'll almost never peel aggro from a straight nuke like that, in my experience, and it's kinda fun for me to have those same decisions to make, but in our own way.
I guess another consideration would be - does any other class have a 100% hate reducer? If I read the suggestion correctly, Feign Death then could be described as "Sacrifice your pet for 100% hate reduction" (or at least "drops you to the very bottom of the hate list" - same kind of idea). Let the balance discussions commence on that point.
Also, in my personal experience, I'd say the majority of the time I peel aggro is because my pet died, and the hate transferred to me. As such, having pet death on FD is kinda redundant.
What would negatively affect my personal gameplay by going back to pets unsummoning on feign (like they did way, way back pre LU13 I think it was) is more in a solo environment. Feigning has kept me going when wandering adds happen to wander too close to me - that mob decides I'm dead and mosies on along, and I can get back up to try to help my pet out again with the original target. I'd hate to lose that.
So, dunno. My initial gut instinct is that I remember being very happy when pets didn't unsummon on a feign after that change was made, even if I hadn't gone through a full analysis process of how and why.

Well said Deila. I agree on the last bit. Just tossing around ideas.

I like the way you put it about the 100% agro reduction part. You mention one pet dying, but in a raid necros can have between 8 and 17 active pets depending on how well you can time Undead Tide. So still, no other class can loose agro completely while still having 80% of their DPS stream STILL applying damage for an additional 30 - 60 seconds. If I had to give up something in the name of balance, that would be it.

Tossing around ideas is very good. Especially when the idea can be discussed without agendas - this is turning out to be a good discussion. Needs to be more of that on the forums, I think.
Ah, yeah - I don't consider dumbfires to be our 'pet' though. Semantics, I guess. I see our main pets as our 'pets', and dumbfires as temporary helpers - it seems that the devs also consider dumbfires to be spells, not pets - or at least some kind of weird hybrid. Okay. DoTs that can be cured, but can also take AoE damage. Whatever they are, they're useful, and that's what's most important.
I do see the point about classes not losing all that damage when being able to just get ignored by a mob. Then again, is there another class that can lose that much damage output to a single mob AoE? There's probably some measure of balance in there.
In one set of conditions (raid with a good Undead Tide turnout being nigh-ideal), that makes sense. But... raiding is not 'standard' gameplay for many, if not most, players, and I do worry about sweeping changes made to classes based on raid conditions every bit as much as I'd worry about PvP balance issues affecting PvE. If something directly affects non-raiding to such a degree in order to balance raid damage.... dangerous waters, I think, and I'd want to have some idea that there was no other way.

Agree about the raid not being normal game play, and I absolutely don't want any changes to non raid gameplay.

Why do I still play this [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn]ing game.........EQ will lose even more players...screw them, I cant wait til vanguard

Maybe you should go play Disney's Toontown instead, I don't think they've ever nerfed anything in that game.

Really, people like you should avoid Vanguard. Its planned to have an even harder edge, and the guys making that game swing a faster and meaner nerf bat than anybody at SoE knows exists. For these reasons, I'm very much looking forward to Vanguard. I actually like a little challenge in my MMORPGs.

"12. Lets mention that snare, fear, 2 Debuffs, all proc Liche also."

And lets also mention that all of the above breaks snare and fear and snare? It sure looks like alot but menawhile mages are knocking out 3-6k nukes? our dmg doesnt come close to keeping up, just mages have aggro issues they can push out soo much dmg. When you look at everything you listed there really isnt alot of utilty there, imho if you got no utlity you only bring dps to the table and that is why summoners need to be top dps they add nothing much esle.

"First off, it doesn't matter what we the players think, when it comes to us being balanced or not.

We *are* doing more then we're supposed to. That is a hard fact, and nothing you say can prove otherwise. The devs will adjust us to bring us more in line with what they had planned."

Gonna call BS. Because the only reason this is an issue is because "a segment of players is whining" and there never seems to be an end to the whining about balance because there is a segment of players who do not play a class they enjoy they instead want to play the most uber overpowered class, and unless they are that class they whine. I mean for real how many people pick up a wizard because they simply are looking for the most uber dps class? so they can have some [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn] and be mr be all end all for raids and exp groups?

Soi your wrong it is all about what the players think. They whine they effect the dev's and the dev's react. We are what moving close to 2 years into the game I think the time has long past when the dev's had placed this class where they wanted it to be.