LU24 Pet/buff changes patched to Test - What Changed

They haven't changed the cast timer on our core line of damage/debuff spells yet, This may affect liche effeciency, but not by much. I know you can squeeze a few % point of damage out of liche by casting certain spells in certain order, and the changes in casting times, may effect those those casting orders. But I'd have a hard time calling this a nerf in itself.

Previous poster on this topic was correct - there are no changes to Lich procs from the spell proc changes.
Spell proc changes made it so that procs with a percent chance to fire adjusted that percentage based on casting time of the spell, normalized to 2.5 seconds. As I understand it, that means that if a given effect says it procs 5% of the time, it will proc 5% from a 2.5 second cast time spell, will proc a little less often than 5% from a faster-casting spell, and proc a little more often from a longer-casting time spell. Basically, the same idea as what happened with melee procs way back when, when they were looking at balancing imbued weapon procs (mostly - other weapon procs fit this as well, imbued weapons were just the most common), just this round it was for procs off of spells.
Lich is different though, in that it doesn't have a proc percentage - it just does it's thing, automatically, when we cast our disease-based spells. Which is almost all of them. Yeah, even our roots seem to be disease-based, because they, too, proc Lich.
(Which reminds me... gotta make sure that roots, when initially cast, aren't immediately checking for break from the Lich proc damage. Never seen it happen, but... they've been in playing with code on roots, so good time to be sure it's evaluating Lich proc damage before the root takes hold, and not after.)

Cool to know, I was worried that they MIGHT change it to more of a proc, which would hurt :smileymad:. If they aint done it yet though, still golden.

The Devs can't seem to manage to fix bugs that have been around since beta all those months ago. What makes them think they should be able to take on something as esoteric as class balancing?

The last time they tried to "tweak" the necro they broke the abilities to taunt and hold aggro. We had to twiddle our thumbs (still paying our subscribtions, mind you - and don't forget your increase for Station Access coming soon) while they figured out what happened. Actually, they didn't figure it out. We had to tell them-- about 30 times.

Simply laughable

Can anyone on the test server tell me how shockwave works now with the upgrades u make to it? i.e how long does the stun duration last for and how much does it increase by every point u put into it. Thanks

Another difference I noticed tonight. Swarm pet difference, so I'll include it in this thread.

Blighted Horde now has a 45 second duration and 1 minute recast, where before it was reversed (1 minute duration, 45 second recast). Initial guess is that this is fixing a bug, and not a nerf, per-se. Always seemed weird to be able to refresh them with no downtime in between. To me, at least.

More as I find them.

Well, its a loss of 30 seconds of damage, so a big nerf. (15 sec cut from pets and 15 sec spent waiting)
If you only kill big mobs, that last longer than a miniute it could have been a bug, but I sometimes use that spell on mobs that do not live long enough to cast it multiple times, so I often waited on timer as is. Therefore I could argue that even in current duration/recast factor, it prevents me from casting it on every solo mob, and so it works to limit the use of the spell.
Message Edited by Druzgotek on 05-13-2006 06:50 PM

Yeah, it lessens the overall damage in those situations. What I meant by 'bug' instead of 'nerf' is that I suspect this duration/recast flipping was not intended originally, but a mistake that has been corrected. No inside info on that, just what I suspect - through most of my Necromantic career, dumbfire pets have had shorter durations than recasts, with the moved dogs (were the level 24 swarm pet waaaay back when, then moved to 51 at LU13, and almost lost to us) and now Blighted Horde, their upgrade, being the only exceptions that I remember offhand.
It's pretty hard to tell right now though, since the patch notes are known to be incomplete and/or in error. Blackguard warned that since he was going to E3 that the notes would be inaccurate. Always hard to tell what's intended and what's a bug if nothing's mentioned in the patch notes. Once we get updated patch notes, I'll see what they list as being intended changes. If not appearing in those notes, I'll ask around - might be able to find out, might not. Until then though, I'm just trying to catch what changes as I find them.

Yes, I was in no way trying to pick on your findings. Thanks for the hard work
I'm glad I did not buy the master 1 of that on broker for last few days, lol. Well, that is not entirely true, I suspect many necros will quit over this combat revamp number two for the necros, especially if more nerfs come, so spells will be cheaper.

You sure about that?

I thought our swarm pet was 45 sec duration and 45 sec recast. If before it lasted 1 minute and had a 45 second recast wouldn't you be able to have 6 swarm pets out?

Maybe I'm just remembering incorrectly, but I really don't think I ever could have two swarm pets of the same type out at one time.

Yes, I'm sure about the recast and durations, because I was experimenting with recasting just before they expired, to see if that might eliminate the hate transfer (never really could tell on that one though - we have no hate meter, and I hadn't peeled aggro on any of those tests anyway). You don't get 6 swarm pets (or didn't, I should say, since it's changed now) - it worked like any other recast of a spell. Overwrote the old, kinda like how the Coil line works. So, the existing 3 would poof as the next three cycled in.

Here is my two cents in the whole matter.

I played this game since launch. I have seen necros go from changes to changes. Some good and some bad. When I was lvl 50 before class changes I had the top rank in necros due to being part of the best raiding guild and getting the masters and equipment I needed before I took a 6 month leave. So for me coming back to necros as they are now (before the change upcoming) it was a drastic change. We actually became a really nice DPS class since we were pretty much stripped of our beneficial side of buffs (giving disease resistance etc and that broken buff that was supposed to give group members a chance to lifetap on a hit)

I can't say I am happy with how things are playing out, but yes maybe we can alter our play style and see how things change. To be honest my biggest concern is the mention of wizards damage VS ours. Wizards don't do an amazing amount of damage as it is. Sometimes it takes some hard work to outdamage certain tank classes. So with our DPS being lowered, it will make us less attractive to many groups. I mean if I was starting a group and filling out roles, I would rarely consider a necro as a part unless the place we were going for called for such things as being handy for a necro to FD and rez or the lil extra healing power we do give.

To be blunt, we lost our good charge with pet damage, our dots are nothing to get stoked about, and lifetap is good damage but with the long reuse timer its not a good alternative for DPS. We don't really have any buffs that people need, some of our AA line is a bit out of order now such as the scout pet deaggro. I mean our scout pet does amazing DPS sure, and I had to work my [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn] off sometimes to keep the aggro OFF the pet. I can care less if my pet skills work on Epic encounters. Sure for those who are raiding a lot it would be a nice thing for our pets to stifle every so often. What bout us who wanna take it a bit easier and go with the casual gaming side.

I'm sorry. My swarm pets, life transfers, feign death, and rez abilities just doesn't seem to cut it with a hit to dps. I can see getting a slight decress but the innate DPS mod gone, damage all over the board reduced.. its gonna hurt no matter how you look at it.

I hate to do the whole "WAA this class is better then mine" spill, but it looks like coercers will be replacing us as a "Pet Class" If you have ever seen a Coercer who is gutsy play their class they will easily outdps ANYONE by charming ^^^ mobs and the like. I've done vaults in like 35 mins due to a coercer charming pets. If SoE wants to look for "Unbalancing" skits then they need to check out other classes too. Sure, we got control undeath, but that is situational.

Overall i am not impressed with the direction this is going. I don't choice to raid anymore, been there and done that, and I don't want to feel like to get the most out of my class I need to raid. We will continue to excel in long fights to a degree sure, but when it comes down to the normal crawl (Solo, grouping, Instances) we just (IMO) have what it takes to be a worthwhile class to bring along unless there is just not anymore classes willing to go. Just my two cents.

Giga, Ex-necro of Ardent Legion

Been done. If you take a look on the Enchanter Boards they have a list of what spells got nerfed big time for them, and I am sure Coercers are gonna see the same thing. Sure , it sounds great, AoE mez. Breaks on Action now, not Damage. No taunting or debuffing anymore. Same with a lot of thier spells. Coercers are gonna get hit just as bad, just so that they can hit an Epic. I dunno what they where thinking :smileysad:

Ok, so are the Necro swarm pets different from the Conjuror ones?

my Plague of rats adept 1 has a 1 minute recast, 45 seconds duration. If that ones 45/45 then it would seem to be different between the versions we get at different levels.

The screenie above is for Conjuror swarm pets. And yes, appears to be very different, in that most of our swarm pets (now, all of them) have 1 minute recasts, not matching duration/recast as the one posted.
But yeah, the Blighted Horde (our piggies) were 45 second recast, 1 minute duration - at least mine on Test have been all this time, which is why I've been able to recast them while the previous batch were still out and active. I know that's inconsistent with even our two Rats swarms earlier in the line, hence my belief that those values were incorrect, and this recent change was correcting the mistake, rather than a 'nerf'.

not sure if you guys saw this in the update notes, or if it has been said here already (didnt see so). But looks like not only did the recast timer and duration get changed but the DPS mod on the dumbfire pets is now gone, which is equal to 17.5% of thier DPS.
Maybe not the biggest thing in the world, but we are sure taking it hard this time, all the DPS going away is really adding up.

So much for T2 DPS, hello T3

Zass
70 Iksar Necro

As usual the Necromancer class is getting screwed yet once more, how long will it be before this class is no longer a viable class. SOE is sure working hard to FFFFFFFFFFF this class over and over and over again, Way to go SOE F it, not fix it. Can't wait for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.

Vanguard has been acquired by SoE. While Vanguard devs state SoE will have no hand in development...well...I am sure it will be true initially...then later on SoE will buy the game if it does well. Did noone learn from EQ1?
Note: I am no saying SoE or Vanguard are bad. I am just saying sooner or later SoE will make decisions in Vanguard.

And you noticed that Sigil told Microsoft, thanks for the cash... but no thanks! I don't think they'll have a problem telling SoE the same if that time came. But I REALLY don't think SoE will want to screw with VG. They're going to use VG to draw off the hardcore gamers from WoW and EQ2. If any game will suffer due to VG it will, ironically, be EQ1.

With Station Access, SoE is making money either way. VG will remain under Brad's iron fisted "vision" for the forseeable future. Now, thats a good and bad thing cuz many many many people didn't like EQ1 when Brad's "vision" was in effect. I don't see VG being designed for the faint at heart.