Necromancer Spell/Pet Issues (Consolidated)

I know Teachings of the Undead is on your list, but I just got it and want to add some detail about the bugs involved with it.

This was all tested with App4 at level 40.6.

I recieved a wide variety of results testing this. It seems to act differently depending on how many times you've cast it, if you zoned recently, if you recast with or without first canceling the icon, etc... Basically, this spell is screwed beyond belief.

The most common results I recieved from the testing were...

1. It adds only 1 STA. If you zone that 1 STA goes away.
2. It adds no INT at all not even if you zone.
3. It adds only 69 to disease resistance. Sometimes it adds it right away, sometimes you have to zone first.

Your results may vary since this spell is so utterly messed up.

What good are our group buffs if you gotta zone to see the benefit and if there is no benefit at all in some cases?

I am debating about adding Priorities to this current list based on what we think the most important fixes are. Please post your feedback on this idea. So far just off the top of my head (As I am at work right now) I am thinking some of the major priorities should be:

Warlock/Scout Pet DPS
Bugged Group Buffs
Pet Aggro Management
General Dungeon Pathing Problems

Ideas? Comments?
Message Edited by Jakanden on 03-15-2005 05:34 PM

Group buff fixes is #1 on my list.

Are you by any chance stacking this with Mark of the Miasmic?

Doh... yah actually I was stacking it with mark of the miasmic Adept 1, which I guess explains a lot of things. I was thinking it would overwrite any spel that it was supposed to be an upgrade for and use the same timer etc... But apparently they stack.

I hanve't tried adept 1 of the Teachings spell, but it appears that app4 of Teachings is almost identical to adept1 Mark., Which is basically what has already been reported...

But it doesn't explain the differing results with each cast.
Message Edited by xxArcanexx on 03-15-2005 08:21 PM

Yup, that is true but unfortunatly if you try to cancel it nothing happens... so... it's basically the same thing as before...

About the priorities to fix... the assassins/warlocks pets are definatly my number one priority. Right now, those pets are completly useless spells, I never use them because there isn't a situation where they overcome the tank pets.

The second priority as I see would be the DOTs spells. If mages are suppose to be the highest damage classes why the assassins have better DPS than us? I really don't know if it is only the assassins or the general scout classes.

By the way... yesterday I dinged 35 and got my new fluff spell and let me say this: I LOVE IT!!

PS: Cheers to Jakanden and all necro community that helps to update this thread! I just wish we had a more direct response from the devs about our class issues.
Message Edited by Morcego on 03-16-2005 04:17 AM
Message Edited by Morcego on 03-16-2005 04:18 AM

I have Revivication adept 1, and it changes the health of the person when rezzed from 43% to 45%...thats the only comparison between apprentice 1 and adept 1.

I'm also disappointed that Fade and Eternal Bindings are both just higher level spells with the same effect as Cloak of Venril and Chains of Torment.
Cloak of Venril slows the target by 15%, yet Fade slows the target by 5%.
Fade heals us for 160 or so hit points.....what the hell hits for that low at 46+ ?

I think a list sorted by priority would be great, though the devs probably have a good idea of what the priorities are anyway.

Pet damage is definitely #1 on my list... and really I can't see it as anything else but #1.

Aggro management is #2 easily, whether you mean the amount of aggro pets can generate or probablems with them having their own aggro list and not obeying orders, it all falls into the same general category.

Group buffs... yea, they're nice, but lets be honest, in a group when you have 15 buff icons on the side, no one checks to make sure they're all working. On the other hand, everyone with a parser notices when your pet sucks.

Pathing issues I think are a much larger problem than just pets since mobs and such have the same issues.

As for assassins vs mages being highest damage.. once again its not that simple. Just like comparing wizards to necros. Burst vs sustained damage. Assassins are the same way.. high burst damage and situational IE from behind, cloaked, etc. I'd need a much more thorough investigate before judging.

I could swear I canceled ghost form from the icon the day I posted it... may be on the crack, though.
As far as fix order Jak, I'd go with:
1) Pet DPS disparities
2) DoT DPS vs. cast time is horrendous on most spells (especially withering affliction/deaths coil and Breath of the Unearthed/Accursed Cloud); stuns and roots also fall into this category.
3) All high level concentration buffs broken
4) Pet agro management
5) Pet pathing

Old bug that began to annoy me again today: often when a pet initiates combat, it's hard to get to the corpse loot. If you're good or lucky, you can jump and get it, but if you're inept or in a hurry, you can't.

Another old issue that I really thought had been fixed, but hadn't paid much attention to to realize it WASN'T fixed: the maintained spell window only displays 12 icons. I thought that a recent patch was supposed to fix that, but after alot of counting today, it doesn't seem to be the case. Am I way off on this one?

Yep, only 12 for me too thisMoriMori... only been in the last couple days so far as I know but it sure is annoying.

From the 3/16 test patch notes:
- Corpses and chests that were slightly out of reach should now be easier to loot.
- The number of slots in the Maintained window has been increased to 30.

So these are both fixed in the next patch (Monday is my guess as that's when Bloodline Chronicles goes live) The loot bug has little to do with the pet and much to do with a broken z-axis. If the mob is 1/10th higher than you then you can't loot it so god forbid it fall on a pebble. We just notice it more becaus emost often we are some distance away from the mob when it dies. Some zones are much worse than others - there's a place in Rivervale where if a mob dies anywhere on the road you just cannot loot it.

Maintained spells will also show you their target in the case of DoTs and such if I remember correctly.

Ah good. For some reason I thought they'd already patched in the extended maintained spells window. Silly me.

Not entirely sure if it's been brought up yet... since I haven't read the last few new pages...

Cloak of Venril seems bugged/exploit... It allows you to cast it on the run.

Grisly Brace and Grisly Stele... I'm not entirely sure about this one either... but you can actually keep each of these on two seperate targets, though after one ward is broken both spell icons refresh. So, if you cast Stele on pet and then Brace on yourself you can actually have two wards going, but once one breaks you need to wait the refresh on both.

Oh, and a clever stacking of the illusion spells on top of each other causes a really strange zone halt... I haven't experimented but I did it once in Nektropos Castle and once in East Freeport... I'm not entirely sure whether it effects everyone in zone, grouped, or just those nearby... but when I did it at the castle... everyone in my group was frozen in place.... taking about 5-10 minutes for the software to sort out exactly what had happened... I really don't know how to describe what happened... but if you want to try it out just casting all three and then drop skeleton (not sure if that's it... you'll know it when it happens... no mistake).

I would have been convinced that it was just my PC... but my wife who was sitting right next to me halted as well as the 4 other people in my group... It was like the world froze... and eventually returned to normal...
Message Edited by Necronstreksis on 03-18-2005 07:24 AM

Oh hey... when this happened, did everything basically drop to 1 frame per 10 seconds and slower? I had this happen last night where I would start getting sudden lags of 2-3 seconds... then more frequently, then suddenly it just... sorta froze. I'd see the screen update every 5-10 seconds... then after a while every 20-30 seconds... so it wasn't completely frozen... just really really lagged? I ended up rebooting so I dunno if it resolved itself or not...
This happened a while after I had the ghost illusion bug where only my staff showed up. I clicked it off but was still invisible... so I cast skele illusion on myself then cancelled the skele illusion which put me back to normal.
This was the first time I had that slowdown problem and I assumed it was the new video drivers I installed... and the time difference between fooling around with the illusion and the slowdown was probably a good 30 mins, but I think the weird lags starting happening shortly after that.

Yes... That's exactly what I mean. And it effects more people that just you... like I said I'm not sure if it's proximity, graphic settings, group, or zone-wide.

Hrmmm weird. Well, good to know it wasn't the drivers at least In my case though, I don't think it affected my group because in the brief glimpses of the game text I could see they were still killin stuff just fine. Weird. Did you or anyone in your group have a group illusion up at the time?

I would almost agree with this prioritization except that your #4 is my #1. Aspect of Undead, Unholy Covenant, and Favor of the Unfallen are their "must zone or camp to work" bug is the absolute biggest game breaker that we have. It forces me to stop playing when I use Deathly Pallor. It forces me to stop playing when it drops. It forces me to stop playing when grouping. It forces my group to stop playing if I die or use Deathly Pallor. That is the only bug that we have right now that is an absolute game breaker so it has to be first in my opinion.

Dinged 36 and got a new nuke "upgrade"



Take your conclusions....