Serious problems with the Necro class/mechanics

Discussion in 'Necromancer' started by ARCHIVED-Germs666, Sep 14, 2010.

  1. ARCHIVED-Germs666 Guest

    1. LIFEBURN - Not affected by ability mod/double attack, 5 Min recast is too long. Max damage limiter (60% of mobs health?) and Lifeburn immunity need to be removed . EB does not have any of these limitations,has a shorter recast and no EB immunity for multiple conjis and does more damage with no risk to the caster)
    2. ACCELERATED DECAY - Does not properly stack with UT (not sure if it stacks with timewarp), Does not Apply to LIfeburn, Health Drain seems excessive. (I liked the old idea when it front-loaded our DoTs to nukes which would make Spell Double attack actually useful again!! This would also fix the UT issue and make the health cost seem justified)
    3. UNDEAD HORDE/TEMP PETS - Not enough dps/Survivability to make them worth casting
    4. SIPHONING OF SOULS - Do not Stack. (can we carry 10-15? It'd be something to do when we cant find groups)
    5. OOZE CRAWLER - Make it a temp pet that actually has a chance of the landing the debuff but lessen it if needed
    6. SPELL DOUBLE ATTACK - A whole game mechanic wasted on our class since we have no Big Nukes. (Make it apply to LIFEBURN, or give us a big hitter in place of AD (in EQOA necros got a spell called Dessicate as and endline which was a big nuke with a 3 min timer like EB but for the necro.It could be an encounter spell like a disease cloud since we lack AoE damage.
    7. PET GEAR - Conjurors benefit way more than a necro due to EB alone on EVERY piece of pet gear. (The item dev Plays a conji)
    8. SCOUT PET - Noble Idea but no thanks. With shared stats why would we ever want a melee based pet? Wizard and Warlock pets would be nice. (Nox based for both though) We could switch between the two based on encounters. Making Dimensional Storage that much better.
    These are just some of my major frustrations with this class. It seems like conjis/Wizards/Warlocks still have major advantages since they arent heavily DoT based like necros and their pets are.
  2. ARCHIVED-Rhadamanthys Guest

    Germs666 wrote:
    1. LIFEBURN - Agreed, we have to basically kill ourselves to do a decent amount of damage. And while I can heal myself through the whole spell, it seems a little unfair that we have to rely on a healer to do the damage. Why can't we crit, and why doesn't AD, UT, or splurt work on it? It is a dot, so if all of that could be applied, then the 60% limitation and immunity is justified.
    2. ACCELERATED DECAY - I like this spell the way it is, but it would be nice if UT worked with it properly. The health drain is not much of a factor imo, as lifetaps usually keep me at full health anyway. The only minor problem is healing yourself outside of battle, which is just a bit of a nuisance.
    3. UNDEAD HORDE/TEMP PETS - Agreed, changing them to true dots would be nice.
    4. SIPHONING OF SOULS - Agreed, these spells are actually pretty good, especially having an extra aoe. But having only 1 cast?
    5. OOZE CRAWLER - Yes, we need this changed as it is pretty worthless.
    6. SPELL DOUBLE ATTACK - This needs to work the way it is stated in time warp: to increase the number of ticks. Then it would actually be worth having on a necro. Double attack on the initial hit is so horrible.
    7. PET GEAR - Agreed.
    8. SCOUT PET - The mage pet does more single target dps than this and doesn't have to die from being up close. I thought maybe using implode and then reanimate would be useful on aoe fights (or even dimensional storage), but implode doesn't crit, and reanimate doesn't even work in that case. And for dimensional storage, at least keep the buffs that were on the pet.
    And imo, necros should be the best dps on a long fight, so maybe give us some longer dots like bloodcoil that really kick in damage over time. The dumbfire pets last for a while, so these could be converted to make this happen. Cause in a short fight, our dps doesn't even come out like the burst damage classes. So at least give us that advantage on long fights. We shouldn't be that great in a short fight, but give our dots time to tick out and we should easily be on top over most classes.
  3. ARCHIVED-Xalmat Guest

    Aren't there a bajillion threads on what's wrong with Necros?
  4. ARCHIVED-Germs666 Guest

    this isn't just another thread
    these are SRS ISSUES!
  5. ARCHIVED-MackGee Guest

    Rhadamanthys wrote:
    Although our guild healers do an excellent job of healing me through lifeburn in group settings it's not always the case. I would love some pointers on how you're able to heal yourself through the whole spell. This could greatly help myself and the healers out when I cast the spell.
    Thanks in advance,
    Scott
  6. ARCHIVED-Rhadamanthys Guest

    To heal myself I first cast consumption (I have the AA that heals the group as well, so every spell my pet casts heals me for about 1.5k total). Then once lifeburn starts going I do a lifetap, bloodcloud, and then heal myself with animist's transference (just in case the mob hits me and I don't have enough for transfer life), and then heal myself with transfer life. In most cases you should be able to live through that unless you get aggro from the mob or get hit by a strong aoe (in which case you might have to distance yourself to not be able to cast bloodcloud).
  7. ARCHIVED-Turn Guest

    What I'd like to see is some of our less useful spells and AA abilities be retooled to add a bit of group and raid utility. Say, for example, Siphon of Souls becomes an until cancelled self buff. Whenever an enemy you have engaged dies, you get a little bit of health and mana back, and a counter goes up depending on the strength of the enemy, to a max of say 10. The abilities you gain use this universal counter instead of getting individual ones. Maybe they could decay over time if they're not used, as the necromancer slowly loses control over the spirit and it fades away to wherever it is the souls go.
    Change/Add to some of the Siphoning abilities so that they chain an immobile soul to the ground where they're cast, which buffs allies or damages enemies within a certain radius (say 10m). Could keep them similar to what the current spells are (one applies a DoT to enemies in its radius, one increases allies' health regen) or change them to give resistance buffs or small crit bonus/potency/casting speed buffs, debuffs, etc. Have them as individual maintained abilities that can be cancelled, and when active consume power. Having one out could cut significantly into Lich's regen, having two or three out at once would require Lich, a chanter and use of hearts and shards and manatap procs to keep up throughout a fight.
    Then I'd change the Implode AA to be a passive ability that affects all summoned pets on death. Tank pets could throw out a 5 second knockdown/stun, Mage pets could do significant AE damage. Have this affect the summoned spirits as well, so when you cancel the particular spirit that you have up, it "explodes" another effect in the area. The AE DoT spirit could do AE damage, the health regen spirit could give all allies in the explosion radius +10% to max health for 10 seconds, and so on. This way you could co-ordinate with other classes when to drop them (say with Wizards about when to blow up the +10% max mana spirit for their manaburn). Maybe make them affected by Blood Pact but also able to be terminated early if they get aggro or get hit with AE autoattack.
    No much chance of it, but I think it'd be an interesting way to give us some more raid utility and make us feel more like summoners than sorcerors with less dps potential.

    MackGee wrote:
    Consumption -> Lifeburn -> spam Lifetap / Blood Cloud / Animist's Transference / Transfer Life. That'll get you through Lifeburn without any healer support assuming you have decent casting speed and crit chance.

    EDIT: damn typos
  8. ARCHIVED-Mosha D'Khan Guest

    MackGee wrote:
    for instances, (dont raid on my necro) i pop vamp, consumption, lifeburn, the siphoning souls ability if it is up, lifetap, blood letter, and then animist's bond and then maybe transfer life if needed. for the most part is keeps me up fine
  9. ARCHIVED-Jaezah Guest

    I use vampirism on myself also when i throw lifeburn.
    Vamp - Lifeburn - Lifetap - consumption - bloodcloud - animist transfer - lifetap again
    I'll try moving consumption up to pre-lifeburn.. i've always casted it after but it seems to be more popular pre-lifeburn. Hmm..
  10. ARCHIVED-Rhadamanthys Guest

    Jaezah wrote:
    I tend to cast it before just in case you get hurt while casting, plus the 15 second duration matches up with the cast time and duration of LB. And in most cases Vampirism just dies like 2 seconds after cast, and it isn't needed to keep yourself up.
  11. ARCHIVED-Garlin1 Guest

    Xalmat wrote:
    Do you have to comment on every Necro forum post about changes? I mean, I'm not trying to be rude, but seriously try to be productive with your posts here.
  12. ARCHIVED-Xalmat Guest

    Garlin1 wrote:
    Forgive the rant, but...
    All I'm going to say on this subject is that most Necros really don't know what makes Necros tick properly, or how they're supposed to tick. This is partially because the majority of Necromancers are alts who will forever remain unskilled at the class.
    The ones that do play the class as their mains aren't contributing as much as they should to helping their own class improve. Nor do you have any really solid resources that newbies can turn to, which really limits class improvement further (as there will be fewer people that know how the class ticks as a result). The newbie resources that do exist are not updated when they need to be.
    Nor do y'all have a central location where the list of class problems can be easily browsed by the devs (The one you do have hasn't been updated in a year and a half since it's original post). When threads like this one pop up to suggest fixes for the class, they are often (not always) presented in hard to read formats, or in an openly hostile format. What is needed is a frequently updated thread with class problems that are laid out, with full details on what's wrong and how to fix. Of course that won't change the fact that class balance adjustments rarely happen except with expansion releases.
    Am I saying the necro class is problem free? Absolutely not. The class has been left to languish for some time, and is long overdue for dev attention. Hell some of the problems that plague Necros also plague Conjurors (who I will freely admit got better toys over time than Necros have).
    For the record, with the GU58 betrayal changes I'll be betraying my Conjuror to Necromancer so that I get a better feel for the class myself. I want to experience for myself what makes high end Necros tick, and what's wrong with them.
  13. ARCHIVED-Rhadamanthys Guest

    Xalmat wrote:
    In my experience playing a necro, there are a few major problems that I see (Not necessarily in any order):
    1) Ticks: With AD, UT and spell double attack are virtually useless on our 2 main damage spells, soulrot (single target DPS) and pandemic (encounter DPS) because they don't get extra ticks.
    2) Dumbfires: We have 4 basically useless spells because of this. What's more is that these 4 spells are on the longest recast timers. The only other damage spell with a high recast (not AA) is consumption. Because of the high recast, I would imagine these should be one of the highest damaging spells, but because they are not affected by gear, high-end necros have no use to cast these. And that is even assuming they don't die instantly by an AOE. Our potentially highest damage spell (undead horde) is a dumbfire spell. This spell can actually pull a decent amount of damage if done on a dummy (around 40k). But this requires health and power over time to use, as well as 45 seconds for them to survive to do that damage. A simple change is to make these true DOTs. They are already essentially DOTs, but with a handful of drawbacks.
    3) Grouping: We have very little need to be in any group or raid; I've only seen someone ask for a necro once, and that was when they listed ALL the mage classes for possible DPS, so I wouldn't even count that. IMO changing the dumbfires would be one of the best things for us. Each of those spells lasts for 45 seconds, which is way longer than any of our other DOTs. With Splurt, if these spells were allowed to tick out, they would do tremendous damage, making us useful on long fights. They would be essentially the DOT equivalent of spells like Ice Comet or Assassinate. Currently, we are horrible in short fights, and even in a long fight just about any other DPS class (similarly geared and skilled) will easily outparse us.
    4) Lack of damage spells: Most other classes have a ton of spell options for DPS. Because of dumbfires, we have about 6 useful spells: Bloodcoil, Lifetap, Soulrot, Bloodcloud, Pandemic, and Vampire Bats. Another of our spells, Dooming Darkness, stops getting upgrades at 51, and I only think to use it when all other spells are down. Also on DD, that spell has a chance to dispel upon any damage taken because of its snare component, and thus the DOT component usually gets cancelled immediately, making it even less viable as DPS.
    5) Health: So many of our spells require us to basically kill ourselves to do any damage, when it's really not that much damage. Don't get me wrong, necros can pull high DPS, and I've done very high DPS, but we are still way below other DPS classes.
  14. ARCHIVED-azraelteir Guest

    Xalmat wrote:
    Thank you Sess, I agree with you 100% here. I think one of the major reasons there aren't many players who have Necro as their main is because the majority have left the game or given up Necro as their main a long time ago. There are a few of us around who haven't given it up, but for the most part we are a small group.
    I see a lot of ideas fly across the screen and most of the time I am confused as to why someone would want a certain change for DPS over something more class defining that would give us more desirability at the same time. Necromancers have a lot of class lore to them, there are reasons why we are a DoT based class, there is a reason why we sacrifice health on certain abilities. Its what makes the class what it is, if you don't like it roll a wizzy.
    We do have problems, I agree that the DoT cap sucks and Dumbfires need to be fixed in some way. We have sooo many wasted AA choices that could be re-tasked to better uses.
    And yes, we need a central location for posting, I don't see why people aren't using the established sticky thread above. When the Devs do come to look at our class and whats been going on they aren't going to go searching for posts that have died and rolled off the list, they are going to go straight for a sticky thread that is supposed to house all the combined issues and suggestions for the class. Honestly I don't even read most of these threads unless I am really bored, so I can only imagine the Devs don't either.