THIS Class is Garbage!!! Why the necro has become the WORST class in EQ2

First off, this is a list of problems with our class. The point of this thread is to point out how many unresolved issues we have and hopefully get the devs to wake up.

1) Pet AI - This I admit is a hard one to fix, but Line of sight issues,pathing,casting order etc. Ever time how long it takes for a pet to land it's first spell?? Being able to customize your pets casting order would be nice.
2) No Shared spell crit/spell damage with our pet! - If pets are a portion of our outgoing damage why must they be gimped? 50% Would be a good base start considering there are items and AA Abilities that could get them closer to 100%
3) Slow casting! - I heard our cast times were faster a while ago. Enchanters blow us away and we'd never get TC or UT over a wizard/warlock. Our DoTS should be instant cast considering we have to WAIT AROUND for ticks. This makes no sense to me.
4) Way too many DoTS - I understand the RP purpose of necros giving diseases etc. We need more Direct damage nukes! No burst damage means bad zonewides and not much to offer instance groups.
Our DPS is neutered becuase of slow casting/and waiting around for our damage while scouts wail away...
5) Outdated utility - Hearts used to be cool but my Fabled hearts give 91 power every couple of seconds? Our Rez isn't anything special with it's 45 sec recast. We offer no utility to raids other than casting hearts.Our life transfers could be beefed up to make us support healers like in EQOA. (we'd have like 4-6 necros in a raid helping keep the MT up It was fun)
6) Ooze Crawler - This thing takes away our pet and and gives us this blind guy that couldnt hit the broadside of a barn.
Making it a pet proc would be great!
7) Exploding pet STR AA end ability - We lose our pet again for a WEAK AoE attack? We lose any DPS gains that would give since we have to recast/rebuff our pet. (Never tried this with Dimensional Storage but still can't picture it being useful) This should apply to swarm pets instead.
8 )Lifeburn - Fun Ability, but requires too much help from other classes. I'd rather it be a massive DoT that takes our health down to 25% but gets full ticks everytime. I dont see assassins losing all their health from execute... or do I see mobs getting a 30 sec IMMUNITY after assassins big hits.
9) No Pet gear? - Pets should have equipment slots! Maybe not jewelry, but It'd be a nice touch and would sure help us grab some DPS gains.
10)Scout Pet/AGI line - No reason to waste money/AA on either one. AGI end line is also a joke.
11) Vampirism - This spell needs to be trashed ASAP. Check the broker price, see if anyone uses this junker.
12) Undead Horde - 15 recast is brutal considering its still casting some undead tide and 1 AoE will remove this spell from the mob.
13) Swarm pets - Are they a DoT? Are they pets? No shared stats? Removable by AoE's? Cast times are also too long on these..
14) Auto- Attack - Scouts get an auto attack thats based on melee. Ours should be ranged and based on spell crit. It'd only be fair. We lose a fair amount of DPS from this alone compared to scouts.
15) Spell damage/crit bonus - Doesn't seem to help at all, only applies to the first DoT ticks and 50% to our Lifetaps? Why is this fair??!! Crit bonus applies to our sadly low 1st DoT tick resulting in tiny gains. Same applies to Najena's ring of readiness I don't see many DPS gains and wonder if the time spent clicking the proc is wasted.
16) Cloth Armor,low HP, low mit, med damage = No real reward for being squishy and having to keep our pet alive also. Our damage just isn't there.
17) Drawing of Souls - These are by no means class defining spells, so why can we carry only 1 cast of each? Either make these stackable or smart loot because I only use about half of these, yet I can never keep them all in stock.
18 ) Raidwide hearts/Single target hearts - Target already has a necromancer item, The whole ad3/m1 hotbar fiasco. I know this maybe in the works for a fix but it is still annoying when people ask me for hearts because they have ad3 hotbarred and it doesn't register.

This is all I could think of at the moment. Please feel free to add to this list.

To be completely honest with you, do I think this is the best way to handle this issue...no, although there is not really a wonderful way to handle it, and I certainly understand your frustration as well.
You have some valid points, and some a little off key in my opinion, so just going to emphasize some opinions. I'm not gonna hit every single topic you posted.
Pet AI- Although the spell casting order isn't awesome, I would say the line of sight issue can be relatively fixed with using /pet melee, and the pet will search for line of sight.
Shared stats- As much as I hate pet gear and I would love to this implemented in some way, I don't see it happening as much as I do support you on this one.
Casting speed- We do cast slower than enchanters, but we cast faster than sorcerers, and when PoTM and PoM etc. are in, both our pets and ourselves proc, making it a somewhat balanced.
Too many DoTs- Here I think you have it all wrong. Burst DPS is not our game in my opinion. If we had more DoTs, we wouldn't sit there reapplying DoTs over and over just to get first tick damage constantly. This would allow more damage over time accumulation, overall boosting dps. If our dumbfires were DoTs that would be affected by splurt and other spell bonuses, we would be in a much happier place. Imagine: Another DoT equivalent to bloodcoil, which would allow the actual ticks to get more use.
Useless Abilities and AAs- Yeah, we have quite a few of them. Every class has some, we can manage.
Lifeburn- Highly useful spell, grab your favorite healer and kick out some damage, one of our few truly burst dps spells.
Pet Gear- Probably not the answer, simply an opinion.
Truly, we do not have anything specific to offer in terms of utility that makes us desirable. Our DPS probably falls slightly below what it should, considering we are parsing close to enchanters, while offering no utility. Feel free to smack away at what I've said, would gladly like to hear other perspectives.

My perspective? Germs is right on, and Bonestrike doesnt have a clue.

I wrote up a pretty long post about what i thought of all of it but to add insult to injury.
I've noticed Tank pets anyways don't seem to be able to get any mitigation changes onto them. I've gone through and casted all my tank pets from every tier some adept 3 some M1 and the pets always come up showing 40.5% mitigation (lower level pets will show it against their maximum level). Grouped up with a priest for some group buff (physical mitigation is one they all have) and while my necro's had gone up significantly the pet remained at 40.5%. So it appears to me that the only difference between ad3 pets and M1 pets is a little more avoidance and hps. My Warden self buffed is running around with 42% mit and more than double the avoidance of our tank pet. Conjy Tank pets seem to be locked at 40.5% mit as well however their group buff (defense) gives them more avoidance.
I would think Minion's resilence at least would have the decency to also raise the physical mitigation of the pet as well. (this is why our pets are squishy)
The AA special pet for both summoners needs to be looked at as well. There is a long list of stuff other pet class issues with targeting and otherwise being somewhat unfunctionable in certain raid encounters.
The apparent immunity to many group wide effects. Be it heals or group wide buffs but at the same time includes debuffs and other effects like special targeting conditions as well.

A good summary, you've probably listed most of the reasons you never see anyone asking for a necto to join a group or raid. Most of it seems due to neglect, with abilities having remained the same while the world has changed, so the abilities become as useful as a horse collar on a combine harvester.

Germs666 wrote:

You should check out the Drawing of Souls abilities.
Unstoppable Soul gives you a 16% Max Health Boost for 30 seconds, the duration is lame but this is ideal right before Lifeburn for more damage.

Germs666 wrote:

Oh nice, I'll check that out.
Thanks =)

While I agree that there are some things that could be improved upon, such as AI (Okay, pet, if you can't see it, move until you can. dork!), I find some offense in saying that we're garbage and the worst. d: I thoroughly love playing a necromancer and am really happy with it. Try just sticking to the facts and not using what I consider hyperboles and maybe we'll get taken seriously on some things that really do need a looksies.

Aurelis wrote:

We are patient, friendly and cooperative since two years (at least those that did not leave the game), and nothing happened.

Man, this is VERY depressing. I dont' know why I come these forums, but maybe because I have hope for things to improve for us.
I got my myth a few weeks back and have pretty decent gear with t2 shard armor. In terms of dps, I seem to be second or third place in the parse, but when it comes to necessity and balance in groups, no one is going to miss necros even if they are removed from the game completely. I've completely lost hope regarding this issue. With the support that SOE has shown necros (/sarcastism), I can gaurantee we'll NEVER see these wishful improvements.

They have shown support? What other game have you played?

Clywd wrote:

If I remember correctly we were terribly overpowered two years ago. Every class has their ups and downs as nerfs and upgrades get too out of hang, but the balance swings; we'll be fixed eventually. (Not that I think we are really that bad off anyway)

Clywd wrote:

I ment to be sarcastic lol!

Archimond@Antonia Bayle wrote:

We just got nerfed again! I used to be high on the parse but our dirge is putting up 8k while offering insane utility.

Aurelis wrote:

I love playing the necro also, so much that I will not reroll a scout just because it's EZ mode DPS. We are the worst (ok bruiser may be close). Tier 2.5 DPS Tier 4 utility. This is the current state of the class. It may be a hard pill to swallow but those ARE the facts. The list above is the amount of annoyances and bugs that could be fixed.
Aeralik just likes to play with our pet graphics instead and nerf our proc damage.

Germs666 wrote:

I don't know. Maybe it's because I don't raid, but in the groups that I do run with my guildies, I don't see myself as the worst. *shrug* My pet and I aren't shabby, but I have lower expectations. As far as utility goes, you just need to be creative and we've got some utility. My guildies don't call me the necroercehealepseudotemplassassininja for no reason. (;
And how did Aeralik come in to this? I think that's a sketchy accusation and again, we should stick to facts... (says the unofficial dev fangirl, so I guess that makes my statement invalid in people's eyes. sigh!)
Again, this probably has to do with me grouping instead of raiding, and because I'm not crazy about the parse. Yeah, yeah, I've heard it before - those who aren't parse crazy are the ones that are low on it. d: But while I'm lower on the parse, I'm doing other utility things. *shrug*

i agree with germ unfortunately we are not scheduled to be fixed for more than a year.

its pretty bad when today you get told " sorry we filled the spot " and you ask who they took and they say they took a templar because he was higher dps. keep in mind they had an inq in group already.

so i got turned down so a group could use a templar that has higher dps ,oh and every spell that matters is master which they knew.

lawl.. there is like a hand full of inquis WW that can maybe keep up with my necro in heroic content.. who ever told you a templar has more dps then a necro is smoking crack.

But sadly there are necros out there doing only 300 zw dps...and I wish I was making that up.