Okay - perhaps I need to go back to necro school and relearn the basics of Undead Horde (and its variants). When it says "Summons 12 limited pets to aid the caster," does it really mean "up to 12?" I recently updated my Undead Horde to Master I and am noticing only three mobs, each a different class (tank, healer, and mage, I beleive?). I looked through the combat log and they seem to be doing poor damage against 70-71 ^^^ heroics. While I don't have any parses from before I upgraded, I would place money that they would do more noticeable damage than they are now. I always assumed that the additional via corpses thing was + to the 12. I do know that I would have a lot more undead in my horde in the past. Now it's more like an undead pack or, as someone said when I brought this up to them, "an undead random gathering of people outside a closed theatre." Or perhaps I'm just crazy... Thanks for any insight into this!
It should be summoning 4 without points in Undead Horde and 6 with points in it. There isn't a healer type. Just Mage and Melee types. If you read the buff you'll notice there is a corpse requirement to summon the "up to 12". I know it's rediculous since corses vanish when they are looted but they left it in there anyway... Undead Horde is supposed to be one of our most powerful abilities but because of the corpse requirement and the fact that the dumbfires don't scale even up to 80 let alone past 80 as is required by almost all end game content... Undead Horde is fairly ineffective compared to its rediculous refresh and both an HP drain and corpse requirement. It's one of the main abilities that needs to be adjusted for Necro. In a raid situation on fully debuffed mobs, Undead Horde is much more useful. But without dispatched and every availible disease/poison and wis debuff on the mob it still won't produce any real numbers. It should do a bit more damage than a well buffed lifeburn over a period of 60 seconds but it generally only produces about 1/4 that total. On encounters like Overking in KorSha it does extremely well because you can meet the corpse requirement. Other than that it's just a small bonus to DPS once every 12 to 14 minutes. The only time I use it is right after I Lifeburn so it catches the JCap from Lifeburn. Or when I am soloing a difficult mob and it's 15-20% health and I want to finish it off a little faster.
Xil wrote: I'm only getting three - no points in Undead Horde with my current pseudo-spec. I did have points in there in another spec, so that might explain why I'm noticing a lack of a horde. Really? I thought there was the mage (the one wearing a cloth hood and wielding a staff), the healer (the one with the square buckler shield and some goofy clown pants), and the fighter/meelee (the one in plate with the sword). I saw some healing procs in the combat log from one of the undead "horde," so I just assumed. ho-hum. "Summons an army of undead kin at the cost of health ... The number of undead summoned increases based on the quantity of nearby corpses. ... * Summons 12 limited pets to aid the caster." The lack of any "up to" is what had/has me confused. Seriously, though - how can you call 4 dudes an army. I call shenanigans!
It is pretty rediculous that's for sure. It should summon 12 regardless of corpses and the recast should be about half as long. 7.5 to 8 minutes. And yes, they cast lifetaps, that's why you see them on the heal parse.
Aurelis wrote: Despite what Xil said they do scale, tho there is a bug with them at the moment that summons half Undead Horde and half Undead Tide. I believe the fighter types are still summoned with the previous tier spell. You are correct what looks like a healer type mob is also summoned. They are a pseudo healer, they cast spells and melee but do not heal. The mages cast a lifetap dot, that is where you see the heals from. When you get all 12 out they do a LOT of damage, its getting them out that is a problem. With the AA spec I believe its 5 out and without its 3. Part of the fix solution for this I believe if they won't ever throw us a bone about reducing the recast is to make it 12 no matter what, with the AA adding an additional 2. tbh also I would just prefer they summoned mage's instead of the other useless morons that rush in to die immediately.
Sabutai wrote: I would love just pure mages... mwuah hua hua! Imagine the power! However, in seriousness, I would totally accept the long recast if I could have my 12 minions. Heck, allow the number to also scale via the level of the spell. I saved up and got a Master I - that should at least give me an extra minion or two over an Apprentice level. P: for now, I'll just respec to get those two extra dudes to feel a little more like an army of undead kin. *sigh*
I agree with everyone here on this. It should be one of our main DPS spells but since it's so buggy and the recast is so long, I usually save it for the first named (since people parse I need to show that I shouldn't be replaced yet so I can finish the raid/instance) and the last named. Not everyone can bank on having Jcap since troubs are betraying to dirges since casters aren't desirable compared to scout DPS. My main gripes are: AoE spells wiping these out way too soon, 15 min recast??!!, corpse requirement (when corpses disappear in seconds) and all of that giggling! A simple fix would be: 4 min recast, change the spell to a DoT w/graphic (so no AoE wipes), no corpse requirement (ever tell 5-23 other people not to loot something??) and make it a random 6-10 pets (+2 with AA line bonus so 8-12)
Aurelis wrote: I believe the only difference on the quality is the difference in mobs summoned. So a master spell will spawn master casters using master spells, etc.
Germs666 wrote: can't get greedy, if you want a 4 min recast you have to leave the dumbfire nature alone, or vice versa. It would actually be a decent dps tool if it was max cast every time with no AE deaths, I can see that being a 15 min recast spell. And it is indeed hard to tell people not to loot something, its shiny...gotta have it!!
Germs666 wrote: You have this stuck in your head for some reason but it couldn't be any farther from the truth. You absolutley have to have both Mage "AND" Scout DPS for raiding. And the zonewide depends entirely on the way you build the raid. If you run 3 Dirge with raidwide CoB of course the scouts will out parse the mages. They get CoB every second of every fight. If you run 2 dirge and 2 trouby instead you spread the DPS evenly across the board and instead of seeing all scouts on the top you see a mix of scout and mage like you should. Scout DPS is preferable to certain tanks. Guardian and zerker do better with scouts and dirge, SK Paly do better with mage and troubador. It's all about how you build the group or the raid. Not about one being better than the other. That's just a gross misconception.
Well from a raid standpoint I can see where Mage DPS would be needed, but T1 mages usually fill those. There might be a summoner for hearts/shards though! As far as the Scout DPS>Mage DPS thing goes, it's usually the people shouting for DPS spots for shard groups or instances. I see many people who wouldn't take a necro along for any of the harder instances. (and I don't have a bad rep yet haha) I play in a lot of pickup groups so I don't get the luxury of having a Templar,Troub or Illys with me like you seem to on all of your parses. Don't get me wrong, I take a lot of your advice Xil,but I can see scouts outperform necros easily with no chanters or bards in grp, I've seen a fury out DPS me, I see SKS doing the same. Our cast times/recovery unbuffed are way too slow. Simply speeding these up would improve us tremendously. It wouldn't make us OP for soloing because we'd rip aggro from our tank pets from our damage output. We just lack in burst damage spells severely, and our scout & mage pets should be at least 40% of our DPS considering their horrible HP amount.
Germs666 wrote: Hehe - dunno about you, but if I'm not careful, I can still rip aggro from my poor tank pet, Harvey, which is saying a lot because I put out terrible DPS. P; Okay, two things: 1) So what is the final verdict on Undead Horde? Is it bugged, underappreciated in development, or working as desired by SoE and not accepted by us? hehe. 2) Ugh... the topic of Mage vs. Scout pet has always bothered me. I've tried to read discussions, but I see things from both sides, so it's hard for me to make up my mind. I won't get into why a controller of undead summons a spider drachnid dude, among various previous mobs who aren't really undead...?? (see what I did there? I said I wouldn't, but I actually did... mwuah hua!) Am I mistaken that the Mage pet has poor AI? I could swear that when I've tried to use him, if he isn't in line of sight of the mob, he just stands there like an idiot. I know, my pets are my responsibility, but still...! I wouldn't mind a small spell where he teleports within a certain radius, like my Dark Elf "Shadow Slip" ability, if he can't see the target... Unless I'm wrong and he doesn't actually do this. In which case, I'm back to just one reason to use my Scout over my Mage (group with a coercer; mage tends to break the mezzes). I'd personally love to see more undead themes to necromancers. Rats? Imps? Spider drachnid dudes? I completely adore our stun being skeletal hands and all. It's kind of like we're half undead masters, half things-that-are-considered-kind-of-evil-or-yucky masters. I want to "revive" a mob corpse as a ghost and send it after someone as a temp. pet... but that's a stretch of a wish, I know. P:
your limited pets count as bodies, i will sometimes send them towards the front of the mob so they die(not hard) then cast UH. tbh this is not an important spell it's every 15 min or so and dies to aoe. would be nice if it was more like communion(conj spell) with a shorter recast and just get rid of the corps all togther
And I was wondering what I was doing wrong, UH doing 1% or less of my damage. Bah, another strike on the necros head.
I have to say, personaly, I love being a Necromancer. I know this isnt the popular opinion at the moment, but ohh well. I have played a Necro for over 4 years now and I doubt I will ever give it up. Now I may be one of the lucky few, but I was able to find a guild where I earned the position of main raiding necro. I have taken the time to work with my Raid/Guild Leader on understanding how Necro DPS works, at least according to my play style, and because of this I am consistantly in the top 4 of the raidwide parse. Dont get me wrong, I dont disagree that as a class we have our issues and need some TLC, but we are still functional, how can we not be when I am parsing less than 200dps below a Myth Assassin and Warlock. To start, my Necro is an Euridite, which means I have Aura Sense so I did a test the other day and cast my Horde while my Aura Sense was on and I was shocked too see that there are actually priests in the horde, I never took the time to look previously to be honest. They may not be functional healers (since they typically run up and melee the mob, and die) but they are a healer class. One of the things I worked with my Raid Leader on was not looting trash from bodies in zones that have lots of trash to leave bodies (SOH for example). In these cases I am usually able to max out my Horde with no problem, and in cases like this I am usually able to see a signifigant increase in my DPS, mostly from the Horde Mages since they DPS from a distance and can avoid AOEs better than the healers and melee. Xil, I just wanted to say that I have read many of your posts, and I tend to agree with your point of view on things more often than not. We may be a broken class, but it dosnt mean we cant still hit the top of the parse in any situation. A.Z.
