Xalmat wrote: you're not seeing the "issues" because you have not played the class long enough to see it's short comings or because you're choosing to ignore them. the life drains hurt solo, with poor healers and in a pvp situation. in rok with the massive "blue stat" boost both summoners lost out since the pet did not beneift from these but necro most because we lost 50% of our spell mod on 50% of our damage because of life tap mod mechanics. also had a useless level 80 ability (vampirisim). add to that the RoK dot vs. detrimental effects penalty and it's pretty easy to see that necros where useless in RoK. then comes TSO with tons of healing and curing and you can see how necro being dependent on healers became an issue for the average necro that did not have the good fortune to be pampered by a raid force. also the massive influx of pet "focus" gear that benefited conj quite a bit more then necro. now we have SF and again necro was short handed on the end line ability (accelerated decay) along with lifetap and dot mechanics still not being fixed. further more conj getting a lifeburn "like" big damage ability on a 3 minute timer instead of 5 minute. btw. why did you betray Sess, didn't you have xalmat who was already a necro?
Davngr1 wrote: I betrayed due to boredom with the Conjuror class. And because I'm not raiding presently, my gear basically plateaued. I also fully mastered out from level 1 to 90. I want to raid, but at present real life prevents it. Xalmat the necro never made it higher than level 50 something before the betrayal changes were announced. At that point i said "F it". As far as lifedrains go, I just don't know what people are complaining about. At least on an epic training dummy and solo, with Blood Pact, Lich, and Accelerated Decay going, my HP never dips below 90-95% even with a standard spell rotation and not going out of my way to keep myself healed. The mana drain with Blood Pact going is pretty nuts i'll admit, but the HP drain is minor at best. Throw in lifeburn, and sure it gets very dicey. I sit at ~16k HP solo, with the three permanent life drains taking about 1k hp/tick. Davngr1 wrote: Perhaps. But I do see certain weakpoints in the class, and I also see some powerful strengths. And I can conclude that Necros are much more buff and gear dependent than a Conjuror.
Xalmat wrote: I'm not too sure what some of the fuss is about. You seem to have a pretty good idea of necro issues. Sure, there are more issues, but I would say the dumbfires and DOT mechanics (which lead to issues like UT and AD conflicting and spell double attack) are the biggest things holding us back as far as DPS and you saw that right away. The dumbfires pretty much give us 4 useless spells, when one of them is supposed to be our hardest hitting spell. And I'm not too sure how much DPS EB adds to conjurors, but on a single dummy with AD, I can get about 16k max with spells < 20 sec recast, and without it about 14k. So, it might add about 15% more DPS. From what I've seen with some Conjurors, EB usually seems to add a lot more than that. The life drains are mostly annoying, because in most situations our lifetaps can easily heal through them. But the problem with all of those life drains is that we pretty much have to kill ourselves to do any damage (LB especially), and it's not that much compared to most DPS classes. Even coercers, a utility class, can outparse us while feeding the group power and increasing our DPS. And I think even inquisitors might be able to outparse us.
What if Undead Horde were to summon 5 or so minions at a time, but for the duration of the effect, every time a minion died, 2 more were summoned to replace it? This would actually cause the spell to scale-up somewhat in effectiveness against tougher MOBs, because the more minions that get one-shotted, the more spawn to replace them. In other words, it would work about like it does now in solo situations (albeit a bit more consistently) while becoming significantly more effective against heroic or epic content. Plus, I feel that the "horde of undead that merely grows as you fight it" concept has a lot of traction.
Rothgar wrote: Seriously? You developers needed fanfaire to tell you this problem? Comments like this tell me you all are so far out of touch with the game it isn't even funny. Makes me question if you even play it. You've obviously never played a necro. Try playing the game. The problems are evident and blatantly obvious and have always been the same for each ability since their introduction as they have never been fixed or in some cases useful. Answer me this Roth....Why is it necros are the ONLY class in game that has to pay major health penalties for any of their good dps spells? Why are they the only class in game that has to rely on another class (healer) to fire off their big dps special skill? Why are they the only ones whose special dps skill will likely kill them especially in raid if an aoe goes off? With these nasty restrictions/set backs the dps reward should be twice what it is. Fixes needed: Undead Horde - remove the stupid bodies restriction noone else has a limiting factor like this and there are never any bodies. For there to bodies groups would have to give up the gold loot off the bodies this was not well thought out. It should always cast the max pets and be aoe immune or act like a dot. Without aoe immunity this spell is useless in raids as the pets are always killed within a few seconds. Lifeburn - Remove the dang life drain on the necro so we aren't killed by an aoe mid tap or dependent on a raid healer who may not be paying attention to fire it off. We shouldn't have our special be dependent on a 2nd class as conjies don't have that restriction. The other option would be to significantly increase the dps due to the death risks involved. Cast time on this needs to be similar to EB too as at the moment this takes too long to get off. Swarm pets - Make them aoe immune or spell dots. Without immunity they die almost immediately and are useless. What other class can have this happen to their damage spells where it just gets nullified by an aoe going off? Come on Roth you guys gotts think here this stuff is obvious. DOTS - Remove the tick caps and max dot size. Noone else has their damage capped. Allow spell da, tw and other such things to affect the dots. Straight nukers don't have these limitations and it is unfair to dot classes. Pet storage - If the pet persists through death now why in the world does pet storage not persist? This is irritating beyond all belief. It's stored for this very purpose for crimeny sakes. Main pet - Summoner pets need to be aoe immune if our dps is going to be so closely tied to them and used as an excuse to downgrade our castable damage spells compared to wizzies/warlocks. No other class can have their dps neutered by a single aoe then have to struggle through further aoe interruptions to get the pet back up to have decent dps again. Allow them to share their masters resists. When I possess my pet and see he only has 4k resists in a zone i need 20-25k to survive it ticks me off for lack of developer foresight. Fix tank pet aggro - Tank pets have not been viable for ages. They don't hold aggro at all even if using aa abilities to help. The tank pet should be able to taunt consistently and keep it off the summoner. Shared stats would help to fix this. Get rid of all the stupid little this dps buff is going to cost you this much health per tick crap. No other dps class has all these health restrictions to do damage the necro has and despite all the extra restrictions we don't get more dps than they do for it. You all need to either get rid of the penalties or greatly increase the rewards for the risks. Most of this stuff summoners have been asking for between 4-6yrs depending on the ability. It is sad we have been neglected and unfixed for so long. It really makes SOE and the devs look bad. Do me a favor Roth...go to test make yourself a maxed out 90 Necro with great gear and take it on a raid one evening and try to use all the abilities above. You will see in one night in just a few hours the truth of the post. These things are so simple there is really no excuse from development for their lack of attention other than not caring or not playing your own game.
All valid points here. I think Conjurors are doing very well though they face similar issues, they have gotten much more attention because a developer plays one. Obviously no developer plays a necro because if he thought this change to a spell would make ANY difference to anyone then he's playing WoW. Sad to finally see a red name post on this forum and come up with this.
Dallamar@Mistmoore wrote: I agree with most of this, however: 1) Lifeburn should still drain health, as it is possible to keep yourself up through the whole thing, and most healers with a clue can help you easily through it. However, the damage it does it not that great considering what you have to do for it. It should be affected by crit and crit bonus, same with a Wizard's Manaburn. 2) There should be a limit to dot ticks as long as there is a limit to spell multi attacks, otherwise we would be getting more than the DD classes. If a spell triple attack is available, increase the number of ticks allowed, for example. 3) We have blood pact, so making our main pets aoe immune is already available. The cost is a little ridiculous, but lich and lifetaps are usually enough anyway. 4) Tank pet does need some help, but at the same time, I can pull aggro off of most tanks, even when they are well geared. It would be a little OP if our tank pets could hold aggro very well. Also, I can solo most names with the tank pet. You just have to slow down DPS quite a lot, but then most classes wouldn't even be able to solo those names, and most would end up doing less dps than we do anyway... And honestly I think the scout pet needs help before the tank pet. It doesn't even do more dps than the mage pet on a single target...
Rhad I have to disagree with you on a couple points. Lifeburn - In a typical major raid fight with massive aoes going off that take half your health it is not possible to heal yourself through this. You end up having to just not be able to use it. Comper this to EB which conjies can use no matter what and the longer LB cast time it just isnt equal. Heck it doesn't even have equivalent damage cause dots cap. Wizzies may have a mana issue but at least their ability doesnt potentially kill them and take them out of the fight. Dots need to be uncapped. Noone else has a cap and multiple attacks are coming in Velious for other classes. Blood pact is another health sucking ability not worth the cost. 10% a tick is insane especially for something that should simply already exist for survivability of the pet. Health penalties of 5% off AD 10% off BP plus the ticks off Lich. All that health per tick penalty just to get abilities other classes get with no penalty is BS. I call that very unavailable as in a raid you don't want be sucking down your healers wards and group heals like that else they wont want you. Let alone you wouldnt need the pet aoe immune even if they let our resists go through to the pet. Tank pet holding aggro being OP? That idea is contradictory and doesn't make sense. WTH is the point of even having it then? Why not give us a hate transfer we can toss just on or own pet or something at least? Heck that would prob be better idea than waiting for them to code the thing properly taunting. AAs like Perceptor Command only work once then its back on you again it isnt efficient. I don't want to sit there and play healer for my tank pet not being able to dps at all cause his aggro generation is like playing with a lvl 10 tank. I like the idea I just came up with there...Let my tank pet have an aggro link to me so all the aggro I generate with him up goes straight to it thus helping him hold aggro and making it a viable solo play option.
Dallamar@Mistmoore wrote: Well I agree LB sucks in raids, but in most other situations, it isn't so bad. If we have to basically kill ourselves to use it, it should at least crit or gain something from extra ticks or SDA. I'm not sure it gains extra damage from anything other than hp buffs, and possibly debuffs on the mob. And as far as manaburn not killing wizzies; it still takes them out of the fight because then they have no mana to fight. Sure, an enchanter can powerfeed them, but that's the same as a healer healing us basically. And I don't think I've ever seen a wizzy even manaburn in an instance (except maybe on the queen in cella). That ability is worse than LB. How wouldn't our tank being able to hold aggro be OP? With tainted heals we can solo just about anything. If it could actually hold aggro while we actually dps then we would be the best soloers in the game. We would never run out of power, our pet would never die, and we could do good dps without having to worry about ripping. It would be nice if it could hold aggro better, but I don't see how it should be a better tank than a real tank in even legendary gear. It would be like having an assassin pet that could out-dps real assassins.
Undead horde should be changed to a dot: - For every dot ability on the mob, UH does x-y damage every tick up to z dots on the mob. That way we don't have to worry about keeping corpses around, but it still allows for some optimum conditions to cast it. And if dooming darkness gets fixed so it doesn't dispel because of the snare component, it would even give us a reason to cast it even if it doesn't do good damage by itself. Furthermore, if the other dumbfires were dots, they would be even more useful as well.
Lifeburn has, and will always be, a health draining ability...just like manaburn will drain a wizard's power... I really wouldn't have it any other way tbh, thats the purpose of having a high damage spell like that... now it is generally agreed that LB damage needs to be on par with elemental blast...as far as I know, correct me if I'm wrong, EB doesn't have a high risk factor to it like LB and MB do. The trick with the tank pet really is to do minimal damage otherwise you'll eventually rip aggro off your pet...the taunt does need to improve, every once in a while, not too often, a mob in a multi-mob fight will tear off regardless and come after me...if the taunt can be encounter based, that would help with that situation, or maybe when hitting perceptor's command it would taunt the entire encounter itself. I've stated this before, I feel we cast way too slow. An improvement on our rotting line (necro tree) to improve casting and/or reuse would help. Conjurors, again correct me if I'm wrong, have some of their AAs improve their casting speed on their Conjuror tree. Dot tick caps need to be raised so that we can make good use of UT + AD. Dooming Darkness... Why is this spell NOT upgradable beyond lvl 51? This would be very usefull in a raid/solo environment. Yes of course it will eventually dispel off the target when its hit, but just think of the possibilities..
