I haven't met a dev who plays a summoner as a main let alone has a level 80 one and plays it on a regular basis....do you?
So I apologize for asking a question like this within another thread, but as I've just gotten back into the forums and back to playing EQ after a year or two now, I don't have the option to create a new thread. My question is this, I've always been a soloer and a pet class player. That being said I'm finding a delimma with my all time favorite pet class, that being the necromancer, as is why I'm asking in this forum specifically. My question to you all is this I'm looking for heavy solo content through the majority of the game but to say that I don't want to see end game at some point would be naive, so i'm finding it difficult reading these forums because the consensus is basically that I would not get a raid spot ever being a necromancer, especially beginning again this long into the games progression. So should I abandon all hope in your estimation since soloing isn't my ONLY aim with the class. I know that one should normally choose a class that fits play style but to play an entire 70-80 levels with a class I like just to give it up to make an alt that can actually raid seems absolutely useless and a waste of time. Any opinions on what might be the right course to take or another class choice that might be better would be much appreciated. Sorry again for randomly taking over a thread as well as the huge wall of text.
If you are looking to solo and not raid then any of the pet classes are just wonderful. The big complaint about necro's is their lack of use on raids and in some cases groups. Soloing they are fine. With skill and a bit of luck you can solo heroic mobs 5 levels lower than yourself. Some claim they can do better but I have my doubts. I won't believe it until I see it. As for parse numbers - in a perfect group configuration on a raid if the necro had all master spells and the raid group had all master spells, with a mythical epic pet and all the best gear from VP you might, on a good night, see a necro parse close to 5k. More often than not I see between 2k - 3k zonewide in VP. But I do not have all masters and I rarely have a perfect group with all the buffs. I do have the mythic pet and 45% crit. But my gear is only 2nd tier raid gear and not the best available. Also, I have seen others post their dps numbers based on their experiences on the training wall. Those numbers are nice to have since you can use them to test different casting orders but they are not legit for overall rating a necro since the training wall has no magic resists or WIS to mitigate the numbers.
Vendella@Antonia Bayle wrote: Preety sure fyrflyte is 80 conj and is the one designing bulk of summoner gear
Compass do you have you mythical on that necro? and can't put up more than 3.5 to 4.5? Please tell me you are joking. I put up a consistant 4.5(without lifeburn or undead horde) without a mythical in hate and spike for 6 to 9 depending on the debuff timing. If you are putting up those aweful numbers yer slackin with a mythical, seriously slackin. If you don't have yer mythical and decent raid gear then there's not much wrong with 3.5 to 4.5 considering you can sustain that indefinatley without any power regen =P... And Dav like I hinted at in another post summoners would need a complete revamp to put up scout numbers on kills that last less than 30 seconds and that is why the devs can't change us. That would cost WAY more money than the budget they get would allow. And if the fights last less than 30 seconds I don't care if all the summoner is doing is debuffing. There's no need to kill everything in 6 seconds. Necro will still put up 6k+ on the names if played right. And that's what matters. The names that actually drop the stuff you are after. If all the trash is dieing in less than 30 seconds who gives a rats @$% if the summoner is putting up 2k 2500 DPS. The mob is already dead before DPS matters. Hit Veksar with a group that should actually be in there (aka not teir 4+ raiders in mythical, VP, and avatar loots) and post your zonewide. That whole place is filled with millions upon millions of HPs to burn through. And to the rest of you not able to parse on long fights. Stop yer slackin. And on a side note the AA's and the armor in the expansion will not raise our DPS. It will raise our pet's DPS and lower ours so basically we're in the same boat we always were. Don't get me wrong here, I by no means suggest summoners are balanced and working correctly. They absolutley are not. But the problem is not as huge as people here keep making it out to be. And the focus on zonewide parses that really don't reflect summoner ability is a massive stumbling block to a fix EVER coming for the class. You cannot keep telling the developers to remake the whole class especially since none of them actually play a necro and have any real clue what they are looking at here. These doom and dismay posts are the only reason we can't get the quick alteration the class actually needs, that would cost them little to no money and completely fix us. Summoner is by far the hardest mage class to learn to play well. 99% of the people playing the class (even some who've been playingit for a long LONG time) just don't learn to play it correctly or refuse to adapt to changes. It's hard to learn and hard to change once you've gotten comfortable with things a certain way. But that's no reason to keep attacking the forums with doom and gloom posts that accomplish the exact opposite of what many of you are hoping for. Focus on the real issues with summoner specifically: Utility vrs DPS Balance We need a hike in DPS potential that will put us at the top of the "raid" parse by far enough to warrent not having the utility of an enchanter or we need Utility that cannot come from any other class that benefits the raid more than an extra enchanter. Plain and simple. Group zonewides do not matter in any way shape or form. Summoners are not burst DPS and were never intended to be. And in order to become burst DPS we would need a COMPLETE revamp of the class. So please stop focusing on group parses on trash content. They will never revamp the entire summoner archetype. It would cost too much money. Stop screwing us over by complaining about the class not being burst DPS.
necros would have to put up T1 dps for justify not being replaced by an illy and even then i see T1 dps sitting out for utillity. you need to get a clue about T8 raiding it's all about. you no longer just show up, everything has a script and every player has to participate. "ask not what your raid can do for you, but what you can do for your raid" necros bring NO dps other then their own, necros NEED a new role in raid since necros are no longer T1 dps. frankly the following would be great for raids: wiz/lock = assy/ranger: big dps, light utillity, light debuff necro/conj = brig/swash: big debuff,mid dps, light utillity this would allow all three non tank/healer to have a different illy/coerc = troub/dirge big utillity,mid debuff,light dps BUT equal role in raid yes i understand some necros are happy with their current roles in raids, but the facts is necros are the most needy class and give nothing in return. no one is here whining or telling a sad story, everything that is said is truth, my necro went from being important in raids to being a mascot.
Raiding with the necro and getting high dps consists of one thing only: spell cast order. If you aren't top 5 in your raid then your not casting the spells correctly. Remember one thing only, when raid mob is going red and brigand shouts, "Dispatch in" that is perfect time to lifeburn.
Compas wrote: I hate to ask this but why in your right mind would you compare the damage output an assassin or a wizard can do to that of what a necromancer can do? I mean c'mon... of course a wiz or an assassin will out parse a necro that is just plain common sense... But do either the wiz or assassin have the utility features a necro has? No they don't. Each and every class has their strengths and their weakness's but to compare the damage of this is just plain ludicris imo anyways. Look at all the factors of each class and compare .. not just the plain damage potential, if you want straight damage then go play a wiz/assassin and stop whining.
Sicura wrote: Why is it that the only Necro's posting the Necros are not broken and do great DPS are the Necros without thier Mythicals? I think these Necro's forget we're not talking about Necro's being broken in Pre-Mythical raid guilds, even though the Necro still is, its just not apparent yet. The eye-opener will be as soon as their guild starts clearing VP from then on out the ball game is completely changed but they have to get to that point. You ever think the reason you're not clearing VP is because your guild is still carrying Summoners vs correct support/buff/debuff classes? Maybe, just maybe they might read the multiple "Summoner are broken" threads completely before posting that Necro's are fine. Now that TSO is coming out and has more multi-mob encounters vs solo targets all AE classes will see a nice jump in DPS. To bad the stygma is already in place and the top guilds will be looking for a Warlock and/or Conj vs a Necro. Yes I said a Conj because they have an advantage over a Necro on encounters albeit a slight one. BTW that huge DPS boost will put you where you should have been for RoK, which means the other mages will still be ahead.
Why not just give the necromancer GOD mode? In fact, why not just make everyone god mode or one button push 1 million damage. The people complaining in here are the parse watchers who probably scream blood murder when a raid wipes on a mob.
JmacF wrote: Un-install ACT = can't raid most of T7 and can't even touch T8, since you NEED act to even have a remote chance at beating these encoutners. =)
Davngr1 wrote: Oh yeah you MUST have a vanity meter to be able to raid! ... Seriously now, what difference does ACT make to the actual ability to raid. Yes I can see its a handy tool, but to say that you CAN'T raid without it?! C'mon now, isn't the players/etc that preform the raid? Or am I mistaken and ACT actually does something useful other then telling people who is doing the most damage?
Lilesthobo wrote: ACT isn't there just to show your/others DPS. It has several built in functions. Most raid guilds use it to time mob specials / AE's, might be nice to know when not to be in there beating on the target and to find a safer position, put more heals up, etc. Now timing most AE's isn't necessary once the raid force is geared but it still helps keep members alive to continue the fight. Especially for those occassional "ooops" moments. There are other uses, I run mine to ding on melee hits, not so much to time the hits but to tell me when I'm out of range.
Onoes@Lucan DLere wrote: Alright I can see the functuality of that.. but still to base everything in this game strictly off parses is far fetched and shouldn't be done period imo. Sorry but you just can't justisfiably say that nec should be runnin in competition to assassins/wizzys on the parse charts. The game wasn't built that way and shouldn't be played that way.. each class should be taken for the good they have to offer n stop lookin strictly at parses to judge them.
Lilesthobo wrote: Please try to keep up with the conversation. The end all be all role of necros is not pure dps and thats not what people are clamoring for. We are simply stating currently necros offer absolutly no ultility for a raid and our dps doesn not currently reflect our lack of support functions. Summoners in general need to be bought up to a level similar to a rogue contributing support through debuffs as well as giving us a nice shot in the arm for dps since we are severly lacking it currently. Some of us necro's enjoy raiding... try feeding that happy go lucky appreciate everyone for what they bring b.s. to a raid leader see how far it gets you. Oh, and it's hard to appreciate a necromancer for what he brings since it's virtually nothing to a raid.
Paragone wrote: Why do you expect that SOE needs to bring the dps of summoners up to that level? I'm just curious to the reason why you aren't happy with doing 4 to 7k of damage on a raid? Are you not happy that you are no longer pulling aggro from the main tank? it wasn't too long ago that i remember forum's saying there was an over abundance of necro's on each server because they were over power'd.
This is the kind of intelligence you people are trying to argue against. Noone is asking for an "I win" button here, or to be even with assassins and wizards, we just want our entire class fixed and not via the AA's. We use the current capabilities of the other classes like wizards or rogues to align ourselves. AA's should be a bonus addition to the class to further improve where we stand, not bring us up to where we should've been in RoK. Missing pet spells with new tier 8 pets anyone? Oh wait we got 2 new ones coming to us with TSO AA's...awesome. Pets being a third of summoner dps yet not benefiting from master's crits? Oh looky get a few via AA's. The design team did a horrible job this expansion just as they did last expansion and no matter how many times it was brought up via posts, feedback in game or at fan faire they just swept it under the rug. A certain designer did all he could to help us out via gear since another certain designer keeps on ignoring us, but it will only help so much and sadly is still a bit lacking. If sorcerers are compared to assassins and enchanters are compared to bards then obviously we should fall in line with rogues. Are we **** dps currently? Certainly not, however comparing raid utilized dps/buff/debuff benefits of us versus any of the other non fighter/healer classes we have no real justification for a raid slot, FD and rez to recover a wiped raid? Hi tinkering mystic with the ability to rez multiple people faster. Tank or someone else falling short on health? Wow 2k heal on a 7 sec recast vs 10k crits inc sure helped out ^^. Folks running out of power and need a quick shot? Oh not anymore, chanter just had their epic proc or the mystic cast spirit tap and now eveyone is near full...yay! Well maybe we can buff folks in our group to dish out more dps...go go INT buff! An intelligent necro can still pull some good numbers in a pre-mythical and mythical raid or group however surround said necro with other highly competent classes and the class desparity is very visible. Again all we're asking for from soe is some raid appeal and to not have our class fixed via the AA's or gear. And until some of you have seen the game from killing lowbie grays while harvesting to taking on AE and script intensive avatars and raid mobs you will not have the correct concept of the class as a whole only a skewed view of what you think is good to go.
