[Uteunayr]

Originally Posted by Splorf22 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I went and checked the Necromancer spell list. From 56-60, Necromancers receive 10 damage spells (including two pets) and 3 utility spells (including Death Peace from Velious).

I'm certainly not going to accuse you of trolling but I'm really surprised you can't see his point: Necromancers were designed as a DPS class, but Verant decided they were too strong in classic (remember the uproar over necromancer pets with their double FS daggers? or necros soloing the Ghoul Lord while FD?) and so in Kunark they gave Necromancers a few situationally useful utility spells instead of better pets or big upgrades to nukes. They did exactly the same thing to magicians, who got CoH and mod rods rather than a 6000HP Earth Pet.

First off, you're selecting pretty heavily on your level selection which is introducing a nasty bias. You're selecting slightly more than one interval. In Kunark, we gain more utility and support than we do pure DPS abilities.

Sedulous, Trepidation, Conjure Corpse, Quivering Veil, Immobilize, Devouring, Demi-Lich. That's 7 support abilities not counting Death Peace. To get at the bias you introduce with your range selection, most Necro DoTs only get upgraded in the last 5 levels. Stretch your range out to the full Kunark era, and the majority of spells are utility, followed by DPS, followed by pets, and lastly charms.

And how many of them are unique? Necromancers gain a few really neat unique utility abilities in Kunark, whereas they get only one new damage ability in Splurt. The design shifted to emphasize their utility because their damage was horrendous in group and raid situations. Yes, necromancers can DPS while soloing. Fantastic, we get that. But they are among the worst in any type of collaborate effort, and that was true in classic.

Necromancers were designed as a support class with DPS capabilities that were not useful in any way shape or form when it comes to the game's mechanics as they stood in classic or their plans for Kunark when in a group or a raid. Created as a soloing effective class (the only place where you'd get any sort of efficiency out of your dots), but group and raid supporting class, it is when idiots try to bring their soloing into a group by saying "WE'RE A DPS!" that it damages the Necromancer's role. Heck, Enchanters can solo rather efficiently with charm pets, as that's their way of doing damage in a solo situation. So now Enchanters are a DPS class, not a support class. No, that is absurd to any form of logic. So instead of expanding Necro DPS, they realized Necromancers do best in grouping and raiding (what a MMO is ultimately about, as it is a multiplayer venture), so they emphasized the utility and support of the Necromancer class, rather than trying to scale them up more than they were to competitive DPS. And then, of course, they ruined it in PoP by turning the class into what people like Potus wanted, and caused a mass exodus of Necromancers from the game.

Originally Posted by Splorf22 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Edit: Also the necro heal line being dispellable is almost certainly unintentional, and possibly not classic. If you don't dispell your recourse, then you heal at about 1 mana / 2 HP, i.e. worse than a Druid (and no regeneration). Also twitch means a necro can give 20 mana/tick to ONE player. An enchanter can give 14 mana / tick to the entire raid. I just don't see how you can build a class around an inefficient heal, an inefficient means of mana regeneration, and rezzing the cleric after wipes.

Dispelling the negative recourse is classic.

Shadowbond costs 10 mana, you give 125 per tick for 4 ticks, while loosing approximately 60 hp. If you do not dispel, that's +500 hp on the target, -240 hp on yourself, for 10 mana. A Touch of Night is 720 HP for 405 mana. That means you can generate +1500 hp for one Touch of Night worth of mana, or 405, plus the 10 to cast, or 415 mana, suggesting a 3.614457 HP per Mana, rather than the 2.0 you're citing. Further, this doesn't take into account standard ticks of HP and Iksar regen, or even the Regrowth buff of 15 a tick which is pretty vital. An Iksar with Regrowth will be getting back 18+15 = 33 a tick, and losing 60, meaning the net loss is 27, not 60, so you'd actually get an efficiency of 8.03.

A Necro can twitch to the right player, and it can go over Clarity. Each additional Enchanter added to the raid diminishes the need for any further enchanters, because you can only clarity but so much. Necromancers do not diminish other necromancers. Once you have an Enchanter to provide Clarity, the comparison is over, as you can have 2, 3, 8, 10 necromancers to boost far beyond what multiple enchanters would do. You can't put multiple Clarity's on one person. The point is that in being able to directly control our mana, we can give it to the right player, we have control at the right time. If you've never seen the benefit of a strong group of Necromancers, then I feel sorry for you, because it is significant.

This is not to say I diminish or believe an Enchanted to be less important. An Enchanter is to a mana pool what a MDPS is to a mob's HP pool: Sustained mana gain. But Enchanters do not burst (although limited comparison as Rogues do have discs to burst a bit). Necromancers are more comparable to Wizards, bursty Mana/DPS. It is incredibly useful when you need burst reactions that a slow and steady gain won't do. It's just how shamans are better at getting back mana on demand, but Necromancers are best at getting it back progressively.

You can build a class around injecting more bursts of mana into the right player at the right time to prevent wipes, while delivering considerably good heals, all with either a charm or back stabbing DPS pet. The merging of all of these do make a functional and very strong class. If you are not taking full advantage of your Necromancer and instead treating yourself as an ineffective DPS, you're severely curtailing your ability and gimping every single person you associate with to overcome PvE or PvP goals.

Edit: Please do note that I do not have specific values for the HP lost on Shadowbond, I have not done any conclusive testing lately on it, and I cannot find my notes where I had the value written down. It is about 1/2 the HP transferred.