Necro or enchanter...Go!

[Splorf22]

Originally Posted by Uteunayr

The heals are not useful in raids? If you're not using it, you're a bad Necromancer. If you're not using twitch, you're a bad Necromancer.

I'm not going to get into this Usenet point-by-point style of debate, but are you serious here? These are highly situational abilities.

Twitch: Sedulous Subversion has a 3:8 mana transfer ratio. Under absolutely perfect conditions you'll get 65 mana per tick (bard song, lich, torpor to get your HP back and waste nothing on taps). That means you can supply 25 mana/tick to the cleric. As an Enchanter I cast clarity on the raid and provide 200 mana/tick, not to mention haste and in some areas CC and insane charm DPS.

Necro heals: Sakuragi rolls with over 5000 HP in Kunark, and 6000 HP in Velious. With 2-3 clerics for complete heal, 125/tick becomes completely irrelevant. In fact I would regularly ask the necro to stop healing me so I could have room for useful buffs like bard MR songs or stamina potions.

Look, I'm not saying these are worthless spells. I am saying that they aren't class-defining abilities like Charm, Complete Heal, Slow, Feign Death, Lures, etc. It's cool that you have found a way to be marginally effective in spite of the bad class design, and if you enjoy it that's great for you. But the fact of the matter is that Necros were hugely OP in Classic and as a result they got hit with the nerf bat hard in Kunark, probably too hard.

edit: just to be clear, that was from a raid perspective. In groups the heals are great (twitch is even more pointless). But again it's very situational: to really shine as a necro you need a group without a cleric, and most people won't go for that. Shaman/Necro/Monk is probably your best setup there . . . and even there, I think Shaman/Enchanter/Monk is better if there are charmable mobs around. In my opinion Necromancers are very good at soloing up to 60 safely via undead charm, root rots, and fear kiting. Beyond that, there just isn't much.