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.

[Uteunayr]

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

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.

But you're going to get into it? Lol. Okay. I'll try to answer as completely as possible to the general sentiments, rather than each particular bit of information.

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

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.

Again, you miss the entire point of my post, so let me try to make it clearer...

You can supply 200 mana a tick to your raid. Fantastic. I have already said that Enchanters can do this, and the sustained mana offered by an enchanter is beyond what a Necromancer will provide. Now what about the 2nd enchanter? Can he or she also supply 200 mana/tick to the raid? If not (which is the case), then you'll get to the root of the difference between burst and sustained benefit to the raid.

Necromancers don't do that. We burst. We provide 150 mana every 8 seconds, faster if you mix efficiency, and use Covetous. Lets say you do, because you're super bursting. You can cast Sedulous and Covetous once every 4 seconds, to provide 250 mana every 8 seconds. It costs you 400 + 300 = 700 mana to deliver 250 mana in 8 seconds, and with a conservative mana pool of 3k, you can deliver 4 instances of 250 mana in 4 sets of 8 seconds, or 32 seconds. So I can provide 1k mana to a caster in 32 seconds. That's a bit over 5 ticks. Clarity II provides +11 mana a tick, if the wiki page is correct. In 5 ticks, a sustained Clarity II will provide 55 mana, relative to a Necromancer's 1,000.

Further, and expanding upon what I said earlier, we get 65 mana a tick by your calculations, which is, I agree, in the area (I don't really have the total, but I'll go with that). So it will take a Necromancer 4.6 minutes to get their mana back to full, to reload the 32 second 1k mana burst. Each Necromancer in the raid can provide this, whereas you only need 1 Enchanter to provide the 200 a tick.

Now again, that's 1000 to a single person, you're completely right, but when your cleric goes OOM, or your enchanters are tapped due to a shitty pull or if your raid simply wants to be faster and have mana be dished out to the core handlers (clerics/enchanters), a Necromancer shines. When you're playing slow, or you have tons of downtime in your raid or group, a Necromancer does not.

So, I will point this out again: I am not saying Necromancer is better than Enchanters in providing mana, but that we provide mana in two very different ways, and both are good to have. If your Clerics need a burst of mana so pulls can keep going, Necromancers will do better. If your Enchanters are tapped for mana trying to hold down CC, Necromancers will do better.

Enchanters are a great class, with amazing raid utility. I do not reject this, nor would I try to. But that doesn't mean Necromancers need to have the true power of their abilities eschewed, and their role made to seem different than what it is.

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

INecro 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.

If 2-3 clerics are going to use a Complete Heal on some small AE damage, yes, the necro heal becomes irrelevant. But take a Shaman for example. A shaman is going to be cannibalizing to get more mana to dish out buffs. A smart necromancer using their heal efficiently can save a Cleric the 300 mana to cast an Elixir. Take any situation in which you're in a group that doesn't have a cleric due to limited numbers, you can patch up DS damage, your fellow necromancers, your melee after an unfortunate enrage. All of these situations in which there are small bursts of unsustained damage (and as a Necromancer, I see them all the time, and get to patch them all the time), a Necro can save a Cleric a great deal of mana from needing to patch everyone, or a shaman mana so they don't have to torpor people that do not need it.

It is not completely irrelevant. I don't know if you play a Necromancer in a raid scene, but try it. Keep your eyes out for bits of damage that a Cleric would celestial elixir, and instead do it yourself. No, a Necromancer is not going to solo heal a tank, that's what a Cleric is for. That's why I said, Necromancers provide patch heals. You end up doing this very frequently if you have your eyes open and on the health of the raid.

Now, hopefully you have a decent enough head on your shoulders to realize these are different strengths between the classes, and if so, I'll just ignore the rest of what you wrote on the grounds of it being overly patronizing bullshit fueled by ignorance of the class. Perhaps one day, if you haven't yet (I don't see one in your sig), you'll raid extensively on a Necromancer and try what I've been saying and come to see just how big an impact you have on greasing the wheels of a raid through masterful play.