Necro, how do you not choose Iksar?

[Teppler]

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

i don't understand how this debate has gone on for 13 pages. iksar is obviously better in a min/max sense. whether or not that matters to you is up to you, but to say that iksar regen doesn't matter in a numbers sense is just insanity.

It matters but the question is if it matters a lot or it matters a little.

You have a very poor understanding of emotions.

He's right. You have a poor habit of being condescending. It's not conducive to a good discussion.

This type of binary thinking is why you don't get it, and suggests that you didn't roll an iksar and are attempting to rationalize your sub-optimal choice. You're pretending like the only way regen would matter is if it enabled you to camp some item that would be impossible without it, and ignoring the fact that it makes everything you do safer, faster, and easier. Don't try and say that things are already safe, fast, and easy, either. I used relative terms which don't depend on whether or not you're content without bonus regen.

There's nothing wrong with not picking the best race. There's no shame in picking aesthetics over stats if you just own it, but trying to convince yourself that regen doesn't matter by pretending its advantages are trivial in order to make yourself feel better about it is embarrassing.

Looking at things in an abstract sense is great and all but there comes a certain point where you have to be able to apply your theoretics to real situations.

A perfectly good question is to ask what an Iksar necro can do vs another necro. I challenge that you are not digging deep enough to understand.

I challenge that it does not necessarily make things faster, safer and easier in every situation and in most cases that it does, it is extremely marginal.

The use in regen items is that you don't have to waste time in clicking heal items and you don't need targets to click heal items, increasing twitch efficiency or damage efficiency. I'm fairly sure the soul well staff blocks Splurt (our most efficient DoT) also.

How often are you playing necro where you don't have any spare time anywhere?

The DPS from life drains help but they aren't efficient. Their resistance is a factor but most any mob a Necro will be soloing, will not be resistant enough to warrant sacrificing half the efficiency for the more reliable spell landing.

If you're soloing mobs around level 50, resists are a factor. I'd say if you're doing a camp where racial hp is a factor, mob resists are also likely to be a factor. Deflux is also really fast too which is a cool situational tool. I've had many group situations where I've had too much mana and nuking things down with Deflux was useful.

It does have to constantly tick down. That's how the spell works. If it doesn't you're clicking it off, losing mana regen, and wasting time rememing and recasting the spell. Again, inefficient and tedious.

It's extra work to do but I don't believe it to hinder anything realistically.

I'd like to see the necro play who doesn't have 2 seconds to play around with putting demi lich on and off. If he's that busy with his necro, I'd like to see what he's doing.

See above about resistances, almost never solo are there resistant mobs that make the efficiency of a life drain greater than a resistable DoT. In high end group locations, like Velious or Juggs in Sebilis, mobs generally live long enough for 1-2min DoTs unless you have charmed pets. It would depend on the group makeup I think.

IMO if you're not playing around with undeads, you might as well play another class. Without something to charm you are half the class you could be with the monster pet dps.

In your example with velious or juggs in seb it should be noted that this only matters if you're not talking about a maxed out necro which has access to lifetap clickies. Even without lifetap clickies, a non iksar necro only has to tap once every couple fights. I don't believe that to be game changing. The reason I bring up clickies is because a lot of people are discussing this from a min-max perspective. So if we are talking about a maxed out necro we have to include free lifetaps.

Good point on solo Necro charming. A better example would've been fear kiting or root rotting where you are using DoTs exclusively.

I'd argue what useful camps are out there for a necro to fear kite or root rot that will challenge your necro.

[Synthlol]

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

He's right. You have a poor habit of being condescending.

Of course I'm talking down to you. That's the nature of conversations with someone who is beneath you. Insisting that it comes from a place of anger to discredit it is for trolls, and that doesn't belong here.

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

It's not conducive to a good discussion.

I tend to avoid attempting to confront irrational viewpoints with logic. If you don't find the value of bonus regen on a necromancer to be self-evident, then it's unlikely you'll let yourself be convinced by someone else. This is because you'd need an ulterior motive to decide that passively offsetting lich hp drain is trivial. I'm willing to bet that yours is a need to rationalize your racial choice.

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

Looking at things in an abstract sense is great and all but there comes a certain point where you have to be able to apply your theoretics to real situations.

You'll refuse to accept the value of any example I give you and come up with reasons why you wouldn't need to do things in a way that takes advantage of the racial regen, refusing to admit that it's nice to. That being said, two that comes to mind instantly are soloing the Soothsayer in Droga and soloing in the plane of fear. The following examples are far from exhaustive.

With racial regen you can ignore all the trash mobs in the Soothsayer's room, kill the ph, and just hit FD with lich and a timer running. Your hp will decrease so slowly that you can leave your keyboard for over 15 minutes and come back and you will be at full mana and still be alive. You can accomplish tasks in real life during this time, never having to worry about Gather Shadows dropping like you would while sitting. A non iksar wouldn't last half as long. This simple and safe method of camping rare spawns can be applied to camps all across Norrath.

Soloing boogeymen and gorgons in the plane of fear is one of the most challenging things I do on my necromancer. Without the space to fear kite, you must rely on root to CC these deadly mobs. It's almost unavoidable that you'll take hits here and there given there is hardly any safe space to work with, and you're also on a time limit with every mob due to the glare lord that does laps around the zone wall. It's essential to take each mob down as fast as possible, as well as keep your HP full. Hardly any roots last a full duration, and ghoul root procs & bashes will often force you to reset the fight if they don't kill you outright. The lower your hp is when root breaks, the more likely you'll die. Single pulling these mobs is dangerous and can be complicated, and it isn't nice to have to redo a successful split. They also have quite large HP totals, and I usually finish a clean kill at or below 20% mana. The more time and mana you waste casting lifetaps because you need to keep your hp full, the less likely you are to complete a kill. Iksar regen increases the success rate in such an endeavor.

In addition, I have access to a 60 gnome necromancer given to me by a friend who no longer plays. This necromancer was level 50 before Kunark was released, and I have great respect for his owner as well as other gnome necromancers who were around before Kunark, like my raid leader. Every time I play him I'm caught off guard by how rapid his hp decreases with demi-lich or even regular lich up. Non-iksars spend far more time with their hp values at more vulnerable levels than iksars. I find myself spending much more mana to clear camps because I have to resort to lifetaps to keep my hp at a safe level, and this leads to slower progress. Clearing HS North with the gnome, for example, I find myself throwing out lifetaps and lifedrains that are necessary only to keep my hp up, not to finish off a mob or balance their hp levels. I've had to stop clearing out rooms in which nameds spawns in order to deal with respawns because my progress was slower because of the mana I was forced to spend on healing.

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

A perfectly good question is to ask what an Iksar necro can do vs another necro. I challenge that you are not digging deep enough to understand.

I can do anything without a heiro cloak that I can do with a heiro cloak.

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

I'd like to see the necro play who doesn't have 2 seconds to play around with putting demi lich on and off. If he's that busy with his necro, I'd like to see what he's doing.

It's not that he can't, it's that he doesn't want to. This an idea you repeatedly fail to grasp.

[Raev]

I don't find those examples very convincing. AFK farming Droga is boring as hell; at least the spore king gives you 3 minutes of mild excitement every half hour. Grinding your way to the Boogeymen solo over 4 hours seems like a waste of time compared to AEing with a guild in 15 minutes. HS North is a bunch of L45 mobs that drop junk.

What I find more interesting is being part of part of a small crew against legit targets, say Lower Sebilis or WW dragons or Kael giants. And I just don't see how Iksar regen is gamebreaking there. The Iksar Advantage comes from skipping lifetaps in favor of more efficient spells. But against legit targets, lifetaps *are* the efficient spells because their -200 mod means they land every time.

So the only real argument I see here is that Iksar necros are better twitchbots because they can AFK with Demi-Lich on. Why not just group with a shaman and get a torpor every 10 minutes? It's not exactly the end of the world.

Anyway, Iksar is the obvious min/max choice and anyone who says otherwise should be slapped with a seabass. But I'll still take Necrious over most Iksar necros, or Hokushin over most Iksar monks, or Sentenza over most Ogre SKs, or Cucumbers over most Ogre Warriors, and so on and so forth.

[Synthlol]

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

I don't find those examples very convincing. AFK farming Droga is boring as hell; at least the spore king gives you 3 minutes of mild excitement every half hour. Grinding your way to the Boogeymen solo over 4 hours seems like a waste of time compared to AEing with a guild in 15 minutes. HS North is a bunch of L45 mobs that drop junk.

They may not be things that you care about doing, but they are still valid examples of when iksar regen provides a distinct advantage. Your desires aren't representative of every player on the server.

You can't solo King camp. AEing fear takes a guild, and not every necromancer has access to one that can AE clear it. You don't grind your way across the zone, you camp out in the safe spot beforehand. HS North may be junk to you, but to a new player deciding which race to choose, the gear may be something they would really like to attain. It's also a great spot to XP.

Anyone can come up with reason why they wouldn't want to do something. A better person is able to see why someone other than themselves would want to.

[Daldaen]

It's not about not having spare time. It's about wasting time doing something and losing a med tick here and there, just because your race regens less, and therefore by definition is less efficient.

I agree that charming is fantastic but suggesting you should play a different class if you aren't playing undead is dumb, let's be honest here. If that were the case there would be 0 Necros in Velious since Undead populate I believe 2 zones. ToFS and DN (and only bone dragon traps). Either way the # of Undead there is extremely minuscule and Necros are still useful.

Soloing summoners as a Necro is pretty inefficient, so you're generally restricted to soloing pre-51 mobs. Unless you can charm, again only works in Kunark at high-end.

At 60 with Demi Lich, let's say you have 1500 HP. A gnome dies in 6 minutes, and Iksar dies in 10.6minutes. If you want to stay above half health, the gnome must lifetap every 3 minutes, Iksars only have to every 5 minutes. This adds up as the gnome is having to take more time standing to cast life drains or click lifetap clickies, and loses out on more med ticks. Over the course of 10 minutes that Iksar casts just 2 life drains and the non-Iksar casts 3. That's 500 mana back you can spend on other things. Like a root and 2 splurts on another extra mob for example.

You won't find that an Iksar Necromancer can kill mob X and a non Iksar can't. That's not what this is about. You will find an Iksar Necro can root rot more without having to devote as much mana to healing himself, therefore being able to put it towards more damage.

Anywho, we are all just skeletons in the end-game, why not be the one which dies less fast?

[Uteunayr]

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

It's not about not having spare time. It's about wasting time doing something and losing a med tick here and there, just because your race regens less, and therefore by definition is less efficient.

I agree that charming is fantastic but suggesting you should play a different class if you aren't playing undead is dumb, let's be honest here. If that were the case there would be 0 Necros in Velious since Undead populate I believe 2 zones. ToFS and DN (and only bone dragon traps). Either way the # of Undead there is extremely minuscule and Necros are still useful.

Soloing summoners as a Necro is pretty inefficient, so you're generally restricted to soloing pre-51 mobs. Unless you can charm, again only works in Kunark at high-end.

At 60 with Demi Lich, let's say you have 1500 HP. A gnome dies in 6 minutes, and Iksar dies in 10.6minutes. If you want to stay above half health, the gnome must lifetap every 3 minutes, Iksars only have to every 5 minutes. This adds up as the gnome is having to take more time standing to cast life drains or click lifetap clickies, and loses out on more med ticks. Over the course of 10 minutes that Iksar casts just 2 life drains and the non-Iksar casts 3. That's 500 mana back you can spend on other things. Like a root and 2 splurts on another extra mob for example.

You won't find that an Iksar Necromancer can kill mob X and a non Iksar can't. That's not what this is about. You will find an Iksar Necro can root rot more without having to devote as much mana to healing himself, therefore being able to put it towards more damage.

Anywho, we are all just skeletons in the end-game, why not be the one which dies less fast?

This is a good post.

[Teppler]

Originally Posted by Synthlol

Of course I'm talking down to you. That's the nature of conversations with someone who is beneath you. Insisting that it comes from a place of anger to discredit it is for trolls, and that doesn't belong here.

K. Ignored, fool.

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

It's not about not having spare time. It's about wasting time doing something and losing a med tick here and there, just because your race regens less, and therefore by definition is less efficient.

Wasting time is one thing but a good question is if the waste of time effects what you're doing.

I agree that charming is fantastic but suggesting you should play a different class if you aren't playing undead is dumb, let's be honest here. If that were the case there would be 0 Necros in Velious since Undead populate I believe 2 zones. ToFS and DN (and only bone dragon traps). Either way the # of Undead there is extremely minuscule and Necros are still useful.

Soloing summoners as a Necro is pretty inefficient, so you're generally restricted to soloing pre-51 mobs. Unless you can charm, again only works in Kunark at high-end.

We'll see what happens when Velious drops. In terms of relative class strength, necro takes a drop in Velious since there's less undead mobs to take advantage of. I'd wager necro's will start shifting to other classes and the ones that stick around will still find their most use in kunark undead heavy zones still.

At 60 with Demi Lich, let's say you have 1500 HP. A gnome dies in 6 minutes, and Iksar dies in 10.6minutes. If you want to stay above half health, the gnome must lifetap every 3 minutes, Iksars only have to every 5 minutes. This adds up as the gnome is having to take more time standing to cast life drains or click lifetap clickies, and loses out on more med ticks. Over the course of 10 minutes that Iksar casts just 2 life drains and the non-Iksar casts 3. That's 500 mana back you can spend on other things. Like a root and 2 splurts on another extra mob for example.

This is if you're not grouping with a Shaman or Druid. Even a Ranger(chloro) and Cleric(massive hp buffs) will effect this.

An argument of having to waste time on lifetap clickies is part of what I mean when I make an argument that hp regen is marginal. You add some damage from the lifetap and miss out on 2 ticks of seated med. What is that, 50-60 mana?

You won't find that an Iksar Necromancer can kill mob X and a non Iksar can't. That's not what this is about. You will find an Iksar Necro can root rot more without having to devote as much mana to healing himself, therefore being able to put it towards more damage.

What are you root rotting that is challenging?

Anywho, we are all just skeletons in the end-game, why not be the one which dies less fast?

Cause, we want to know much it really matters, not just that it matters.

[Synthlol]

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

K. Ignored, fool.

If I were a chump, I would probably ignore someone who was schooling me, too.

[B4EQWASCOOL]

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

If I were a chump, I would probably ignore someone who was schooling me, too.

Toxic. Citizen, please contain yourself.

[pharmakos]

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

You won't find that an Iksar Necromancer can kill mob X and a non Iksar can't. That's not what this is about. You will find an Iksar Necro can root rot more without having to devote as much mana to healing himself, therefore being able to put it towards more damage.

so an iksar necro is going to be able to hold down the entire Holgresh Elder camp more easily than a non-iksar