SoF feedback

[Jebasiz]

Starting tomorrow, if you have feedback concerning tuning, nerfs(please make sure they have merit prior to posting), or class inadequacies, please post them in this thread.

Tuning is NOT complete, constructive feedback can help..random bitching, or comments like "our pets suck", will not help. Don't post them here(this includes you xislaben!).

[Xislaben]

!!!

[scrat]

Can I start early? It's tomorrow somewhere.

Let me preface with saying that any discrepancy or inadequacy within our spell lines, alternate abilities or pets agitate me. That I spend a lot of time & effort trying to get worthless stuff tweaked is precisely why I’m trying to get worthless stuff tweaked. The majority of folks work on the big stuff, and you don’t need my help. I believe every spell and ability at our capacity should have a very valid use – even if it is situational.

1) Lifeshards. Loss of lifeshard generation with SoF spells via loss of plant/animal lifetap spell. More importantly, this also results in a loss of an upgraded lifeshard. Lifeshards are still a required reagent with SoF mez, and lore would suggest a upgraded lifeshard required for the upgraded spell.

Old Lifeshards are tradable, do 650hp/tick x 5 ticks and only have a 30sec recast...and stack with healing potions & ever other healing effect I know of. The total health provided is 3250, and I personally use them when I can to supplement heal pots & when doing bloodmagic.

A 25% upgrade to the lifeshards would have been 810/tick (4050hp), a 30% upgrade would have been 845/tick (4225hp).

Now that we have SCR (+30% beneficial duration) we can expect reliably 1 extra tick if it rounds down, 2 if it rounds up like I think. This puts extra flavor on lifeshards:
Existing lifeshard @ 7 ticks = 4550hp
25% upgraded: @ 7 ticks = 5670hp (+1120hp)
30% upgraded: @ 7 ticks = 5915hp (+1365hp)

I understand a lot of necros never use lifeshards – either as the reagent for the mez or as a supplemental survivability tool. I understand this is due primarily from the restriction of needing a plant or animal target to tap – and the refusal to comply with stupid game mechanics. I understand that & I’m okay with that viewpoint. However, I am personally not willing to just walk away from a tool that directly increases both my survivability and my ability to perform bigger damage via bloodmagic…hence why I am here posting this.

I have suggested many times during beta that our lifeshard proc get added to our normal lifetap, but with a smaller percentage proc chance. The vitae tap had a 33% chance I think; I believe a 10% chance on our normal lifetap to not be out of line considering our tap is stagnating with extreme velocity in relation to our total health capacity.

2) Orbs. Remember when exceptional heals were nerfed to no longer work on clicks? Well, it’s catching up to us in the form of neglect. If you remember, one of the ways the devs offset the nerf was by increasing the actual heal effect of the various orbs we can create. They increased the heal amount by 15%.



71-Umbra orb rk2 does 1431dmg. Umbra Orbs heal for 1725hp (1500 old)
69-Shadow orb does 1100dmg. Shadow Orbs heal for 1265hp (1100 old)
61-Soul orb does 850dmg. Soul Orbs heal for 978hp.(850 old)

Our latest Orb spell Phantasmal Orb does 1788dmg.
--Phantasmal Orbs heal for 1777hp. They should heal for 2043 (+15% base)

Another take, from a scaling viewpoint:
61 Soul orb dmg / heal
69 Shadow orb +30% dmg / +29.3% heal
71 Umbra orb +30% dmg / +36.3% heal
76 Phantasmal orb +25% dmg / +0.03% heal

On a side note – I never use orbs on myself; they share a recast timer with Lifeshards. However, when I’m grouped up I always find myself making these & using them on group members. They don’t have any body-type restrictions, so their use is only limited by our personal choices.

[Xelera]

First, i am glad they finally scaled our pet haste recast timer to be almost a universal refresh, vice the 30'ish seconds we used to wait. Also, now that the new haste lasts an hour'ish, without reinforcement, we dont have to keep this spell memmed anymore for our pets, good job devs.

Now for the retuning/SoF feedback.

1. It seems sort of arbitrary, the way our vendor bought spells price. Enchanter, wizard, most mage, cleric, and some druid spells all price lower than the necro spells. Sort them by price, like i do when i buy, and you'll see.

2. Though this may not be a necro retuning issue, it affects all classes buying spells on vendors. There should be a filter to search for just that classes spells, or to at least list all spells on a vendor by class. Its a pain going through the whole list looking for your spells, unless you went online, looked them up, wrote them down, then went to vendor and searched alphabetically for them.

3. We only got 3 vendor sold spells at 80, one of which is our useless undead charm, the other being a rogue pet, and our upgraded poison DD that can proc a bonus to DoT damage. There should be at least one class defining spell available at this level... Wizzies get to buy an 8300+ base dmg nuke from a vendor at 80, we get pet/charm/mediocre DD that resisted half the time and rarely procs. The balance here seems a bit off.

4. On the topic of undead charm: Shortly after the release of Planes of Power, charm was nerfed to almost useless, because necros and enchanters were farming 20 aa/day with charm, in crypt of decay, solo, with charm. Dev's said that was not the intention of charm, and they nerfed it hard. I've debuffed grey con undead, charmed them with top undead charm (a spell they insist on upgrading every expansion) and had it break in under 30 seconds every time for 3 minutes. Imagine this on higher level mobs quadding/flurrying for 1400+ and you get one dead necro every time. In Vishimtar event, we eventually stopped using necros with their undead mezz as crowd control, because it only ever landed 25% of the time, with necro agro and usually dead the other 75%. These spells are high resist and highly useless. Get rid of them, replace them with something useful, or retune them. Make them have a lower cap, but make them fixed duration, like 3 mins or something. There are so many penalties on charmed mobs as it is, even enchanters rarely use them, except at lower levels grinding up.

5. We got our standard AA template upgrade with the new expansion. That one that warps pet forward? yeah, it can go. the improved crit rate, crit size, exceptional heals, etc... those are always nice. It would have been nice to see some class defining AA's added in this time around. The community has long been asking for several AA's that dont overpower us, but fit into the necro scheme nicely... examples:
1. group feign death
2. an AA that finishes off DoT's on mob, for all the dmg that would have remained, as one big DD, with associated threat generated of course.
3. a new lifeburn... wizzies have gotten several upgrades over the last few expansions, we have none. mana burn lands in pvp, lifeburn doesnt. manaburn can now do more than 1dmg per 1mana, lifeburn cannot. How about a new AA "Deathburn" that does like 2 or 3dmg per hp on the necro, with 2x the recourse after, but that costs hp AND mana, or that consumes an EE when cast, or that just has a longer recast time, like lay on hands and harm touch used to. Wizzies can crit for near 30k consistently, mages AA crit summoned for 32k, clerics AA crit undead for 32k, we get neither, with risk of dying due to hp agro or ae timing after a lifeburn.
4. An upgrade to blood magic (longer lasting, or lowered reuse time)
5. Shaman got an AA slow, clerics got an AA 3 second cast time rez... both are class defining. Necro class is pretty much defined as lifetaps, dots, mana feeds, mana regen... take your pick. A defining AA for any of those would be awesome. A mana free dot thats on par with dread pyre spell, an AA 5k lifetap w/like a 1 minute refresh, a group mana feed AA, that hits everyone in group with a 20-30% mana boost, while taking 80-90% of necro hp, or a stackable lich AA that converts hp to mana on top of whatever lich spell we have on, even making it risky to use it could take so much hp, like 300/tick for 5 minutes, but giving 200/tick mana back, etc... make something like this even targetable on anyone, so they get mana back at the cost of hp, but can stack with whatever mana regen they have. Make it so this spell can be cast on anyone, but has a minute recast, meaning it can be kept on up to 5 targets (everyone in group except one, if it lasts 5 minutes).
6. with all the illusions from LoN, in game items, potions, we really need an illusionless Lich spell, so we arent excluded from the fun. Halloween costumes overwrote skelly illusion, so it can be done. An AA lich or upgraded spell, equivalent to the highest level lich normally used by a given level necro, would be nice.

The last part here is balance... I went from being in the top 5 in guild for dps/dmg parses, when i was 30th on server (among necros) for gear/hp/mana, to being in the top 15 to 20 on parses, now that im in the top 3 (again, for necros) in gear/hp/mana on server... somehow we went from being a rocking DPS class, to falling back into the roll of mana batteries, since rogues, rangers, berserkers, beastlords, and wizzies all outparse us now (the melee versions outparsing me by several hundred thousand, without having to use aa's, vet rewards, shamans, bards, druids in group while i burn expendable AA's, 7th year vet, and get lucky with procs on demand for blood rk. III). I know we have survivability, versatility, and survivability but going from top 5 to middle of the pack while upgrading every dps focus and mana pool size possible, seems like something is wrong. Perhaps it is because these classes have short term and long term disciplines, to boost dmg, while we get nothing other than AA's, that they get as well, so they cancel out. I would suggest AA's for necros, without ridiculously long (ie, no 20 hour or longer recast) that enable us to burn/crank out DPS for a few minutes, when needed, several times a night on raids, similar to short/long term disc's of melee (these disc's being put in to add balance, but which seem to have significantly tipped the scales in their favor). This applies not just to necros, but to mages as well, who other than summoning some toys, and an occasional coth, should be considered pure DPS, but parse pretty much at the bottom half (and enchanters? omg they suck for dmg).

Imagine if you will, 2 AA's, one being a long term... it improves dmg output by 10%, maybe reducing mana cost by 10% as well, for a 5 minute duration, with a 72 minute recast time. Then insert a short term boost, 20% dmg increase, 20% mana reduction of spells, for 3 minutes, with a 30 minute recast time... only one active at a time, would work. With where we've fallen in DPS output compared to other classes, something like this, for both mage and necro, would put us right back where we need to be, not necessarily at the top, but as DPS classes, back in the mix near the top.

One last retuning idea, would be a boost to us based on which pet we had summoned (rogue pet = 5% boost to dmg while he's alive, maybe as a group aura even, and war pet = 5% boost to hp while alive). Something interesting to code in, would be scaling bonuses based on pet hp, so every 20% loss of pet health, 1% of bonus/aura/group boost, would be lost, making it worthwhile to keep pet up in groups (trading pet dmg for pet buffs possibly).

Sorry if this is long winded, but having been in the mana battery role of necros pre-planes of power, and then being boosted to a true master of death, and then slowly being demoted back into mediocrity, it seems some drastic measures, or even some moderate sensible ones like the ones above, are needed to bring us back up to par. I'm not asking to be top DPS class, wizzies should be able to beat us, thats all they do, dmg dmg dmg... but we shouldnt be falling to the middle of the pack, as we get better gear and focuses either. I dont even mind playing mana battery if needed, but doing it with 10 expansion old spells is slow, tedious, and demeaning. If we arent going to get upgrades in this area, other than 30 mana/minute upgrades to mind flay/dissection/vivisection, then either get rid of feeds altogether, as a bug, that is finally fixed, or give us the tools to do it now. Our best feed spell was luclin era, when uber mana pools were 5k... top mana pools now break 20k, and almost every caster in our guild breaks 15, even the app's... thats 3x the mana pool now, with out any new mana feeds.

Hope this helps. Not a flame fest, just some ideas on balance, tuning, improvements.

[FCseven]

Cold focus still exists on SoF necro items.

[Aegrusnecrox]

Do not complain about the AA's we have recieved. Nodyin has busted his ass to get us what we asked for, and only you seem to have a problem with our current set of AA's. Try actually buying them before complaining about them, and you will realize how incredibly good they are.

When it comes to spells, our current spell setup is fine in concept, it just needs to be tweaked and tuned so that it makes sense.

Also, lich needs to have its illusion component removed.

-Egg

[Jebasiz]

Cold focus still exists on SoF necro items.

Ya, I asked him to change that in beta..I'll bring it up again in a bit. Would be a decent HoC question.

[Jebasiz]

First, i am glad they finally scaled our pet haste recast timer to be almost a universal refresh, vice the 30'ish seconds we used to wait. Also, now that the new haste lasts an hour'ish, without reinforcement, we dont have to keep this spell memmed anymore for our pets, good job devs.

Now for the retuning/SoF feedback.

1. It seems sort of arbitrary, the way our vendor bought spells price. Enchanter, wizard, most mage, cleric, and some druid spells all price lower than the necro spells. Sort them by price, like i do when i buy, and you'll see.

2. Though this may not be a necro retuning issue, it affects all classes buying spells on vendors. There should be a filter to search for just that classes spells, or to at least list all spells on a vendor by class. Its a pain going through the whole list looking for your spells, unless you went online, looked them up, wrote them down, then went to vendor and searched alphabetically for them.

3. We only got 3 vendor sold spells at 80, one of which is our useless undead charm, the other being a rogue pet, and our upgraded poison DD that can proc a bonus to DoT damage. There should be at least one class defining spell available at this level... Wizzies get to buy an 8300+ base dmg nuke from a vendor at 80, we get pet/charm/mediocre DD that resisted half the time and rarely procs. The balance here seems a bit off.

4. On the topic of undead charm: Shortly after the release of Planes of Power, charm was nerfed to almost useless, because necros and enchanters were farming 20 aa/day with charm, in crypt of decay, solo, with charm. Dev's said that was not the intention of charm, and they nerfed it hard. I've debuffed grey con undead, charmed them with top undead charm (a spell they insist on upgrading every expansion) and had it break in under 30 seconds every time for 3 minutes. Imagine this on higher level mobs quadding/flurrying for 1400+ and you get one dead necro every time. In Vishimtar event, we eventually stopped using necros with their undead mezz as crowd control, because it only ever landed 25% of the time, with necro agro and usually dead the other 75%. These spells are high resist and highly useless. Get rid of them, replace them with something useful, or retune them. Make them have a lower cap, but make them fixed duration, like 3 mins or something. There are so many penalties on charmed mobs as it is, even enchanters rarely use them, except at lower levels grinding up.

5. We got our standard AA template upgrade with the new expansion. That one that warps pet forward? yeah, it can go. the improved crit rate, crit size, exceptional heals, etc... those are always nice. It would have been nice to see some class defining AA's added in this time around. The community has long been asking for several AA's that dont overpower us, but fit into the necro scheme nicely... examples:
1. group feign death
2. an AA that finishes off DoT's on mob, for all the dmg that would have remained, as one big DD, with associated threat generated of course.
3. a new lifeburn... wizzies have gotten several upgrades over the last few expansions, we have none. mana burn lands in pvp, lifeburn doesnt. manaburn can now do more than 1dmg per 1mana, lifeburn cannot. How about a new AA "Deathburn" that does like 2 or 3dmg per hp on the necro, with 2x the recourse after, but that costs hp AND mana, or that consumes an EE when cast, or that just has a longer recast time, like lay on hands and harm touch used to. Wizzies can crit for near 30k consistently, mages AA crit summoned for 32k, clerics AA crit undead for 32k, we get neither, with risk of dying due to hp agro or ae timing after a lifeburn.
4. An upgrade to blood magic (longer lasting, or lowered reuse time)
5. Shaman got an AA slow, clerics got an AA 3 second cast time rez... both are class defining. Necro class is pretty much defined as lifetaps, dots, mana feeds, mana regen... take your pick. A defining AA for any of those would be awesome. A mana free dot thats on par with dread pyre spell, an AA 5k lifetap w/like a 1 minute refresh, a group mana feed AA, that hits everyone in group with a 20-30% mana boost, while taking 80-90% of necro hp, or a stackable lich AA that converts hp to mana on top of whatever lich spell we have on, even making it risky to use it could take so much hp, like 300/tick for 5 minutes, but giving 200/tick mana back, etc... make something like this even targetable on anyone, so they get mana back at the cost of hp, but can stack with whatever mana regen they have. Make it so this spell can be cast on anyone, but has a minute recast, meaning it can be kept on up to 5 targets (everyone in group except one, if it lasts 5 minutes).
6. with all the illusions from LoN, in game items, potions, we really need an illusionless Lich spell, so we arent excluded from the fun. Halloween costumes overwrote skelly illusion, so it can be done. An AA lich or upgraded spell, equivalent to the highest level lich normally used by a given level necro, would be nice.

The last part here is balance... I went from being in the top 5 in guild for dps/dmg parses, when i was 30th on server (among necros) for gear/hp/mana, to being in the top 15 to 20 on parses, now that im in the top 3 (again, for necros) in gear/hp/mana on server... somehow we went from being a rocking DPS class, to falling back into the roll of mana batteries, since rogues, rangers, berserkers, beastlords, and wizzies all outparse us now (the melee versions outparsing me by several hundred thousand, without having to use aa's, vet rewards, shamans, bards, druids in group while i burn expendable AA's, 7th year vet, and get lucky with procs on demand for blood rk. III). I know we have survivability, versatility, and survivability but going from top 5 to middle of the pack while upgrading every dps focus and mana pool size possible, seems like something is wrong. Perhaps it is because these classes have short term and long term disciplines, to boost dmg, while we get nothing other than AA's, that they get as well, so they cancel out. I would suggest AA's for necros, without ridiculously long (ie, no 20 hour or longer recast) that enable us to burn/crank out DPS for a few minutes, when needed, several times a night on raids, similar to short/long term disc's of melee (these disc's being put in to add balance, but which seem to have significantly tipped the scales in their favor). This applies not just to necros, but to mages as well, who other than summoning some toys, and an occasional coth, should be considered pure DPS, but parse pretty much at the bottom half (and enchanters? omg they suck for dmg).

Imagine if you will, 2 AA's, one being a long term... it improves dmg output by 10%, maybe reducing mana cost by 10% as well, for a 5 minute duration, with a 72 minute recast time. Then insert a short term boost, 20% dmg increase, 20% mana reduction of spells, for 3 minutes, with a 30 minute recast time... only one active at a time, would work. With where we've fallen in DPS output compared to other classes, something like this, for both mage and necro, would put us right back where we need to be, not necessarily at the top, but as DPS classes, back in the mix near the top.

One last retuning idea, would be a boost to us based on which pet we had summoned (rogue pet = 5% boost to dmg while he's alive, maybe as a group aura even, and war pet = 5% boost to hp while alive). Something interesting to code in, would be scaling bonuses based on pet hp, so every 20% loss of pet health, 1% of bonus/aura/group boost, would be lost, making it worthwhile to keep pet up in groups (trading pet dmg for pet buffs possibly).

Sorry if this is long winded, but having been in the mana battery role of necros pre-planes of power, and then being boosted to a true master of death, and then slowly being demoted back into mediocrity, it seems some drastic measures, or even some moderate sensible ones like the ones above, are needed to bring us back up to par. I'm not asking to be top DPS class, wizzies should be able to beat us, thats all they do, dmg dmg dmg... but we shouldnt be falling to the middle of the pack, as we get better gear and focuses either. I dont even mind playing mana battery if needed, but doing it with 10 expansion old spells is slow, tedious, and demeaning. If we arent going to get upgrades in this area, other than 30 mana/minute upgrades to mind flay/dissection/vivisection, then either get rid of feeds altogether, as a bug, that is finally fixed, or give us the tools to do it now. Our best feed spell was luclin era, when uber mana pools were 5k... top mana pools now break 20k, and almost every caster in our guild breaks 15, even the app's... thats 3x the mana pool now, with out any new mana feeds.

Hope this helps. Not a flame fest, just some ideas on balance, tuning, improvements.

1. Not worth the hassle, tbh.

2. Not really a necro issue. Maybe suggest that on the veteran board. If I remember, I'll tell rashere.

3. Luck of the draw? Our pet at level 80 IS good and going to get better next patch. Searing shadow(excellent dot) was on vendors at 80. 2 out of 3 ain't bad.

4. It was more like 7-10aa per hour and that's why they won't put a resist mod on them. IF I charm kill anything I do so with a chanter, shaman or mage(if I can't find either of the first two). I'd suggest doing that or continuing to not use the spell line. It sucks that we really can't reliably charm kill mobs anymore..but truthfully, I don't think they could balance us if that was a staple of our class and how we solo. I think a better complaint about this is..we can't charm anything we'd normally kill for exp because it's capped to low.

[Jebasiz]

5. Class defining AA - we may not of got something on the line of what clerics and shaman got, but I don't see us lacking in the realm of AA. Destructive cascade, blood tithe, and greater blood tithe ARE class defining. Those along with fury of magic 7-9 and theft of life(more ranks), do make our dots and taps do much more damage. Another type of damage AA was probably scrapped due to the division of power(25% power increase for this expansion spread throughout spells, AA's, skill cap increase, gear). There were only so many aa's Nodyin could give us without breaching his allotment to improve us.
With the direction pet tuning is going, don't discount the pet AA just yet, it's to early for that IMO.

6. Illusionless lich - I'll bring up after the holiday break, again.

7. Balance - melee ALWAYS catch up and pass us with end game itemization. It's been that way forever, and it probably won't change. I went from being top 5 to top 10, and only stayed top 10 because I used glyphs and 7th veteran award. I'm not sure how your groups are set up on raids, but if melee have a have a bard and you don't..you're going to lose. If melee have a bard and shaman and disc at optimum times, you're going to lose big. I'm not sure you can even compare their damage to ours in a situation like that..with a bard and mana recursion..we'd probably come close(perhaps out-distance) on fights over 4 mins, shorter then that, melee will(and should) win. Apples to apples comparison, from my own guild parses, we do fine. I don't know how things shake out at 80 yet, until we're all max aa and have our rank II's and III's it's to early to tell.

You mention mana feeds. If you really want that, I'll step down as CC, change mains to my sk and you can be CC. I'll never feedback a desire for a spell that 99% of necros loathe.

[Isoeses]

3. We only got 3 vendor sold spells at 80, one of which is our useless undead charm, the other being a rogue pet, and our upgraded poison DD that can proc a bonus to DoT damage. There should be at least one class defining spell available at this level... Wizzies get to buy an 8300+ base dmg nuke from a vendor at 80, we get pet/charm/mediocre DD that resisted half the time and rarely procs. The balance here seems a bit off.


As Xis said, we also go Searing Shadow, from a vendor. This spell is HOT HOT HOT! If you are a necro and don't like it...there is something wrong. Its like 14dmg or something per mana and is currently our most efficent spell we have. (Someone correct me if I am wrong). Xis said it good, 2/3 isn't bad. Atleast all of our spells are working as intended.

4. On the topic of undead charm: Shortly after the release of Planes of Power, charm was nerfed to almost useless, because necros and enchanters were farming 20 aa/day with charm, in crypt of decay, solo, with charm. Dev's said that was not the intention of charm, and they nerfed it hard. I've debuffed grey con undead, charmed them with top undead charm (a spell they insist on upgrading every expansion) and had it break in under 30 seconds every time for 3 minutes. Imagine this on higher level mobs quadding/flurrying for 1400+ and you get one dead necro every time. In Vishimtar event, we eventually stopped using necros with their undead mezz as crowd control, because it only ever landed 25% of the time, with necro agro and usually dead the other 75%. These spells are high resist and highly useless. Get rid of them, replace them with something useful, or retune them. Make them have a lower cap, but make them fixed duration, like 3 mins or something. There are so many penalties on charmed mobs as it is, even enchanters rarely use them, except at lower levels grinding up.
This is all based on the RNG, as far as I know. I've had good luck when it comes to charm and mez. Does that mean I use it often, no? For instance, in "The Departed", an undead task with level 80 undead, I mez all the time when we pull 4 or 5 and it sticks.
5. We got our standard AA template upgrade with the new expansion. That one that warps pet forward? yeah, it can go. the improved crit rate, crit size, exceptional heals, etc... those are always nice. It would have been nice to see some class defining AA's added in this time around. The community has long been asking for several AA's that dont overpower us, but fit into the necro scheme nicely... examples:

Deleted a lot there...just to keep the post clean looking, but I think our AAs were great. We finally got +crit dmg on critical dmg DoTs, we got a higher chance of critting DoTs, DDs, lifetaps, etc. Half second FD is friggin Godsent. As for a group FD...NO! Thats just simply put. The AA that does a DD of all the dot dmg would be way, way to overpowering, I'm sorry. I want to do more dmg and make us more efficent as well, but not in that way.

6. with all the illusions from LoN, in game items, potions, we really need an illusionless Lich spell, so we arent excluded from the fun. Halloween costumes overwrote skelly illusion, so it can be done. An AA lich or upgraded spell, equivalent to the highest level lich normally used by a given level necro, would be nice.
It has been mentioned. When you first get the spell, they say there are drawlbacks. Everyone took that as losing HP to have the mana regen; guess they meant the illusion as well.

Deleted the part about balance, but I'll still comment on it. We are balanced. If you are parsing so low, it is 1) because of gear/foci, 2) not the "best fight to parse", 3) spell setup and group setups.

Our class leader and I are usually the top two on the parse. The only time we get out DPS'ed is when the two monks with the two brummals are on and in a sham or bard group. We our a long term DPS, not a burst DPS. I would hope monks/rogue/bezerkers out DPS on those, considering they usually get to use their disc once a fight, where we can keep recasting.

That being said, melee can get dps just for turning attack on and leaving the computer. We don't get that since we choose this class. IMO, its balanced. Melee have always been ahead. When new expansions come out, we jump up ahead of them, but as they get their new weapons they one again pass.

Sorry zeb, I just had to chime in.

Edit: DIE IN A FIRE IF YOU WANT TO BE A BATTERY! I WILL QUIT MY CLASS BEFORE I DO THAT AGAIN!

[Isoeses]

Not sure if spells are finished yet or not, but:

1) Increase proc rate of the Venin line for a /better/ chance of procing an EE. Could also reduce the cast timer and leave the refresh or even increase the refresh to compensate the faster cast.

2) Lich: More mana regen per tick please, or do something to bring our mana regen back into line.

4) Cold foci, needs to go, if it is still on our SoF armor.

3) and of course, bring AotD to not need corpses for sake of being able to loot corpses and grab my Tradeskill items before someone runs buy and loots before I get to use army and loot.

[Jebasiz]

Xis hasn't posted on this thread!

[flubuk]

few irritations I've noticed

-New lich isn't correctly filtered out (ie i get a "you take XX damage from Spectralside)

-TBS pet focus doesn't summon pet as Zombie.

-lag in zones (hopefully cured soon)

-Lich is a woeful upgrade at rank.1 (FT 1 over Otherside rk3)

On the plus side.

-lots of kiteable content.

-nice zone graphics.

-it's tough.

-Searing Shadow is a superb spell.

-destructive fury for dots is nice.

[Jebasiz]

I stopped getting the lich message. People are still getting spammed?

Mana regen and illusionless lich are my next(and likely long) task. Number crunchers that want to add info for me don't be shy. just start a new thread.

[Isoeses]

I stopped getting the lich message. People are still getting spammed?

Mana regen and illusionless lich are my next(and likely long) task. Number crunchers that want to add info for me don't be shy. just start a new thread.

What kind of numbers do you need? I can help...

I don't get spammed anymore

[Evillil]

3. Luck of the draw? Our pet at level 80 IS good and going to get better next patch. Searing shadow(excellent dot) was on vendors at 80. 2 out of 3 ain't bad.

Sorry if I missed something, been trying to keep up on all I can during the new expansion, but what exactly is happening with our pet next patch? I'm actually pretty damn impressed with the improvements they've made so far, so any new upgrades will be nice. Well, impressed might not be the right word...relieved that he can finally tank light blues I guess would be more appropriate, heh.

[flubuk]

hmmm as tonight i am still getting lich damage message for Spectralside Rk1

all other lichs are fine

[Jebasiz]

Sorry if I missed something, been trying to keep up on all I can during the new expansion, but what exactly is happening with our pet next patch? I'm actually pretty damn impressed with the improvements they've made so far, so any new upgrades will be nice. Well, impressed might not be the right word...relieved that he can finally tank light blues I guess would be more appropriate, heh.

The rogue pet can't and still won't be able to tank, but it should have more hitpoints next week. The goal is to have it usable on raid content. Obviously, it will never have enough hps to be survivable on all content..particularly AE heavy raids, but it should be viable more often then not after this change. If it's honestly not enough, let me know.

As far as numbers for lich. Mana expenditure vs mana regened. 3, 5, 8 and 10 mins. DPM for dots(overall, dot line up..use rank II's for comparison). Basically, information/numbers that show how much spectralside is inadequate, and how much it needs to be upgraded.

[Feellia Flo]

Spectrside didn't spam me tonight =)

As far as pets, i don't have all the aa yet, but from magi resources seems are war pet is on chain tables and are rogue pet on leather. Might wanna mention that to the pet dev..could make a slight boost in tanking.

[encephalitis]

Why did SOE decide to ninja-nerf anniversary exp potions so that they are no longer extended by SCR3?

Why Nodyin?


EDIT: Oh, right. Because I enjoyed it, and blabbed about it on a forum that the devs actually read. You can all send me hate mail now.

[scrat]

You didn't cause anything. I remember reading on the vet boards last year about clerics & enchanters bragging that SCR extended the vet aa Lesson - something on the order that it was justified because they can't solo. It certainly does not effect it now. Same thing on celestial heal pots & clarity pots, etc. They used to get extended.

It looks like the devs are going through a bunch of stuff and making it not work; some of my clickys don't work.

[Xheng]

Lots of good stuff in the new expansion... some room for improvement...

1. Illusionless lich, or a lich that gives me an iksar skeletion. I want my tail to show. Please. It makes the mammals jealous.

2. Secondary Forte cap needs to be increased. It was a big increase when first purchased. But with the increase in levels, the specialization cap on other specialization categories has continued to increase. Now the secondary forte gap is only 150 vs. 100... not really that significant. Recommend that the cap on secondary forte increase at the same level as others, as we level up, so that it ends up being in the vicinity of 175 or 200 at level 80. This affects necromancers more than most classes, because our better spells are divided amongst specialization categories.

3. Gift of Exquisite Radiant Mana, once purchased, needs to fire on any spell at all, or at least anything 65 plus. Most other caster classes can just fire their highest level spells to maximize dps. So they are getting full return on Gift when it fires. Not so necros. To maximize dps, we need to use DoTs not only from the current expansion, but several expansions back. It's extremely cumbersome to get good utility out of Gift of mana in this context. It makes our net mana usage relatively higher than other classes that only have to load their highest level spells to be effective.

4. Mana regeneration from Spectralside could use a boost.

5. Need some more clicky damage items in the game. Pyro pants were great and all, but they're getting long in the tooth. And the Horror clicky was nerfed to not be focusable a while back, and still isn't fixed. Maybe for Fabled Time, we could get clicky pants with Dread Pyre? Really not overpowering anymore, given other things that are in play.

6. Another itemization thing I'd love to see is a fast casting clicky Scent of Terris. Getting both the Afterlife/Twilight line and the Terris line on a mob can significantly boost dps on mobs that are somewhat poison resistant, but the sacrifice to give up two spell slots to get there is too great. A Scent of Terris clicky, preferably in ammo slot or usable from inventory, would be grand.

[Brahman]

the newest version of mana flare still not wokring on dots.

wru fix? :)

[scrat]

Yesterday doing the farm cleanup tasks in Loping Plains I cranked up Umbra Orb and was ghetto healing group members.

It was doing 1945 health. This is up from 1725, which lucy still reflects.

Anybody care to offer what phantasmal orb heals for?

[Khyandys]

That's odd, Scrat. I just checked my log and Umbra Orb has never healed for more than 1725 when I've used it (except for one freak incident of 1811 last month). Dunno what's up with that.

[Jebasiz]

Yesterday doing the farm cleanup tasks in Loping Plains I cranked up Umbra Orb and was ghetto healing group members.

It was doing 1945 health. This is up from 1725, which lucy still reflects.

Anybody care to offer what phantasmal orb heals for?

It got changed when they made them not crit anymore.

[Knutplate]

Pretty sure that the change brought it up to 1725, not to 1945.

Did you have some kind of healing aura running?

Curious to determine what caused this.

[Aegrusnecrox]

knutplate is correct, it was 1725 after the change.

got anything that might be focusing that healing power?

-Egg

[Salnayil]

There are so many penalties on charmed mobs as it is, even enchanters rarely use them, except at lower levels grinding up.

This is fully dependent upon the chanters you know. They have AA's solely dedicated to charm and good tools to manage charm pets. If you have ever watched a good enchanter charm solo they can easily match any xp a necro can kite for. They just don't brag so loud anymore because they are worried that they will face the charm nerf again. :)

On the orb thing. Cleric aura increases heals iirc. Pally epic click increases heals on them during it's duration. Not sure if any of these impact orbs, but would be nice to find out.

[scrat]

Okay, I'm such a noob. It was various auras.

From hundreds of lines in my logs..."An Aura of Healing surrounds you."

Additionally, it ranged from 1945-2063. Had a variety of both clerics & paladins in the group at different times.

[Khyandys]

Ah, okay. That seems entirely possible, Salnayil. The one abnormal orb heal showing up in my log was on an epic paladin - though I really can't say whether his epic click was activated at the time or not, since I had the filter for other PC spells off.

[scrat]

Picked up phantasmal orb II today and the soul orbs it generates heals for 2017 health (was solo). Not to be confused with the first generation orbs.

+16.9% upgrade from Umbra orb.

-I'm glad prat upgraded them from the 1777 original (description still says this)
-I'm bummed this is the weakest upgrade of the series ever when this is the most massive player HP upgrade expansion ever.

[Horcrux]

Picked up phantasmal orb II today and the soul orbs it generates heals for 2017 health (was solo). Not to be confused with the first generation orbs.

+16.9% upgrade from Umbra orb.

-I'm glad prat upgraded them from the 1777 original (description still says this)
-I'm bummed this is the weakest upgrade of the series ever when this is the most massive player HP upgrade expansion ever.

I made a bunch during our DP plow Thursday night, and clicking them I was only healing for something like 1812, or some weird number like that. I'm guessing the base is 1777, but what is modifying it? I have Healing +1 as a new Mod, and 35% to 80 healing foci. Doubt the foci is affecting it, maybe the Healing mod?

[Jebasiz]

Foci don't effect orbs.

[Horcrux]

Foci don't effect orbs.

Didn't think so. So what does? Lots of people are having varying heal ammounts form the same orbs.

[Pharren]

paladin aura

[Jebann]

the new heal mod 3 from sof gear

[FCseven]

Splort and splurt don't stack.I was dissapointed to see this.

[Xislaben]

Splort and splurt don't stack.I was dissapointed to see this.

Now that's odd. I don't see any reason why they shouldn't.

[Feellia Flo]

Splort and splurt don't stack.I was dissapointed to see this.

Ugh I wonder if splort will stack between necs now. I have rk2 don't think any necs in my guild have the spell yet to test.

[Jebasiz]

Splort and splurt don't stack.I was dissapointed to see this.

I'll look into this.

[FCseven]

Putrefaction has no "wears off" message.

[scrat]

Anybody know if the SoF ranks of Swarm of Decay (4-6) was tweaked by Nodyin yet? He gave the impression that he would investigate my claim that the upgraded ranks are vastly under-performing.

[Lifleviya]

Need to get focus on the SoF Steam/Gyro core changed from cold.

[Xislaben]

Need to get focus on the SoF Steam/Gyro core changed from cold.

I believe we asked, and Merloc said something like, "Cold or Chromatic, your choice but only those two" so...

[Meph]

Even with foci change tingy only those 2 are available lol?

I know Sk's can change between poison & disease on their T3 bracers.

[Lifleviya]

SoF Teir 3 group robes need a focus/click. Did Merloc say anything about this yet or give us an option?

[Judication]

1 ~ archer aa's blow. they dont reflect cost at all, another archer per aa bought or a noticeable increase in dmg would be nice.

2 ~ pissed i cant kite cryst anymore, should be at least something in their that necros can play with. was good for farming plat :)

3 ~ was hoping for a better bp click than last two expansions with lame pet click.

4 ~ i dualed a druid last night using splort, and it wasnt taking hold, but was totally messing up everyone else. so that spell is def having stacking issues.

5 ~ rogue pet dps is great, but is lame that my dotz are barely getting a boast to over all dmg compared to melee dmg using weapons that are 20/50 and 30/110 typish weapons generally, be nice if we got an aa that would maybe give a chance of final tick to possibly be a big crit, such as how clerics get that aa versus undead that can crit 25k or whatever.

6 ~ if you want to give me a cold foci, you should give me cold spells besides chill bones.

7 ~ make more plant mobs/raidmobs so i can get use outa plant line spellz.

8 ~ wohooo for better necro mez that hasnt been upgraded in who knows how long, now upgrade something that matters like lifeburn maybe?

9 ~ lots of fun kiting beza/ zeka instances, great job on random drop augs.

10 ~ everyone else is getting stuff that dd's/ crits really damn hard versus certain npcs, why not give necros something super effective, like i dont know something versus undead instead of plants? or even versus summoned mobs?

11 ~ why is it wizys can snare anything but i cant? ie wyverns in crys

[jarlax]

Even with foci change tingy only those 2 are available lol?

I know Sk's can change between poison & disease on their T3 bracers.

Bracers can be any dammage focus you want the gloves are cold.. WTB corruption jeeze

[DeadLikeMe]

You can get corruption from Reflective Gem of Communication. I would like to see a better disease focus. Best is Corrupted Energeiac Silk Wristband Armor (60% to level 77 which scales to 51% at 80). They have 65% to 80 and 70% to 80 focii but no items have them. I know you guys hate the disease line but it's better than the 1 corruption spell we have. Replace the Cold focus with Disease.

[Pharren]

They have 65% to 80 and 70% to 80 focii but no items have them.
SoF bracers have it, you just have to change it from poison to disease with the bracer tuneforge thingamajig from akanon strike force vendor.

[Jebasiz]

1 ~ archer aa's blow. they dont reflect cost at all, another archer per aa bought or a noticeable increase in dmg would be nice.



Nodyin is parsing this, and will get back to me as to whether or not he'll upgrade them or lower the AA cost.

[scrat]

Anybody know if the SoF ranks of Swarm of Decay (4-6) was tweaked by Nodyin yet? He gave the impression that he would investigate my claim that the upgraded ranks are vastly under-performing.

Nothing was ever mentioned about an upgrade being finished (that I recall) and there definately wasn't any patch notes..but this has been upgraded.

Initially rank6 of Swarm of Decay wasn't able to break 100dps against those weak melee solo target dragonscale vipers. So I literally haven't used it since. Seriously. Until yesterday.

They now clock in at 197 dps. This was against the same target - dragonsacle viper. Looks like their damage was doubled. Nothing changed on the reuse time or duration, so it's still a very very low overall contributor @ 6.5 dps.

I'll have to play around some more with them to see if anything else got changed (hp, melee dmg, etc) in an attempt to discover something worthy to use them outside the standard 3-round diversion when soloing a summoner. I'm also curious how their dps holds up v. legitimate xp targets.

[Cyador]

Hmm, interesting.

I didn't want to spend any more aa's on archers since I was under the impression that the line is still useless, but if they are really improved I'll max it out. Plus the coolness factor :p!

[Vumnaydar]

cyador r u CKay's lil brother?

[Aegrusnecrox]

Is someone going to tell merloc that we have neither a cold spell nor a chromatic spell?

It would be really nice, since he apparently doesn't understand that foci for spells we dont have dont actually focus anything.

-Egg

[Xislaben]

Is someone going to tell merloc that we have neither a cold spell nor a chromatic spell?

It would be really nice, since he apparently doesn't understand that foci for spells we dont have dont actually focus anything.

-Egg

Well, we do technically have 2 cold spells, but neither one needs focusing as we only use them as jokes. Yes, Merloc knows, the foci and armor are being designed on an archetypal level, so we get foci we don't use as will other classes... So, I can ask him to remove the foci, but we can't have anything in its place, it's either as it or nothing.

[Aegrusnecrox]

can someone else inform merloc of the absurdity of that line of reasoning? I guess it would be helpful for him to hear it from two sources.

-Egg

[Lashden]

Is he still putting cold focuses on necro only items? I could possibly agree with that thinking if a class that can use it can actually wear it though.

And those two nukes aren't even focuasble, fyi :P