Idea for a new Necromancer AA (replace Insidious Elements)

Ceto

Dalayan Adventurer
Reasoning behind wanting to replace Insidious Elements tome line:
Most Necromancer DoT spells generally already have extremely good resist adjusts (making the effects of the tome very minimal); also, mobs at higher tiers are often either fully immune to a DoT, or don't mitigate it at all (which makes the usage case very narrow). These two facts render the Insidious Elements class tome line highly underwhelming.

Name: Army of the Dead
Description: Lowers the cooldown of Wake the Dead AA by 1:30 per rank from 9 minutes to 7.5/6/4.5/3 minutes. Additionally, for every damage over time spell you are currently afflicting your target with, one additional skeleton spawns on your target when you use Wake the Dead (capped at 2/4/6/8 additional skeletons per rank).

Necromancers are already a very strong class from 65 into to mid tiers, but are known to be lacking in DPS later on in the higher tiers. This change avoids buffing them at their strongest point by not giving them any more front-loaded character power than they already have (a class tome you'd likely get after Strands of Life). This is still a somewhat situational tome (swarm pets tend to get deleted on AoE heavy fights anyway), but gives some actual extra power later into a fight once you have all DoTs ticking (which would contribute to Necromancer class identity - supposed to do more damage the longer a fight goes on).

Thoughts?
 
Name: Army of the Dead
Description: Lowers the cooldown of Wake the Dead AA by 1:30 per rank from 9 minutes to 7.5/6/4.5/3 minutes. Additionally, for every damage over time spell you are currently afflicting your target with, one additional skeleton spawns on your target when you use Wake the Dead (capped at 2/4/6/8 additional skeletons per rank).
Agreed, insidious elements is garbage.

However, the numbers on this proposal are a bit much:
A) 4 ranks, with 8 skeles per rank, that can be used ever 3 minutes. The math on that turns into 32 swarm pets every 180 seconds. Giving necros an ability that effectively poops out a swarm pet every tic [32 pets / 180 seconds] is a bit much.
B) Also, for all the griping about laggy encounters [with the commonality of lots of mobs] it seems counter intuitive to then give a class an ability to produce 32 swarm pets often.
C) Giving necros the ability to generate more pets [albeit shitty swarmers] than a mage is stepping over a class line.

I like the idea of scrapping Insidious elements. I dislike the idea of replacing it with swarm pets that really don't do much anyhow.
 
Alternative proposal :

Name: The Precipice
Description: The flow of life and death must be balanced. When active, this AA allows the necromancer to cast spells while moving, albeit at a higher mana cost [Rank% 70/55/40/25%]

High tier necros fall behind because of movement, plain and simple. When 'dot twisting' gets interrupted repeatedly, a necro quickly becomes subpar to other DPS casters, highlighted by the long cast times, and even longer damage output timeframes. Being able to cast on the move will prevent this, also twisting 4 - 5 dots, and juggling movement mechanics, will further distinguish player skill among necros.
 
A) 4 ranks, with 8 skeles per rank, that can be used ever 3 minutes. The math on that turns into 32 swarm pets every 180 seconds. Giving necros an ability that effectively poops out a swarm pet every tic [32 pets / 180 seconds] is a bit much.
B) Also, for all the griping about laggy encounters [with the commonality of lots of mobs] it seems counter intuitive to then give a class an ability to produce 32 swarm pets often.
C) Giving necros the ability to generate more pets [albeit shitty swarmers] than a mage is stepping over a class line.
a) no no no no no no no. 2/4/6/8 skeles per rank. which means at the max rank, you do not get 32 swarm pets, you get 13 (8 from tome + 5 from AA).
b) 13 swarm pets is not that much. mage swarm pet AA already summons 9.
c) necromancer is supposed to be one of the main pet classes.

friendly reminder that druid frog pet is fairly equivalent (stronger at lower tiers) to necro pet in DPS, beastlord pets can flurry and heal the beastlord, mage pet does 12,000 damage periodically with a tome, and a mage swarm pet casts moon comet.
what does the necro pet do in comparison? sub-par dps that's not even half of a mage pet. oh and they cast lifetaps (if you cast lifetaps) that are a dps loss anyway.

necromancer pets are actually the weakest in the game right now (not counting enchanter/shaman pets). but i guess we're stepping over class lines by giving them more swarm pets. my bad.

Alternative proposal :

Name: The Precipice
Description: The flow of life and death must be balanced. When active, this AA allows the necromancer to cast spells while moving, albeit at a higher mana cost [Rank% 70/55/40/25%]

High tier necros fall behind because of movement, plain and simple. When 'dot twisting' gets interrupted repeatedly, a necro quickly becomes subpar to other DPS casters, highlighted by the long cast times, and even longer damage output timeframes. Being able to cast on the move will prevent this, also twisting 4 - 5 dots, and juggling movement mechanics, will further distinguish player skill among necros.
good suggestion, and i like the idea, although i disagree with movement being the sole reason why high tier necros fall behind. yes, it does hurt dps, but not nearly as badly as you'd think. even on fights where you aren't moving, necromancers still fall very short of mages, monks, and rogues. you can't put through enough damage to compete due to the lack of new spells at higher tiers and DoTs/pet damage not scaling with gear like other classes. implementing this tome would only highlight that fact.
 
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General question because I simply do not know: Does the tome only work to the Necro itself? From what I understood it lowers the overall resists in general making it a neat addition on raids.

That aside I fully agree with the idea to change it. Either proposal feels good to me. I especially like the Idea behind this:

Name: The Precipice
Description: The flow of life and death must be balanced. When active, this AA allows the necromancer to cast spells while moving, albeit at a higher mana cost [Rank% 70/55/40/25%]

High tier necros fall behind because of movement, plain and simple. When 'dot twisting' gets interrupted repeatedly, a necro quickly becomes subpar to other DPS casters, highlighted by the long cast times, and even longer damage output timeframes. Being able to cast on the move will prevent this, also twisting 4 - 5 dots, and juggling movement mechanics, will further distinguish player skill among necros.

I've stumbled about longish casttimes every now and then and having a mechanic to partially circumvent this would help tremendously, especially while soloing or in group situations (or even with raidfights where you have to periodically relocate).

Getting at the pet and it being useful or not in general: I agree that the current Necro pet is subpar in about every category. The relic pet is too squishy to really be useful as an "Oh shit I need to grab this Mob for a moment" and doesn't do real DPS. The Runic pet is far better DPS-Wise but once OOM will be pure deadweight. An AA that effects the pet would really help that. Either have it restore mana (25% / 40% / 60% / 85%) or enable better spells for a short period of time.
 
I’ve always thought there should be a way to make the R1 pet a little more worthwhile. Letting the pet get mana back from strands kills would be a very nice start to actually using this pet during groups. Changing the class tome to allow the R1 pet to mimic it’s master’s casting 2/4/6/8% of the time would be a nice boost to necro sustained dps while utilizing the R1 pet that is rather underwhelming.

I agree that this tome always felt a little off since necros already had such large resist adjusts to begin with. I’m not sure if adding more swarm pets is necessarily the way to go with how unstable so many fights/zones are.
 
I like it! Though what if instead of adding more crappy skeletons the new AA makes them a little more formidable? Hit a little harder? Can swarm pets cast spells? Maybe some lifetaps? Mana taps that feed the group*? Not be destroyed by a light breeze by getting some AoE resistance? Heyo- that's four effects for four ranks. With the reduced cooldown that'd be a powerful utility burst tool in the necro's toolbox.

The idea of buffing up Necro pets in general is also good, though fixing them through AAs isn't ideal. Just buff them. That said, the mana tap would help R1 be a stump less of the time.

*could be scaled to Mind Wrack, the spell line that time forgot.
 
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*could be scaled to Mind Wrack, the spell line that time forgot.

I use that all the time /sadface.
It's insanely handy.

Honestly tho' I like the idea. I'm just not sure if implementing a Mana tap is the path to fix the R1 pet (which is not bad, it just lacks the ability to regain mana or switch to Melee when oom IMO) because that still makes it somewhat situational. I'd rather have it aimed directly at the pets manapool but that's just my 2cp.

I agree that a general adjustment is in order to make 1) the AA worth the XP dumped into it and 2) maybe patch a problem a Necro is most likely facing when he proceeded far enough to dump XP into this AA (R1).
 
Yes, Mind Wrack is handy and it's a lvl 50-something spell that was didn't see an ancient, 60s, relic, murk, runic, or whatever else upgrade. Time forgot /sadface/ You'd think in a game where mana down time is a known and talked about problem... but I digress.

To be clear, I'm suggesting boosting up the AA Swarm Pet for general utility that just happens to help the R1 pet. More frequent higher burst with some life and mana taps- huzzah! The R1 pet still needs a fix - "just buff them". Though to un-digress, fixing the mana regen suckage in general would probably fix the R1 too. Percentages people, you gotta swap from addition to percentages on that regen.
 
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