Necromancer Balancing

[antihelei]

Now that I have played my necro to 65 and beyond I feel I have a better grasp on the pitfalls and benefits of necromancers. I feel that they are in need of some balancing to make them more desireable in groups and raids.

Here are my suggestions:

1.) Necromancer spells post 60 are generally very weak. Our best DPS spell is caress of sivyana (excluding marlows cremation which is very rare and very few necros have it and claws of the chill because no necros have it) which is shared with shamans, and while it is good, is not exception dps, clocking in at 157 if constantly cast with no tick skips. Skitterpox is decent dps, but nothing special. The spells wherein the problem lies are Hand and Spirit of Kaezul and Embedding Darkness.

Hand and Spirit of Kaezul are nigh useless, they are extremely mana inefficient, do low damage and have little use in raids or groups. Since our pets are not designed for tanking, then a pet heal for around 300 per tick (with afflict 5) is useless, considering the ample mana cost, and the fact that a spell like that can not support our pets for very long. Hand of Kaezul is even worse, considering the much easier to get Lifebane is a better damage/healing to mana ratio.

Embedding Darkness is completely useless, and there is a thread about it so I won't go on about it.

My suggestion is to make Hand/Spirit non-relic and level 64 and put in a Relic poison dot that lasts for 4 ticks, does 270 DD on landing and 699 per tick, making it just over 3000 total damage over 4 ticks. This would drastically improve Necro raid dps, and provide a good spread of relic and archaic DoT damage.

2.) Necromancer pets are incredibly weak and have very little support. While raiding in DHK, my lvl 63 pet cannont last more than 2 or 3 trash mobs because of the AE's they cast, and because I have no other pet heals, besides a mana draining relic and a low level spell that doesnt provide enough healing to be usefull. What I suggest is increasing the damage/healing their lifetaps do and lowering their melee dps slightly and giving necros some sort of useful post 60 pet heal. Not something to the degree that mages have, but something that can be like Wraithbond, but instead of a 1:1 make it a 1:3 for like 500 necro health heals the pet for 1500?


3.) Necromancer AA's are somewhat spread thin and they are retirable relatively low. I suggest changing a few of the AA's to better serve the necro. A few of my suggestions:

a.) Critical DoT AA - give necromancers a chance to do the same kind of critical damage on their mana efficient spells that all the other int caster classes get. To go along with this, remove some of the lifetap crit AA's, changing them over to DoT crit aa's

b.) Pet DPS increase AA - no explaination needed

c.) Mez Improvement AA - something to increase the length or effectiveness of the necromancer mezzes, giving them more use in certain raid situations and in groups.

d.) AOE DoT AA - When this AA is triggered the next targeted DoT spell a necromancer casts will hit up to 4 targets.


These are just a few of my suggestions, and I'm sure more experienced necros could add on, or criticize them, but I'm sure that we all feel that necros are not as useful as they should be.

 

[Raherin]

b.) Pet DPS increase AA - no explaination needed

Your issue was necro pet tanking/taking AEs. At this point, relic necro pet is just under mage pet dps. So no, necro pet aren't getting/needing any more dps.


A necro can do around 170ish dps (pet not included). Which is quite in line with what we are looking for. The idea of critical dots is being toyed with, however it would be adding dot crits to nuke crit chance AA. But we would have to look into other class balance before we do that (e.g. shamans!).

 

[Bernat]

Well, Shamans can only have 2 dots at the same time on any given mob. One of them is disease, and thus doesn't do that much damage. Have that in mind too, best dot is shaman (iirc), but best dotter is necro, which is fine .

EDIT: added "2", which was missing

 

[Raherin]

Shamans can do gross dps for a priest class.

 

[Xeldan]

In response to 3.) d.):

I'm not sure how useful an AA that turns a DoT into an AE DoT would be... I'd think there would be more possible harm caused by it than good. You also have to keep in mind we can't modify recast times on AA's, so it would be really difficult to find a good recast time without possibly replacing something that may be useful already.

 

[FalconKyule]

Now that I have played my necro to 65 and beyond I feel I have a better grasp on the pitfalls and benefits of necromancers. I feel that they are in need of some balancing to make them more desireable in groups and raids.

Here are my suggestions:

1.) Necromancer spells post 60 are generally very weak. Our best DPS spell is caress of sivyana (excluding marlows cremation which is very rare and very few necros have it and claws of the chill because no necros have it) which is shared with shamans, and while it is good, is not exception dps, clocking in at 157 if constantly cast with no tick skips. Skitterpox is decent dps, but nothing special. The spells wherein the problem lies are Hand and Spirit of Kaezul and Embedding Darkness.

Hand and Spirit of Kaezul are nigh useless, they are extremely mana inefficient, do low damage and have little use in raids or groups. Since our pets are not designed for tanking, then a pet heal for around 300 per tick (with afflict 5) is useless, considering the ample mana cost, and the fact that a spell like that can not support our pets for very long. Hand of Kaezul is even worse, considering the much easier to get Lifebane is a better damage/healing to mana ratio.

Hand and Spirit of Kaezul have a relatively easy fix to them. I find nothing wrong with them aside from mana cost. Even dropping the cost down to 490 without changing anything else would make them more useful. Remember a Lifetap DoT isn't there to be a quick fix heal and in the long run they are much more efficient than an instant lifetap when you are kiting mobs or in a group situation.

I have my own thread about Embedding Darkness.

A new pet heal spell would be a good thing, and not these reversed lifetap DoT to heal pet spells but an actual healing spell similar to what live uses. I'll post the more important details about it here -

Mana - 250
Casting time - 4.5 seconds
Recast time - instant (it was 2.5 seconds but got changed like a year later)
Effect - Heals target undead for 1000 points. -10 Disease counters

Nothing overpowered and does everything a necro needs to be done to a pet.

My suggestion is to make Hand/Spirit non-relic and level 64 and put in a Relic poison dot that lasts for 4 ticks, does 270 DD on landing and 699 per tick, making it just over 3000 total damage over 4 ticks. This would drastically improve Necro raid dps, and provide a good spread of relic and archaic DoT damage.

About the new proposed spell. Say they move Hand/Spirit down to lvl 64 and take out their Relic status and make this new spell. It is useful but slightly overpowered..... if you don't put in a casting time, mana cost and all that. But here's how I'd go about designing the spell.

Melshard's Ego Ectoplasm (yeah.. I have a big ego.... sue me =X)
Mana Cost - 545
Skill - Conjuration
Resist - Poison
Casting Time - 4.5 seconds
Recast - Instant
Duration - 5 ticks
Effect - Increase Poison Counters by 17. Decrease HP ,DD, 250. DoT per Tick 550 (2750 DoT damage total)

THat's a decent DoT. It's not overly powered, it has a good mana to damage ratio, and has a slightly higher duration to offset the slower casting speed. Could I do better? Surely yes I could but this is just to show how a necro thinks when it comes to spells and efficiency. Though if a spell like this were put in Claws of the Chill would have to be reworked(easily fixed) so it would be worth getting our hands on.

2.) Necromancer pets are incredibly weak and have very little support. While raiding in DHK, my lvl 63 pet cannont last more than 2 or 3 trash mobs because of the AE's they cast, and because I have no other pet heals, besides a mana draining relic and a low level spell that doesnt provide enough healing to be usefull. What I suggest is increasing the damage/healing their lifetaps do and lowering their melee dps slightly and giving necros some sort of useful post 60 pet heal. Not something to the degree that mages have, but something that can be like Wraithbond, but instead of a 1:1 make it a 1:3 for like 500 necro health heals the pet for 1500?

My pet heal 'suggestion' above would fix this.

3.) Necromancer AA's are somewhat spread thin and they are retirable relatively low. I suggest changing a few of the AA's to better serve the necro. A few of my suggestions:

a.) Critical DoT AA - give necromancers a chance to do the same kind of critical damage on their mana efficient spells that all the other int caster classes get. To go along with this, remove some of the lifetap crit AA's, changing them over to DoT crit aa's

This was done on live. Even from a RP point of view critical DoTs are not out of the question. Implementing them is another story though. Even live still has necros screaming about how badly the crit DoTs work. Over there the chances of a DoT critting are much lower than it is for a wizard or mage to crit on their nukes. IT's been suggested that necros get an innate 2% chance to dot crit from lvl 1 - the same chance wizards have with their crits from lvl 1 and on top of that wizards have like another tier to their nuke crit chances. Necros only got Critical Affliction..... that's it... one tier(though with new expansion necros have 3 tiers of Critical Dots but are still nowhere close to the % of Wizard crit %). Not to mention the bug with aggro they never got around to fixing. To explain ; when a dot would crit.... it doubled the mobs hate instantly for the damage dealt. So if say a dot critted for 750 then a mob's hate would go up 1500 instead of increasing normally.

b.) Pet DPS increase AA - no explaination needed

Not needed.

c.) Mez Improvement AA - something to increase the length or effectiveness of the necromancer mezzes, giving them more use in certain raid situations and in groups.

this is something of a hot issue on live(although on live... necros don't even have a mez other than Screaming Terror).... and it has an easy fix; increase the lvl cap of the mobs the spell affects, drop the duration to something like 4-5 ticks. It won't step on enchanter's toes seeing as we can only have one mob mezzed at once( or two if need be) and also if we are to keep even one mob mezzed it drops our dps and if we keep two mobs mezzed.... well our dps goes to nil until someone engages one of the mezzed mobs.

d.) AOE DoT AA - When this AA is triggered the next targeted DoT spell a necromancer casts will hit up to 4 targets.

This has been talked about over on live a lot. ANd I'll say here what I said there. It's just a silly idea. Sure it'd be fun... but would serve no true purpose.


I may not have played on SoD for long but I have played a necro on live for a very long time. I know the ins and outs of the necro class. By the time I reach lvl 65 on SoD hopefully I will see some of my suggestions go through.

Ex Animo

*EDIT* mostly correcting spelling errors... but now I just give up haha.

 

[antihelei]

In response to 3.) d.):

I'm not sure how useful an AA that turns a DoT into an AE DoT would be... I'd think there would be more possible harm caused by it than good. You also have to keep in mind we can't modify recast times on AA's, so it would be really difficult to find a good recast time without possibly replacing something that may be useful already.

Perhaps make a few targeted AoE dots?

 

[Svha]

b.) The idea of critical dots is being toyed with, however it would be adding dot crits to nuke crit chance AA. But we would have to look into other class balance before we do that (e.g. shamans!).

As the above would unbalance the SHM/DRU classes, could this not be tagged onto "Vampiric Lore" instead (Passive level 65 required AA that provides a chance of landing a critical lifetap) yes, the AA is shared with the SK class - however I dont think it would unbalance SK's as the DoT spells they do have are pretty weak anyway.

Each class seems to have a huge boost to their key ability(s) from AA skills apart from Necros. The DPS of a level 65 0 AA Necro compared to a maxed AA Necro is almost identical, we have no advancement in our key ability (DPS).

Perhaps make a few targeted AoE dots?

Oh god no :brow: I cannot think of any advantage of doing this apart from being able to "quad"-kite with DoTs :roll: - Sorry Antihelei :hug:


-----------------------------------


Other issues / thoughts I have on the class


Magic DoTs
An DoT in the magic line would be nice to see, as some zones do not alow the use of more than one DoT spell;

For example

Fire Grotto / Red Sun mines - here our only option is to use a poison DoT as our fire DoT is point blank resisted and the disease line has a to long duration to be effective. (Mobs dead before even 1/3 of the DoTs damage has been inflicted, same with splurt)

Cmal - Same as above however transpose fire and poision
Planes etc ....

I think we may have a case here as other caster/DPS classes use burst damage, ie a wizard can pick a weakness in a mob fire/cold/magic and spam that same spell until the mob is dead. However our DoTs do not stack - therefore we cannot do this, which drasticly reduces our DPS in several zones.

Implant a small resist debuff on the spell if required, to stop the spell being stacked by two Necros on the same mob to keep raid encounters balanced.

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Snare
Frankly I think these give us a great deal of flexiblity. I switch between the 29/59/and 64 snares constantly depending on what I am doing. Just because a spell is level 29 does not mean it should rot in your spell book post 60. The issue I do have is the casting time on the 59/64 snares and would like to see the casting time reduced from 6 seconds to 5 seconds. (As the mob is usually out of range by the time the spell finishes casting )

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Hand and Spirit of Kaezul
As mentioned by the OP these are nigh on useless, even more so as they are tagged as 2 level 65 relic spells. Please upgrade or demote these to level 61->64 spells

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Pet Slumber / Wake the Dead
These AA's make me want to cry - but every class has some bad apples I guess.

 

[FalconKyule]

b.) The idea of critical dots is being toyed with, however it would be adding dot crits to nuke crit chance AA. But we would have to look into other class balance before we do that (e.g. shamans!).

As the above would unbalance the SHM/DRU classes, could this not be tagged onto "Vampiric Lore" instead (Passive level 65 required AA that provides a chance of landing a critical lifetap) yes, the AA is shared with the SK class - however I dont think it would unbalance SK's as the DoT spells they do have are pretty weak anyway.

I'm confused as to how this would unbalance Dru/Sham if they are affected equally. Also I'm not sure how it's so hard to put them in game. I know this will sound so so so much easier than it would be to do... but can't you just bring over the Omens AA's without bringing anything else from Omens? Crit Dots are already there.

Each class seems to have a huge boost to their key ability(s) from AA skills apart from Necros. The DPS of a level 65 0 AA Necro compared to a maxed AA Necro is almost identical, we have no advancement in our key ability (DPS).

well said.

Other issues / thoughts I have on the class


Magic DoTs
An DoT in the magic line would be nice to see, as some zones do not alow the use of more than one DoT spell;

intersting... but Hand of Kaezul is from the magic line.. at least it checks against MR and not PR and so forth. I know it's hard to get unless you wanna stick to Vexing Mordinia while soloing.

For example

Fire Grotto / Red Sun mines - here our only option is to use a poison DoT as our fire DoT is point blank resisted and the disease line has a to long duration to be effective. (Mobs dead before even 1/3 of the DoTs damage has been inflicted, same with splurt)

I see you're talking from a grouping standpoint and not a solo standpoint. in group cases.... just use one or two dots that are your fastest acting while lifetapping/nuking once a fight. Easy on the mana... easy on the group.....

Or if you are talking solo... then pat yourself ont he back and say 'Hey, that disease dot sure lasts a long while.... gives me time to get back some mana while I wait to cast that one again!' Less spells cast during a fight = less mana used = happier necro. Efficiency.

I think we may have a case here as other caster/DPS classes use burst damage, ie a wizard can pick a weakness in a mob fire/cold/magic and spam that same spell until the mob is dead. However our DoTs do not stack - therefore we cannot do this, which drasticly reduces our DPS in several zones.

But we do have multiple DoTs in our arsenal.... just choose a lineup and adapt to the situation. We necros are quite versatile. And I dunno how they have the multiple necro dot stacking going, which I think is what you are talking about, but if such is the case then on a raid necros are even more limited and the mob dies slower. I don't even know if on SoD they allow one necro to pour all the dots he has onto one mob while soloing, I haven't had enough time to get that high to test it personally.

Implant a small resist debuff on the spell if required, to stop the spell being stacked by two Necros on the same mob to keep raid encounters balanced.

this is the exact opposite of what should be suggested. Multiple Necros should be able to stack dots. Multiple Wizards can use the same nuke at the same time over and over and over. Shamans and Druids, too, should be allowed to stack their dots as well. Even though a single caster could not have the same dot more than once on a mob just like normal. This would require the slight retuning of some raid encounters.

Anything else is just silly and makes no sense, even from a RP view.

EXAMPLE - Necro_1 injects Poor_Subject with Poison in his leg while Necro_2 injects the same Poison but applies it to the arm. Same poison but with a double dose, even in the real world, will kill faster.
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Snare
Frankly I think these give us a great deal of flexiblity. I switch between the 29/59/and 64 snares constantly depending on what I am doing. Just because a spell is level 29 does not mean it should rot in your spell book post 60. The issue I do have is the casting time on the 59/64 snares and would like to see the casting time reduced from 6 seconds to 5 seconds. (As the mob is usually out of range by the time the spell finishes casting )

I already have a thread about this - here



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Pet Slumber / Wake the Dead
These AA's make me want to cry - but every class has some bad apples I guess.

Slumbering Minion/Pet slumber is completely and utterly useless. To be brutally honest... it's the worst AA I've ever seen or even heard suggested. Ever.

Wake the Dead... meh. It's fun to toy around with.

Ex Animo

 

[Raherin]

Slumbering Minion/Pet slumber is completely and utterly useless. To be brutally honest... it's the worst AA I've ever seen or even heard suggested. Ever.

Slumbering minion is actually quite nice. It lowers downtime, especially if your pet gets hurt alot during fights. *hint hint necro pets*


I used to use slumbering minion alot, and even for a necro, since their mana regen is excellent, having their pet heal really fast after fights is quite handy, and would help lowering downtime. So I honestly don't see what's so bad about it, perhaps it's just play style.

 

[tekaskeeperoftheages]

a.) Critical DoT AA - give necromancers a chance to do the same kind of critical damage on their mana efficient spells that all the other int caster classes get. To go along with this, remove some of the lifetap crit AA's, changing them over to DoT crit aa's

Each class seems to have a huge boost to their key ability(s) from AA skills apart from Necros. The DPS of a level 65 0 AA Necro compared to a maxed AA Necro is almost identical, we have no advancement in our key ability (DPS).



/signed mages and wiz's with maxed AA benefit by criting like mad, and additionally mage pets can nuke(relic necro pet dot is 25 dmg for 4 tics omFG?!) and other stuff and I hear something about wiz familars having a chance to nuke for as much as the wiz does? aka do more dmg then a necro pet could do in like 5 battles on a for example, elds entrance mob with a decent grp. While necros have what, a few cooldowns and crit chance on DD lifetaps? My largest lifeburn has been 7k, something a wiz could do in 2 normal crit nukes (not ultimate primal w/e) Additionally while necro crit nukes do increase in chance they do not increase in damage like the spell casting fury AA does, screwed again!
Maybe at least a AA that increases dot damage and stacks with aff enchance items? and please not by 1.001%.

With the taking away of mana pump spells we have become almost completly useless on raids. Dmf being our only group buff has its very limited purposes such as poi resist being needed in dungeons that actually allow lev. Mind wrack seems to have some value on raids now if a necro or 2 is placed in a group of clerics but its not essential like a sham is for slow.
So, our support spells (decources) seems to be non essential, our dps weak and therefore our class not in the slightest way important.


Oh and for you Canadians, vote conservative.

 

[FalconKyule]

Slumbering Minion/Pet slumber is completely and utterly useless. To be brutally honest... it's the worst AA I've ever seen or even heard suggested. Ever.

Slumbering minion is actually quite nice. It lowers downtime, especially if your pet gets hurt alot during fights. *hint hint necro pets*


I used to use slumbering minion alot, and even for a necro, since their mana regen is excellent, having their pet heal really fast after fights is quite handy, and would help lowering downtime. So I honestly don't see what's so bad about it, perhaps it's just play style.

a pet heal spell also helps downtime. it actually helps a lot more than most people think. But as I said before I haven't gotten high enough to test out some of the AA's myself. Perhaps SLumbering minion won't be so bad if I saw it working.

I'm not sorry if I come off as a bit arrogant or overbearing, it's just part of my personality.

Also I'm not sure how many people on here ever played a necro over on live from 1 all the way up without twinking... hell even with twinking so long as you learn the skills. I have played live for a long time, over 2 years... well 3 if you count my absence in the last year and I played a necro nearlythe entire time. My highest lvl alt was around lvl 36 and only 10 days /played on him if that tells you anything about how much I played my necro. I know them inside and out. Their weakness, their strengths. I like SoD a lot but it seems necros are getting shafted, just like on live. I know that SoD and live are two different entities but they share the same fundamentals and mechanics. Necros can get a few things changed and not upset the 'balance' that everyone is always so rabid about. To quote a friend from a different board '

thats what i meant with mobs AI.

verant invented a game in 1999 and had honestly no clue, how this will work.

we players saw that you can split mobs with fd and kite them around and we did it, of course. brad already said, that this was never intended, it was a player invented game mechanics, so to say.

and exactly this makes a good game , imho. nowadays, devs like to control everything to just worship the god of balance. and this ruined eq2 even before launch day.

micromanagement of game mechanics by the devs is the ruin of all fun!
in eq1 the classes have so much abilities, that you never can foresee tactics players will invent to kill something which was never intended to kill it this way. and there is no way back. ok, they nerfed something, but some basics are unnerfable. thats the difference between eq1 and all so called 2nd gen games.

if i myself as a nec like to do the impossible or my guild like to, we discuss on our board, compile ideas, read forums, ask friends, try and wipe until we got a method to do it. in newer games the devs have ensured, that you cant do the non intended impossible. but exactly doing the impossible is the kick, which makes you stay and play.

Let the bold lettering show the point of that, although the entire thing is something a lot of developers should take into heart.

 

[Anatole]

but an actual healing spell similar to what live uses.

This was done on live.

this is something of a hot issue on live(although on live... necros don't even have a mez other than Screaming Terror)

This has been talked about over on live a lot.

I may not have played on SoD for long but I have played a necro on live for a very long time.

Also I'm not sure how many people on here ever played a necro over on live from 1 all the way up without twinking

I have played live for a long time, over 2 years

I like SoD a lot but it seems necros are getting shafted, just like on live.

I tend to think that it's far healthier to see SoD as a game itself, seperate to Live. Might help you to do the same.

 

[Raherin]

a pet heal spell also helps downtime. it actually helps a lot more than most people think. But as I said before I haven't gotten high enough to test out some of the AA's myself. Perhaps SLumbering minion won't be so bad if I saw it working.

I'm not sorry if I come off as a bit arrogant or overbearing, it's just part of my personality.

I didn't think you came off that way. A pet heal is another way to avoid downtime, but it does cost mana. Basically, I just let my pet tank and heal as little as possible, and when I'm done fighting I slumber my pet while I med for a little mana. Usually you would have to med for few seconds after fights anyways.

 

[Bonk84]

I still say that the two relics hand and spirit of kaezul are nearly worthless and cheat the necro out of a good relic spot. I would rather the spells be combined into an upgrade for Zefeer's Theft of Vitae, which does dot damage on the mob and returns HP to you and your group including pets.

Adding in that necro dot damage could crit would be nice. I'm not talking about the entire spell, I'm just talking about now and then a tick (meaning all the dots active on a mob) would crit. Let this crit % be based on par with the average mage crit doing X damage so they are about the same.

Replace vampiric lore with the above AA. vampiric lore gives us increased chance to crit lifetaps, but in a grouping situation extra agro from a high end xp mob = quick death if you don't have a good on-the-ball healer.

Give necro's a magic line of spells beyond splurt that essentially do the same thing (low damage at first, then heavy damage near the end of the spell.

just some thoughts

 

[FalconKyule]

a pet heal spell also helps downtime. it actually helps a lot more than most people think. But as I said before I haven't gotten high enough to test out some of the AA's myself. Perhaps SLumbering minion won't be so bad if I saw it working.

I'm not sorry if I come off as a bit arrogant or overbearing, it's just part of my personality.

I didn't think you came off that way. A pet heal is another way to avoid downtime, but it does cost mana. Basically, I just let my pet tank and heal as little as possible, and when I'm done fighting I slumber my pet while I med for a little mana. Usually you would have to med for few seconds after fights anyways.

heh we just have two different play styles. =) and that's cool.
I just like to keep my pet healthy at all times, especially if I am in a dungeon soloing when it's not possible to kite a mob properly. So that is another reason I suggest a good pet heal spell and not an AA that is only good between fights. What if the mob your pet is tanking is killing your pet faster than these lifetap dot pet heal spell can heal him? I only made the suggestion because that is a very possible situation and a pet heal costing mana.... even if it is just 250 or so.... is very negligible. I view necros as having two mana bars, their real mana bar and then their health. And our Lich line is what helps supply our mana in a fast manner.... so 250 mana or so is not going to make much of a difference.

Honestly the only real problem I see with necros on this server is our snare spells and lack of good pet healing. Everything else is rather well put together, even the Hand of Kaezul is ok, maybe not relic worthy, but it's fine every other way.

Adding in that necro dot damage could crit would be nice. I'm not talking about the entire spell, I'm just talking about now and then a tick (meaning all the dots active on a mob) would crit. Let this crit % be based on par with the average mage crit doing X damage so they are about the same.

Crit DoTs are pretty nice and they do work the way you want to suggest them, where they have a certain % to crit on each tick. But it's up to the developers here to figure out how to implement them, or if they even want to. They exist already but I don't know anything about transfering them over otherwise I'd be all over Wiz trying to help put stuff into this game.

vampiric lore gives us increased chance to crit lifetaps, but in a grouping situation extra agro from a high end xp mob = quick death if you don't have a good on-the-ball healer.

am I the only necro here that knows and uses our FD aggro management/defense mechanism?

Give necro's a magic line of spells beyond splurt that essentially do the same thing (low damage at first, then heavy damage near the end of the spell.

that is an awesome suggestion. Splurt was always a fun spell and it was a sad day when it went out of my rotation. An upgrade would rule.

 

[Wiz]

I am just going to chip in with the quick comment that DoTs will be made to crit (critical ticks) from the same AAs/focuses that normal nukes do. Affliction Enhancement will be lowered appropritely to Damage Increment levels though.

 

[Bernat]

I am just going to chip in with the quick comment that DoTs will be made to crit (critical ticks) from the same AAs/focuses that normal nukes do. Affliction Enhancement will be lowered appropritely to Damage Increment levels though.

That will hit the low level dotter. Have that in mind when lowering AE focus effects. (Even at 65, my shammy didn't plan on getting nuke crit any time soon.)

 

[Wiz]

I am just going to chip in with the quick comment that DoTs will be made to crit (critical ticks) from the same AAs/focuses that normal nukes do. Affliction Enhancement will be lowered appropritely to Damage Increment levels though.

That will hit the low level dotter. Have that in mind when lowering AE focus effects. (Even at 65, my shammy didn't plan on getting nuke crit any time soon.)

Necros will gain an innate chance to proc with dots like wizards get with nukes, anyone else can survive a slight hit to their DoT DPS.

 

[Haphesto]

Will seafire lockets affect dot crit chances?