No class should be balanced around one AA
- Thread starter Boehm
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Boehm
Dalayan Elder
Yes, I think that a tome that gives necromancers a mod rod like, group ability is a useful thing for a class which is basically carried in most on tier xp groups. Only shining on content where either the group is under tier for the content, or on reaching a named with health allowing a 5 minute + fight.
Your suggestions for mana incrementing abilities are so many and varied that I, and I doubt any else, can keep track of what you are talking about.
Yes, it is amazing, but she was not talking about an innate return, which was your addition. My actual opinion is this;
1. Crit mana return for a class tome would be great
2. Mana bloom or what ever aoe mana tap for leechstorm would be great.
3. Burst lich would be great
4. etc + mana would be great.
But;
1. We do not know how the current changes will play out on bosses with large health. At least I haven't parsed enough to be sure about final suggestions. The addition of an additional dot tick to claws of the chill is significant, but who knows at this point.
2. At some point, we are overflowing with so much mana that + mana 1 more is functionally useless because we are already applying all the dots we can forever. At which point, we could "smooth dps" or whatever the euphemism of the day is, to make a suggestion to ameliorate a spot in the current changes where we take a gut punch, if there is one. But oops we blew our wad on mana.
3. The point of this thread is was not to make necromancer great at everything. But force a vision of the class as a sustained caster dps class on the dev/adms of the server which I believe was completely lacking. My vision that we be a real sustained dps class, who because of its mechanics will be mediocre on low health fights, good on mid timed fights, but be AMAZING on long duration fights. Which fits the class role as an insurance class. Burst dot dps does not fit that model.
I saw breaking the dependency on festering curse as the means to this end. Because now the class has to stand on its own two feet. I think we still have things that need change.
I think we need more mana, but if we get it I would like it to scale across the tiers so the class is consistent. If this is enough, then more + mana mechanics are not necessary or at least can scale more moderately.
I think Zaela's suggestion is amazingly good and an option. I think a burst lich scaling on hp is also amazing and an option. The point of my commenting in the thread was to keep it from going down more mana rabbit holes. Not that what she proposed was anything less then spectacular.
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Boehm
Dalayan Elder
It came across as hebephrenic garbage to me. I also dont pay much attention to wizards.
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Animand
Dalayan Elder
Fair enough. But I figured I could translate it for you so we could wouldn't get off track from fixing up Necromancers. Let me know if you need any math done.
donfolstar3
Dalayan Master
What did you expect? That the NEC DoT damage gets increased across the board (Wich allready happened), yet festering curse remains unchanged for the time being? Really?syduck:
I expect that Festering will be changed soon and was sharing that information by posting a pic since no one had mentioned it in this thread yet. "...hooray?" was meant to mean hesitant optimism not "fuck the devs", sorry for the confusion.
@Boehm
1. Still not seeing anything to suggest how Strands of Life being more reliable/steady is a bad thing.
2. Yes, I have given many suggestions for mana abilities- most of which you just listed so they can't be that hard to keep track of. It seems you agree sustainability is the way for the necro class to go forward, so what is wrong with throwing out +mana ideas until one sticks?
3. "or"
4. That "or" idea of mine for Zaela's crit return idea fits yours, and others, stated desire for something that "scales across the tiers" much more than a tome, just sayin.
5. Yes, eventually +mana mechanics would be redundant and useless. Right now that point is so far away for long fights that even if innate crit return AND burst lich AND more reliable Strands AND Lichstorm were implemented most necros would not hit the wall. Considering most people in this thread are only advocating one or two** of those changes and I'd be amazed if we got 2 this seems like a far off hypothetical at worst.
**Currently I favor, as this thread has evolved, an innate mana return on crits on high level spells (or replacing Festering Curse with this ability, anything that would happen before tomes) and smoothing Strands of Life one way or another. Necro-canni doesn't really do it for me and seems too bursty when everything else is screaming sustained and I have come to accept that most classes have one terrible AA that will never change as some kind of weird SoD idiosyncrasy.
Silosobi
Dalayan Pious Diety
From the parses I have seen, a 10%/rank crit mana return tome and a super lich that adds maybe 15-20% of a necros mana would have the class looking pretty good. The two effects would work synergisticly, giving them more mana and then allowing that mana to go further.
I'm pretty sure that if necros could max stack dots constantly they would out dps almost everyone.
I'm pretty sure that if necros could max stack dots constantly they would out dps almost everyone.
I didn't see this thread before, so I posted a new thread and someone linked it to me. I was a bit upset to find that FC wasn't working anymore and wanted to find out why. I have to disagree with what I think the OP was stating. I don't feel like my class revolves around having Festering Curse. I do pretty substantial dps in my guild's raids and really only use FC on the longer lasting boss fights (in which case, there are raids that I don't use it at all).
*The following is pretty much copied and pasted from my post*
I think what I'm most concerned about is getting something lame and entirely useless in replacement for it. Perhaps if a discussion could be opened up with the necro community about how to replace it (I wouldn't want a dev that's never played a necro or doesn't understand a necro's mechanics solely deciding how to replace it). Personally, if I was offered the opportunity to make a suggestion and couldn't suggest to just give back Festering Curse, I would probably make two suggestions, one for a passive aa and one for an activated aa.
For active, perhaps bring back the Festering Curse as an AA dot. Beef up the damage, decrease the cool down, keep it unresistable, and give it a set duration or max damage.
For passive, perhaps change it to an AA that increases our total dot damage. Not critical damage, but overall damage and adding a negative resist check. If I remember correctly, it cost 9 AA's to purchase Festering Curse. Could make this passive AA in three ranks, with a percentage increase to dot damage and lower resist check with each rank. For instance: ranks would cost 2, 3, and 4 AA's consecutively. For rank 1: increase dot damage 5% and decrease resist chance 2%. For rank 2: increase dot damage 10% and decrease resist chance 3%. For rank 3: increase dot damage 25% and decrease resist chance 5%.
I should make a disclaimer here that I didn't do any of the math and was really just throwing numbers out there for the percentages of dot damage increase and resist decrease.
I did play EQ and dreadfully remember my (often) primary roll on raids being a mana battery for healers. If I wanted to play a main utility class I would have chosen enchanter, bard, or shaman. I am really hoping putting necros into that role again is NOT on the options table for replacing the Festering Curse AA. Not that I would be opposed to having an AA that would be something similar to paragon or super lich, but not as a replacement for Festering Curse.
*The following is pretty much copied and pasted from my post*
I think what I'm most concerned about is getting something lame and entirely useless in replacement for it. Perhaps if a discussion could be opened up with the necro community about how to replace it (I wouldn't want a dev that's never played a necro or doesn't understand a necro's mechanics solely deciding how to replace it). Personally, if I was offered the opportunity to make a suggestion and couldn't suggest to just give back Festering Curse, I would probably make two suggestions, one for a passive aa and one for an activated aa.
For active, perhaps bring back the Festering Curse as an AA dot. Beef up the damage, decrease the cool down, keep it unresistable, and give it a set duration or max damage.
For passive, perhaps change it to an AA that increases our total dot damage. Not critical damage, but overall damage and adding a negative resist check. If I remember correctly, it cost 9 AA's to purchase Festering Curse. Could make this passive AA in three ranks, with a percentage increase to dot damage and lower resist check with each rank. For instance: ranks would cost 2, 3, and 4 AA's consecutively. For rank 1: increase dot damage 5% and decrease resist chance 2%. For rank 2: increase dot damage 10% and decrease resist chance 3%. For rank 3: increase dot damage 25% and decrease resist chance 5%.
I should make a disclaimer here that I didn't do any of the math and was really just throwing numbers out there for the percentages of dot damage increase and resist decrease.
I did play EQ and dreadfully remember my (often) primary roll on raids being a mana battery for healers. If I wanted to play a main utility class I would have chosen enchanter, bard, or shaman. I am really hoping putting necros into that role again is NOT on the options table for replacing the Festering Curse AA. Not that I would be opposed to having an AA that would be something similar to paragon or super lich, but not as a replacement for Festering Curse.
The issue that it is (presumably) over powered? So the guilds that are t-10 plus have had the opportunity to utilize such a (presumably) over powered aa and the rest of us gaining ground through the tiers won't be able to once we attempt to get through those tiers?
I digress though, my guild has only just broken into tier 7. I did use it on the longer, harder fights. I liked the AA, it was a great tool. I didn't see it as being something that made my class.
Dinadass
Dalayan Pious Diety
Necro DOTs as a whole were buffed to compensate for its removal, which (if balanced correctly) would be a positive change for your class overall. Whether or not they were buffed enough, I do not know.
The issue as far as I recall was that Necro DPS was excessively dependent on FC to keep up to par in raid situations, and it was skewing their balance. Several raid-level DoT spells were buffed (archaic pretty significantly iirc) when FC went out to redress the balance somewhat and improve performance in general.
I think I've already gone into it earlier in this thread but no other class is dependent on an active AA for their DPS the way Necros were. Even ignoring the overly long reuse time, FC was dependent on a very specific sort of situation to be effective (long fights against a target that is attackable from the start and doesn't depop at any point) and in that situation it was a little too effective and was probably standing in the way of Necro DPS being better in general (crazy high parses are ones that get spread around and remembered, not the average, more representative ones). Several suggested replacements for damaging active effects would have had similar issues, though in those cases they would mostly be skewing Necro DPS toward quick fights against lone targets and would have been bursty in a way which doesn't really fit with how Necros really work.
It could come back as a DoT maybe, but what kind of DoT? How much reuse? How big should it be? Would it be skewed to specific situations? If it's single target and can only be used once per fight it'll probably run into the problems above. On the other hand if it's something you can use at will it would have to be pretty small.
I guess the AA could be made into just a passive thing but it's kind of a waste of the active button. Also we can't change how many ranks an AA has. It'd have to be 1 rank for 9 AAs no matter what.
I think I've already gone into it earlier in this thread but no other class is dependent on an active AA for their DPS the way Necros were. Even ignoring the overly long reuse time, FC was dependent on a very specific sort of situation to be effective (long fights against a target that is attackable from the start and doesn't depop at any point) and in that situation it was a little too effective and was probably standing in the way of Necro DPS being better in general (crazy high parses are ones that get spread around and remembered, not the average, more representative ones). Several suggested replacements for damaging active effects would have had similar issues, though in those cases they would mostly be skewing Necro DPS toward quick fights against lone targets and would have been bursty in a way which doesn't really fit with how Necros really work.
It could come back as a DoT maybe, but what kind of DoT? How much reuse? How big should it be? Would it be skewed to specific situations? If it's single target and can only be used once per fight it'll probably run into the problems above. On the other hand if it's something you can use at will it would have to be pretty small.
I guess the AA could be made into just a passive thing but it's kind of a waste of the active button. Also we can't change how many ranks an AA has. It'd have to be 1 rank for 9 AAs no matter what.
Boehm
Dalayan Elder
No, that it became patently obvious that in cases where either FC was unusable because the fight mechanics precluded it ( a lot of end game fights) or because it was down, necromancer dps was terrible. Like 40-50% behind other dps terrible and running out of mana before the other dps casters. That we were balanced around it should be self-evident, or we would not have received a 30% increase to the 4 primary raid dots and an extra tick in claws of the chill. So now you do more dps across the other 99% of the game, which doesn't involve raid bosses, more efficiently.
There are still issues with the class. Among these;
1. It's still 10-15%, perhaps more DPS too low.
2. The sustain from base mana generation is still inadequate.
3. AOD is stealing the hand and spirit line, which is garbage considering the expense of those spell lines, and the immense amount of trouble of getting Runic2 and its hideous cost. Making these useless for anything but soloing.
4. That the resist lowering spell for magic resist in insidious elements is a level 52 spell, which is only worth casting because of it and barely so.
5. Yes, the AA is still a placeholder.
There is further, no necromancer community. There aren't enough raiding necromancers to make one. Also, the issues with the class only become obvious after T10 and beyond, it becomes clear we missed a balance pass because no one knew how to use a parser when necs dots didn't show up on parses.
Changing a couple of the variables above could make it a great class again, rather then just an existing one. For example, having more mana and a splurt line follow on, or a level 9-tick magic dot etc... But the devs say dps is not equal, which basically means they oil squeeky wheels. So if you want to be better you are going to have to find enough necs to whine about it like wizards, druids, and mages do. But if you look at mages 5 out of the top 5 still play, 4 out of 5 top druids still play, 4 out of 5 top 5 wizards still play. For necros, only Shuks still plays. Good luck.
( this was for necro not zaela, who is dead on)
There are still issues with the class. Among these;
1. It's still 10-15%, perhaps more DPS too low.
2. The sustain from base mana generation is still inadequate.
3. AOD is stealing the hand and spirit line, which is garbage considering the expense of those spell lines, and the immense amount of trouble of getting Runic2 and its hideous cost. Making these useless for anything but soloing.
4. That the resist lowering spell for magic resist in insidious elements is a level 52 spell, which is only worth casting because of it and barely so.
5. Yes, the AA is still a placeholder.
There is further, no necromancer community. There aren't enough raiding necromancers to make one. Also, the issues with the class only become obvious after T10 and beyond, it becomes clear we missed a balance pass because no one knew how to use a parser when necs dots didn't show up on parses.
Changing a couple of the variables above could make it a great class again, rather then just an existing one. For example, having more mana and a splurt line follow on, or a level 9-tick magic dot etc... But the devs say dps is not equal, which basically means they oil squeeky wheels. So if you want to be better you are going to have to find enough necs to whine about it like wizards, druids, and mages do. But if you look at mages 5 out of the top 5 still play, 4 out of 5 top druids still play, 4 out of 5 top 5 wizards still play. For necros, only Shuks still plays. Good luck.
( this was for necro not zaela, who is dead on)
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@Zaela
If it came back as a dot, it would have to be something significantly strong. And if not as strong, then something with a significant decrease in cool down. Ultimately, it would have to be both. It would have to, because it would have to be worth the AA cost.
@Velleity
I suppose I don't have an argument being that I'm not tier 10+. I don't know about other guilds and how many raiding necros they have. In my guild, there are three and I am the least geared of us. Perhaps I don't know how class defining Festering Curse has been for necros at t10+, but I know it hasn't been the case where we currently are in raiding. I'm not an SoD game designer or admin, but I don't think the game should revolve around only those that are higher tiered. I can, however, agree that having a higher level, long duration magic based dot would be nice (such as an upgraded splurt line); but I doubt that would happen. But even that wouldn't be as cool as having a spell that wears off when you FD. Saved alot of quick rez recoveries that way. Sure, I burned FC, but then again, it wasn't class changing for me, so it didn't really matter.
Anyway, as stated in my first post, I don't see FC as being class defining (yes, I know, I'm not tier 10 or higher so I don't know how it affects that content). My only real concerns are that if it's getting replace that it happen soon with something that isn't lame or worthless and that necros don't go back to the "mana battery" role that we sometimes were in live.
As it stands right now, I have 9 spent AA's on something I can no longer use. The quicker a GOOD replacement is decided on, the better.
If it came back as a dot, it would have to be something significantly strong. And if not as strong, then something with a significant decrease in cool down. Ultimately, it would have to be both. It would have to, because it would have to be worth the AA cost.
@Velleity
I suppose I don't have an argument being that I'm not tier 10+. I don't know about other guilds and how many raiding necros they have. In my guild, there are three and I am the least geared of us. Perhaps I don't know how class defining Festering Curse has been for necros at t10+, but I know it hasn't been the case where we currently are in raiding. I'm not an SoD game designer or admin, but I don't think the game should revolve around only those that are higher tiered. I can, however, agree that having a higher level, long duration magic based dot would be nice (such as an upgraded splurt line); but I doubt that would happen. But even that wouldn't be as cool as having a spell that wears off when you FD. Saved alot of quick rez recoveries that way. Sure, I burned FC, but then again, it wasn't class changing for me, so it didn't really matter.
Anyway, as stated in my first post, I don't see FC as being class defining (yes, I know, I'm not tier 10 or higher so I don't know how it affects that content). My only real concerns are that if it's getting replace that it happen soon with something that isn't lame or worthless and that necros don't go back to the "mana battery" role that we sometimes were in live.
As it stands right now, I have 9 spent AA's on something I can no longer use. The quicker a GOOD replacement is decided on, the better.
Obscenitor
Dalayan Elder
I would ditch the argument that you spent 9 AA's on something so it has to be good. There are several high cost AAs that see very little to no use for several classes. Necros are not alone in that. I think the issue at hand, and what Velleity is addressing, is the fact that there are several holes for Necros. Not just the one still left by FC being removed.
Personally, I would not expect Necros to parse as well as wizards, that would be silly as they get neat things like FD, rez, and mez.
Dinadass
Dalayan Pious Diety
Yeah but wizards get ports and rbow. And class X gets Y. etc.
I think if it was a fight with just one single target that you DPS for a long time, necros should parse even with wizards/rogues since that's what they're supposed to specialize in... sustained DPS. Anything with AOE or lots of target switches would probably favor other classes.
There's so many high end tomes/spells/items that shake up the pre-established roles of classes that it's really hard to keep things like DPS hierarchy straight though.
Boehm
Dalayan Elder
1. That you are arguing for it's reinstatement so vehemently is proof to me you know well how stupid powerful it was.
2. End game is the best time to see where classes are lacking. Because all things considered, we are more equivalent in gear and tome investments then at any other time of the game. Also, passing but significant variances in dps from codices of power become moot. I had 3 cop in T7 and I OWNED the other dps, because I did 15% more base damage then they did. That 15% base dps, however, was not reflective of my class but of the investment I made in it.
And when I say that a disparity became obvious, I mean it became smack me in the face obvious that necs were utterly lacking without festering curse. There is no way that this lack did not exist in T7, it just wasn't obvious.
3. I am now going to tell you how to play your class. FC did not wear off when you FDed. It wore off when if your were FDed at a server tick. In fact, if you timed the fd for the server tick using some flag like say dots, you could fd have 5 seconds to spare to get back up. Also, the fd precedes the animation such that if you control-s at a little more then half way through the animation you have a full aggro drop, except in cases of high server lag. Once you get this timing down, you can do it even under boss attack and hardly ever lose the spell, because the danger of loss area in time is minute.
4. No one is suggesting that necs become mana batteries, except wizards and no pays much attention to them now anyway.
And @ bango, baloney. all those things are irrelevant in a raid. I don't do enough damage to pull aggro in raids, several classes can rez with a reagent including wizards, and raid mezzing lol. The only thing that would justify it is if Zaela's point about dot weakening is accurate. As she has always been forthright, there is no reason to doubt her. That said, I would still argue that considering ttmax dps and predictability of damage, we should be competitive dps on high health single targets.
But yes, we should suck in raids because those three things we get to make us suck less in groups should be held against us in raids.
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Obscenitor
Dalayan Elder
I never ever said you should "suck in raids" all I said was you should not do as much DPS as a class that is ENTIRELY ONE DIMENSIONAL. For this same reason I think Rogues should do more DPS than Rangers and Monks (which as of late is not the fact -- Kedrin can out parse Reinhardt pretty considerably).
Moraelintz
Dalayan Elder
I somewhat agree with you bango, but at the same time I think it shoudl be situational. A necro should be able to keep up the full efficiency of dots much longer than a mage or wizard can nuke. Thus in longer fights the necro should be able to keep up sustained dps longer than wiz/mag can. I think on shorter fight where burst dps is key wizards are and should be king but on endurance fights there should be no class that comes close to a necro. That is sort of what FC did, but now necros mana efficiency is just not up to par from what I can tell. IMO they should be finishing most raid fights with 30-40% more mana than the rest of the raid. Mana shouldnt really be there issue it should be is this fight long enough for my sustained dps to matter.
Silosobi
Dalayan Pious Diety
Dps balance is a weird issue. Necros suck at exp, yet they are the king of emberflow, no other int caster can do on tier ef. Sure, necros should be good at sustained dps, but at some point all fights are long because everyone has a lot of mana... IDK how it should work. I think if all dps are "equal", then they need to add some more utility to rogues and wizards. The fact that you had to load a box to get to your raid zone or open your ED map is not utility.
Thanks, but with 7+ years of playing a necro, I don't need anyone to tell me how to play a necro.
As far as FC is concerned, meh, I liked it alot. Even though I hate losing it, I don't need it and didn't use it that often. I've gone weeks and never toggle the hotkey for it.
I'm sorry if I confused you, my concern is getting a replacement for the aa's spent that doesn't suck. Not vehemently arguing that FC should be reinstated.
I don't disagree that end game is a great place to see where classes are lacking in any game. Been there, done that, wrote the book you're taking notes from.
@Obscenitor: Yes, yes. Probably every class has those aa's that aren't very useful. How many of those classes have aa's that have place holders because the aa's aren't working due to being taken away?