Necromancers were once quite average. Our advantage was a pretty good mana regen (not as good as a shaman's), but as stated our DoTs were about on par with Wizards for damage:mana but they took longer to affect. Our pets were extremely lame, and tanked like an undereqipped warrior of about half their level. They also missed all the time. We were pretty good at soloing, but a couple classes could surpass us, especially in the right circumstances.
Then, HP regen got nerfed and our "pretty good mana regen" as well. It was dangerous for my Iksar (+regen) with a Heart of Mielech (+regen) to solo normal dark blue mobs with Arch Lich (not even the final lich spell), and it got somewhat ridiculous with the HP regen nerf, although it wasn't really serious. We might had to lifetap a little more (loss of mana). We're still taken in groups if no one else is really available, and we're useful in raids so clerics don't run OOM and the tank doesn't die.
Now, we can no longer give our mana to others, our main raid function. I'm not defending this function, but hey, it was one. For what? A 10% mob weakening effect. That's great if you're the only class that can cast dots, but I can see with shaman (with superior mana regen) and other necros, a raid mob hitting that 10% weakness pretty fast, even without you being present. So now you can cast a couple dots on the mob and wait ... OR you could be a wizard and cast nuke over nuke until you run out of mana by the end of a fight, doing several times more damage to the mob.
Currently, I guess you can see the Necro as a DPS / debuff class, only the "main debuff class", the shaman, can probably do the same debuff job as you can with his own dots (I'm not sure how much damage you have to be doing to a mob for it to reach the 10% weak cap, but I can't see it being a whole lot or the effect would be useless in group situations). Our DPS is definitely quite second rate compared to rogues, rangers, wizards, magicians, monks. While we may still be alright at soloing, we've definitely lost a lot in the area we were lacking earlier, which is group and raid friendliness.
Now, I was assuming that the necro class was going to get something in exchange for having their main raid function eliminated (besides the dot weakening effect which presents the stacking issue I mentioned earlier) but from Wiz's reply: "Give me parses and we can start talking changes."
Changes need to be made. We are not as useful as we should be. We cannot do a fraction of the DPS or debuff nearly as well as other classes. Even the bard, who is also somewhat of "jack of all trades" class has some very important specific roles.
Also, I know I've mentioned this ever since I joined the server, but I figured I would again, our pets are useless. They must have a dexterity score of about 20 as they miss more than hit, and there's no way I can let my pet tank a DB at ANY LEVEL and that's even with a Pet Health V item. At higher levels when mobs are doing hundreds of damage, our pet begins to proc a 40 damage lifetap, which is way too little too late to be of any use. Also, our spell drops are pathetic, as bad as our pets are I still haven't even seen my level 63 pet for sale for months. Many of our spells are just not guaranteed to a necromancer which I don't think should be the case, I don't think you should have to go through 63-65 without your recent pet just because it's designed so it's nearly impossible to obtain.
But I digress, as it stands now, the necromancer class does need a serious looking at, with or without parses. It is fairly evident that we were never close to being an overpowered class and now that we've gotten chopped short a bit recently, we do need a reevaluation.
