ince there is no current Necromancer Team Lead, Redh_armor has kindly compiled issues expressed by the community into this presentation. With the help of another team lead, it will be provided to Mythic appropriately.

The March 2004 Team Lead Community Report

1. Overview

The necromancer is a class of contradictions. Part fighter, part mage. Part player, mostly pet. Among the most popular classes, but strongly disliked by many. Fun and challenging for some, but too buggy for others. Impressive in farming parts of the PvE world, but a lightweight in RvR. Feared by melee classes, but a mere trifle to enemy casters. A non-stop ranged killer of yellow con mobs (Deathsight), or a spike-covered, PBAoE bear outlasting reds (Death Servant). Constantly hounded to PL, but shunned from normal groups. Kept by some as farm-bots, but enjoyed by many as our favorite class.

Recent changes, announced or otherwise, plus a list of long-lived bugs have lead to significant player dissatisfaction. Chief among the issues are rapid armor decay, RvR survivability, and surprise changes. We feel that this is a class with great potential and look forward with optimism for helpful changes, and with some concern about reduced utility from adjustment of some class strengths and our ability to play effectively in a post-Frontiers game.

2. Concerns

2.1 RvR survivability

The necromancer is unbalanced in RvR. It may overpower a small melee group, or die quickly when legendary weapons are used. Casters can quickly kill the pet or cause it to suffer maximum duration CC effects. The necro has no way of reducing CC through purge, determination, or sorceror mezz cure via the group panel. Unable to heal pet through the group panel spells also healing classes must choose between using more expensive groupheal/spreadheal spells or letting the necro fall in battle. The best necromancer’s casting delay is at least twice that of a typical well-equipped cloth caster.

2.2 RvR Utility

Necromancers are perceived as adding little to an RvR group and have great difficulty in finding groups. This leads to player frustration, or the use of gimmicks to solo in RvR. Some of these gimmicks such as grouping with a cleric bot are viewed as exploits by other classes, but necros who wish to RvR often feel forced to use a bot, or leave the field.

2.3 Pet Control

Pet control is awkward at best. Pathing problems continue to result in deaths in PvE and RvR. Response to the "here" command is too slow. Erratic pet behavior after a "stay" mode kill can lead to aggro problems. The pet cannot be stopped from attacking a player in range if we cast a spell. The pet can be aggroed like a mob and will leave your selected target to engage its attacker/taunter. Despite clear caster LOS it can be very difficult to position the pet so that it has a valid LOS on target.

2.4 Spell Queuing

The spell queue system makes it very difficult for a necromancer to react to a dynamic situation. If a particular spell is to be cast, it can take up to 11 seconds just to start casting it. The necromancer is wholly dependent on the pet's spell queue and attack cycle in order to attack. All spells and abilities in the spell queue can be overwritten by other spells or abilities. This can trigger the FP, spell or RA timers without ever producing the spell or RA effect.

2.5 PvE Utility and Group Interplay

With the exception of powerlevelling, necros are not commonly sought by groups. In PvE groups they are valued primarily for AF debuff, ABS buff, and power transfer to healers. All of these abilities are in the Deathsight line; emphasizing the Servant and Pain necros problem. Group members cannot perform some common tasks with necros in shade form. The pet cannot be selected and healed from the group window. Shield tanks cannot guard the pet. Fast casting requires a cleric to spend concentration to dex & dex/qui buff both the necro and pet.

2.6 Procs, charges and potions

The necromancers have been denied access to procs and charges in shade form for a long time. This was generally accepted by the players by reasoning that since the necro’s gear did not decay, it was not getting hit, and procs should not fire. Now that our gear is being damaged, the procs should fire as for other casters. Similarly we should have access to charges and potions just like any other class.

2.7 Pet Summoning and Porting

The necromancer is without its pet, and helpless, for at least 20 seconds when he first logs on or ports. After going LD or logging in RvR or wandering mob zones the necro can face certain death upon relogging. So to when porting into certain dungeons. The summoning delay is fair when pet is killed or released. If the highest level pet were auto-summoned, or if the summons were changed to an instant with 20 second delay following death or release, this problem would become small. The Frontiers porting system is of obvious future concern.

2.8 Unanticipated Changes to the Class

No issue has caused more frustration among the necros in the past few months than the introduction of changes without mention in patch notes, and at times, without having been first implemented on Pendragon. To elaborate here would sour the tone of this report.

3. Spec Line Issues

3.1 General

1. The spec lines are unbalanced with over 90% of necro specced 44+ in deathsight. Sight necros solo very well with minimal downtime. This spec line is the most group-friendly.
2. All spec lines would benefit from improved group support tools.
3. The resist rate for lifetap and powertap spells appears to be higher than that of the DD spells of other classes. Taps are the primary attacks of the class.
4. We feel that our spec buffs are too weak to enhance their respective spec lines.
5. We feel too restricted by having to use only one specific pet at level 50. We would like to take advantage of the different pet features such as attack speed, but due to the level cap restrictions only the abomination is survivable in RvR, or death servant play.

3.2 Deathsight

1. The new sound effect for the spec lifetap is very loud and long. It makes it difficult for players to pick out the sound cues they have been used for timing FP. The spec lifetap is typically spammed while the necro waits for the FP timer to reset.

3.3 Death Servant

1. The servant necro is the class most affected by gear decay. This character will typically have paladin-like prolonged melee with a high level mob, or pull groups of lower level mobs to its damage shield and PBAoE attack. Unlike the paladin the pet has very poor block/parry skills and does not have durable plate armor. When sorcerors and cabalists pull pygmies the damage taken by their pets is not transferred to the caster. The net result is extremely fast gear decay.
2. Due to poor pet defense the death servant spec line is very difficult to play without a group or cleric-bot. No class’s viability should be based on the assumed presence of a bot.
3. Our PBAoE spell does approximately 2/3 of normal PB damage with increased cast time and only marginally less power usage.
4. The shade cast DD spells do only 20% more damage than the deathsight lifetap while requiring twice the amount of power.
5. Our HoT spell doesnt last long enough or heal for enough to be considered a viable alternative to using lifetaps or even pure DDs.
6. We feel our damage shield's duration is too short to be adequately used in group situations due largely to the trouble of passing it through the queue in the middle of battle.
7. Power management can be difficult for servant necros. Unlike Deathsight necros they cannot count on powertaps to replenish power after a long fight, and like all necros they cannot use power potions.

3.4 Painworking

1. Painworking is a nearly unplayable primary spec line, and is a weak secondary line. This line deals less damage and takes more time do so than the others while also having no means of self-defense, healing, or ranged attack. Painworking necros are so rare that it is difficult to comment in detail about their problems.
2. The AoE snare's duration, especially after resists, is considered to be too short to be useful in most situations, especially since it breaks mez.

4. New Issues

4.1 Item decay

Melee damage now degrades the necromancer’s gear. Unlike other cloth casters, however, the necro class is a fighter-mage. It is designed to engage opponents toe-to-toe and has no ability to CC and kite. Thus a necromancer’s gear is far more damaged by killing 100 mobs than that of other casters. This issue is critical to Death Servant necros since this class kills primarily with PBAoE and melee attacks. This problem has caused some interesting player responses. These include: never repairing gear except staff and playing with 70% condition items; play mostly naked; acquiring but not leveling artifacts.

4.2 Attack from legendary weapons

Because of the 26% magic damage penalty of the pet vs a level 50 player, legendary weapons have a much larger impact on necros than other players. It also appears that the magic damage of these weapons bypasses some of the high damage absorption that is key to necro survival in RvR.

4.3 Use of legendary weapons

Because of the restriction on the use of alchemical features, the necro cannot employ legendary weapons.

5. Item Issues

5.1 Quickness transfer

Quickness on gear does not transfer to the pet and improve swing speed. This has been reported since December 03, but has not been recognized in patch notes, or grab bag notes.

5.2 Useless stats on class-specific items

The necro epic cap has +quickness. The epic robe and entire Caer Sidi gear suite have procs that are useless to the class. We are therefore denied a benefit given to other classes.

5.3 Non-functioning ToA bonuses

The ToA casting speed, casting range, and attack speed bonuses do not transfer to the pet. ToA spell damage and duration effects do work as expected. Once again we are denied benefits given to other classes.

6. Other Issues

6.1 Impossible or needlessly difficult quests and tasks

Many items cannot be used in shade mode. This was originally implemented for balance/exploit issues, but

1. distance-to-pet checks have been implemented for other abilities,
2. many items have little/no impact on class balance issues (used to trigger quest events, map items, readable scroll items), and
3. requiring 20 seconds of defenselessness and dropping buffs in order to use a potion seems unfair.

The necromancer is effectively denied, or limited in, participation in some standard, ML and artifact quests. Examples are:

• Fall of the Emperor Quest
• Jashan's Brother Artifact Quest
• Master Level 6 Trial 5
• The Lost Treasure Quest.

6.2 Personalizing appearance

Necromancers are completely unable to change the way they look. They must all use the same pet and must all be the same shade. Necromancers would love some way to change the appearance of themselves, or the pet. This would also assist healers in selecting the correct abomination when several are present.

Female character’s are represented by the same shade and pet forms as male characters. At a minimum the top pet should have male and female forms. Players have suggested several female mobs that might be used as the female counterpart to the abomination.

6.3 User Interface

Third party UI mods have improved our understanding of pet status. This ToA feature is much appreciated, but issues remain. The buffs and effects on the pet cannot be delved. The number of pet buffs and effects that can be displayed is too small to allow all positive and negative effects on the pet to be visible to the necro. Necromancers believe that this unique class restriction is unnecessary and would like to be able to have this information if at all possible.

Appendix 1. Bug list

We realize that detailed bug lists are not part of the standard report outline, but have no other means of submitting this list in the absence of an active TL.

A1.1 General bugs

1. The necromancer cannot tell if the pet has proper LOS to the target until he attempts to cast. If LOS check fails then the spell fails, and pet must be quickly switched to passive to avoid its running off to engage.
2. Spells take power from the necro whether they are cast or not due to LOS check, and whether they are on valid targets or not.
3. Casting speed. The necromancer is the slowest caster in the game. Naked and unbuffed the most commonly cast RvR spells delve 3s, but require at least 3.25 seconds to cast. With max gear and buffs the time improves to perhaps 2.3 seconds. It is possible for an opponent to cast three PBAoE spells between two casts by a fast necro.
4. The pet must remain close to the necromancer to enable casting, but the pet cannot be controlled to stay within range.
5. All spells must process through the spell queue. There are no necro instant-cast spells.
6. ToA casting speed bonuses do not effect the most commonly cast spells. This is because these are pet-cast spells, and the speed bonus does not transfer to the pet.
7. Necro buffs on the pet are overwritten by buffs from other players. This happens even when the new buff is of a lower level than the original necro buff. Because pet buffs cannot be delved, it is not possible to tell, for example, if the pet has +48 dex buff from the necro, or a +40 dex buff from a level 47 cleric.
8. The death servant damage shield delivers almost no increase in damage from level 24 to 44 despite an almost 2:1 difference in delved DPS.
9. As for other pet classes, certain group effects and spells work at long or unlimited range.
10. Racial resists do not transfer to the pet, although the pet is the necromancer most of the time.
11. The Cabalist spirit debuff doesn't work for necro spells.

A1.2 RA and MA bugs

1. Purge processes through the pet’s queue. Since the queue is stopped when the pet is mezzed or stunned, purge only works when it is not needed.
2. Several important RAs do not transfer to the pet, and are therefore useless to the necromancer. Among these are:
   • Mastery of Concentration,
   • Augmented strength/constitution/quickness/dexterity,
   • Avoidance of Magic,
   • Empty Mind,
   • Toughness, and
   • Regeneration.
3. Some important RAs fail to function at all. Among these are:
   • Concentration, and
   • Magestic Will
4. The 100 unit pet range limit for casting MAs negatively affects game play. This range is less than the normal follow distance of the pet at a walk, and when presented with the slightest of obstacles the pet may not close to that range when the necro stands still to cast.
5. When MAs fail to cast because the pet is out of range the MA timer is triggered as though it actually did cast. Similarly, if the necro attempts to cast an RA without first summoning a pet, the timer is triggered but the cast fails.
6. The bodyguard MA cannot guard the pet, so is useless.
7. Wild Arcana works, but the player receives no feedback when a critical debuff occurs.

A1.3 RvR bugs

1. The pet suffers maximum duration crowd control regardless of resistances or fall off from AoE.
2. Players can score 100% crits on our pets, and the pets take more spell damage than a player equal to the necro in level.
3. The pet takes 26% more spell damage than a level 50 player, 13% more than a level 44 player(the same level as the pet.)
4. The pet is affected by confuse. This is unacceptable since the pet is the necromancer, not merely a companion.
5. The pet can not be stopped from swinging at an enemy after processing a spell, not even in passive mode. This means that melee and stealth classes can use reactive styles against the pet, even though we have commanded it not to melee with the target.
6. The pet can be taunted or aggroed with damage like a mob and cannot be forced to stay on the selected opponent.
7. Any debuff cast on our pet interrupts us. This does not apply to any other class in the game.
8. When the pet has two spells in the queue and the first is interrupted, the pet will still attempt to cast the second spell but it will be automatically interrupted even if the source of the interruption is gone.