Curse

NiknudStunod · Apr 25, 2005, 08:37 AM // 08:37

I focused on mainly one class this last bwe and that was the necromancer. When I was looking at his skills I couldn't believe how close he was to the D2 necro and couldn't wait to dive in. I started with a pure necro and worked around the spectrum of multi classing. I was a little dismayed at how relatively weak the class was. The first thing I noticed was the game was pretty much a defensive game. This means that the longer it takes for people to die the less effective a true necromancer can be. This now means that the Blood and the curse line are my options. I have a few suggestions that I thought I would throw out there to try and help this class as much as possible.

First we have 3 summons that rely on corpses. Would it be overpowering to give the necromancer the ability to summon spirits/wraiths/ghosts or whatever. The cooldown could be fairly long so the necro couldn't make a army, allowing 2 at a time wouldn't be wrong. The idea behind this spell would be to summon something without actually having a corpse. you could use blood sacrafice as the key behind the spell.

Give the necro a create corpse spell. Have him call to the underworld and have a fresh corpse put in his general location. A good solution to avoid abuse of having 20-30 minions would be to give the necromancer a morale penalty every time he uses the spell. If his morale is below 0% then he can't use it.

Soul reaping looks great on paper but in a defensive game the power will be coming to little to late because when players start to die it is either to late for your team or not needed because you are winning. What about a complete change in this skill. How about making soul reaping a aura that reduces healing on enemy characters within its influence. This would bring a entire new dimension into the game. you could possibly make it so they lose 2% healing for every level put into SR.

These are just some ideas I thought I would throw out. If anyone thinks they can improve on them or have there own feel free to post your ideas.

Tanik · Apr 25, 2005, 04:28 PM // 16:28

Alot of that is the reasons that most people dont play a necro primary they have a few good skills but nothing really that isnt more support for other classes. The summoning necros are good but take awhile to get going as you mentioned. I like the summons without corpses thing, tho i think the DP for creating a corpse is abit steep.. why not just tag on a huge mana cost like say 25 or so? i dont think it could be abused too much that way even if you could amass a huge army with it, it wouldnt be quick by any means.

Epinephrine · Apr 25, 2005, 05:10 PM // 17:10

My only issue with necromancers is the difficulty of running out of corpses. As the only necromancer in a group they are plentiful, but multiple necromancers hog the corpses pretty badly - combine this with the fact that minions die constantly (even without combat) and you have a hard time if there is more than one necro around. Granted, this isn't a new phenomenon; another game that had necromancers in it (D2) had some of this issue as well, though since the skeletons lasted indefinitely (if not killed) and the revives for 3 minutes, combined with the fact that you encountered many more enemies per unit time than in GW you could have a few without running out of corpses too badly. Hard to see an easy fix for this - you can't up the encounter rate and keep game play the same, the minions are tough enough that they shouldn't last forever and there is no cap on how many you can make. Extending the life (reducing the degeneration rate) would help to some extent, and this could be balanced by having a maximum number of active animates based on your death magic, but then we are essentially stepping back into D2 land. I'd like to be able to adventure with another necromancer without having to haggle over stealing life from a corpse or blowing it up; as it is I am running Blood/Curses while another buddy runs Death. Necromancers are pretty much unique in this difficulty - no other class has a penalty associated with playing alongside his classmates.

Oh, and I like Soul Reaping as it is.

TCP_Leader · Apr 25, 2005, 06:07 PM // 18:07

i tried a Me/Ne near the end of the last BWE. The truth is... Later in the game, against larger creatures. They just suck. My mesmer skills were great, but the necro skills just werent up to par, especially summoning, i ditched that crap right away.

Epinephrine · Apr 25, 2005, 06:22 PM // 18:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by TCP_Leader

i tried a Me/Ne near the end of the last BWE. The truth is... Later in the game, against larger creatures. They just suck. My mesmer skills were great, but the necro skills just werent up to par, especially summoning, i ditched that crap right away.

So because you couldn't play one they suck. I hear that a lot. Necros are great, they are a super PvE class - if you can't use one, that's fine, but it doesn't make them suck. Your premise would require universal reports of necro suckage, as it is a global statement, while one person reporting how well necromancers work dash your supposition by showing that there exist necromancers that don't suck; hence the suckiness is not innate to the necromancer, but rather to the build elected, skills chosen or poor abilities of the player.

So necros don't suck.

NiknudStunod · Apr 25, 2005, 08:02 PM // 20:02

The improvements I have suggested for the necro are for pvp. The lack of corpses and dieing in a good pvp game is a hinderance to a death/soul speced necro. The only other way around this is to put fodder animals into arena's that could be killed with a single spell/attack. Maybe I am just dreaming but I would really like the necro to be a viable class to have that isn't secondary to others for pvp reasons.

Ryzzer · Apr 26, 2005, 01:49 AM // 01:49

Those Ideas are awesome, especially for the PvP, cause my necro isn't what I would call 'good' fighting other guilds

Well back in the open alpha in august or whatever, I played as a necro. And yes he was quite similar to the Diablo 2 necromancer. I fealt that the class sucked something fierce, and yes... Because I had no clue howto use his skills together, I ended up making another one in the march BWE and got him to level 13... And man do those sommoning skills still blow, Which is how i qwuickly figured out that summons arn't his/her best type of skills, I mainly used him therafter for defensive use in PvE with all his souped up his death over time spells.

I say when you see a level 20 necro thats not a PvP char, congradulate him/her, cause you know they went through some crap getting there!

NiknudStunod · Apr 26, 2005, 02:19 AM // 02:19

If anyone could come up with something better I am all ears/eyes.