Q4 2021 PATCH : Hail to the King!

General

*halfling monk
*added size to score
*wielding a weapon vulnerable to its damage type causes zap
*unique weapons can be enchanted
*a fix has has been added to change "double murders" into "mutual murders"

Areas/Items/Mobs

*new area "Sst-N'ank Manor"
-some recent bloodstains have been noticed out near the ethereal knight. strangers are unwelcome!
-fills a levelling gap after killing the oaken beasts / fire giant soldiers
*battlezone has received some updates to accommodate Legion
*dryads and nymphs no longer walk into the emerald forest ranger guild
*repop timer increased in zodiac island to match other areas with long dungeons
*serpents exp while solo increased 10%
*new pets are available in high tower of sorcery
- this is a work in progress, do not rush and buy these yet (sorry!)
*a new lair item has been added to deploy bumping-into-wall flavour text
dragons have a better mechanic for fire breathing

Cabals

*Legion cabal has returned!
-new "vessels" signup allowing a player to become a demon's body donor (the new way to get "protection")

Classes

Warrior

*if the warrior gets zero extra attacks in a round, their first dodge attempt will be substituted for a riposte

Berserker

* relax now has a chance to work with frenzy/rage

Paladin

*chance to finish lightning charge with an extra room of movement, so it whiffs less often
*willpower now dissipates gradually with calm adrenaline

Thief

*Adrenaline from pvp preventing hiding is tripled of the previous timer
being immune to bodyslam/bash/grapple lag is less frequent once every hour
*Pry/Steal has an extra combat round of lag added to its current lag time
*Prying also requires thief to have two empty hands (not be wielding/holding anything)
*add a "belt clip" which clips the players sack to their belt. so the thief cannot take the sack before prying the belt.
-this item is on sale in seringale's general shop (shortly)
*chances to steal added for inventory. rares=75% sack=50% (with no clip)
tripwires get stamped on, with a snitching yell, if they are laid in front of lawful mobs.
*envenom adds small amount of damage to each attack with chance of poison
*new skill-Strap slash
-Thief can use this on sleeping targets to loosen straps, buckles etc, making target's AC from armor lower, temporarily. This can be stacked multiple times but lasts only 2 ticks (not refreshed by re-use).
-backstabs and fleeing while strap slashed both cause items to possibly drop depending on slot and item weight, so players may need to double back and pick up their dropped items
-note that some formerly unpryable slots can be procured this way

Illusionist

*blur now checks save vs mental of opponent, so it can work better if they don't have saves. conversely, its possible a level 15 poncho that casts blur isnt your best bet at level 50.
*enlarge can now be cast in combat

Invoker

Changes to shield spell
*now 25% of the invokers max hp
*reduces damage by 25% instead of blocking all damage outright. this 25% is also the shields reduction amount per hit - note, also affects abyssal bulwark
*regens slowly while out of combat (level/5 per round)
*cooloff period after shattering has been reduced to match the normal duration of a shield
*mystic tendrils doesnt regen mana when it regens shields
*heals the invoker if it is shattered by damage
ice/fire/lightning shield
*damage return is now a proportion of damage taken (both to shield level and directly hp)
*shield shatter has a special affect if one of these 3 spells are in use

Necromancer

*strength damned: 75% chance of sets a timer on zombie, causing it to eventually explode. makes zombie "an unstable zombie of " etc. if it is killed, it will also explode (check). the timer is approx 2 hours while strength damned can be cast every 5 min now.
** this chance is reduced significantly by using a decorated zombie
* ghoul frenzy : limited to zombies only
*Shatter: this spell returns to deal bash damage so that necromancers can do something effective vs undead stuff
*new skill: bloodcast
-use this to spend hp instead of mana to cast necrotic spells. it works while silenced. required for flesh golem and hellgate
*alhoon gain a slighty advantage in vamp touch due to their bodies being less corporal and thus require less energy

Shadow

*per the wishlist, we have back assassinate one hit kill. this was done by implementing a stalk which takes careful stealth and some actual detective work, we will disseminate that info into helpfile

vampire

added detect magic

Bard

*bards can now throw more than just cards
*concord, weight of burden singable in combat, concord +sv mental, twilight singable if not tanking

Druid

*locate animal has been replaced with locate object
*brambles last longer now and is visible in score

Please use thread to help flag helpfiles we need to change.

Necro was my favorite class, now I wont roll one again.

Sad.

Id just like to thank the devs for their hard work.

Also, I want to see Xenyar play a druid.

Necros have come a long way with skeletons, soul siphon, hellgate, shatter, ghoul frenzy, decorating zombies, rend life, sepulcher lairs, bloodcast etc. (I just rattled off 10 things and they are all awesome) That's loads of pretty awesome shit

I still wanna see fencing go dex based instead of int based.

What part? I checked into that and found everything dex-based so I didn't change anything else. I didnt spend too long looking but it pretty much checked out fine compared to dodge.

Well, I know old fencing added hit/dam to an elf paladin because it was INT based for that. When I previously made a vamp and got fencing, both hit/dam were lowered and got even lower the higher I ranked. I don't think the 1 point difference between vamp strength/dex would make that big of a factor, but an INT of 20 definitely would.

Got it, yes I can fix that up for non-elf. The elf paladin will continue to use thier 25 int bonus for fencing stat. That's their perk.

Inigo Montoya was so good at fencing because of his keen wit, after all. And that mustache.

I have a few questions about the belt clip. Does clipping to a belt expend the belt clip item? How can you tell if a belt is clipped? Can you clip multiple belts or unclip a belt? Do the clips ever break down similar to potions evaporating?
Thanks

Was there a reason we didn't have halfling monks until now?

Strength damned explodes my zombies?? Do you have any fucking idea how hard I work for my zombies???? Make them worth a shit if not strengthened again then?

Kornhole, I was waiting for another necro lover to chime in. Thank you.

So what you are saying you'd rather see necro from 10 years ago than necro of 2022 without strength damned?

I think necros have come a long way from being a pain in the ass fragile one trick ponies that take forever to get zombies with especially alone to pretty solid class with diverse toolkit, even all the tools to get zombies easily now.

I mean you cant just keep adding good stuff to a class and expect it to still be balanced. Look what happened to Paladins...

The expiring zombies mandate came from Resatimm, although he originally wanted to apply to all raised zombies. You have me to thank for having it kept to strength damned only. I also made strength damned be cast every 5 min. So it is not the case that you would have to wait 2 hours to strength damned another zombie. You will be able to cast it again faster than you can animate another corpse. It's a much quicker setup, much better suited for adulthood's limited playing time. I doubt you want to go back to having to wait around doing nothing for 40 minutes just to str damned again.

Necros have some cool stuff. No doubt about it. What this specific change does is makes top-end hard to get zombies obsolete. Sometimes you have to kill those guys multiple times to raise them first of all, even with decorate. Why go through all that fun to finally get that bad ass zombie you've really been trying for, just for it to explode on you?
This change is geared towards the average zombies...trolls, thief guardian, rugged slith...maybe a Tegadol or Innkeeper...and to kill those guys you need a strengthened zombie to help get the job done as it is. So by the time I've got my first zombie raised and strength damned, I can now go add a stronger zombie to the army..by the time I get that done, my first zombie is almost ready to expire.
With necros, you build an army and wait for ppl in range to log on... they log on and next thing you know, your zombies are popping, and you can't put them to good use.
Necros are still viable with run of the mill zombies, but some people like to have fun and build a big strong army.

Also mark solo'ing boss areas off the list. Take Faction of Magic, for example. it can take a couple/few hours to wipe that area out with a necro. Can't do that with exploding zombies.

@Xenyar, devil's advocate perspective:

There was a recent change to illusionists that removed the ability to memorize top-end duplicates. You can still duplicate the Wendigo Alpha but once he pops or disappears, he's gone. You need to run and dupe him again.

To my morning brain not drenched with enough coffee yet, this necro change seems like pretty good parity.

Can't you just wait to apply the strength damned till you want to use it in pk?

I think it all depends on how long it takes for the zombies to explode.

Do they explode after being strengthened for 30 mins in real time? 1 hour? 2 hours? 3 hours? I think that'd be the most important thing to know before really commenting on it.

If it explodes in like 1.5-2 hours after casting strengthen on it, that seems totally fair and reasonable.

Like vanisse said, just strengthen when you see a person to fight (bite the bullet that you will have a 5 min wait for your second then another 5 min wait for your third) and have at it. Or if you know you only have 1.5 hours left to play, start strengthening anyways incase someone comes around looking for a fight.

I'm not personally affected by this change because I've never been the type of guy to log on a necro, go get great zombies, and sit waiting for a full day for someone to log on for me to go kill (kinda like a spider waiting in a web). I'm not able to play for a huge session like that and I feel like people just don't log on if they know there is a necro that buff waiting to kill them. Like, some people might think "I've seen that necro on every day, all day, for the last week, I don't want to fight it so I'm going to go play pokemon online instead".

TLDNR: I'm not going to complain about this change because I don't know how long the zombies exist for before they explode. Also, I don't like necros that sit on game for hours and hours at a time with full buffed army dissuading others from logging on. Overall I like the change more than I don't like it. Also, shatter. Come on people, shatter!

Well I can understand the disappointment that strength damned putting a timer on a zombie is, even if that is two hours.

I think you would naturally just want some simple way to extend that zombie's lifetime. maybe with each exploded zombie you get to harvest its corpse (with your reapers blade that indicates your class harvests dead things) and find some energy that would add +mana to your equipped shroud. So that way you are encouraged to stay online until it pops and reap the corpse later. Then later you can make the zombies last longer by withdrawing the stored energy from your soul shroud.

so for instance, lets say I have 3 zombies, I stay on 2 hours, each zombie explodes and I harvest them all for +15 mana (5 each). Then later on when I play again, I have 3 zombies, I want to stay another two hours, I can spend that 15 mana to get the refresh, and again at the end of the period I can choose to harvest the mana back, or keep spending 15 mana if I want to keep them around longer. but at the end of the session its eventually only going to be 5 mana stored per zombie, so I lose something there. However - if I kill a pc and soul capture (which would be a reason to keep zombies longer), i would have +20 mana on that soul, which I could then use once to top up zombies.

each soul shroud have max of 150 mana perhaps, which would be a nice bonus for vamp touching in wintering, but a necro would have to be careful not to completely zero the mana out because that would cause the soul to deplete and disappear forever. That would definitely be possible if the necro played sessions where they only harvested one zombie and the math worked out that way.

command "infuse zombies" or something, free command with strength damned. for shits and giggles it could explode your flesh golem into blood and guts that fly into your zombies

less QQ more pew pew patch is awesome necros are fine, lets massacre.

Dav seems like the idea behind zombies exploding is to prevent necros from sitting on for a full day with buff zombies and you're just proposing a complex way of allowing necros to sit on all day with buff zombies....

Well no, it just sounds complicated written out, but its not any more complicated than what you do constantly already just to get purple potions. and it could just create a wraith instead of zombies. magic damage. I think that would be a lot better really.

its basically this sequence

3 animate corpse -> strength damned -> explodes -> harvest what exploded -> make a wraith using that (low hp magic damage casters) or logout and save your wraith materials for later in the form of +mana and I guess try to get 3 wraiths which would be obscene farm.

I'm currently wondering what it is making this class so fun because it seems like it'd be annoying AF until fully geared in a load of AC so that you can just spam kill the mobs you want to raise with vamp touch/rend quickly. It does not exactly look like a blast if things are hard and they fail to animate corpses on top of this. I'd expect being able to run around with magic damage wraiths at level 50 would be a game-changer for them.

That seems really cool, how strong would these wraiths be in comparison to zombies/skeletons, would there be other benefits? Finally, would the opponents be able to sac these materials in some form or fashion to prevent this?

As another thought, what about specs for necromancers? I could see potentially some really cool stuff for necromancers if we wanted to borrow ideas from other games, IE thorns(Bone armor) or other types of negative necromantic spells instead of zombies and golems, etc. If there is any interest in this idea, I could flesh out what I am talking about further.

Vanisse, managing strength damned and only applying it when entering pk is one way to do it. But that will handicap your zombies in the mean time for PvE. It will mainly hurt your efforts of gaining better zombies. Most all zombies without strength damned get 1 attack per round, except the thief guardian who will sometimes get two attacks. So you'd being using gimped zombies trying to "build an army". Another problem with that is a few patches ago, flesh and stone golems got a huge nerf. From two possible attacks per round, down to 1 attack. Now you are using gimped golems, and gimped zombies to gain equipment, take down bosses, or trying to get better zombies.
Or you can skip trying to manage strength damned, use it as soon as you get a zombie(which can take multiple tries even with using decorate).
You can't farm corpses and store multiples in a sepulcher anymore. Sepulchers only hold 1 corpse now. Corpse farming is the only to withstand the zombies exploding. Say sepulchers are changed and can hold more corpses... your zombie explodes, you run to your lair to grab another corpse and hope you are successful on the first animate. You fail, and there's a 12 tick cool down from trying again. Doing all that to try and maintain a very average Army would just be frustrating.

There will be no more "super armies". Necros will now be average armies at best. Rugged sliths, thief guardians, and trolls. You won't have the fire power with non-strength damned zombies to take down the big guys for their corpses. Personally, I wouldn't go after those big guys anymore if they are just going to explode on me after 45 minutes. I would stick with the average to below average zombies and just keep cycling through the to maintain a half ass decent army. Which then means the majority of my time logged in will be going to get fresh corpses that I hope to raise on first try.
This makes decorate almost obsolete too. There's no way I'm wasting gold on a zombie that will explode soon enough. Especially a revolving door of getting new zombies over and over. You'll drive yourself crazy trying to get a few decent zombies, go farm gold, go decorate and raise corpses, try to use them for the 15 minutes you actually do have a average army at full strength. Zombie Explodes, go farm gold to decorate, go get new corpse, etc. Decorate corpse just isn't viable anymore.

Dav cool ideas with the mana/wraith thing. But, in the end, I think all this has gotten over complicated...simple solution might be to revert zombies/animate corpse to what it was a month ago.

Personally I was kind of disgusted to see zombies that can do mangles/demolishes along with the golems that do two attacks per round. Like, why do they need that when they have a bunch of sweet mals/afflictives/vamp touch?

I think Illyiza still would have had a lot of kills without super OP zombies.

Dav those wraiths sound really cool.

subverting Resatimms will is not an option here in any case

I am a necro lover true to heart. Favorite class in the game. I'm not the only one. If it is up to Resatimm to revert the change, then I ask you to reconsider this decision Res. I have tried to lay out the current issues(compound from multiple patches as well) as to why this pigeon holes necros into a "below average/average army at best" class now, and a temporary one at that since your zombies vanish.
Out of all the changes I disagree with, this one hurts the worst.

What our most recent necro was doing was logging on hours before the surge to collect buff zombies then bottom-feed on everybody in the surge and ruin the whole thing. This occured week after week, and it would result in the game dead and empty every Sunday. This class was single-handed causing the collapse of the game. I saw it logging in and demolishing groups, I believe if I am not mistaken that had something to do with why hamsamwich quit playing AR

Please refer again to my numerous graveyard posts where I detailed that "fun" required risk and a balance of fun means a balance of risk and reward on both sides. With a full zombies strength damned fully geared necromancer, who is taking the risk? Who gets all the reward? Its clearly poisonous. Necros in 1999 did not have the convenience of prepping before surges to then gorge on a spike of expected logins. The duration was an insightful decision by Resatimm that perfectly addresses this issue.

"fixed" the issue... but fucked the class as a whole. Necros have practically no chance now against the top 3 or 4 guys now. I've got ideas that won't fuck up the class completely. Now necros are a hassles, a headache, a pain to play.
I'd rather just stick with 3 level 54 skeletons that don't explode than deal with farming shit zombie corpses my entire log in time. Yeah they are low hp, but they have 4 rank advantage and with ghoul frenzy can to the trick.

There's a Emissary Outpost. Why not ask for input there before changing a class completely? I'd been happy to lend a hand before seeing this hack-job.

but there's 2 necros in top 5 ;o

So I tend to react too quickly, but my comment about making zombies worthwhile without strength Damned actually was well thought out... There was a change to animate or the zombies themselves that took away things like haste or second attack "because strength Damned will give it back" or some such.... If strength Damned is going to pop my zombies, make them worth a s*** without it.




Also this fix to that problem is like fixing a nosebleed by way of exsanguination. Hey this badass is too badass.... I'm going to go play hello Kitty island adventure. One could say this fix could be... Remove surges

I personally have nothing to say in regards to the necro changes. Which I mean that I haven't personally experienced the changes and IOT throw my two cents in, I would roll a necro and test them out before putting my ideas and suggestions into play.

This patch notes topic seem to have become a discussion thread about necromancers, which is obviously fine since they were affected by the patch... I have some thoughts about the necromancer situation and other possibilities which may be thematic with the changes, but for now let me focus on some of the good parts of this patch.

The Manor area is a great addition; that said, we already had options between fire giant outlaws and blood shamans for goodies. I won't complain about having another ranking area though!

Ozaru's wish regarding dryads and nymphs not entering the ranger guild in Emerald has now been granted; do we have anybody who is going to complain about this?

Serpent xp increase is cool, nice QoL change.


Now for my thoughts about the necromancer changes...

I've never been an especially great necromancer, but the necromancer is one of the classes (along with illusionist) which has always allowed players with more in-game knowledge to use that knowledge to their advantage. Knowing which zombies are worth raising itself takes trial and error or at least observing other necromancers in action. We've come far since the days of using Valen as the backbone of an army of magical damage zombies (I think Darzavius used him a lot after he saw me using him on one of my toons), or having a level 60 grizzly hunter zombie being relatively easy to obtain with ***DEMOLISHES*** damage and two attacks per round... But anyway, in the case of illusionists and necromancers, the phrase "knowledge is power" has always been true.

With that said, the changes to the necromancer class are significant. I like the idea of not having success being tied down to having no life and spending a long time on the game... I'm pretty sure most of us are adults with other commitments outside the game, which means few players have the time to spend many hours online to get the zombies.

Additionally, if we're going with the theme of the necromancer having armies which eventually stop functioning, it might be possible to make thematic adjustments. Slave mercenaries from Darkhaven literally seem to collapse after a set period of time rather than demanding more money like standard mercenaries do... Maybe the necromancer can summon an army of wraiths or specters like the illusionist has razor strings which eventually fade away, but which can also be sacrificed in some way (say, dismissed or banished) to heal the necromancer? (The last idea is loosely based on something from another game I've played in the past)

Xenyar how is anyone supposed to judge how much of a hassle a necromancer is to play based off of the opinions of one curmudgeony person. That is a serious question. I have loads of ideas for necros. Who cares about that? But we all care about being the other player dealing with 3 strength damned zombies and the "mage" (the squishy part of the army) who has 600 armor class and a 1000 hp. Like. It will take you 50 rounds of fighting to kill the person who can kill you in 3

BW the manor fits in levels between the areas you mentioned. Levels were not set with the intent to successfully hijack the title of best levelling area from mobs that obviously have vulns. But if someone is tired of ettins and unable to defilers/shamans, then the Manor should do perfectly.

I was referring to mountain trolls actually Dav... But I agree with you regarding the niche the Manor can fill based on what I've seen of the area thus far.

Oh I thought I read only shamans/fire giant soldiers. The mountain trolls are on my radar, already. They are standout gimp. They either need their stats fixed or their level lowered or perhaps the better fix is you should not get full exp from these mobs because they have been reduced hp and given a vuln. The setup does not work nearly so well as the kaddar faeries do (reduced hp + vuln but literally grouped and aggressive everywhere = high risk high reward).. I do think we should try to accomodate more instances of larger rooms of mobs to level on though. I haven't thought of a real solution to it.

I said, "between fire giant soldiers and blood shamans".


My point was there are a number of options for ranking around that level but I like that there's another one now.

As in, stuff you can level on in that level range inclusive, not those two mobs exclusively (just clarifying)

You can't get high AC anymore Dav, remember? That got screwed up too when you removed the slot multiplier for enchant armor.
So don't waste your medals/relics enchanting anything at the seringale forge or tower of sorcery, it's not worth risking your armor, or using those currencies to enchant a piece of armor that will give you +1 ac.
You effectively made invokers enchant armor absolutely worthless.

Anyhow, there's plenty of other viable ways to tweak necros. Exploding zombies is just a terrible "fix".
You destroyed PvE for this class too. I'm not talking about killing nymps and shit. Competitive PvE...long dungeons, tough mobs at the end of those, etc...Can't take down those big guys with zombies that vanished on you and are replaced with skeletons.

Any fun, back and forth, drawn out PK battle is now tainted. As the battle goes on the necro just gets weaker by replacing exploding zombies with skeletons.. What, ask your opponent for a break so you can go get another zombie? Even if they are the nicest ppl around and say sure go get you another one.... Now you gotta hope you animate first try.
And again, it's made decorate almost not worth using. lvl 50 corpse with a examination table, 50k. Just for my zombie to explode 45 minutes later?

There is many other options and ideas that could remedy the issue you have with necromancers prior to this patch, without gutting the marquee thing of a necro, the zombie.

I do think you are putting your personal interest first here Xenyar. This class will not be the most fun class in the game anymore once it has driven everybody else off. It will not even be levelable.

When AR was 80+ people online it was able to absorb players getting stomped by strength damned full zombie Rins and fully looted. It did not matter if they quit. Those days have long passed.

Here's what the modern big picture is. Despite a max online of 10-15, we somehow still have a terrible ratio of toxic pk'ing to meaningful pk. The level 50 scene is a split of players who have completely given up on pk'ing and gankers.. The Justice and Knight cabals have loosened their requirements to induct gankers, to the point where we have allowed a dickhead in Justice who will plague you if you leave town and then either fine you for entering town or attack you if you stay outside. We might as well be offering all cabals dual citizenship with the Legion cabal at this point. These changes to necros are barely going to make any difference, but if we can do anything to restore "real pvp" at this point, we should be doing it. One of those things is making sure Winter requires a group. Also, again, it is two hours not 45 minutes

I was planning on staying silent, but Ill join Xenyar on this out of principle.

You change classes that no one had a problem with for no real reason. You did it to the following.

Monks - removing weapons
Shadows
Paladins
Illusionists
Necros

No one pks with ills anymore because of the dupe changes
You single handily eliminated anyone from wanting to make a shadow because now you have to chose 1 of 3 shit specs
You gave paladins the golden goose and eliminated anyone wanting to play evils because trying to contented was a waste of time
And now you are doing it with necros

I was a victim of the alhoon necro and I thought it was fucking stupid to be killed in 3 rounds. I also thought it was fucking stupid on the necro's part for quiting out unless he had the ultimate advantage. So find a happy medium where necros feel they can be competitive in real time not grinding for shit.

Your solution to this game has always been make shit harder as the player base dwindles.

If you have shit players in cabals abusing power fucking slay them, if you are going to call out Vydra I'll call out Szrevan. He deathmarked my minozerker for following him around while Linisan was attacking him. Was my intention to try and get a cheap kill absolutely, but I am following the fight at lvl 44. He deathmarked my justice applicant for being a fucking justice with 0 prior interaction. I stopped playing both of those characters because of that shit. But one guy gets called out on the forums, the other guy gets an entire area dedicated to him. Maybe your favoritism has something to do with the toxic pk environment because people don't care about the game anymore.

If I didn't just see a 50 necro roll a decked Warlord WITHOUT zombies this all might sound less ridiculous. You realize that this is all based on empirical evidence too, right? This is how this goes Ozaru. It always goes the same way. Grind out or gain a big advantage > start ganking and looting. We try to address it patch after patch. I did not wreck the game when I took down enchanted imbued augmented engraved titanium tenor. Go look at the graveyard threads yourself. They're like "oh man what a badass player that was, I was too scared to even login, he was so badass" followed by clap clap well done very good ah yessir, great character you've made. And dont think I've forgotten, the complaining about the paladins was misconstrued. It all stemmed from the impact of that juiced gear. Slith warrior in a suit of amazing armor doing great does not mean slith warrior is the best thing ever either.

Here is how necro went over time, because of "personal bias"

* bash/trip etc were removed from zombies (attempt at increase fairness)
** at the same time rend life was added
* stone golems and flesh golems were hasted (biased requests from necro)
* bash/trip were put back on zombies via strength damned (more bias)
* strength damned was buffed MORE THAN ORIGINAL (bias)
* throw in ghoul frenzy (at this point, wut)
* we noticed players getting 3 rounded about 4 years too late
* we hit the brakes
* necro players straight back to crying their favorite class is ruined

Of course someone is going to get cranky when changes that make the PK more fair (i.e. balanced) affects the cheese they were using. A balanced game is not what everybody is looking for. Some people just want to pad their pk's. I am all for making this necromancer class more fun and more interesting, less frustrating and less boring. But not at the price of two rounder kills at 50. Fun is a currency that needs to circulate. Besides that, while you guys are just being crabby about necros being ruined its all missed opportunity to just say lets give a sufficiently decorated zombie a 100% chance to stay stable when strength damned. Its like "i had all these ideas" in the past tense. Yeah but you gave no ideas knowing we were going to eventually do something about the problem tho. Sure is a lot easier to let some other person do all the work then criticize it.

that fight took 20 minutes, that doesn't count as rolled. Since the warlord hasn't logged in for a few weeks I doubt he was decked and probably didn't even have sav equipment.

I mean a bard just beat a fire giant zerker, are bards next? Maybe the better prepared necro outplayed a rusty warlord.

This is all talk. Get some necro fight logs up and we'll see how poorly necros are fareing.

Necros are plenty strong. You don't even need zombies. Just get mental and mal break.

the point of making PvE harder is presumably to encourage more social interaction (winter groups) rather than people soloing all the endgame. i've done both. the former is a lot more fun for everybody

I didn't attempt to do anything to change Winter difficulty in this patch so any impact this patch had on it is purely incidental. Its news to me that necromancer was still solo'ing this shit, and if its fixed then its a happy accident. I don't see how the change could've done anything about it though.

Winter has always been intended for high-level groups seeking challenge. I don't believe that has ever been unclear because a sign (in front of the entrance for the last 23 years) specifically says that. I am sure a poll in the battlefield would quickly sort out whether the community would generally ratherhear about the Winter area getting soloed and cheesed by the "elite" players of the game, or whether we'd rather see them sitting by the pits experiencing death's bitter taste. I think we all know what that poll results would look like.

I have had a long talk tonight with Resatimm about necros and we decided that the strength damned can have 25% chance to work out without a 2 hour cooldown, which will be increased a lot if you decorated the zombie but still not 100% likely. This conversation was more fruitful than expected as it also led to ghoul frenzy being restrict to zombies-only (technically, nothing in the necro army is actually a ghoul) and some unreported summonable lowbie mobs that were vuln negative causing overpowered vampiric touch were updated. I also gave alhoon a slightly better vampiric touch.

Friendly reminder:
[quote="help bug"]Do not exploit beneficial bugs unless you've already reported it fully and accurately. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.[/quote]
This approach of "I'll use whatevers available" works great for ganking but it is causing anger and resentment which is a cost not worth it.

Future updates to necromancers will more likely focus on the other things we talked about like going wraith and bone armor, naming your zombies for QoL, being able to recast golems etc,