Necros in 2025
krystal
Posts: 5
2/27/2025, 6:30:23 PM
Hi everyone, ive seen some of the discussion on Necros recently and thought i'de pen some of my thoughts for all to consider.
***DISCLAIMER***
I do not profess to be a pro player nor do i profess to have 100% visibility on the Necro kit; I simply enjoy playing Necros and i have been playing them on and off since the start and the following are just my thoughts on how the class can be refined and made more fun to play and to play against.
***DISCLAIMER***
I dont propose to deep dive into the entirety of the Necro's kit. Suffice to say Necros have received various updates throughout the years and they currently have quite a few interesting tools in the bag. I also dont want to give away too much :P. I will, however, set out some basic information that i will be relying on so that everyone is on the same page for the following discussion.
1. Necromancer's Kit
A. Charmies
The necromancer can have a total of 5 followers (at 50) which will comprise a combination of the following 3 types of charmies - (i) Golems (including ossuary); (ii) skeletons; and (iii) ZOMBIES.
(i) and (ii) are pretty straightforward. You basically choose 2 from the golem class (i.e. flesh golem, stone golem and ossuary). The remaining 3 can comprise any combination between skeleton and zombies.
Skeletons are generic raises you get from corpses.
Zombie also do not survive logouts (you can only entomb 1 zombie and i believe this only survives for 15 minutes after logout) - This also means if halfway through your raising routine, a real-life event crops up, you start from 0. Only this time, if sdam is on CD, you would have to sit around and wait until sdam come off cool down to be able to get that first sdam zombie. Worse still if you had just raised a skele/zombie before you logged. The first 6-12 minutes you will spend sitting around.
Another practical point to consider is that zombies can die and are relatively squishy. The lower the level of the zombie, the faster it dies. Given that they dont really fight back and are really weak on their own, almost every decently geared level 50 (regardless of class) can burn through 6.5k hp in a matter of rounds. This then compounds to the problem of the long CD time of sdam, because if you take a bad fight and lose a high level zombie, you're not getting it back any time soon. The only quick fix would be to raise a low level skeleton/zombie just to fill in the blanks.
So are zombies even worth getting?
C. Zombies designed as an essential part of Necro's kit
As i previously mentioned, the powerbar system and blacktorrent has its power creep hard coded to the number of zombies you control. Each zombie you lose decreases your power level significantly. Thus, in the current state of the kit design and in order to fight at full strength, a necromancer will be forced to put in the time and the effort to raise his zombies for marginal benefit; it is very much a painful connundrum at this point.
At this juncture i feel it apposite to make this point - I am not saying that a Necro is unplayable without 3 sdam level 60 zombies; it is definitely possible to score kills using lower level and weaker charmies. However, if a necro has to rely on blasting you with huge afflictive spells in order to kill you despite leading an undead army, then IMO, that kind of defeats the purpose of the army, and by proxy, the design of the class system around charmies.
3. short term suggestions to make necro playable
A. word of recall should recall a necro's charmies along with him
Given the nerf to word where it has to be channelled now, a necro should not be punished for wording if he manages to pull away and get the full channel off to recall. However, in the current state of things, if for any reason you are forced to recall, it is likely you will lose almost your entire army in the time it takes you to run back to them. There is a system in place where your charmies tether back to you after a short delay (iirc 10 ticks or so), however, as alluded to above, in 10 ticks, any decently geared level 50 worth his salt would have gone to town on your charmies and you likely will have lost all your sdam zombies. This will likely result in a quit off to fight another day scenario.
B. Allow necros to raise generic zombies
Consider allowing necros to raise generic zombies similar to the raise skeleton system. This would allow the necro to immediately raise a level 45 zombie upon log in without needing to find and kill a level 45 mob. It would also make necro combat alot more forgiving and it also gives the necro an easy way to replenish his army should an fight go bad and a hard reset from the engagement is needed. The generic zombies should still be able to death graps on attack, but to balance the convenience, perhaps such generic zombies should not be then able to perform the special bite attack available to zombies raised from proper corpses.
This will also make spells like ghoul explosion more palatable to use.
C. Reduce the CD of Sdam, given its marginal benefits to the zombie.
I understand the worry and the proverbial balance needle that needs to threaded here. Balancing zombies are a delicate matter. However, the current CD of 1.5 hours is simply unrealistic. The CD acts as a hard deterrent to people who have real world commitments and cannot afford hours of continuous time on end to play the game. However, if this is the direction and vision the Devs have for a necro, then nth further will need to be said.
If not, my suggestion would be allow necros to accrue up to 2 charges of sdam at any point in time; each charge accrues over 45 mins of real time and the current system of sdam cd ticking down through logouts should be retained. What this essentially does is to add abit more depth into the necro gameplay - a necro may choose to use up both charges upon log in to get to a higher power spike earlier or choose to save one charge for a rainy day in case a fight goes bad and he loses a zombie. If the devs are afraid of op zombie armies chewing through lesser players, sdam zombies can be made a little weaker if necessary. Although my honest opinion is the increase in power from sdam'ing a zombie is so marginal that this buff would probably not even be realistically be felt by anyone else other than the necro himself.
4. Conclusion
These are my thoughts for now. If you have survived up till this point, i thank you for your kind attention. I think in the long run, the wise move would be to reconsider the entire charmie system. i have some ideas for that (i.e. have different mobs provide different kinds of corpses which result in different kinds of zombies - like dmg zombies vs utility zombies), but that would have to be in another post if anyone wants to hear about it.
Happy to hear from everyone in the meantime.
Cheers!
***DISCLAIMER***
I do not profess to be a pro player nor do i profess to have 100% visibility on the Necro kit; I simply enjoy playing Necros and i have been playing them on and off since the start and the following are just my thoughts on how the class can be refined and made more fun to play and to play against.
***DISCLAIMER***
I dont propose to deep dive into the entirety of the Necro's kit. Suffice to say Necros have received various updates throughout the years and they currently have quite a few interesting tools in the bag. I also dont want to give away too much :P. I will, however, set out some basic information that i will be relying on so that everyone is on the same page for the following discussion.
1. Necromancer's Kit
A. Charmies
The necromancer can have a total of 5 followers (at 50) which will comprise a combination of the following 3 types of charmies - (i) Golems (including ossuary); (ii) skeletons; and (iii) ZOMBIES.
(i) and (ii) are pretty straightforward. You basically choose 2 from the golem class (i.e. flesh golem, stone golem and ossuary). The remaining 3 can comprise any combination between skeleton and zombies.
Skeletons are generic raises you get from corpses.
- The only thing that matters when raising a skeleton is the level of the corpse - if the corpse is within +- 5 levels of your toon, skeletons will take on the level of the corpse. If it is below 5 levels, you will get a skeleton that is 5 levels below your current level.
- Maximum raise of +5 levels (i.e. max level skele to raise is 55 from a 55 corpse and above).
- Cooldown of a successful raise is 24 ticks; no CD on fail.
[/list:o]
Zombies are probably where the controversy lies within the Necro kit:
[list=1] - You may raise zombies up to 10 levels above your current level (max raise at 50 is 60).
- Raised zombies have 66.6% of the original mob's health and will only inherit a fraction of the original mob's attack dmg and will not inherit natural haste from the mob.
- After raising a zombie, it will timeout after around 2.5 hours real time; and
- Zombies can be strengthened with the strength damned spell ("Sdam"). Sdam gives the zombie 100 additional health, a little bit more dmg and the ability to bite targets for a special attack and a chance to plague. Sdam currently has a 180 tick CD.
[/list:o]
To illustrate:
[list=1] - A wedigo alpha does 4x MANGLES/MASSACRES and has 3.1k hp.
- Upon successful raise, the zombie of the wedigo alpha has 2.1k health and does 1 DISEMBOWEL a round with a small chance to hit a second time a round.
- Upon Sdam, 2.2k health, DISMEMBERS, and bite
[/list:o]
[list=1] - The Darkenbeast has 9.8k hp, does 2-3 MANGLES/MASSACRES.
- Upon raise, the zombie of a darkenbeast has 6.5k health and does 1 MUTILATE/DISEMBOWEL each round.
- Upon Sdam, 6.6k health, does 1 DISMEMBER each round and bite
[/list:o]
B. The power bar system
This is a relatively recent change. The helpfiles are pretty explanatory so just a short summary:
[list=a] - The system consists of morbidity, hellraiser and death graps interacting with each other.
- Morbidity will increase dmg charmies do to a target based on number of negative spells cast on target;
- hellraiser increases dmg done by spells cast by the necromancer based on number of time charmies hit target; and
- death grasp augments chorus of anguish and drains a small amount of mal saves. [/list:o]
The important thing to note here is that zombies' attacks have a chance to death grasp on hit. So each zombie the necromancer controls enables him to hit more death grasps in a shorter period of time and unlocks that part of his kit quicker. As u can imagine, just the mal drain alone is a huge utility and this is quite a big part of the necromancer's kit.
There is a small further point here in relation to black torrent, which damage scales off the number of zombies you control. But through my testing, even with max zombies it does MASSACRES with a pyre, so this is a small point, but just to emphasize that for a Necro to be at full strength, he will need to raise 3 zombies ASAP.
For the avoidance of doubt, skeletons do not contribute to the death grasp and black torrent count. Only zombies do.
So what exactly is the problem with Necros? In a nutshell, a Necro is a time sink - everything about the power of the kit is time gated from the time you log on. I will elaborate below.
2. The time sink - practical problems with the current kit
A. Raise time
As i mentioned above, a successful raise puts animate corpse on a 24 tick CD. That means, assuming that you raise your first zombie in the first minute you come online, you will need at least 24 minutes to get 3 zombies. This however, is the absolute quickest. In actual practice, the time taken to reach 3 effective zombies is way longer. The practical consideration is this: If you save time and raise an easy but weak zombie, it does not do effective damage and will not be able to hit a level 50 player much; or if you spend time to kill a higher level mob for a stronger zombie, it will take significantly longer and this will defo not be possible if there are multiple PKs around looking for you.In my experience, the absolute fastest for me is 18 minutes from log on - 2x level 54 skeletons + 1 darkenbeast. And this is assuming no failed raises, no PK danger around.
Each failed raise for a zombie sets you back 6 minutes (i have failed raises even blood cast and animate corpse mastered and a 70k gold decorate corpse). Even then, assuming all goes well, after the last skeleton raise, i will still be completely low on mana and will probably take another 5-10 ticks of resting to get into fighting condition. Also, i can safely say, the effectiveness of skeletons in PK combat is pretty low. Against a fully spelled up level 50 target (i.e. full suite of maledictive spells), the skeletons hit roughly 3 times in 4 rounds. Thus, the bare minimum of 2 skeletons and 1 zombie is not effective in combat; you will probably have to rely on your afflictive spells to score the kill.
In consideration of the above, this means that, at the fastest, it will take me roughly 30 minutes (undisturbed) to get to fighting strength albeit not even on a competitive level. If a Necro is looking only to fight when he has 3 effective zombies (i.e. level 55 and above), and taking into account the very real possibility of failing raises, this time is anywhere from 1 to 1.5 hours.
The above DOES NOT take into account Sdam.
B. Sdam CD
The next other pain point is the super ultra long CD of sdam. Although sdam does make a different in the strength of the zombie, the gain is marginal at best when taking into consideration that is has a 1.5 hour real time CD - that level 60 sdam zombie only does 1 DISMEMBER a round and so in all honesty is pretty meh for the 1.5 hour CD.
Because of the long CD of Sdam, it also actually forces the necromancer to attempt a raise on the strongest zombie he intends to get as his first raise as you would want your sdam to be on CD as soon as possible from the time you log in; so that you can get your 2nd and 3rd sdam zombie in the shortest possible time; it takes away the option from a necromancer to raise interim zombies (i.e. lower level zombies) to assist in gaining that 3 x level 60 sdam army. That being said, however, for a necro, solo'ing a level 60 power mob is well within the means of the kit.
Thus, in conclusion, in order to get 3 Sdam zombies (assuming sdam from the first minute of login), a necromancer would have to be online for 3 hours minimum. Again, taking into account failed raises etc. This time in reality would be closer to something like 3.5 to 4 hours.
Zombie also do not survive logouts (you can only entomb 1 zombie and i believe this only survives for 15 minutes after logout) - This also means if halfway through your raising routine, a real-life event crops up, you start from 0. Only this time, if sdam is on CD, you would have to sit around and wait until sdam come off cool down to be able to get that first sdam zombie. Worse still if you had just raised a skele/zombie before you logged. The first 6-12 minutes you will spend sitting around.
Another practical point to consider is that zombies can die and are relatively squishy. The lower the level of the zombie, the faster it dies. Given that they dont really fight back and are really weak on their own, almost every decently geared level 50 (regardless of class) can burn through 6.5k hp in a matter of rounds. This then compounds to the problem of the long CD time of sdam, because if you take a bad fight and lose a high level zombie, you're not getting it back any time soon. The only quick fix would be to raise a low level skeleton/zombie just to fill in the blanks.
So are zombies even worth getting?
C. Zombies designed as an essential part of Necro's kit
As i previously mentioned, the powerbar system and blacktorrent has its power creep hard coded to the number of zombies you control. Each zombie you lose decreases your power level significantly. Thus, in the current state of the kit design and in order to fight at full strength, a necromancer will be forced to put in the time and the effort to raise his zombies for marginal benefit; it is very much a painful connundrum at this point.
At this juncture i feel it apposite to make this point - I am not saying that a Necro is unplayable without 3 sdam level 60 zombies; it is definitely possible to score kills using lower level and weaker charmies. However, if a necro has to rely on blasting you with huge afflictive spells in order to kill you despite leading an undead army, then IMO, that kind of defeats the purpose of the army, and by proxy, the design of the class system around charmies.
3. short term suggestions to make necro playable
A. word of recall should recall a necro's charmies along with him
Given the nerf to word where it has to be channelled now, a necro should not be punished for wording if he manages to pull away and get the full channel off to recall. However, in the current state of things, if for any reason you are forced to recall, it is likely you will lose almost your entire army in the time it takes you to run back to them. There is a system in place where your charmies tether back to you after a short delay (iirc 10 ticks or so), however, as alluded to above, in 10 ticks, any decently geared level 50 worth his salt would have gone to town on your charmies and you likely will have lost all your sdam zombies. This will likely result in a quit off to fight another day scenario.
B. Allow necros to raise generic zombies
Consider allowing necros to raise generic zombies similar to the raise skeleton system. This would allow the necro to immediately raise a level 45 zombie upon log in without needing to find and kill a level 45 mob. It would also make necro combat alot more forgiving and it also gives the necro an easy way to replenish his army should an fight go bad and a hard reset from the engagement is needed. The generic zombies should still be able to death graps on attack, but to balance the convenience, perhaps such generic zombies should not be then able to perform the special bite attack available to zombies raised from proper corpses.
This will also make spells like ghoul explosion more palatable to use.
C. Reduce the CD of Sdam, given its marginal benefits to the zombie.
I understand the worry and the proverbial balance needle that needs to threaded here. Balancing zombies are a delicate matter. However, the current CD of 1.5 hours is simply unrealistic. The CD acts as a hard deterrent to people who have real world commitments and cannot afford hours of continuous time on end to play the game. However, if this is the direction and vision the Devs have for a necro, then nth further will need to be said.
If not, my suggestion would be allow necros to accrue up to 2 charges of sdam at any point in time; each charge accrues over 45 mins of real time and the current system of sdam cd ticking down through logouts should be retained. What this essentially does is to add abit more depth into the necro gameplay - a necro may choose to use up both charges upon log in to get to a higher power spike earlier or choose to save one charge for a rainy day in case a fight goes bad and he loses a zombie. If the devs are afraid of op zombie armies chewing through lesser players, sdam zombies can be made a little weaker if necessary. Although my honest opinion is the increase in power from sdam'ing a zombie is so marginal that this buff would probably not even be realistically be felt by anyone else other than the necro himself.
4. Conclusion
These are my thoughts for now. If you have survived up till this point, i thank you for your kind attention. I think in the long run, the wise move would be to reconsider the entire charmie system. i have some ideas for that (i.e. have different mobs provide different kinds of corpses which result in different kinds of zombies - like dmg zombies vs utility zombies), but that would have to be in another post if anyone wants to hear about it.
Happy to hear from everyone in the meantime.
Cheers!
Davairus
Posts: 10674
3/2/2025, 10:51:42 AM
krystal that is a detailed post but it completely missed a couple things.
1. Vampiric touch is as critical (if not more so) than the morbidity hellraise death grasp stuff. Its gotten a couple of huge nerfs which should be causing some serious pain for necro. That will also inihbit your abiility to raise a zombie. Necro needs a good vampiric touch spell. We have had a balance issue with this spell being abused with summon so we put in level scaling that may have left it pretty gimp.
2. zombies should be much easier to raise if you just decorate their corpse in gold coins. Least that was my understanding. and you do not lose your gold , it is simply a tool of the ritual. That should be limiting your "failed raises". We could add a rare or unique wand to boost the level of the spell further (wear it before casting, otherwise just have it in inv) but I was not aware this is even still a problem. I also thought I made it so powerword kill instantly makes creature into zombies if it works? there's been some relief here
3. zombies are actually permanent once they have been made "strength damned" ..
I dont know if I feel strength damned is way too long but I dont remember ever hearing anyone say it was way too short, so maybe it could be shortened without much fuss. But I think the fully strength damned level 55+ tired innkeeper doing divine power or whatever is much too buff and it seems to just lead to necro players making sure they get 3 of them before they feel properly "pk ready".. might've been better if strength damned just completely replaces your usual 2-3 zombies with just one giant SOB that does triple damage.
1. Vampiric touch is as critical (if not more so) than the morbidity hellraise death grasp stuff. Its gotten a couple of huge nerfs which should be causing some serious pain for necro. That will also inihbit your abiility to raise a zombie. Necro needs a good vampiric touch spell. We have had a balance issue with this spell being abused with summon so we put in level scaling that may have left it pretty gimp.
2. zombies should be much easier to raise if you just decorate their corpse in gold coins. Least that was my understanding. and you do not lose your gold , it is simply a tool of the ritual. That should be limiting your "failed raises". We could add a rare or unique wand to boost the level of the spell further (wear it before casting, otherwise just have it in inv) but I was not aware this is even still a problem. I also thought I made it so powerword kill instantly makes creature into zombies if it works? there's been some relief here
3. zombies are actually permanent once they have been made "strength damned" ..
I dont know if I feel strength damned is way too long but I dont remember ever hearing anyone say it was way too short, so maybe it could be shortened without much fuss. But I think the fully strength damned level 55+ tired innkeeper doing divine power or whatever is much too buff and it seems to just lead to necro players making sure they get 3 of them before they feel properly "pk ready".. might've been better if strength damned just completely replaces your usual 2-3 zombies with just one giant SOB that does triple damage.
Lumubella
Posts: 438
3/3/2025, 8:52:28 PM
Necromancers have Invoker spell damage potential in addition to mals, and ways to lower mal saves. Zombies can do lag skills and other things. Its an embarasment of choices really. Zombies don't need a buff. Necromancers don't need a buff, just more convenience.
Vampiric touch as it originally stood was overpowered, Illyiza was the biggest example of this for me being able to recover to full off of cityguards. Necromancers do not need reliable healing over all of the other tools they get, they are already a smelly version of Batman. Having it for PvE is a convenience but in PvP its too strong. I had a lot of ideas here. Maybe limit vamp touch to using a flesh golem and get a solid heal and use up one of its organs for each heal to limit the healing, or have pk adrenaline block it. Lots of cool ideas instead of just giving necromancers healing. Healers dont get even get blind.
I think the biggest thing for convenience would either A.)Let zombies remain between logouts through entomb or some other way. or B.)Lower the cooldown on strength damned. I'm more for option A because you want losing a zombie to attacks/turn undead to be punishing for the necromancer. Yeah it'll take forever to get that army up, but once they do they will be a feared terror. Once that necromancer has a full strength army and is a feared terror the villagers can get their pitchforks and torches and summons and try to weaken the necromancer that way, knowing now they have a window to try to kill the guy. Necromancer can be sneaky and entomb weakened zombies adding another layer of strategy to being necromancer. Failing option A make strength damned last like 60 ticks and weaken the necromancer with reduced regen or something for that duration.
TLDR: Necromancers don't need healing in pvp, they can struggle with scrolls like every other mage. Let them keep their zombies over logout or shorten strength damned time to something reasonable, like 60 ticks.
Vampiric touch as it originally stood was overpowered, Illyiza was the biggest example of this for me being able to recover to full off of cityguards. Necromancers do not need reliable healing over all of the other tools they get, they are already a smelly version of Batman. Having it for PvE is a convenience but in PvP its too strong. I had a lot of ideas here. Maybe limit vamp touch to using a flesh golem and get a solid heal and use up one of its organs for each heal to limit the healing, or have pk adrenaline block it. Lots of cool ideas instead of just giving necromancers healing. Healers dont get even get blind.
I think the biggest thing for convenience would either A.)Let zombies remain between logouts through entomb or some other way. or B.)Lower the cooldown on strength damned. I'm more for option A because you want losing a zombie to attacks/turn undead to be punishing for the necromancer. Yeah it'll take forever to get that army up, but once they do they will be a feared terror. Once that necromancer has a full strength army and is a feared terror the villagers can get their pitchforks and torches and summons and try to weaken the necromancer that way, knowing now they have a window to try to kill the guy. Necromancer can be sneaky and entomb weakened zombies adding another layer of strategy to being necromancer. Failing option A make strength damned last like 60 ticks and weaken the necromancer with reduced regen or something for that duration.
TLDR: Necromancers don't need healing in pvp, they can struggle with scrolls like every other mage. Let them keep their zombies over logout or shorten strength damned time to something reasonable, like 60 ticks.
krystal
Posts: 5
3/4/2025, 7:37:58 PM
Ok, so ive done some more testing recently and here are my thoughts and replies.
Firstly to Dav (in-line below):
1. Vampiric touch is as critical (if not more so) than the morbidity hellraise death grasp stuff.
PVE: I think vamp touch with pyre now is in a good spot. 1 Nymph (level 29) can give me around 120 to 150hp in a tick, coupled with basic regen, thats close to 180 a tick on avg. Anyways, with the ossuary, there is no need to vamp anything other than for damage. (Before anyone screams op on this, please read below PVP below)
PVP: the question here is whether you are able to use your pyre. Again, assuming similar skill levels, the pyre is quite unuseable, given that you need to chorus to reposition it, only 1 can be placed at a time in an area and it cannot be cast in combat (i.e If your target stands at hyando, you're not getting the pyre, period). Vamp touch without the pyre is not worth the mana to cast.
Also, in relation to any concerns that a necro can heal 150hp a tick from vamp, please know that in order for you to do this and assuming the nymph does not hit you, you would need to:
(1) chorus to move the pyre (30 mana); (2) vamp at least 4-5 times (thats 120 to 150mana); and (3) If you have to summon the mob to vamp, thats another 30 mana. thats essentially something like a 1.2/1.3 mana to 1 hp conversion ratio and there are other classes that are doing more with alot less - so i think this is balanced.
Also because (and this is the biggest point), when you are vamping a nymph for 1 tick, you are not chasing your target; If your target can't run away from you in 1 tick, you would have killed him regardless anyway; This is only useful in a reset/PVE situation.
In a evenly matched fight, there is no way a necromancer can use vamp touch now to regen health effectively anymore, and yes this is definitely gimped.
Ideas for this point would be perhaps to let you drain health off your zombies instead. To prevent this from being OP, let the drain be AOE (ie. u drain all of your zombies HP at the same rate), and drain %tage (ie. u drain 10% of all of your charmies health to health 5% of yours etc.). For your consideration.
2. zombies should be much easier to raise if you just decorate their corpse in gold coins.
Yes there has defo been some relief here and i am thankful for that. However, IMO, this dosent address the root of the problem - which is the sheer time commitment behind playing a necro (ie. failing animate corpse puts it on a 6 min CD).
Regardless of how easy it is to raise a zombie now, it is not 100% (i have recently failed 3 times in a row to raise the darkenbeast, mastered bloodcast, animate and decorated with 240k gold); this means when i fail, i spend a minimum of 6 mins waiting around for something to happen and this is not enjoyable at all (in this case by the time i raised my first zombie i was 45 mins in, just trying killing the darkenbeast, waiting for him to respawn and failing my raises and repeating etc.), and as i have alluded to before, it is simply sub-optimal to try and kill someone with skeletons alone, and with the long CD on strength damned, it forces me to try and raise my strongest zombie first for time efficiency - there aren't many good options given to me here (refer to generic zombie suggestion in original post to alleviate this issue).
As for powerword kill, you only get to pwki them when they are low (ie. awful), which saves u seconds at best.
3. zombies are actually permanent once they have been made "strength damned" ..
Yes, but its a 90 min CD and your zombies dont last for 3 hours. Meaning if i get my zombies in quick succession and i delay for whatever reason between strength damning my first and second zombie, there is a high chance my third zombie will pop before my strength damned comes off cool down - is this working as intended?
As to Lumubella:
Yes necros hit hard with spells currently, but this is with the pyre, and again, the pyre is situational - you are not able to use this in every single fight.
Further, zombies actually do not lag anymore, its the golems that do now but only for 1 tick when ghoul frenzied (which then goes on like a 25 hour cd or smth). For the long CD imposed on strength damned, yes i honestly do feel that zombies are currently pretty underwhelming.
I have addressed vampiric touch above.
It is my view that if you allow a necro to retain his zombies through logout, then the entire strength damned system and the way it interacts with zombies, as well as the overall strength of the zombies will have to be re-looked at. Simply because, on the one hand we do not want a repeat of 3 hyandos wailing on you the moment the necro appears in the realms (unless the hyando zombie is balanced). On the other hand, waiting 1.5 hours to upgrade your zombie from DISEMBOWELLING to DISMEMBERING is just plain meh. I think we need to thread the middle ground here or revamp the system. However, i do believe that allowing necromancers to keep their zombies over logout is a good change and is one that needs to be eventually implemented unless (as i have mentioned before), the design philosophy behind a necro is for him to only be effective if someone has time on hand to burn. If so, then strength damned zombies would really need to be buffed immensely.
That being said, assuming status quo, another suggestion i have in relation to just lowering the CD of strength damned would be for it to actually apply to all zombies in your group when cast and then it goes on its current CD (i.e. 180 ticks).
What this essentially does is to provide the necromancer with a choice to then decide when is the most opportune moment to use strength damned - if i expect to be on only for a short while today or if its really dangerous, i can choose to strength damned on my first zombie (this is essentially what is happening now). However, the difference is if i have a bit more time on my hands today or if the coast is clear, i can then choose to only strength damned when my entire army is up, or if halfway through raising zombies, PK comes on, i can choose to strength damned only 2 zombies.
In addition, to alleviate the downtime when zombies are killed in PK, perhaps you can consider having each zombie death reduce the remaining CD of strength damned by a fixed percentage. This however, should not reset the CD if you lose all 3 zombies at once (so for eg. each zombie death would reduce remaining CD by 30%, so that if you lose all 3 zombies, you would still have to endure 10% of your remaining strength damned CD weakened without a strength damned army; The animate corpse CD would also come into play here).
Finally, to clarify, the considerations for my response above include the following:
1. sepulchers and lairs (ie. corpse storage); and
2. wilting touch and powerword kill being able to 1 shot mobs;
**Also, on a side note, please can we make it such that zombie plague dosen't hit group members (including pets and mercenaries) or undead pets mayb^^?
Firstly to Dav (in-line below):
1. Vampiric touch is as critical (if not more so) than the morbidity hellraise death grasp stuff.
PVE: I think vamp touch with pyre now is in a good spot. 1 Nymph (level 29) can give me around 120 to 150hp in a tick, coupled with basic regen, thats close to 180 a tick on avg. Anyways, with the ossuary, there is no need to vamp anything other than for damage. (Before anyone screams op on this, please read below PVP below)
PVP: the question here is whether you are able to use your pyre. Again, assuming similar skill levels, the pyre is quite unuseable, given that you need to chorus to reposition it, only 1 can be placed at a time in an area and it cannot be cast in combat (i.e If your target stands at hyando, you're not getting the pyre, period). Vamp touch without the pyre is not worth the mana to cast.
Also, in relation to any concerns that a necro can heal 150hp a tick from vamp, please know that in order for you to do this and assuming the nymph does not hit you, you would need to:
(1) chorus to move the pyre (30 mana); (2) vamp at least 4-5 times (thats 120 to 150mana); and (3) If you have to summon the mob to vamp, thats another 30 mana. thats essentially something like a 1.2/1.3 mana to 1 hp conversion ratio and there are other classes that are doing more with alot less - so i think this is balanced.
Also because (and this is the biggest point), when you are vamping a nymph for 1 tick, you are not chasing your target; If your target can't run away from you in 1 tick, you would have killed him regardless anyway; This is only useful in a reset/PVE situation.
In a evenly matched fight, there is no way a necromancer can use vamp touch now to regen health effectively anymore, and yes this is definitely gimped.
Ideas for this point would be perhaps to let you drain health off your zombies instead. To prevent this from being OP, let the drain be AOE (ie. u drain all of your zombies HP at the same rate), and drain %tage (ie. u drain 10% of all of your charmies health to health 5% of yours etc.). For your consideration.
2. zombies should be much easier to raise if you just decorate their corpse in gold coins.
Yes there has defo been some relief here and i am thankful for that. However, IMO, this dosent address the root of the problem - which is the sheer time commitment behind playing a necro (ie. failing animate corpse puts it on a 6 min CD).
Regardless of how easy it is to raise a zombie now, it is not 100% (i have recently failed 3 times in a row to raise the darkenbeast, mastered bloodcast, animate and decorated with 240k gold); this means when i fail, i spend a minimum of 6 mins waiting around for something to happen and this is not enjoyable at all (in this case by the time i raised my first zombie i was 45 mins in, just trying killing the darkenbeast, waiting for him to respawn and failing my raises and repeating etc.), and as i have alluded to before, it is simply sub-optimal to try and kill someone with skeletons alone, and with the long CD on strength damned, it forces me to try and raise my strongest zombie first for time efficiency - there aren't many good options given to me here (refer to generic zombie suggestion in original post to alleviate this issue).
As for powerword kill, you only get to pwki them when they are low (ie. awful), which saves u seconds at best.
3. zombies are actually permanent once they have been made "strength damned" ..
Yes, but its a 90 min CD and your zombies dont last for 3 hours. Meaning if i get my zombies in quick succession and i delay for whatever reason between strength damning my first and second zombie, there is a high chance my third zombie will pop before my strength damned comes off cool down - is this working as intended?
As to Lumubella:
Yes necros hit hard with spells currently, but this is with the pyre, and again, the pyre is situational - you are not able to use this in every single fight.
Further, zombies actually do not lag anymore, its the golems that do now but only for 1 tick when ghoul frenzied (which then goes on like a 25 hour cd or smth). For the long CD imposed on strength damned, yes i honestly do feel that zombies are currently pretty underwhelming.
I have addressed vampiric touch above.
It is my view that if you allow a necro to retain his zombies through logout, then the entire strength damned system and the way it interacts with zombies, as well as the overall strength of the zombies will have to be re-looked at. Simply because, on the one hand we do not want a repeat of 3 hyandos wailing on you the moment the necro appears in the realms (unless the hyando zombie is balanced). On the other hand, waiting 1.5 hours to upgrade your zombie from DISEMBOWELLING to DISMEMBERING is just plain meh. I think we need to thread the middle ground here or revamp the system. However, i do believe that allowing necromancers to keep their zombies over logout is a good change and is one that needs to be eventually implemented unless (as i have mentioned before), the design philosophy behind a necro is for him to only be effective if someone has time on hand to burn. If so, then strength damned zombies would really need to be buffed immensely.
That being said, assuming status quo, another suggestion i have in relation to just lowering the CD of strength damned would be for it to actually apply to all zombies in your group when cast and then it goes on its current CD (i.e. 180 ticks).
What this essentially does is to provide the necromancer with a choice to then decide when is the most opportune moment to use strength damned - if i expect to be on only for a short while today or if its really dangerous, i can choose to strength damned on my first zombie (this is essentially what is happening now). However, the difference is if i have a bit more time on my hands today or if the coast is clear, i can then choose to only strength damned when my entire army is up, or if halfway through raising zombies, PK comes on, i can choose to strength damned only 2 zombies.
In addition, to alleviate the downtime when zombies are killed in PK, perhaps you can consider having each zombie death reduce the remaining CD of strength damned by a fixed percentage. This however, should not reset the CD if you lose all 3 zombies at once (so for eg. each zombie death would reduce remaining CD by 30%, so that if you lose all 3 zombies, you would still have to endure 10% of your remaining strength damned CD weakened without a strength damned army; The animate corpse CD would also come into play here).
Finally, to clarify, the considerations for my response above include the following:
1. sepulchers and lairs (ie. corpse storage); and
2. wilting touch and powerword kill being able to 1 shot mobs;
**Also, on a side note, please can we make it such that zombie plague dosen't hit group members (including pets and mercenaries) or undead pets mayb^^?