Necromancy & Dungeons Feedback

[Leycian]

I just started playing and I really want to be a necro for RP sake, but the mechanics seem very anti-fun, it's just too punishing, yet the class isn't very strong. So we have to be in a graveyard to summon our skeletons, which means if one dies we gotta run back across the map or sometimes an entirely different map just to summon them.

My suggestion is simply changing it from 3 graveyards to 1 graveyard.

I'm not entirely sure on late game balance, I've asked around and was told it's bad, I'm only lvl 25 in necro so far. I just think it should be somewhat fun and not so tedious. I'm sure there's a ton of other suggestions about balance, maybe adding in spectres, or the ability to make a golem or homunculus from body parts we collect, I think that'd be cool.

Anyway, that's just my feedback for this class.

update: Lvl 35 now, the class has just felt so incredibly weak the entire time. I can't really solo anything now, where as sword/psychology let me solo pretty much everything at my level. Currently playing as fire/necro, I'll try spider/necro soon, regardless, the minions are super weak in all regards, hp, dmg, AI, etc. In the future I'll level bard and druid to try with it too.
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On another note, this game seems to be getting a lot of new players and dungeons are becoming overcrowded, I had a suggestion for this too. Without forsaking the open-dungeon aspect, and without making it impossible on solo players with spawn-rate increases, I think the best solution would be to have a 'channel-server' system for dungeons, so when you enter you can choose to switch channels to another one if the first is overcrowded. This will eventually be necessary if the game becomes very popular, it's already becoming an issue trying to farm or simply do quests in lower level dungeons.

[Raviollius]

I just started playing and I really want to be a necro for RP sake, but the mechanics seem very anti-fun, it's just too punishing, yet the class isn't very strong. So we have to be in a graveyard to summon our skeletons, which means if one dies we gotta run back across the map or sometimes an entirely different map just to summon them. The likelihood of having 3 graves next to eachother is almost impossible unless you get 3 friends to die. The only alternative is to use the free-summon archers.

You can suicide thrice in the entrance of the map for 3 tombstones that will last a LONG time. It was a rather popular strat a few years ago. Also, I always find it humorous, because back then the class was too strong, so people didn't care too much about it.


This will eventually be necessary if the game becomes very popular, it's already becoming an issue trying to farm or simply do quests in lower level dungeons.
You see overcrowding because we don't have that many places to go yet - the intention is for the cap to be level 125. These are higher-level players who are trying to farm stuff, mostly.

[Leycian]

You can suicide thrice in the entrance of the map for 3 tombstones that will last a LONG time. It was a rather popular strat a few years ago. Also, I always find it humorous, because back then the class was too strong, so people didn't care too much about it.


You see overcrowding because we don't have that many places to go yet - the intention is for the cap to be level 125. These are higher-level players who are trying to farm stuff, mostly.

Ok, so I've lvld to 35 now and my opinion has slightly altered, yea we can suicide 3x, I still think it should be changed to 1 grave instead of 3 graves though. That's very counter intuitive for noobs, plus suiciding 3x is a bit ridiculous..

Other than that, necromancer just feels so weak... I've tried hard to stick with it so far but it's sort of pointless, I could do so much more as anything else really. I can't really solo anything now, where as sword/psychology let me solo pretty much everything at my level.

Currently I've tried sword/necro and I'm using fire/necro right now. I plan on trying bard, spider, and druid with it to see how they pair, but it'll be a while before I have them all leveled with decent gear/mods to get a good idea.

Maybe this will change in time, but I've been told it stays weak so idk.

[kazeandi]

Nothing pairs well with Necro. No other support ability makes real sense, since other heals than the Necro ones won't work on your pets.

[Leodane]

It's rough, yeah. I've been thinking about why lately. I've leveled bard, ment, fire, and psych past 50, and ice and necro around 30, and necro is definitely at the bottom of the heap. It's still loads of fun to play. I very much enjoy using the rooting ability, then enraging my skeletons and letting them go to work. They're just inconvenient, though. Necro seems to break the general rule of design for this server - if it's inconvenient, it should be more powerful.

Bard is ridiculously inconvenient to level to 70, and ridiculously powerful. Ice/Fire magic are very inconvenient, and quite powerful. Ment and psych are not very inconvenient, and are not very powerful - don't get me wrong, they're great, just not busted-great. Necro, though...tough to unlock behind a decently powerful boss, tough to unlock some abilities behind a L35 goblinese requirement, tough to play requiring cemeteries and reagents, tough to maintain due to fragile pets, some of which actually kill themselves over time, tough to supplement without any pet/group buff synergies...and not terribly strong in practice relative to all this.

In the spirit of not complaining without offering suggestions:

1. Remove the graveyard requirement and replace it with a humanoid corpse OR femur+rib+skull, or make a new craftable called "Bag of Bones" which alchemists can make at low levels. Rib + femur + skull + canvas = bag of bones. Make the bag of bones the reagent for casting skellies, but without other requirements. Or heck, give us choices - bag of bones OR corpse OR graveyard. The three gravestones thing is a neat idea in theory, but in practice, it just becomes a chore.

2. Give some passive side-bar slot-able skills which juice up skeletons. Make them stackable. It'd let necro customize our skellies a bit more. Maybe include some HP boosters, Armor Boosters, Rage Boosters, maybe one that increases summons cap further, and some which change skeleton damage types or somesuch. That way, we would sacrifice more side-bar utility to make our skellies more viable. You'd probably also see more necros addicted to gur horta.

3. Perhaps lower the cooldown on enrage and make it cost HP or something. Change the name to Bloodlust. It could be made a channeled ability - lose hp while you're channeling to drive your skeletons berserk.

4. Make group spells affect summons in some limited form. Perhaps make it a gear mod - "Your party abilities affect all party members including summons, but at 75% effectiveness." Hell, something to give some synergy. Let our skellies get those mentalism auras or bard song boosts. They don't need to be 100% effective, but right now, minion-mancers don't really feel like there are any synergies.

Obviously, implementing all these at the same time would be insane. Hopefully, there's something in here that might be helpful. I'm definitely enjoying necromancy, and am hoping I can find a way to make bard/necromancer work - I like the idea of skeletons dancing to my creepy music a la Danse Macabre. Also, anyone interested in grouping up, I'd like to start a necro-themed guild. See the guild forum, Legion of Bones.

-Soulspinner

[Astrea]

I want to start by saying that when I was first looking in to this game necromancy was the thing that pushed me over the edge and got me to to pick it up. It's one of my favourite skill/classes and not nearly enough games let you do it. That said, I have to agree with everyone else here, necromancy is just plain weak. So far I'm at 54 necro and I honestly believe that at this point it is actually holding me back from taking on appropriately leveled content. There are a few reasons for this I believe.

First off, summons. Skeletons seem to be trying to do two separate things at once and there is quite a disparity between them. They are weak, fragile, relatively cheap to summon and very impersonal which tells me they should be disposable fodder that you just toss at your enemy. Unfortunately they also have a rather debilitating summoning requirement that seems to say they should be something you need to invest in and more or less treasure. Beyond their split personality issues, each of the skeleton types have their own issues. Warriors are completely useless because they only deal no damage to anything with armour and can't draw agro because of that. Mages have a good concept in that they are glass cannons, high(er relative to the others) damage with low armour and health, in practice this just leads to them getting one shot if you fail to properly control agro or a pat walks up from behind that you don't notice. And then there is my personal favourite/the only useable type, the archer. The archer strikes a decent balance between the warrior and the mage with decent (for my level) survivability and good damage (which is just as good as the mages for some reason therefore making the mage obsolete) but has a tendency to get afraid of enemies getting too close and sprinting down the hallway to agro several groups of enemies or having issues pathing on narrow paths and running off to who knows where and dieing while not attacking the enemies it drags back to you. In short, warriors don't do enough damage. Mages are too squishy and don't do enough damage. Archers are decent but it's annoying when they freak out in melee and just agro more stuff.

Next up we have the meat golem. I like the concept of this, something that as you play rots away and you have to keep buffing it with create super zombie to be relevant, but in practice I don't think it works out very well. It just melts too quickly and as someone who isn't really playing a support character I don't have all that much time between spraying out my ranged DPS to run over to a corpse and poke it back in to the semblance of a meaty dwarf. Not only that, but the fact that it takes up not one, but two normal skill slots means you have even less you can spend on other more 'useful' skills. There are two ways I can see to fix this skill, first is to make meat goblin a sidebar skill that doesn't melt itself in to oblivion, instead it exists as a slider between weak and strong, it starts at strong and over two to five minutes it's stats slowly degrade towards the weak side, but it doesn't outright die. You would use the create super zombie skill to reset it's stats back to the strong side. The other option I could see would be to get rid of create super zombie entirely and have shambling corpse act as a toggle ability. Instead of having to run over and prod a corpse you would simply turn on the skill and it would generate an aura around you that when it detected a corpse would raise it as a meat golem as long as you had power available. These versions would obviously be weaker than the current shambling corpse, wouldn't last as long and wouldn't be able to take advantage of create super zombie. The upside would be that they would truly be disposable because you wouldn't have to spend all your time poking bodies, you could have more than one, and they would die off fast enough that you wouldn't have to micromanage them.

Necromancy isn't all about minion mastering though, it's also got a small repertoire of black magic which I can honestly say is kind of meh. The damage skills feel more like they are just their to pull enemies. Death's Hold is probably the best skill in all of the necromancer skill tree and would be one of the few things I wouldn't touch. Deathgaze should either be renamed spookytouch or given at least a ten meter range, because running twenty meters over to the enemy just to fear them is not my idea of fun as a ranged attacker. Lifesteal just sucks damage wise, and sucks as a heal unless it's aoe. heal undead and rebuild undead are kind of redundant and with how fragile and low agro undead are makes these two skills completely useless. Either your minions are already dead, or haven't taken damage in the first place. Spleens Power is a well designed skill and I very much approve of it, the health one I can assume is just as useful, but I haven't tried it. Wave of Darkness is actually decent compared to a lot of the other necromancy skills.

Now that that is out of the way I have to say that I like a lot of what Leodane was saying, although I would go a little further. I think that necromancy could honestly use a companion skill in the vein of bucklesmithing, fletching or meditation. I would call it something like bonestitching and it would be used to make the bag of bones that Leodane mentioned. Additionally it would be used to make inscribled skulls/ribs/femurs that you could use to upgrade and customize your skeletons (sort of like disposable gear that would go away when they died.) This would handily resolve a lot of the issues with skeletons as they are because you would both be able to summon them (a lot more expensively) anywhere, and then make them not completely useless at higher levels by gearing them up. Also skeletons should totally be able to take advantage of non-priest party buffs and heals.

Anyways, as a dedicated necromancer there are a couple of things I would love to see. First off, a bone bearer, a summon that would act like a storage chest. It would be a great place to keep all the bags of bones/inscribed bone bits you would make with bonestitching. An useful ability for fighting undead, it's weird that as a necromancer undead are one of the strongest things against me. An aoe CC option, or a knockback (perhaps in the form of being able to explode one of your minions.)

Either way, I'd like to thank the devs. I love the game, and I love the flavour of the necromancy skill, even if it is kind of weak right now. So keep up the good work! And please give us necromancers more toys to play with. >.>

[kazeandi]

Necromancers should have one proper, permanent pet they can put gear they find on, and that levels when they level. Doesn't have to be as good as the AH pet (which really isn't great either), but it should generate AOE aggro.

[Mbaums]

I have not really touched a necro build yet, but I was told just totally ignore the pets. Once you think of it like a pet that has bonus pets, it becomes easier to appreciate.

[kazeandi]

Appreciate what?
That you can use half of the skill?
Other skills work 100%, why appreciate the fact that you can only use 50%?

[Raviollius]

update: Lvl 35 now, the class has just felt so incredibly weak the entire time. I originally leveled as sword/mentalism, but even as sword/necro it's just disgustingly weak. Currently playing as fire/necro, I'll try spider/necro soon, regardless, the minions are super weak in all regards, hp, dmg, AI, etc. In the future I'll level bard and druid to try with it too.

I'll give you a tip: there's a mod in necro that improves your slashing damage by a LOT, because it's a % increase that's calculated after almost everything. You can have 100% uptime on it. Have fun.


I have not really touched a necro build yet, but I was told just totally ignore the pets. Once you think of it like a pet that has bonus pets, it becomes easier to appreciate.

This. 2/3 of the complaints itt are about pets or pet mods.

Pets aren't in a nice place currently, actually ever since the blanket pet nerf. Back then, necromancy was considered THE best skill, in no small part due to the pets!

That said, you guys should pay more attention to the other skills/mods in necro. It isn't a top-tier skill anymore, but it isn't meh tier either.

They are weak, fragile, relatively cheap to summon and very impersonal which tells me they should be disposable fodder that you just toss at your enemy. Unfortunately they also have a rather debilitating summoning requirement that seems to say they should be something you need to invest in and more or less treasure.
The free skelly archers are disposable. The warriors are able to be modded into usability - mod for provoke undead(damage +136%; +36 for 10 seconds) and taunt(1700% extra taunt! Burn some of the enemy's armor if you have to, they should get the aggro back easily enough). Also the 70% less rage mod on skellies is OP. Try it.

Drop shambling corpse completely, it's not worth it.

Deathgaze should either be renamed spookytouch or given at least a ten meter range, because running twenty meters over to the enemy just to fear them is not my idea of fun as a ranged attacker
Let's not make all fear skills equal, ok? Thanks. It's a tool to peel stuff from you, not for ranged fear'ing.

Lifesteal just sucks damage wise, and sucks as a heal unless it's aoe
That's because it does both of these things at once. You can mod it to be better, but it shouldn't be naturally good at doing both.

I think that necromancy could honestly use a companion skill in the vein of bucklesmithing, fletching or meditation. I would call it something like bonestitching and it would be used to make the bag of bones that Leodane mentioned.
I believe it's already in the game, it just was't expanded on yet. From the wiki: "All skeleton-summon abilities besides Free-Summon Skeletal Archer require a Femur (Free-Summon requires a Humanoid skull)."

I imagine higher-tier undead will use better skulls.

About dealing with enemy undead... I think necromancy should NOT have an ability to kill undead easily. It makes no sense. What they should have, imo, is a way to bind enemy undead as temporary pets.

[snowe]

Skeletons seem to be trying to do two separate things at once and there is quite a disparity between them. They are weak, fragile, relatively cheap to summon and very impersonal which tells me they should be disposable fodder that you just toss at your enemy. Unfortunately they also have a rather debilitating summoning requirement that seems to say they should be something you need to invest in and more or less treasure.

A wonderfully worded diagnosis which begs to be amplified in a reply.

[kazeandi]

People comment on the pet side of the skill mainly because that's what needs to be given as feedback. No use posting about working spells here. And maybe, if the petproblem in Necromancy and AH is being mentioned often enough, Citan will take note and work on it.

[dymarr]

A subject I am interested enough in to contribute!

I originally intended to play necromancer/<whatever> when I picked up this game, I have since dropped it because my gaming group needed a tank and necromancy just wasn't what I had hoped it would be.

My main gripes have been echoed on this and other threads but they basically boil down to
Dmg seems sub-par
Pets are far more of a hassle than they are worth
I don't feel....... Necromancery


Don't worry, I have come prepared with suggestions!

Dmg seems sub-par:
One of the biggest problems I have here is that I am absurdly ineffective against undead mobs and I dont see a good reason for this. Necromancers create and manipulate undead as a hobby, I should have no problem laying some hurt on them. I would also like to avoid the advice of "make shit hit harder", but I am not above asking for some more synergy between our skills, for example, if I fear a rooted target it should take additiona l damage as it tears at its feet in an attempt to escape. Another idea I had is that necrotic magic is usually something that creeps into a target and slowly overwhelms them, this could be accomplished by adding a stacking debuff where necrotic damage amplifies further necrotic damage up to a point (think sunder stacking from WoW), it doesnt have to be much but it gives the feel that you are overwhelming your target with dark magic. I have other ideas but this doens't seem like the right place to dump all of my crazy musings so I will stop for now.

Basically I would like to see Necromancy dmg kicked up a few notches because it is a relatively inconvenient skill, which I don't mind, but you should be rewarded for your persistence.

Pets are far more of a hassle than they are worth:
As stated earlier in the thread, all of our minions are more work than they are worth. Mages die instantly, archers will chain pull for you, swordsman are little more than a weak dot. My suggestion, remove the graveyard requirement for these skeletons (up the reagent cost if you want, femurs are easy enough). These skeletons are a necromancers playthings, summoned and dismissed on a whim. Additionally remove the targeting requirement for shambling corpse, just have the spell pick a nearby corpse at random. Here is the (slightly plagiarized) moment of brilliance, give us a plague golem. An undead behemoth stitched together from the powerful parts of our enemies. This should not be a one-and-done style summon but a constant side quest for the necromancer. Upgrading and maintaining this golem should be a constant goal of the necromancer and should require the efforts of multiple tradeskills:

Oh you just looted a Pristine Orc Skull, lets get my calligraphy guild mate to put some runic incantations for durability and then use this masterpiece to replace the Impressive goblin skull that I was using (its durability had almost worn out anyway).
Finally got enough trophy skins to cover your walking skeleton and give it some extra armor, better hope my tailoring skill is high enough to stitch this all together.
Thats the last rib bone I needed to create a new ribcage, its time to use skill X to accomplish ability Y.

These parts can be treated like treasure affixes to your pet, different parts have different functions and will all eventually wear out and need repair/replacement. This can also be where your graveyard requirement comes in. Binding these pieces together requires a little extra power that is siphoned from the damned and such energies are only sufficiently concentrated in graveyards (and maybe only during certain events, like druid events or lycan full moons).

The above suggestions would also go a long ways towards addressing the "not feeling necromancery" portion of my complaints so I dont have much more to add.

Anyway consider this my formal hello to the PG community, I've been playing for about 2 months now and I have been loving it. I have been looking for a game to scratch my EQ itch for a long time now and this game is doing it.

If anyone has any comments about my ideas I would love to hear what other people think, and yes I heavily borrowed (read: blatantly stole) the idea for the flesh golem from another poster elsewhere on the forum, I then added some of my own ideas because I loved his original so much.