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.
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.