Necro or enchanter...Go!

[Uteunayr]

Originally Posted by Potus [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Necros are very fun from 1-50. After 50 please realize that their is a considerable and noticeable drop in power. Verant hated necromancers and the two expansions reflect a neglect of Necromancers. You see it in the pets, which aren't very good post 50, and you see it in a lot of anti-necromancer gameplay changes, things like mobs summoning, mobs being unfearable, mobs being unsnareable, etc.

I think both are a lot of fun and you won't be disappointed by either.

Think so? I always had the opposite reaction. It isn't until 50+ that I feel the class really starts to flush out and spread its wings. It isn't until then that you get a good bit of your best self-sufficiency (rezzes, succor, etc), your most mana efficient DoTs, get to spend more than 1 level with an effective root, tiny coffins, and we end up with Spectre form. You get a backstabbing pet, and a Spectre warrior pet, far cooler than the standard warrior.

It wasn't until 60+ in the post-Velious era that I started to feel the end of Necromancer, through the DOT crunch, the end of twitch, healing, and the like.

Eh, to each their own I suppose.

[Potus]

Yeah because post 50 the goal of Verant was to make Necros "more well-rounded" without actually making them any better. That's why they start to venture into the realm of gimmickry, with rezs and spectre pets and direct-damage to plants instead of actually getting stronger.

The pets are a perfect example. The 49 pet is a badass. It deals fantastic damage, can take a beating when you get an add or a series of resists. Very good pet. If you continue the trajectory to 51, 56, 59, the Necro pet should be a 49 pet but better. More HP, more Damage. Can stand toe-to-toe with 50+ mobs which start to really hit hard. Not the case.

Instead you get monk and rogue pets. Sounds great on paper, terrible in practice. They have a fraction of the hitpoints that the 49 pet has. Which means they die very, very, very fast. Get an add? Dead pet. Get 2 consecutive fear resists? Dead pet. The increase in damage is a gimmick. Dead pets do no damage (also ugh I hated having to get people in groups to tank so my pet was behind the mob. It was also amazing how many times the pet pathed awkwardly so that during fear kites it never backstabbed). Whatever mana savings you supposedly got from the pet doing more damage went out the window once it died at a moment when your level 49 style pets would have lived longer.

1-49 the Necromancer is a complete beast. Very good class. 50+ you see where Verant tried to nerf the class by not improving it while all other classes got gains and monsters got way more powerful.

[Uteunayr]

Originally Posted by Potus [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Yeah because post 50 the goal of Verant was to make Necros "more well-rounded" without actually making them any better. That's why they start to venture into the realm of gimmickry, with rezs and spectre pets and direct-damage to plants instead of actually getting stronger.

The pets are a perfect example. The 49 pet is a badass. It deals fantastic damage, can take a beating when you get an add or a series of resists. Very good pet. If you continue the trajectory to 51, 56, 59, the Necro pet should be a 49 pet but better. More HP, more Damage. Can stand toe-to-toe with 50+ mobs which start to really hit hard. Not the case.

Instead you get monk and rogue pets. Sounds great on paper, terrible in practice. They have a fraction of the hitpoints that the 49 pet has. Which means they die very, very, very fast. Get an add? Dead pet. Get 2 consecutive fear resists? Dead pet. The increase in damage is a gimmick. Dead pets do no damage (also ugh I hated having to get people in groups to tank so my pet was behind the mob. It was also amazing how many times the pet pathed awkwardly so that during fear kites it never backstabbed). Whatever mana savings you supposedly got from the pet doing more damage went out the window once it died at a moment when your level 49 style pets would have lived longer.

1-49 the Necromancer is a complete beast. Very good class. 50+ you see where Verant tried to nerf the class by not improving it while all other classes got gains and monsters got way more powerful.

Your pets are not meant to be tanking for you, not even in the pre-50 stages. If your pet was out-threating your DoTs, you probably weren't using enough of them to claim full XP on your mob. Your pet really is nothing more than another DoT with the potential to steal XP. So having a pet that can tank isn't something I have ever, at any point, needed out of a Necro, nor ended up using.

I agree with the scaling. DPS boosts from 59 damage a tick up to needing 111 a tick, while HP on pets go from 2300 to 2700. But again, I refer to my previous. If the mob is turning away from a fear, and hitting your pet first, I am going to lean toward the idea that you're doing something very inefficiently.

And in that regard, my skeletal pets remain up most of the time, because I am the one who is controlling the mob. So my pets do not die, so I do not see them suffer from inefficiency. The difference in time between killing a seafury from a root rot, and a fear kite with necro pet backstabbing is significant.

I will add that in regards to pets, I do think the 56 pet is ultimately an entire waste.

I do not share the perspective that we were simply diversified, rather than empowered, as with Kunark we were given an additional hard-to-resist DoT line, Splurt, which ended up being one of the most mana efficient spells in the game. Our Necro heal Shadowbond was scaled up for output and diminished the negative effect, even if it only ever ticks once if done properly. I do not see a 93% rez on demand as a gimmicky aspect, nor the ability to Levant across zones, I see them as incredibly empowering and great abilities that enhance a Necromancer's individuality, in a world in which Necromancers are meant to be isolated.

Defoliation is a joke. I will wholeheartedly agree there. But there are other Necro spells from pre-50 that are equally as useless.

So, from my experiences, I disagree with the negative perspective of Necros 50+. To each their own, and it is for each to judge.

[Potus]

Originally Posted by Uteunayr [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Your pets are not meant to be tanking for you, not even in the pre-50 stages. If your pet was out-threating your DoTs, you probably weren't using enough of them to claim full XP on your mob. Your pet really is nothing more than another DoT with the potential to steal XP. So having a pet that can tank isn't something I have ever, at any point, needed out of a Necro, nor ended up using.

I agree with the scaling. DPS boosts from 59 damage a tick up to needing 111 a tick, while HP on pets go from 2300 to 2700. But again, I refer to my previous. If the mob is turning away from a fear, and hitting your pet first, I am going to lean toward the idea that you're doing something very inefficiently.

We might be getting into differences between this server and live (especially about stealing aggro), but no, I am not talking about for tanking. I'm talking about for taking damage when situations go bad. That is the best part about pets for the Necro, you can be very cavalier about solo'ing without downtime and getting very aggressive with spawns because your pet can compensate whenever you have resists or trains or adds. And they happen. It's just a part of the game, and if they don't happen then the Necro is being waaaay too cautious.

The fact remains that the Rogue and Monk pet die so quickly it's amazing. If you look at their HP totals they're roughly half and 3/4 of the 49 pet, yet they're 4 and 7 levels later against monsters whose damage output scaled significantly higher.

Another thing that people do not recognize is the rogue and monk do not bash. Bash is a lot of damage and more importantly it stuns. When you factor that in it is quite obvious Verant was scamming the necro class by calling them upgrades (which at the time people ripped Abashi a new one over on the forums).

I do not share the perspective that we were simply diversified, rather than empowered, as with Kunark we were given an additional hard-to-resist DoT line, Splurt, which ended up being one of the most mana efficient spells in the game. Our Necro heal Shadowbond was scaled up for output and diminished the negative effect, even if it only ever ticks once if done properly. I do not see a 93% rez on demand as a gimmicky aspect, nor the ability to Levant across zones, I see them as incredibly empowering and great abilities that enhance a Necromancer's individuality, in a world in which Necromancers are meant to be isolated.

Defoliation is a joke. I will wholeheartedly agree there. But there are other Necro spells from pre-50 that are equally as useless.

So, from my experiences, I disagree with the negative perspective of Necros 50+. To each their own, and it is for each to judge.

I understand, and I respect your opinion. Anyone that remembers me from live knew I was rather vocal about hating Verant regarding necros during this period so I definitely had a glass-half-empty viewpoint on the situation.

Splurt is a fantastic DoT, I won't argue with you there (although on this server it is missing its last tick). The problem is that DoTs became super underpowered during this era, and even more as Velious approached, and it was something that continued to impact Necromancers the most. DoT stacking did not exist, and in groups monsters died way too fast for most DoTs. Necros had to become super utility, which Shadowbound helped considerably. Would have loved an upgrade to Screaming Terror.

The problem with sacrifice was that it wasn't really a rez. You had to steal someone's exp to use it, which usually meant you had to pay some poor guy getting deleveled. It took until Shadows of Luclin before the price on EE's dropped enough that it didn't hurt to use them all the time (at least on my server, I haven't seen the price here in a while).

For raids? Sure, great great great utility to be able to feign death, quit out, then come back 90 seconds later and rez the failed raid. But I'd rather have better lifetaps or a fear spell that landed on mobs over 55.

[Vexenu]

The simple fact is that charm is incredibly overpowered in EQ due to the strength of mobs relative to players, and this fact is only amplified as you get higher in level. Put another way, the Enchanter is powerful because he is able to use mobs to kill each other rather than having to use his own spells to kills mobs. The Necro can only do this with undead. The Enchanter can do it with any type of mob. The Enchanter also has lines of stuns and mezzes to easily control their charmed pets and recover from breaks, as well as two massively powerful debuffs with Tash and slow. Along with charm, slow is another incredibly overpowered ability in EQ. Being able to cut a mob's damage output in half, or even less, is simply a staggeringly powerful ability.

Objectively speaking, looking at it from a design perspective and with modern knowledge/mastery of the game, Enchanters are almost laughably overpowered. Charm, slow, haste, mez, stuns, Clarity, ToT, Invis/IVU, etc... The guy who posted about having a 55 Nec and a 60 Enchanter had it right. Once you play an Enchanter after playing other classes, it sort of feels like you're cheating. It doesn't seem like you should be able to do that much with just one class.

Necros are a more versatile class in terms of being able to do more things (FD, heal, rez, self-evac, snare, insta-invis, invuln) but they fall short of the pure power of the Enchanter. It's simply a design issue. Mobs in EQ are much more powerful than players, and Enchanters can control and buff/debuff mobs to a much greater degree than Necros can.

The Necro is like MacGuyver. He has a trick to solve every problem. Often the solution will be ghetto and barely functional, but it will probably work somehow.

The Enchanter is like an incredibly hot chick. She has no need to do anything for herself. She just charms some Brock Lesnar-type fella and gets him to smash everything in her path. And if her charm breaks, she will stun and mesmerize him by flashing her tits before re-charming. Shit ain't even fair.

All that being said, Necros are still a lot of fun to play and are a very powerful and versatile solo class. But they just can't match the pure power of the Enchanter for killing tough mobs.

[Potus]

Charm is super super super powerful. It doesn't break as often here as it does on live, so it's even more powerful here.

But I am glad. Charm is fun and cool.

[Uteunayr]

Originally Posted by Potus [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

We might be getting into differences between this server and live (especially about stealing aggro), but no, I am not talking about for tanking. I'm talking about for taking damage when situations go bad. That is the best part about pets for the Necro, you can be very cavalier about solo'ing without downtime and getting very aggressive with spawns because your pet can compensate whenever you have resists or trains or adds. And they happen. It's just a part of the game, and if they don't happen then the Necro is being waaaay too cautious.

The fact remains that the Rogue and Monk pet die so quickly it's amazing. If you look at their HP totals they're roughly half and 3/4 of the 49 pet, yet they're 4 and 7 levels later against monsters whose damage output scaled significantly higher.

Another thing that people do not recognize is the rogue and monk do not bash. Bash is a lot of damage and more importantly it stuns. When you factor that in it is quite obvious Verant was scamming the necro class by calling them upgrades (which at the time people ripped Abashi a new one over on the forums).

See, when you write like this, I don't honestly understand. I am sorry, but I must be missing something. Whne you say "your pet can compensate whenever you have resists or trains or adds...", it sounds as if you intentionally throw your pet in to absorb damage for you... That's not a Necro pet. Skeletons are brittle, weak. If a pull goes bad, or you get resists, you pop your mage clickie and Feign Death out of the situation. I have never, at any point in my EQ career, felt I needed to throw my pet at something, to have it tank something, to compensate for me. That's something I have always seen as a Mage tactic.

I have never, once, felt gimped by the fact that the rogue and monk pet die quickly. Yes, they die quickly, but they shouldn't be taking damage in the first place if you're doing it right. Instead of scaling up HP (which is NOT what necro pets are, or ever were, for), they scaled up their damage by adding some nice variety to it with the backstabbing pet, and a cool looking warrior pet.

The stun bash does is brief, and the DPS it does is minor relative to the backstab. Warriors Bash, Monks Flying Kick, Rogues Backstab. I'll take the Backstab over a Bash any day of the week. My DPS with a Rogue backstab is much higher than an EoT with Bash.

Sorry, there's some major disconnect happening between us. I have never, nor can I ever imagine, a situation in which I feel it would fall on my pet to need to take hits for me. They are not tanks, they should not be tanks, they are another DoT effect. That's it. So, you are obviously doing something very different from how I have been playing the class since back in the day as well for the crux of your argument to be relevant. I am not saying you're wrong, just that for your argument to stand, I believe you're playing Necromancer in a strange way.

Originally Posted by Potus [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The problem with sacrifice was that it wasn't really a rez. You had to steal someone's exp to use it, which usually meant you had to pay some poor guy getting deleveled. It took until Shadows of Luclin before the price on EE's dropped enough that it didn't hurt to use them all the time (at least on my server, I haven't seen the price here in a while).

For raids? Sure, great great great utility to be able to feign death, quit out, then come back 90 seconds later and rez the failed raid. But I'd rather have better lifetaps or a fear spell that landed on mobs over 55.

Convergence is the rez, and yes, it uses an EE. But, just as on P1999, just as back on live, you did not have to delevel a person, as you could EE a level 60 through some janky mechanics. Even back in Kunark you were capable of getting EEs without something sacrificing their levels. Further, I do not buy "it wasn't really a rez.", it's a 93% rez at any point that I want without a Cleric or Paladin. Yes, you have to pay dearly for the component to do it, but that's the cost of convenience. How much would you be paying a Cleric or Paladin to run all the way out to City of Mist to grab you? How much would it cost to use one of your EEs? The convenience makes a Necromancer independent, and the rez is a part of that. So, I disagree and believe you undervalue the necro rez here, and overemphasize the losses.

You can FD and /q out any time you have roamers and you're over level 34. You can do it effectively in just about any situation, in addition to standing up, and popping CoS immediately to reposition yourself, or zone. I have good enough Lifetaps, and I have fears that will land on CT Minions, and Dark Blue cons to me. I am more than content, and I was more than content.

Originally Posted by Vexenu [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

All that being said, Necros are still a lot of fun to play and are a very powerful and versatile solo class. But they just can't match the pure power of the Enchanter for killing tough mobs.

This is what I would emphasize, yet again. Not every money mob is tough, and more importantly, not every money mob is living. An Enchanter will be supreme to a Necromancer in that they can handle large numbers of enemies in close corridors through their CC, and charm through the bunch. However, there are numerous camps a Necromancer can solo that are still end-game ones in which your full arsenal is available (undead), and there are numerous camps in which maintaining that charm becomes more a hindrance than an advantage (especially if you're a graduate student like me and need to do a lot of work while playing), and the variety offered by Necromancer as a class adjusts to that.

A necromancer can manage with a lower level pet, as we have our DoTs to make up the difference in damage, whereas the vast majority of damage from an enchanter is from their pets. Necromancers can rest more heavily on their own efficient damage potential. If you do not have a high level pet available to you, or numerous weak ones around the main target (thinking stuff like AC South Ro, some Guk mobs, a ton of quest mobs), or you cannot make the time to focus on maintaining a charm, a Necromancer lets you power through such a situation.

There are plenty of tactics a Necromancer can employ to take down high end mobs, but they are not as wide as an Enchanter. But the number of camps an Enchanter can do with ease that a Necromancer must work much harder to do, are made up for (in my view) by the absolute freedom Necromancer provides for you (rez, levant, DA, healing, most efficient mana machine, your extremely efficient damage not contingent upon a pet, etc), and the ease of camps that, relatively, enchanters need to pay more attention to since charming is pretty much the only way.

Again, I am not saying Enchanters are bad, their tool set is great, but Necromancers have a wide variety of tools at their disposal that make them far more efficient than a simple jack of all trades. The OP and any other reader trying to make this choice should do one thing, and one thing only: Look at the abilities and capacities of each class objectively, and make the choice as to what best fits their life, their sense of fun, and what they desire out of the game.

TL;DR: I do not accept a value judgment that Enchanters are better, just as no reader here should accept a value judgment that Necromancer is better. By the very nature of the word, better is subjective. One person may value the tools offered by a Necromancer more highly than those offered by an Enchanter, or may value the tools of the Enchanter over those offered by the Necromancer. Make the choice that best fits what you want, and you will not go wrong. And in that respect, you can read my Necromancer guide (linked in my first post) to read about how a Necromancer plays.

[Tuljin]

Nec vs Enc is almost like apples and oranges - the only thing worth comparing is the fact that they are both very capable solo classes that can charm strong mobs (with the nec being limited to undeads) The similarities end there really.

For many (most) places in the game, root CC is just fine, especially in a group situation. If you live your life without AOE mez you start to get good at pulling tough camps with whatever available tools you have. Theres a lot of encs that ride to 60 just by grouping and only casting AOE mez on ugly ass pulls of 4 mobs plus in KC or Seb without keeping a charmed pet and you can get a group really whenever the hell you want lol. The ride for a Nec to get to 60 is nowhere near as easy.

Really enchanter is the "best" class in the game because its OP (really along with shaman idk) You can be really good at soloing deep in dangerous dungeons, OR (as is the case most of the time) you can sit on your ass and have all the nubs in your full LCY group pull w/e willy nilly and with little skill you can keep the horrific pulls at bay (most of the time :P)

But when people talk about "best" on this server it means "easiest to not die" and "broken powerful." Because EQ is actually a hard game everyone's constantly looking for shortcuts/the easy way out. Theres a reason there are always so many 60 encs online, and if you did the research a only fraction of them soloed to 60.

I guess nec is "weaker" but again the whole argument is just completely ridiculous. Nec is an awesome class if you know how to play, but its a shitty class if you don't know how to play. Enc is an awesome class if you know how to play, and is somehow still an awesome class even if you don't know how to play.

[Uteunayr]

Originally Posted by Tuljin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Really enchanter is the "best" class in the game because its OP (really along with shaman idk) You can be really good at soloing deep in dangerous dungeons, OR (as is the case most of the time) you can sit on your ass and have all the nubs in your full LCY group pull w/e willy nilly and with little skill you can keep the horrific pulls at bay (most of the time :P)

But when people talk about "best" on this server it means "easiest to not die" and "broken powerful." Because EQ is actually a hard game everyone's constantly looking for shortcuts/the easy way out. Theres a reason there are always so many 60 encs online, and if you did the research a only fraction of them soloed to 60.

This is where I have an issue, because it's a value judgment. When you say Enchanters are the "easiest to not die" or the most "broken powerful". What type of power? What is the relative power comparison between a 93% component based rez, and having illusions? What quantity more powerful is a self-succor versus a mana regeneration buff that goes on others? What is the relative strength of Feign Death compared to AE Mez?

These things cannot be easily quantified. Are enchanters the "easiest to not die"? I'd think a Necromancer has that down with 2 DAs, FD, Levant, and the like. How does the survivability of those tools relate to the survivability potential of an Enchanter with AE mez, mem blur, and the like?

If better is being counted as "easiest to not die", then I'd put Necros up against them gladly. If better being called "broken powerful" in which we consider power to be efficacy against the highest level dungeon mobs in terms of soloing? Then I'd put up Enchanters.

The point is simple, it is all subjective. Each person will look at the tools of each class and have a different opinion on the relative value of each tool to the other class' tool. That is why the best way to choose is to get an understanding of the objective facts about each class, free of judgments, and make your own, so you pick the one that is most fitting for what it is you want. This is why I cannot blame anyone who knowingly picks a Dark Elf, understanding the differences between Dark Elf and Iksar for a Necromancer. If they understand just how valuable regen is, but it isn't as valuable to them as having a copy of their old classic toon, I can completely understand that. But they must understand the objective fact of what regeneration does for a Necromancer, so that the value they place on it is appropriate.

[Tuljin]

Which is why I put "best" in quotes haha - you can come to the p99 forums with the Johnny Cochran Legal Team and no matter what you say about a partcular class enc or shaman will always be the "best" class.

Also, most people who play this game are so solo-centric (i.e. the EQ Asperger's Syndrome) that when it comes to the odd skills that a Necro has that are very valuable to others (HP feed, twitch, EE rez) they won't really register as legitimate reasons to choose a class. Its either pure DPS, JBB root rot, or AOE mez/charm.

And I would agree that with FD its quite easy to stay alive =) Again a big reason people argue enc is that as a high level nec its damn near impossible to post up LFG and get a group, whereas if you're an enc people will kick people out of the group to get you lol. High level necs really need to have a couple good buddies that they can group with or go solo HS, theres really no other choice to move the bar at high lvl.

I may get crucified for saying this but I will say enc is probably the "easier" option! =)