Shattered Kingdoms

I meant combining the two tbh, six wraiths in frontrow, a myrvaeln in the back alongside the necro.

Yeaaaa I mean that you'd be better off with Varloch or the ice wight than with the ghoul. It works well enough for a class that goes 1v1 to be able to have a massive opener but as stated before most of (my fights at least) are something like 5v1 and during such the opener doesn't really count for all that much especially since they have a good chance of initiating combat first.

I had an idea that someone might find interesting. It would take necros from the current, ubermassive amount of wraiths, to a more balanced and tactically interesting direction. It would meant a complete overhaul of the "animate dead" spell that would be used in combination to the "control undead" spell.

First I'd make it so you can choose the type of undead you can create, as was suggested many times before, starting from zombies, skeletons, etc. and each of these types would have certain advantages and disadvantages as well as unique abilities. For example zombies could regenerate their wounds by eating the flesh from corpses, a sort of cannibalize ability, wights would be good tanks, wraiths would be fragile yet capable damage dealers, with the ability to enter the ethereal plane etc. skeletons would do this and that and so on and so forth.

Second thing to change would be the type of corpses you use, or their affect on the animated creature. For example, the undead animated from a certain corpse would retain some of the abilities or properties from that corpse, such as the type of hide, size, perhaps the ability to detect hidden or invis, sanctuary and so on, basically all the properties that the NPC you killed had (aside from some overpowered scripts and such). This would encourage the necromancer to seek out powerful NPCs to slay and animate their corpses to yield better results.

Now, the first issue a necromancer would face in this system would be the short amount of time that the undead would be with him. Well, I propose two changes to the 'animate dead' spell that would solve this issue. The first would be to make the animated NPCs permanent (until a reboot or a crash happens) and the second would be to make these animated undead NOT be charmed by the necromancer. That is a critical change in this system, because the necro would be simply animating a NPC that he COULD then control if he used 'control undead' on it. Given that fact, a controlled NPC should in a way act like a pet, so that the necro could save it while quitting or during reboots (if that is possible to code).

Now of course these proposed changes would make control undead more powerful as well as the creatures retained through animate dead which would mean that a necro wouldn't need a huge number of NPCs to be powerful or competitive in the PK field. It would also mean that the concentration and mana drain should be lessened on control undead so that a delf necro could comfortably hold four to five undead (or any other number that would not make them overly powerful or too weak). Also, animated undead shouldn't be destroyed by dispel magic.

This system I came up with would make necromancers a great deal more interesting as they would in fact be encouraged to explore and find more suitable NPCs for their playstyles. Perhaps a powerful tanking undead with an adamantite hide, or a huge wraith made from a dragon that deals decent damage. The possibilities are endless.

I also had a nifty little idea that seemed interesting at the time so I may as well share it with all of you. Let's call it "Imbue", though I'm not too attached to the name. In essence it gives the necromancer the power to imbue their controlled undead with a power of malediction. So, for example if one were to imbue the poisonous touch into their undead, the NPC would have a chance to fire off a poison script every three, four rounds in an attempt to poison the target. The same could be done with blindness, deafness, plague, feeblemind, etc. Of course, these scripts shouldn't be overpowered so that the adventurers would actually have a chance to resist them.

In the end I'd like to say that all the suggested numbers in this post are just rough examples that I'm using. There would certainly be a need to test it and make it more balanced, so don't pay too much heed to them just try to look at the idea.

Limiting a necro to 8 undead of any kind sounds reasonable, (Full group with the necro), and lowering the control undead costs to allow 2 or 3 of those to be controlled undead and let them still use a reasonable variety of spells.
Much more than that is kinda overpowered.
As an alternative if a level limit on the maximum total undead is possible, maybe making the max group size of undead any necro can control or animate something around 200 to 250 levels worth should make things both playable and balanced.

people shouldn't be able to spend 30 seconds after login and be able to go ethereal, time after time whenever it runs out

it pretty much means god mode

or, cabal headquarters' mage guards could spawn ethereal, much like the bounty NPCs

remove ethereal scrolls/staves/wands and watch necros be instantly balanced, haha

(or, alternatively, add ethereal pills)

Jonny can atest that a barb can own a necro with the sling skill.

Barb+sling+fury = hurt

Considering some of the tactics he used, as well as some of the things he had thought about ahead of me, I'd say he wasn't that huge of one. I've gone toe-to-toe with other "Vets", and those fights were less difficult. A little ill-prepared, perhaps, but he was far from a "huge n00b". I had been given a ton of buffs before that fight, which is why I wasn't killed quickly. More to the point: Even if our PK skills are "average", average vs average, necro died. Vet vs vet, necro often dies. (Depends on the variables sometimes)... I've seen one veteran player after another drop necros by being smart about the situation. It's only when the veteran is caught off guard do they usually die.

Back to point:

Now, Kin references a 44 second HQ raid. While the PoV of the raid was taken from a the point of the receiver, I am most curious to know what, exactly, happened in terms of the attacker. Was it bug abuse? Was the cabal broke, and consequently no guards spawned? Without seeing that side of the log we can't really make any assumptions. But, before we go screaming for the nerf bat, lets remember that a skilled player will also do crazy things, no matter what the class is. Do necros need fixing: No. Leave them the hell alone.

What I'd more love to see is their polar opposite. Paladins were given a buff to BoG in order to combat necros, but that one buff pales in comparison to the diversity of the necro. I, personally, would much prefer to see a lightie version of the necro, more than anything else.

sleeper

GRIFFONS!

Lol.

I agree, and if I could come up with something suitable, I'd share my idea.

I know that it's probably gone through everybody's head by now, but let's think for a sec: Here are the classes that have to do with alignment:
Paladin (Good) vs Hellion (Evil)
Priest (Good) vs Priest (Selfish) vs Priest (Evil)
? vs Necro (Evil)

I'd personally love to hear some ideas for one...

though if you think about it, the Necro's only weakness is that 90% hunt them automatically... a "Good" version of that class wouldn't have that weakness... hmm

Any thoughts on the subject?