Shattered Kingdoms

A low population of necromancers has always been the case in SK, even when we had 80-100 players on peak times. You can't justify that fact with them not needing a wimp, they did, anyone would have told you that. The lack of players playing them would take some getting used to, I've heard a lot about them, mounted on what Baldric just pointed I've also heard:

1) Were hard/boring to level
2) Too much preparation going into that order all bash PK is admittedly boring to many. I would agree, I would rather play a less successful PK class with less preparation going into it, myself.

Sure, let's try an overhaul and make necromancers more player friendly by making them easier to level, and have them not have as much preparation to enter into PK, but wimp them even harder. It sounds like you want to have your cake and eat it too.

Baldric makes good points, but the biggest problem with necromancers is that all those undead are pretty easy to kill if you fight the necro correctly, and necros have no recourse against ranged damage. There's a reason that there haven't been many successful necros recently, and that's because they take time to prepare (Time which involves asking other players for help since you can't enchant) and because a lost fight as a necro is pretty bad: You lose all the enchanted weapons you've given your undead.

Not to mention unless you go MR, which is an incredibly terrible timesink, a paladin (Or anyone in a tribunal with paladin guards) can rip you into pieces. And if you DO go MR, you get completely screwed by ranged weaponry, not to mention now it takes a paladin only five combat rounds to individually BoG each and every one of your undead and take their weapons, leaving you looking pretty stupid.

The addition of remove compulsion into the game has also made using controls more hazardous than helpful in most cases.

Before ethereal spawning bounty NPCs, remove compulsion priests, and an 8 undead limit, necros were both more powerful and also had the most vulnerabilities of any class: With a limit of 8 undead and more countermeasures in the form of ethereal bounty NPCs and remove compulsion, necromancers are much less scary and more vulnerable than most other classes.

I would agree with mostly everything Baldric said, necros did need a nerf and warlocks did need a buff. However, I am not entirely certain that giving them the ability to buy a pet was necessarily what the class needed. We're probably gonna see a bunch of tribunal warlocks being made in the near future.

Stone skin was a truly superb change, no complains there, only praise.

Hopefully sorcerers will not be allowed to hoard unique NPCs, but if that is somehow ever coded in then I'd strongly advise builders to make non-unique, charm-worthy NPCs.

As a final note and somewhat off-topic I'd like to add that I truly hope SK will start turning away from what I'd like to call "NPC wars" mentality of pvp, and move more towards a pvp mode where the actual characters are key elements in any encounter with NPCs as perhaps a slight boon. Right now the most powerful classes are those who can manage to gain control of the most NPCs, which naturally gives them an unfair edge.

I agree a lot with what Sakhul says here. The NPC wars are annoying and I don't even PK that much if ever. (Hey I do put up SOME logs once in a blue moon. )

Moving along, I'm going to voice an old opinion I had when I played Ixcenia and at the time I advocated nerfing necros even though people called me a whiner. Something was wrong with the fact that my Delf necro could hold at max 43 wraiths (yes I actually stretched it to that much) and that opened my eyes to how horribly, stupidly powerful they could be. However getting that many wasn't easy. As Edoras says, using controls is more risky. I've experienced this first hand in which my character preferred controls actually rather than animates. I got absolutely wrecked 90% of the time I tried to engage in pvp, not that I was ever any good mind you.

Anyways, getting back on track, the main issue that caused said wreckage was simply the fact of the "HW Bomb" or where people would pre-cast holy word and then walk in on you. This gave the necro NO TIME to stop it at all. Zilch, zero, nada and when you're engaged with bounty NPCs in the middle of Exile or Sith spawning 5 or so at a time, they already have enough time to just walk in and cast it. As it is now, most people don't realize that what Edoras said is true.

Even just getting 8-10 wraiths (The standard was usually 14-20 if I recall) takes a rather large amount of time. Even at GM with a crap ton o mods for mana, animate dead on my max wis Delf was still taking bout 7-10% mana. Doesn't sound like much til you multiply that by around 8, sleeping time then of course setting up everything before hand, you're looking at least 30 minutes to an hour just for a single possibly 5-10 minute raid on some place. I propose one change, if it's at all possible. Walking should affect concentration that way Necros have a chance to escape from the HW bomb. While they still do have a lot of firepower, I personally don't see any way fair in having 2-3 priests or paladins (and in today's lightie world isn't inconceivable) INSTANTLY wrecking you just for walking in.

Moving along, I want to discuss warlocks either. Having played one, Elementals are extremely freaking annoying to work with. Even animates last longer than elementals (everything up to wraiths lasts roughly 1.5 hours if I recall and wraiths last 45 minutes) where as the last time I timed it, elementals last 27ish minutes. Either up the timer to around 1-1.5 or 2 hours OR just remove the timer completely and make it a concentration based spell (I'm all for this truthfully.) Another thing is to make said other elementals resistant / immune to their elements like the Fire elemental. This has made no sense to me that the fire Elemental is the only one sporting an immunity and even then it's only immune to fireball / burning hands, as it should be. However Earth elementals should be immune to earthquake. Air elementals should be immune to lighting bolt / chain lightning and water elementals should be immune to cone of cold or such. This would give them more utility as at the moment once you get master there isn't any reason to use anything other than fire. Sorry for the long post. All in all I like the change.

Edoras, necros aren’t as vulnerable as you think. When they’re played right, they can be damn near unkillable. Ranged damage can be limited in a number of ways (see: Baba). Energy suit, a shield, and mood defensive does wonders. Plus, with wands/staves/scrolls, a necro can enjoy all the defensive buffs that you enjoy with your sorc (protection, sanc, MI, RE, armor, IG, SS, shield . . . list goes on). His wraiths can all have shield as well. With an MR suit and SW, the necro himself isn’t vulnerable to any spells. His wraiths and controls can all wear 50MR if he wants, too, almost completely negating any threat of holy word, BoG, or remove compulsion. And if an enemy cloth priest entered the room with me, he’d have dirt in his eyes immediately, or his party would have fled from zapped fear, or his INT would drop from zapped feeblemind, or I’d have petrified him or something. Again, I can also just give my wight some MR.

Kin, having that kind of damage output should take some prep time. But really, nowadays, you can dump 10 trains into mana. Add a nephrite to that and trust me, you will FLY through the process of raising an army.

Sakhul, I think it’s more likely that we’ll see warlocks who aren’t in tribunals. Before this change, warlocks were ONLY viable when in a trib. Now, they can go cabal or independent without getting wrecked.

Maybe, but I think people were mostly discouraged from playing warlocks because of their weaknesses.

On the other hand, a certain cabal can now make them absolute beasts (even more so than before).

Well, you can't go MR and also keep stone skin up, not if you plan to refresh those during combat. And again, all it takes is one scout or merc with the brains to stay out of the room with you in it to get rid of all your mirror images and stone skin within 3 combat rounds. Also, no matter what people say, you can't nullify ranged damage with MP and a shield. That's really silly, and whoever was testing that was doing it wrong. You also CANNOT negate the damage from BoG unless you go MR, which makes those ranged damage/circle stabs even more destructive because there's no way to heal you unless you strip naked. You should know that a sorc dies in two circles to a prepared rogue, and necros don't have more HP than sorcs.

Putting 50 MR on your undead (Not possible unless you put a full suit of armor and jewelry with greater MR, which is not something you can just pull out of your butt) is only going to work on half the spells that hit them, and will end up being a big waste of time, since they're still going to get BoG'ed, holy worded, or just get killed from melee damage. Also, when you recall because your eight undead couldn't stand up to the guard NPCs and PCs against you, they aren't coming with you, so all that time goes down the drain.


Necros are only really dangerous against bad people, especially now. Even in the last gameplay thread, experienced players said that sorcs were more scary than necros, because necros are so vulnerable and easy to avoid. If zapped fear, zapped feeblemind, recited petrification, or anything else that involves failing a save on a wand or scroll works on the people you're fighting, then they're bad. All it took to fight a necro before was the intelligence to stay out of the room and use ranged attacks and walk-in holy words, and now that's even more true. Any trib scout, trib paladin, trib warlock, or trib rogue with half a brain in his head could one handedly stop a necromancer from attacking a city, even if that necromancer was at full force: When it comes to fights against more than one smart player, you're going to have lost the battle before the time for order lag from two orders wears off.

For example: If someone rolled a necro now and tried to beat Farine one on one they'd get steamrolled because eight undead that are going to get BoG'ed and holy worded into oblivion is a losing tactic. It would sure be funny to watch though.

It seems to me like Edoras is trying to say that necromancers deserve a buff.

Well great, figure out a way to make them more powerful without giving them 19082039480293.1 wraith to control at once.

Necros simply don't need a buff. People talk about them as if the undead army is the only option availble to them for pvp, which just isn't the case. Against certain combinations of opponents, it might be an uphill battle to fight with wraiths, and spending 20 minutes of prep won't be the way to go. The necro has a very powerful and diverse spellset and skillset that is entirely independent of the wraiths. Having more damage output than 8 GM barbs is just ONE of the many pk options available to them. They're seriously a very powerful class and do not require any sort of buff.

Necromancers still rock your socks off. It just means you cannot just get ganked and animate a few NPCs and be super successful at peekay. Even a necro will need to do some preperations.

Here is a thought? Change casting to make you stop concentrating on a spell when you move. So if I order blank NPC to holy word, and then run north, and then said NPC holy nukes the room, or the same with final strike. Make it so you have to stand still to properly concentrate for spells, or abandon the spell if you move. This may help necros a teeny bit to avoid the holy word bomb and give them a chance to act.