Baldric wrote:
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.
A good necro never had to choose between lots of animates and using fear/maledictions/wands/staves, because a good necro would do both. Now, a good necro can only do one of those, and is stuck with using eight undead that he has to equip in addition to himself in order to be fearsome, except unlike sorcs, necros can't enchant for themselves and they also don't have easy access to shrink and enlarge, so you end up putting in a boatload of time to prep your character only to be on par with other characters. In my mind necros are only going to be good for using against grey auras and other darkies.
I don't think necros were overpowered before: Mainly because while one on one with an army of undead, any necro would win, every NPC in half the cities in the game aggro against undead, necros themselves are squishy, and undead can be bolted and holy worded. Sure, they were strong one on one against most people, but no one in their right mind would go one on one against a fully prepped necro. It lended that sense of strength to the class that is universally reviled and rallied against by Light-auras, whereas now, it's just not worth going down that path because you're no more powerful than any other person at your maximum strength, despite the fact that you're universally hated and attacked on sight by most crusading lighties. Before, it was almost tempting to be like "Man, they ARE powerful, maybe being evil is worth it!" And now it's like "Wow, that guy sacrificed his soul for THAT? What an idiot." It also gave great satisfaction when beating necros, because they were such feared killing machines. Now it'd be like playing against some NBA all-stars in a basketball game, except they're the all-stars from forty years ago.
The only thing I like about the added necro nerf is that now they can't solo inner guardians.