patrisaurus wrote:
There's absolutely no way for anybody to kill anybody else who's played competently when their goal is simply to survive, making that a terrible argument. I suppose you should be thankful that just about every player of SK is an incompetent nitwit, so will probably agree with you anyways.
This is yet another pointless straw man. We already know it is possible to survive on SK by using powerhouse tactics like 'quaff recall,' or 'flee' or even sit around in the middle of nowhere. This is established, but it has nothing to do with class balance. Class balance is having a chance to actually win a confrontation, not just survive a confrontation.
Consider the IC motivations of characters, too. The enemies of necromancers must at some point face them and try to beat them back. Suppose you were the lone Peacekeeper online and a necromancer came to Exile. Would you just log out? That's the best way to survive. Would you try to go run the necromancer off as your RP demands? That's a good way to get owned. You have no shot one-on-one against a competent necromancer He will just keep coming back and keep slaughtering NPCs and newbs, draining your resources and coffers, and there's really nothing you can do single-handedly to stop him. Now, reverse the scenario. You are the only Peacekeeper on and you attack Kol's Moot solo. A necromancer shows up. You will 100% get run off or killed. You will have no chance of beating him and winning the day.
The same scenario is even more unbalanced in cabal raids. If a necromancer raids your cabal and you're the only defender around, you really have no chance. Within three rounds after you are alerted of the attack, the outer guardian is already dead. You could try to gate in and face off with him, but you will lose. You will have no chance of defending your relic. Now look at the flipside. You are a barbarian and you want to take the a dark cabal's relic. Their only defender online is a necromancer. So, you get incredibly buffed up and go take on the outer guardian. Midway into your 30th round of combat with the outer guardian, the necromancer and his army show up and squash you.
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As others have discussed, necromancers have to be as powerful as they are 1v1 because the entire game is setup to ensure that they don't get 1v1 fights. If you can't find other lighties to fight against necros it's either because the light/dark balance is currently darkie heavy (which is an SK thing, not a necromancer thing), or because you're such an insufferable peck that nobody will hear your cries for help (a personal problem).
They absolutely do not. I'm sure a lot more people would gladly try to take necromancers on 1 on 1 if it were remotely feasible to do so with a decent chance of success. As it is, you have no chance of landing a kill unless the necromancer screws up royally, and you have a very good chance of dying as soon as the "order all bashes" start destroying you. Necromancers do not have to be ridiculously overpowered. They should be just like any other class in terms of both PvP and PvE strength.
The argument that they somehow need to be so powerful that only groups can take them on to have a good chance of success is garbage. Unlike their enemies, they don't actually have to show up to defend the innocent and they don't have to fight honorably or go down in a hopeless scenario to save someone else. Their diabolic alignment is balance enough; they can always fight on their own terms, with an advantage. They can pretty much do whatever they want, behaving like complete psychopaths, cowards, or whatever else is most advantageous. Other darkies also won't stand up to them or their bullying because they are also too scared of the "order all bash" scenario, even though almost everyone is supposed to revile them for being so heinous. Gratuitous imbalances like this actually destroy the potential for great RP on all sides, irritate veterans who get tired of having to avoid some twink with 10 GM barbarian NPCs because winning is not a possibility, and discourage newbies who get destroyed in 2 rounds before they even know what happened. There is no upside for SK to having this imbalance persist.
Besides which, you can watch what happens if a change to animate dead goes in. Necromancers will still own face with their controls and their still numerous yet not as powerful animates. It will just shift the balance to the point that a melee type or paladin can try to make a stand without guaranteeing that he's going to get instantly plowed into the dirt.