Shattered Kingdoms

When you say spam bash, are you talking about 8 wraiths bashing at once as spam bash, or a melee character that can bash entering the bash command over and over again?

I think Nightwing meant the latter; however, I contend that "O ALL BASH" is also spam bashing.

That's fine, as long as you also can see that the chance to get away increases when you're dealing with 'o all bash' vs a melee spamming the bash command. It may be small, and in most cases insignificant, but that's not the point. The chance of escape is higher with 'o all bash'.

I think this has been mentioned before but..How about this as a change.

Currently the reason animates are so deadly is because they are practically GM flying berserker machines. Literally they hit zerk and possibly fury and own the crap out of whatever they hit. This is further added when you actually give them enchanted weapons. This compounded by the fact that they can all bash which means that even the best defensive player isn't going to avoid 8 bashes from wraiths + 2 from controls possibly.

Why not make animates GM skeletons? They chill touch, I don't think they can bash, make them say..I don't know scout class or something. They have access to swords, third attack but they can't trip or bash. This does a few things. First off it weakens them as skeletons have some of the lowest HP of the animates. Secondly, they can't bash or trip or zerk which means the insane damage output is gone and people have a chance to flee. They still have third attack with swords and spears which limits their weaponry. Without 8 incoming bashes, people would have a chance for wimpy to kick in and get out.

That could possibly help to balance animate. Alternatively, you could just remove animate entirely and tweak control undead. The problem with that though is that it would require controls not being utterly one shot by Paladins or a certain Paladin would always rofl stomp a necro due to BoG. Just my 2 cents after playing a couple of necros.

I'm only going to say this once, because it makes me both angry and frustrated to try and explain this multiple times:

If a necro leads in with o all bash, he's only going to engage one or two wraiths for the first round of combat (e.g., the time that it takes between the first wraith bashing you while the rest sit there with their thumbs up their you-know-what). So 'o all bash' has to at least be followed up with 'o all kill', meaning that you don't take the full brunt of the necro's army until the start of the third round and sanctuary means that half of those wraiths will outright fail as they bounce. Futhermore, he's then got to time the followup bash (because, unlike the actual bash command, o all bash incurs order lag even if you're prone) to beat your recovery / flee: if you time it correctly, you can get away from a necro in that window. But this is the most important point: you can only be bashed if you're on the front row, and you shouldn't be on the front row if you can't survive a full three rounds of combat.

In that aspect, a single merc or barb is far more dangerous, in that they can spam bash you successfully once you've been put down, and you have relatively fewer options for escape.

tldr; If you die to a necro who leads in with o all bash, then you're doing it wrong.

Also, you don't seem to get that "o all bash" is not "spam bash". It is a powerful mechanic but it is fundamentally different than "spam bash" which is only open to warriors - and guess what, is also kind of a newb tactic in most scenarios, see:walthur logs where he spams bash, misses one, and has 17 queued up and kills himself with extra lag.

If you are defensive and set up at all right to take blows a necro has to bash you -at least- 2x to kill you. This means that unless you spamflee while bashed like a newbie (not a bad person, just a newbie) you -will- have an opportunity to react faster to "you regain your footing" and flee, because the necromancer is also lagged every time he types o all bash whether or not you are up for said order to be successful.

Dulrik said he sees "o all bash" appear quite often in his logs. I think it's valid to consider other people's points of view on this rather than get so defensive. Anyway, the point is not to be able to flee a necromancer, but BEAT a necromancer. Look at it from that perspective.

Even if bash gets removed from wraiths, they'll still be plenty powerful and have access to bash with controls. I just don't see the problem and it seems like a great compromise as opposed to nerfing animates' levels or taking something cool away from necros.

If you want to beat a necromancer, then you have to out-prepare them.

jennbo, you half-admitted this earlier in your post, when you said that you quit playing a necromancer because of the incredible amount of effort that goes into maintenance. Necromancers have to prepare far more than any other class to be even remotely competitive, and if you're unwilling to match (or really, beat) that level of preparation then you don't deserve to win.

I'm not a twink. I don't play SK to steamroll every area and every PC. I play it for the enforced RP and the interesting game mechanics. If I played a necromancer, he would be too crazy and obsessed with the macabre to waste his time charging through cities with a boatload of undead, trying to land some cheap ganks. But that's just me. I shouldn't need to go abuse a class and force the issue in order to push for positive changes to SK; I would rather spend my time playing in a way that I like, but still have the opportunity to come here and talk about ideas for improving the game. Like I said before, it's not fun for me (or for most players) being on either side of such a large imbalance. It's way more fun to excel starting on an even playing field where it's you, not your overpowered class, that makes the difference.

You see, these are contradictory in my mind. You acknowledge that if you remove the incredible melee output of the necromancer altogether that it will still be an effective class. I think you are right, but it just supports how glaringly overpowered they are. They don't need to have incredible utility AND 5x the melee output of the next best class. They definitely do not need to be steamrolling PvE, eating boss NPCs and cabal guardians for breakfast in a matter of a few rounds.

I think the question now is not whether it should happen, but which option is best. Everyone has acknowledged that you could ratchet down animate dead and necromancers will still be great. Which is the best method of doing that? Is it better to reduce the level of animated dead and leave them otherwise unchanged or is it better to make a new class for animated dead with a considerably less powerful skill list than barbarians have? The latter is better in a perfect world, I think, but I suspect it would require a lot more coding effort to accomplish. Is the quick-and-dirty 70% level cap on animated dead good enough?

Tinkering with etherealform is a lot more dangerous, because it could break other things and affect other classes in unforeseen ways. It could also cause some PvE problems. I like some of the ideas people have had in theory, but in practice just dealing with animated dead to start with would be easier and have far fewer potential side-effects.