Shattered Kingdoms

Actually, this is a pretty convincing argument, since unarmed ghouls are the epitome of uselessness in SK.

The GM zombie I raised and gave the armor spell plus a worn shield didn't shield block anything that a shadowy wight with an unenchanted hunting spear threw his way. I see no reason why a PC with buffs and an enchanted weapon will do worse, like the unberserked barb earlier today who 2 rounded my shadowy wight with an HoL.

Styles, I can't tell if you're intentionally being obtuse or if you actually think that your "didja think about that" routine is clever, but it seems that all of your strawmen that the necromancer is fighting are just literally sitting there and taking advantage of their auto-attacks. Stacking poison and weaken on an enemy is going to take some five combat rounds if his opponent is prepared, and in that time somebody is likely to be dead or gone.

You're theorycrafting around irrelevant or impossible scenarios, and it's really aggravating.

But at least Eddy is now coming up with some relevant test cases.

EDIT: My biggest problem is that I'm having trouble coming up with solutions that don't reverse the direction that I hoped necromancers would go: having the widest margin of vulnerability / overwhelming power as a function of preparation. There are plenty of easy compensations, like removing / lengthening the timer for undead, or increasing the raw damage of unarmed animates, but they're all steps in the wrong direction.

I love everything about this post. Thanks for your time and effort in creating new game dynamics to keep us (ALL) on our toes and increasing the versatility of several classes.

I can't wait to see what you'll do to swashies.

It's impossible to have eight ghouls poisoning a guy after you order your controls and/or store pets to bash him, then hit him with weaken? This couldn't happen in a one on one fight against a paladin who is buffed up enough to withstand the melee output of your controls and ghoul army for more than 3 rounds? I don't know what makes you think this is an impossible scenario. It used to be an impossible scenario to try to one-on-one a competent necromancer with a paladin, because "order all bash" and the melee output of 10 berserked GM barbarians was going to destroy you. Now, a fight could actually last more than a few rounds. A paladin going up one-on-one against a necromancer who can't try to land 10 bashes on every order actually has a shot at victory, and it makes fights last longer. I think this is neither irrelevant nor impossible. You are just stuck in the old paradigm of thinking fights between necromancers and paladins must end super fast. This is the type of conflict where both should be trying to win, not just survive, so I can imagine some drawn-out fights. Of course, the necromancer could still just land a string of bashes with his controls and/or store pet and that's that. The paladin still goes down to bashlock. It's just a lot less likely to end that way now.

Your math is also bad. Stacking poison may or may not take five combat rounds if you have eight ghouls.

Anyway, just use your imagination. What used to be the case is no longer the case. Now there are new tactics open to a necromancer who wants to optimize animates and tailor them to specific circumstances. It's definitely more interesting now, and it's more balanced. That said, I don't know what the implications are for PvE. That was always of equal interest to me as the PvP aspect. I don't know if animate armies are still going to steamroll PvE or not. Whatever the case, they won't be steamrolling it as hard as before. The damage per round output is definitely lower than before.

Right now, there's a lot of ignorance on everyone's part about all of this. We don't even really know how everything works yet. I, for one, am ready to give this change a day in court before passing judgment. It looks like an improvement over the old way, but I reserve final judgment until we know more.

Hey Styles, this is why you have no idea what you're talking about.


You have clearly never played a necro or played well against a necro.
It is impossible for the necro to win unless the paladin is bad.
The paladin walks in behind his pet and BoGs the controls. If the necro has 8 ghouls, this takes literally no time at all because the necro will have at most 3 controls, probably one or two.
The paladin laughs because now the necro has no more damage and nothing to stop the paladin from spam BoGing all the rest of his undead or him. If at any point the paladin needs to take a step away to spam quaff heals or something, he can type the flee command.
The end. Now you know all that you ever need to know to beat a necro as a paladin, congratulations. If you join a tribunal the entire process is so easy that it's a joke.

There are no new tactics for a necro. There is just a quicker way to die. Every single fight that a necro has will look like this Except that now there's no chance at all that a necro will have the firepower to punch through whatever the paladin is standing behind in time.

Again, you have clearly never played a necro or played well against a necro and need to listen to what experienced people have to say instead of saying things like "But what if" when you are clearly just making a bunch of junk up. When you say things like "solo paladins never had a chance before this update" when there are people saying "Actually, my solo mercenary did just fine against a fully-equipped hoard of undead" then you look like you are just pushing your agenda instead of actually trying to come to some sort of conclusion.

I was shocked that you didn't do something useful in this fight, such as cast fear on the paladin. You literally stood there while he started to cast holy word. I thought it was you who mentioned that a veteran shouldn't let people open a fight with a spell because they should be fast enough to move first. PVP 101, was it?

Paladins should enter a mini-game when the necro goes ethereal.

The mini game should be randomly words, 10 of them, echoed so both foes can see them.

If paladin manages to type them faster than the necro, then the necro is casted outside of the ethereal plane or the paladin joins it.

Needless to say that the mini-game will be out of time and as long as the mini-game lasts, everything will freeze in the mud, waiting for the two foes to resolve it.

okay, it is a joke of course. I am more than fine with the changes as it seems that a paladin will now be more probable to run a necro off. It is after all equally important for a paladin to run someone off as it is for someone else to kill them.

I was caught in order lag, which, as I mentioned, takes as long as a holy word. Not that it would have mattered at all in that case.

I would do this, and also buff Plague, and make it more contagious, with greater damage. I mean, come on, the Plague was called "The Black Death" for a reason; it wiped out a third of a continent! Even today if you get it, your odds of surviving can be pretty dim.


Don

They are a lot, lot, lot, lot weaker than before.