Shattered Kingdoms

The only class that can't singlehandedly demolish a necromancer now is the priest, and probably the swashie (poor swashies).

Mercs and Barbs can effectively stand toe-to-toe with undead controls -- in three rounds the necromancers controls are dead - hilariously, they'll kill themselves on SA alone if you've got it.
Sorcs have dispel to turn controls, or they can just petrify / sleep the necro himself while their charm holds the front line. Petrification is no longer than FoD, and petrification is instant death, while FoD can only outright kill elves with no damage reduction.
This might be the only applicable use of b augment ever, but it's hilarious to see.
Shamans have call lightning to straight up murder the low-HP undead, as well as dispel / sleep just like sorcerers.
Lighty priests can try the holy word / flee tactic, although priests can't kill anything solo anyway.

With appropriate measures, you could extend this to a good 20 or 30 minutes of three controls + multiple animates. It's not really that hard.


Did you miss the part where I said it was a buffed pet? An unbuffed pet lasts less than a round. A buffed pet will last about 1.5 rounds, maybe 2 rounds for the absolute toughest store pets. The rest is an exercise in probability. BoGs don't automatically one-shot controls, and unbuffed animates don't automatically bounce off of sanc. It's these kinds of nonsense statements that destroy the credibility of these hyperbolic arguments people are making. And, like I said, the necromancer doesn't have to come in with an "order all" right out the gate. He has options. So many options.

And this is how it's supposed to be! A paladin should be an even match against a necromancer. This type of scenario could go either way, but in all likelihood neither party will actually die if the players don't make any grievous errors. And both parties will have to expend a lot of resources during the fight. The only real losers are the NPCs, many of which will be sacrificed in the battle.

In your examples above, are the necromancers themselves just sitting around twiddling their thumbs? Also, have we reached a tacit understanding that scouts are so subpar in this confrontation that they don't even deserve consideration? Are we assuming that necromancers keep their undead grouped so that call lightning will hit them all? There are just so many holes in these examples.

If you were a necromancer and a fully buffed barbarian rolled up on you and your hoard and you were also ready for action, you honestly don't think you could come up with some winning tactics? Do you think you would be in any legitimate danger of dying? Because the barbarian almost certainly would. To me, this encounter actually seems interesting for both parties. Not an exercise of "order all bash" backed up with completely ridiculous melee output.

Yeah, they bounce off of sanctuary. Then, the paladin initiates the attack. Sanctuary is gone. O all kill that bastard.

I'm sorry, but this is still a lot of QQ. Dulrik made the changes, and with Edoras' attitude, he's probably not going to get anything accomplished by continuing to spit out sarcastic replies and cry in every single post. I doubt he's making Dulrik convinced or succeeding in changing his mind. He's making thoughtful vets roll their eyes with his inability to LET IT GO, not convincing them to join his cause. If Edoras really cares about the supposed plight of the poor, fragile necromancer - he should start testing, posting, and PMing suggestions to Dulrik, and stop wasting his time arguing with people in threads like these. It's not productive for HIS cause, even if he is the lone wolf hero of the class that you're projecting him to be.

Some of your situations have holes in them to me, like if I were a necro going up against a sorc I might try to blind or sleep the sorc myself. Personally I think I would try to blind first causing them to have to eat an herb or quaff a vial if they were wise enough to keep one in their inventory which would then give you time to cast something like feeblemind. This is a situation where luck and tactics are heavily involved (like in most pvp situations). FoD can insta kill anyone by the way, not just elves. It is more effective the more health the victim has though so it's better to use FoD first if you want a chance at a one shot. Also, against a sorc feeblemind would be a very clutch spell to land, I can guarantee a GM feeblemind would prevent a sorc from casting anything, and would probably also break concentation on their charm.

I don't see how a merc or barb could ever kill a necro solo unless the necro is just careless. It might be difficult for the necro to land a kill on a skilled warrior class, but unless it's a swashie with taunt I can't even fathom how a necro would get in a position to be bash locked and lose.

Shamans have call lightning, yes but they also need to be outdoors and within line of sight of the necro. If a shaman is in the same room as the necro well I would expect blindness, sleep, deafen, something of that nature to prevent a shaman from spamming call lightning.



Uh oh here it comes! *runs for cover*

How about less theoretical and more applied? This isn't getting the recent changes any help.

That's more or less the point I'm trying to make with my replies, it's all theory craft until we see some logs with sound tactics involved.

Agreed. But I'm at work, and so I'm limited to theorycrafting.

Styles, to answer your objections in turn: all of the examples I gave above except petrification have less 1.5 rounds of combat, so it doesn't matter what the necromancer does because he's going to be dead after doing it. Wand lag, order lag, and the necromancer's casting times are at least as long as any of the above options that require you to be in the same room as the necromancer.
Scouts are the very definition of ranged damage (of which necromancers have 0), so of course the scout is going to win. I didn't think that needed pointing out.
Call lightning will devastate the necromancer himself, as well as his controls which are going to be grouped with him, and that's all that matters for this discussion.
If you see legitimate holes, point them out. So far I'm not really convinced.

See Tarconus.

I suppose this is the biggest problem that I have with these most recent code updates -- despite everyone's protests, they really are an indictment on the player. Pre-update necromancers can look very powerful, but they have to be in the hands of a player who can take a freaking gnome mercenary to victory, and with at least as high a success rate. On the "other" site, someone posted a log today of a paladin doing virtually everything wrong that he possibly could (I don't mean that in a mean way, Nokuro... to be honest, not many players are going to fare all that much better), and yet the necromancer still can't manage a kill.

Alaric, Tarconus, and Rorey are all prime examples that could have beaten Surrit 1 on 1 in the previous code implementation, because they took the same amount of massive time to prepare that Edoras does, and because they have the capacity to think clearly in combat. I definitely agree that the necromancer is an incredibly advanced class, and the level of involvement to get to what everything seems to think is available 24/7 (e.g., fully buffed and equipped army) is pretty intensive -- that should come with reward that can only be canceled by the same amount of preparation. But instead of trying to rise to that level, the necromancer class has been dumbed down so far that even in the hands of the most capable players it's not going to be able to shine, and that's the shame of it.

No caster, barring extraordinary circumstances, -should- be killed by a melee character in a 1v1 situation. They can be beaten, most certainly, but not killed. This isn't worth even arguing and whenever someone brings the point up of "Well if I engage a necro 1v1 in Teron he can just recall and run away when he wants therefore necros are overpowered" I am tempted to ignore them completely, because this is true for every single class that doesn't fight from the front row.

It would be a good thing to eliminate the ability to perform walk-in holy words. I don't like proposing this because it eliminates one of the few ways to engage successfully when <XXXX> is in play, but if walk-in holy words aren't removed then necromancers will be a joke of a class. They still are, but at least you'll have to sit in the room with them and cast holy word to win instead of casting it out of the room and then walking in.