Shattered Kingdoms

The extreme vulnerabilities I'm referencing refer to the fact that not only is a necro himself very vulnerable, but his undead are even more vulnerable.

The necro himself is vulnerable because necros wear cloth armor, don't natively have defensive spells like warlocks and sorcerers do, and all necros are vulnerable to BoG. As a human or deep-elf, the damage from BoG is enough to kill you (See Syn's necro getting 3 shotted), but even as a sprite or halfling, BoG damage is enough to make you have to quaff heals, and if you get tagged and anyone can dispel you or go ethereal, you're hosed. If you start quaffing heals during a fight, you are completely neutralized, unlike physical damage classes. Like all casters, necros also get murdered by arrows and bolts, and necros also have no innate ranged combat abilities at all and don't have access to healing spells like a warlock or shaman might.

In addition, a necro's sources of damage are also very vulnerable. Necros have two ways to deal damage: Finger of Death, and physical damage. Fear is also an excellent spell in case you happen to be going against a group where some of the members have poor will saves and you can't handle them all being in the room. To be completely honest, you can pretty much throw all maledictions out the window here when it comes to PvP, because if you wanted to roll a class that casts maledictions in PvP, you should have rolled a class that doesn't have to immediately recall upon reaching the second row ie: shaman or hellion.

Finger of death is nice, but it takes forever to cast and reciting a scroll has a relatively low chance of beating someone's fort save, let alone landing a kill: It's also impossible to one-shot even an elf with FoD if the elf has sanctuary, because FoD does damage based on the target's current HP.

As for physical damage, necros have animates and controls. Controls are the best choice now, but they have a hefty mana drain, take double damage from holy word, and are all going to get 1-shotted by BoG. Not counting my regen, I lose 10% mana a tick from 3 controls, and I have to release all other spells I'm holding to sleep with 3 controls. Controls are also very volatile: They can be negated and turned against you by MR barbs, cancellation, dispel magic, remove compulsion, and holy word.

As for animates, animates all have very low HP and have to be utilized through orders. They also have no active skills. As such, each animate, while equivalent to a hasted, GS'ed rogue, paladin or hellion in damage, will also get dropped to 50% or lower if not outright dispelled by holy word. Animates can also get one-shotted by BoG. Animates get 1-rounded by someone wielding a Hammer of Light. In the time that it takes you to order all your animates to hit a single target, a holy word can start and finish, which will cut the damage output and survivability of an animate army in more than half. Another holy word will kill each and every one of your animates without question. Against a single Hammer warrior with an HoL, you have about 3-4 rounds to win the fight before your undead start dropping below critical mass to the point where his heal potions are heavily out-performing the damage of your undead. You should know this last part from experience, I'd think.

Put a necro in a 1v1 fight in neutral territory against a skilled player and he will probably win the engagement, as long as the other player is not a paladin, sorcerer, warlock, scout, or hammer warrior. However, while a necro may win the engagements, landing the kill is still very difficult. Even then, it is unlikely that anyone who isn't one of those class/faction combinations will ever engage him 1v1 in neutral territory. So let's be more reasonable. Put the necro in a 2v2 fight, and if the opposing side has anyone who can holy word or BoG then the necro has an extremely small window (about 3 rounds of combat) to do something before his entire undead army is utterly demolished and he's left with nothing but his spell damage, which, as I mentioned, is very lacking. Holy word is in a much greater supply than you may think, and since necros are the universally hated evil, no one is going to turn down the chance to drop a HW bomb. As for paladins: If all that a paladin ever does in a fight is BoG the necro's controls in the first 2-3 rounds of combat and then BoG the necro's animates afterwards, the necro will be unable to kill anyone who isn't afk or bad or do anything besides contribute maledictions and fear.

I think that the Pilnor v. Xunux fight and the Tarconus v Surrit fight are pretty stellar examples of exposing the glaring vulnerabilities of the necro class while not having to take a single risk yourself. I also think that it's very worthy of noting that the strongest cabal in the game, the Hammer of Light, is always pitted against necros.

The bold part is already true. The rest would not be impossible but would be another significant chunk of work on my part.

These could definitely be interesting to add to the game, although I doubt it would a real solution to the issues raised in this thread (assuming there is anything here that needs addressed).

This is really the only thing that interests me right now.

Give up on raising the damage of animates back up, because that's just not going to happen. But I DO want necromancers to be viable as a malediction class. Previous to these changes, you could never, ever have raised the hit points of animates because they were already murderous. Now... well, it's at least conceivable that we could do that. But I will need to see weeks, perhaps months, of testing across multiple people before I would think about it. So why don't you come back to this in 2013?

"Come back to this in 2013" sounds sooooo heavy.

I don't care if it is only 19 days away.

Shame the Mayans are going to destroy everything in 9 days. I think this is all a last minute plot by Dulrik as he rides off on a cosmic fire, laughing at how he made people dance to his changes.

Heh, I think Styles won me over with that gif, more or less exactly how I felt reading that. I like playing with you, man, but you're a terribly unconvincing forum warrior. You just wrote like 20,000 words and your arguments were "paladins are really good against me and hammer of light really beat on undead". That's like 5% of the mud.

Patrisaurus, didn't I just yesterday get the jump on you with 3 controls in Exile, and you downed a shadowy wight in 2 rounds while on mood defensive without berserk? Anyway, that wasn't the biggest part of my argument.

Apparently when I answer questions I'm just too verbose. Maybe if I just select the most important part of my previous post, which you apparently either missed or are just trolling me.
I'll add to that that the good ole walk-in holy word, follow necro + flee after dropping the bomb move is extremely safe and impossible to stop if you have someone competent to lead you.

D, if you want necros to use more maledictions, would it be possible for the necro to enchant all of the undead's equipped weapons with a malediction at once? Only would work with anything under the control in the necro's group.

for instance:



Mass versions of poison, plague, weaken... Think I grabbed them all.
Edoras, would something like that make you wanna use maledictions again and would balance out your issues with the class currently? Not saying there is or isn't anything wrong ... yet.