Shattered Kingdoms

I can see what you are saying, however evidence says otherwise. People are not playing merc/barb because they are easy. They are playing them because they are overpowered. Sorcs/necros have counters, barbs/mercs do not. That's why there are a ton more barb/mercs to sorcs/necros.

I agree with everything Algon said here.

Sorcs are better than any other class because they are essentially all the classes rolled into one, plus they have abilities that are better than anything any of the other classes get. Anyone who says that mercs>sorcs is wrong. Lathron is as good as any PC out there, and a sorc can run around with Lathron and ANOTHER GM barb to help out.

The only reason it's silly to play a necro is that sorcs are so much obviously better than necros now. Necros are still good. I am sure a good player could be highly successful using nothing other than sleep and shadowy wights in PvP. But necros get a lot more than sleep and control undead when it comes to extremely useful or powerful abilities/spells. They have rift, wands, scrolls, staves, locate object, detections, scribe, dispel magic, fear, blindness, curse, and identify. Yeah, it's annoying that animate has been reduced to a flavor spell, but as far as game balance goes, necros are good, if not nearly as OP as sorcs.

MR barbs are too strong for too little drawback.

Bash should not reset people's stances.

I don't see any evidence to support the claim that MR barbarians are too strong. There have been a couple that have had moderate success, but none that have dominated like other classes. I think people are conflating being too powerful with being annoying to play against. They negate preparation, which is essentially time investment. Time invested is simply not a good model for PK success, so I don't see this as a negative.

Being knocked prone should not reset stance, since it punishes characters that are in the correct stance (defensive) and actually rewards a mongoloid, aggressive stance front row character by making them take less damage and be less likely to get knocked prone again.

Perhaps the time one spends prone could be modified by the stance one was in before it happened. Giving a defensive character that extra 10-20 pulses to resume a stance, quaff a potion, or react and an aggressive character a bit more of a punishment for risking and failing would produce an environment where we have perceived control over our consequences. That is a powerful psychological mechanic and brings more "active" to the situation on both sides of of an encounter.

There's a difference between being too strong, and being too strong for too little drawback. I personally abhor the idea of a mechanic like aura of negation that's not only unpreventable from the target, but is -only- useful against people who have put more effort into prep. That's stupid.

Anyway, this thread's supposed to be about necros. I've given my advice: They should get a skill that lets them order their animates (not controls) without order lag. They certainly need something in order to have any real advantage over the other casters classes, especially considering that they're not only shoehorned into playing diabolic, but also BoGable.

If only necromancers could have some sort of spell that would create a "Save or Die" situation for characters with weak fortitude saves. If only they could scribe it twice so that in one instant action the percent change of saving for a character is an order of magnitude lower.

If only necromancers had a spell that implemented the force flee of Bolt of Glory. Maybe it could affect the entire group of the target and use will saves to provide necromancers with a great alternative to spells that target fortitude.

Geez, if only necromancers had access to pretty much every single debuff in the game and had a large amount of art to pump up the DC of those debuffs.

I think you, and maybe some other veterans, are entirely over-reliant on animate dead when formulating necromantic strategies. Necromancers can use any magic device in the game. Think about that. A necromancer without a diverse portfolio is a necromancer asking to be easily overcome.

You mean petrification? Necromancers don't get that. The damage of Finger of Death is based on your target's current HP, and scrolls do less damage then cast spells. Scribed Finger of death isn't save or die except against naked, unbuffed elves. As for a cast FoD, you can remove all of your gear, eat a sanc herb, and fail a save against a GM necro casting FoD without dying, even if you're an elf. I don't think that it's even possible for a halfling or sprite to ever die to FoD. 7/10 would rather have petrification/depetrification.

Fear is the one spell that necromancers get which is actually useful, but being able to cast fear is just not good enough to offset necro weaknesses, not to mention there are a few magical devices in the game that grant fear to other casters. Except on the rare occasion where your necro is in group fighting another group, at best casting fear is a way to -maybe- save your butt if you get way outnumbered or BoGed, at worst casting fear is just a way to lose kills you otherwise could have gained. The biggest problem of necros is getting people to stay -in- the room, not to make them flee.

If only there were two other much more survivable classes with access to maledictions, or one other superior caster class with access to the most important one (dispel magic). Being able to maledict someone to death in a fight is cool and all until you realize that you should have just rolled a shaman or hellion.

I'd much rather have a warlock or sorcerer with a huge set of wands and staves than a necro with a huge set of wands and staves. The amount of usefulness that a well-geared warlock or sorc possesses a well-geared necro is staggering.

I played a few Necromancers after the animate change but didn't do any pvp, stuck mostly to pve. It really excited me since I was one of the biggest in favor of the animate change since playing Ixcenia so many years ago. Problem is, animates are weak as newborns almost. Even in PvE using skeletons, which are supposed to be the "strikers" if I recall and the damage dealers, even with the maxed out number of, I believe it was 8 (full group of 9), it took them ages to kill anything that was considered "tough". This was at master level and beyond mind you, where characters are supposed to be "complete."

Simply put, if they're given a weapon they do little to no damage and their touch attacks are taken away. Unarmed, they do a little to sometimes moderate damage, but the die stupidly fast. The idea is to encourage mixing and matching your undead, which makes sense, but none of them do decent damage or have the survival of a control, even if the controls can be BoG'd. Holy word just destroys animate, but then again that makes sense. Two holy words and your army is gone, so well coordinated priests / pallies or whatever can easily just take you out before you do anything The shadowy wights at least will get some DPS out in that round before the BoG goes off and one of them with a weapon can do more than your entire full 8 undead army can. That's pretty messed up.

From a balance aspect though, animate is a nightmare as it is near impossible to balance an entire group of NPCs that a player can carry. Then again, Necros are supposed to be more isolated in RP than they are in today's game, at least from what I saw. A lot of darkie nations are accepting of them, though sometimes you see the MC not so trusting or wanting their help. I guess this RP flavor was the reasoning for the animate army being somewhat overpowered back in the day. They're supposed to be loners, sort of.

As it stands now, Ardith makes a valid point. In the game, how many logs do you see people killed with magic damage? When I was playing Mephistir as a solo warlock, and I know I'm not the best example, there were many a times to where there were people with gear enchanted so heavily that magic damage done nothing to them. You rarely see that with melee damage. Even with all the buffs, sanc, protection, etc, you can still die in 3-5 rounds with melee damage. It'd take a solo magic user other than a sorc around 10+ rounds to kill someone because your spells are only doing at most 7% to their HP pool. Elementals, or even Lathron won't last that long with things like frenzy, giant strength, haste and the multitude of ways you can buff melee damage. In fact, you can buff melee damage but not spell damage, yet with the multiple strikes, melee outguns magic damage on a pure per round basis.

Like Edoras said, how many Necromancers have you seen actually cast FoD? With its cast time, you'll be dead before you get it off, depending on the situation. Even when you do get it off, FoD simply is not a threatening spell. It isn't like petrify to where "poof" and you're dead. You resist it, take a bit of damage, quaff a heal vial and you're well on your way back to beating the necros undead. If you want to balance necros you need to, imo, first balance melee and magic. That's easier said than done and I wish I had a suggestions to do so.

Someone like Ardith or Finney or one of the more prominent pkers is better suited to that than me. I'm goin back to lurking. Later guys.

Just as a side note, skeletons do have a decent amount of potential damage output, given that they have the sword skill and come with innate haste. You can still toss up some massive weapons on them and go to town: The problem is that they now drop instantly in a single holy word, they do -substantially- less damage than wraiths used to pre-nerf and are also much more likely to bounce off of sanc because they can't berserk/fury.

I felt like a lot of animates sucked at the weapons skills. Even with enchanted massive weapons, they where not hitting their targets very much.