Shattered Kingdoms

You're somewhat right on this: In general, necros are one of the most powerful classes if you are forced to fight in the same room as they are (although even that comes with an added caveat of whether or not the opposing side has any lightie priests or paladins, at which point I'd much rather have a warlock than a necro). The primary counter to this is, as you've noted, to avoid fighting a necro in the same room. To that end, that a necro has no innate way to actually stop you from simply avoiding him.

Even then, with the correct assumption that a necros greatest strength -is- "same-room combat," I know of two logs where a single character faced off solo against an undead horde in the same room and it was the necromancer who was forced to flee. One of them is a log from one of my characters, a gnome hammer mercenary, the other is a log from one of Baldric's characters, who was a peacekeeper dwarf barbarian. Both of them are also -before- the recent notable nerfs to animate HP, damage, and saves. Now, a well buffed hammer merc barb or paladin will totally decimate a necromancer 1v1 unless the necromancer manages to get a very lucky dispel off, and even in that case I can see the hammer warrior still getting away unless a lucky bash also lands near the same time-frame.

TL;DR: If your stance is that necromancers don't need some love because they're still overpowered in "same-room combat," I think that's a faulty stance, as not only can same-room combat be avoided, but against lightie priests and paladins, same-room combat is actually not in the favor of the necro.

I don't necessarily agree with this. Surrit was able to last through a great deal of combat without being forced ethereal, because I was willing to actually use heal potions during PvP, which is a fault that most casters succumb to. That said, there are definitely situations where you can go ethereal yet still do some damage, especially against ranged combat. The problem with doing so is that if you are forced ethereal, you're almost guaranteed to lose the fight because you're limited to orders and dispels, not to mention having to worry about enemies going ethereal and killing you.

Another even more recent change that really hurt necros along with all casters was the change to magic-resistant races against magma. I would not be surprised if a max CON, max HP necro or sorcerer can be one-shot from 100 to zero by magma on a failed reflex save, and the only damage mitigation options against magma are protection and sanctuary. Recently, Galthryn (elf sorc) actually died from a single magma -brandish- because of the magma DoT, and that was as an elf before the magma buff. With the code now, that would have likely instantly killed him from a staff brandish.

A max con, max hp necromancer would not be one-shot by magma spray.

Necromancers are fine.

So yeah, Necromancers are still useful and what not, but honestly there's absolutely no reason to animate wraiths. They don't use weapons, they get two attacks and they don't paralyze anymore. They start off ethereal but they can't even bash, so they'd be hard pressed to even kill an ethereal sorcerer. They might as well not even be part of the animate dead squad, and seeing as they're the last undead type you get and require a higher level corpse, they SHOULD be the most potent of all the undead types.

I armed a wraith with a very strong and fast exotic weapon and it was deflecting off the light chain mail of a typical GM priest NPC. My skeletons absolutely destroy these same NPCs armed or unarmed.

Also, I think instead of messing with order lag and all, if cast times were just decreased then you could use tactical advantage of your controlled undead being aggressive when not controlled, and focus on casting with some animates as protection/extra damage.

Finally, I think that my biggest pet peeve is that the undead are susceptible to Finger of Death. I understand that they're not really going to have MP, MR, Fort or Will, but seriously Finger of death shouldn't affect them, nor I think should Energy drain nor vampiric touch, since these are spells that typically don't affect them when they're not being controlled and just doesn't make Rp sense.

Without weighing in on whether necros are "fine" or "need work", I just want to comment that if you're using all animates for the same purposes, then you're just doing it wrong.

All animates have at least the most bare-bones weapon-handling skills. Maybe a basic knife is more suitable than putting a halberd in some of those cold, undead hands. All undead lose their 'special attack' when wielding weapons.

Skeletons are the best with weapons. But they are skinny, boney, and they break kind of easily. Chill touch.
Zombies are slower than skeletons because of all that meat on their carcass. But that makes a better meat shield.
Ghouls are slower than skeletons, faster than zombies. Poisonous bite.
Wights are slower than skeletons, faster than zombies. Cursed bite.
Wraiths can offer a flying, ethereal undead option. Paralyzing bite (yes, they still have it, I just tested to verify).

I know, there are plenty of arguments still about why animates aren't as useful as they might theoretically be. But they do offer some varied benefits for the necromancer.

*No insinuations, attacks or assumptions purposely directed at anyone else or their opinion. This is simply my own opinion*

Through testing, I simply do not see any point in using them or depending on them for a successful battle scenario.

109 rounds for a single wraith to kill a housekeeper NPC in tlaxcala. (131 hits to kill "0.76% avg damage per strike) Against actual players in decent armor, I simply do not thing a group of these would be reliable to do any real damage.

28 rounds for '3' wraiths to kill a tlaxcala priest. Another example of their very low damage output. Yes, they could wield weapons, but you would have to forgo their touch attacks. Was it changed to bite recently?

Best case scenario, paralyze procs 7% of time and the lowest being 1.2% from testing. In the battle against the housekeeper, the wraith touch proc'd a bit more around 6 times, but that was during the course of 109 rounds. Given the fact that most pvp rounds last at the most, 10, one could assume that the chance of a single wraith actually landing a touch attack (save or not) is around 0.7%. With 3 wraiths, 2.1%.

Tanking potential- (ivory hide and close to 700hp) They may last a couple rounds. Zombies are definitely the best choice for tanking. Given the very low rate of paralyze and low damage output, one might be better off making solely zombies.

I understand that control undead concentration was increased to perhaps funnel necromancers toward animate builds, but I simply do not find them reliable in any fashion.

Onto spell casting:

Fist off I would just like to point out that I am in no way whining or complaining. These are simply my personal observations regarding spell damage and necros in their current form.

I tested out energy-drain after it had been changed and came to the conclusion that with no fort mods and resisting 1/4 14 art casts, that it was pointless to use the spell even if it was no-save like harm. In a real pvp battle, there would be no point since damage type spells would be reduced via protection/sanctuary/shield/racial MP. Not to mention not one tick lost after 8 casts that were not resisted.

Finger of death is great if your opponent has no fortitude.
It doesn't impair on save and realistically, one isn't going to have enough time during a battle to impair an opponent with other fort based spells. Battles happen way too quick for that. I think its a good opening spell, but that is about it. Seems easy to resist like E drain.

Chill/Vampiric touch damage is trivial and not really worth casts when other things such as maledictions could be cast.

At this point magma is likely the only damage based spell I would consider casting in pk. I think that by ignoring MP, racial MP etc, it has become a viable option. I still don't see any point though in using necromancer damage spells at all. Between the cast times, ways to reduce the damage and the short duration of pk scenarios, there are much better options out there and the damage spells just seem like a waste which cause players to lean more toward melee from animates for damage output. I'd really like to see necros branch away from the pet build.

I tested plague a bit. 4 second cast times cause the spell to lose it's usefulness. I could only ever really see using the spell as a hellion casting it on a weapon. Upon first cast, -3 dex/con seem trivial.

I would personally reduce the concentration cost of control undead or somehow adjust negative energy based spells to increase their effectiveness.

I remember levelling a necro recently and being very pleased when two hours of talking to the HF of the faith I wanted later without an invest, I deleted him. First time I've been happy to get rp'd into deletion. My experience was consistent with what is being reported here. They are great for farming gold though.

Agreed. Armed skeletons are your best for animated-dead damage output. Bite v touch, it's the same as the default, I think. I just believe that the echo on that one reads as the wraith biting the person.


I seem to remember that we turned down the power on their paralyzations because they were overpowered before. I suspect that if you used the same corpse to make a wight, their "curse" touch might land more often, and that if you used the same corpse to make a ghoul, their "poison" touch might land even more often still. I'm uncertain if these attacks cause impairment when they're resisted, but they probably should if they don't.


Zombies seem to be a bit under-rated, IMO. You drop a GM NPC and turn him into a zombie, you've got a reasonable meat shield. Drop another and turn it into a skeleton + give him decent EQ, and you've got a reasonable pig-sticker. Not the best, by any measure. But helpful in appropriate circumstances.


This has been the general trend of necros for the past ~13 years. In the beginning, they were basically sorcs who ran around with 2 controlled undead. Animate dead was completely useless. In the same way that sorcs skew to "charm" and warlocks skew to "conjure elemental", we opted to skew necros closer to "animate dead" and further from "control undead". Since then, necro balance has tried to walk that general line.


I'll admit, I'm really not a fan of being able to "heal" back your EXP at the healer. The damage output was increased at the time, but I liked that necromancers could drain away experience. It needed more limits than we had in the old Wild West days, but the current healer-solution cripples the spell that once kept the whole MUD in fear.


Think you could also make the argument that it's extremely useful in PvE. My necros in the past made pretty extensive use of "c finger <NPC>" followed immediately by "c animate corpse <type>".


I'd like to see the healing component of vampiric touch made more useful. I've tried and tried to play necros who use the spell to help keep their frail selves alive, and it still falls short of how I'd prefer to see it work.


I haven't played a necromancer in PK for several years, so you may be right. Personally, I never judge a class or a skill/spell based solely on how it operates in the arena of PK. As more of an adventurer-type player, I spend at least as much time in considering how that class/ skill/spell/etc operates in relation to NPCs/ areas/ game environment as I do in studying how it can be used in PK vs other players.


I love the vision of the necromancer walking through town with an army of undead at his fingertips. But I'm a much bigger fan of animate than I am of control. I like to see the game offering different types of pet-build mechanics: charm v. animate v. conjure v. tame v. intimidate. Necros shifting to more combat-readiness is likely to move them closer to a shaman or hellion. Animate, however, as it works is pretty much unique in how it interacts with the game world. I like to see this as one of the foundations of their theme in-game.


Personally, I don't want to see any improvements made to control undead. It's already pretty buff and I still think that if that's the play experience that is desired, it can be achieved by playing a sorc with charm. I'd rather stick with Animate Dead as the bread & butter to be worked on.
As for adjusting negative energy based spells to increase their effectiveness, in this case I'd point toward making E-drain's experience drain more permanent again, and to increase the effectiveness of Vampric Touch.


I love necro conversations, by the way. Such a cool class.

Did you account for wraiths not attempting touch attacks against victims who are already paralyzed? Your data is way different than my own, and that's the only explanation I can think of. I find a rate through experimentation much higher than 7%.