Necromancer/Death Mage

[NiteHawk]

Keep it simple mate, it needs to not be overly complicated

[Futch]

I kinda think what hurts DM's the most isn't really their spell damage or leech but the fact that they should be casting their PVP spells in the first round if that's the way the spells are intended (blind, rot) but then again I have no idea what blind does.

[Satsujin]

Blind makes the room dark to your target, I think? Something like that anyways. And yeah, they lose an entire round of damage with their buffs and debuffs that need casting. That and their low damage (or melee classes high damage, whatever the issue is) makes them suck PVP.

[NiteHawk]

It's not really that caster damage is too low, it's physical damage is too high.

The literal difference is 190 from blast to about 160 ish now from Leech. I don't think that's terrible damage. But theres a problem with AGI and Physical damage that needs addressing.

I don't get why everyone is claiming leech is a PVP spell, it's not. It's for both. The leeching part is just a bonus. It's not like it's a risky move, it's the same MP as Blast (only 5). I adjusted it recently and gave it better average and a little more damage. I am also going to remove the heal message if it doesn't heal anything, cause it'll be less annoying in PVE then.

That being said, ROT and BLIND are more of PVP spells but work in PVE too. Blind gives you -1 agi but also blinds you from seeing anyone in the room, it's like being in total darkness. It's good for escaping primarily but also if they have higher WISDOM and you hit them with it, it can take them out of PVP if they can't see anything, or you can weave back and forth in the room and be a dick. (They cannot see you enter or leave either.) On monsters it makes it so they don't follow you, so it's more about PVP.

ROT is pretty much a poison based spell. Rot doesn't stack, and at higher levels it might work OK on PVE for additional damage. It's probably 15-20 damage per tick (5 seconds) with a beam set damage on top but it's probably a spell I'd only cast at the start of a battle once. It uneffects more right now, something which I might remove, I'm not sure yet. But casting rot in the start and being successful could mean additional damage. I think the amount needs to be higher, possibly.


I think the biggest problem is everyone is basing it off things like zerkers which deal 330-400 damage, but it's the zerkers that are at fault here right now, and other physical based classes. Physical damage does and should deal more damage, but it's a bit extreme right now, plus I don't feel armor or agi are correct and need some fixing.

[Kruell]

I don't get why everyone is claiming leech is a PVP spell, it's not. It's for both. The leeching part is just a bonus. It's not like it's a risky move, it's the same MP as Blast (only 5). I adjusted it recently and gave it better average and a little more damage. I am also going to remove the heal message if it doesn't heal anything, cause it'll be less annoying in PVE then.

Just speaking for me. The first few Death Mages I leveled were before you put in the last fix. The fizzle/unaffect rate of Leech appeared to be so high you were wasting 15 mana per turn and doing about 10% more damage than a single Beam. Compare that with Beam which would hardly fizzle by lvl 18 and unaffected much less for 6 mana per round. Having that kind of round meant at best you were getting healed for 30 points a round but you were doing so little damage to a monster it was taking forever to kill it. Even with your Zombie you couldn't level as a necro without burning through healing AND mana pots.

I've leveled only one DM since your fix. The damage change is VERY noticeable but fizzle was still a huge problem between lvl 16 and 20ish (that's fine). I leveled in the Goblin Mine so was facing different monsters but I didn't suffer from rounds of no damage due to unaffect. Either you changed something there or it was just the difference in monsters. Without the unaffect epidemic, leveling the DM was actually very easy and made me wonder if Leech might not be too powerful now.

I fought a few different classes with my last DM with Enchanters, Priests, and lizard Ninja/Zerkers dying horribly. Against an Elder it was literally 50/50 and close. With the upcoming changes to damage/armor we will have to evaluate pvp again. Right now though DMs "feel" like they are combat ready. No Class should dominate PVP and until I face other races of Ninjas, Death Mages seem to be a caster PVP contender which is a very nice change.

Side Note: My Gobby Ninja pwns DMs and other caster classes. Maybe the changes to DMs will force people to move away from lizards and allocate points to Wisdom. People will have to decide how to balance their character instead of going for max agi and str, boosting one and ignoring wisdom.

[Satsujin]

I've got an elf ninja if you want to pit your DM against that for a couple rounds.

[NiteHawk]

I'm hoping leech will be better off. I did adjust the fizzle rate to be similar to BLAST. Also gave that small damage boost and rounded the average a bit. Overall I think it's fine though. It should of been 5MP though for awhile, so the MP rate is fine.

For healing your zombie pet though you can leech it and it will opposite heal it. It takes some of your HP but its minimal, about half a basic leech 10-20 HP?)

[NiteHawk]

-LEECH for necros now has 10% more damage, and has less fizzle. It also has a higher minimum then before.
-BLIND for necros now gives -2 agility rather then -1 agility.
-Necromancers now gain AC every per 3 levels. 9 AC at level 25.


Wrote in the dev log. Leech should of already been noted but the rest are new.

[Reaper]

I have a few suggestions to make the necro a little better.

Overall- I think the heal needs to be increased. I'm not suggesting it be OP or anything, but right now it is very marginal. It's ok for mobs but for pvp its not very good. I think it should be around 50% of the damage.

Utility- we really don't have much

Rot - this is an ok skill

Blind- this is almost worthless for pvp as it is completely negated by simply moving. If this spell was changed to last a finite amount of time it would make the necro useful. For instance you would be blind and have -agi for like 5 seconds.

Its really the lack of utility that kills us. I get that we are a slightly tougher but less damage sorc, I'm good with that. Yet, we need something. I think adjusting blind would do wonders for our viability.

Another idea I had is removing sap from the sorcs and giving it to necros. Right now sorcs have airwalk, invis, Ming, enchant, sap. If sap were changed to the necro class it would make sorcs the buffers and the necros the debuffer. This gives us more party viability, also it makes sense.


Anyways just my opinion/ suggestions and ideas.

[Reaper]

Also not suggesting we get all of these things, just different ideas. Having a 5second blind and sap would be Op. I think if we got sap blind should stay how it is for example.