Necro pet (Liches) bugs

When liches cast curse, they don’t take into account, if the mob is already cursed.
When liches cast curse, they do it repeatedly, regardless if they have cast it already. (Haven’t liches cast weaken for me.)
Liches attempt to demon bind high-level mobs repeatedly.
Liches demon bind mobs that didn’t phase on me.
Liches don’t immediately use their mana. This is pretty uncomfortable, considering they are weaker, than other pets, they don’t use their abilities well this way and it’s best to kill the mob, rather than attempt to hit him (liches have noticeably lower hitroll, than wights or wraiths.).

All of this makes them much worse, than the much easier available wraiths or even wights. I thought that pets should be better with levels (comparing wights to liches now).

You might say that liches blast and I need to use them for specific mobs - well - I tried - they don’t blast or cast in the ways specified above.

I suggest the following to improve 4-5:

allow necros to set the casting direction of a pet by selecting a pre-set guideline: order lich cast mage, order lich cast nomage
allow necros to select specific spells for each mob: order lich cast destruction, order 2.lich cast curse/weaken/arms of the abyss/destruction
allow necros create their own presets:

create preset mageone demon bind, destruction

create preset magetwo curse/weaken/demon bind/destruction

create preset solid curse/weaken/destruction

Presets can be named differently, such as chain of commands, instructions or enchantments.

Usage:

order lich use mageone

order 2.lich use magetwo

order 3.lich use solid

Thank you.

by the time u get through order 1. order 2. order 3.

you’re probably dead :D

The way I understood it, the suggestion allows the necro to define the behavior of the pet before the fight.

Then when the fight arrives, order whatever kill target would result in the defined behavior.

I think one of the features of pets is that they behave in a way you don’t have total control over.

If u can have one pet blast, one pet debuff, one pet bash or whatever, they’d be way overpowered.

Spink got it right, I meant the presets to be created and used before fight.

Way overpowered? Simply fixing the 1-4 bugs would make them actually useful, than lower level pets, including summoned pets (wraiths) - and apparently animated pets should be better, than summoned pets (they aren’t, atm).

The preset option doesn’t change them more, than fixing the bugs (i.e., not binding nomage mobs, etc). It doesn’t even add new spells to pets: they’d cast debuffs anyway, but the preset saves them about 0-30ma per pet, depending on how the spell checks are done, that’s all (with all the mentioned bugs fixed, I should add).

What the presets do is allow necros actually use the pets, rather than rely on some minimal random chance they’ll do something.

For example, wights already proc well and only one of them procs the poison once, the rest don’t proc it during the fight. I don’t see why liches can’t proc curse, bind, weaken (if liches do it, haven’t seen it) and blast as effectively as wights do at the moment.

Example:

The 1-4 bugs are fixed:

liches debuff the mob randomly (one lich casts curse, another bind, another weaken/arms)
liches proceed with blasting the mob

With presets:

1-2 liches debuff the mob, if there are more, they start blasting
liches proceed with blasting

Another variant:

liches start blasting immediately

The only difference is the speed of blasting, which does make the mobs use their potential, but not really overpowered.

Also, I didn’t mention bash: liches don’t have this proc. I’m only talking about the efficient use of current pet procs, I’m not discussing about adding any new procs/spells to pets at the moment.

It strikes me that these would not be overly easy to implement (although I guess I wouldn’t know, so just call it an unqualified guess).

So (assuming I guessed well) that means for it to have a chance, an immortal has to love it enough to put in the time.

Perhaps easier (and requiring far less love) would be to just remove the debuff spells from the lich arsenal, since debuffs are better guided by real intelligence anyway.

That way you get a buff disguised as a nerf, changing a lich from a confused random-number-generator/spellcaster to a focused destruction machine.

Perhaps if this is too considered too powerful, one of the debuffs could be left in, to dilute the destruction a bit.

Anyway, I don’t really know what I’m doing, so feel free to poke holes.

You are right that fixing bugs is easier, than implementing the presets.

And I’ll be fine if they just fix the bugs as well.

But the presets could be a useful addition to the necro pet arsenal, rather than removing the debuffs.

Removing debuffs from liches seems like a step back, rather than fixing the actual problems or adding something useful/interesting to the mud.

I understand your frustration and its frustration I have on occassion felt with necro pets, that said however the bottom line in my view is that necro pets provide necros at all levels (that I have achieved so far) with a balanced level of power.

I would see liches in the same way that I would see many many of the mage/cleric spells /bard songs that are rarely if ever used, nice background to the game but functionally pointless, other than testing I have never used liches, should they be of use? probably. Do I care much about it? Not at all.

It soon becomes apparent that by and large wraiths and wights are the best pets to use in most circumstances, there are exceptions especially when you start working out how best necro pets can mix with supplications, this makes banshee and vilewight viable. I would favour 3 wights over 2 vilewights most days.

Personally I dont want to worry about setting pets up or passing them additional orders, I would much rather summon&spell them then order them into the fight and let them get on with it. Any additional work I would need to do to manage them should be met by equal increase in power they provide.

While I would be very happy to see pets rationalised to see a gradual increase in available power through necro levels stepping up every time a new pet was available, this would not only make a lot of sense but would improve the richness of the game and therefore my enjoyment. I dont however see this as anything like a burning issue, I prefer to just shrug and accept that some pets are there just for decoration.

My biggest concern right now is to hear from other necros with a few more levels than me that bonesnarls are now pointless due to insufficient AC … hearing that sort of took the excitement out of looking forward to 5x40 … I guess the reign of the wights and wraiths will continue.

Thraxas

Thraxas, when I was exping for 3x40, I eagerly anticipated the increase of power of my pets. Using 36lev pets at 2x40 necro (or even far beyond) is not that elegant, don’t you think?

Now I learn that I don’t need to anticipate anything at 5x40 necro as well: what is fun in that?

I rather side with this point of view:

Quote: While I would be very happy to see pets rationalised to see a gradual increase in available power through necro levels stepping up every time a new pet was available, this would not only make a lot of sense but would improve the richness of the game and therefore my enjoyment.

I’ve seen a number of things that could be improved with necro and this is the major one, in my opinion. So if imms aren’t working on making the whole animate dead set improve gradually, such as

slightly improving the vampires (they are too low hps and dam to be worth finding larger corpses and animating them at night, despite their useful proc that’s supposed to prolong the runs - but it doesn’t, because they die anyway)
making other animated pets useful, as mentioned by you and including the whole animate/summon set
reducing the amount of wight slots the imp takes to 1, since it does much less damage and heals only after fight
reducing the random bonus, where uc gear effect is negligible (i.e., the random hp effect overcomes the UC gear effect)

then they might as well start with the liches and work from there.

Not that I don’t appreciate the time and effort the imms put into the mud, but I think this can be one of the critical points of improvements they can focus on.

For those, who doubt that liches don’t blast, especially on ether mobs, have feel free to enjoy this log and see how many times liches cast in this fight and what they cast:

Mug reaches out with his spiritual hands, gripping the ghostly Weaponsmaster!

<900hp 415ma 204mv> 317762252, -10, -9.7+0

cast ‘curse’ weap

You stop singing.

You lost your concentration!

<900hp 406ma 205mv> 317762252, -10, -9.7+0

The ghostly Weaponsmaster brutally massacres Mug with his hit.

You feel a sudden rush of excitement!

You are brutally massacred by the ghostly Weaponsmaster’s hit.

The ghostly Weaponsmaster viciously massacres Mug with his hit.

The ghostly Weaponsmaster hates your guts!

You pound the ghostly Weaponsmaster very hard.

You miss the ghostly Weaponsmaster with your pound.

You report 839/900 hp. Change: -60. Need: 61. Spells: fluidity, wall of flesh.

<839hp 407ma 206mv> 317762952, -10, -9.7+700

rescue mug

Mug maintains his wraithtouch on the ghostly Weaponsmaster.

Banzai! To the rescue…

<843hp 408ma 207mv> 317762952, -10, -9.7+0

But nobody is fighting him?

<843hp 408ma 207mv> 317762952, -10, -9.7+0

order undead kill weap

A lich’s zap passes right through the ghostly Weaponsmaster!

<846hp 409ma 209mv> 317762952, -10, -9.7+0

You miss the ghostly Weaponsmaster with your pound.

A lich’s zap passes right through the ghostly Weaponsmaster!

The ghostly Weaponsmaster viciously massacres a lich with his hit.

You are viciously massacred by the ghostly Weaponsmaster’s hit.

The ghostly Weaponsmaster misses you with his hit.

You pound the ghostly Weaponsmaster extremely hard.

You pound the ghostly Weaponsmaster very hard.

You report 762/900 hp. Change: -77. Need: 138. Spells: wall of flesh, fluidity.

<762hp 409ma 209mv> 317765138, -10, -9.7+2186

Mug maintains his wraithtouch on the ghostly Weaponsmaster.

<766hp 410ma 210mv> 317765138, -10, -9.7+0

Mug utters the words, ‘diesilla barh’

<766hp 410ma 210mv> 317765138, -10, -9.7+0

You pound the ghostly Weaponsmaster very hard.

A lich’s zap passes right through the ghostly Weaponsmaster!

The ghostly Weaponsmaster misses you with his hit.

You are viciously massacred by the ghostly Weaponsmaster’s hit.

The ghostly Weaponsmaster viciously massacres a lich with his hit.

You pound the ghostly Weaponsmaster extremely hard.

You report 685/900 hp. Change: -77. Need: 215. Spells: wall of flesh, fluidity.

<685hp 412ma 212mv> 317767010, -10, -9.7+1872

l weap

Mug utters the words, ‘qahijf gsfal’

<685hp 412ma 212mv> 317767010, -10, -9.7+0

Mug maintains his wraithtouch on the ghostly Weaponsmaster.

<686hp 412ma 213mv> 317767010, -10, -9.7+0

cast ‘restorat’ Taron

The song ends, and you feel less camaraderie with your party.

<689hp 414ma 214mv> 317767010, -10, -9.7+0

Mug utters the words, ‘qahijf gsfal’

<689hp 414ma 214mv> 317767010, -10, -9.7+0

This battled scarred veteran appears to have lost the really

important battle, the one that killed him. Now he can but

remember his days of glory, when his scars were ones of victory

and not of defeat. He doesn’t look very happy and being looked

at seems to have irritated him.

The ghostly Weaponsmaster has some small wounds and bruises.

You attempt to peek at the inventory:

You can’t see anything.

<691hp 414ma 215mv> 317767010, -10, -9.7+0

Ok.

The cleansing fires of healing fill your body!

You report 882/900 hp. Change: +197. Need: 18. Spells: fluidity, wall of flesh.

<882hp 352ma 215mv> 317774650, -9, -9.7You miss the ghostly Weaponsmaster with your pound.

A lich’s zap passes right through the ghostly Weaponsmaster!

You are brutally massacred by the ghostly Weaponsmaster’s hit.

You are viciously massacred by the ghostly Weaponsmaster’s hit.

You pound the ghostly Weaponsmaster very hard.

You pound the ghostly Weaponsmaster extremely hard.

You report 606/900 hp. Change: -276. Need: 294. Spells: fluidity, wall of flesh.

<606hp 352ma 215mv> 317775698, -9, -9.7+8688

Mug maintains his wraithtouch on the ghostly Weaponsmaster.

Mug releases his grip on the ghostly Weaponsmaster.

<607hp 353ma 216mv> 317775698, -9, -9.7+0

cast ‘restorat’ Taron

You lost your concentration!

<610hp 323ma 217mv> 317775698, -9, -9.7+0

cast ‘restorat’ Taron

Mug utters the words, ‘qahijf gsfal’

<611hp 323ma 218mv> 317775698, -9, -9.7+0

You pound the ghostly Weaponsmaster very hard.

A lich’s zap passes right through the ghostly Weaponsmaster!

You are brutally massacred by the ghostly Weaponsmaster’s hit.

You are viciously massacred by the ghostly Weaponsmaster’s hit.

You miss the ghostly Weaponsmaster with your pound.

You pound the ghostly Weaponsmaster extremely hard.

You report 340/900 hp. Change: -266. Need: 560. Spells: wall of flesh, fluidity.

<340hp 324ma 219mv> 317777550, -9, -9.7+1852

With a mighty effort, you shake off your exhaustion!

Ok.

The cleansing fires of healing fill your body!

You report 528/900 hp. Change: +188. Need: 372. Spells: fluidity, wall of flesh.

<528hp 262ma 179mv> 317785070, -9, -9.7+7520

cast ‘restorat’ Taron

You are thirsty.

<533hp 264ma 181mv> 317785070, -9, -9.7+0

Ok.

The cleansing fires of healing fill your body!

You report 728/900 hp. Change: +200. Need: 172. Spells: wall of flesh, fluidity.

<728hp 202ma 181mv> 317792870, -9, -9.7+7800

You miss the ghostly Weaponsmaster with your pound.

A lich’s zap passes right through the ghostly Weaponsmaster!

You are viciously massacred by the ghostly Weaponsmaster’s hit.

The ghostly Weaponsmaster viciously massacres a lich with his hit.

You pound the ghostly Weaponsmaster very hard.

A lich utters the words, ‘judifgz’

The ghostly Weaponsmaster briefly reveals a red aura!

You report 653/900 hp. Change: -75. Need: 247. Spells: wall of flesh, fluidity.

<653hp 202ma 181mv> 317794534, -9, -9.7+1664

TICK IN 10 SECONDS.

save

Animates are up for 4 ticks!

Mug looks at the ghostly Weaponsmaster.

<654hp 202ma 181mv> 317794534, -9, -9.7+0

cast ‘restorat’ Taron

Saving Taron.

Saving items.

<654hp 202ma 181mv> 317794534, -9, -9.7+0

cast ‘destruction’

Ok.

The cleansing fires of healing fill your body!

You report 859/900 hp. Change: +206. Need: 41. Spells: wall of flesh, fluidity.

<859hp 140ma 181mv> 317802694, -9, -9.7+8160

Mug – ’nope’

<860hp 140ma 182mv> 317802694, -9, -9.7+0

You miss the ghostly Weaponsmaster with your pound.

A lich’s zap passes right through the ghostly Weaponsmaster!

The ghostly Weaponsmaster viciously massacres a lich with his hit.

You are viciously massacred by the ghostly Weaponsmaster’s hit.

The ghostly Weaponsmaster viciously massacres a lich with his hit.

A lich is dead! R.I.P.

Your blood freezes as you hear a lich’s death cry.

A lich stops following you.

Undeads have been up for 4 ticks!

You miss the ghostly Weaponsmaster with your pound.

You pound the ghostly Weaponsmaster very hard.

You report 776/900 hp. Change: -83. Need: 124. Spells: fluidity, wall of flesh.

<776hp 140ma 182mv> 317802802, -9, -9.7+108

Ok.

A piece of the ghostly Weaponsmaster is blasted away.

<777hp 121ma 182mv> 317810040, -9, -9.7+7238

Mug looks at the ghostly Weaponsmaster.

<778hp 121ma 182mv> 317810040, -9, -9.7+0

l weap

This battled scarred veteran appears to have lost the really

important battle, the one that killed him. Now he can but

remember his days of glory, when his scars were ones of victory

and not of defeat. He doesn’t look very happy and being looked

at seems to have irritated him.

The ghostly Weaponsmaster has quite a few wounds.

You attempt to peek at the inventory:

You can’t see anything.

<778hp 121ma 183mv> 317810040, -9, -9.7+0

You miss the ghostly Weaponsmaster with your pound.

A lich’s zap passes right through the ghostly Weaponsmaster!

You are brutally massacred by the ghostly Weaponsmaster’s hit.

You are viciously massacred by the ghostly Weaponsmaster’s hit.

You pound the ghostly Weaponsmaster extremely hard.

You report 505/900 hp. Change: -271. Need: 395. Spells: fluidity, wall of flesh.

<505hp 121ma 183mv> 317811923, -9, -9.7+1883

gt hehe

You grouptell: ‘hehe’

<505hp 121ma 183mv> 317811923, -9, -9.7+0

cast ‘restorat’ Taron

Ok.

The cleansing fires of healing fill your body!

You report 706/900 hp. Change: +201. Need: 194. Spells: wall of flesh, fluidity.

<706hp 59ma 183mv> 317819923, -9, -9.7+8000

Mug utters the words, ‘diesilla barh’

<706hp 60ma 183mv> 317819923, -9, -9.7+0

You pound the ghostly Weaponsmaster extremely hard.

A lich’s zap passes right through the ghostly Weaponsmaster!

You are brutally massacred by the ghostly Weaponsmaster’s hit.

You are viciously massacred by the ghostly Weaponsmaster’s hit.

The ghostly Weaponsmaster misses you with his hit.

You miss the ghostly Weaponsmaster with your pound.

You pound the ghostly Weaponsmaster very hard.

A lich utters the words, ‘judifgz’

You report 554/900 hp. Change: -152. Need: 346. Spells: fluidity, wall of flesh.

<554hp 60ma 184mv> 317820805, -9, -9.7+882

cast ‘restorat’ Taron

Mug looks at the ghostly Weaponsmaster.

<555hp 60ma 184mv> 317820805, -9, -9.7+0

You can’t summon enough energy to cast the spell.

<555hp 60ma 184mv> 317820805, -9, -9.7+0

l weap

This battled scarred veteran appears to have lost the really

important battle, the one that killed him. Now he can but

remember his days of glory, when his scars were ones of victory

and not of defeat. He doesn’t look very happy and being looked

at seems to have irritated him.

The ghostly Weaponsmaster has quite a few wounds.

You attempt to peek at the inventory:

You can’t see anything.

<555hp 60ma 184mv> 317820805, -9, -9.7+0

You miss the ghostly Weaponsmaster with your pound.

A lich’s zap passes right through the ghostly Weaponsmaster!

You are brutally massacred by the ghostly Weaponsmaster’s hit.

The ghostly Weaponsmaster viciously massacres a lich with his hit.

You are viciously massacred by the ghostly Weaponsmaster’s hit.

You miss the ghostly Weaponsmaster with your pound.

You pound the ghostly Weaponsmaster extremely hard.

You report 366/900 hp. Change: -188. Need: 534. Spells: fluidity, wall of flesh.

<366hp 60ma 184mv> 317821885, -9, -9.7+1080

cast ‘restorat’ Taron

You can’t summon enough energy to cast the spell.

<367hp 61ma 185mv> 317821885, -9, -9.7+0

cast ‘restorat’ Taron

You can’t summon enough energy to cast the spell.

<367hp 61ma 185mv> 317821885, -9, -9.7+0

cast ‘restorat’ Taron

You can’t summon enough energy to cast the spell.

<368hp 61ma 185mv> 317821885, -9, -9.7+0

You pound the ghostly Weaponsmaster extremely hard.

A lich’s zap passes right through the ghostly Weaponsmaster!

You are brutally massacred by the ghostly Weaponsmaster’s hit.

The ghostly Weaponsmaster misses you with his hit.

You are viciously massacred by the ghostly Weaponsmaster’s hit.

You pound the ghostly Weaponsmaster extremely hard.

You report 181/900 hp. Change: -185. Need: 719. Spells: wall of flesh, fluidity.

<181hp 61ma 185mv> 317822095, -9, -9.7+210

cast ‘restorat’ Taron

You can’t summon enough energy to cast the spell.

<182hp 61ma 186mv> 317822095, -9, -9.7+0

cast ‘restorat’ Taron

Mug panics, and attempts to flee.

As Mug steps through the protective wall of flesh, it disintegrates into a pile of goo.

<182hp 61ma 186mv> 317822095, -9, -9.7+0

You can’t summon enough energy to cast the spell.

<182hp 61ma 186mv> 317822095, -9, -9.7+0

cast ‘restorat’ Taron

Ok.

The cleansing fires of healing fill your body!

You report 377/900 hp. Change: +196. Need: 523. Spells: fluidity, wall of flesh.

<377hp 0ma 186mv> 317829855, -9, -9.7+7760

fle

You pound the ghostly Weaponsmaster very hard.

A lich’s zap passes right through the ghostly Weaponsmaster!

The ghostly Weaponsmaster misses you with his hit.

The ghostly Weaponsmaster viciously massacres a lich with his hit.

You pound the ghostly Weaponsmaster very hard.

As you step through the protective wall of flesh, it disintegrates into a pile of goo.

Remains of Main Street

Exits: North East West

For those, who skipped the log, it’s 2 curses in 11 rounds. Very helpful.

nice log and tallies with the testing I’ve done, liches are pointless, as I said they’re decoration only rather than serving any functional purpose, do I care, Not at all, necros have other pets that provide adequate power.

It would be nice to see a similar job of work done on necros as has been done on druids to smooth their power out over levels and provide a gradual step up in the power of pets available as you progress

If this was done right, then some step ups would be to just stronger pets some step ups would increase utility. This is what I think was intended behind the pet structure.

low level: wraiths / wights - utilitarian fighters

step up and you get vampires - better fighters but only available at night «< this works well but not that much better that its worth waiting for night

step up and you get liches - worse fighters but with vs ether proc «< this just dosent work at all

step up and you get vilewights - better utilitarian fighters «< they are, but as you only get 2 vilewights to 3 wights the balance stays with wights

step up and you get call followers «< fantastic spell worth waiting for

step up and you get control horde «< fantastic spell worth waiting for

step up and you get banshee - better utilitarian fighters with good proc attack «< proc attack somewhat broken (and reported) imo no better than vilewights

(This is where I am)

So the next steps up would logically be to a bigger lich / vampire i.e. better vs ether pet or better fighter but with restrictions e.g. very powerful fighter but dies with the mob / only available in daylight, followed by a more powerful utilitarian fighter.

They dont happen, instead you get bonesnarls a bigger version on vilewights that were on S3 absolutely fantastic, on S4 I havent played with them yet but I hear they’re useless as they have such bad ac and die quickly.

Anyway, I think pets could be sensibly improved without unbalancing the class, but this would take a job of work and I think we can all see that the imms are working fantastically hard atm in other areas. Necro as a class works now, so understandably this isnt likely to be a priority, I would see this as sensible improvement rather than the class being fundamentally broken, which it isnt.

Splork told me he’d look into balancing animated pets above wraiths ages ago and it’s still not done, granted he doesnt have alot of time and not many people up till now have complained as wimpy tends to be very quiet when it comes to reporting things to immortals and others are just not high enough level.

At the moment it seems that pretty much all animate dead pets after wraiths and banshees are useless, not only do you need to farm corpses, but the powers of those undeads are not on par.

Vampires: Slightly stronger than wights, but again you can only have 2 of them at 1x40 while you can have 3 wights and you can only summon them at night, so vampires arent a viable upgrade to wights.

Fix: allow for 3 vampires 1x40, 3 vampires and 1 wraith at 2x40.

Liches:

Problem: As above, you can only have 2 before control horde and they do not provide good enough blasting power to be at least on par with the damage output of 3 wraiths.

Fix: removing the curse spell from their list and adding vampiric touch with destruction as the only 2 spells they can cast in equal proportions.

Vilewight:

Problem - not much stronger than a single wraith and yet you are only allowed to have 2 of them while you can have 3 or even 4 wraiths ( once you get control horde ). 2 of them are weaker than 3 wraiths, and once you get the 4rth wraith there is really no competition.

Fix: reduce the cost in pet points for vilewights to allow 2 viles and 1 wraith or lich before control horde and 3 viles and 1 wraith once you get control horde.

As i didnt really get as far as Bonesnarls and Phantoms i’ve heard from Wimpy that they do indeed suck and do not fare well against banshees and wraiths, im guessing Wimpy would be the person to talk to if immortals are interested in fixing the higher necro pets.

Overall im happy that we at least have pets like wraiths and banshees now to look forward to from 1x40 till avatar and control horde, before that it was only wights that were useful as you could only have 2 wraiths and they sucked. And it only took 2 months of nagging to change that.

It does seem like necro’s have a plethora of pets to choose from, but in the end alot of the pets are just wasted because they are not competitive and this in turn makes necro less fun to level than it could have been.

Thraxas, just to bring this point up again: vampires have a hp suck proc, which would theoretically allow them to last longer, thus prolonging the runs and/or increasing exp/hr. So they are supposed to be useful in a way, other than just being tougher fighters. However, it’s not effective, because vampires have low hps and low ac (apparently), because they die too quickly.

Simply animating vampires at night isn’t that huge of a problem, compared to that they die quickly and are less useful, than wights.

Dragoth, I think wights can be useful at times (compared to wraiths), when high hitroll/hps are required: they are my preference against thick high ac mobs that I usually kill. Though with high uc/bard songs the difference is very minimal, especially, if wraiths are lit.

I also have to note that liches have 1.5 more pet points, than wights, so if they are coded that way, they should be at least x1.5 times more useful, than wights.

Mornin’ folks,

I’ll take a look at this (next big project? who knows!); shouldn’t be too bad making the liches/demiliches less… stupid.

I’m all for a better pet growth for necros, but I’m quite wary about touching this since it would probably involve adjusting wights quite a bit, probably in the weaker direction. Why don’t we use wights as the standard, and work from there? My first impression is that if we did that, the high level animates/summons will become really disgustingly powerful, but I’ll reserve that call until after I look at the actual numbers and decide if I want to get lambasted for touching this sensitive aspect of sloth.

Chobbs

IMHO, starting with wights as the standard is a good idea, because:

they are slightly better, than wraiths, which makes sense, since they require corpses to be animated
they are the type of pets that are actually useful
wraiths work, too, but not as good as wights
the overpower factor can be diminished, while keeping wights the same, by managing the difference between the next-level pets well (i.e., not making vilewights 3khp monsters). So great power of next level forms lies not in the wights themselves, but in the pet-specific multipliers you use to create next-level forms.

So there’s no need to decrease wights at all in any circumstances, in my opinion.

Thanks for looking this up, Chobbs.

As far as balance and class progression goes, there is a very very thin line here and you have to be careful with major changes as you have to balance quite a few things right - pet points for every single undead ( pet points go up every 40 levels so you have to account for that and control horde at avatar too ) + hp/ac/damage of every single undead, summon undead vs animate dead + class of undead ( caster vs damage vs high ac pets ) + undead control bonus + combination of those pets and points ( so mixing different pets is viable ) + position of necromancer in class order ( affects both pet points and available pets ) and on top of all of that you have to match them exactly right for the level they can be summoned at and the levels they will be used untill. If you thought making balanced druid forms is hard, then this one will be nightmarish.

Therefore the line between balance, underpower and overpower is very thin and to be honest i’d be vary of any changes to the old pets such as wights and wraiths as they work pretty well despite having to fill huge brackets of levels (e.g wraiths are the pets of choice for 2x40 untill 4x40)

There is also a very clear distinction between summon undead vs animate undead - I have personally always viewed summon undeads as your go-to pets for exp runs and animate deads as a one-run big mob pets, as finding and killing mobs for corpses ultimately eats the time that you could have been exping.

Again, if you do plan on major changes for the necromancer pets, i’d check not twice, but 10 times before implementing that change. I have played this class for about a year now, i have calculated pretty much all the pet points and know exactly where necro’s gain pet points and i cant honestly say that i know exactly right what’s needed to make necromancer pets perfectly balanced, although i do have a general idea.

Dragoth wrote: There is also a very clear distinction between summon undead vs animate undead - I have personally always viewed summon undeads as your go-to pets for exp runs and animate deads as a one-run big mob pets, as finding and killing mobs for corpses ultimately eats the time that you could have been exping.

Odd, I see animates and summons in exactly the reverse way, summons are the quick summon for a single mob or wuick run, but for a long xp run I’d rather put the time into corpse farming up front and rely on the longer lasting and more durable animates.

Dragoth wrote: I have played this class for about a year now, i have calculated pretty much all the pet points and know exactly where necro’s gain pet points and i cant honestly say that i know exactly right what’s needed to make necromancer pets perfectly balanced, although i do have a general idea.

I’ve played necro as prime on my main char now for wbout 6 years and believe I have a similarly well informed view of how the class and its pets work. Necro seems to be a love it or hate it class, personally I love it, balancing time taken up front to plan, farm corpses, gather pets spell them up then execute the planned run, offset against this requirement to plan and put more work in is the increased power the pets should provide. imo necro should be more powerful than other classes esp solo but also require more work to manage the power, on S3 that was true, on S4 its not far off, changes I’d be looking for would be more utility and variety rather than any increase in power, not sure how lowering wights power would fit with that. If wights / wraiths were to be changed it shouldnt be until after any other changes have been implemented and proven otherwise you run the risk of seriously hurting the class.

@thraxas

Well if we include sloth3 then i have about 4 years of necromancer experience, as i’ve spent about 3 years as a necro on sloth3.

I cant say sloth3 was better in that regard really, you had your wraiths as your main pet untill bonesnarls and then phantom and demi/dracoliches. Rest of the pets were utter rubbish. But because all of those were so overpowered for their level that noone really cared as long as the previous pet was worse than the next and that you got em at a reasonable interval - lets not forget that leveling in sloth3 was much more bearable.

I guess i could live with the whole corpse farming thing for my next run if the pets were worth it, but at the moment they are not so i see no point.

As far as being best at solo ,this is really quite situational and depends on what you are soloing - necro will never be the best at exp soloing because good exp runs always rely on wasting the least resources to kill a mob and this can only be achieved by huge burst damage ( i.e thief or mage ) and as a result taking the least damage. I have experience of both playing a mage and a thief in addition to necro so i am not just theorizing.

Necro style on the other hand is all about consistent good damage but average avoidance, so you take hits which you have to heal and your undeads die and you have to replace them, so you will always waste more resources while exping and hence get less exp as a result, and the further you go the less exp you will make compared to mages and thieves because mobs start hitting more and more and if your pets are not getting better at avoiding those hits or taking more damage you end up wasting more and more resources to heal yourself and summon new pets.

Necro is pretty good for fat eq popping mobs due to our survivability, but again its very dependant on the strength of our pets, if they have low hp and low avoidance then they wont get the chance to do alot of damage during their lifetime and that just means a low mana to damage ratio.

And lets not forget that pet’s arent anything special and that they are essentially just a damage + a form of damage mitigation and not necessary overpowered at all.

So take a single wraith for example, it has 400hp (unsanced), does 50hp per round damage on average ( if it doesnt miss ), have practically no AC and costs 51 mana.

If this wraith gets killed in 1 round, it only did 50 hp damage for the 50 mana it costs to summon, so needless to say its a very crappy damage spell that has a rate of 1 hp per 1 mana - compare that with firewinds 6hp for 1 mana which is 6 times more mana efficient, thats like casting a restore at 372 mana, not very nice .

But a consequence of this is that the longer the wraith lives, the more damage it will do over its lifetime and that means a better damage to mana ratio. If your wraith lives for 6 rounds it will do 300 damage for 50 mana, which is about the same as a firewind in terms of mana efficiency, but not in terms of burst damage of course.

But how about damage reduction that it provided, isnt it like a heal you’ll ask ? Nope!

Damage reduction that this wraith will provide is questionable, since mobs hit different AC differently. So even though wraith died from being hit its not necessary that this mob would have hit you for the same damage that it hit the wraith for and it could have missed you completely if you had less AC than the wraith, meaning that this wraith absorbed 0 damage and yet it still died.

And even if your wraiths had the same AC as you they would still only be absorbing half its HP not the full amount, simply because they are unsanced and since everyone kills mobs while receiving half the damage from sanctuary spell, wraiths do not - so while the wraith got hit for 400 damage, you would have been hit for only 200 damage.

Yes, you could potentially sanc the wraith to increase its mitigation and damage, but that will be like wasting 75 mana for summoning another wraith, which costs only 50 mana ( not very mana efficient )

3 wraiths are not really that much different, except that they have 1200 unsanced hp, hit for 150 damage per round ( on average without misses) and cost 150 mana, but the main principles stay and you can treat them as 1 mob untill one of them dies.

All in all necro pets are nothing special and are suited for very specific encounters where you can maximize their longevity so as to make them as mana efficient as possible. But overpowered, they are certainly not.

@Dragoth

thank you for your lessons in how the necro class works, some might consider it a patronising and condescending but not me I find it very welcome, I can now give in to my the memory loss of my advancing years and forget all the personal experience I have built up and rely solely on your tutoring, while I’m at it I will try and remember that I’m not allowed to hold nor express any opinion that in any way differs from yours,

I’ll also apply this to my knowledge of taking thief warrior druid and mage classes all of which I might have taken to high Av on S3, but please let me know how I’m allowed to play these classes and what opinions I’m allowed to hold on these too.

Well, regardless of what thraxas thinks about it, I liked your exposition, Dragoth.

Approaching these things from a mana-efficiency standpoint is useful and enlightening, thanks for sharing.

I particularly like the comparison to other forms of damage-dealing and mitigation.

Sorry for offending you Thraxas, sorry i have no experience talking with the older generations. Thanks Spink, glad someone enjoyed it rather than being all high and mighty about how he doesnt want to hear anything he already knows.

While there are a lot of factors to be considered, in the end it is indeed math: mana cost to do damage, as Dragoth said. So it shouldn’t be too hard to work something out for the necro pets, IMHO.

I have a very limited experience playing a necro (34ne in s3, to 2x40 as secondary on s4), but I do agree that it’s more efficient to use animates for exp runs, rather than summons, because:

wights have slightly better hitroll
wights have more hps
animates last twice as longer, than summons
you can use your xp mob corpses to animate, so you only need to use summns for the first few exp mobs (assuming you are killing at least wightable mobs for xp)
other animates have useful procs (vampires can suck blood from mobs to last longer)

I also have to note that for some exp kills it’s possible to wall pets, rather than sanc, which makes walling even wraiths useful. Also take into account the actual mana cost of the summon undead spell. Flesh golem is nice as well.

Obviously, I didn’t test much pet points or pet procs beyond wraiths or liches ;)

I also suspect that Dragoth’s preference is partly influenced that he has high mana regen and can afford summonning and sacrificing undeads instead of animating them and lighting them to save mana (keeping undeads alive = saving mana).

It’s weird that none of you has mentioned a xeg-yi, who heals pets: does it mitigate any downfalls of any pets or it’s just useless, since it takes up a good portion of pet points?

Thanks.

P.S. I think Dragoth addressed his posts to imms, who don’t play, rather than more experienced necros, Thraxas. I might as well can be mistaken.

Mornin’ folks,

Liches and demiliches have been reworked to be less, for a lack of a better term, idiotic. Stats subject to further change. Constructive feedback appreciated.

Chobbs

Thank you Chobbs, for listening and reacting so quickly about this, very professional attitude if i may say so.

I have done some testing and after spending close to an hour looking for the right corpses to test with i can say that i am pleased, Liches may now be used again. I will certainly not be sacrifing my time running for corpses when i could be doing exp ( as it stands now, 6 lichable corpses would take a whole run to get and you would have to know where to look for them too). But if i do come around lichable corpses during my exp runs i will certainly use them over wraiths. They would also be my choice of minion for EQ mobs.

I tested them on a variety of mobs and seem to be doing 10-20% more damage than wraiths (when wraiths take 19-21 rounds to kill something, liches take 15-17 rounds) when they have full mana and blast enthusiastically, coupled with their superior health they do make a slightly better minion just as you would expect for an animate dead. It would be extra nice if 2 of these could be coupled with a vilewight at level 4x40, this would make an interesting minion mix by providing your undead party with more overall survivability granting a 4x40 player a distinct advantage over 2x40 or 3x40.

Another thing that i would love for you to take into consideration Chobbs is granting undead minions that have mana a benefit from Undead Control Eq, this would allow people with a higher Undead Control cap to have an advantage over others. I’m not saying that you should just add more mana on top of what caster pets have now, reducing their current mana and granting bonus mana for undead control EQ is what i have in mind.

My reasoning behind it is this: Because Undead control EQ only affects hitroll and HP and caster minions have weak melee attacks as a given so they get pretty much 0 benefit from it at the moment and as all Liches and Demiliches blast the same spells whether you have 0 undead control or 20 undead control and they have the same mana this creates an imbalance first of all in the whole Undead control EQ concept and grants excessive power to Warrior/xx/necromancer types who can use minions like liches as their blasting mana pools. If they want to have blasting mana, they should get more EQ - in this case Undead control EQ.

To be honest i would go as far as scaling minion’s mana regen and movement with increased undead control as well.

But anyway, thanks for taking a look at this Chobbs, as it stands now we have gained another usable pet and that is always good news. Why have all that pet coding if 90% of the pets werent worth using :idea:

Oh noes, now he stabs wa/nes in the back :(

Nah, no way dude, where are you getting that from ? You must have not been paying attention! As what i was saying is the exact opposite- as a wa/ne you will only benefit, but people with wa/dr/cl/ne will be worse off compared to you.

As Liches power stems from mana and mana regen beyond everything else and mana and regen are not affected by Undead Control at the moment = exactly the same power for everyone that can get liches.

If mana and regen are made to scale with UC, that will mean that people who actually have a necromancer in such a position that allows for higher UC cap ( WA/ne for example) and actually bother to get UC gear will benefit more than the other guy who does not.

Dont you expect to have more powerful undeads with 10 UC than you do with 0 UC ?

This creates another progression step: it makes you want to pop more EQ and it makes your necromancer poisition in your class important, if Liches power is the same for wa/ne/dr/cl and for wa/dr/cl/ne, this opens a loophole to having powerful undeads AND having better shapeshifts AND having cleric supplications sooner. Catch my drift bro ? :mrgreen:

Chobbs, is there going to be anything else we could expect from you in this department ? There’s alot of work still needed on this if you can spare the time ?

I did some minor testing for viles and here’s what I found:

I like the gas proc, which seems to be -hit -4dam (tested on myself, not sure if dam scales on mobs). However, it doesn’t even always proc every fight. I am fine with it not proccing in the first round, but not every or every 2nd fight? The gas proc rate seems a bit low.
the dam proc does nice damage for a fighter mob
I liked the hp drain proc
the hps are good enough
the damage could be higher for someone, who takes a slot of a lich or 2 wraiths. Hp steal proc isn’t worth an almost total loss of dam on a pet, especially, if a necro doesn’t kill his pets often (aegis, etc).
the hitroll is abyssmally low: lower, than wraiths, in my experience

So I’d suggest to:

increase dam by 8 dam per attack
increase hitroll by about 3 (Yes, it’s that low)
increase gas proc at least by 2 times, maybe 2.5 (and yes, I rarely ever see it, too).

Of course, Anrok said that banshee has a blind proc and hits twice as hard, so making vilewights hit as hard as banshees would probably is not necessary =)

Thank you for your work, Chobbs.

P.S. Regarding Anrok’s suggestion about scaling mana/regen with UC: this isn’t that bad, but it’s already more or less scaled with UC cap, natural UC and 40 levels after necro. wa/x/x/x/ne wont be getting many liches any time soon. By that time, wa/ne will get many other undeads.

By the way, is it me, or animate dead pets dont get better hit or dam with more UC?

It’s just vilewight has about 2-3 worse hitroll, then wraith, and my wraths dont have stellar hitroll either (I’m blessing them and singing brothers sometimes). I’d expect vile to hit much more often, but maybe it can be fixed by scaling animates up with UC slightly?

Yeah, I’ll test this when I get more corpses ;)

I’m in completely 2 minds about necro pets:

One the one hand I’m thinking that perhaps they’re not perfect, but actually they work ok as they are and could probably be left alone, I certainly manage to use them effectively enough.

On the other hand I think that they could do with a complete rewrite from start and huge simplification, lets take out all the proc attacks all the special abilities all the blasting and just scale the ac hit and dam up at each x40 so that you know pets from a higher level will always be better than the previous ones, no question.

You should always get 3 of any undead pet (4 with control horde).

Summon undeads should be exactly equal to the next animate dead, the only difference being that animates need a corpse to animate but last twice as long.

That to my mind would offer a far better option for necros, imms and coders. A simple easy to understand scaled series of pets that while less ‘feature rich’ (aka buggy) got progressively more powerful as you gain levels.

Not sure I’d dare to believe such a radical change could be in the offing … if only it were Christmas.

On the third hand this continual badgering for tinkering with whats there now is beginning to get on my nerves … though actually I did just spend an hour on the phone to my sister hearing all about how her family is far better than mine and how her Christmas is going to more special than mine so perhaps I’m just tense and wound up … perhaps I shall start on the Christmas sherry and relax then all these ‘helpful’ suggestions about how to make necro pets work better will wash over me and stop winding me up so much.

Thraxas

Thraxas, your 2nd suggestion to scale pets better with all levels is great. In fact, it is one of the options. But from what I understand, imms dont have the time to rework the necro pets completely. Splork said he won’t be buffing them either.

I’d add that you might be able to sum 2 instead of 3 mobs, but with the same total damage and hps. This would lessen the requirement for corpses and allow us to save mana on buffing pets (which can be expensive, 35 animate + 40 golem/aegis + 15 ss = 90ma).

Other than that, I support the idea of figuring out a better scaling structure for necro pets and making them actually worthwhile as a whole.

You wouldn’t want a scaling scheme with pets, who don’t hit mobs, like vilewights, or die as quickly as vampires, though.

However, if you scroll back, you’ll see that current suggestions is an attempt to briefly improve pets without requiring much time from Chobbs. If he decides to rewrite them completely, I’d appreciate that as well, of course.

Ok, dont take this as an attack on your personality (as people do too often) as its not ment to be one. But I really dont see such a change needed nor wanted and i will tell you why.

General points:

a) The current code took a very large amount of time to write back in the days when we had some very good dedicated coders working on the mud. And it took pretty long to get it polished out to where it is now.

b) You will need a good coder with alot of free time available to work on this and Even if you manage rewrite the code completely right now using your best judgement, its not guaranteed that it will work as intended and how many more years of polishing out do we really want?

Personal points:

The current code as Thraxas said manages to work very well under given circumstances. It takes into account alot of stuff, stuff like weights for each undead and pet points that scale with your necro class and avatar class and total levels, which is great and it adds alot of flexibility to the code itself.

The shortcomings imho are not in the code itself, but in the details that did not get filled out properly ( stats for certain undeads, pet weights, later level undeads are not thought out very well )

Right now up to my level, i am happy with how the pets scale.

Levels: Undeads available (My rated experience)

Newbie 1-20 : All lowbie pets are pretty cool.. (5/5)

Level 20-36: You get your spectres and ghasts and you get more of them every few levels (5/5)

Level 36-40-2x40: Wights and vampires (3 at 1x40 ?). Poltergeists are useless though. (4/5)

Level 2x40: 3 wraiths or 2 liches. (5/5)

Level 3x40: 3 Liches instead of 2. Vilewights suck.. (3.5/5)

Level 4x40: 2 Banshees or 4 wraiths. (4.5/5)

Level 4x40 and Avatar 6 (control horde): 4 lich / 2 banshees and 1 wraith. (5/5)

Not based on personal experience:

Level 5x40: 2 Bonesnarls ( suck as told by wimpy), ?3? Vilewights ( suck as tested by me) ( Expected 2/5)

Level 6x40: Phantoms (suck as told by wimpy) 3 banshees, 2 demiliches (Expecting:3.5/5)

Level 7x40: Empty, no new pets and no additional pets to your existing ones. (0/5)

Level 8x40: Swordwraiths and Dracoliches (Unsure)

8x40 to Avatar 40: No new pets, no additional pets..(0/5)

I, unlike others, also remember the terrible times when sloth4 just started; Splork tweaked the code a little bit ( as part of the big conversion from sloth3 to sloth4) and it caused necros to have 1 wraith untill 4x40 and wights were three times as powerful as a pet at 1x40 as opposed to wraith’s which required 2x40 to be summoned. At 3x40 i could summon 1 vilewight which was just as crap as it is now..

(And even if you were there at the begining, this part of story you might have not heard):

All of the above was considered fine by Splork because noone complained -and why did noone complain ? - Because certain necros knew that they could animate dead and summon any pet they wanted..so they didnt want that to get fixed, so they didnt complain.

I of course did not know anything about this since noone shares anything on sloth these days and I had to kill stuff with 3 level 36 pets up untill 3x40 at which point i said enough of this and started complaining to Splork every day.

What did i get for this ? While certain necros were enjoying their level 8x40 pets at 1x40 i was arguing with Splork for about a month and receiving an unhealthy dose of abuse during that time.

In the end though, i managed to persuade him to do something about it and he restored Sloth3 undead code to its original and we could all summon 3 wraiths at 2x40 and wights got debuffed to make them comparably weaker than wraiths which at least restored some progression.

After a bit more debting, Splork added .15pet points every 40 levels (instead of a flat points for everyone at any level) which added even further to pet progression.

Right now, im 85% happy with how the system works and i would not want anyone changing that code, because every little bit of polishing that comes, does not come easy.

I have tested all the 1-40 pets briefly as I was progressing with levels and only ghast was useful apart from wights.

That is, I mostly used spectres until I could animate a ghast or animate a wight or two.

I wouldn’t call all the 1x40 pets perfect or that useful, even though some of them (bloodworm and mummy) weren’t as disappointing as a vilewight. In fact, I’d expect more mobs from 1x40 to 9x40, than from 1 to 40 necro, because it’s much slower to get the latter levels, than the first 40.

This, and the latter mess with pets power as you’ve noted in your expectations is the reason why I think that the hp/dam/hitroll numbers need to be either improved or redone.

I don’t really care if it’s through restructuring the whole scheme or just by selecting the right base and scaling the numbers right, so they are fair at all levels.

If it’s the latter, which seems to be your suggestion, that’s fine by me.

But this will too require lots of effort, other than simply tweaking mobs one by one.

I do understand what you are saying Teron, but i just feel that anything major can be counter-productive as this whole system can come crashing down like a house of cards as everything is built on delicately matching undead pet weights and giving enough pet points to necros to animate sensible undeads.

I do agree that there might need to be a few filler pets required for 7x40 and for Avatar levels, otherwise it will be very very dull to level those levels using banshees ( granted bonesnarls and phatoms suck )

However, we all need to agree together on what we think needs to be done before we bug immortals for it. Lets get a necro council together, talk things over and then have someone report our thoughts and finding to the immortal team who will look it over and maybe do something instead of just reading ramblings by everyone and deciding what to listen to.

I don’t see how anything stops other necros voicing their concerns here.

After there’s something we can all agree with, imms can easily (hopefully) implement it.

What form of a necro guild do you propose? An online meeting (a group or a channel)? If so, when? And who is considered a necro? ;)

When we are online we can Group together, channel talk, send mudmail, even if only 2 of us can agree on something, then we can just make a mudmail and send it to Thraxas (since he’s an avid and opinionated forum user too 8) ) and if he agrees on it we can send it over to other necros to take objections and if there are none we propose it to immortals.

Dragoth wrote: When we are online we can Group together, channel talk, send mudmail, even if only 2 of us can agree on something, then we can just make a mudmail and send it to Thraxas (since he’s an avid and opinionated forum user too 8) ) and if he agrees on it we can send it over to other necros to take objections and if there are none we propose it to immortals.

Happy to be a part of this, maybe the question is pointless without coder time but it passes time, my votes would be for either:

Option 1: Do nothing stuff works now dont break it.

Option 2:

Wipe all necro pets (other than juju which no-one questions works well as is) and replace with:

lvl 10 summon undead Ghost hp 150 ac +4 hit 0 dam 0

lvl 20 animate dead Ghast hp 150 ac +4 hit 0 dam 0 corpse lvl reqd 20

lvl 30 summon undead Spectre hp 250 ac +2 hit +1 dam +1

lvl 40 animate dead Wight hp 250 ac +2 hit +1 dam +1 corpse lvl reqd 30

2x40 summon undead Wraith hp 350 ac 0 hit +2 dam +2

3x40 animate dead Vilewight hp 350 ac 0 hit +2 dam +2 corpse lvl reqd 40

4x40 summon undead Banshee hp 400 ac -2 hit +3 dam +3

5x40 animate dead Bonesnarl hp 400 ac -2 hit +3 dam +3 corpse lvl reqd 41

6x40 summon undead Phantom hp 500 ac -4 hit +4 dam +4

7x40 animate dead Demilich hp 500 ac -4 hit +4 dam +4 corpse lvl reqd 41

8x40 summon undead Swordwraith hp 600 ac -6 hit +5 dam +5

8x40 animate dead Dracolich hp 600 ac -6 hit +5 dam +5 corpse lvl reqd 41

(exact stats up for debate of course)

All of which you can get 3 of (4 with control horde).

All animates lasting (as they do now) twice as long as summons

Level starts from the position of necro in your classo (as it does now)

All procs blasts and other special effects removed from these pets.

UC to add hp and +hit

Thraxas

Well, those numbers have to correlate with firewind and hand dam monk damage (and other stuff) to make sense.

I’m not sure the progression is tied to that as well, which is what Anrok seems to have been talking about.

Thraxas, are you sure that it’s better to do nothing, other than adding some minor power to vilewights, phantoms and bonesnarls?

Replacing a system that has been on sloth for 4? years with something Thraxas just made up on the spot..yeah thats very likely to happen.

I suggest we stop discussing these delusions and focus our attention on some real propositions.

The real current problem is and i agree with Taron is that vilewights are really bad and have been bad since i was talking to Splork about them 1 year or so ago. In their current form they should either not weight more than a lich in pet points, or they should be considerably buffed. Noone in their right mind would give up 1.7 liches or 1.8 wraiths for 1 vilewight. I understand the concept of a tank pet and they do take alot of hits and put a semi-useful debuff on the target, but i sacrifice too much to have one of them.

Teron wrote: Thraxas, are you sure that it’s better to do nothing, other than adding some minor power to vilewights, phantoms and bonesnarls?

overlooking the very biased way you phrase your question … yes I think it is better to either do nothing or do a proper job rather than tinker at the edges making minor improvements / adjustments that mask the fact the issue hasnt been solved. To apply an analogy I think you’re trying to mend the aircon on a open top car in a heatwave, the car still works and drives ok, and the aircon is broken so should be fixed at some point and might even improve things a little but its a pointless excercise til you put a roof and windows on the car.

@Dragoth … you suggested we discuss specific suggestions to try to come to some consensus and even invited me to join in, now I join in with a specific suggestion and invite comments suddenly you ridicule me for it? … no I dont believe this thread will lead to any improvement, but then something you’ve never learnt is that the crier isnt and has never been a good mechanism to promote any change …

Thraxas

a) the invitation was open for ingame discussions not onboard discussion, but that would lead to me telling you the exact same thing: put more thought into what you propose before you propose it.

b) Your current proposition has no sustenance and i find it offensive that you think you can replace the current code with something you just sucked out of your thumb in 2 minutes.

And despite what you may think Thraxas, crier discussions have led to ALOT of recent changes. Druid changes for once, followed by lowered exp loss on death, followed by liches being fixed, need i say more ?

P.S. Even if we all agreed that the current code was crap and needed to be reworked there would have to be a genius solution on paper and alot of immortal involvement to warrant such a huge change which would take months to implement and check for bugs followed by months of ingame testing to make sure its working exactly as intended.

Right now there isnt even a consensus that the current code is bad and yet you keep pushing to promote this thought despite being told otherwise by fellow code-users.

Well, I think that by posting the little bits here the imms will see where the pets are lacking and will decide, whether it’s worth an overhaul or not.

If they see they need to change a lot and that a better way to improve pets would be to overhaul, then I’m sure they’ll do that (some day, whenever they find time).

Right now, however, there isn’t enough information and it’s possibly best to tinker with pets as they are. If everything works fine after tinkering, why bother with it later?

Fair enough Teron & Dragoth, you dont agree with my 2nd choice suggestion of a complete overhaul, personally I think neither of you have put enough work into finding ways to make necro as it stands work to know a great deal about what you’re talking about instead falling back on crier whinging and you’ve dismissed my secondry suggestion out of hand without putting anything like as much thought into considering it as went into proposing it, but there we go.

So I’ll revert to my first and primary position (which Dragoth seems to be ignoring) Necro pets are not broken, they work fine, they can be made to what they should be doing as they are, the class is powerful enough at all levels without being unbalanced no changes are needed and any minor imperfection is so slight as to not warrent coder time to address, there are far more productive uses of such scarce and valuable time. Any whinging about necro pets in this thread or elsewhere is just that, whinging by the unskilled and unimaginative who’d rather whinge about the game rather than learn to play better.

Thraxas

Thraxas, what made you think that we have done little testing?

What do we need to know/study to understand necros as good as you do?

Thank you.

just another silly flame message :P

This much I will say, we appreciate player involvement and opinions regarding what needs to be looked at and possibly approved with our game. However, we will not be performing a complete overhaul of necromancer pet points. It has taken us years to get the system as balanced as it stands now and starting over is not the smartest option. For the most part, and it is and has been proved ingame, we are happy with Necromancer class and their pets. We do realize that there need to be some adjustments made but they will not be very drastic. The pet point system involves other classes and is probably overly confusing, however it does work quite well for what we have been trying to achieve, at least for the most part.

There are not very many Immortals who are willing to attack this project, as its quite obvious any changes are going to lead to a few players being extremely unhappy that their opinions or suggestions were not listened to or the fact only part of it was. Then this normally leads to Immortal persecution. This thread and our chances to talk to necromancers ingame have made it quite evident to all that very few of you guys can come to an agreement on what, if anything, needs to be changed/adjusted.

When we make changes to a class feature( such as pets), some aspects of that feature are reduced and some are strengthened in an attempt to balance and make the overall usefulness as a whole better than it was previously. The major complaint here is that pet strengths are balanced and their are not enough pets for the 8 class system. We realize both of these points are true and eventually we will have to take a look at the situation. We will not be taking the best pets and basing everything off of them however. Some pets need to be tuned up and some need to be tuned down and this is where we will just have to suck it up, make the changes, and live with the crier complaints.

Overall, we are extremely happy with the Necromancer class which is another reason we are not incredibly rushed to attack this project. When the holiday season comes to an end and a few of us have time again, we will get together and debate what we think is the next project for us. It very well may be this one or it may be another class that needs help a little bit more than this one. For instance, Clerics have nearly identical complaints as the ones I am hearing here and our Bard class is still not a very sought after option…

Happy Holidays all,

Splork

This is exactly how i feel about it Splork, thanks for responding.

The main thing im always sceptical and concerned about and i have voiced it here already - is immortals making changes to something based purely on the code, without playing the class and without knowing its ins and outs.

It is extremely hard to put together every little detail when you simply look at the code as opposed to when you play the class. When you look at a pet code, you look at it out of context if you will and its hard to judge exactly how it falls into place.

For example, summoning 4 wraiths may seem like dandy business (max hp winners and max damage winners at level 6 avatar), but to summon and buff all 4 wraiths ( stone skin,bless aegis) would take 400 mana. Then as a necro you need to sanc juju and self for an additional 80mana and dont forget wraithform which is another 80 mana! So thats a whopping 560mana spent just to prepare for a run for which you now have 50mana left to heal yourself.

Alright, you may say that i can choose to regen some of the mana after summoning wraiths.

So now lets look at the time required to do everything, 2x40+ animate undeads last 600 seconds +-%5:

80 seconds: To summon 4 wraiths and buff them all and to change back into regen gear ( that is with using aliases for quick eq changes and buffing undeads ).

240 seconds: Regen 400 mana at 100mr ( Ne/dr ), god help all other classes that want to use summon undead pets.

40 seconds: Change into AC gear, sanc self, sanc juju, wraithform self, checking any spells that might need to be recasted before the run.

A total of 360 seconds at perfect execution to start a run at nearly full mana minus self and juju buffs. This leaves me 240 seconds to finish my run before undead crumble. Because necros rely on hitting fat and slow hitting mobs for exp, 4 ticks is enough for maybe 4 mobs, so how on earth am i supposed to make exp? If i start killing low hp hard hitting mobs then one of my wraiths may die and i have to switch into undead gear ( 20 secs ) summon and sanc and bless wraith ( 20 secs ) change back into AC gear (20 secs) and now i have 3 minutes to kill anything and my wraithform will fade away in 60 secs ( Wraithform lasts 120 secs +-20 with enhancement attune). So maybe I shouldnt buff my pets you say ? If i dont buff my pets then they will simply die after 1-2 mob and i need to change gears, summon pets, stone skin/bless them and change back again which eats away at my mana (each wraith costs 55 mana to summon+20mana to stone skin/bless) and my wraithform timer.

How would someone looking at the code know all this ? He wouldnt, all he would look at is pet stats and then pass judgement using it, where it doesnt even come close to painting the picture of what those pets mean in retrospect.

Someone who never played a necromancer and who doesnt consult any of the necromancer players will never be able to make a worthwhile decision or a notable change simply because there is soooo many things that should be in balance.

To me personally, the current system works fine because most of the pets compliment each other in some way or another and let me explain why. I have a different pets for different situations - for long runs i choose to summon 2 banshees and a wraith because even though they deal less damage than 4 wraiths i need less mana to buff them and banshees survive much longer than wraiths so i dont need to stop my runs and make new ones. For short runs i make wraiths because they deal more damage and for boss runs i farm corpses and make liches as they last 1200 secs and allow me to fully buff everyone and start the fight with extra full mana. So all the pets are currently utilized by me and if anything were to change i would obviously lose out on on either of those scenarios.

So what is lacking at my level that i would personally change ? Utilization for Vilewights, they dont fit inside any of my scenarios and are simply useless. Would also be nice to have my animate/summons last longer than what they last by default since im so many levels above their required level, but not really holding out for it.

The only thing that bothers me a little is that after talking with wimpy his 4 wraiths were the best combo up untill 7x40 where he got 3 banshees, even though he had bonesnarls and phantoms added to his pet lists a 5x40 and 6x40, and i find 4 wraiths of little use even at my level since they drop so fast unless buffed, which takes alot of mana and time.

Someone who simply looks at the code, such as Kjartan, would never know the requirements you just posted. However, since most of us up here have done what you mentioned thousands of times, I am a little taken back by that post.

Saying that the current Immortals have no clue regarding how the basics of playing a Necromancer are is rubbish. What you just mentioned has been nearly identical since pet inception 8 years ago on S3. Several of us played the class and had to do exactly what you mentioned above and did so perfectly fine. While many of us have not played the class to high level in this version, I seriously believe playing a Necromancer prime to 40 avatar on s3 still gives me and a couple others of us a solid grasp of the intricacies and tricks to succeeding as a necro.

We realize the game is different and there are many things we do not understand because some of us have not had the time to seriously play but that last post sure doesnt sit well with me. Quite a few of the Immmortals have high level characters now and I still play when I can. I do not believe my 17+ years of playing high level Avatars or the last couple of years of playing lowbies should discount my experience as a player.

Either way, this is one of the reasons I strongly consider changes based on personal conversations with players via gchats, emails, and online conversations. I am not nearly as well versed in the classes currently as I have been in the past and when this happens a good leader should listen to those who are.

Splork

Well, sorry Splork, i certainly wasnt trying to say that every immortal hasnt got a clue about what its like to play this game, but being a realist i do not expect everyone to know how to play a necromancer and the little quirks that one only knows from alot of experience with this class.

I was just trying to point out a potential cause for problems and that there are many more things that should be kept in mind than meet the eye at first.

Thraxas wrote: … Necro pets are not broken, they work fine … the class is powerful enough at all levels without being unbalanced no changes are needed …
Thraxas

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