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Sorry guys just need to go on a Diatribe here in frustration of the many misguided attempts to make a "necromancer-like" class in other MMORPGs.<
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First, some History:<
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Maybe it's just me. Maybe it's like children eating at McDonalds and never quite liking the fries at any other restaurant for the rest of their lives. When I first started EQ, as most of you know, I played a Warrior, my sister got me started and in the 15min I had to get a character made up so I could go team up with my sis and go kill bad guys, I decided to stick with an easy class to play, IE warrior. This was ok for the first couple months but it was really a boring class to play, I mean 1. Target bad guy, 2. get within melee range, 3. click "Melee Attack" 4. Kick and scream, 5. watch TV. 6. Wash/Rinse/Repeat. /yawn, DAMN it was boring. The only excitement was in groups where the cleric had bad ping times and you didn't know whether or not the heal was going to come in time. <
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Anyway one afternoon, at lvl 30, I was in South Karana slashing away at Southpaws at the spires when I teamed up with a Necromancer, I forget the name. When I look back he must have felt sorry for me, he was basically fear kiting them and I was dealing like 1/4 of the total dmg. at the time I couldn't see the dmg he was doing in DoT's and I thought I must have been kicking serious ass by doing so much dmg to them in such a short space of time. Later on, in a different group, a shaman started going off on how Necro's had it easy, how stacking DoT's were really the ultimate dmg in the spell casting Universe, (this is back when Sunstrike was the top DD), until then I had never heard of the "DoT"s he spoke of. This led to the first "magic using" character I ever played in EQ.<
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I started Reepr as an Erudite for one simple reason, pff, High Int. I mean int is the primary stat for necro's and Erudites had it in spades. Keep in mind, at this time, I had never heard of Dark Pact, or Lich. So anyway I started my erudite in what I now describe as "THE WORST STARTING GROUND FOR ANY RACE EVER IN ALL OF EQ". Jesus it sucked, its ONLY saving grace was the number of skellys you could lay waste to for getting bones for pets, before the bazaar of course. Anyway after 6 painful lvls of advancement I just got plain sick of it and made a run for Freeport. Took me 3 tries but I finally go there, and got bound.<
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At lvl 12 I discovered the spell that would hook me on necro's for life, Dark Pact. Now I know what you're thinking, at that time Dark Pact was a lvl 8 spell. Yeah I hadn't yet found castersrealm or any other site that had good descriptions of spells, and I saved my money for spells that "sounded" worthwhile. After Dark Pact my life changed, mana flowed freely and my definition of Necromancer changed inexorably. Necromancers, to me, were all about the free exchange of hp/mana to and from the enemy. The faster you died, the quicker mana was restored, the faster you were able to suck life from the mob and start the cycle anew. The Holy Trinity of the Necromancer, Lich -> DoT -> Leech, with a snare here and a fear there. It was amazing, much more complex and exhilarating than the "hack and slash" lifestyle of a tank. What's more, you didn't need an entire group for it to be effective.<
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At lvl 16 came the tool which allowed me to finally relax while playing the game, Feign Death. Ahhhh, no more having to log out in order to feel safe from roaming mobs. No more worrying about dying to a mob that was 1/2 your lvl while running from point A to point B. In the middle of a train, while all others are dying around you, you can lie peacefully knowing nothing will hit you unless you get up. I now regard that spell as the best spell I ever received in any RPG, ever. Rez comes in a distant second, heh. <
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in the Low 30's we finally got our first pure nuke, not a lifetap which could only be used efficiently if you were low enough on health, but an actual efficient DD. New tricks being added to our arsenal. 34 was definitely one of the best spell lvls, until lvl 49, for necromaners. It gave us much more powerful DoT's, Nuke, Dooming Darkness was used all the way to lvl 60 but was given to us at lvl 29. And yet still, the full usefulness of the necro could not yet be comprehended. At lvl 39 something happened to my pet. He had always been my favorite DoT, barely costing me mana in the long run, but something was different. Aside from his large "dark red" appearance, (old pets were always the best pet graphics), he was healing faster than he had ever done in the past, and he began procing some kind of lifetap. Then at 44 the new pet had unimaginable number of hit points, more than I could have hoped for, and casting yet another, better, lifetap. This finally culminated at lvl 49 with the best tank pet I had ever used or seen.<
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While playing my warrior, Juger, I became frustrated at lvl 51 when I discovered that I could STILL not solo a hill giant without significant risk to life and limb. As Reepr I had been soloing hill giants since lvl 30, and was quite happy with the results, but when I hit lvl 49 and was able to sick my pet on those same hill/sand giants and have him come out ahead, at a full 60% hp, in a full tank-on-tank fight, no fearing, no snaring, my jaw hit the floor. All that work as Juger, all the gathering of specific equipment to help out in those specific battles and my lvl 49 PET would have wiped the floor with my warrior. It was at that point I truly said goodbye to tank classes forever.<
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In the race to 60 I discovered even more interesting spells and uses for them. With Harmshield, Rez, a truly decent charm spell, and finally some useful root spells, we could all of the sudden do things differently. We could adapt to different situations. We weren't stuck with fear kiting, or pet tanking, we could root Dot, Charm Kite, do Crowd Control. Necro's become the most versatile classes in EQ with the Bard being the only possible exception.<
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In the end, it was this Versatility that really held my fascination for the class, and the game. Without it, EQ was uninteresting and pointless. <
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Now, WTF were they thinking?:<
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Now I left EQ for a combination of reasons, I was graduating and could no longer raid like I once had, no more 3:00AM PoTime raids 8P. SoE had released LDoN and was a big disappointment to many of us. It just didn't have the strategic mission that PoP had. It was not built for raiding guilds. People began to leave and I no longer felt the "need" to login. So I gave away my plat and droppable items, and canceled the account.<
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Now I still played games, I just couldn't login for 12 hours at a time. So I started looking for different games "Like" EQ.<
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Everyone was talking about Worlds of Warcraft like it was the next coming of Jesus, and when November finally rolled around I told my friends I would give it a shot. I, of course, chose a death dealing class as to rekindle the experience I had with Reepr in EQ. In the beginning it was pretty easy, almost too easy, so many quests, all giving out insane amounts of XP for stupid easy tasks. Run over here, get 1/2 a lvl, run back and get the other half. Boom lvl 8 over by running from Point A to Point B and back again. /yawn<
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The spells we got were somewhat interesting, they had the same sort of DoT/Leech feel to them and the pets were a classic ripoff of the Fire/Earth/Water pets mages got in EQ, a caster, a tank, and a rogue pet, though the last one Warlocks got was just stupid in the end, honestly I think they were high one night huffing fumes or something and made the Fellhunter, an amalgamous mass of snakes that steals strength and has good defense against magic but has such low hp it makes it useless in a tank/magic battle? <
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Anyway the Warlock class was the most versatile class, but even then, it was so nerfed down it became useless. Soloing became a chore in the high lvls, it wasn't fun, it just took forever. In groups you could have many roles but people told you which role you were supposed to fill, then spent the rest of the time complaining why you couldn't do the job of a full fledged Priest/Hunter/Rogue/Shaman/Mage. <
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Instead of the Jack of all trades we were the Joker of all Trades. After lvl 50 I just wasn't into it anymore. Later I read about a new game called Guild Wars which had a necromancer class of their own. On several fronts, this game had promise but when I purchased said game and tried out their implementation, I was sadly disappointed. from what I experienced and read, on their "builds" the only ones that showed promise were ones that concentrated on raising many "WTD-like" pets and sending them in to a battle situation only to explode around the enemy. This, to me, was akin to a Fundamentalist EQ Mage sending in pets to Suicide AE Bomb targets ala Al-Qaeda. Good Christ WTF were they thinking when they designed this class.<
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The only game I've seen out there that even has promise of a class like the EQ necro is the Sigil game Vanguard /sigh. <
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What I'd Really like to see:<
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These MMORPG Designers need to take a serious look at the class as a whole and start seeing why people played it in the first place. I miss being able to do the most amazing things within the game, things even the game designers weren't aware of, the ability to come up with new and interesting ways of solving some of the games toughest problems using elegant solutions devised by the player. Not limited to what he/she could do by some specific "build" regulated by the developers, but open to improvement at every new lvl by some new ability or spell or tactic learned from experience. <
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The skills/spell system really needs to be revamped. None of this "you only get 1 skill point per lvl and you spend it on certain 'ideologies'", if you cast lifetap 9000 times you should be getting better at it, none of this, oh you can't get better at this class of spell because you spent your point on some other class. Also spells themselves shouldn't be so rigid. You don't need to have spells that "do 80 points of poison based damage over 30 seconds unless you have some skill modifiers that extend the duration or dmg of said spell". They need to leave it entirely open ended. It's just ironic that the same companies that pigeon-hole the spell systems into static spells with "skill modifiers" yet make their entire user interface open ended using XML.<
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Spells, imo, should be created by the players. You want to make a spell that does X amount of dmg, over Y amount of time, in Z-based types of magic find gather "these" components and combine them in some kind of container to form the spell. No limits on how much dmg, or over how long of a time. If someone wants to gather every reagent known to man, fine let them, it would take forever to find them, they may spawn randomly, or only drop off high lvl mobs but it should be left up to the players, not dictated by the game designer. Same should go for tradeskills and in game items. You want to make a "Potion of complete-Heal"? or Sword of Dragon-UberDeath? Ok, that's fine, but good luck finding all the rare-spawn/uber-hard drop components though. This allows for rare drops to be more fun for the casual players, and leaves plenty of regular drops for the Uber-Raiders to find and use.<
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In this hypothetical game there really would be no "pre-defined" class system though. There would just be players who would be self-described. You could have Warriors with Caster Pets, if they wanted to be. Or Wizards with Debuffs. Or Clerics with amazing DD's. The thing is, all players could be as versatile as they wanted to be if they put enough time/effort into it. Even a casual player, over time, could become uber.<
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Anyway I guess I kind of got off the subject, I'm just hoping I will be able to get that feeling I did again while playing a Necro in EQ.<
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/sigh, I miss it so.<
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Arch Lich of Lanys (Retired)<
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Arch Lich of Lanys (Retired)<