pale master vs necro archmage

[sephiroth1084]

People can make decisions about their races separately, so I didn't include that here.

I only addressed two schools, because that is the clearest example and correlates best with the AM setup. An AM is going to be specializing in two schools, so I compared their best possible DCs to a PM's.

That a non-Necro-focused AM is 4 points behind a PM is a relevant point that I should have brought up. I guess I'm too entrenched in the last year's relegation of DC-based Necro spells to secondary content. This is an important point now that the abundant proxy-Death Ward is being lifted from endgame content.

I think AM still has a bit going for it, but am constantly surprised by people choosing AM over PM pointing at the DCs of the former to support their decision.

[Ghoste]

Self healing (or additional self healing if you are wf) PM.

Free damage spells (aka really low costs) AM.

Free-er damage spells (aka 0 sp cost) damage spells, PM.

[donfilibuster]

apparently you and i have different definitions of "low cost". enervation costs 25 + 50 + 75 + 100 = 250 SP just to learn, and costs 10 SP per cast vs 25. unlike, say, magic missile, there are not really a bunch of free metamagics to apply either. furthermore, because the pale master will likely have +1 necromancy DC over even a fully specialised archmage (courtesy of yugoloth potions), 1/4 of all castings of enervation are wasted if they're to prep for necromancy spells, and the same holds true for every other school for the same reason (actually, 1/4 of the archmage's secondary school, and a full 1/2 of every other school, assuming the same amount of investment in spell focus feats).

That no one is even mentioning enervation makes me think no one really think of this as a valid AM necro tactic.
IMO no AM necro thread is complete without a review of enervation, which is a powerful spell to have as a SLA.

Both energy drain and enervation have NO save, it need not be heightened, it won't matter that AM has less DC that PM.
Negative levels effectively reduce the targets saving throws so the DC difference is also out of the picture.

Energy drain is a valid tactic at the high levels, in amrath, in IQ, in dreaming dark, in epics, in the cove, etc.
Otherwise the devils and quori and epic minion save half the time, unless you have a good build of course.
Draining everything on sight do take a bit of sp, hence the SLA makes sense.

So the 'low cost' is in relation to the actual cost of energy drain, obviously you can get more bang for your buck if you are nuker specced under the u9 changes.
The metamagic won't really matter, nor the DC, nor the sp spent to get the SLA.
Furthermore it matters for saving the lv IV slot, because there are 'better' spells to prepare at lv IV.

Is enervation really an underdog or it's all just fuzz?

[Jaid314]

That no one is even mentioning enervation makes me think no one really think of this as a valid AM necro tactic.
IMO no AM necro thread is complete without a review of enervation, which is a powerful spell to have as a SLA.

Both energy drain and enervation have NO save, it need not be heightened, it won't matter that AM has less DC that PM.
Negative levels effectively reduce the targets saving throws so the DC difference is also out of the picture.

Energy drain is a valid tactic at the high levels, in amrath, in IQ, in dreaming dark, in epics, in the cove, etc.
Otherwise the devils and quori and epic minion save half the time, unless you have a good build of course.
Draining everything on sight do take a bit of sp, hence the SLA makes sense.

So the 'low cost' is in relation to the actual cost of energy drain, obviously you can get more bang for your buck if you are nuker specced under the u9 changes.
The metamagic won't really matter, nor the DC, nor the sp spent to get the SLA.
Furthermore it matters for saving the lv IV slot, because there are 'better' spells to prepare at lv IV.

Is enervation really an underdog or it's all just fuzz?

oh, enervation is quite good. no question of that.

it just isn't remotely worth taking as an SLA.

first off, you can cast it *10 times* with the SP cost you paid to get it as an SLA. only on your 11th casting per shrine do you break even. if you need to cast that many enervation spells, odds are good you're only going to be landing single-target stuff as well, which means you're losing out on efficiency with your mass spells.

secondly, as i pointed out... PM is actually moderately likely to have 1 point better DCs than AM in any given school, provided both PM and AM focus on the same two schools (and have equally good gear etc). a 1 point improvement in DC means that the 1 in 4 chance for enervate to only hit for 1 negative level is essentially only bringing you to the point where you're equal in DC to the pale master. ie you actually need to cast about 13 enervation SLAs as an archmage to match the pale master (and if you have a +2 DC advantage on your pale master, it's actually a full 20 enervation SLAs to make up for the difference, give or take).

i really don't recommend specialising in necro archmage. if you want to specialise in necro, roll a pale master. there are two basic (min/max) reasons to make an archmage:

1) you want more spell points and are confident your DCs are high enough to not need further improvement beyond the lower bonuses given by archmage.
2) you have done the math and concluded the number of times you will use the SLAs is likely to make said SLAs worthwhile (such as evoker archmage builds that focus on force damage, or CC builds that take enchant and conjuration 1 and 2 for the hynotism, resistible dance, and web spells to be spammable for next to nothing).

for any other numerically based reason, you likely want to go pale master in the end.

of course, flavor can certainly have an impact as well. lots of people don't want to be a toaster, lots of people don't want to be a zombie (and a reasonable amount of people want to be zombie toasters).

[sephiroth1084]

of course, flavor can certainly have an impact as well. lots of people don't want to be a toaster, lots of people don't want to be a zombie (and a reasonable amount of people want to be zombie toasters).

And a lot of people don't want a cloud of puke around them all the time.


Those people are silly.

[Jaid314]

And a lot of people don't want a cloud of puke around them all the time.


Those people are silly.

last i heard, a dev was taking a look at changing the visual.

and besides, maybe some people like to live in a giant rotten translucent watermelon rind

[sigtrent]

My money is on PM but I play one and love it. My AM is still young and is not going to be necro specced.

I think if you want necro, pale master is just more fun and versatile. If you want to focus on some other kind of spell, go archmage. Also you may want archmage until level 12. Pale master isn't too interesting until you get the undead forms where archmage delivers the goods early on.

What I like best about PM is not just throwing insta kills, but standing around raining death with bolts and blasts while laughing at incoming damage and hardly spending a drop of mana. It is just plain fun.

[AylinIsAwesome]

And a lot of people don't want a cloud of puke around them all the time.


Those people are silly.

100% agree.

[donfilibuster]

oh, enervation is quite good. no question of that.

it just isn't remotely worth taking as an SLA.

first off, you can cast it *10 times* with the SP cost you paid to get it as an SLA. only on your 11th casting per shrine do you break even. if you need to cast that many enervation spells, odds are good you're only going to be landing single-target stuff as well, which means you're losing out on efficiency with your mass spells.

secondly, as i pointed out... PM is actually moderately likely to have 1 point better DCs than AM in any given school, provided both PM and AM focus on the same two schools (and have equally good gear etc). a 1 point improvement in DC means that the 1 in 4 chance for enervate to only hit for 1 negative level is essentially only bringing you to the point where you're equal in DC to the pale master. ie you actually need to cast about 13 enervation SLAs as an archmage to match the pale master (and if you have a +2 DC advantage on your pale master, it's actually a full 20 enervation SLAs to make up for the difference, give or take).

ok, i see where are u going and the math is good, going full PM has more advantages overall.
Surely AM necro is one of those things you take when you have a specific build, not something one can recommend to everyone.

If you pick enervation it would likely be used extensively, possibly more than once per target, on every target, as the cooldown allows.
Examples are the use of energy drain on the quori, you can land that FoD the first shot, or take a few tries, so drain helps in the long run.
A couple of enervations are still half the sp cost of one energy drain, you are however seriously limited by time and zerging speed.

The biggest spoil of the SLA would be the cooldown, if it is anything like the long cooldown on magic missile then it is definitely not worth taking.
And i suspect it is that way, haven't managed to get that far on my AM alt to test for myself, my main is PM and use energy drain a lot so wish i could get a bit of that at lower cost.

Since this is a thread on AM necro it's surely worth to go through all the pros and cons.

[Jaid314]

- all AM SLAs have a 6 second cooldown

- apart from the dream reavers, most quori don't have terribly good saves. you're probably closer to being able to semi-reliably wail/FoD them than you think. on my sorcerer, a 36 DC or so is not great, but lands fairly often on hard in the dreaming dark quest.

- if you need to enervate things 2-3 times per target, odds are good you need a new strategy.

- i'm not entirely sure why *anyone* would take AM necro from an effectiveness perspective, except that people blindly assume that archmage gets higher DCs. (some people just won't like the idea of being a pale master, but that's not because it's ineffective, it's just because they don't want to be a pale master :P )

[manumase]

- all AM SLAs have a 6 second cooldown

- apart from the dream reavers, most quori don't have terribly good saves. you're probably closer to being able to semi-reliably wail/FoD them than you think. on my sorcerer, a 36 DC or so is not great, but lands fairly often on hard in the dreaming dark quest.

- if you need to enervate things 2-3 times per target, odds are good you need a new strategy.

- i'm not entirely sure why *anyone* would take AM necro from an effectiveness perspective, except that people blindly assume that archmage gets higher DCs. (some people just won't like the idea of being a pale master, but that's not because it's ineffective, it's just because they don't want to be a pale master :P )

necro AM gets more sp and can also get an extra dc in another useful school like enchantment or conjuration, but when it comes to pale master, i dont know much, its interesting yes, but thats all i know about it

[Cartheron]

necro AM gets more sp and can also get an extra dc in another useful school like enchantment or conjuration, but when it comes to pale master, i dont know much, its interesting yes, but thats all i know about it

As discussed above, PM gets +1 DC in all spell school thanks to lich's form +2 int increase, and can esily bring it to +2 or +3. Since we are speaking about necro AM, PM has 1 spare feat comparing to the same AM build, so no DC advantage to AM. Only advantage that necro AM has over PM is more sp. If you want more sp, which you will be able to spend on less effective casting, then necro AM is a way to go. Otherwise, PM wins.

[donfilibuster]

a 1 point improvement in DC means that the 1 in 4 chance for enervate to only hit for 1 negative level is essentially only bringing you to the point where you're equal in DC to the pale master. ie you actually need to cast about 13 enervation SLAs as an archmage to match the pale master (and if you have a +2 DC advantage on your pale master, it's actually a full 20 enervation SLAs to make up for the difference, give or take).

With the new changes posted for u9, the negative levels are now -2 to saves instead of -1.
This effectively cuts the gap on the above math by half.

[Jaid314]

With the new changes posted for u9, the negative levels are now -2 to saves instead of -1.
This effectively cuts the gap on the above math by half.

true, but it still leaves the archmage paying a lot of AP, feats, SP, etc to be second best most of the time, with the occasional cheap (provided you're casting more than 10 per shrine normally) enervation to make you pretty good once every 6 seconds.

[sephiroth1084]

true, but it still leaves the archmage paying a lot of AP, feats, SP, etc to be second best most of the time, with the occasional cheap (provided you're casting more than 10 per shrine normally) enervation to make you pretty good once every 6 seconds.

I think AMs need a boost now, actually (I think they needed a slight nudge before).

Maybe giving each tier a choice of 1 or 2 SLAs to pick? That leaves a few schools looking even more worthless, though (I'm looking at you Illusion and Abjuration!).

Enchanters got really hurt this update, as their bread and butter Hypno got hit with the Nerfsteamroller (TM)

[Jaid314]

I think AMs need a boost now, actually (I think they needed a slight nudge before).

Maybe giving each tier a choice of 1 or 2 SLAs to pick? That leaves a few schools looking even more worthless, though (I'm looking at you Illusion and Abjuration!).

Enchanters got really hurt this update, as their bread and butter Hypno got hit with the Nerfsteamroller (TM)

true, hypno is hurting (though now i suppose it's more likely to get spammed repeatedly) but imo it's relatively low on the list of things to fix (resistible dance is probably worth it, and even if hypno is only worth a -3 will save debuff for 15 seconds and/or buying you some time to resistible dance key targets that isn't exactly horrible either)

but yeah, some of the schools need help *way* more than enchantment. sure, mass hold monster/person got a bit less awesome (now that they have to beat spell pen), and likely the same is true for mass suggestion (though the devs haven't specified), but still... abjuration, illusion, heck even transmutation need way more help than enchantment.