Necromancy revamp

[Doxmaster]

I'm not really one for major nerfs...but you did touch upon what other schools lack: Efficiency. Let’s look at all spell schools and judge their worth from levels 15+.

Enchantment:
*Problem-You disabled the enemy, but typically need to kill them still. Nuking, AOE DoTs, melee DPS, ranged DPS, Instakills...something.

*Solution-Enchantment is in a very good place ATM.

Illusion-
*Problem-The school itself isn’t as much a problem as the number of spells in it. With only 7 spells (6 if you count a mass version of invisibility as the same spell) illusion doesn’t get its proper chance to shine.

*Solution- Add spells, adjusted from PnP versions.
Color spray
Silent/minor/major/Persistent/Permanent/Programmed/Project image: summon monster that doesn’t do anything but eat agro
Greater/Shadow conjuration
Greater/Shadow evocation
Simulacrum-Duplicate monster/ally
Weird- AOE Phantasmal killer

Conjuration-
*Problem: None really. This is a decent school.

Solution: none needed

Abjuration-
Problem: Mostly buff spells. Dispel magic is typically useless.
Solution: Lower the cost of Dispels and make it target spells that are beneficial to the enemy only. Likewise, when cast on an ally, make it only target harmful spells. Allow enemies to buff themselves in ways that make dispelling actually useful.

Evocation-
Problem: Becomes inefficient and slow around now. This was worked on by the spell pass, but towards higher levels, straight nuking becomes far too inefficient for trash and is only used on bosses because/when saving sp has no value on those fights.

Solution: Adjust the cost of Maximize and Empower on nuke spells; I would suggest making it a percent of the normal spell, instead of 15 and 25 SP before enhancements. I would aim for spells costing 3-4 times their normal cost without enhancements or the wizard capstone and ~2 times their normal cost with it. Encouraging casters to nuke and having it be an efficient method of killing enemies will lower the difference between high grade casters and high grade melees.

Transmutation-
Problem: this school is mostly buffs, with the occasional 'Save or X' spell.
Solution: none really. This is in a decent place; the buffs are great and the other spells are good enough to warrant being used.

Necromancy-
Problem: the instakills are debated over constantly.

Solution: improve other schools to be equally efficient as simply killing the target enemies, then bring the debuff potion of necromancy up to par. If nuking (which is accepted as the main alternative to instakills and Heavy CC of Necromancy and Enchantment respectively) could get as much done as a Finger of Death or Wail could as equal or lower costs, Finger and wail would both be smaller problems.

Spell damage VS cost is rather strange towards endgame on failed saves:
Meteor swarm costs 50 SP without metamagics and maybe...65 with full metamagic cost reductions. It does 6d3+18 fire damage and 2d3+6 bludgeoning damage: around 80 damage max
80*2.5(maximize and empower)=200 damage.
200*2(being generous with enhancements)=400 damage
So 400 AOE damage for 65 sp...roughly 6 damage per SP, per enemy. Assuming 10 enemies, that is 60 damage per spell point.

Wail, on the other hand, will do as much damage as they have HP, up to 1000 damage on enemies with the new Epic ward. On 3 enemies with 1000 HP each you just did 3000 damage for 50 sp. 60 damage per spell point. Yes, using Wail inefficiently was just as efficient as using Meteor Swarm efficiently.

Change that and you won’t need to Nerf Insta kills. People currently build for speed and efficiency. Instakills are currently both; if instakills were fastest but other avenues were more efficient, more casters, especially the ones that haven’t yet reached 40+ DCs, would nuke instead of trying to Insta kill.

[Vint]

I did not read a good majority of what you said, but I will still say no.

I hate nerfs.

[Dendrix]

No. The whole point of instant kill spells is to kill instantly.

lots of different spells doing different things is good.

[Jandric]

Problem: Blanket immunities are bad.

Proposed solution: Greatly raise the sp cost, and add a little hp heal upon a successful kill (self heal for single target, group heal for AoE), to necromancy instakill spells. Make enchantment the mana efficient spell school, by slightly lowering the sp costs.

This way, necro instakill spells, even for palemasters, will become a sort of oh $h!^ button, or a mana dump if you know you're close to a shrine.

Also: Don't bring back auto-crit for held mobs. But, instead bring back woo-woo, by making woo-woo sticks (dreamspitter and U9 stick) have a 50% chance to neg level a HELD, STUNNED or OTHERWISE UNAWARE enemy (including the first attack from stealth).

Discuss

/definitely not signed

Dear God- No! Group healing from the PM? One of the things I like about this game is that despite the necessary differences between pen and paper and an MMO, is that Turbine has managed to stay pretty close to the feel of the real game. Insta-kills already cost enough and have slower cool downs from U9. It's already easier to land an enchantment spell against almost all epic mobs than it is a necromancy, anyway. Reducing the cost further would be completely unabalancing and achieve nothing.

No special machanics need to be introduced for Turbine to let Insta-kill spells work in challenges. All they have to do is make sure that mob saves are setup correctly, sprinkle in DW as required, and put a little work into it instead of pressing the easy button and giving out blanket immunities.

[HarveyMilk]

/definitely not signed

Dear God- No! Group healing from the PM? One of the things I like about this game is that despite the necessary differences between pen and paper and an MMO, is that Turbine has managed to stay pretty close to the feel of the real game. Insta-kills already cost enough and have slower cool downs from U9. It's already easier to land an enchantment spell against almost all epic mobs than it is a necromancy, anyway. Reducing the cost further would be completely unabalancing and achieve nothing.

No special machanics need to be introduced for Turbine to let Insta-kill spells work in challenges. All they have to do is make sure that mob saves are setup correctly, sprinkle in DW as required, and put a little work into it instead of pressing the easy button and giving out blanket immunities.

In the "real game," you can't have a capped PM wailing endless hordes of enemies. A higher cooldown, maybe equal to implosion, would be a step in the right direction. And an aoe heal on a cooldown like that would be less useful healing than a light monk finisher. Yes, I think a necromancer converting enemy life into life for himself/teammates would be fun, AND fitting. It would certainly be more fun for the rest of the team.

[Archmage2k]

Hm, ok. Let me re-frame this.
....

I want am to be competitive with pm, I want other spell schools to be more viable than they are, and I want no reason for the devs to make any creature instakill immune. Heck, I even think red-named should be instakillable, but it should take 5-10 vorpal rolls to do it.

I think the problem is less that the PM and necromancy are too good and more that the AM needs some work.

I played an archmage, and I was terribly disappointed with it after being excited about it before release. The spell-like abilities you pick up are usually spells that are of limited usefulness. I felt like I was wasting more enhancement points than it was worth to reach the top tier spell-like abilities because I knew I would never cast the lower ones. Some are good, some are bad, but I think every school has at least one "junk" spell on the AM's list of choices.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

Necromancy isn't broken; the quests are.

Some mobs should flat out be immune to it. Most should not.

Players have Deathblock/ward. Boss monsters should too.

Minions get blasted out of existence. Hordes of them.

Elite bodyguards should not.

In some cases monster casters should cast Deathward.....and players should dispel it.

In other cases, monster should have deathblock items, just like we do.

In most, Necromancers should kill anything that comes near them.

Some monsters should have high saves... and/or SR.

Others should not.

All in the same dungeon....this allows Necromancers to use their powers sometimes, and have to find other methods at other times.

this is balance.

Each class having atime to shine and each class having a time to fizzle...
in the same dungeon.....so no class gets discriminated against because other players consider that class useless in the specific dungeon.

[Jandric]

Necromancy isn't broken; the quests are.

Some mobs should flat out be immune to it. Most should not.

Players have Deathblock/ward. Boss monsters should too.

Minions get blasted out of existence. Hordes of them.

Elite bodyguards should not.

In some cases monster casters should cast Deathward.....and players should dispel it.

In other cases, monster should have deathblock items, just like we do.

In most, Necromancers should kill anything that comes near them.

Some monsters should have high saves... and/or SR.

Others should not.

All in the same dungeon....this allows Necromancers to use their powers sometimes, and have to find other methods at other times.

this is balance.

Each class having atime to shine and each class having a time to fizzle...
in the same dungeon.....so no class gets discriminated against because other players consider that class useless in the specific dungeon.

This is exactly the way to do it. No esoteric changes to the rules are needed, and blanket class nerfs aren't needed either. All you have to do is construct the encounters in a certain way. No Necromancer or Enchanter should just be able to wail/mass hold their way through all the mobs. It really is as simple as that.

[Silverwren]

However, raising the cooldown, raising the sp cost, adding in an AoE heal from killed mobs... that's fun and win, imo. It would force wizards to use OTHER spells and save wail, a very powerful spell, for when it's needed. That fits my idea of how powerful magic should work in a dnd-based game.

I beg to differ. This would NOT be fun. The cool down time on Wail is already long enough (30 seconds) that I have to use other spells in my arsenal, such as Chain Lightning and Disintegrate. It appears to me that you are attempting to put a cool down time on Wail that is similar to Power Word Kill, which has a cool down time you measure with a calendar.

Again, I disagree with your argument and feel that everything is fine just the way it is.