Undead Player Design Flaws and Fixes.

[SpeakerForTheDead]

I've been playing a few different kinds of undead characters and i've found some fundamental design problems with them that i think need to be addressed in order for players to do better with them and have more fun with them. Undead have some good benefits... healing with neg energy, some added immunities, ability to be underwater without breathing. but in order to get these benefits, too much has to be sacrificed, and not much is really gained if you play the harder stuff...

1. Problems fighting other undead. as an undead spellcaster you'd think you would be extra good vs undead since you know all about them, but this is actually opposite the case. you are in fact beyond stupid, and are in fact better at healing the undead enemy than your undead allies. the fact that you heal undead enemies with neg energy dmg spells is i think the worst aspect of this game right now, and add on top of that the fact that you heal enemies better than allies, and the undead become the worst, stupidest chars in the game. the immunity stripping that wizards have isnt very good either, doesnt work well, doesnt last long, and if i try to use neg energy vs undead with wiz stripping i still end up healing them a bunch. def a liability to the team when your first neg dmg spell always heals them to full too. the healing the enemy factor needs to be removed. maybe give them a dmg reduction for neg or something instead, but currently necromancers are a joke vs undead... and there's something very wrong with that...

2. Reaper self-healing. one of the main positives of being undead is the ability to heal yourself. but with how reaper works, this ability is basically gone in high reaper, and you need to rely more on allies to heal, which is a problem for undead who take less regular healing from allies. so instead of healing being a plus for them, it actually becomes a minus usually. the legendary neg feat gives you self-healing with each hit, but that's basically nothing in high reapers. vampire pale master gives a chance of self-healing on melee attacks, but that's basically nothing in reaper. reaper should be changed so that you can still self-heal in it effectively, so that all the builds that use self-healing dont become needlessly useless.

3. Fighting non-undead who heal from negative damage. there are some creatures who gain life from negative dmg but arent undead, so wiz stripping doesnt work, and stuff that usually doesnt activate on undead activates on them and heals them. warlock abyss pact dmg is a good example of this. normally since you're doing that attack all the time, the neg dmg doesnt hit undead, but when fighting non-undead that heal from it, i have to manually turn off my entire abyss pact every time i'm fighting them. added negative dmg on each weapon attack that normally wont trigger on undead do trigger on them each hit. as if fighting undead wasnt bad enough, these guys are even worse. negative healing should be removed from them as well so it's not so unbalanced.

Undead are currently underpowered according to everyone i talk to. I dont think these changes will make them OP in any way, but it will help level the playing field so that they can have a chance at the top and be much more fun for a lot of players. ty.

[LurkingVeteran]

If Undead were underpowered, Wizards wouldn't run in undead shrouds, but they do. You are right that Negative spells shouldn't be healing undead enemies, and esp not non-undead enemies though. I don't see a reason for this.

[LurkingVeteran]

I'll add that Warlock undead are unusually weak because they lack Negative Energy Burst and the Greater aura. Although, if you spec blaster, the extra crit might help a bit. It's not a build that is good for high reaper group play.

[droid327]

reaper should be changed so that you can still self-heal in it effectively, so that all the builds that use self-healing dont become needlessly useless.

This isnt just an issue with Undead characters, its universal. The reaper self-heal penalty is way too big, especially in R1 where it jumps straight to 60%. This basically invalidates a whole tier of classes with weaker self-heal capabilities (or newer players without long-term sources of Heal Amp), and the only ones who can still self-heal are those that can grossly over-heal in NHE.

It really should be like 4% in R1 and then +10% per skull

[Bjond]

straight to 60%. This basically invalidates a whole tier of classes

This is the fundamental problem of how reaper increases difficulty. The increase is ludicrously far from uniform. Basically, reaper doesn't make things harder. Each difficulty tweak just chases more builds out of the game and leaves others unaffected.

IMHO, the way to make it uniform would be fairly simple: extra HP on mobs (or extra mitigation) and some mobs get replaced by reapers with higher difficulty meaning more HP and tougher reapers. That's it. It's boring, but it has the same effect on every build -- longer fights, higher demand for group v solo.

As soon as you start trying to "spice it up" with special unique difficulty tweaks like reducing self-heal, CC, concealment, or even upping damage output from mobs, the only end result is to chase certain builds out of the game (eg. the "mitigation via HOT" builds and melee builds).

[Smelt32]

3. Fighting non-undead who heal from negative damage. there are some creatures who gain life from negative dmg but aren't undead, so wiz stripping doesn't work, and stuff that usually doesnt activate on undead activates on them and heals them. warlock abyss pact dmg is a good example of this. normally since you're doing that attack all the time, the neg dmg doesn't hit undead, but when fighting non-undead that heal from it, i have to manually turn off my entire abyss pact every time I'm fighting them. added negative dmg on each weapon attack that normally wont trigger on undead do trigger on them each hit. as if fighting undead wasnt bad enough, these guys are even worse. negative healing should be removed from them as well so it's not so unbalanced.

Undead are currently underpowered according to everyone i talk to. I don't think these changes will make them OP in any way, but it will help level the playing field so that they can have a chance at the top and be much more fun for a lot of players. ty.

Your point 3 isn't an issue unique to undead warlocks. Acid warlocks have to turn off their pact when fighting arcane oozes for example. I'd be very surprised if every type of warlock didn't have some mobs that they have to turn their pacts off to fight. Golems and some elementals spring to mind. This would also be a problem to wizards and sorcs that specialise in one element or type of damage. It doesn't need to be fixed. it is a logical draw back to this sort of specialization.

As for your initial points about fighting undead.... Have you thought of casting a different spell every once in a while? You know.... an actual spell instead of an SLA. I'm sure there are a couple out there that don't do negative damage, like fireball or iceberg or something. Or you always take more of a back seat in quests with lots of undead, rather than whining that you can't do certain quests by running and pushing your SLA buttons. You never know, you might even have to shrine from time to time, or god forbid..... actually conserve your mana a little.

As for self healing, try using single target spells instead. If your class can't cast them use scrolls or wands. Just remember that some classes have to do this all the time and not just on the odd quest.

[SpeakerForTheDead]

This is the fundamental problem of how reaper increases difficulty. The increase is ludicrously far from uniform. Basically, reaper doesn't make things harder. Each difficulty tweak just chases more builds out of the game and leaves others unaffected.

IMHO, the way to make it uniform would be fairly simple: extra HP on mobs (or extra mitigation) and some mobs get replaced by reapers with higher difficulty meaning more HP and tougher reapers. That's it. It's boring, but it has the same effect on every build -- longer fights, higher demand for group v solo.

As soon as you start trying to "spice it up" with special unique difficulty tweaks like reducing self-heal, CC, concealment, or even upping damage output from mobs, the only end result is to chase certain builds out of the game (eg. the "mitigation via HOT" builds and melee builds).

yeah, i agree it needs to be kept more simple for more builds to be able to be viable in high reaper. things like removing concealment and incorporeality along with self-heal just cripple some builds, while leaving others basically unaffected. there's no good reason for it. high reaper is what many people want to eventually run, it should be able to be a goal for any good char, not just the few the happen to be lucky on not being affected by the random reaper stuff as much. cause things like "switching to a dmg type that does tiny dmg in high reapers" isnt a viable option for many players who want to have fun and be useful, and unlike the very, very rare occasions when something heals from acid, healing from neg dmg is something that comes up all the time.

[Phoenicis]

If Undead were underpowered, Wizards wouldn't run in undead shrouds, but they do. You are right that Negative spells shouldn't be healing undead enemies, and esp not non-undead enemies though. I don't see a reason for this.

For the record, I completely disagree. Neg energy spells from players SHOULD heal enemy undead. Neg energy is neg energy. Make the class choice, find a way to deal with the class problems.

Also for the record, Yes, I have played a pale master, and yes, fighting undead would be hard as heck without access to the SLAs on the pale master tree.

[Wizard1406]

This isnt just an issue with Undead characters, its universal. The reaper self-heal penalty is way too big, especially in R1 where it jumps straight to 60%. This basically invalidates a whole tier of classes with weaker self-heal capabilities (or newer players without long-term sources of Heal Amp), and the only ones who can still self-heal are those that can grossly over-heal in NHE.

It really should be like 4% in R1 and then +10% per skull

Yep, it was introduced to make people group more, but there simply isn't the playerbase for this. Especially in heroics it can take over an hour to get a single party member.

I think company, faster killing and upping the skulls for more rxp is enough incentive to make people group , there doesn't need to be such crippling heal penalty on even R1. IMHO it should be more like 0,8 multiplier on R1 , ramping up quicker to be the same as now on high difficulties.

Your point 3 isn't an issue unique to undead warlocks. Acid warlocks have to turn off their pact when fighting arcane oozes for example. I'd be very surprised if every type of warlock didn't have some mobs that they have to turn their pacts off to fight. Golems and some elementals spring to mind. This would also be a problem to wizards and sorcs that specialise in one element or type of damage. It doesn't need to be fixed. it is a logical draw back to this sort of specialization.

Well immunity to negative is the most common by far, so they have the biggest problem of all the "elements". Sorcerers can strip immunity or are strong enough in their second element in heroics before immunity stripping (and they can strip single target at 12+) and have enough SP.

Warlock has too high of a percentage of their damage from their pact. IMHO the base arcane ED dice should be increased. Warlock blasts are too low damage currently anyway.

[helpfulguy1234]

This isnt just an issue with Undead characters, its universal. The reaper self-heal penalty is way too big, especially in R1 where it jumps straight to 60%. This basically invalidates a whole tier of classes with weaker self-heal capabilities (or newer players without long-term sources of Heal Amp), and the only ones who can still self-heal are those that can grossly over-heal in NHE.

It really should be like 4% in R1 and then +10% per skull

Yeah I would agree with this very much. This would be a much better implementation of the self heal penalty. Just the time saved from chugging a barb one csw at a time to full health would be a nice qol improvement.