Necromancy: Taking Control of the Situation

[Jasa]

I've played around with Necromancy quite a bit, I love how it was implemented in MO1, and I love what we are working on here for MO2, I got extremely excited to hear henrik talk about Necromancer battles leading an army, and its true a Walker style necromancer is an option to play, I do feel rather powerful walking around with two greater walkers as bodyguards and a few strongs sprinkled in my little horde of risen walkers.

When I first saw necromancers I thought that it was really cool that they spawned undead, and they came right at me specifically when I had agro. When I saw the rotten walkers that died in 1 hit as a way of applying Poison! It truly made my mind spin on what kind of walkers I could sprinkle into my army. I was comping at the bit to start casting walkers and watching them run at other players or enemies that might take control of them and throw them back at me like henrik said. Then having a true core of my undead horde under my command and using that to smash anyone that got close to me at the cost of my mana regen.

If I wanted to be a necromancer, not a death caster, not a dark mage, a True Necromancer. I had to have all the spells for walkers. I needed to have Akh Bond, I needed to have walker knowledge. I lived in the Necromancer dungeon to become the Necromancer.

Then I got to necromancy, and I feel it's not there yet, I can't just summon a walker as an attack spell and live with the consequences of it being thrown back at me. People can't take control of my walkers. I can't toss my army around as they are limited by a time limit and not my mana reserves. Preparing the horde is less about weighting the cost of my mana regen and going criminal, than it is debating if they will be on top of me in 3 minutes or 6 minutes and if I have the reagents to do it a second time in case they decide to stay out of my range.

I was ecstatic to live out in the world as a powerful but juicy target. My undead will not win the day in a battle, but the Chaos I sew on the battlefield is what drove me to necromancy. Its what brought me to this game, and it hurts that I do not have rotten walkers to apply poison, it hurts that the average run of the mill necromancer can't just toss a body at a problem, it wounds me that a Master Necromancer cannot walk around with their army or build it and have to think about the type of walkers they want within the constraints of their mana regen.

I'm just wondering is the vision of necromancers fighting each other for control of undead and leading an army still alive? or well Unalive, undead? I think that is right. Is the dream Undead?

 

[JohnOldman]

They all should drain your mana from the start unless controlled by someone else and never de-spawn unless they get killed. they already have huge mana cost, huge reagent cost, huge buildup time and short duration, they should only have three of those four problems at best.

Imo right now they don't make sense to use nearly anywhere, the learning curve for using them on pvp is sky high and every time you die you lose a full steel armor set worth of reagents so nobody is pushing to use an learn them, on the places they would make the most sense to use such as bandit camps, PoInterest or the like, are places you go to farm money not to sink your entire fortune on reagents, the opportunity cost isn't there at all.

SV should add failsafe vendors for ash and ritual blood in the middle of nowhere selling at decent prices in the few silver per unit because the economy prices are not getting nowhere near for them to be useable. Its ok if going to buy reagents its an ordeal akin to go getting fishing hooks and lines to jungle camp, Its not ok using 1 gold per cast in order to summon useless cannon folder.

 

[Jasa]

They all should drain your mana from the start unless controlled by someone else and never de-spawn unless they get killed. they already have huge mana cost, huge reagent cost, huge buildup time and short duration, they should only have three of those four problems at best.

Imo right now they don't make sense to use nearly anywhere, the learning curve for using them on pvp is sky high and every time you die you lose a full steel armor set worth of reagents so nobody is pushing to use an learn them, on the places they would make the most sense to use such as bandit camps, PoInterest or the like, are places you go to farm money not to sink your entire fortune on reagents, the opportunity cost isn't there at all.

SV should add failsafe vendors for ash and ritual blood in the middle of nowhere selling at decent prices in the few silver per unit because the economy prices are not getting nowhere near for them to be useable. Its ok if going to buy reagents its an ordeal akin to go getting fishing hooks and lines to jungle camp, Its not ok using 1 gold per cast in order to summon useless cannon folder.

I kind of thought that we would see 2 functions of the Undead, casting on yourself just places them in Idle that you then are able to take control of them. Or casting on someone else since they have range on them and the undead goes to attack that target unless they had reflected in which case the undead is coming back at you. I kind of think or well thought that the price of controlling them was fair so long as people could fire and forget at the lower end, while someone with the right reagents could control them kind of deal.

The Mana Drain & Cost of controlling is fair, the Control Timer is not when it is already eating at reserves.

I do think that blood and ashe prices are kind of dang high, though I do not blame the players for it since the Necro PoI's were so close together or so far from anywhere you may want to use said ashe and blood. We could see some sacrificial walkers in fab tower, a few more PoI's spread out over a good area and I think necromancy will be in a good place at least walker control and such.

Kind of against the idea of a vendor being added for the materials, though an alternative way to get blood is fine in my eyes. Perhaps it can be tied to ritualism? Cutting your hand and murdering your reserves to make a handful of blood? 1-15ish at a time for the Ritualists depending on their skill level? That or make it an ability so mercied bandits / humanoids can be sacrificed and turn into sacrificial walkers would be more in line with the theme of the class fantasy, though at the end of the day it's up to SV.

 

[Dixie]

Its like i have to summon one, control it manually, then cast for it to do anything. Repeat per walker and now you're oom and the first ones you spawned are out of "time" and just die?? There's no point to even use a system that kills itself in just 2 minutes. You could sick an army on someone, for a small fortune, and the zombies will be expired before their stamina bar is gone. LOL

 

[Domtomsen]

I have my walker knowledge on 100 now and thought it would give the walker some use. But it takes sooooo long to summon them and bring them under your control (8 freaking casts for 4 walker) and then you still need you hit the command attack on relatively close range.
And you need to do all this in a hurry because they are on a timer.
They might not be useless but its sooo much time investement for trivial tasks and the time up is so short. They are not really fun to use. They dont follow you anywhere because the have less stam then a fat mage.

Maybe let us summon more at a time for extra mana cost, or remove timers or let them follow us faster. and please give us an option to release them so they dont drain mana for an eternity if the run out of sight.

 

[Jackdstripper]

I will repeat what i said ages ago. The only powerful ability in Necro was always the death knight. Nothing else was worth it in MO1.

Mo2 is no different, except that we dont have the DK summon( probably because it was so stupidly OP).

 

[Anabolic Man]

COntrolled Zombies should not despawn and it need a counter for risen Monsters. Weapons and Arrows crafted out of silver could deal twice the damage to undead monsters !

 

[Dixie]

COntrolled Zombies should not despawn and it need a counter for risen Monsters. Weapons and Arrows crafted out of silver could deal twice the damage to undead monsters !

 

[Gnidex]

Doesn't all this just prove tjat nobody at SV is actually playing the game. Who would subject themselves to broken systems like this one.