Right now the majority of the people fighting you when you are a spectre are heroes and thus harder to land spells on.

And yet I've still never seen a Spectre with a losing record. Even with the changes to the PK range, I'd rate them near the top of that power curve.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

>And yet I've still never seen a Spectre with a losing record.
>Even with the changes to the PK range, I'd rate them near the
>top of that power curve.
>

And I assume you looked at pks below 40 and after 40, right? I am under the impression that necros beat a lot of tail early on and then once they are spectres its drops off immensely.

And I assume you looked at pks below 40 and after 40, right? I am under the impression that necros beat a lot of tail early on and then once they are spectres its drops off immensely.

Not at all. Until you get the better versions of Wraithform and enjoy the expanded selection of wands available at the higher levels, you're fragile. Still deadly, but if someone catches you napping, you have a problem.

There might be an upwards bump in their power curve around 40, especially for the lower XP races, but they still do plenty well at 47. Part of the reason we lowered the "hero PK" rule to 47 was precisely because they were that good, and we wanted to introduce more heroes into their range.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

You weren't the most lethal of necromancers, and that was with Master's powers. I'd suggest heroing and fighting a group of hero ragers and telling me its not really a big deal. I haven't played a spectre in a damn long while, but I never really found them that difficult either, but then maybe I was just lucky or something. Eyes of flames on my Marans always took care of sleep, camo always took care of my sylvans, manacles as my tribunal. Naturally, necros have to deal with all of those, except now they get to deal with heroes at a rank disadvantage and they have no locate object for their lichquest items. Animate dead is still a bitch. Sleep got a major nerfing, and since you were mortal at least barrier wands got a major nerfing as well. Granted, sylvans aren't what they were at Valgs time but I'm not really sure I would consider pre-change necromancers to be as lethal as you claim.

>You weren't the most lethal of necromancers

I hear this a lot, and (not taking a shot at you, Boldereth) usually from players who haven't in their whole career played a character that lethal, much less as one of their first few efforts. I spent a lot of time watching Valg; I get a kick out of watching a competent necromancer in action and I'd tattooed the guy to boot. While he was clearly a quasi-foofy roleplaying character, he still threw more beating than 95%+ of the characters to see spectre out there.

Did he get cleaned up by Leika? Well, yeah. Did gangs of ~6 sylvans anchored by one or two really good players run roughshod over him? Sure did. ####, at least the guy was fighting the fights his character would and not just logging off.

If every person I'd ever heard talk about how bad Valg was had to post the name of their own supposedly more tough-ass necromancer, probably you'd see a couple posts from me acknowledging "Yeah, you were probably better" You'd probably never notice it, though, because they'd be buried in 100 threads remniscent of the old "No, Sladin, you just killed this ONE GUY" thread from Dio's a few years back.

You weren't the most lethal of necromancers,

1) Whatever assessment you're making (accurate or not) was about my second hero and first mage, that I played three years ago. I hear people improve over time. (Feel free to put your own summer 2000 character up for analysis on this thread. I suspect you'll see a difference between then and now.) I don't think playing a mage for the first time and ending up as a lich leader of Master (and I held on to leader for about 5 months before being promoted to heroimm) is an ill omen regarding my ability, and I don't think my foes from that time period would accuse me of being an all-RP character who was unwilling to fight when it was called for.

2) Since then, I've become a reasonably high-ranking immortal, who has done design more for mages than most other classes, including writing the code for a lot of the changes you're talking about. I frequently review handy chart-like data of how individuals or groups are doing. My work gets reviewed by people like Zulgh and Sebeok and Nepenthe and others, and we make adjustments as needed. I think any of those three will agree that when they come to me and say "X is too strong/weak", I'm more than willing to defer to their judgement.

3) There's any number of recent necromancers who were brutal on their foes, as a lich or even only as a Spectre. There are no punching bag Spectres, ever. In our recent player poll, the playerbase agreed that necromancers were at the front of the power curve, and I don't think they were referring to the level 20 ones.

3B) Some players have made the argument that 3) is because ranking a necromancer is especially hard. The (disputable) claim is that the weeding out process exclusively prohibits bad Spectres, and the clear-cut imbalance that was at Spectre is a result of selective breeding, and not inherent to the class. If that argument is true (it's on the table, but I'm not convinced yet), it suggests two imbalances (one with Spectres and one with midbie necromancers), and the prescribed course of action would be to correct them both. There's little question in my mind that a human Spectre before the recent changes was the most lethal combination available. Opening up the hero PK range and reining in Sleep slightly were intended to address this. If midbie necromancers are so impossible to rank that it prohibits most of the playerbase from attempting the class, I'm willing to look at it in the interest of class diversity. But saying that we should crank up Spectres and make them only attainable by a small fraction of the playerbase is just pandering to the elite players and worsening an imbalance.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

>3B) Some players have made the argument that 3) is because
>ranking a necromancer is especially hard.

While I would also agree that necromancers are hard to rank, I was referring more to what Nepenthe was talking about involving the play style of necromancers. My argument is that the less-skilled players get kicked around as a necromancer probably more than any other class in the in the low-mid ranges, and get frustrated by it.

And sure, when you add the fact that nobody wants them in a group because they have the least of any class in terms of ranking-applicabe skills, that's going to weed out the people who can't get groups by offering intangibles.

>There's little question in my mind that a human Spectre before
>the recent changes was the most lethal combination available.

Most lethal defined how? Likely to die from? I guess I can buy that. But on the other hand, bash followed by pincer/cranial is all it takes to kill a lot of characters. At least against a spectre you can quaff a teleport potion and have a chance at getting your gear back.

Personally, when I'm bothering to carry things to keep me alive, I'm far more worried about getting that killed-before-my-next-command effect Nepenthe mentioned than I am about having to flee and quaff because a spectre put me to sleep.

If the warrior doesn't kill me before I can run, then my odds of survival are good. So the spectre has a greater chance of ultimately sealing the kill, which is another reason their ratio would be high. But if my options upon being surprised are

1> 80% chance of losing 1/3 of a con and keeping my gear
2> 40% chance of losing 1/3 of a con and losing my gear

I'll take 1 thank you very much and then use the time I didn't waste regearing to go kill the necro.

(Yes I know these numbers are just made up and mean absolutely nothing... but you get the idea).

> If midbie necromancers are so impossible to rank that it prohibits
> most of the playerbase from attempting the class, I'm willing to
>look at it in the interest of class diversity.

Well I personally like necromancers being rare, but if you want more diversity then yeah, give them some ranking spells around 25 or so. And that might help some, but I think it's just an inherent (and good) part of necromancers that they're tough to play right, but deadly when they are.

This isn't a pot shot at you specifically in relation to your skill. The point is that if they were overpowered due to this, then its been this way for quite some time and yet for some reason most of us have never noticed it. You were a cool cat, I remember interviewing with you (if you could call it that) with a lowbie master of mine and I remember your RP was outstanding, but that being said I don't see two dozen necro spectres running around. My point is exactly that you weren't *FEARED* on the level of a druid with 99% dam redux, or on the level of a badass 90 damroll rager berserker, or on the level of a 100% assassinate assassin...I didn't tremble in fear when Dullameh was on, and if he scared me it was more for the arcane and bards that he hung around with, not him himself. Same with Ghuljun and Khurmen. Even if I'm forced into a fight with a nasty necro due to my roleplay, I knew the chances of him killing me were slim if I didn't overstep and let them slowly widdle me down.

In fact, at this moment there is exactly one, Isengrim, and he's cool but he doesn't frighten me in the way that a hero rager frightens me. I can fight a necromancer and prevent the majority of their truly lethal spells. Forget, sleep, power word kill are simple to outright avoid. Blindness, scourge and poison can easily be cured. You can win simply by avoiding getting summoned into gangs or teleported from a solo necro after being slept. A thing as simple as save vs spell can negate a lot of the nastiness of a necro, but its not so easy to negate pincer or cranial combined with being unable to tank their damage.

I can prevent deathblow if I'm like one of a few tanking classes, walk with an army of preps and people to keep my ass alive, or assassinate the rager. Likewise, I find a rank 20 necro 10x more lethal than a 47 rank necro but then I've played rank 20 mages who've torn apart groups with cone of cold wands, protection and stoneskin *shrug*.

Here's an example. Who was the last hero shifter who hasn't known where a shield, aura and barrier wand is? I can say a damn good portion. Same with invokers. Same with transmuters. How many spectres have I met that don't know at least a couple shield and aura wands? Literally none except Deigreck whom I showed a couple. In fact every spectre I've met struck me as more competant then about 90% of the warriors I meet. Is it the roleplay? Nah, its more then that. Even then, I still don't really *fear* necromancers the way you fear a nasty assassin or a strong maran. Necromancers are a lethal class but their lethality stems from the fact that they are a tedious and methodical class. You have a certain window of opportunity, if you manage to nail your foe well done, if your foe isn't an idiot then there are easy steps they can take to at least avoid dying to you.

The problem lies in that you're a spectre who is running up against people who you have one good chance to land a spell on without being a prep whore. One good chance unless you gang bang (a route I don't think the game is trying to run with necromancers, we have orcs and APs we don't need another gang-pk-only class). Against a decent rager you got one shot, same with most of the axe and mace specs in the game you got one good shot before you have to flee and heal and etc unless you're prepped with wands.

>And yet I've still never seen a Spectre with a losing record.
>Even with the changes to the PK range, I'd rate them near the
>top of that power curve.]

I'm not saying spectres are weak, but just because all spectres have a good record doesn't mean they're strong or near the top of the power curse. It could be the people playing the spectres who are at the top of the powe curve, not neccesarily the spectres themselves. If I were to play a spectre, I can pretty much guarutee you that I wouldn't have a positive record.

Killing with a necromancer requires a lot more preps and skill than many other classes, and a lot of people give up early. So you're getting a selection effect because only the more skilled people stick around to get to spectre. This artificially inflates how good spectres seem.
Not that spectres aren't powerful enough, but to be honest, there's a lot of classes I'm more afraid of at level 46.

::Killing with a necromancer requires a lot more preps and skill than many other classes, and a lot of people give up early. So you're getting a selection effect because only the more skilled people stick around to get to spectre.

Sorry bud, you're shooting yourself in the foot with your own argument. If they give up early, they're likely not even making it to 47 and thus voiding anything you just said.

Cheers
Jhyrb.

Actually, I believe hes saying the sample is skewed. I'm going to agree with him and say that if you randomly chose 10 spectres and 10 say, imperial warriors at level 47, and by some means defintively test the skill of the different sets of players, the ten spectres will come out ahead. Unless one of the warriors is Nepenthe.

At the same time there are many many less spectres. If spectres were so powerful, by logic we should see as many of them as warriors, but its due to their fragility and tediousness that we don't. To me, thats a balancing factor.

Necromancers are in the running for my favorite class in the game. Part of their appeal, for me, is precisely that they have a very different play style than, say, a warrior, one that not every player can excel with. It takes a certain style.

As a necromancer, you should always feel like you can beat anyone, but at the same time, if you slip up, anyone can beat you. That's half the fun and I'll be pouty if someone tries to change it too much.

>As a necromancer, you should always feel like you can beat
>anyone,

true

>but at the same time, if you slip up, anyone can beat
>you.

Uhm, no
You just retreat and return with better plans.
As a necro you don't have to fight and make a decision how
it is going in the middle of combat.
Cast sleep, failed? Alright, retreat and try again later.
Add the fact they have summon ( and thus don't have to actually charge into groups )
and i would consider necromancers as one of "no-risk-at-all"
classes in the game along with healers and assassins.

As for their good pk ratio,
That is their lethal power combined with the fact they don't
have to risk to land a kill.
Also most of sceptres are skilled players, many of them pretend
to be liches and newbies just don't bother to roll/rank a sceptre.

>>but at the same time, if you slip up, anyone can beat
>>you.
>
>Uhm, no
>You just retreat and return with better plans.
>As a necro you don't have to fight and make a decision how
>it is going in the middle of combat.
>Cast sleep, failed? Alright, retreat and try again later.

If you've never died before your next command after a failed sleep, then you either haven't played necromancers very much, or you haven't tried to fight anyone very good.

However, you seem to have misunderstood the point I was trying to make. Yes, a necromancer on the attack who has all of his ducks in a row and who is well aware of the strength and capabilities of his opposition should rarely die. The skill to a necromancer (as with anything, in differing ways) is to setting up those fights and avoiding fights set up for you to lose.

I've said it a thousand times and I'll say it once more: Any character in the game seems unbeatable if you get to assume they will make the right choices and their opponents will be stupid.

Sure, a necromancer can use sleep and summon to control the flow of a lot of his fights, but give a newbie that character and they probably aren't going to do jack with it. A necromancer that isn't playing to their strengths at the moment is one of the single easiest characters to kill. If I am a stealth character (or a command denial character with a little luck and speed) and you are my necromancer enemy, it is very possible you will die without getting to act or even hurting me. You just aren't ever going to be able to do that to certain kinds of characters -- they're not nearly as fragile.

>If you've never died before your next command after a
>failed sleep, then you either haven't played necromancers very
>much, or you haven't tried to fight anyone very good.

True, schit may happen.
However with their wraithform it is somewhat hard
to permalag them as a solo person.
And when you stumble into gangs, you can die with many
other classes before your next command.

Of course, it is very possible and allowed to play
a ballcy necromancer who raid Battle everyday solo,
you perhaps will die a lot, but that's matter of player's
skill/style not the power of the class.

>However, you seem to have misunderstood the point I was trying
>to make. Yes, a necromancer on the attack who has all of his
>ducks in a row and who is well aware of the strength and
>capabilities of his opposition should rarely die. The skill
>to a necromancer (as with anything, in differing ways) is to
>setting up those fights and avoiding fights set up for you to
>lose.

>I've said it a thousand times and I'll say it once more: Any
>character in the game seems unbeatable if you get to assume
>they will make the right choices and their opponents will be
>stupid.

I don't talk about extremal cases
However necromancer's ability to land a kill and the risk
they have to put themselves into to do that
brings them into the top of safe+lethal classes.

>Sure, a necromancer can use sleep and summon to control the
>flow of a lot of his fights, but give a newbie that character
>and they probably aren't going to do jack with it. A
>necromancer that isn't playing to their strengths at the
>moment is one of the single easiest characters to kill. If I
>am a stealth character (or a command denial character with a
>little luck and speed) and you are my necromancer enemy, it is
>very possible you will die without getting to act or even
>hurting me. You just aren't ever going to be able to do that
>to certain kinds of characters -- they're not nearly as
>fragile.
>

Sure, a succesful necromancer is not for newbies,
you at least have to know areas, think and move quickly,
and have a clue what your enemy can do to you.

I think any spectre who would flee because he failed sleep and retreat (abandoning his army btw) is a puss and not desserving of my or any other CF'ers respect.

>Sorry bud, you're shooting yourself in the foot with your own
>argument. If they give up early, they're likely not even
>making it to 47 and thus voiding anything you just said.

As moridin said, that's exactly my point. The unskilled people make it to 47 less often than the skilled people. Therefore the players of spectres tend to be disproportionately more skilled compared to other classes.

Uhm, so, when they're 'disproportionately' skilled compared to other classes (implying that they know how to pk and know where to get stuff and all, better than the other classes of that rank or lower), the expansion of the pk-range was justified after all, because else everyone else is being beaten up by that disproportionately skilled necro.

In my opinion someone who has a possibility to become a lich should be scary, and should know how to get around things, either with knowledge of previous characters or that present character.. this making the class a little like the empowered classes: fun to play but not for everyone..

Not arguing that spectres are powerful, and usually the players that manage to get to spectre are usually pretty good so a change so spectres become 50 would do little for the new players.

Just thought it would be a nice and logical thing as they can depend more on their class power and less on wands.

And no I'm not saying it would be a major difference.

As a spectre the only time I really felt a problem with landing spells was on villagers that were above me. As for wands I rarely ever used them since I either didnt know where they were, they were gone, or I simply couldnt kill the thing that had them. My point is Im far from the elite player and I handled the problems you point out fairly well, you pick your fights.