AoC dev discusses Necro patch changes and future updates

by William Dobson on Jun 25th 2008 2:30PM

Fantasy, Age of Conan, Classes, Game mechanics, Patches

Monday's Age of Conan patch saw some hefty nerfs to area effect spells for both the Tempest of Set and the Necromancer. System designer "Jayde" decided to elaborate on the Necro changes in the forums, and also to discuss the future updates to the class, which may give some hope to those that were thinking of ditching their mains.

Half of the upcoming changes that Jayde lists nearly made it into Monday's patch, but seeing as they missed that one, they should almost certainly be included this Thursday. It all looks like extremely good stuff for Necros, with many spells getting large damage boosts, as well as increases to the effect of the +magic damage stat to damage-over-times spells, among other things. The second update will give some of the Necro pets splash damage on their attacks. As a general statement, Jayde said that Funcom intends for Necromancers to be "a competitive damage class at the top levels of DPS", and will make adjustments until this proves to be true; in other words, hang in there guys!

Source

Tags: age-of-conan, aoc, aoe, area-effect, area-of-effect, developer, dps, forums, funcom, jayde, necro, necromancer, patches, pets, system-designer

Reader Comments (2)

The nerfs to AOE were understandable. Myself I play a ToS and was able to pull whole areas at once with very little chance of dying. But in the case of the necro they over did it. I group with a barbarian and a necro almost all the time. Watching the necro after the patch trying to even solo stuff is just silly now. They are not a healing or a tank class, but due to the new super low damage they can barely beat something down before it tears there heart out. The pet patch helped lower level necros out, but necros already near 70 took a hard one to the groin. Something I have had to explain over and over to people is yes, my toon can lay down a TON of aoe damage. But to do that I sacrafice all my decent healing and mana regen abilities. Which is how it should be, I pick my class as a general template of what I want to do. Then I further refine it to my style by spending talent points. The necro's now don't have any other options than pet spec. Do you have any idea how crappy pet spec really is? Its ok as long as whatever your fighting doesnt have any friends, but how many fights in this game are 1 vs 1?
What was supposed to be one of the core dps classes is now the weakest dps class of them all (even PoM can lay down more damage). Nerfs are silly in the first place, but completely hosing a class that many people have spent the whole month leveling is unfair and not a great customer satisfaction move.

I have a low level Necro just got to level 30 last night. I tried the DtS spec (as much as I could with the points I had) and while it was pretty powerful it didn’t seem much fun to me, not what in my mind a pet class was supposed to be (I’m sure with 8 DtS’s on it was strong). After the patch I went back to my reanimation build and at least at level 30 I think I’m stronger now than I was (all PVE). I can use a siphon life (or whatever its called) before combat, send in the corrupters, flesh to worms a mob, do another siphon and pop BR and PSS and burn down 4 same level mobs at once. The pets will just auto attack anything that hits me.

Maybe at higher levels Necro’s and ToS and PoM’s were pulling more, I don’t know. But it seems to me that having all 8 pet pts by 20 brings the class back to what it was intended to be.

Seems like at lower levels we could be OP in PVP. Just hide and sick your pets on someone (the ones that drain mana and stamina).