User:Quizzical/Necrofail

I'm not entirely against necromancers. They are, like every other class, plenty useful in what they do. The problem comes instead when players try to make necromancers the solution to everything. Like every other class, there are situations where necromancers don't really fare that well.

In particular, a necromancer primary makes perfect sense if you're going to rely heavily on necromancer skills. But it does not make so much sense if you're trying to play as some other class (most commonly ritualist), using the necromancer primary for soul reaping, as has become popular in some quarters. Like any other class, too many necromancers in a group is a liability.

I understand why people use the soul reaping primary to play as another class: extra energy when mobs die can be quite useful. When things are going well and many mobs are dying, a necromancer primary with adequate soul reaping may well have nearly infinite energy. This can power whatever skills he wants to use from his "real" profession. But when things are going so well, any class will do just fine.

But what happens when mobs aren't dying much? What happens when mobs have some heavy defensive skills, so that it takes quite a while to kill anything? What happens when you have a bad pull and have to run away to prevent a wipe, and come back to resurrect group members later? That is, what happens when things go wrong?

When things go awry, a necromancer's soul reaping won't be much help. The primary attribute of a player's "real" class probably would have been useful, though. Insignias corresponding to the player's real class often would have helped, too. Runes of whatever attributes the player uses would certainly have helped. In some cases, the additional armor of the primary class would also have helped. Instead, the necromancer primary pretending to be some other class is crippled exactly when his group most needs him.

A related topic is that of minion masters. One has probably seen situations where a minion master has at least six or eight minions with him almost contantly and bulldozes through an area. In such situations, minion masters are very powerful indeed. But when it is possible to maintain so many minions for so long, the area is probably easy enough that even without a minion master, the group could have gotten through the area without too much trouble.

But as before, what happens when things go wrong? What happens when some mobs prompty slaughter the minions? What happens when the minions run off and grab extra mobs? What happens when there is a bad pull, the group has to run away, and the minions stay to die? Again, what happens when things go wrong?

In this situation, what we have is a minion master without minions. This is useless. As before, the minion master is useless precisely when his group most needs something powerful. This is the opposite of being helpful to a group.

It's not that minion masters are useless. To the contrary, they have their uses. They work particularly well in point defense missions where running off is not a problem. But they are not the solution to everything, and it is simply foolish to always bring a minion master along without considering whether it makes sense for the particular mission at hand.

In both cases, what we have is overuse of necromancers making easy parts of a mission or explorable area easier, and hard parts harder. For farming, this may be wonderful, as the group avoids things that are "hard". But for missions, breezing through the easier areas only to wipe at the hardest part is not a good thing.

Again, I'm not against necromancers as a class. Having one come along to take advantage of corpses and with a suitable build for the mission is usually helpful. But a group that loads up on necromancer primaries pretending to be other classes lives on the edge of disaster. It may breeze through the mission, but it will make things worse than necessary if the group encounters difficulties.