AOC - General Discussion II

[Onte]

Originally Posted by spronk

BS CC consists of a knockback on a 1-2 min c/d and a 6 second stun on a 2-3 min c/d. Their cone heal is on a 1 min c/d.

1 knockback with a 1min c/d. 1 stun with a 2min c/d.

1 cone heal with almost-instant c/d, lasts 13sec and stacks 5x.

1 AoE heal with 20sec c/d but casts a 1min debuff on all party members effected by it.

1 reactive heal that is cast upon the mob and heals group as B.S. does melee damage.

Squishy at early levels but the HoT is what makes the class stand out. Stack your HoT and you're nearly indestructible.

At L49 I've got combos that are laying down ~1600dmg and I can keep a group healed without issue. It is a very button-pushing class and does resemble the EQ1 bard, imo. I'm enjoying it though and it looks like my guild likes having me around!

[Alltear]

Originally Posted by xregg

anyone getting 103 errors? Just tried to patch today and i keep getting it and cant find a fix on the forums.

***SOLUTION***Error code 103: Update did not complete successfully***SOLUTION*** - Age of Conan Forums

fixed it for me

[spronk]

Originally Posted by Lewstelamon

What level are you? Bear shaman are ridiculous higher up unless they nerfed them in the last few patches.

my bs is 65 right now, i stopped leveling him except I play an hour a day or so just doing noble villas (probably ~3 months to hit 80 that way, lol). At no point from 1-65 did I ever feel powerful. The only thing BS's have going for them is that with untamed regen they don't ever have to rest.

I rerolled a ToS, hes only level 35 so far (in under a week) but its 10x improvement. I never fear pulling adds, in fact the more the better. If someone tries to come gank me I am pretty confident of killing them usually. I have a lot more fun playing a ToS than a BS, even doing the same grind and quest shit again.

bear shamans are just weak from a design perspective - melee healing class, low HP, little damage mitigation, have to constantly reapply buffs/debuffs. In PVP we are easy focus fire and kill targets. The class idea is nice, and i'm sure they will fix it eventually (more HP, more mitigation, longer buffs/debuffs, combat rez, etc) but its no fun playing for now.

[Pyros]

I think the biggest issue in PvP for bear shamans is they're the squishiest of the healers, yet the only ones that actually need to be in melee range, where a lot of random shit flies. Getting hit by a random combo is not uncommon, and with the low hp and low mitigation, they'll most likely die. It's really a designing failure. This and assassins being focused on their stealth attack which they can't use since they can't stealth in combat, and combat status is shared between group members. It's the 2 biggest design failures imo, and that makes those classes basically the worst at what they're supposed to do.

Bear shamans though are still pretty viable if played safely(winding up combos far from the fight, pretty much like how I play my hox), assassins are terrible ^^.

[Tolanin]

bear shaman is a good class it just suffers from being the healer thats more balanced than the other two healers... judging a class based on how they compare to tos in 1v1 and pve is not even a contest. That and the way armor works in this game is pretty retarded.

[Pyros]

Originally Posted by Tolanin

bear shaman is a good class it just suffers from being the healer thats more balanced than the other two healers... judging a class based on how they compare to tos in 1v1 and pve is not even a contest. That and the way armor works in this game is pretty retarded.

It's not so much 1vs1, but more group fight. A ToS due to the shield giving a bit more mitigation and avoidance will survive better. Also the hp buff provided by a tos or pom is much superior to the buffs provided by a BS imo. If you run with a single healer, it better be a pom, or a tos(but pom is imo better as a single healer, because they can survive better) in all situations. BS makes a good 2nd healer though, but so do one of the other 2. I don't believe BS are more balanced, they're just weaker. PoM and ToS are perfectly balanced in group fights, but what I bitched about earlier in the thread, the fact they have heavy hitting AEs. These probably need nerfing, just like Unholy Hands for necro, and whatever it is that demos do which hits fucking hard.

An "easy" fix would be to cap damage on the AEs, and then spread the damage between targets. Cap would be like what the AE would do on 3targets, so if you AE 6people, you're doing half dmg. It's still more overall damage than single targetting, but it's not insane.

I hit 70 earlier, and first thing I did was go to keshatta, despoil the soul my 8pet slots, then corpse detonate/unholy hands a full group to death. While fun, it's hardly balanced ^^.

[Big W Powah!]

Originally Posted by Pyros

It's not so much 1vs1, but more group fight. A ToS due to the shield giving a bit more mitigation and avoidance will survive better. Also the hp buff provided by a tos or pom is much superior to the buffs provided by a BS imo. If you run with a single healer, it better be a pom, or a tos(but pom is imo better as a single healer, because they can survive better) in all situations. BS makes a good 2nd healer though, but so do one of the other 2. I don't believe BS are more balanced, they're just weaker. PoM and ToS are perfectly balanced in group fights, but what I bitched about earlier in the thread, the fact they have heavy hitting AEs. These probably need nerfing, just like Unholy Hands for necro, and whatever it is that demos do which hits fucking hard.

An "easy" fix would be to cap damage on the AEs, and then spread the damage between targets. Cap would be like what the AE would do on 3targets, so if you AE 6people, you're doing half dmg. It's still more overall damage than single targetting, but it's not insane.

I hit 70 earlier, and first thing I did was go to keshatta, despoil the soul my 8pet slots, then corpse detonate/unholy hands a full group to death. While fun, it's hardly balanced ^^.

so you're saying BS need some buffing, or at the very least retuning to be more survivable since their front line-ers?

[Pyros]

Originally Posted by Big W Powah!

so you're saying BS need some buffing, or at the very least retuning to be more survivable since their front line-ers?

Probably yeah, it's not like their dps is so crazy they have to be weak on the defensive side, if you compare it to ToS, it might be a bit better for single target assuming you do land hits on people who are not tapping/active blocking, but it's worlds worse for AEing. The CC isn't something to be crazy about, while good, every healer has their own set of CC.

I think one thing that would go a long way in making BS a viable main healer would be to give them a real hp buff, it's stupid that they're the only one giving shit for hp. 1k hp at 80 is a big fucking bonus, PvPing without a ToS or a PoM makes you open to a lot more one shots than with one(and there's already quite a few one shotters even with the 1k hp). I guess they could look into armor too, the difference between medium and light is ridiculous, so when the light healers get a shield, it simply makes them better than medium. They could give them specific stuff that no one else get, like some kind of dispel on stupid CCs like fears. I'm sure people would kill for a way to get out of intimidating shout, goddamn crappy guardians, they can't hit for shit but they can instant AE fear/snare you for 10secs, on the same ability.

[Gilgamel]

Originally Posted by CnCGOD

The trash you killed was prob the raid level minons.

We killed one champ which didn't appear to be a minion, and he was only marginally harder than the other mobs. No harder than your typical boss in Oasis. The minions are the stupid guys who try to charm you right? The champ had a different outline on his target window. Then I pulled 3 and we zoned out and decided to call it a night.

[TwiNCannoN]

I think necro is becoming FOTM. Me and a friend are leveling up alt necros and half of the people we come across are necros haha.

It's really funny though. I'm actually tempted to try and get all these alts into a necro guild just to run around doing stupid shit like 6 hidden necros sending pets at people. Hilariously, if anyone gets a fatality, they get one frozen hatred per necro in the group... can you imagine an AE group with say, 4 necros, 1 priest and 1 rogue (brutality!)!?

[Tolanin]

necro is broken in a few special ways that need nerfing quick.. one pets that chase forever are completely retarded, two mark of the devourer is retarded and needs to be removed, three corpse detonate is stupid, four the evade chance on the pets is completely stupid, necro pet should not be more survivable than a lvl80 elite.

ya i meant to say bear shaman was good except for the survive, i think they need to change armor to actually mean something, wtf is the point of med armor if its almost the same as light, and heavy is the same as cloth, more health on some pieces? bullshit.

[Rhym]

Just some random thoughts on Necromancer that I played to 61:

Talents:
- Go straight up reanimation for unholy hands. This spell is by far your best AOE and is bread and butter for every pvp and pve fight. A must have. It also has what I believe is a bug: Begin channeling it until it ticks once (about 2 seconds in) then if you cancel the spell it will continue to go full duraton AOEing that spot. Make sure to pick up the evasion/mitigation talents along the way. You are very squishy and need them. Void is also an incredible spell that you will love for pvp.

- Next I went for Mark of Devourer but I must say this spell is not as impressive as I thought it would be. It is really just a slap in the face spell for pvp that annoys the hell out of people b/c it lasts 3 minutes. The healing is nothing, literally 1 hp on each tick, and it's dot ticks are spread out heavily compared to your other dots and don't do much damage. Thankfully it does have a 0.3 second cast and is bugged requiring only 1 feat point in it to get full effects.

- Regen talent in general tree is not that important after the mana changes. I literally can't run out of mana now and can't recall the last time I mana potted. I went up to get purge, and survivability along the way via quicker refresh on runed flesh (awesome feat) and mitigation against magic/melee. Alternatively you could ignore this and begin going up nightfall or reanimation. I would of ended up corpse explosion had I kept lvling. The nightfall line has so many wasted feat gaps. Also, you will never use any of your ice spells so all of those are utterly worthless.

PvP:
- Great class for pvp that only suffers from a few problems: not much CC, lack of burst, damage is just not that high even stacking a multitude of dots, squishy. However, your AOE fear is amazing for group and solo pvp. Unholy Hands rapes melees and void does too. You can also do some obnoxious crap like void a pet and go into hiding sticking pets on people then own them when they have low stamina from void or just put mark of devourer on everyone you see and be a royal pain in the ass.
- Kiting, active blocking, double tap evasion are crucial. Stack up your dots, get unholy hands down and then start trying to survive. A typical 1v1 fight goes:
1. Load up lifestrike/flesh of worms/mark of devourer and maybe pestilential if they're have slow reaction times
2. Kite/mitigate damage
3. Fear
4. Reload dots and burn them down via blasphemous ruin/pestilential

You're one of the few classes that can reliably take down ToS or PoM but ones that actually don't suck will smoke you. Fortunately, there's very few of them who know what they're doing. The loading of dots and then fearing when they try to heal at 50% and then burn them strategy works wonders. Granted tho 50ish+ gets pretty annoying when some classes can 1 shot you or just do so much more dmg than your dots. I mean it gets discouraging when a demonologist has nukes that do 700-1000 and to do that you need 9 seconds of dots ticking and casting multiple spells or when a barbarian hits you for 2300 on a single combo and your max hp is 1700.

Playing the class is a bit like guerilla warfare, lurk in the shadows, annoy people with pets, load up dots and kite using the terrain. If you try to go toe to toe with most classes you will lose. Think my kill/death is like 673/153 and thats all soloing or duoing with a PoM and attacking anyone I saw besides lowbies. So regardless of if it was 2 people 10 lvls above us we'd go for it or a group of 4 around our level.

PvE: ehhh not very good. Solo is pretty painful. You die too quickly to AOE very well and other AOE classes like PoM/ToS will put you to shame lvling. However, with a PoM partner PvE became amazingly easy just AOEing the hell out of anything in sight and having 0 risk to it. You will lvl pretty slowly. Find a group and some friends.

Edit: going to reroll conqueror or guardian on new server. Any thoughts on guardians at high lvls? I hear their burst is actually quite manly and have multiple charges, stun, knockdown and snare. And i know i've had a few guardians basically 1 shot me out of a charge.

[Pyros]

There's definitely a lot of necros. I rerolled one cause like, I fought a few good ones and even pre buffs, they were pretty good(but some buffs made them awesome, like the pet speed change, probably best buff they got yet, since it actually let pets catch up runners and finish them). Now our last ToS who hit 80 rerolled one too, and the ToS who was rolling a demo we plvled to 50 rerolled a necro. I guess I should learn to shut the fuck up instead of saying stuff like "wow I got a 5chain kill on lvl 69mobs at lvl 66".

AEing is a bit more risky than a healing class, but not much. It's only dangerous when you pull when unholy hands is down, if it's up after 65 you can just kill a pack of 10mobs before they even start hitting you. Pre 65, you have to be a bit more careful with the AEing, even with PSS high damage, since you go down rather fast. If you remember to turn on siphon on every pet prepull it's pretty easy, and if it's a reroll you can pretty much chain chug potions, making leveling a piece of cake.

As for PvP, I've only fought terrible players currently, but I killed them all. I even killed some lvl 80 pom idiot who was camping lvl 60s at the rezpoint in atzel. I jumped him, then he went CC crazy on me, and took me down to like 15% in 2spells before I sprinted away. My freaking pets were bugged somewhere so I had to, and while I was running, they came back, so I sent my pets on him, and he forgot to heal it seems, he was eager to use his clarity of mind/repulse on me, so he ran into melee range, got feared, and died. Then he rezed, and started ganking newbies again, and I killed him AGAIN. Terrible player though, I killed him like 15times on my hox before, he's the kind of pom that only lives more than 5secs because he has 8secs of immunity with hands of mitra. It definitely looks like a powerful class though, because the dps isn't low at all when you cast all your dots and unholy hands. Also you can PSS really bad players.

[Jabberwhacky]

Unholy Hands is not a bread and butter PVE skill, and the simple reason for that is that it has a 45 second cooldown. I don't know how long it takes you to kill mobs, but for me it's all of 10-15 seconds (tops). Double that for travel time to get to more mobs and you're still sitting around doing fuck-all for 20-25 seconds. Hell, the CD doesn't even start until you *finish* casting, so it is a full 45 seconds after the fight that you can use it again.

Also not sure how you can possibly say solo is painful for a necro. I'm only 31 and it's fucking cake, and I've heard (both here and in game) that it gets way faster at 65 with the Arch Magi.

I would also heartily recommend finding a decently large camp of mobs 2-5 levels below you and AEing the shit out all of them at once. With Improved PSS, I can get 10 souls easy, and normally 1-3 frozen hatreds, and that's with a relatively small camp. Then for the next 45-75 seconds I get to rape the shit out of any schmuck that happens to run by.

[Pyros]

Arch magis sure make leveling much easier, however compared to lvl 1-30, the 40-60 range was a bit tougher. Mobs hit harders, and sometimes are mixed with casters archers and kb melees, while in the lower levels it's mostly melee mobs, and caster mob that cast one spell then come melee. Starting 65 it's piece of cake again, and definitely on par with pom leveling, so nearing ToS.

Btw, you've heard it first, next patch(so probably thursday), necros are finally getting their 8pet points at lvl 20 like they said they would. Not sure about other buffs, but that's a fucking good one for newbies, since 8 mutilators or corruptors fucking rape stuff at low level, and also because instead of using crappy melee pets that bug mobs in evade mode, you could go for despoil the soul instead of unholy hands as your first feats, and get +145%spell dmg at lvl 23, meaning you kill mobs in 2 ticks of PSS. Then you get soulfrost and decay, and you pretty much kill mobs with soulfrost blasphemousruin decay. You need archmage feat too though. It's a bit different, but works fine ^^.

And they're taking down closed beta servers to open live test servers after that patch. The way they're talking about it though, they're gonna do a shitfest like vanguard's test server up until a few months ago, so a permanent server where you actually have to roll a char and level up and shit to be able to test the content. Pretty fucking worthless, I hope they stop being idiots and instead of "promoting players to play on those test servers we'll have events', they fucking give premades or char copies. Copies being better, to avoid idiots reporting intended features as bugs because they're well, idiots.