The mighty beast of Harad is slain by a loyal tribesman. (Re-posted with colour).
Nor does Mels or Sob, or the RAGE ability on IDLs. Packmons are coded as 'single' NPC's, they just drop multiple corpses.
[new] Date: 18. Dec, 2007, 18:57:46 By: Tevildo
Lightning doesn't work against packmons. It only hits one of them at a time. Just thought I'd throw that in there...
Sandstorm also only hits 1 per round. Even with maxxed kills when killing a pride of lions or gorillas its common place for the first kill to rot before I've finished the rest of the pack (Normaly 4/5 NPCs within the packmon).
well thats a problem that should be looked at
i have a maxed necro, and a maxed wizard
honestly i will say necros do have better combat spells, but wizards also have way more utility spells/abilities,
imbue only recharges magic items, that means crystals, i tried to imbue an srs once, didnt work
enchant/wildflower is awesome, esp in a guild with a lot of wizards, you make a color code for different spells, and you tell anyone with some free time to enchant flowers, whenever i just get on to chat im making enchanted flowers,
wizards also have spells that seem useless, but are helpful if you know how to use them, and some are just for fun, like fireworks. Comprehend is great for exploring, because you can understand the languages regardless (plus it saves you money if you wanted to train languages, just train it to 15, cast comprehend and you are 100% fluent)
should sandstorm require more ep drain...probably, should lightning hit you less often...probably, should lightning be able to hit flying mounts...definantly(and should deal significantly more damage on a flying mount) there are just so many nit picky things that can be said about wizards/necros but the fact of the matter is there are so many weakness that wizys/necros have in other parts of the game it balances out
Lightning doesn't work against packmons. It only hits one of them at a time. Just thought I'd throw that in there...
i was cheering for the dragon :(
pentheus, when you headbutt you still hit the enemy with your weapon... when you're leeching you dont.
Which quests Trempk?
The problem that I see with it is that certain NPCs/quests are extremely unbalanced considering how easy they are with it. But thats a problem in the quests, not the spell.
Pentheus said:
With my level 16 necromancer (who had been level 19 and was bashed down, which means all my commons were shit as well) I could still make substantially over 10k/hr pelting. On my best days I could make A LOT more than that.
Right, that was with old sounders. Things are much different now. Also in this log, bear in mind I had nearly 200 will. Therefore at least half the hits on me would have broken my concentration if I had my standard 100.
Ice spike takes ~1/3 the ep of a fireball and can EASILY deal half the damage; it is an EP friendly spell.
Leech takes ~headbutt worth of EP, and while doing less damage, it heals the caster without making him at all full or anything. It serves as an EP sink, since all of necros other spells are extremely low ep cost (ice spike, sandstorm primarily).
Lightning averages closer to 80hp than 100, though I will conceed that lightning DOES have its advantages. It's a great spell.
With regard to the flower thing, first, wizards can hit themselves with lightning (and do so a disturbing amount of the time, even with 100+ conc and cm) and even with flowers, it still takes ~10ep to cast lightning. Making flowers without a bot takes a long time; you're not _really_ casting for free, you're just healing your ep from casting all at once. If you spend 3 hours making flowers, you still spent 3 hours (unless you're using a bot to do it, which is illegal).
I dont know, Necro has prob been my favorite prof I've ever had. Get some etched armour, a walking staff and maybe a shield and you can solo alot of stuff. I can solo Nid and all his farmers without a heal just casting sandstorm on them. It is extremely easy to equip and such which is why I spam the auctions at reboot.
ice spike is directly comparable to fireball, it does less damage (and until recently could explode and put you in combat with everything in the room) and costs somewhat less EP.
Leech is another matter, but it is what we get instead of enchant and counter (arguably you could class imbue as our version of enchant, but it's not quite the same), wizards can spend an hour creating flowers and then not use any EP at all. Leech is definately NOT EP friendly, it sucks it like it's going out of fashion, I'm not sure where you got the idea it was EP friendly, it is a useful skill yes.
Lightning does upwards of 100HP damage, to everything in the room, and ignores armour totally, they each have downsides and upsides when compared to sandstorm.
The thing is, even if you only ever hit your target with the weakest tier sandstorm, that's still like 5 damage per round, guaranteed (if it's unarmoured). In contrast, a moderate weapon in the hands of a maxed warrior against Gothmog can be expected to do ~8.6 damage per round on average.
With my level 16 necromancer (who had been level 19 and was bashed down, which means all my commons were shit as well) I could still make substantially over 10k/hr pelting. On my best days I could make A LOT more than that.
The multiple target thing is exactly the same drawback as affects lightning. Lightning takes 3 uninterrupted rounds to cast; sandstorm casts instantly. Lightning drains ep fast enough that you can only use it in particular circumstances unless you have lightning flowers; sandstorm takes right there next to no ep, and thus can be used in any circumstance with the appropriate armour level NPCs.
The armour negating sandstorm thing might be an appropriate gripe if sandstorm was ALL necromancers had. However, they DO have leech and ice spike, both of which are extremely ep efficient.
The instances where this problem is significant is rare, unless they added/updated a lot of quests in the past few weeks since I actively played as a necromancer.
The word 'useless' was quoted directly from Ivon's post, which is why it had quotes. Though, I admit I did miss the word 'the' from his post.
You cannot use it in a room where you only want to be attacking 1 of a group of NPC's (for instance any quest where you have a helper NPC on your side, or something you are trying o protect, like the assassin in Mirkwood), lest you end up in combat with all of them. Though thats the same issue Lightning has so it evens out.
I don't believe anyone said that made the spell totally useless, merely in certain circumstances, Ivon just said it can be a downside sometimes. It's has both pros and cons, as does anything, I'm quite happy with ir's pros and can therefore live with it's cons.
Or were you deliberately pretending to be an idiot to try and get 'one over' Ivon.
I don't get how sandstorm hitting multiple targets is a disadvantage. Perhaps you should explain how killing more things at once makes the spell 'useless.'
For all of you people thinking that sandstorm is way too powerfull:
I built up a level 19 necro using only sandsorm. My aim and attack skills are at 60-70. Recently i decided to try the necro with a sword. It appears that a single target dies almost as fast as with sword as with sandstorm. On a second thought, sandstorm's main advantage - hitting multiple targets, in many surcumstances may appear to be a disadvantage, rendering the sandstorm useless.
I.
Sandstorm pros:
Hits multiple NPC (if they are not in pack)
Low endurance cost
Good damage at later phases
Sandstorm cons:
If you get interrupted it starts again from the weakest level.
You can lose control over it from round 1 (it happened to my necro to lose control over it the moment it was casted). The bad thing about this is that you have to pay attention constantly while golding or pelting.
Lousy damage at armoured targets.
Your armour degrades much much faster.
If you use it exclusively your aim and attack skill do not go up at all. (i consider this minor drawback)
Conclusion: All in all, I think the sandstorm is not bad golding skill. You cannot use it effectively in PK.
About the log:
Probably a combination of leech and weapon (if the necro has maxed aim and attack) or spike is a better idea than using sandstorm. At least, it is much much safer.
If someone wears a cloak it does almost zero damage, even at max strength. It degrades gear like it's going out of fashion. The reaosn it's so effective on NPC's is that most of them aren't actually wearing anything.
It seems reasonable to me to have sandstorm ep drain be related to the amount of damage it does. If there is only 1 target in the room, you summon a smaller sandstorm than if there are 10. That way if you're doing 20 damage per round to 4 targets (which is, I think, the 3rd or 4th tier of sandstorm if I recall correctly) you could be charged 40ep for that 1 round, but you'd still be doing twice as much damage per ep as if you were headbutting, and 4 times faster.
As is (and always has been), though, sandstorm drains way, way too little EP for how effective it is.
i wasn't referring to the dragon alkath... i was talking about sandstorm in general
Oh and:
HP:16 EP:206 >
Your horrific sandstorm rages unabated!!!
Your horrific sandstorm rages unabated!!!
Your horrific sandstorm rages unabated!!!
Your devastating sandstorm wreaks havoc!!!
cc
You cease your spell.
Your sandstorm subsides.
HP:16 EP:200 >
6 ep cost? :P and those are ending rounds of sandstorm so they are strong.
I haven't had sandstorm used on me so I can't say for sure, but I have a necromancer and it seems faster to cast sandstorm than to use my sword and it doesn't seem slower than ice spike (which takes a lot more ep). And it certainly seemed to rape Carforgoth well enough.
Once it gets more powerful it starts to cost more, too. It also has to get to that point before you're distracted, which it usually does I'll admit.
It's pretty good, could probably use a cost increase, but it's next to useless in a lot of situations as well as it degrades your equipment.
It does alot more damage than that Hirgail. Once it gets more powerful it rapes.
Aye, Burgul, because a dragon's scales are VERY bad armour. It hardly protects against anything!
Foraker its damage isn't that good. It's doing like 3-4hp a round most of the time.
but if your target is wearing some rags, it sucks.
the thing I don't get most about sandstorm, is that when cast continuous it costs practically no ep. And since its damage is good enough that its worth casting even on a single target (as seen here) necromancers don't even need a weapon. They just always use sandstorm.
did i hit 1?
Phade rates it 1 because I didn't die? Or because hes another Herkimer idiot?:P
Bah, almost :(
P:15 EP:211 >
Your sandstorm continues.
Carforgoth barely misses you with a fireball.
HP:15 EP:210 >
Your strong sandstorm rages unabated!
Carforgoth barely misses you with a fireball.
Your strong sandstorm rages unabated!
Carforgoth barely misses you with a fireball.
drink phial
You are too full to even drink anything.
HP:15 EP:209 >
Your powerful sandstorm rages unabated!
Carforgoth barely misses you with a fireball.
Your powerful sandstorm rages unabated!
Carforgoth barely misses you with a fireball.
Your horrific sandstorm rages unabated!!!
You killed Carforgoth.