soul siphon for necromancer

[Davairus]

new spell: soul siphon (shortcut "siph")

its a level 6 spell which i believe i set at 10 mana ; what it'll do is reduce your opponents armor (like a faerie fire), and is round-based so you would have to keep it up much like a dirt kick. it'll last longer with level and reduce armor more, although the armor reduction is not great by any means at higher levels, due to the way it interpolates. anyway, that's just for the minor group (i.e. your zombies) benefit.

the purpose of the spell is allow necro to regain mana from his melee hits, its a percentage of the damage done so you gain some benefit from hit/dam. Why, well, I looked at invoker and illusionist and noted they both have mana regen spells which they use. A invoker can get heals from his team mate for tendrils as well. Even so they both classes have some troubles with mana levelling. Meanwhile necromancer has none of these. I've watched and attempted necro levelling and what'll happen is you seem to flip between 2 states... either you are soloing and running out of hp very fast, especially since your only damage spell for a long time does damage to you, or you are in a group and doing nothing because you ran oom long before the round was done. My fix is you get the soul siphon spell, so you can regen some mana by fighting and go back to running out of hp *which can be healed up*.

you will have to bear with the spell at first because at level 6 you don't have any decent equipment or second attack ... as you level it will last longer too, so it should easily pay for its mana cost. Maybe later you can survive mobs very well with it using vamp touch, but that will be something that depends on the numbers I chose, and obviously the damage you do. i would like to see vamp touch mana cost being too prohibitive for doing this indefinitely, but for now I haven't worried about the tweak. However, it needs to be considered carefully since necro can make mobs very soft with mals, and conveniently quick raising of zombies is not the effect I was looking for ( I am looking for better mana endurance while levelling).

note that it is very hard to land on players.

update: players in the necro group now gain half of the mana benefit too

[Thorgoth]

dude I love the group perk. We need more skills like this for sure.

[Voltron]

Oh holy smokes that's awesome. The spell benefiting the entirely group directly is awesome and from my knowledge pretty unheard of in AR. I think, like picpen, that it's great and I would love to see some more stuff like it.

I guess now that I think about it some skills and spell already are that way. Dirt kick doesn't just make you hit better, it makes everyone, same with all other mals. Maybe I'm a little crazy.. sorry.

[Resatimm]

Wow, someone might actually WANT a necro in their group now hahaha

[Davairus]

No, we have group perks..bards songs...armor/shield spell... all meant to make your group endure better. What we haven't had before is mana replenishment. Its one of those taboo areas, where nothing has ever been given before. But necromancers were obviously terrible to level with, since their primary damage spell exerts extra healing on their cleric. This seems like a fair thing to include in their spells, although, remember what I'm looking for is something to keep a group going as it levels up. Not for instance a group of cabal players decide summon/rape a tough guard instead of resting a long time. So the mana needs to trickle in just enough for that heal every 3 rounds or whatever it is. It should not be too hard to find good numbers. Worst case scenario is it just gives you flat mana instead of a % of damage done.

[Vertas]

It wasn't working for me, maybe I'm interpreting it wrong though. You cast the spell on mob, it hits, when you cause damage with your weapon you and or your group gain mana every three rounds or so?

[Davairus]

i'll check on the weekend.

[kento]

[kento]

edit: The last message doesn't matter, Sorry. I didn't realize it's still not working at all.

[Davairus]

I buffed the mana replenishment for the necro (groupmates still get a mere trickle). The spell is also raised to level 32. The reasoning why it is raised to level 32 is as follows.

1) I was having some trouble deciding on mana return at low gear levels and how that should scale up. Because I did want it to go in hand with the rend life type of necro, I had in mind returning a percentage of the damage done. This type of math is an annoyance and I don't want to deal with the low level cases where there basically is NO damroll anyway. The spell does not even return its mana cost in mana. I am aware that necros have a hard start but this is the same for the other mages and something that is supposed to be made up for by with perks later (another reason why this spell has been moved later is because it basically is a perk).

2) I find that fights finish much too quickly before here (right up to the nymphs) for application of the spell. It is when you get to about level 32, like rangers, where the round is long enough to tax the mana reserves of mages, where you start to think, hmm, geez, I run out of mana completely in 3 mobs, why did I roll this? And the solution to that is not to wear mana eq. The reason why that is not a solution is you prolong the issue for 1 or 2 mobs at the first round. Once you are OOM, dragged back to rest, you are competing with hp regen and monster potion regen throughout the fight. And you lose. You will end up being useful for 2 mobs and then useless again. I think that is a bad design for mob levelling. I find that isnt an issue until level 32 really.

3) There is a gap level at 32 where you dont get new stuff. I plugged this gap.


As a final note, I will add that I think the spell is now on the OP side. And mabe past Imms would roll in their graves and hate me. BUT, I must admit, try it out. You will see that necro does not have the hitroll to really pull this off well by himself. It also will take a proper set of damage eq. If you have someone to dirt kick, the spell is very effective. Also, keeping a debuff on the target and refreshing it is more interesting than rend rend rend rend rend rend rend (which itself is more interesting than doing nothing at all because you have no mana and cannot keep up with your warrior thief supergroup.).


A decent rend life necro should be able to put out some very competitive damage while also having increased sustainability. While other classes have third attacks and dual wield to bring extra damage, the rend life has the perk of being an unblockable source of damage.. I felt that other classes get lots more benefit from dirt, allowing them to outshine mages, so here's an elegant way for a necro to have one. Again, the numbers are something I will continue to think about. It will also be disabled with PvP adrenaline at some point because I dont want to provide more mana in those kinda situations... its much too bursty for that. I will get around to that after some other odds and ends.