With the June 16th patch, many changes were made to the Necromancer's Feat Tree. Thanks to people over at the official AoC forums we can now share what was changed exactly. Also, we've wiped all Necromancer builds at The Age of Conan Armory due to these changes.
Necromancer Feat Tree change Notes
REANIMATION TREE
Unholy Fortitude and Grim Hunger
These feats have been switched around in positions, which while it makes sense regarding the later feats in what is now the Unholy Fortitude feat line, has serious implications upon the spell damage build due to having to spend 5 more feat points to get Grim Hunger.
Improved Parasitic Souls
This feat has also been shifted up from tier 3 to tier 4 which also hurts the aoe spell power build, albeit not as seriously as the Grim Hunger change.
NIGHTFALL TREE
Despoil the Soul
Has been shifted down to a tier 3 feat, this has been promised and was a change we knew was coming. Overall this is a good change and one much needed.
Flesh of the Wight and Blasphemed Flesh
FotW has been shifted down to a tier 3 feat, while its followup has been shifted down to a tier 5 feat. Unexpected but will help a lot of builds by offering a relatively easily accessible boost to mage shields. For one point you cant go too far wrong.
Mark of the Devourer
MotD has been shifted up a tier to a tier 4 feat and still does not offer any benefit beyond the first point invested. By itself not a particularly big concern, but it has knock on effects right throughout the tree.
Unholy Inspiration
Unholy Inspiration gets knocked up a level to a tier 6 feat. This feat was fairly sub par anyway as a tier 4 feat, but was appealing to a reanimation heavy build. Likely to be ignored a lot now by reanimation necros and ignored by all nightfall necros as they use despoil the soul instead.
Death Eater
This feat has been brought down from a tier 7 to a tier 5 feat. The logic behind this is to probably give one with Death necros an option to be able to pump up their HP when necessary by eating one of their pets and resummoning. Otherwise ignored by Nightfall necros.
Ravenous Souls
This feat has been pushed up from tier 5 to tier 6. Not really sure what the logic behind this change is, it used to fill in a useful role in tier 5 as a good filler talent. Not sure it can perform the same role in tier 6 but will have to see.
Soul Absorption
This feat has been pushed up from tier 6 to tier 7. Again I do not know entirely what the logic behind this change was, but it is making the top end of the tree extremely cluttered with points you will want to spend.
Embrace Death
What were Funcom thinking when they moved this not only to tier 7, but as a prerequisite to Plagued Heart Curse, which itself is the new prerequisite for Ritual of the Lich. Any feat that only comes into play when you have killed something instead of while you are trying to kill it will almost always be ignored. The benefit from this feat would have to be massive for anyone to even consider lich form anymore.
Plagued Heart Curse and Wretched Heart Curse
This has been shifted up to tier 8 and is the new prerequisite to Ritual of the Lich. Wretched Heart Curse has also subsequently been pushed up to tier 8 as a result. Patch notes promised additional damage on Plagued Heart Curse (I had 5 points in it before the patch) but the damage on it appears to be same as it was pre patch. I will have to compare damage values before and after resetting feat points.
Funcom developer response to the "Attributes fix"
Dexterity does affect evade chance, it simply is not reflected in the GUI correctly. The GUI team is looking into getting this fixed soon. Dexterity also increases offhand chance, DPS from certain weapon types, max stamina, and stamina regeneration.
One should not expect too much in an individual sense from attributes as they apply bonuses to a wide range of stats simultaneously.
There will be a guide to these skills posted for the community within the next week or two to clarify any questions with these issues.
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