Training Necromancy post GM

Rock 2020-04-21 02:21 #0

I have a necro/fencer/poisoner who recently made GM, has read a 120 Necro PS and a tier I Necro Mastery primer. The UOGuide Necro page suggests that at 100 skill you should train with the Vampiric Embrace skill. That puzzled me, because with normal skill arithmetic he would only have a 2.5% chance of success at 100 skill. (It becomes castable at 99.0 skill, so each 0.1 skill above that is +0.25% chance of success.) However, his success rate is MUCH larger than that. At 100.4 skill, it feels a lot more like a 40 to 50% success rate, whereas the Necro book reports it should be 3.5%. Why is there a discrepancy between what the game reports and the actual results?

Another question -- how effective is the Conduit mastery spell in training Necromancy? That was actually going to be my main question until I saw the very high success rate of Vampirc Embrace.

Alazi 2020-04-21 03:17 #1

The way I train necromancy after 100 is to use necromancy skill increase items to get to 120, and then I cast Vampiric Embrace to raise real skill. The item bonus raises your chance of casting the spell but does not stop you from gaining natural skill.

Conduit is not as effective as Vampiric Embrace because it requires a living target to curse. You could hypothetically use it, but the above method I personally find to be much faster.

Alazi 2020-04-21 04:37 #2

Also Rock, to answer your question about the differing casting chance, I assume you are training in a suit made of Mystic of Sorcery legendary artifacts, which would mean you likely have a high amount of casting focus. Casting focus decreases your chance to fail a spell (Whether through getting hit or failing it due to insufficient skill. A high amount of casting focus could potentially be the reason you are experiencing a higher success rate than you should be.

Rock 2020-04-21 07:11 #3

@Alazi Thank you for the response and info. Regarding Conduit, the necromancer himself can be the "living target", making it a player-based AoE (pbAoE) debuff. Also, check again and you can see that the target can be a physical location, not necessarily yourself or a foe. Maybe there has been a change to its original behavior. The EC training macro I began using after the OP was

lich form
vampiric embrace (3 times)
conduit (self)
spirit speak

There is a 4 second delay between each step, with just 2 seconds for the SS. The gains seemed quite reasonable, even without any +necro skill. I'll probably soon replace the lich form with either another vampiric embrace or conduit. Right now in the low 100s he can get gains from any of the steps, although lich form is approaching what will be too easy of a training spell..

All pieces of his suit are crafted by my GM+ tailor with properties added by my GM+ imbuer. There was nothing more fancy than that. Casting focus (CF) was not added and I'm not even sure it is an imbuable property. If he has any CF, it is on his bracelet and/or ring. If any, I doubt it is very much. I'll check tomorrow.

Oh, it occurs to me I haven't tested the success rate of Vampiric Embrace without the Necro Mastery active. Maybe that is contributing to its probability of success.

Alazi 2020-04-21 08:19 #4

@Rock I wasn't aware that you could cast conduit on yourself. Since there's no casting focus, I can't say what would cause the spell to have a higher chance of success unless the spell has been altered in some way by the devs to make it succeed more often. I do not believe that the mastery has any effect on your ability to cast spells, but the mechanics of UO are cryptic and not easily accessible, so it could easily be a possibility.

Rock 2020-04-21 14:40 #5

@Alazi You are correct; necro mastery had no effect on the success of Vampiric Embrace (VE). I ran the macro of my previous post both with and without it active. The macro has 10 iterations, and VE succeeded 40% to 50% of the time either way. Also there is no casting focus on his jewelry.

Maybe his magic ratings (human form as reported by the Character Sheet) have some side effect.

Lower Reagent Cost -- 113/100
Enhance Potions -- 0/50
Spell Damage Increase -- 5
Faster Casting Recovery -- 6/6
Faster Casting -- 0/4
Lower Mana Cost -- 40/40
Hit Point Regeneration -- 2/18
Stamina Regeneration -- 3
Mana Regeneration -- 11/30
Reflect Physical Damage -- 0/105
Defense Chance Increase -- 5/45

Also, his Fencing is 101.4, Tactics 100.0, Resist 100.2, Med 100.0, Necro 101.2, Poisoning 76.2, and SS 105.8. Note that this is a "focused" build, which I guess could have something to do with VE's success rate. He has no skill buffs (well, there is 5% Musicianship, but I don't think that is relevant, especially since his racial JoAT ability overrides that at 20%. He also has 35.2% Anatomy, which is set to go down so other skills can rise. (I have listed all this just to have a record as much as anything.)

While I like the build anyway, being focused allows him to cast spells in Horrific Beast form. I like that form a lot since it gives him a 22/18 HPR. If he is weilding a weapon with HPR it is even higher, since none of the form bonus is limited by the HPR cap. While not as high as Ninjitsu's dog/cat form can be, it is much more flexible.

I don't know whether my success rate is a bug or something the devs have done intentionally. At DedFred's 101.2 skill level, the necro book reports the success rate should be 5.5%. So even if the higher rate is intentional, there is the partial bug of the reported percentage.

Rock 2020-04-21 17:16 #6

If my success rate with Vampiric Embrace is unusual, it occurs to me that it could be an undocmented bonus of having a focused build. It is not the general success rate bonus which @Alazi attributes to the Casting Focus property. I know this because the only spell which succeeds more often than the necro book says it should is VE. Hmm, let me test this on Test Center...

<back>

Nope. Having a focused build has no impact on the success rate of VE. 6/10 successes in a focused build, and 5/10 non-focused. The necro book reports the success rate should be 6%, not 60%. So I will tentatively assume that all necros have this success rate, unless some builds, such as sampire, have it specifically tweaked to act as documented.

Training Necromancy post GM

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