[twit]

Originally Posted by Yawgmoth-VDN nice to have indeed, but if you react fast, the unfeated cc's are good enough for that...

Quick reactions don't really make that much of a difference when someone else in the raid pulls the Aegis out of your Frost Blast cone while casting or that Arms doesn't get stunned when he should and closes the 5m gap to you and strikes you dead in a single blow.
When you're already dealing as much damage as you can without pulling aggro, utility feats add something while damage feats do not. Additionally, Flash Freeze and Frost Reach are more valuable to someone less experienced in the class and/or the fights while someone who knows their class and all the smelly bosses in and out might want to forego them.

Originally Posted by Yawgmoth-VDN i usually use reapers... why do you think arcanists are better??

First off, unfeated all necro pets have nearly equalized damage. That is it doesn't matter what pet you use as their damage output will be nearly identical.
What gives Reapers the highest damage potential are two things, first of the Devourer feat, which is far down the Nightfall tree, and secondarily them doing unholy damage which synergizes with the spiritual torment debuff from Grim Hunger. I'll gladly ignore their heal as it's so minor it has no consequence, ever.

In order to fully feat The Devourer you have to skip either Master of the Dead or General of the Dead. Most necros would agree Master of the Dead isn't something you want to leave home without, and raw numbers actually mean the one point in General of the Dead adds more damage than the last point in The Devourer. That's without even considering the insane non-T3 tank utility you get from General of the Dead and a frenzied melee pet or an invulnerable army of pets anywhere else.
So we're left with at most two feat points in The Devourer in a caster pet feat like mine but these two points would cost us (in my spec) Night of the Harvester and Plague Swarm.
Secondarily the synergy between the Reaper dealing unholy damage and the spiritual torment debuff while the Arcanist deals frost damage. In a T3 raid every boss and nearly every other mob should be fully debuffed from a few seconds from them being aggroed all the way up to their death, meaning the damage type of your pet won't matter.

So essentially, the Reapers have a slightly higher damage potential and a non consequential heal.

The Arcanist on the other hand will provide you, your group and your pets with up to a 5% base spell damage increase which won't have a 100% uptime due to the slightly too low proc chance but it will stay maxed as long as you have four or more Arcanists attacking and you can typically maintain it even when you have to watch out for aggro swaps by individually ordering your pets to attack different targets or stay idle for a short bit etc.
Arcanists also have a shorter cast length than the Reaper (2.0 vs 2.5s) meaning they will proc Cabal more frequently than Reapers, further reducing the already minute damage advantage of the Reapers.

If The Devourer had been properly placed in the RA tree and/or Blood Arcanist had been a relevant 4pt pet (incoming revamp I'm looking at you to fix this and not screw things up) things might be different but right now I'll keep advocating Arcanists over Reapers in high-tier raids.


Admittedly though, the Reapers do use a better cologne.

[Yawgmoth-VDN]

we usually have rangers that protect the casters with traps, so adds doesn't get close to them...

btw, thanks for the explanation about arcanists vs. reapers!! i'll definitely have to think about it...


the point is that i feat the devourer 'cos i like to use blood arcanists when i'm playing solo, for their aoe and healing, that is much better than reapers on short fights... but indeed i don't play so much my necro anymore as solo, 'cos i have farmed everything i wanted to have with him...

[joyodongo]

Yes, necromancer class is a whole world by itself, you have so many combinations you can use of pets/spells and the feat trees are so... extrange that there are many approaches.
As I've always used melée pets I thing I'm going to try with this one:

http://aoc.yg.com/feat-planner?class...,864-13,863-11

It's more or less the feats from Twit but maximizing Ice Strike with Frozen Body.

[twit]

Originally Posted by joyodongo maximizing Ice Strike with Frozen Body.

Keep in mind that any +x% damage you see listed in the feats is added to your base damage for that spell, not the final damage. So five points in Frozen Body equates around 2-3% damage increase on Ice Strike (depending on gear) as opposed to the listed 10%.
I usually focus on Corrupted Soul as the +50% healing on Lifestrike is an actual 50% modifier.

[kingkonge]

http://aoc.yg.com/feat-planner?class...,859-12,864-12

is good is nice for T3. dont loose mana, got minus hate abilites,

[Marlekin]

Originally Posted by twit Arcanists also have a shorter cast length than the Reaper (2.0 vs 2.5s) meaning they will proc Cabal and other ranged procs (such as ToS') more frequently than Reapers further reducing the already minute damage advantage of the Reapers.

What ToS procs trigger on ranged magic attacks?
Empowered Life of Set, Storm Regalia and Resonance only proc from melee attacks as far as I know, did I miss something?

I can't think of anything else than cabal which procs from casterpets.

Very fine discussion of the reaper/arcanist question btw.

[twit]

Originally Posted by Marlekin What ToS procs trigger on ranged magic attacks? Empowered Life of Set, Storm Regalia and Resonance only proc from melee attacks as far as I know, did I miss something? I can't think of anything else than cabal which procs from casterpets.

You're propably right and I mixed it up with necro spells triggering Resonance. Checked a few logs and couldn't find any other procs off of ranged pets. Shorter cast times would still benefit more from flat magic damage bonuses, but there's not a whole lot of those around.

I'll edit that post accordingly.