Stalking Blastbones accounts for well over 20% of your damage as a Necromancer.
On a parse, it's usually 25% - 30%. In a BG, it's anywhere from 25% to 40% of your damage in CMX. It deals more damage than Blighted, and is far and away necromancer's best ability.
Removing it for a 20% buff on only your Grave Lord abilities (of which only 1 or 2 are usable in PvP) and DoTs (something you need to outsource since the class lacks any sticky DoTs) is not the play.
Colossus bombers are really the only winner here, and even then - I'm not sure the 20% buff to Colossus will offset the damage loss from a crit Stalking Blastbones (which usually hits harder than a tick of Colossus - well over 33% of its damage).
The math here doesn't add up. The Sacrifice buff would need to be
AT LEAST 25-30% for this new ability to be worth considering. This change will not help Necro, and will only reinforce loading up your bar with non-class DoTs and boring, AoE DoT Proc playstyles.
Please ZOS, from a long-time Necro main,
consider moving this new mechanic to the Skeletal Archer/Arcanist - even if that means reducing the buff a bit since it would be usable in tandem with Blastbones. Stalking Blastbones is Necromancer's bread and butter. Leaving the lesser Blighted morph feels like a consolation prize rather than a way to continue Necro's current playstyle.
If the goal was to reduce complexity of the rotation - congrats!
Now it's impossible to place a corpse at a target's feet in any sort of ranged fight. The rotation will be a lot more difficult if you're unable to consistently place corpses where you need them to be.
This change will only accomplish 1 thing - a ton of Oblivions Foe/BRP destro necros that don't even feel like a necro because they're loaded up with weapon abilities.
@ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_GinaBruno PLEASE pass this on to the dev team. Removing Stalking Blastbones would be like removing Spec Bow, Whip, or Fatecarver. It doesn't matter that Blighted was left alone because Blighted is nowhere near as good as Stalking in PvP.
Edited by CameraBeardThePirate on 30 January 2024 18:57