Sacrificial Bones is a failure in making Necro's rotation easier.

CameraBeardThePirate · February 20

TL;DR: All thats changed with the rotation is you now cast Venom Skull every third ability instead of Blastbones. Your corpse generation is even worse than before, and magicka focused builds will not have enough corpses because they now have to spend 3 globals just for a single corpse despite having 2 DoTs that each need a corpse at the target's feet.

This skill has done nothing to reduce the complexity of Necro's rotation. Your corpse gen now relies on the third cast of Skulls, so either you run Venom Skull and cast it every 3rd necro ability (sounds familiar doesn't it?), or run Ricochet Skull and still not have enough corpse generation while also having the most nonsensical rotation ever (good luck keeping up Graveyard and Tether when you can only create a corpse after 3 Ricochet Skulls).

The AOE proc on Skulls is great! But it either needs to always create a corpse, or you need to go back to the drawing board with Sacrificial Bones. It still feels like a dead cast, does nothing to make rotations easier, and takes up bar space with a delayed buff that does no damage on a class that already lacks in bar space.

Quit the nonsense - make Sacrificial Bones a targeted ability that applies a DoT to all targets hit in addition to the current effects. It wouldn't feel like a dead cast, it would allow a corpse on demand at the target's location, and it would solve Necro's issue of not having a sticky DoT.

OtarTheMad · February 20

Yeah, I don’t get why ZOS just won’t give Necro a sticky dot. They could put one at the end of Skeletal Summons, could put one on Blighted and have the dot be fire so we don’t lose a source of burning. Seems simple enough to me. Necro would still need more changes but these would be good steps

I think at this point if Necro isn’t going to get one then one simple change could be switching two classes passives. Necro and Arcanist switch passives. Necro gets the status effect one and Arcanist gets the dot one. This will never happen but just saying, it’d help.

Uvi_AUT · February 20

Weird solution instead of using one of the excellent ones on the Forum. Now youre again pigeonholed into one skill. But now its Skulls. Another Class that cant freely choose its Filler-Ability.....
I really wanted to play my Necro again after seeing the new Blastbones. I always liked the freedom of choice. But I think thats out the window now.

Aldoss · February 20

I read the patch notes out loud to my wife tonight while waiting for our bg queue to pop.

She does not play necro, does not remember any of the skill names, but obviously knows about blastbones (because, y'know, it's the class defining skill).

When she heard the notes, her series of reactions were:

- That makes no sense
- And it's less damage than before?
- Wait, it doesn't even give you the self-corpse thing?
- What is Flame Skulls?
- And that happens every 3 seconds?
- Wasn't blastbones every 3 seconds?
- That makes no sense

I'm sorry, but actually what is happening there at ZOS HQ?! Is there no one in that building that plays this class?!

C_Inside · February 20

The latest iteration of SacBones is just a failure of a skill overall. So it boosts all of your necro skills but forces you to use Venom Skull. What's the point of it boosting all of your necro skills if you're still forced to only use Grave Lord ones? No one's gonna use Scythe because you don't generate enough corpses that way. Maybe they're expecting people to start using the Goliath? Or maybe they don't want you using Boneyard and Syphon? Those are some of the best DOTs necro has, though. Besides, what else are you gonna use in their place? Necro doesn't have any other worthwhile dps class skills.

Speaking of Venom Skull, I like the fact that SacBones, the skill which directly buffs Skull, also indirectly nerfs it. With Blighted Blastbones you get a charge towards Skull's 3rd cast every ~3 seconds. With SacBones you get one every 20. So you wind up with far fewer 50% boosted Skulls. Now, casting Venom SKull does count as a charge towards itself, but optimally you only want to use it when it's charged up as it doesn't provide any other utility the way other class spammables do. This is something you can fairly reliably do with Blighted and indeed, something you could also do with Stalking BLastbones.

i11ionward · February 20

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

TL;DR: All thats changed with the rotation is you now cast Venom Skull every third ability instead of Blastbones. Your corpse generation is still worse, and magicka focused builds will not have enough corpses because they now have to spend 3 globals just for a single corpse.

This skill has done nothing to reduce the complexity of Necro's rotation. Your corpse gen now relies on the third cast of Skulls, so either you run Venom Skull and cast it every 3rd necro ability (sounds familiar doesn't it?), or run Ricochet Skull and still not have enough corpse generation while also having the most nonsensical rotation ever (good luck keeping up Graveyard and Tether when you can only create a corpse after 3 Ricochet Skulls).

The AOE proc on Skulls is great! But it either needs to always create a corpse, or you need to go back to the drawing board with Sacrificial Bones. It still feels like a dead cast, does nothing to make rotations easier, and takes up bar space with a delayed buff that does no damage on a class that already lacks in bar space.

Quit the nonsense - make Sacrificial Bones a targeted ability that applies a DoT to all targets hit in addition to the current effects. It wouldn't feel like a dead cast, it would allow a corpse on demand at the target's location, and it would solve Necro's issue of not having a sticky DoT.

By choosing Sacrificial Bones you are literally making Skulls a worse version of Blastbones. What genius developer came up with this? What's the point? I like it when morphs have different gameplay, but what they did with Blastbones is just crap.

Alaztor91 · February 20

I don't even think that relying on Venom Skull effect is something practical, the only other skills that will help proc the 3rd cast faster are all skills that you don't want to overcast anyways. And casting 3x Ricochet (or Venom) Skull before every Boneyard/Siphon cast seems way more complicated than having to cast old BB every 3s imo. Having to switch targets in a fight and having your Corpse appear at another place also screws your rotation even more.

You also can't really rely on the Corpse generated from Skeletal Mage since that one will pretty much always spawn near you.

KlauthWarthog · February 20

Now necromancers don't even get to pick their spammable anymore, while having an even more convoluted rotation - any time you are refreshing dots and not casting skulls, you are also not building up stacks towards a corpse...
... and yes, now you have to build stacks to get a corpse.

How the heck did they manage to make it worse?

OtarTheMad · February 20

KlauthWarthog wrote: »

Now necromancers don't even get to pick their spammable anymore, while having an even more convoluted rotation - any time you are refreshing dots and not casting skulls, you are also not building up stacks towards a corpse...
... and yes, now you have to build stacks to get a corpse.

How the heck did they manage to make it worse?

I feel like they (ZOS) are overthinking this. That or the way that they believe Necromancer should be played, their intended vision, is vastly different from ours.

Either way they’ve made it harder to log in for me since I am pretty stuck with Magcro as my main.

Lalothen · February 20

Being pigeonholed into using Skulls for corpse gen has got to be the worst "solution" to a glaring class mechanic issue that I've seen in a long time.

They should just:

1) Keep the exploding skeleton on the mag morph.

2) Make the Sacrifice Bones effect a passive buff for having that morph slotted.

3) Reduce the base damage of the mag skeleton by half (bringing it down to the same base damage as elemental ring).

4) Cut'n'Paste the "Stalking" mechanic over to the Blighted morph.

5) Profit??????

They can tweak the buff percentages if necessary to keep things in line.

i11ionward · February 20

ZOS I came up with a skill for you that really simplifies the rotation of necros, you just have to balance the damage according to the tables.

... Blastbones

Cost: 2700 Magicka
Target: Area
Duration: 20 seconds
Maximum range: 28 meters
Radius: 6 meters

Create the area at the target location. Summon a skeleton from the ground each 4 seconds in this area, the skeleton runs to a closest enemy at the area and explodes when it gets close to them, dealing XXXX Damage to all enemies nearby.

System_Data · February 20

i11ionward wrote: »

ZOS I came up with a skill for you that really simplifies the rotation of necros, you just have to balance the damage according to the tables.

... Blastbones

Cost: 2700 Magicka
Target: Area
Duration: 20 seconds
Maximum range: 28 meters
Radius: 6 meters

Create the area at the target location. Summon a skeleton from the ground each 4 seconds in this area, the skeleton runs to a closest enemy at the area and explodes when it gets close to them, dealing XXXX Damage to all enemies nearby.

Had a similar idea in mind as well. They could have even just band-aid their new skill to spawn corpses every few seconds too.

Instead, now we face the same dilemma that NB had before, using "Path of Darkness" followed by "Veiled Strike" to access the same buff that they had earlier, only to be retconned this coming patch.

Seriously ZOS, have you not learn from the mistakes you made. You guys set out the simplify Necromancers rotation and it's anything but. It's always one step forward and two steps back.

It's 2024, how does Necromancer not have either Major Brutality/Sorcery or Major Savagery/Prophecy in their kit when some classes have both of them.

Rasande_Robin · February 20

I like the newest changes, but it still feels as thought through as the crafting event... now Blastbone morph is a skull morph O_o?!?