Necromancer who cannot depend on minions.

Ramonfg95

It has always bothered me that the necromancer only has (had, now with the removal of blastbones) 3 minions: blastbones that died instantly, a healing ghost, and a mediocre damage-dealing mage/archer skeleton. When will we be able to summon more creatures? Grave grasp and totem are rarely used, and the siphons are difficult to use and have little effect... Why can't we summon more creatures using the bodies we generate? Please explain why ESO has the only necromancer class that doesn't truly feel like a necromancer. I want to summon creatures and rely on them! Give me warrior skeletons that last longer, or allow me to generate fragile skeletons from the bodies that die. Anything that allows me to have more summons and truly feel like a necromancer!

VanLo83

Yeah beats me, the entire class doesn't feel like a Necromancer at all, more a dark sorcerer or something like that. I'd love to have a permanent pet like the Sorc/Warden has that does special things based on the attacks I do. But that would mean that ZOS would actually need to put in some proper work on the Necro and that just won't happen... I wish it would but... myeah...

MashmalloMan

VanLo83 wrote: »

Yeah beats me, the entire class doesn't feel like a Necromancer at all, more a dark sorcerer or something like that. I'd love to have a permanent pet like the Sorc/Warden has that does special things based on the attacks I do. But that would mean that ZOS would actually need to put in some proper work on the Necro and that just won't happen... I wish it would but... myeah...

I have high hopes that Scribing (most likely Mages Guild) will bring in a summon Grimoire for the people that want to be more of a summoner play style:

Grimoire:
Summon a familiar to attack an enemy for 20s.

Effect 1:

1. Fire = Flame Atro
2. Shock = Storm Atro
3. Bleed = Wolf
4. Disease = Zombie

Effect 2:

1. Permanent = Double bar required. Damage reduced by -20%, but casting improves damage by +60%.
2. Aoe = Deals 30% of damage dealt to nearby enemies.
3. Damage = Improves damage by +20%
4. Duration = Increases duration to 30s
5. Sacrifice = Cast a second time to sacrifice the summon to the enemy targeted for 30% of the damage dealt.

Effect 3:

1. Major Brutality/Sorcery while active.
2. Major Savagery/Prophecy while active.
3. Minor Maim to enemies hit.
4. 30% snare to enemies hit.

ZhuJiuyin

To be honest, I have always suspected that ZOS reversed the styles of Sorc and Necro.

Necro should be the guy who uses pets. Forming an army through skeletons, zombies, and ghosts is Necro's style.
Sorc is more like a magic user who uses his power to control Daedric, using dark magic, lightning, and occasionally controlling Daedric to serve himself.

But ZOS reverses the two, so we see Sorc constantly asking for a pet-free style, while Necro wants more pets.

Faulgor

I'm not sure where the idea that Necromancer should have an army of summons comes from - in TES that seems only fitting for Mannimarco, and the King of Worms is certainly exceptional.

My main roleplay issue when playing Necromancer is that it never feels like you are actually raising the corpses around you, you know? I understand raising a fallen boss or something would be impractical, but even the "normal" corpse mechanics are only used to buff a handful of skills that don't actually summon anything! In fact, our summons are the very skills that don't require corpses!

IMO it would make more sense, design-wise, if our spammable, Flame Skull, as well as support abilities generated corpses, and our minions consumed them.

But really, the main gameplay issue is that the one summon we have just sucks. Skeletal Mage just feels soo ineffectual.

Michaelkeir

I’ve spoken my mind about necromancers on quite a few post over the past few years. And I ask this same question concerning more minions on a necro.

I read an article somewhere (around the time necromancer was released as a class) that ZoS didn’t go the permanent pet route because they wanted to try something different from most other games necromancer class’s and that they didn’t want to step on the sorcerer’s pet theme.

If you ask me, that was a bad move. The class as it is now is a pale imitation of what a real necromancer is. Even the NPC necromancer’s are better necros than the class. They can at least summon one permanent pet AND buff them with that beam skill they attach to their minions. And some can summon flesh and skeleton atronachs that actually move around and attack instead of smashing the ground for a few seconds and disappearing. Don’t get me started on Blastbones. Our archer/mage “pets” are nothing more than glorified dots. Who ever came up with this idea should really research what a necromancer really does in fantasy. When I think necromancer, I think:
- Summoning undead and empowering them.
- Damage over Time like curses, poison, and or diseases.
- MELEE and range pets.
- Some type of cold fire or blue flame attacks.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, I’m extremely disappointed with this class. I really wanted to like it. I really did. It is my favorite class in RPGs. I even bought or earned every emote, personality, and motifs associated with necromancers. But as it stands, this class isn’t even a necromancer.

OtarTheMad

I feel Necro can be more than minions, Soul Trap and Soul Strike are technically Necro abilities and so is Necrotic Orb and Bone Shield. So I get them wanting to be different.

With that being said they could have done both. Instead of tethering to a corpse on the ground you could tether to a skeleton that is summoned “using the power of a corpse” and with Animated BB ultimate that could have been zombies or more skeletons instead of just BB used a different way.

They could have took some inspiration from the shout the dragon uses in Soul Cairn and made the Archer/Arcanist ability shoot out a curse to an enemy when it dies applying a DoT. Changing the Mage Arcanist ability would be good too so that there isn’t confusion with the new class. Perfect excuse. OR instead of having a siphon and healing tether you have the Necromancer “channel the corpses energy” and either throw it at a target for a sticky DoT instead of siphon and the healing tether: use it to heal himself and/or get stamina back.

So, the sad part for me is they had two paths to go down for Necromancer and they somehow fumbled it. They could have gone down a route where temp pets were a thing but it was more focused on essence draining, bones, body parts even and using those ideas to create abilities or go with the typically undead army necro. How do you miss on both?

necro_the_crafter

Necro fnatasy in eso is quite something.

We had been in soul cairn several times troughtout the series, and soul cairn is the place in oblivion where powerful necromancers derive its power from. Necromancer's that commune with Ideal Masters, supposed lords of the plane, have a powerful summons and a ways to control souls no other petty conjurer have.

Its a shame ESO didnt expanded on this aspect of elder scrolls necromancers, instead to be tied to soul cairn, they seem to made them derive their power from coldharbour and molag bal, and, while its resonable, cuz molag also gives necrotic power to his followers, it would make more sense to player character to not rely on him, cuz he steals our soul and basicly an antagonist of a main game story.

And while its not directly stated, that our character necro uses coldfire as a sourse of his power, thematicly its obvious, color scheme of a skills clearly tells that our fire spells is indeed coldfire. And a flesh atronachs is the ones from coldharbour, made by molag bal's flesh sculptors.

And while necros colors look coldharboury, mechanicly however their spells looks like they are learned from soul cairn. If you remeber Skyrim, you CAN actually sumon powerful undead from oblivion,and that what we see with ESO necros where our undead is SUMMONED, not raised.

I guess they wont change lore aspect of necro, but having an expantion of class lore in the game would be something that brings a lot of attention (and players money) in.