Ever since necromancer came out in 2019, ZOS has displayed a consistent pattern of disregard for necromancer players and the class as a whole. Necro is ignored almost every patch while other classes are reworked, buffed, and positively redesigned with the game's current standards, but if it is mentioned, it's almost always a nerf to the already bottom of the barrel class. Here's a few of the significant direct AND indirect nerfs necro has had in the past few years.
- Major vuln nerfed to 10% > massive indirect nerf to Colossus in PvP making it mediocre outside of ball groups.
- The extra base 1k WD/SD patch was an indirect nerf to Ravenous Goliath's damage since all other damage ultimates significantly scaled up, but not Ravenous Goliath because it scales off HP. Prior to this patch it was a pretty decent DOT/pressure ultimate comparable to Northern Storm.
- Empowering grasp was completely gutted with the changes to empower.
- The Rapid Rot passive was nerfed to 10% from 15% extra damage to DOTs.
- The Skeletal Arcanist/Archer's damage was nerfed 50% in DOT rework patch, despite NOT being a sticky DOT, not being able to choose who the skeleton targets, and the duration was only increased by 4s from 16s to 20s. The duration increase was a double nerf since the 16s duration allowed for faster corpse generation. Actual sticky DOTs had their damage halved this patch, but their duration was doubled, commonly from 10s to 20s. The skeletal summons were already weak prior to the change, and it just obliterated any viability they still had for absolutely no reason.
- The Siphon skill ticks were halved from 0.33s to 0.66s, making them significantly worse at proc'ing status effects and 50% as effective with damage boosting sets like Draugrkin.
- Both ghost morphs had their healing nuked by 50%.
- Boneyard was nerfed and Harmony was deleted, killing off the bomber necro playstyle without giving necro anything in return.
In exchange for all these nerfs, Ruinous scythe and Skulls were buffed, but the scythe is only viable on stam builds, and skulls is still incredibly slow and clunky. How is that fair and balanced while other classes receive major skill overhauls every other patch? That's like 1.5 reworks/buffs for necro over the course of half a decade.
Stalking Blastbones has been the only good damage skill in the entire kit, and the core identity of the class. Deleting the one foundational class skill now for a delayed buff is just insulting to the players that have stuck with necro for all these rough years. What class skills does ZOS even think the buff will be useful for? An extra 15% damage to a list of trash damage skills doesn't help, and just means necro will be even more of an identity-less generic DOT/proc spammer. This change spits in the face of long-term necro players and completely ignores the actual issues with the class that have been reiterated over and over and over both in feedback for this patch, and for the last several years.
I'm sick of the continued blatant disregard for actual necro players and their feedback, including feedback around theming. If ZOS wants to rework/redesign necro, great, the class feels like it was designed purely around a parse dummy. They shouldn't, however, just delete our core skill out of the blue without reworking the rest of the class around it. Take this change back and redesign the class so we have a comprehensive offensive toolkit instead of just a delayed buff to a bunch of generic DOTs/procs.