Necromancer Skill: Stalking Blastbones VS Grave Lord's Sacrifice.

Kalle_Demos

Stalking Blastbones

Perashim wrote: »

You'd think they would listen when one of the classes you have to actually pay money for is active garbage.

This is what baffles me the most. ESO is an MMO and not everyone is going to be happy about changes. Just the nature of a game this size. But this change helps no one. The Necro is mathematically further behind the other classes. The intended goals of the change were not met. The Necro was once one of the most anticipated features as a classic Elder Scrolls villain but is now largely maligned by the community because of it's many shortcomings. This is just my anecdotal on my part but over the last few months, multiple new players that have joined some of my guilds expressed interest in the Necromancer but were steered away by more experienced players because the Class is and has been in such a poor state. This change helps no one. The question must be asked, who was this actually for? Because players aren't having fun and money is being left on the table.

StarOfElyon

Stalking Blastbones

Guess we can change the name of this class from Necromancer to Scriber.

Deimus

Stalking Blastbones

The new patch notes seals it! Necro is continuing it's streak of abuse in 2024. They are keeping a close eye on this skill in case anyone finds a way to make Necro viable with it so the class can receive swift and heavy nerfs.

How much lower can this class go? Maybe 2025 and the new blood from Roundhouse can bring something positive for the class.

danko355

Stalking Blastbones

I just wish someone from the devs actually played this class to understand what’s wrong with it. On paper it has mitigations, hots, damage skills, but you just need to play it for a few hours to understand all the problems the class has.

C_Inside

Stalking Blastbones

Deimus wrote: »

The new patch notes seals it! Necro is continuing it's streak of abuse in 2024. They are keeping a close eye on this skill in case anyone finds a way to make Necro viable with it so the class can receive swift and heavy nerfs.

How much lower can this class go? Maybe 2025 and the new blood from Roundhouse can bring something positive for the class.

To be fair necro did receive a sizeable buff to syphon this patch. And none of the other changes seem to have resulted in an indirect nerf. So the patch is still a win for us.

If only the win could've actually been something we wanted. No one was complaining about syphon's damage. The general consensus was about how trash Suckrifice and other skills like Skeleton Mage, Ruinous Scythe, and Grave Grasp are. So while syphon's buff is a welcome change, it just further shows that the devs either don't read our feedback, or if they do it's on the very surface level. Like, they read that necro's damage is behind the other classes but instead of actually reading our feedback which directly points at what the issue is they blindly chose a skill and gave it a buff. How much of a buff? "I dunno Jon. God I wish Microsoft hadn't laid off Mike. He was the only one that played necro. Anyway, 33% sound good? Yeah that should shut them up".

Deimus

Stalking Blastbones

C_Inside wrote: »

Deimus wrote: »

The new patch notes seals it! Necro is continuing it's streak of abuse in 2024. They are keeping a close eye on this skill in case anyone finds a way to make Necro viable with it so the class can receive swift and heavy nerfs.

How much lower can this class go? Maybe 2025 and the new blood from Roundhouse can bring something positive for the class.

To be fair necro did receive a sizeable buff to syphon this patch. And none of the other changes seem to have resulted in an indirect nerf. So the patch is still a win for us.

If only the win could've actually been something we wanted. No one was complaining about syphon's damage. The general consensus was about how trash Suckrifice and other skills like Skeleton Mage, Ruinous Scythe, and Grave Grasp are. So while syphon's buff is a welcome change, it just further shows that the devs either don't read our feedback, or if they do it's on the very surface level. Like, they read that necro's damage is behind the other classes but instead of actually reading our feedback which directly points at what the issue is they blindly chose a skill and gave it a buff. How much of a buff? "I dunno Jon. God I wish Microsoft hadn't laid off Mike. He was the only one that played necro. Anyway, 33% sound good? Yeah that should shut them up".

The lack of change to GLS is what prompted my post. They said they'd keep an eye out and adjust the skill throughout the year since it hadn't hit the mark yet, but still pulled it out the oven raw and sat it on our plates. So now we're stuck eating this raw mess for 6 months to wait for the possibility of if past experience is anything to go by, minor tweaks that will leave some of the clunky behavior intact or changes that will leave us scratching our head.

Yeah the tethers get a buff which is nice and an unambiguous improvement, but it doesn't solve any of the issues that has been laid out on the forums repeatedly for years now by people who actually play the class.

Alaztor91

Stalking Blastbones

Deimus wrote: »

The new patch notes seals it! Necro is continuing it's streak of abuse in 2024. They are keeping a close eye on this skill in case anyone finds a way to make Necro viable with it so the class can receive swift and heavy nerfs.

How much lower can this class go? Maybe 2025 and the new blood from Roundhouse can bring something positive for the class.

ZOS: We heard your feedback about GLS being clunky to use and missing the mark, so we went ahead and made some exciting new changes to help reduce the intense demand and complex rotation requirement of the class.

-Grave Lord's Sacrifice: Sacrifice yourself and leap to a nearby ally to infuse them with power, increasing their damage done with class abilities and Damage over time effects by 25%. This bonus is removed when you revive. Creates a corpse on death.

Known Issue: This morph is currently able to target NPCs and allowing you to revive yourself after combat. Both of these issues will be fixed in a future incremental patch.

C_Inside

Stalking Blastbones

What's truly baffling here is what exactly is the thought process behind the power balancing of necro these last few patches? OK, so last patch they nerfed necro by removing Stalking Blastbones. Now they buff tether so necro's overall damage is brought back to where it was. Like, what was the point of this? You literally took 1 step backwards and now 1 step forwards. This is just change for the sake of change.

@ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_GinaBruno Do your devs not have anything to do all day? Or are you afraid that if you leave things alone you won't have enough stuff to fill your patch notes with and won't have a justification to have patches this infrequently?

Lazarus_Rising

Stalking Blastbones

It will not be possible to balance the dots for pve and pvp.
You need to give us some burst damage for pvp badly. First we need the initial blastbones back and then you need to give us some kind of additional burst. Other classes have this aswell.

IncultaWolf

Stalking Blastbones

Necro needs more time to bake. Maybe by the end of the year it'll be cooked

Yamenstein

Stalking Blastbones

Aldoss wrote: »

This poll is now approaching 90 unique players (how are there even that many necros?! Where are you all when I need to complete the kill necro quest in cyro?!), I want to reiterate some of the absurdity of this buff that no other buff in the game suffers from:

- this buff has a delay
- this buff can be stunned
- this buff can be immobilized
- this buff can die before application
- this buff can be LOS'd by the caster, causing the buff to fail
- this buff doesn't even do what the tooltip claims it does (no buff to animate blastbones ultimate)


Almost 95% agreement in this thread. This skill is the absolute worst designed skill that ever made it to live. ZOS wasted its money on this skill's design and everyone knows it. The only reason why this isn't blowing up even more is because no one played necro to begin with. Imagine if DKs had their Flames of Oblivion changed to do everything I just listed?

Oh right... They'd just use all their other skills because DK is a functioning class with the most robust class toolkit in the game. And yet, you know they'd be blowing up this forum about how ridiculous this is.

Necro had no other skills. ZOS deleted the one unifying skill every necro build used. The one skill on a death recap that let you know you were fighting a necro.

Talk. To. Us!

Sums up everything nicely.
ZoS never going to acknowledge this. They half bake anything they implement.

Sapphire_Lily

Stalking Blastbones

I’m only a casual player who PVEs and I recently played my nercomancer; what have you done to it?

I don’t know anything about numbers or top builds but from a pure casual stand point, my necromancer is totally defunct. She can’t been kill a base game enemy anymore!

Now the skeleton jumps on me? What’s the point?

NoticeMeArkay

Stalking Blastbones

Put it back, the Grave Lord can have it.

BasP

Stalking Blastbones

While I can get behind the idea of having one morph that enables a different playstyle for Necromancers (though it was executed rather poorly), I find it strange that the base skill was changed as well. When I made my first Necromancer I was relatively new to ESO and I found Blastbones a cool skill to use, even if I didn't have a proper rotation down or anything. It seemed to make short work of overland mobs at least.

Due to Sacrificial Bones, a new player's first experience with the skill seems worse to me. It's just weird that you summon a skeleton that jumps at you, it's annoying that it can only be used in combat, and the buff isn't really worthwhile. I would've probably just ignored the skill after trying it once or twice. If Blastbones remained the base skill, however, new players could get familiar with it and then decide to stick with it by choosing Blighted Blastbones or try the other morph.

tigerWhiskers

Stalking Blastbones

I think having two totally different play styles is of value. But like many here I agree it needed a lot more polish before going live.
I’ve worked hard to contribute to my prog group on necro over the last… over 2 years now. Now I’m being told my necro is unlikely to be wanted in the future. It’s disheartening.
I do applaud game developers ensuring accessibility to the game. But to be deeply satisfying, high difficulty; high reward is … well rewarding and keeps players like me engaged long term. I think there’s room for both accessible options and high challenge/reward options. Necro is a perfect class to reward the challenge they present. But they have to deliver on being rewarding.
I actually think the necro issues are a little bit around damage, a lot around GLS not being viable in content (we all already know corpse creation is lacking and unwieldy, getting the buff is problematic and damage is poor). But mostly I think it is about the necro no longer contributing anything uniquely useful as dps. Necro would be instantly relevant again if they were given a unique and meaningful group buff.
For example, they have always been billed as the class that is master of elemental and martial damage. Have them buff their own status effect chance and the group’s status effect damage. A little but meaningful contribution to the group alongside an extra bump to their own damage. Have this buff (or debuff) trigger off a dps skill like both morphs of skeletal mage and have the uptime scale off weapon and spell damage to make dps the most beneficial role to run it. I’d actually love the group buff portion of this change to be a synergy that can be other or self activated. “Activating the synergy applies Scythe’s Touch to the enemy for up to 15 seconds. This part of the synergy scales off weapon and spell damage. Scythe’s Touch can be reapplied every 20 seconds…” sort of thing.
Maybe you have a better idea for a new group buff or unique debuff for necro.
Wouldn’t it also be nice if the skeletal arcanist registered as AOE shock damage buffed by GLS.

C_Inside

Stalking Blastbones

Bumping this again for the same reason as last time. We probably need to get to 1000 votes for @ZOS_Kevin or @ZOS_GinaBruno to address us or something.

Kalle_Demos

Stalking Blastbones

BasP wrote: »

While I can get behind the idea of having one morph that enables a different playstyle for Necromancers (though it was executed rather poorly), I find it strange that the base skill was changed as well. When I made my first Necromancer I was relatively new to ESO and I found Blastbones a cool skill to use, even if I didn't have a proper rotation down or anything. It seemed to make short work of overland mobs at least.

Due to Sacrificial Bones, a new player's first experience with the skill seems worse to me. It's just weird that you summon a skeleton that jumps at you, it's annoying that it can only be used in combat, and the buff isn't really worthwhile. I would've probably just ignored the skill after trying it once or twice. If Blastbones remained the base skill, however, new players could get familiar with it and then decide to stick with it by choosing Blighted Blastbones or try the other morph.

As I've said before, GLS was implemented in the worst possible way and caused more problems while solving none. Keeping the base skill would have been...something. With it's main damage ability gone, the disparity between Necro and the other classes is much more obvious to newer players. The Necromancer's reputation among the pool of potential customers is only going to get worse.

Yamenstein

Stalking Blastbones

tigerWhiskers wrote: »

I think having two totally different play styles is of value. But like many here I agree it needed a lot more polish before going live.
I’ve worked hard to contribute to my prog group on necro over the last… over 2 years now. Now I’m being told my necro is unlikely to be wanted in the future. It’s disheartening.
I do applaud game developers ensuring accessibility to the game. But to be deeply satisfying, high difficulty; high reward is … well rewarding and keeps players like me engaged long term. I think there’s room for both accessible options and high challenge/reward options. Necro is a perfect class to reward the challenge they present. But they have to deliver on being rewarding.
I actually think the necro issues are a little bit around damage, a lot around GLS not being viable in content (we all already know corpse creation is lacking and unwieldy, getting the buff is problematic and damage is poor). But mostly I think it is about the necro no longer contributing anything uniquely useful as dps. Necro would be instantly relevant again if they were given a unique and meaningful group buff.
For example, they have always been billed as the class that is master of elemental and martial damage. Have them buff their own status effect chance and the group’s status effect damage. A little but meaningful contribution to the group alongside an extra bump to their own damage. Have this buff (or debuff) trigger off a dps skill like both morphs of skeletal mage and have the uptime scale off weapon and spell damage to make dps the most beneficial role to run it. I’d actually love the group buff portion of this change to be a synergy that can be other or self activated. “Activating the synergy applies Scythe’s Touch to the enemy for up to 15 seconds. This part of the synergy scales off weapon and spell damage. Scythe’s Touch can be reapplied every 20 seconds…” sort of thing.
Maybe you have a better idea for a new group buff or unique debuff for necro.
Wouldn’t it also be nice if the skeletal arcanist registered as AOE shock damage buffed by GLS.

Agreed. I don’t mind GLS for the most part. But it’s poorly implemented. The entire class is a mess and needs to be revised. Make it a difficult class fine - but then the output should be higher when you put in the effort.

VouxeTheMinotaur

Stalking Blastbones

Knew this change was coming and was excited... til I tried it out in a dungeon and realized how unbelievably [snip] my rotation is now. switching to the stam was worse, no cast out of combat feels strange and just takes even longer to set up my AOE's that do better with a corpse, and having a corpse at my feet with the new morph does squat.

with the change, I'm heavily debating on deleting my necro toon. having one rot away (hah) at the bottom of my character list does no good

[edited for profanity bypass]

Kalle_Demos

Stalking Blastbones

VouxeTheMinotaur wrote: »

Knew this change was coming and was excited... til I tried it out in a dungeon and realized how unbelievably [snip] my rotation is now. switching to the stam was worse, no cast out of combat feels strange and just takes even longer to set up my AOE's that do better with a corpse, and having a corpse at my feet with the new morph does squat.

with the change, I'm heavily debating on deleting my necro toon. having one rot away (hah) at the bottom of my character list does no good

[edited for profanity bypass]

One thing that the few defenders of GLS have been overlooking, perhaps intentionally in some cases, is the fun factor. GLS may look fine on paper but it's awkward and doesn't actually help Necro rotation issues as was intended, just the opposite among a slew of other problems with the skill. It's just not fun. Much worse than what we had before. Having to do more with less and still being relegated to a 'buff dps' role is not what most Necro players had in mind when they bought the Class.

ClowdyAllDay

why i get notices for this thread? i commented here?

Kalle_Demos

Stalking Blastbones

ClowdyAllDay wrote: »

why i get notices for this thread? i commented here?

Were you tagged? Or perhaps you bookmarked the thread?

Kalle_Demos

Stalking Blastbones

Sapphire_Lily wrote: »

I’m only a casual player who PVEs and I recently played my nercomancer; what have you done to it?

I don’t know anything about numbers or top builds but from a pure casual stand point, my necromancer is totally defunct. She can’t been kill a base game enemy anymore!

Now the skeleton jumps on me? What’s the point?

The casual player experience, probably the most common in the game shouldn't be ignored either. The Necro, as it is, isn't so degraded that it can't get through overland or normal content but there is that fun factor to consider again. GLS, which introduction was allegedly meant to help the more casual experience has done the opposite. With the loss of Stalking, a large part of the class fantasy is gone as many of the Necro's remaining skills are lackluster and unsatisfying to use. Blighted and it's debuff which is useless in PVE is a very poor substitute. The Necro's problems and disproportionate shortcomings have become more pronounced and obvious across all play styles, casual and vets alike.

Alaztor91

Stalking Blastbones

Scribing is releasing in a few weeks, and it seems that ZOS didn't even bother to adjust the Necromancer Class Signature Script so that it generates the Corpse at the target instead of generating it near the player.

The Sorcerer Class Signature Script had the same problem, and it was adjusted. What is even more hilarious is that Grave Lord's Sacrifice, the morph rework that ZOS released only 3 months ago ALSO had the same problem with the Corpse being generated near the player, however it was adjusted before U41 release.

Seriously wth is this.

CameraBeardThePirate

Stalking Blastbones

Alaztor91 wrote: »

Scribing is releasing in a few weeks, and it seems that ZOS didn't even bother to adjust the Necromancer Class Signature Script so that it generates the Corpse at the target instead of generating it near the player.

The Sorcerer Class Signature Script had the same problem, and it was adjusted. What is even more hilarious is that Grave Lord's Sacrifice, the morph rework that ZOS released only 3 months ago ALSO had the same problem with the Corpse being generated near the player, however it was adjusted before U41 release.

Seriously wth is this.

I'm not making any statements on how often the devs may or may not play necromancer.

I am making a statement that anyone that does play necromancer should know that it's important to generate corpses near the target.

KlauthWarthog

Stalking Blastbones

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

I'm not making any statements on how often the devs may or may not play necromancer.

I am making a statement that anyone that does play necromancer should know that it's important to generate corpses near the target.

Not a whole lot of difference when you are parsing, which is how they "test" those things.

Kalle_Demos

Stalking Blastbones

Alaztor91 wrote: »

Scribing is releasing in a few weeks, and it seems that ZOS didn't even bother to adjust the Necromancer Class Signature Script so that it generates the Corpse at the target instead of generating it near the player.

The Sorcerer Class Signature Script had the same problem, and it was adjusted. What is even more hilarious is that Grave Lord's Sacrifice, the morph rework that ZOS released only 3 months ago ALSO had the same problem with the Corpse being generated near the player, however it was adjusted before U41 release.

Seriously wth is this.

This is unfortunate but hardly surprising at this point. I don't know how things work behind the scenes and can only speculate because communication is, yet again, absent but it seems that the Necromancer has been put on the back-burner. It's clear to see that it's not getting the same attention as the other classes. I didn't think this would be the case with Scribing too in assuming the new feature would be a priority but even in that focus the Necro is left behind. And a reminder: The Necromancer is not a base game Class. People payed to have access to it. And Scribing is a feature behind a paywall as well.

Kalle_Demos

Stalking Blastbones

Bringing this to attention: GLS is perhaps more bugged than we though. Video by @IncultaWolf

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/659152/grave-lords-sacrifice-does-not-function-properly-video-evidence

https://youtube.com/watch?v=32tvcqB-5FQ

dinokstrunz

Stalking Blastbones

Oh wow, just when you think this sad slop of a class couldn't sink any lower... Zenimax get your act together this class has become a laughing stock.

Sakiri

Grave Lord's Sacrifice

Kalle_Demos wrote: »

mariliaribas wrote: »

Not trying to call someone out or anything, but I would truly like to know what do the people that voted for Grave Lord Sacrifice like about the skill. I tried to use it in different scenarios, but ultimately the fact that it has to be casted in combat and that you can line of sight your own buff prevented me from using it seriously. But looking at the skill, even if those two major problems were solved, it would still be a clunky skill that would make an even more convoluted rotation of having to cast skull three times before even being able to cast boneyard and do actual damage with dots. It's such a weird way to begin a fight, you have to:

- summon skeleton
- use skull once to get into combat
- use grave lord Sacrifice for the buff
- use skull three times to generate a corpse
- finally use boneyard to apply the dot
- skull three times
- detonating syphon



That's like ten seconds into the fight before you can actually start to do damage. By the time you get to the end of applying all your dots, the first one is halfway through already. Nevermind bad damage in boss fights, necros are now completely useless in trash pulls and you can wipe the floor with them in pvp.

How did you guys that voted for GLS made such a skill work?

I too find it odd that no one that voted for GLS has opted to defend it or join the conversation. And as you point out, the skill has issues. A nerf among nerfs, Necro is left only with much worse options.

I like it on paper and feel if they fix the issues with it, it'll work just fine.

I didn't like constantly having to hit blastbones. The cd was super short, delaying it was awful and it reminded me of daedric prey, but with an even shorter window. Just annoyed me to use.

I'd kill for something that plays like old school affliction warlock from wow. Dots and drains.