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

Kalle_Demos

Stalking Blastbones

StarOfElyon wrote: »

OsUfi wrote: »

C_Inside wrote: »

While the syphon buff is nice and an overall buff to the class' damage was needed, it just further shows that the devs are not listening to the community. Who exactly was complaining about syphon's damage?

IMHO this is the best kind of buffs we can get. Incremental buffs to each skill. If they over correct, we get a nerf later on. If they overhaul skills, we end up with GLS. If they buff lots of things at once, and over buff us, then it's a pain tuning things back down.

Give me incremental little buffs like this each month, and I'll be very happy tyvm.

It's crazy because they don't take that approach with every other class.

This. I know that it's the usual mood to dread patch notes but as I stated in a previous post, good work is being done. There doesn't need to be a special approach to fixing the Necromancer.

Urvoth

Stalking Blastbones

OsUfi wrote: »

C_Inside wrote: »

While the syphon buff is nice and an overall buff to the class' damage was needed, it just further shows that the devs are not listening to the community. Who exactly was complaining about syphon's damage?

IMHO this is the best kind of buffs we can get. Incremental buffs to each skill. If they over correct, we get a nerf later on. If they overhaul skills, we end up with GLS. If they buff lots of things at once, and over buff us, then it's a pain tuning things back down.

Give me incremental little buffs like this each month, and I'll be very happy tyvm.

The problem with that is they don't do monthly or even bi-monthly patches. They refuse to make any changes outside of the quarterly releases, so it will take literal years to get necro's kit into a better place.

CameraBeardThePirate

Stalking Blastbones

Urvoth wrote: »

OsUfi wrote: »

C_Inside wrote: »

While the syphon buff is nice and an overall buff to the class' damage was needed, it just further shows that the devs are not listening to the community. Who exactly was complaining about syphon's damage?

IMHO this is the best kind of buffs we can get. Incremental buffs to each skill. If they over correct, we get a nerf later on. If they overhaul skills, we end up with GLS. If they buff lots of things at once, and over buff us, then it's a pain tuning things back down.

Give me incremental little buffs like this each month, and I'll be very happy tyvm.

The problem with that is they don't do monthly or even bi-monthly patches. They refuse to make any changes outside of the quarterly releases, so it will take literal years to get necro's kit into a better place.

God this x100000.

This game's PvP scene suffers SO MUCH from how infrequent the balance changes come. Metas get so stale, classes continue overperforming for months (or even years), and balance changes are drip fed.

StarOfElyon

Stalking Blastbones

This is us right now 🤡🤡🤡

Kalle_Demos

Stalking Blastbones

The Necromancer's glaring problems remain unaddressed in week 2 of PTS. The purchasable Class that is. Enemy NPC Necros got some attention at least. Hilarious...

Increased the Health and Power of the following enemies:

Dariel Lemonds
Baron Rize
Crystal Atronachs
Necromancers
Xoryn
Defense Prisms

A persistent Corpse Generation bug has seemingly been fixed which is nice.

Fixed an issue where corpse-consuming visual effects would be present on some bodies you should not be able to utilize, such as those left by another fight you did not participate in.

Kalle_Demos

Stalking Blastbones

C_Inside wrote: »

While the syphon buff is nice and an overall buff to the class' damage was needed, it just further shows that the devs are not listening to the community. Who exactly was complaining about syphon's damage? Most of the discourse regarding why necro is bad this past month revolved around:

1. How much GLS sucks.
2. How much necro's overall damage has fallen behind. The general consensus on this point however was that the reason was because of how many trash skills like Skeleton Mage, Ruinous Scythe, and Grave Grasp are in its kit. I can't recall a lack of damage on syphon ever being mentioned.
3. How buggy corpses are. There was a thread on the Bugs section that explained in detail what the issue is, how to reproduce it, and even provided video proof: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/655110/corpses-are-still-bugged-after-the-incremental-patch#latest. Naturally it went completely ignored.

Obligatory @ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_GinaBruno tag. Because we're still eagerly waiting for the communication you promised all the way back in U35.

While the corpse mechanic has seemingly been addressed...ALL OF THIS!!! The Necro has been in a poor state for a while and it just boggles the mind why the choice was made to make the Class objectively worse. The balance team cannot be satisfied with the Necro in comparison to the Arcanist or Dragon Knight. The math doesn't math. Some posters have suggested that there is an end goal and that all of this will make sense but in the years of Necro decay there has been zero communication on what those goals may be, if they even exist.

StarOfElyon

Stalking Blastbones

There's not going to be any communication. We need to take a hint.

C_Inside

Stalking Blastbones

StarOfElyon wrote: »

There's not going to be any communication. We need to take a hint.

Then we'll just keep bumping this thread and not let it die. Maybe once we reach 1000 votes @ZOS_Kevin and @ZOS_GinaBruno will finally start communicating with us.

Kalle_Demos

Stalking Blastbones

C_Inside wrote: »

StarOfElyon wrote: »

There's not going to be any communication. We need to take a hint.

Then we'll just keep bumping this thread and not let it die. Maybe once we reach 1000 votes @ZOS_Kevin and @ZOS_GinaBruno will finally start communicating with us.

There are a number of reason covered in this thread as to why they can't ignore us or this problem forever. Sadly however, this debacle is yet another example of the failure to rise to their own standards and accomplish their own goals.

Yamenstein

Stalking Blastbones

So any updates from ZoS?

Rasande_Robin

Stalking Blastbones

Would love to hear something in regard to the future of GLS.

Personally I'd like a revert back to SB.

danko355

Stalking Blastbones

I think at some point ZOS will listen to the feedback and do what they always do to a Necro - they will convert stamina morph to be a self buff as well (for consistency reasons obviously!). A grave class should be in the grave, what else to say

Alaztor91

Stalking Blastbones

The sad part is that ZOS would rather leave Necro in the gutter instead of admitting their failure regarding current GLS design. The name certainly fits the skill in this case, with ZOS being the actual Grave Lord and Necromancers being the sacrifice.

Kalle_Demos

Stalking Blastbones

Yamenstein wrote: »

So any updates from ZoS?

Unfortunately no. In all this time we have received zero meaningful communication on the state of the Necromancer.

Vulkunne

Stalking Blastbones

IncultaWolf wrote: »

From what I've read and seen, everyone who does serious pve parses that hit 100k+ have just swapped to the stamina morph of blastbones because it's actually easier of a rotation than grave lord's sacrifice, so the intended goal of reworking this ability failed.

It feels very clunky how you can't cast it out of combat anymore, and the 2.5 second cast time for grave lord's sacrifice feels really bad before you can even start doing damage or spamming skulls to cast a range tether or buffed graveyard.

I've been playing this game off and on since beta and this is honestly the worst change I've ever seen on any class.

https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/1bcmtyo/rip_my_fave_necro_skill/

Thank you for posting this. Exactly ^

I say this respectfully, that it seems to me they don't understand the reason for people using the skill as it was. If it were me and this came up in a meeting I would lobby to change some passives around first. Of course people were not going to agree with this change because you cannot fix something people like by taking it away.

alexj4596b14_ESO

Stalking Blastbones

@ZOS_Kevin and @ZOS_GinaBruno

mr1sho

Stalking Blastbones

Gls has been completely taken off my my skill bar if felt clunky and the delay in regular content was very noticable I honestly don't understand the this change to necro at all

Naftal

Grave Lord's Sacrifice

There's no need for stalking blastbones as the stamina morph does the same.

But they should allow using the other skill outside of combat AND buff it a little bit.

OtarTheMad

Stalking Blastbones

Urvoth wrote: »

OsUfi wrote: »

C_Inside wrote: »

While the syphon buff is nice and an overall buff to the class' damage was needed, it just further shows that the devs are not listening to the community. Who exactly was complaining about syphon's damage?

IMHO this is the best kind of buffs we can get. Incremental buffs to each skill. If they over correct, we get a nerf later on. If they overhaul skills, we end up with GLS. If they buff lots of things at once, and over buff us, then it's a pain tuning things back down.

Give me incremental little buffs like this each month, and I'll be very happy tyvm.

The problem with that is they don't do monthly or even bi-monthly patches. They refuse to make any changes outside of the quarterly releases, so it will take literal years to get necro's kit into a better place.

I wish I could agree with this more than once. On top of that, due to some over correction after the U35 chaos, it seems that ZOS might have deemed just one DLC a year, Q1 DLC it seems, that will have major combat changes.

So, either I start to make multiple mains like an Arcanist and a DK in case Arc gets destroyed too or I just tap out and play another game entirely.

Kalle_Demos

Stalking Blastbones

Naftal wrote: »

There's no need for stalking blastbones as the stamina morph does the same.

But they should allow using the other skill outside of combat AND buff it a little bit.

The stamina morph does not 'do the same'. It's debuff is completely useless in PVE and it's a complete downgrade in PVP for several reasons. Even stam builds used Stalking because it was that much of a better option. The Necro wasn't doing great before but now its in an even worse position overall.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=NfS-bdn4gTU

^^^

With this being said, parse cros are nonexistent in a proper raid composition, and necromancers as a whole are to be resorted to the buff dps position.

^^^

And GLS' problems go beyond the anti-fun 'in-combat' requirement and it's weakness. The skill was potentially released in a broken state and there have still been no fixes.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/653282/grave-lords-sacrifice-still-doesnt-buff-all-class-abilities-as-stated

Naftal

Grave Lord's Sacrifice

Kalle_Demos wrote: »

Naftal wrote: »

There's no need for stalking blastbones as the stamina morph does the same.

But they should allow using the other skill outside of combat AND buff it a little bit.

The stamina morph does not 'do the same'. It's debuff is completely useless in PVE and it's a complete downgrade in PVP for several reasons. Even stam builds used Stalking because it was that much of a better option. The Necro wasn't doing great before but now its in an even worse position overall.

The debuff doesn't do anything in pve but they buffed it to always proc disease and also buffed the disease proc. It just does more aoe damage now than before. It also should do more damage than stalking blastbones did in pve since you really didn't ever get the ranged bonus from it.

Imo Blighted Blastbones in this patch is better than Stalking Blastbones in last patch, in both pve and pvp.

Rasande_Robin

Stalking Blastbones

Naftal wrote: »

Kalle_Demos wrote: »

Naftal wrote: »

There's no need for stalking blastbones as the stamina morph does the same.

But they should allow using the other skill outside of combat AND buff it a little bit.

The stamina morph does not 'do the same'. It's debuff is completely useless in PVE and it's a complete downgrade in PVP for several reasons. Even stam builds used Stalking because it was that much of a better option. The Necro wasn't doing great before but now its in an even worse position overall.

The debuff doesn't do anything in pve but they buffed it to always proc disease and also buffed the disease proc. It just does more aoe damage now than before. It also should do more damage than stalking blastbones did in pve since you really didn't ever get the ranged bonus from it.

Imo Blighted Blastbones in this patch is better than Stalking Blastbones in last patch, in both pve and pvp.

Stamina users have no effective way to make use of their magicka pool now.

SB was not scaleing from distance but from "time" the summoning took 2 seconds basically giving it a 20% damage boost compared to BB.

My build with the Bahsei set is ruined now because I could control my extremely low magicka with reusable parts and SB as a "stamina" necro.

Kalle_Demos

Stalking Blastbones

Naftal wrote: »

Kalle_Demos wrote: »

Naftal wrote: »

There's no need for stalking blastbones as the stamina morph does the same.

But they should allow using the other skill outside of combat AND buff it a little bit.

The stamina morph does not 'do the same'. It's debuff is completely useless in PVE and it's a complete downgrade in PVP for several reasons. Even stam builds used Stalking because it was that much of a better option. The Necro wasn't doing great before but now its in an even worse position overall.

The debuff doesn't do anything in pve but they buffed it to always proc disease and also buffed the disease proc. It just does more aoe damage now than before. It also should do more damage than stalking blastbones did in pve since you really didn't ever get the ranged bonus from it.

Imo Blighted Blastbones in this patch is better than Stalking Blastbones in last patch, in both pve and pvp.

As Rasande_Robin points out, even the now buffed Blighted is an inferior choice compared to Stalking for stam builds. And mag builds are no better off stuck with a skill that hits for less and less often as they are now more prone to resource stalls. This debacle has nerfed Necro in both arenas of play, the last thing the class needed. Blighted may be working out for you and your opinions are valid but thus far they are in contrast to the evidence and math we have available.

Urvoth

Stalking Blastbones

Naftal wrote: »

Kalle_Demos wrote: »

Naftal wrote: »

There's no need for stalking blastbones as the stamina morph does the same.

But they should allow using the other skill outside of combat AND buff it a little bit.

The stamina morph does not 'do the same'. It's debuff is completely useless in PVE and it's a complete downgrade in PVP for several reasons. Even stam builds used Stalking because it was that much of a better option. The Necro wasn't doing great before but now its in an even worse position overall.

The debuff doesn't do anything in pve but they buffed it to always proc disease and also buffed the disease proc. It just does more aoe damage now than before. It also should do more damage than stalking blastbones did in pve since you really didn't ever get the ranged bonus from it.

Imo Blighted Blastbones in this patch is better than Stalking Blastbones in last patch, in both pve and pvp.

It's not though, the damage is significantly worse, at least in PvP.

C_Inside

Stalking Blastbones

Urvoth wrote: »

Naftal wrote: »

Kalle_Demos wrote: »

Naftal wrote: »

There's no need for stalking blastbones as the stamina morph does the same.

But they should allow using the other skill outside of combat AND buff it a little bit.

The stamina morph does not 'do the same'. It's debuff is completely useless in PVE and it's a complete downgrade in PVP for several reasons. Even stam builds used Stalking because it was that much of a better option. The Necro wasn't doing great before but now its in an even worse position overall.

The debuff doesn't do anything in pve but they buffed it to always proc disease and also buffed the disease proc. It just does more aoe damage now than before. It also should do more damage than stalking blastbones did in pve since you really didn't ever get the ranged bonus from it.

Imo Blighted Blastbones in this patch is better than Stalking Blastbones in last patch, in both pve and pvp.

It's not though, the damage is significantly worse, at least in PvP.

PvP isn't the only thing that's getting special treatment. The damage is significantly worse in PvE as well. Ignoring the guaranteed 10% bonus you got from the modifier, Stalking's damage could be further increased from Engulfing Flames + Encratis. That's another 11%. Furthermore, Stalking could trigger Burning which synergized with Rapid Rot. Blighted's Diseased does not. Speaking of Diseased, the guaranteed proc isn't as much of a buff as you may think because the meta right now is either running dual charged daggers or nirnhoned + charged. With a skill giving a guaranteed proc it means you're not getting any benefit from the charged trait. In other words you're running a useless trait for the GCD where you're casting Blighted BB. This is doubled if you run dual charged.

Now I'll give you this, the Morag Tong set does boost Blighted's damage by 10%, including the diseased proc, but how often do you see that set in group content versus Engulfing + Encratis? I personally can't recall ever seeing it in the over probably thousands of hours I've done trials in. Even when doing Hard Modes no one ever uses Morag Tong whereas Engulfing + Encratis is pretty much a staple.

Kalle_Demos

Stalking Blastbones

Still nothing, no fixes, updates or communication from his week's PTS. I cannot fathom how professionals can find this situation acceptable.

Kalle_Demos

Stalking Blastbones

C_Inside wrote: »

Urvoth wrote: »

Naftal wrote: »

Kalle_Demos wrote: »

Naftal wrote: »

There's no need for stalking blastbones as the stamina morph does the same.

But they should allow using the other skill outside of combat AND buff it a little bit.

The stamina morph does not 'do the same'. It's debuff is completely useless in PVE and it's a complete downgrade in PVP for several reasons. Even stam builds used Stalking because it was that much of a better option. The Necro wasn't doing great before but now its in an even worse position overall.

The debuff doesn't do anything in pve but they buffed it to always proc disease and also buffed the disease proc. It just does more aoe damage now than before. It also should do more damage than stalking blastbones did in pve since you really didn't ever get the ranged bonus from it.

Imo Blighted Blastbones in this patch is better than Stalking Blastbones in last patch, in both pve and pvp.

It's not though, the damage is significantly worse, at least in PvP.

PvP isn't the only thing that's getting special treatment. The damage is significantly worse in PvE as well. Ignoring the guaranteed 10% bonus you got from the modifier, Stalking's damage could be further increased from Engulfing Flames + Encratis. That's another 11%. Furthermore, Stalking could trigger Burning which synergized with Rapid Rot. Blighted's Diseased does not. Speaking of Diseased, the guaranteed proc isn't as much of a buff as you may think because the meta right now is either running dual charged daggers or nirnhoned + charged. With a skill giving a guaranteed proc it means you're not getting any benefit from the charged trait. In other words you're running a useless trait for the GCD where you're casting Blighted BB. This is doubled if you run dual charged.

Now I'll give you this, the Morag Tong set does boost Blighted's damage by 10%, including the diseased proc, but how often do you see that set in group content versus Engulfing + Encratis? I personally can't recall ever seeing it in the over probably thousands of hours I've done trials in. Even when doing Hard Modes no one ever uses Morag Tong whereas Engulfing + Encratis is pretty much a staple.

All of this. Blast Bones was one of those cases where one morph was simply better than the other in all situations. The best damage ability the Necro had. Deleting it completely and leaving the struggling class with inferior options all around doesn't make any sense. Mathematical sense. Maybe that's why there has been no communication. There is no logical defense of this change. No logical reason behind it in the first place.

OtarTheMad

Stalking Blastbones

To me, and maybe this is just me, but changing Necro into a good and fun class was pretty simple, even if you didn’t want to do a huge overhaul… just tweaks to abilities. Just my opinion:

1. Skulls spammable: make faster

2. Skeletal Mage: After dying at full duration, throws energy at targeted enemy (bar icon lights up). Does a DoT. Applies minor mangle

3. Boneyard- increase damage of self synergy

4. Siphon tether- still needs a corpse to activate but stays activate after corpse vanishes if before it expires. While attached to corpse does DoT AoE damage to all in area of body as well.

5. Animated Blastbones: i say give this a synergy which is also a self synergy that does flame damage. Also applies heal absorption to all hit

LunaFlora

Grave Lord's Sacrifice

Just to add why i like Grave Lord's Sacrifice:

first i believe Blighted should have been changed instead of Stalking.
As it is clear Stalking was the better version of the two morphs.

second the tooltip:


While in combat, summon a skeleton from the ground after 2.5 seconds. The skeleton leaps to you, sacrificing the fallen soul within and mastering your necromantic energies for 20 seconds, increasing your damage done with class abilities and damage over time effects by 15%. While active, your third cast of Flame Skull deals its damage in an area and creates a corpse near the enemy. Creates a corpse on death.

third:
i love that it gives a 20 second buff to damage over time and class damage.
i do not usually use Flame Skull, but the area damage is useful as well.

my main necro has a damage over time and area of effect build so it helps me.
and blastbones was way too frustrating to use especially because it doesn't damage enemies until 2.5 seconds.

So Gravelord's Sacrifice has made me love playing with my necromancer more.

Alaztor91

Stalking Blastbones

LunaFlora wrote: »

Just to add why i like Grave Lord's Sacrifice:

first i believe Blighted should have been changed instead of Stalking.
As it is clear Stalking was the better version of the two morphs.

second the tooltip:


While in combat, summon a skeleton from the ground after 2.5 seconds. The skeleton leaps to you, sacrificing the fallen soul within and mastering your necromantic energies for 20 seconds, increasing your damage done with class abilities and damage over time effects by 15%. While active, your third cast of Flame Skull deals its damage in an area and creates a corpse near the enemy. Creates a corpse on death.

third:
i love that it gives a 20 second buff to damage over time and class damage.
i do not usually use Flame Skull, but the area damage is useful as well.

my main necro has a damage over time and area of effect build so it helps me.
and blastbones was way too frustrating to use especially because it doesn't damage enemies until 2.5 seconds.

So Gravelord's Sacrifice has made me love playing with my necromancer more.

Other than casting GLS every 20s instead of casting Blighted/Stalking BB every 3s, is there any other reason why you now enjoy Necro more?

I understand the argument of old BB being frustrating to use because of the ''every 3s'' cast requirement and the constant barswap associated with it, but I don't think that many people have an issue with GLS being a 20s buff. It is mostly the other problems that were ''inherited'' from BB that people have an issue with, stuff like the Skeleton being vulnerable to CC/LoS or the 2.5s effect delay due to it basically using the same summon animation but with a different target or the in-combat requirement.

Then we have the problem with Corpse generation that ZOS tried to address with basically forcing you to use Flame Skull as a spammable. Pretty much anyone that plays Necro knows that you need more than 1 Corpse every 20s to have an efficient use of your Corpse consuming skills, and the only way to generate those from range is with Blighted BB or the GLS Flame Skull proc. The difference is that Blighted BB allows you to use any spammable you want and if you are actually using GLS and spamming Flame Skull to generate more Corpses then that makes the rotation even more convoluted than the old ''cast BB every 3s''.