How to Rework Necromancer DPS.

Tessitura

Opening

I am not here to give a full class rework like you might expect, I am not here to rinse and repeat the age old demands for sources of Major Buffs. I am here to explain how one would make Necromancer a better class and it is the mechanic of the class it's self. It's biggest problem for longest time has been it's class mechanic, the creating and consumption of corpses. This in it's self is not the problem, the problem is the way necromancer consumes it's class resource, the corpses. These static points on the ground that our consumers get fixed to. It's clunky, easily countered, and the build up is never truly worth the reward when dpsing and even healing. ZoS made a poor attempt at addressing this by first making the necromancer the corpse, and then by removing it's best dps skill for a buff you could accidentally LoS. (For which I shared some very heated words and suggested people play another game, I still stand by that.) ZoS blundered their attempt but the corpse is in fact the key to this. The fix is changing the way we use them and building a actual class interaction.

My suggestion is simple, change Skeletal Arcanist/Archer to a radiant corpse consumer which raises a max of three skeletons that attack your target and act as mobile corpses. I'll explain further below.

The Main Mechanic

Its 5th skill, should be a corpse consumer. You press the button and it consumes up to 3 corpses within' x meters. The consumed corpses became risen minions that attack your focused target and are not able to be targeted so as to avoid clutter. These minions act as corpses for all other corpse interactions. You can tether to them with your tether skills, you can attach the Boneyard to them so it moves, and there morphs should be elemental minions. The Magicka morph will infuse them with an aura of Fire, Lightning, and Ice. The Stamina morph Disease, Poison, and Bleeding. Each aura pulses as a aoe and can inflict the related status effect. To help keep track of the minions uptime, you can have Lich Crystals float around you, one for each minion, when one fades so does the crystal and you know its time to re-apply.

With this, your corpse consumption becomes less clunky as the button press is a radiant thing that no longer requires to to root yourself to one spot only to have the boss, mobs, or enemy players walk away from it so now it's useless. Plus it adds a very strong thematic core to the Necromancer that doesn't step on the toes of other pet classes. This is the core of the fix to me, everything else is secondary to this. However I have a suggestion for further interactions with this core mechanic.

Boneyard Interaction

Boneyard now being linked to these moving corpses means it can interact in a unique way, there are many potential interactions one could come up with but I have two suggestions for morphes to change the gameplay up and make it more satisfying.

Morph One: Sacrifice.
The first morph is simple, after casting Boneyard and attacking it to a minion, the button gets replaced with a new skill, Sacrifice. The ends the boneyard and causes it to detonate all minions within it's field of effect. They explode dealing the remainder of Boneyards damage all at once and applying the status effects of the minions within. (Burning, Concussion, Brittle, ect.)

Morph Two: Creeping Death.
This morph would make it so Boneyard applied Major Breach to all within it's area of effect, but also make it so the minions inside the field now apply a stacking slow each time they hit, after reaching a set number of stacks it stuns the target it applies Minor Vulnerability. (Debuffs and Status effects I think are very on theme.)

Closing

There are other potential suggestions that could benefit but these are the core things that would create a dps identity for Necromancer. The Dev's mishandling of my favorite class as put such a sour taste in my mouth I am on a hiatus from this game for a indeterminate amount of time. But I refused to leave without putting this out into the world first so it can probably be ignored. I am sure some of you will hate it, some will love, and many will have their own ideas. But this is what I think would be the best move for the class and it's corpse problem.

yadibroz

Tessitura wrote: »

Opening

I am not here to give a full class rework like you might expect, I am not here to rinse and repeat the age old demands for sources of Major Buffs. I am here to explain how one would make Necromancer a better class and it is the mechanic of the class it's self. It's biggest problem for longest time has been it's class mechanic, the creating and consumption of corpses. This in it's self is not the problem, the problem is the way necromancer consumes it's class resource, the corpses. These static points on the ground that our consumers get fixed to. It's clunky, easily countered, and the build up is never truly worth the reward when dpsing and even healing. ZoS made a poor attempt at addressing this by first making the necromancer the corpse, and then by removing it's best dps skill for a buff you could accidentally LoS. (For which I shared some very heated words and suggested people play another game, I still stand by that.) ZoS blundered their attempt but the corpse is in fact the key to this. The fix is changing the way we use them and building a actual class interaction.

My suggestion is simple, change Skeletal Arcanist/Archer to a radiant corpse consumer which raises a max of three skeletons that attack your target and act as mobile corpses. I'll explain further below.

The Main Mechanic

Its 5th skill, should be a corpse consumer. You press the button and it consumes up to 3 corpses within' x meters. The consumed corpses became risen minions that attack your focuses target and are not able to be targeted so as to avoid clutter. These minions act as corpses for all other corpse interactions. You can tether to them with your tether skills, you can attach the Boneyard to them so it moves, and there morphs she be elemental minions. The Magicka morph will infuse them with an aura of Fire, Lightning, and Ice. The Stamina morph Disease, Poison, and Bleeding. Each aura pulses as a aoe and can inflict the related status effect. To help keep track of the minions uptime, you can have Lich Crystals float around you, one for each minion, when one fades so does the crystal and you know its time to re-apply.

With this, your corpse consumption becomes less clunky as the button press is a radiant thing that no longer requires to to root yourself to one spot only to have the boss, mobs, or enemy players walk away from it so now it's useless. Plus it adds a very strong thematic core to the Necromancer that doesn't step on the toes of other pet classes. This is the core of the fix to me, everything else is secondary to this. However I have a suggestion for further interactions with this core mechanic.

Boneyard Interaction

Boneyard now being linked to these moving corpses means it can interact in a unique way, there are many potential interactions one could come up with but I have two suggestions for morphes to change the gameplay up and make it more satisfying.

Morph One: Sacrifice.
The first morph is simple, after casting Boneyard and attacking it to a minion, the button gets replaced with a new skill, Sacrifice. The ends the boneyard and causes it to detonate all minions within it's field of effect. They explode dealing the remainder of Boneyards damage all at once and applying the status effects of the minions within. (Burning, Concussion, Brittle, ect.)

Morph Two: Creeping Death.
This morph would make it so Boneyard applied Major Breach to all within it's area of effect, but also make it so the minions inside the field now apply a stacking slow each time they hit, after reaching a set number of stacks it stuns the target it applies Minor Vulnerability. (Debuffs and Status effects I think are very on theme.)

Closing

There are other potential suggestions that could benefit but these are the core things that would create a dps identity for Necromancer. The Dev's mishandling of my favorite class as put such a sour taste in my mouth I am on a hiatus from this game for a indeterminate amount of time. But I refused to leave without putting this out into the world first so it can probably be ignored. I am sure some of you will hate it, some will love, and many will have their own ideas. But this is what I think would be the best move for the class and it's corpse problem.

It simple forget necromancer everything exist because that is what they are trying to do and don't wanna give us a refund for a incomplete class, even me if I was a dev, I would listen to everyone to make sure I make a right choice and make everyone happy by following their feedback and make the class better and that is what I call support which they don't have which is very unfortunate where we should just give up especially this dlc is a disappointment and a failure for a 10 year old game.

GrimStyx

yadibroz wrote: »

Tessitura wrote: »

Opening

I am not here to give a full class rework like you might expect, I am not here to rinse and repeat the age old demands for sources of Major Buffs. I am here to explain how one would make Necromancer a better class and it is the mechanic of the class it's self. It's biggest problem for longest time has been it's class mechanic, the creating and consumption of corpses. This in it's self is not the problem, the problem is the way necromancer consumes it's class resource, the corpses. These static points on the ground that our consumers get fixed to. It's clunky, easily countered, and the build up is never truly worth the reward when dpsing and even healing. ZoS made a poor attempt at addressing this by first making the necromancer the corpse, and then by removing it's best dps skill for a buff you could accidentally LoS. (For which I shared some very heated words and suggested people play another game, I still stand by that.) ZoS blundered their attempt but the corpse is in fact the key to this. The fix is changing the way we use them and building a actual class interaction.

My suggestion is simple, change Skeletal Arcanist/Archer to a radiant corpse consumer which raises a max of three skeletons that attack your target and act as mobile corpses. I'll explain further below.

The Main Mechanic

Its 5th skill, should be a corpse consumer. You press the button and it consumes up to 3 corpses within' x meters. The consumed corpses became risen minions that attack your focuses target and are not able to be targeted so as to avoid clutter. These minions act as corpses for all other corpse interactions. You can tether to them with your tether skills, you can attach the Boneyard to them so it moves, and there morphs she be elemental minions. The Magicka morph will infuse them with an aura of Fire, Lightning, and Ice. The Stamina morph Disease, Poison, and Bleeding. Each aura pulses as a aoe and can inflict the related status effect. To help keep track of the minions uptime, you can have Lich Crystals float around you, one for each minion, when one fades so does the crystal and you know its time to re-apply.

With this, your corpse consumption becomes less clunky as the button press is a radiant thing that no longer requires to to root yourself to one spot only to have the boss, mobs, or enemy players walk away from it so now it's useless. Plus it adds a very strong thematic core to the Necromancer that doesn't step on the toes of other pet classes. This is the core of the fix to me, everything else is secondary to this. However I have a suggestion for further interactions with this core mechanic.

Boneyard Interaction

Boneyard now being linked to these moving corpses means it can interact in a unique way, there are many potential interactions one could come up with but I have two suggestions for morphes to change the gameplay up and make it more satisfying.

Morph One: Sacrifice.
The first morph is simple, after casting Boneyard and attacking it to a minion, the button gets replaced with a new skill, Sacrifice. The ends the boneyard and causes it to detonate all minions within it's field of effect. They explode dealing the remainder of Boneyards damage all at once and applying the status effects of the minions within. (Burning, Concussion, Brittle, ect.)

Morph Two: Creeping Death.
This morph would make it so Boneyard applied Major Breach to all within it's area of effect, but also make it so the minions inside the field now apply a stacking slow each time they hit, after reaching a set number of stacks it stuns the target it applies Minor Vulnerability. (Debuffs and Status effects I think are very on theme.)

Closing

There are other potential suggestions that could benefit but these are the core things that would create a dps identity for Necromancer. The Dev's mishandling of my favorite class as put such a sour taste in my mouth I am on a hiatus from this game for a indeterminate amount of time. But I refused to leave without putting this out into the world first so it can probably be ignored. I am sure some of you will hate it, some will love, and many will have their own ideas. But this is what I think would be the best move for the class and it's corpse problem.

It simple forget necromancer everything exist because that is what they are trying to do and don't wanna give us a refund for a incomplete class, even me if I was a dev, I would listen to everyone to make sure I make a right choice and make everyone happy by following their feedback and make the class better and that is what I call support which they don't have which is very unfortunate where we should just give up especially this dlc is a disappointment and a failure for a 10 year old game.

Of course, it’s a shame in that game like this has a poorly developed class just laying as a dead weight, but it seems like they said to do something with it by the end of the year, since they said that they would be working on refining the old content, but this is not certain. But if hypothetically this happens, then it’s better to make it so that they don’t have to recycle it anymore

yadibroz

GrimStyx wrote: »

yadibroz wrote: »

Tessitura wrote: »

Opening

I am not here to give a full class rework like you might expect, I am not here to rinse and repeat the age old demands for sources of Major Buffs. I am here to explain how one would make Necromancer a better class and it is the mechanic of the class it's self. It's biggest problem for longest time has been it's class mechanic, the creating and consumption of corpses. This in it's self is not the problem, the problem is the way necromancer consumes it's class resource, the corpses. These static points on the ground that our consumers get fixed to. It's clunky, easily countered, and the build up is never truly worth the reward when dpsing and even healing. ZoS made a poor attempt at addressing this by first making the necromancer the corpse, and then by removing it's best dps skill for a buff you could accidentally LoS. (For which I shared some very heated words and suggested people play another game, I still stand by that.) ZoS blundered their attempt but the corpse is in fact the key to this. The fix is changing the way we use them and building a actual class interaction.

My suggestion is simple, change Skeletal Arcanist/Archer to a radiant corpse consumer which raises a max of three skeletons that attack your target and act as mobile corpses. I'll explain further below.

The Main Mechanic

Its 5th skill, should be a corpse consumer. You press the button and it consumes up to 3 corpses within' x meters. The consumed corpses became risen minions that attack your focuses target and are not able to be targeted so as to avoid clutter. These minions act as corpses for all other corpse interactions. You can tether to them with your tether skills, you can attach the Boneyard to them so it moves, and there morphs she be elemental minions. The Magicka morph will infuse them with an aura of Fire, Lightning, and Ice. The Stamina morph Disease, Poison, and Bleeding. Each aura pulses as a aoe and can inflict the related status effect. To help keep track of the minions uptime, you can have Lich Crystals float around you, one for each minion, when one fades so does the crystal and you know its time to re-apply.

With this, your corpse consumption becomes less clunky as the button press is a radiant thing that no longer requires to to root yourself to one spot only to have the boss, mobs, or enemy players walk away from it so now it's useless. Plus it adds a very strong thematic core to the Necromancer that doesn't step on the toes of other pet classes. This is the core of the fix to me, everything else is secondary to this. However I have a suggestion for further interactions with this core mechanic.

Boneyard Interaction

Boneyard now being linked to these moving corpses means it can interact in a unique way, there are many potential interactions one could come up with but I have two suggestions for morphes to change the gameplay up and make it more satisfying.

Morph One: Sacrifice.
The first morph is simple, after casting Boneyard and attacking it to a minion, the button gets replaced with a new skill, Sacrifice. The ends the boneyard and causes it to detonate all minions within it's field of effect. They explode dealing the remainder of Boneyards damage all at once and applying the status effects of the minions within. (Burning, Concussion, Brittle, ect.)

Morph Two: Creeping Death.
This morph would make it so Boneyard applied Major Breach to all within it's area of effect, but also make it so the minions inside the field now apply a stacking slow each time they hit, after reaching a set number of stacks it stuns the target it applies Minor Vulnerability. (Debuffs and Status effects I think are very on theme.)

Closing

There are other potential suggestions that could benefit but these are the core things that would create a dps identity for Necromancer. The Dev's mishandling of my favorite class as put such a sour taste in my mouth I am on a hiatus from this game for a indeterminate amount of time. But I refused to leave without putting this out into the world first so it can probably be ignored. I am sure some of you will hate it, some will love, and many will have their own ideas. But this is what I think would be the best move for the class and it's corpse problem.

It simple forget necromancer everything exist because that is what they are trying to do and don't wanna give us a refund for a incomplete class, even me if I was a dev, I would listen to everyone to make sure I make a right choice and make everyone happy by following their feedback and make the class better and that is what I call support which they don't have which is very unfortunate where we should just give up especially this dlc is a disappointment and a failure for a 10 year old game.

Of course, it’s a shame in that game like this has a poorly developed class just laying as a dead weight, but it seems like they said to do something with it by the end of the year, since they said that they would be working on refining the old content, but this is not certain. But if hypothetically this happens, then it’s better to make it so that they don’t have to recycle it anymore

What they been doing on necromancer recently been disappointed and losing more hope for success so what they can do better without listen to our feedbacks and same with the q4 for pvp update, it will be nothing with no new map and more nerf than buff for sure so more disappointed to come.

BXR_Lonestar

IMO, this is what they need to do to fix the necro:

1. Change the corpse mechanic all together. Instead of consuming the corpse to strengthen abilities, consumption of a corpse should give residual spell/weapon damage similar to Thrassian Stranglers, for a duration.

2. Rework summoning skills to be permanent summoned abilities similar to the Sorc. Make blastbones some kind of golum or flesh atronarch that is really tanky but doesn't do much in the way of damage (basically a meatshield).

3. Change one of the skill lines to be purely curse oriented.

master_vanargand

Stamina Necromancer is the attracting attention PvE DPS now.
Scribing's Traveling Knife, which increases the group's physical damage by 8%.
Traveling Knife is best use by Stamina Necromancer.

Afterip

Necromancer needs rework of offensive passive skills. They are very weak right now.

OsUfi

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

IMO, this is what they need to do to fix the necro:

1. Change the corpse mechanic all together. Instead of consuming the corpse to strengthen abilities, consumption of a corpse should give residual spell/weapon damage similar to Thrassian Stranglers, for a duration.

Corpse mechanic is fine, gives the class some flavour. Just buffing like you suggest would make the class play the same as all the others, in a game where class identity has been an issue for years.

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

2. Rework summoning skills to be permanent summoned abilities similar to the Sorc. Make blastbones some kind of golum or flesh atronarch that is really tanky but doesn't do much in the way of damage (basically a meatshield).

For perm summons, the damage/healing would have to be reduced, further nerfing necro. As for Blastbones, God no, leave that skill alone. It's our main and only source of DPS half the time.

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

3. Change one of the skill lines to be purely curse oriented.

To what end? What would you remove? The healing, tanking, or DPS line? That also sounds like a nerf to one playstyle to me.

BasP

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

2. Rework summoning skills to be permanent summoned abilities similar to the Sorc. Make blastbones some kind of golum or flesh atronarch that is really tanky but doesn't do much in the way of damage (basically a meatshield).

So you'd want to potentially spend 6 skill slots to have a permanent Blastbones/meatshield, Skeletal Mage and Spirit Mender following you around? And perhaps both Ultimates as well if the Colossus would be turned into a permanent pet similar to the Warden's bear? That seems pretty limiting from a build perspective. (Personally, I'm glad that a Necromancer's summons aren't permanent because I dislike the fact that those have to be double barred in ESO.)

I do like the idea of adding curses to the class, especially considering ZOS wanted the Necromancer to be a debuff class. But I'd prefer it if some of the less commonly used morphs of existing skills would serve that purpose, however.

Yamenstein

Class Fantasy:
I'm a master of the undead. Summoning bodies for one purpose and disposing of them when they have done their job. The more dead that surround me the stronger i become.

Overall skill line split is perfectly fine.
Some key skills within each line needs to be re-worked to be of any use - there are some skills that I do not use all that often, if at all. Either they are worthless because a better skill exists outside of the class or they just aren't that impactful in the first place to use or include in my kit. The latter need to be buffed and tuned to be of any use.

I think some of the skills can utilise more corpses to buff or change how they function. Some of the skills already do this. Maybe there is just the right number for this though - as just like with an Arcanist the class has 4 resources to manage (stamina, health, magicka and corpses). With that said though, SOME of the buffs to the class can be behind the expected use of a corpse to avoid it becoming too OP.

Trying to avoid just saying "buff the damage output" for each skill.

Grave Lord:
Colossus - Fine, and fun
Flame skull - fine, though i find it to be very slow and breaks up the flow of the class. I'm not sure what it is. It some times feels like there is a cast time to it.
Blastbones (both morphs) is fine - just fix any pathing issues so it is reliable. With the new GLS morph make it so you can trigger outside of combat.
Boneyard - fine, harmony nerfs suck but i believe it is one of, if not the only, synergy you can self execute
Skeletal mage - arcanist morph needs a damage buff
siphon - fine

Bone Tyrant:
Goliath - fine, i don't personally use the pummeling morph but maybe someone else does for some bash build
scythe - both morphs fine
bone armour - both morphs fine
bitter harvest - i personally use necrotic potency - this skill is probably the most funnest. makes you feel as though the more dead bodies around you the stronger you are
bone totem - both morphs fine, not a fan of the delay for the stun but overall decent
grave grasp - just meh. even if i wanted to use it i wouldn't have a slot for it

Living Death:
Reanimate - its okay. I only use it for the fun or if I know that a mechanic is definitely going to wipe team members
Life amid Death - just completely rework this skill into something new. No reason to slot.
Spirit mender - both morphs can do with healing buff. Intensive mender with a major one and Spirit Guardian with a minor one as it has the damage mitigation (this morph one can argue is perfectly fine as well).
Expunge - i have so many other skills i need to slot this will hardly ever be used. I'm curious how often people use this. Change it up or buff it to make a player actually toss up between the use of this skill or not.
Blood Sacrifice - meh, of no use. So many heals in this game why do I have to slot this?
Braided Tether - I don't use but it's a free skill and has some good passives against it. Mechanically it is a bit boring just adding another aoe heal around you.

This is not taking into account the passives - which are for the most part fine. But can be boosted i feel. Taking into consideration the corpse mechanic of the class - per corpse that is consumed extra buffs can be provided, or per corpse on the ground (that is applicable to you) etc.

I'm happy for this class to be difficult to master. It already is because of the short buff timers! <- Which might be something that can be looked into. But if that doesn't change then the potential output should be the same.

it is very poor form to create a class that takes more effort to get not even close to the same damage output.
The only place this class excels is as an off tank and as a support.

The caveat to all of this - zos game design and philosophy is to cater to the casual gamer - which for the most part do not care at all about this class being better other than a simple "yeah yeah buff because why not".

CameraBeardThePirate

OsUfi wrote: »

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

IMO, this is what they need to do to fix the necro:

1. Change the corpse mechanic all together. Instead of consuming the corpse to strengthen abilities, consumption of a corpse should give residual spell/weapon damage similar to Thrassian Stranglers, for a duration.

Corpse mechanic is fine, gives the class some flavour. Just buffing like you suggest would make the class play the same as all the others, in a game where class identity has been an issue for years.

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

2. Rework summoning skills to be permanent summoned abilities similar to the Sorc. Make blastbones some kind of golum or flesh atronarch that is really tanky but doesn't do much in the way of damage (basically a meatshield).

For perm summons, the damage/healing would have to be reduced, further nerfing necro. As for Blastbones, God no, leave that skill alone. It's our main and only source of DPS half the time.

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

3. Change one of the skill lines to be purely curse oriented.

To what end? What would you remove? The healing, tanking, or DPS line? That also sounds like a nerf to one playstyle to me.

The corpse mechanic is definitely not fine. It's still a buggy mess, even after the "fix" in this latest patch. It only serves to complicate the class with no real reward.

I agree about permanent pets. Necro shouldn't have permanent pets. That's always been the way they've functioned in Elder Scrolls, and permanent pets are also just really bad in this game.

Lazarus_Rising

I was thinking about sticky corpses like with nobility in decay just on enemies.

Basically Blastbones or lets say the Flaming Skull when cast, attach them self to the target. Then you can cast your tethers/boneyard on them. Thats how you ensure consistent damage and pressure.

There also needs to be a solution for the corpses in general. They disappear to fast to make use out of them when using the animate blastbones ultimate for example. Maybe they should get rid of the corpses in general and just make them soul orbs to lighten the load of models.

Yamenstein

increase teh damage of its burst skill and make it reliable to start with.

I love seeing those high burst crystal frags from sorcs. who designed the necro class? its half baked zos - work on it