GLS still needs a lot of work

Urvoth

Grave Lord’s Sacrifice still feels like a terrible replacement for Stalking Blastbones and needs quite a few changes to become more competitive, especially in PvP.

The delayed buff feels awful to use, and is inconsistent with every single other buff in the game. It needs the delay removed and to be instant like every other buff. You can still lose your own buff due to every issue normal blastbones has.

A 15% damage to dots and class skills, plus a skulls explosion is nowhere near enough to compensate for losing Stalking. Stalking was consistently 40-50% of most necro’s damage in PvP and Blighted is significantly less, like 30%+ less. The rest of the necro damage kit is nowhere near good enough for a 15% damage buff to make them compensate. Siphon is probably the best skill but requires an entire 5p set to make it relevant. At the least, making yourself a corpse like the original pts GLS would’ve allowed for Siphon to be used without requiring Nobility.

Skulls also feel incredibly clunky and mag skulls really need the “on every 3rd necro ability” feature of stam skulls. Maybe give stam skulls execute scaling to compensate if mag skulls gets this. Making both skulls undodgeable would also help a lot.

We also should not be forced to swap to a stam skill just to maintain a semblance of damage. That completely goes against the “play how you want” mantra. Stalking was THE magcro skill for years and losing it completely destroyed our class identity with nothing to compensate. Imagine the outcry if Merciless Resolve was deleted all of a sudden to add a new “playstyle” for NB that no one even asked for.

The best way for the damage gap to be solved without too much redesign of the rest of the kit would be to make GLS apply a short duration dot to your light attacks, similar to what WW does. This would build more innate damage into the kit without causing additional bar space issues or causing balance issues in PvE where better generic dots are viable.

necro_the_crafter

Funny that this change was made to improve necros build diversity by making it not relying on blastbones as much and in the end missed its mark completly by forcing you to use skull, killing all other spammable alternatives - thus reducing build diversity even further. As well as being poor alternative to blighted DPS-wise for PvE, and BURST-wise for PvP.

Even heavy DoT builds perform better with blighted both in PvP and PvE wich just points out GLS a complete joke of a rework.
And ability itself feels so unimpactful, you barely notice if its doing something.

And again imagine Merciless is now a buff that make you shoot yourself with a bow increasing damage dealt by 15%/ Molten Whip make you whip yourself increasing damage dealt by 15%/Crystal Fragments makes you throw a shards into yourself increasing damage dealt by 15%/Deep Fissure makes your bettels bite you increasing damage dealt by 15%/ Tentacular Dread makes a tetacle hug you increasing damage dealt by 15%/ Power of the Light lights you up increasing damage dealt by 15%.

^That what you did to necro ZoS, I didnt made it up.

CameraBeardThePirate

The ability is also still bugged, and has been since it launched. It does not properly give its buff to the 3rd cast of Skull if the 3rd cast kills its initial target.

In other words, you should avoid throwing your third Skull cast at low health targets, because if the cast kills the target, other targets around it will not receive any AoE damage and the corpse will not be generated from the 3rd cast.

necro_the_crafter

Its so sad. I dont know what make them still presist with the change and push it to live servers, but I hope that in the near future they would be given time to actualy think this ability through.

I dont understand like how they could miss something as big as necro losing all ranged corpse gen with its first implementation into PTS, than slapped a bandaid that killed spammable diversity creating this skulls interaction that turns out to be bugged btw, as well as also nerfing this ability from 20% bonus damage to 15% before it hit live.

And now still presisting with the change by making it usable out of combat. And its still way worse than blightbones (that used to be a weaker morph btw). Just imagine how much power was removed from an underperfoming class, because they just had to push it.
Good to see some of class power returned with the most recent changes, but still as it is GLS is a biggest dissapointment of a class skill in the game.
Again - GLS didnt create any diversity in necros builds, it created exactly 1 skulls spam build that is way worse in any game scenario than a classic blightbones playstyle.

For me personnaly GLS is a reason I aprecciate blighted bones now more than I ever did.

NuarBlack

I love the idea of it giving you the self corpse buff that Nobility gives.

Giving necro a sticky dot is long overdue. Not sure if that makes GLS over loaded though if it got both self corpse and dot on LA.

Would love to see skulls get a stacking dot like hemorage but unique fire or poison damage. Wouldn't over load GLS and would make skulls more appealing. Where adding a dot buff to GLS would make skulls even more obsolete.

Urvoth

NuarBlack wrote: »

I love the idea of it giving you the self corpse buff that Nobility gives.

Giving necro a sticky dot is long overdue. Not sure if that makes GLS over loaded though if it got both self corpse and dot on LA.

Would love to see skulls get a stacking dot like hemorage but unique fire or poison damage. Wouldn't over load GLS and would make skulls more appealing. Where adding a dot buff to GLS would make skulls even more obsolete.

I don't think skulls would be more obsolete if GLS got a dot added to light attacks. Skulls would still get the 15% dmg boost and explosion, so there's reason to use it with GLS, but a dot on light attacks allows some power outside of just using skulls.

necro_the_crafter

NuarBlack wrote: »

I love the idea of it giving you the self corpse buff that Nobility gives.

Giving necro a sticky dot is long overdue. Not sure if that makes GLS over loaded though if it got both self corpse and dot on LA.

Would love to see skulls get a stacking dot like hemorage but unique fire or poison damage. Wouldn't over load GLS and would make skulls more appealing. Where adding a dot buff to GLS would make skulls even more obsolete.

Skulls projectile speed and cost making it absolete rn, the damage is great actually, but its still lose in efficency to force pulse, because force pulse can proc up to 3 different status effects per cast, while cost less mana, as well as losing to arterial burst, due to it being significantly cheaper, and procing guarantee bleed on every cast.

So yea, dot on GLS buff wont make skulls obsolete. In fact if skulls stacks did something (give s/wpd per stack as whip or mersiless does),and had a quicker projectile speed, its cost issues wouldnt matter that much and it would be better then any other alternative spammable at the baseline, and a far better one with GLS, while force pulse and arterial burst would still perform better on specific builds that aimed at status procs. But even wont make necromancers switch from Blighted, because GLS is such a luckluster of a skill.

Every time i try to make it work im ending up in the situation where i feel like I forgot to put something impotant on my skillbar. Its like playing sorc, but you have only force pulses with no shards procs or curse. Or arcanist that suddenly lost its beam and now just standing there spamming tetnatcles. Or NB that have suprise attack on every skillslot. Its boring, underwhelming playstyle.

Even lightning staff HA builds feels much more interactive than GLS necro.

NuarBlack

necro_the_crafter wrote: »

NuarBlack wrote: »

I love the idea of it giving you the self corpse buff that Nobility gives.

Giving necro a sticky dot is long overdue. Not sure if that makes GLS over loaded though if it got both self corpse and dot on LA.

Would love to see skulls get a stacking dot like hemorage but unique fire or poison damage. Wouldn't over load GLS and would make skulls more appealing. Where adding a dot buff to GLS would make skulls even more obsolete.

Skulls projectile speed and cost making it absolete rn, the damage is great actually, but its still lose in efficency to force pulse, because force pulse can proc up to 3 different status effects per cast, while cost less mana, as well as losing to arterial burst, due to it being significantly cheaper, and procing guarantee bleed on every cast.

So yea, dot on GLS buff wont make skulls obsolete. In fact if skulls stacks did something (give s/wpd per stack as whip or mersiless does),and had a quicker projectile speed, its cost issues wouldnt matter that much and it would be better then any other alternative spammable at the baseline, and a far better one with GLS, while force pulse and arterial burst would still perform better on specific builds that aimed at status procs. But even wont make necromancers switch from Blighted, because GLS is such a luckluster of a skill.

Every time i try to make it work im ending up in the situation where i feel like I forgot to put something impotant on my skillbar. Its like playing sorc, but you have only force pulses with no shards procs or curse. Or arcanist that suddenly lost its beam and now just standing there spamming tetnatcles. Or NB that have suprise attack on every skillslot. Its boring, underwhelming playstyle.

Even lightning staff HA builds feels much more interactive than GLS necro.

I get that skulls needs other fixes but GLS right now actually makes Skulls appealing. Giving the dot to LA isn't going to make skulls more appealing. There is zero logic there. It means you can benefit from GLS without skulls which just like I said makes it more obsolete. For better or worse as I get that opens up other spammable options.

Urvoth

NuarBlack wrote: »

necro_the_crafter wrote: »

NuarBlack wrote: »

I love the idea of it giving you the self corpse buff that Nobility gives.

Giving necro a sticky dot is long overdue. Not sure if that makes GLS over loaded though if it got both self corpse and dot on LA.

Would love to see skulls get a stacking dot like hemorage but unique fire or poison damage. Wouldn't over load GLS and would make skulls more appealing. Where adding a dot buff to GLS would make skulls even more obsolete.

Skulls projectile speed and cost making it absolete rn, the damage is great actually, but its still lose in efficency to force pulse, because force pulse can proc up to 3 different status effects per cast, while cost less mana, as well as losing to arterial burst, due to it being significantly cheaper, and procing guarantee bleed on every cast.

So yea, dot on GLS buff wont make skulls obsolete. In fact if skulls stacks did something (give s/wpd per stack as whip or mersiless does),and had a quicker projectile speed, its cost issues wouldnt matter that much and it would be better then any other alternative spammable at the baseline, and a far better one with GLS, while force pulse and arterial burst would still perform better on specific builds that aimed at status procs. But even wont make necromancers switch from Blighted, because GLS is such a luckluster of a skill.

Every time i try to make it work im ending up in the situation where i feel like I forgot to put something impotant on my skillbar. Its like playing sorc, but you have only force pulses with no shards procs or curse. Or arcanist that suddenly lost its beam and now just standing there spamming tetnatcles. Or NB that have suprise attack on every skillslot. Its boring, underwhelming playstyle.

Even lightning staff HA builds feels much more interactive than GLS necro.

I get that skulls needs other fixes but GLS right now actually makes Skulls appealing. Giving the dot to LA isn't going to make skulls more appealing. There is zero logic there. It means you can benefit from GLS without skulls which just like I said makes it more obsolete. For better or worse as I get that opens up other spammable options.

A dot for LA adds more power to the offensive kit while keeping the power a bit more spread out. GLS would still buffs skulls and keep it appealing while also providing more innate damage to GLS as a skill. The primary use case of GLS wouldn't be just tied to skull spam though, and would keep more build options viable.

Urvoth

The update to Ghostly Embrace is a great positive change for the class, probably one of the best ever since now we finally have a sticky dot, but it would be great to still see some updates to GLS, like at least having it be an instantly applied buff. The issues with Skulls still remain, and I would still like to see an inherent damage feature be added to GLS, like a dot to light attacks, even if it's just a generic burning proc.

Urvoth

Urvoth wrote: »

The update to Ghostly Embrace is a great positive change for the class, probably one of the best ever since now we finally have a sticky dot, but it would be great to still see some updates to GLS, like at least having it be an instantly applied buff. The issues with Skulls still remain, and I would still like to see an inherent damage feature be added to GLS, like a dot to light attacks, even if it's just a generic burning proc.

After a lot more testing, I think the cc effects of the current ghostly should remain alongside the upcoming dot and corpse mechanic. It's a clunky and slow skill, and the dot isn't even on every patch. Necro still needs some cc pressure and Ghostly helps with that. The comparable skills on other classes like Burning Talons and the new Lotus Fan do a lot more than just apply a dot, so I think it's fair to allow Ghostly to keep the CC pressure.

necro_the_crafter

X - ability power
Y - ability convinience.
Dotted line - Meta Event Horizon (MEH), ability/passive/set that falls behind it never gets picked again for PvP.

1 - Undeath paassive. Its power always otweights inconvinionce it causes. "No brainer" pick for anyone who wants to become more tanky. For everyone basicly.
3 - Scalding rune. Generaly weak ability that is also hard to hit. You never see it in PvP.
2.1 - Live Ghostly Embrace. It barely picks behind a MEH, because its have a potential to aplly both CC pressure and decent damage.
2.2 - PTS Ghostly Embrace. Since half of this ability potential is lost now, it fall behind the MEH again. So it just wont be used ever again, until future improves.

flizomica

For what it's worth, I tried to use GLS since it was originally added to the game and I have finally given up on it. These issues prevent me from using it:

• A delayed self-buff is so annoying. It's slightly better now that it can be cast outside of combat, but needing to awkwardly stand around and wait for ~3 seconds before starting an encounter tremendously interrupts the normal flow of gameplay.
• Your own self-buff can miss you! I have to basically stand still in-combat to make sure that the skelly will hit me and not get lost of confused with pathing.
• These two issues means I have to think more about GLS in the flow of combat than simply blastbones every 3rd skill cast. It therefore doesn't even hit the original goal of simplifying Necro combat.

In my opinion:

• Delete GLS and bring stalking blastbones back since it was the stronger morph.
• Make blighted blastbones spawn a 10-20 second ground DoT that does something interesting so that it will actually result in a simplified rotation.
• Move the GLS DoT/Necro skill buff to a different skill because I like that component and Necro needs to be stronger overall.

necro_the_crafter

flizomica wrote: »

For what it's worth, I tried to use GLS since it was originally added to the game and I have finally given up on it. These issues prevent me from using it:

• A delayed self-buff is so annoying. It's slightly better now that it can be cast outside of combat, but needing to awkwardly stand around and wait for ~3 seconds before starting an encounter tremendously interrupts the normal flow of gameplay.
• Your own self-buff can miss you! I have to basically stand still in-combat to make sure that the skelly will hit me and not get lost of confused with pathing.
• These two issues means I have to think more about GLS in the flow of combat than simply blastbones every 3rd skill cast. It therefore doesn't even hit the original goal of simplifying Necro combat.

In my opinion:

• Delete GLS and bring stalking blastbones back since it was the stronger morph.
• Make blighted blastbones spawn a 10-20 second ground DoT that does something interesting so that it will actually result in a simplified rotation.
• Move the GLS DoT/Necro skill buff to a different skill because I like that component and Necro needs to be stronger overall.

I think they struggle the most with making it ability more like haunting curse or deep fissure, that were changed to hit twice over longer duration in one cast to simplify the rotation. You cant make blastbones hit twice in one cast, since its doesnot "sticks" to any target, like haunting does or sticks to you like fissure does.
It rises lots off questions like : should it spawn in place where previous bb spawned?, should it hit same target that previous bb hit?, what if necro moves away from original cast point?, what if target that got hit by first bb dies?, etc.

I believe that is why they went with all this GLS fiasco.

And its all because necros entire kit is so off from their spreadsheet balancing that they cannot find a solution required to bring it more in line with other classes. That why it was OP for so long after realease. Thats why its so bad after hybridization started in u35.

Necro requires uniqe aproach to make it viable and simple, or a complete rework to make it function more in line with other classes, and make it fit for spreadsheet balancing. And with how slow balance passes at this game, and ZoS lack of dedication to decide what approach they need to take, class hung in this wierd limbo where it has barely viable skills for one activity and complete and decent kit for the other, which is actually kills all the "play the way you want" feel about class. Its okay tank, decent dps, and garbage for PvP, below average for solo Arenas.

Aldoss

I tried playing with GLS in IA last night and was just so so so disappointed. The whole corpse mechanic thing dropping at your feet is awful. I'm really frustrated that the mechanic of sticking the corpse to you got removed before it went live. That wouldn't have saved it, don't get me wrong. Literally everything is wrong with this skill, but it would have at least been nice to not have to waste a 5pc for the mechanic (although I kind of can't imagine playing necro without nobility anymore - amazing set, thanks for that at least!).

Let's be real here: ZOS will not bring back Stalking. They're much too egotistic to admit that they F'ed this skill up as badly as they did.

It needs a whole rework.

However, while you're thinking about how you'll finally overhaul Necro in U54, GLS needs this to be even considered a viable option:

- Casting GLS grants you IMMEDIATE buffs. No more waiting on the smooth brained skele (that's insultingly still called Stalking Blastbones, mind you) to jump to you.
- Buffs will now grant you 20% increased dmg to your class abilities, dots, and 10% increase to your heals.
- Once the BB jumps to you, the corpse will stick to you for the duration of the buff, unless it is used by a corpse consumer ability, or refreshed with an early cast of the skill.
- While active, Animate Blastbones morph no longer raises the dead, but instead will explode all corpses in the field for x damage to all enemies within y radius.

The mechanic of Flame Skull now dropping a corpse after 3 casts is honestly just dumb. It made no logical sense to remove Stalking in favor of GLS because "some people complain about having to cast the same skill every 3 seconds", only to then make them cast Flame Skull 3 times to get the corpse that BB would have given them.

Just make the 3rd cast of Flame Skull drop a corpse anyway. The skill is already trash. Necro needs more corpses. The 3rd cast of Flame Skull should just already do it. It's a skull you're flinging anyway. It makes thematic sense.

These are honestly the bare minimum changes that need to be made to get me to use this skill in any serious capacity.

necro_the_crafter

Aldoss wrote: »

I tried playing with GLS in IA last night and was just so so so disappointed. The whole corpse mechanic thing dropping at your feet is awful. I'm really frustrated that the mechanic of sticking the corpse to you got removed before it went live. That wouldn't have saved it, don't get me wrong. Literally everything is wrong with this skill, but it would have at least been nice to not have to waste a 5pc for the mechanic (although I kind of can't imagine playing necro without nobility anymore - amazing set, thanks for that at least!).

Let's be real here: ZOS will not bring back Stalking. They're much too egotistic to admit that they F'ed this skill up as badly as they did.

It needs a whole rework.

However, while you're thinking about how you'll finally overhaul Necro in U54, GLS needs this to be even considered a viable option:

- Casting GLS grants you IMMEDIATE buffs. No more waiting on the smooth brained skele (that's insultingly still called Stalking Blastbones, mind you) to jump to you.
- Buffs will now grant you 20% increased dmg to your class abilities, dots, and 10% increase to your heals.
- Once the BB jumps to you, the corpse will stick to you for the duration of the buff, unless it is used by a corpse consumer ability, or refreshed with an early cast of the skill.
- While active, Animate Blastbones morph no longer raises the dead, but instead will explode all corpses in the field for x damage to all enemies within y radius.

The mechanic of Flame Skull now dropping a corpse after 3 casts is honestly just dumb. It made no logical sense to remove Stalking in favor of GLS because "some people complain about having to cast the same skill every 3 seconds", only to then make them cast Flame Skull 3 times to get the corpse that BB would have given them.

Just make the 3rd cast of Flame Skull drop a corpse anyway. The skill is already trash. Necro needs more corpses. The 3rd cast of Flame Skull should just already do it. It's a skull you're flinging anyway. It makes thematic sense.

These are honestly the bare minimum changes that need to be made to get me to use this skill in any serious capacity.

They actualy removed all of the "every 3 sec" ability in the game. Haunted got a double pop over 10 sec duration, deep fissure got a double pop over 10 sec duration, subterranian is double pop over 6 sec.
And they cant replicate this on a blastbones, its simply would be much more clunky that way. Does this justify GLS being that bad? Absolutly not. Is there a better solution? Oh yes, definetly. GLS feels rushed, its got a skull bandaid mid pts cycle, because they didnd account for range corpse generation.
If they had put more effort I belive they could have come up with much better change. They could have made a delayed direct AoE ability for example, like throwing a skeleton from the sky on yours enemy head Dark Anchor style that lands after 2.5 sec delay dealind damage upon landing, and then, skeleton assemble its bones together for 3.5 sec and upon finishing assembling jumps on target to deal second portion of damage. This would have align damage/duration to a subterranian, but in order for this ability to work properly it should stick to a target that you casted it on, so the landing AoE follws a target, and then they have to decide what to do if ability is recast. So basicly if skeleton hadnt landed yet it should cancel landing on first target, and instead start animation on second, and if a blastbone had started assemble animation it should cancel, and if blastbones was already alive it should get immidiatly killed on ability recast. So yeah its pretty convoluted, and poses quite a challange for coders i think, that they cannot justify puting time and resourse to solve, so they went for "cheaper" version, which we as a players cannot justify using.

Urvoth

necro_the_crafter wrote: »

Aldoss wrote: »

I tried playing with GLS in IA last night and was just so so so disappointed. The whole corpse mechanic thing dropping at your feet is awful. I'm really frustrated that the mechanic of sticking the corpse to you got removed before it went live. That wouldn't have saved it, don't get me wrong. Literally everything is wrong with this skill, but it would have at least been nice to not have to waste a 5pc for the mechanic (although I kind of can't imagine playing necro without nobility anymore - amazing set, thanks for that at least!).

Let's be real here: ZOS will not bring back Stalking. They're much too egotistic to admit that they F'ed this skill up as badly as they did.

It needs a whole rework.

However, while you're thinking about how you'll finally overhaul Necro in U54, GLS needs this to be even considered a viable option:

- Casting GLS grants you IMMEDIATE buffs. No more waiting on the smooth brained skele (that's insultingly still called Stalking Blastbones, mind you) to jump to you.
- Buffs will now grant you 20% increased dmg to your class abilities, dots, and 10% increase to your heals.
- Once the BB jumps to you, the corpse will stick to you for the duration of the buff, unless it is used by a corpse consumer ability, or refreshed with an early cast of the skill.
- While active, Animate Blastbones morph no longer raises the dead, but instead will explode all corpses in the field for x damage to all enemies within y radius.

The mechanic of Flame Skull now dropping a corpse after 3 casts is honestly just dumb. It made no logical sense to remove Stalking in favor of GLS because "some people complain about having to cast the same skill every 3 seconds", only to then make them cast Flame Skull 3 times to get the corpse that BB would have given them.

Just make the 3rd cast of Flame Skull drop a corpse anyway. The skill is already trash. Necro needs more corpses. The 3rd cast of Flame Skull should just already do it. It's a skull you're flinging anyway. It makes thematic sense.

These are honestly the bare minimum changes that need to be made to get me to use this skill in any serious capacity.

They actualy removed all of the "every 3 sec" ability in the game. Haunted got a double pop over 10 sec duration, deep fissure got a double pop over 10 sec duration, subterranian is double pop over 6 sec.
And they cant replicate this on a blastbones, its simply would be much more clunky that way. Does this justify GLS being that bad? Absolutly not. Is there a better solution? Oh yes, definetly. GLS feels rushed, its got a skull bandaid mid pts cycle, because they didnd account for range corpse generation.
If they had put more effort I belive they could have come up with much better change. They could have made a delayed direct AoE ability for example, like throwing a skeleton from the sky on yours enemy head Dark Anchor style that lands after 2.5 sec delay dealind damage upon landing, and then, skeleton assemble its bones together for 3.5 sec and upon finishing assembling jumps on target to deal second portion of damage. This would have align damage/duration to a subterranian, but in order for this ability to work properly it should stick to a target that you casted it on, so the landing AoE follws a target, and then they have to decide what to do if ability is recast. So basicly if skeleton hadnt landed yet it should cancel landing on first target, and instead start animation on second, and if a blastbone had started assemble animation it should cancel, and if blastbones was already alive it should get immidiatly killed on ability recast. So yeah its pretty convoluted, and poses quite a challange for coders i think, that they cannot justify puting time and resourse to solve, so they went for "cheaper" version, which we as a players cannot justify using.

It’s just so exhausting playing a class that needs significant reworks and yet likely will never get them due to the way ZOS makes changes. They said GLS is a work in progress, so why not let us keep stalking until they have a real solution? Actively making the class worse doesn’t help whatsoever. Necro doesn’t need a series of minor changes and tweaks to each skill like other classes have, it needs complete skill redesign for half our skills.

necro_the_crafter

Urvoth wrote: »

It’s just so exhausting playing a class that needs significant reworks and yet likely will never get them due to the way ZOS makes changes. They said GLS is a work in progress, so why not let us keep stalking until they have a real solution? Actively making the class worse doesn’t help whatsoever. Necro doesn’t need a series of minor changes and tweaks to each skill like other classes have, it needs complete skill redesign for half our skills.

Yeah I hope they spreadsheet balance their spreadsheet balancing. Updates used to turn everything around back in a day, shaking up the meta quite hard, and now it so slow that they even drop unfinished abilities on live, to be developed later, and forget about it. Such a shame.