Restoring Light... and other defensive skill lines

necro_the_crafter

Joy_Division wrote: »

Gotcha. What I meant was if it would be more difficult to sustain Ghost for Necroplar looking to replace Grave Lord for another class line than a pure Necro (i.e,, comparing the value of the cost reduction to the Rune's active recovery benefit)?

Yeah you could sustain it with rune active, probaly will need an atronach mundus and recovery food on top. Have to test it to be shure.

But, what i had tested, is siphoning + restoring light, slotting siphoning attacks and kepping rune up results in insane 500 mag /st per sec return, running both of this skillines - I put everything else in damage, and even swapped for max stat food because I simply was unable to bring my stam/mana pool below 50% inbetween poitons cooldown, and if I ever did, just 1 heavy attack followed by activating siphoning attack returnes a lot of resourses in a burst.

CAB_Life

Move all Templar defensive options to the spear tree, which should’ve been cleaned up ages ago to the the “tanking” tree as they’ve done with all the newer classes. Like why is the armor buff in a healing tree? How does that make sense at all? I can’t think of any other class that does this. At least that way you’re trading survivability vs sustain/ utility.

CameraBeardThePirate

Deimus wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Deimus wrote: »

I completely agree with you on Earthen Heart and Curative Runeform. For Green Balance I agree with your point on Emerald moss, but Maturation and Nature's Gift are great passives and Nature's Gift is getting buffed. Sustain for Warden is already extremely good with Flourish and Betty Netch so I see why it requires another person, and the other two Warden skill lines are already going to be 2 of the more attractive skill lines to subclass into for PvP. I agree the other abilities outside of the ult and Lotus Blossom could use a touch up, but when the class has Polar Wind the best heal in the game of course most of them wouldn't be touched.

100% disagree Hardened Ward does not need the heal back that skill has been very unhealthy for PvP over the past year. High ranged burst and mobility should have the tradeoff of low defense.

I'd like to know why do you think Living Death is so attractive to other classes for PvP? Like Arcanist's support lines Living Death and Bone Tyrant will hold less value for those subclassing into them due to the disadvantage of generating the class unique resource. Also with Necromancer's corpses counting as pets the 5 pet limit in PvP will further restrict this unique resource making it hard for even native Necros to use effectively.

• Resistant Flesh is one of if not the worst class burst heals
• Animate Blastbones is only something you'll be able to utilize on a native Necro and you will still struggle to get 3 corpses with the new pet limitation counting corpses as pets
• Mortal Coil is great, but again only usable on a native Necro wearing Nobility in Decay as the tethers break too easily in ESO's fast paced and mobile PvP environment.
• Life amid Death (Renewing Undeath) might be attractive for a group healer, but with the corpse requriements (you'll never have enough to max out the Enduring morph) and Spirit Mender as your only source of corpse generation, it's too much work for not enough payoff Ritual is better and easier to use.
• Hexproof is great, but I struggle to find bar space to slot it over other things Necro needs in PvP, other classes with better kits might not have that issue.
• Spirit Mender is the only thing that Living Death uniquely brings to the table that I could really see other classes actually wanting. Best skill in the line and it looks darn cool.
• The passives are kind of meh except for Near-Death Experience which is getting reduced by 40% and Curative Curse as long as you don't use Resistant Flesh as your burst heal. Undead Confederate is also getting nerfed when it already needed a boost, Its current value is a fraction of the recovery you'll get from Nature's Gift which will be getting buffed. Corpse Consumption is good on a native Necro which has a wide variety of ways to consume corpses so other classes will have to slot Renewing Undeath or Mortal Coil if they don't want a dead passive, but good luck keeping Coil up with only Spirit Guardian to make corpses and the tether breaking every 2 seconds.

As a PvP Necro main if the current changes go through I think Living Death will be the dead weight skill line for us. Trying out builds on the PTS the unique 10% mitigation from Spirit Guardian was really the only tradeoff. My healing, sustain, utility, and by result of improving sustain I was able to swap one of my sets for more damage so that improved as well from dropping Living Death on my Necro.

Necro Main here chiming in about Living Death:

It's very good.

Right off the bat, everyone bags on Resistant Flesh but believe me when I say, that ability is much better than people give it credit for. Yes, the Defile kinda sucks, but the heal is strong enough even with the Defile, and most matches, you're going to have minor Defile on you anyways with how easy status effects are to come by. The Resistance you get when slamming this ability in a pinch is what makes necromancer feel so tanky, and a lot of people completely fail to realize this.

Life Amid Death is a fantastic group heal, whether you're a dedicated healer or just running in a group. It's cheap (comparatively), and has a HoT attached to it. With Intensive Mender, you'll always have a corpse for this when you need it, and while you won't be able to max out the duration, even with a 5 second duration this skill still has a much higher heal:cost ratio than other healing skills.

On that note, Intensive Mender is back to being one of the best HoTs in the game after its most recent buff. This thing regularly heals for 800k+ in 8v8s on a DPS build. Hitting 3 targets for 2.5k - 5k every 2 seconds is very strong.

Hexproof is the best self purge in the game, and its not particularly close. It's essentially free, as the health cost is basically trading the mag cost to take an extra tick of whatever DoTs you're purging off, and the 3% cost reduction helps a lot if on your defensive bar.

Yes, they are nerfing the passives, but even still, Necro's heal skills outpace any of the other healing lines outside of Restoring Light.

The scribed heals both Healing Soul and Healing Contingency are more effective. In PvP you will always have a negative effect on you by the time you need to cast a burst heal and it won't always be defile cutting almost all the benefit you gain from your passive. With Healing Contingency you can stack Minor Protection with the unique 8% mitigation making an AoE heal (guaranteed to heal you) with more resistance than Resistant Flesh, that lasts longer, and has no downsides. Until next patch it's cheaper than Resistant Flesh too. If you go through all the class burst heals which one would you pick Resistant Flesh over? Maybe the Sorc, but they have Matriarch, Dark Deal, and Ward until next patch. DK, NB, Arc, Warden, and Templar burst heals are better than Resistant Flesh.

Hexproof I agree that it's good and maybe other classes with built in mobility like NB or Sorc would benefit from it much more than Necromancer just like Arcanist did with GLS, but I usually end up dropping it for RAT (purge and die or LoS to heal up and/or turn and burn). You need speed in PvP and Necro has none. If the skill had Major/Minor Expedition or some unique movement component to it that would definitely take this skill line to the next level giving it 2 great skills worth slotting on every class in PvP.

Spirit Mender I completely agree one of the few skills in the game where both morphs are top tier skills if you had it in your kit and weren't running one of the morphs you're gimping yourself. For Renewing Undeath also good for a group healer, but not worth subclassing for it would just be a pleasant bonus.The issue is with subclassing why not take Restoring Light for a group healer, Storm Calling for solo, or Siphoning for small scale? Much better passives, easier to use skills with no conditions some of them are set it and forget it. Out of the utility lines I'd rank Living Death 5th behind Restoring Light, Storm Calling, Siphoning, and Winter's Embrace. It does a few things well, but there are better options no way is it the 2nd best utility skill line.

First - Contingency and Res Flesh don't compete; you just use both. Res Flesh and Healing Soul DO complete, and while on paper Healing Soul is great, the targeting is absolutely terrible on this ability. It doesn't smart heal as intelligently as other skills, and because the range is 360° and ignores LoS, sometimes its literally impossible to heal yourself.

Res Flesh also has a higher tooltip than most of the burst heals you mentioned - this offsets the Minor Defile. Res Flesh is absolutely better than Arcanist's Healing Rune, Breath of Life, and Soothing Spores (unless you're specifically running the stam morph in open world to bypass negate). The only two that outpace it are Healthy Offering (go figure) and Coag.

I'm also not sure why you say you use RaT over Hexproof - again, you just use both.

Deimus

Decimus wrote: »

Deimus wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Deimus wrote: »

I completely agree with you on Earthen Heart and Curative Runeform. For Green Balance I agree with your point on Emerald moss, but Maturation and Nature's Gift are great passives and Nature's Gift is getting buffed. Sustain for Warden is already extremely good with Flourish and Betty Netch so I see why it requires another person, and the other two Warden skill lines are already going to be 2 of the more attractive skill lines to subclass into for PvP. I agree the other abilities outside of the ult and Lotus Blossom could use a touch up, but when the class has Polar Wind the best heal in the game of course most of them wouldn't be touched.

100% disagree Hardened Ward does not need the heal back that skill has been very unhealthy for PvP over the past year. High ranged burst and mobility should have the tradeoff of low defense.

I'd like to know why do you think Living Death is so attractive to other classes for PvP? Like Arcanist's support lines Living Death and Bone Tyrant will hold less value for those subclassing into them due to the disadvantage of generating the class unique resource. Also with Necromancer's corpses counting as pets the 5 pet limit in PvP will further restrict this unique resource making it hard for even native Necros to use effectively.

• Resistant Flesh is one of if not the worst class burst heals
• Animate Blastbones is only something you'll be able to utilize on a native Necro and you will still struggle to get 3 corpses with the new pet limitation counting corpses as pets
• Mortal Coil is great, but again only usable on a native Necro wearing Nobility in Decay as the tethers break too easily in ESO's fast paced and mobile PvP environment.
• Life amid Death (Renewing Undeath) might be attractive for a group healer, but with the corpse requriements (you'll never have enough to max out the Enduring morph) and Spirit Mender as your only source of corpse generation, it's too much work for not enough payoff Ritual is better and easier to use.
• Hexproof is great, but I struggle to find bar space to slot it over other things Necro needs in PvP, other classes with better kits might not have that issue.
• Spirit Mender is the only thing that Living Death uniquely brings to the table that I could really see other classes actually wanting. Best skill in the line and it looks darn cool.
• The passives are kind of meh except for Near-Death Experience which is getting reduced by 40% and Curative Curse as long as you don't use Resistant Flesh as your burst heal. Undead Confederate is also getting nerfed when it already needed a boost, Its current value is a fraction of the recovery you'll get from Nature's Gift which will be getting buffed. Corpse Consumption is good on a native Necro which has a wide variety of ways to consume corpses so other classes will have to slot Renewing Undeath or Mortal Coil if they don't want a dead passive, but good luck keeping Coil up with only Spirit Guardian to make corpses and the tether breaking every 2 seconds.

As a PvP Necro main if the current changes go through I think Living Death will be the dead weight skill line for us. Trying out builds on the PTS the unique 10% mitigation from Spirit Guardian was really the only tradeoff. My healing, sustain, utility, and by result of improving sustain I was able to swap one of my sets for more damage so that improved as well from dropping Living Death on my Necro.

Necro Main here chiming in about Living Death:

It's very good.

Right off the bat, everyone bags on Resistant Flesh but believe me when I say, that ability is much better than people give it credit for. Yes, the Defile kinda sucks, but the heal is strong enough even with the Defile, and most matches, you're going to have minor Defile on you anyways with how easy status effects are to come by. The Resistance you get when slamming this ability in a pinch is what makes necromancer feel so tanky, and a lot of people completely fail to realize this.

Life Amid Death is a fantastic group heal, whether you're a dedicated healer or just running in a group. It's cheap (comparatively), and has a HoT attached to it. With Intensive Mender, you'll always have a corpse for this when you need it, and while you won't be able to max out the duration, even with a 5 second duration this skill still has a much higher heal:cost ratio than other healing skills.

On that note, Intensive Mender is back to being one of the best HoTs in the game after its most recent buff. This thing regularly heals for 800k+ in 8v8s on a DPS build. Hitting 3 targets for 2.5k - 5k every 2 seconds is very strong.

Hexproof is the best self purge in the game, and its not particularly close. It's essentially free, as the health cost is basically trading the mag cost to take an extra tick of whatever DoTs you're purging off, and the 3% cost reduction helps a lot if on your defensive bar.

Yes, they are nerfing the passives, but even still, Necro's heal skills outpace any of the other healing lines outside of Restoring Light.

The scribed heals both Healing Soul and Healing Contingency are more effective. In PvP you will always have a negative effect on you by the time you need to cast a burst heal and it won't always be defile cutting almost all the benefit you gain from your passive. With Healing Contingency you can stack Minor Protection with the unique 8% mitigation making an AoE heal (guaranteed to heal you) with more resistance than Resistant Flesh, that lasts longer, and has no downsides. Until next patch it's cheaper than Resistant Flesh too. If you go through all the class burst heals which one would you pick Resistant Flesh over? Maybe the Sorc, but they have Matriarch, Dark Deal, and Ward until next patch. DK, NB, Arc, Warden, and Templar burst heals are better than Resistant Flesh.

Hexproof I agree that it's good and maybe other classes with built in mobility like NB or Sorc would benefit from it much more than Necromancer just like Arcanist did with GLS, but I usually end up dropping it for RAT (purge and die or LoS to heal up and/or turn and burn). You need speed in PvP and Necro has none. If the skill had Major/Minor Expedition or some unique movement component to it that would definitely take this skill line to the next level giving it 2 great skills worth slotting on every class in PvP.

Spirit Mender I completely agree one of the few skills in the game where both morphs are top tier skills if you had it in your kit and weren't running one of the morphs you're gimping yourself. For Renewing Undeath also good for a group healer, but not worth subclassing for it would just be a pleasant bonus.The issue is with subclassing why not take Restoring Light for a group healer, Storm Calling for solo, or Siphoning for small scale? Much better passives, easier to use skills with no conditions some of them are set it and forget it. Out of the utility lines I'd rank Living Death 5th behind Restoring Light, Storm Calling, Siphoning, and Winter's Embrace. It does a few things well, but there are better options no way is it the 2nd best utility skill line.

It is though, you can test this on PTS... the problem with Storm Calling is that you'll have everyone streaking after you, Blastbones & bow procs flying your way 24/7. You do get Crit Surge from here, but apart from that and Streak the skill line is entirely offensive - you get way more defense from Living Death.

Siphoning same thing, as I wrote above you need 4 Siphoning abilities slotted to get same healing you get from Living Death passive... and you'll never be in a position to use Siphoning Attacks/Leeching for sustain unless you're playing a permablock troll tank... but even then it's probably better to just rely on Rune/Netch.

Winter's Embrace really isn't good outside of building around frost damage - Polar Wind alone doesn't provide enough of an incentive. This skill line is really good though if you build around that frost damage.

What do you gain if you don't?
Extra Chilled damage+proc chance (trivial if you don't build around it)
1,2k Armor (with just Polar Wind slotted - 2,4k if you somehow find space for Shimmering)
Major Maim with horrible up time
8% Block Mitigation/15% Frost Damage (if even 50% of your damage was Frost Damage somehow, this'd be worth 7,5%... but more likely the number with Chilled/Crushing Shock alone is something like 10%, resulting in 1,5% overall dmg increase)

The Polar Wind isn't worth Major Vitality (Healing Soul)+12% strength/crit chance on all healing (Rune, Vigor, Spirit Guardian, Healing Soul, Ritual, Crit Surge etc), regens and so on

I think I get where you guys are viewing this, and we're applying value to different areas. I'm looking at utility from the perspective of which skill line will give me the most tools or shores up the most weaknesses in my kit instead of best for a support build.

Streak (gap closer, escape tool, and cc)+Major/Minor Expedition from the Storm Armor skill lets you LoS more effectively to avoid taking damage positioning is one of the most important skills in PvP, and a cherry on top both do damage. Surge is my damage buff and will give me a decent supply of healing.

Nature's Gift is 100% the better passive outside of dueling or 1vx. The 155 recovery from Undead Confederate is every 2 seconds while Nature's Gift is every second so you could think of it as 554 recovery to your lowest resource. If your resources were close to the same value you could theoretically get 277 stamina and 277 magicka in 2 seconds which is much better than the 155 recovery. Yeah you need another player, but in battlegrounds or Cyro as long as Lotus Blossom is active your light attacks will be triggering this passive on cooldown.

With Siphoning Attacks you don't even need to activate it. It's essentially an always up Mortal Coil that gives double the resources without ever casting the skill less time on your back bar and you get to save a global. Power Extraction is a packed skill and Soul Tether is a good cheap ult. The ultimate passives are good, and while the healing bonus is less the 6% boost to your mag and stam is great.

Winter's Embrace gives you the strongest burst heal in the game, a great ult in Northern Storm, The armor gives Minor Prot freeing up the Psijic ult if you had it slotted or on a scribed skill, and Crystal Slab is the closest thing we have to old DK wings.

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Deimus wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Deimus wrote: »

I completely agree with you on Earthen Heart and Curative Runeform. For Green Balance I agree with your point on Emerald moss, but Maturation and Nature's Gift are great passives and Nature's Gift is getting buffed. Sustain for Warden is already extremely good with Flourish and Betty Netch so I see why it requires another person, and the other two Warden skill lines are already going to be 2 of the more attractive skill lines to subclass into for PvP. I agree the other abilities outside of the ult and Lotus Blossom could use a touch up, but when the class has Polar Wind the best heal in the game of course most of them wouldn't be touched.

100% disagree Hardened Ward does not need the heal back that skill has been very unhealthy for PvP over the past year. High ranged burst and mobility should have the tradeoff of low defense.

I'd like to know why do you think Living Death is so attractive to other classes for PvP? Like Arcanist's support lines Living Death and Bone Tyrant will hold less value for those subclassing into them due to the disadvantage of generating the class unique resource. Also with Necromancer's corpses counting as pets the 5 pet limit in PvP will further restrict this unique resource making it hard for even native Necros to use effectively.

• Resistant Flesh is one of if not the worst class burst heals
• Animate Blastbones is only something you'll be able to utilize on a native Necro and you will still struggle to get 3 corpses with the new pet limitation counting corpses as pets
• Mortal Coil is great, but again only usable on a native Necro wearing Nobility in Decay as the tethers break too easily in ESO's fast paced and mobile PvP environment.
• Life amid Death (Renewing Undeath) might be attractive for a group healer, but with the corpse requriements (you'll never have enough to max out the Enduring morph) and Spirit Mender as your only source of corpse generation, it's too much work for not enough payoff Ritual is better and easier to use.
• Hexproof is great, but I struggle to find bar space to slot it over other things Necro needs in PvP, other classes with better kits might not have that issue.
• Spirit Mender is the only thing that Living Death uniquely brings to the table that I could really see other classes actually wanting. Best skill in the line and it looks darn cool.
• The passives are kind of meh except for Near-Death Experience which is getting reduced by 40% and Curative Curse as long as you don't use Resistant Flesh as your burst heal. Undead Confederate is also getting nerfed when it already needed a boost, Its current value is a fraction of the recovery you'll get from Nature's Gift which will be getting buffed. Corpse Consumption is good on a native Necro which has a wide variety of ways to consume corpses so other classes will have to slot Renewing Undeath or Mortal Coil if they don't want a dead passive, but good luck keeping Coil up with only Spirit Guardian to make corpses and the tether breaking every 2 seconds.

As a PvP Necro main if the current changes go through I think Living Death will be the dead weight skill line for us. Trying out builds on the PTS the unique 10% mitigation from Spirit Guardian was really the only tradeoff. My healing, sustain, utility, and by result of improving sustain I was able to swap one of my sets for more damage so that improved as well from dropping Living Death on my Necro.

Necro Main here chiming in about Living Death:

It's very good.

Right off the bat, everyone bags on Resistant Flesh but believe me when I say, that ability is much better than people give it credit for. Yes, the Defile kinda sucks, but the heal is strong enough even with the Defile, and most matches, you're going to have minor Defile on you anyways with how easy status effects are to come by. The Resistance you get when slamming this ability in a pinch is what makes necromancer feel so tanky, and a lot of people completely fail to realize this.

Life Amid Death is a fantastic group heal, whether you're a dedicated healer or just running in a group. It's cheap (comparatively), and has a HoT attached to it. With Intensive Mender, you'll always have a corpse for this when you need it, and while you won't be able to max out the duration, even with a 5 second duration this skill still has a much higher heal:cost ratio than other healing skills.

On that note, Intensive Mender is back to being one of the best HoTs in the game after its most recent buff. This thing regularly heals for 800k+ in 8v8s on a DPS build. Hitting 3 targets for 2.5k - 5k every 2 seconds is very strong.

Hexproof is the best self purge in the game, and its not particularly close. It's essentially free, as the health cost is basically trading the mag cost to take an extra tick of whatever DoTs you're purging off, and the 3% cost reduction helps a lot if on your defensive bar.

Yes, they are nerfing the passives, but even still, Necro's heal skills outpace any of the other healing lines outside of Restoring Light.

The scribed heals both Healing Soul and Healing Contingency are more effective. In PvP you will always have a negative effect on you by the time you need to cast a burst heal and it won't always be defile cutting almost all the benefit you gain from your passive. With Healing Contingency you can stack Minor Protection with the unique 8% mitigation making an AoE heal (guaranteed to heal you) with more resistance than Resistant Flesh, that lasts longer, and has no downsides. Until next patch it's cheaper than Resistant Flesh too. If you go through all the class burst heals which one would you pick Resistant Flesh over? Maybe the Sorc, but they have Matriarch, Dark Deal, and Ward until next patch. DK, NB, Arc, Warden, and Templar burst heals are better than Resistant Flesh.

Hexproof I agree that it's good and maybe other classes with built in mobility like NB or Sorc would benefit from it much more than Necromancer just like Arcanist did with GLS, but I usually end up dropping it for RAT (purge and die or LoS to heal up and/or turn and burn). You need speed in PvP and Necro has none. If the skill had Major/Minor Expedition or some unique movement component to it that would definitely take this skill line to the next level giving it 2 great skills worth slotting on every class in PvP.

Spirit Mender I completely agree one of the few skills in the game where both morphs are top tier skills if you had it in your kit and weren't running one of the morphs you're gimping yourself. For Renewing Undeath also good for a group healer, but not worth subclassing for it would just be a pleasant bonus.The issue is with subclassing why not take Restoring Light for a group healer, Storm Calling for solo, or Siphoning for small scale? Much better passives, easier to use skills with no conditions some of them are set it and forget it. Out of the utility lines I'd rank Living Death 5th behind Restoring Light, Storm Calling, Siphoning, and Winter's Embrace. It does a few things well, but there are better options no way is it the 2nd best utility skill line.

First - Contingency and Res Flesh don't compete; you just use both. Res Flesh and Healing Soul DO complete, and while on paper Healing Soul is great, the targeting is absolutely terrible on this ability. It doesn't smart heal as intelligently as other skills, and because the range is 360° and ignores LoS, sometimes its literally impossible to heal yourself.

Res Flesh also has a higher tooltip than most of the burst heals you mentioned - this offsets the Minor Defile. Res Flesh is absolutely better than Arcanist's Healing Rune, Breath of Life, and Soothing Spores (unless you're specifically running the stam morph in open world to bypass negate). The only two that outpace it are Healthy Offering (go figure) and Coag.

I'm also not sure why you say you use RaT over Hexproof - again, you just use both.

I'd love to use both give me two more bar slots lol you should know how precious bar space is on a Necro. You will never have every tool . Give up mobility, cc, some damage, or extra utility. My current favorite build on Necro doesn't have room for Hexproof or RAT, but it feels more like a Necromancer than anything else and performs well too bad it's dead next patch. Necro can't stay out of the basement for long ZOS gets too antsy.

We just a difference of opinion for the ranking of Resistant Flesh. With Evolving Runemend you can manipulate your resources from front to back bar and have Arc burst heal cost mag or stam, it generates crux, up to 9% cost reduction, and a HoT lots of value depending on the build, but Healing Soul could be better. I use Honor the Dead on Templar up to 20% stronger with partial cost refund again I think you guys are focused more on a group healer build than utility, for Warden the burst heal is Polar Wind you don't see duo Soothing Spore Wardens you see the twin tornado menaces.

Not that any of this matters with ZOS ignoring Necro concerns yet again and not just killing a unique playstyle this time, but a good chuck of its class skills in PvP I can already foresee my playtime scaling back a lot next patch. Vengeance test is the only thing to look forward to 1 week of good Cyrodiil PvP. Great job combat team putting Necromancer back in its place, if you're even aware of the effects that the PvP pet restriction had on corpse consumers. Communication is hard.