How is the Necromancer class nowadays?

WoWpackform · September 14

Lately, I keep hearing the term "nerfomancer" from few in the community. Is the class truly the weakest of all classes now? It was really good when it came out in 2019.

propertyOfUndefined · September 14

It's improved slightly since the last patch, but it still lags behind other classes.

Many of its core strengths have been significantly nerfed — Major Protection, Major Defile, Major Vulnerability, Harmony + self-activated synergy, to name a few.

Meanwhile, other classes have been consistently receiving buffs, leaving Necromancer in a position where it won’t be able to compete at the same level without a major overhaul, imho.

StarOfElyon · September 14

WoWpackform wrote: »

Lately, I keep hearing the term "nerfomancer" from few in the community. Is the class truly the weakest of all classes now? It was really good when it came out in 2019.

It still remains difficult to work with, ESPECIALLY using the class skills.

Navaac223 · September 14

For pve : terrible animation for the spammable (if you choose to use it). Only stamcro DDs are viable but, as always, you will get outparsed by a 3 button rotation stamarc. Necrotanks are great and healers are above average.

For pvp : not even playable. No reliable stun, short cooldowns, crowded bar space, lacking ults, no reliable way to use corpses, skeletal archer is still outclassed by rally and degeneration (unless you're in a 1v1), stalking blastbones is gone...

loosej · September 14

There's been a significant amount of changes, a lot of them good, but they all feel very random.

I have a couple of necromancers but don't play them a lot, but I try to get every character at least rank 1 alliance war every month. First time logging in I had no idea what the changes were, and after reading a couple of paragraphs of skill descriptions I gave up and just slotted a bunch of weapon/guild/alliance skills. I'll get around to doing it proper at some point, but I'll have to be in a patient mood to go over every change.

Building an actual rotation on necro has always felt like a challenge, and there have been enough changes that I basically have to start that process all over again. It also feels like the changes are still a work in progress, and I don't really trust that the setup I would come up with now would still work after the next patch. But I am glad to see that they're at least trying to work on the class.

I was expecting the nightblade skills being moved around between trees to be more of an adjustment, but those changes made sense. After 5 minutes I understood what they were and how they affected my build, and that was it.

Zodiarkslayer · September 14

I play a MagCro as a Heavy Attack Healer in SOLO environment.
Its fun and both the healing and the damage are quite good, but I jump a lot of loopholes to get there.
And frankly, this build doesn't feel like it is a "Real Necromancer".

StamCro is still good, but compare it to others and you'll ask yourself: why bother with all that complicated stuff?

You know what would make Necro awesome in ESO? A Death Beam! 😂

Sockermannen · September 15

Still behind in DPS, though not by far. If you want to run necro DPS for PvE you’ll likely get stuck in EC/spaulder prison.

They are still top tier tanks and can be both off and main tank depending on the fight.

Healer is good but not top tier, they are better for fights with alot of adds for you to eat so that you can use colo more often. They also have aoe major cowardice and vuln in their kit nowdays so that’s nice.

Renato90085 · September 15

If you mean is PvP:Yes ,necro is weakest class in PvP
If you mean is PvE:No,necro alway T0-T1 just bad in dungreon and difficult
The PvE weakest is stam warden and NB these two years

tsaescishoeshiner · September 16

My mag necro feels the same as several years ago, and can do all the same veteran content I was doing before. Other than using stam blastbones now, and a solid list of QoL improvements across each skill line, it's about the same.

What's changed for necro DPS is that they bring fewer unique buffs to optimized groups, and the other classes just do better in a lot of situations.

The minority who says you can't use necro in trials or have to run support sets aren't talking about regular trial groups, who mainly check for DPS in my experience (I've seen 90-100k trial dummy parse requirements for good groups, which is doable on necro). It's different for hardmodes and trifectas, of course, and like every patch, your options in those groups will just depend on the group.

You'll still offer a lot to a vet dungeon or trial group and can perform your role, and Arcanists might even appreciate your Colossus in portals/execute.

So to me, none of this has made necros unviable if you like the class and want to do well with it. Blastbones is the only thing that feels different. But necros could use buffs and improvements to keep up with the other classes.

Justosay · September 16

All classes have the same set of skills (but under different names): direct damage, DoT, crowd control, resource regeneration, protection, healing. Most of these skills have their own duplicates in the skills available to each class and in gear sets.
So, there is no "weakest" class in the game (when it comes to PVE content, because I do not understand the desire to kill other players and tell mom and dad at the dinner table that you killed them for an achievement), there are mainly builds that suit the game encounters (groups and bosses) and the game mechanics.
Thus, Necro is not the best or the worst. Just cook it right

Aggrovious · September 16

Necromancer was my first class when I started ESO. It has fallen so far from its former glory. A good Necromancer build has little to no Necro class skills and that is really bad. It all started when ZOS nerfed Rapid Rot's passive. The class just does not feel good to play and that is a huge design issue.

They're plenty of ways to make this class better. They need to rework almost all of their skills.
WE SHOULD BE ABLE TO SUMMON AN UNDEAD ARMY OF MINIONS BECAUSE WE RAISED THEM FROM THE DEAD
If you look at GW2, you can have several minions out that don't expire, say 2 maximum. We can even look at Diablo 4 in how they blow up their corpses. Lots of existing mechanics for this class in other games that ZOS needs to seriously consider because this class NEEDS a complete rework.

MindOfTheSwarm · September 24

Necromancer needs a few tweaks. A big issue is that it has too many different elemental damage types. Personally, I would ditch Magic Damage completely and just stick with Flame, Shock and Frost. Then I’d go Disease and Bleed only for Stamina.

I would do the following alongside the above suggestions.

1. Make a morph of Graveyard deal Disease Damage and consume a corpse to summon a zombie that lasts until killed or dies. The zombie would deal Disease Damage and have a high chance to Defile enemies.

2. Change the Skeletal Archer to Bleed with increased damage vs Haemorrhaging targets.

3. Change Venom Skull to Festering Skull with guaranteed Disease Status on hit and increased damage vs Defiled targets to make up for its poor animation and speed.

4. Change the Siphon skill to target enemies directly instead of targeting a corpse. Making it more usable and better for PvP and mobile encounters. Consumes a nearby corpse to significantly increase its chance of applying its respective status effect.

5. Bone Totem would be ranged at base. Both morphs would deal damage per pulse. Flame and Disease. Both totems would empower your minions while active.

6. Empowering Grasp needs to go and be replaced. Upcoming Frost change isn’t bad, I would make one morph Disease based.

7. Make one morph of Spirit Guardian directly damage enemies with Frost Damage, but it heals you or a nearby ally for the damage dealt. Less healing than the dedicated healing morph.

8. Restoring Tether directly targets allies. Consumes a nearby corpse to empower it.

9. Swap the damage types of Shocking Siphon and Frost Goliath Ultimates. The Shock Morph would apply Off Balance with first hit and stun with the second hit.

That’s a lot of things I would change but that’s my opinion.