State of Necromancer

necro_the_crafter · September 23

Guys remember times when blastbones was biggest necromancer issue? How people would complain on how unreliable it is?

Well, while it still is, its fun how it come all the way from 'require rework' to 'last class defining skill'. And its clearly shows a state of the class and people playing it. When most notoriusly unreliable ability becomes most defended skill, I think its a reason to listen to your community for once.

Im gonna be short:

1. Blastbones still has issues of becoming inactive for all its duration due to being cc'd, kited, negated, having general pathing or targeting issues, and then its just dies, deals no damage and doesnt even refunds its cost. Congrats you just spend yours stamina to look at half-spoiled bones taking a stroll. But it also have a big positive side to cover for its issues - big undodgable AoE Burst.

2. GLS inherited all the previous issues, but removed its most important aspect - AoE Burst, without it class feels incomplete.
Yea, yea, you have some of it back on skulls, but skulls have slow projectile speed that is extremly easy to dodge, and require a setup, you have cast 2 necros abilities for venom skull, or 2 flaming skulls to even have a chance at procing AoE damage (that is less then BB). Extreamly easy to predict as well if you can count up to 3, and if you failed to do so, skull travel speed still gives you a lot of time to dodge. So yea, ability is clearly unfinished, and in dire need of more numbers tweaking stuff added to it. Even if % buff would decrease, I and many would like to see it doing something more than plain damage buff.

3. Ghostly embrace is broken on live as it ignores % damage modifiers as well as enemy mitigation. It says 3k damage per patch and it deals same damage. Even in pvp. Even to targets that block. Even is it crits. Its always same damage as tooltip states, no matter what. And on pts people states its still broken. How little people play necromancer or use embrace that its went under the radar for a whole patch and wasnt adressed in this pts cycle. And the fact that even if it fixed people would hate to use it, for its positioning requirment and slow travel speed.

So yeah, one ability hasnt been fixed from release, other is half-coocked year-long undergoing rework, and new one isnt following games rules, on top of being clunky to utilise.

CameraBeardThePirate · September 23

At least give Blighted back a portion of the Stalking modifier.

The Stalking modifier offset the unreliability of Blastbones. Instead of completely losing DPS if Blastbones freaked out, you were at least making up for some of that DPS loss in burst damage.

The rest of their kit is still incredibly clunky. I thought with the positive Deaden Pain change last year that they might have actually started to understand why corpse consumption sucked so much, but it seems they didn't.

In short, corpse consumers need to be worth using in mobile environments. Right now, the only one that is worth using is Deaden Pain, because of the long (and more importantly, sticky) duration or upfront benefit (for the Potency morph).

Grave Grasp needs a complete overhaul. It boggles my mind that they think slapping on some damage on this thing will make it good when the ability feels like hot garbage. Seriously, this thing feels like it belongs in a completely different game. It's clunky, slow, hard to aim, and costs a ridiculous amount of mag.

GLS is also still awful. There's simply no reason to use it when Blastbones gives so much more damage, even on a full DoT setup.

necro_the_crafter · September 23

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

At least give Blighted back a portion of the Stalking modifier.

The Stalking modifier offset the unreliability of Blastbones. Instead of completely losing DPS if Blastbones freaked out, you were at least making up for some of that DPS loss in burst damage.

The rest of their kit is still incredibly clunky. I thought with the positive Deaden Pain change last year that they might have actually started to understand why corpse consumption sucked so much, but it seems they didn't.

In short, corpse consumers need to be worth using in mobile environments. Right now, the only one that is worth using is Deaden Pain, because of the long (and more importantly, sticky) duration or upfront benefit (for the Potency morph).

Grave Grasp needs a complete overhaul. It boggles my mind that they think slapping on some damage on this thing will make it good when the ability feels like hot garbage. Seriously, this thing feels like it belongs in a completely different game. It's clunky, slow, hard to aim, and costs a ridiculous amount of mag.

GLS is also still awful. There's simply no reason to use it when Blastbones gives so much more damage, even on a full DoT setup.

They could actually make a burst corpse-spender instead of GLS, and that could synergise with new ghostly embrase corpse generation (if ghostly embrace was good actually) and instead we got seemengly random reworks with no trace of forethought.

At least they did an easy part slapping brutality/sorsery and svagery/prophesy on skills necros used in pve allowing for tri-stat pots. And yeah this changes where called for since u35. We have to wait until u55 it seems, until they finally will put together a decent rework of skills thats is barely usable outside of dummy parsing.

And ZoS reasoning lol, making ghostly enbrace be good SITUATIONALLY while other classes get a skill reworked or significantly buffed because it was good only SITUATIONALLY (same condition, same reasoning) like DK chains, nbs healthy offering, templars bubble, etc...

At least rn in its broken state ghostly embrace can potentially hit a 9k-12k damage total if you have your target backed against a wall, as well as rooting and stunning it, and that damage is oblivion basicly since it goes through block and doesnt benefit from crit damage. If they gonna fix it next patch it will be 3-5k damage total from all three circles in pvp with 1-3k dot, and without any utility. All while other classes have much easyier time hitting same aoe-cc-dot like arctic blast/burning talons/ blazing spears. All of them still retain their utility while having both burst, dot and cc element. Except for necros because someone has to populate F tier I guess.

BasP · September 23

necro_the_crafter wrote: »

3. Ghostly embrace is broken on live as it ignores % damage modifiers as well as enemy mitigation. It says 3k damage per patch and it deals same damage. Even in pvp. Even to targets that block. Even is it crits. Its always same damage as tooltip states, no matter what. And on pts people states its still broken.

Hm, when I tried the skill on the PTS the damage worked for me (in PvE at least).

Truth be told, for Pve I'd probably use the skill as a semi-spammable on my Magcro with the current animation if every patch would apply the (non-stackable) DOT and the damage was increased a bit. I can image that it's a lot more clunky to use in PvP, though (... which seems to be a recurring thing with Necromancers).

Regarding Blighted Blastbones, I definitely agree that it should get some of Stalking's modifier to make up for the unreliability of the skill, as CameraBeardThePirate said.

Aldoss · September 23

BasP wrote: »

Hm, when I tried the skill on the PTS the damage worked for me (in PvE at least).

I think you missed the "on live" qualifier. I was hit in a BG the other day for 12k by the current ghostly embrace because of the bug. I dodge rolled backward and got hit by all 3 patches for ~4k each. If ghostly embrace were working as intended, that would be that the person had an 8k+ tooltip on the skill, which just simply isn't possible.

madman65 · September 23

The devs got rid of Blastbones because of the Scholarium scripts that were in the future but now out. Just think of how much damage a Blastbones would make if the previous skill was Ulfsild`s Contingency. Gamers would be screaming in PVP that it would is to powerful so the devs changes Blastbones, then let everyone cool down about the change. Then they release the Scholarium to us, I believe that`s what they had in mind.

StarOfElyon · September 23

It would be incredibly hard/not worth it to time Blastbones with Contingency. But with Dawnbreakers? That's pretty common and more damaging.

CameraBeardThePirate · September 23

madman65 wrote: »

The devs got rid of Blastbones because of the Scholarium scripts that were in the future but now out. Just think of how much damage a Blastbones would make if the previous skill was Ulfsild`s Contingency. Gamers would be screaming in PVP that it would is to powerful so the devs changes Blastbones, then let everyone cool down about the change. Then they release the Scholarium to us, I believe that`s what they had in mind.

This is pretty off-base. Contingency + Shalks, Merciless, DB, Colo, or Frags all hit harder than Blastbones with Contingency.

IncultaWolf · September 23

madman65 wrote: »

The devs got rid of Blastbones because of the Scholarium scripts that were in the future but now out. Just think of how much damage a Blastbones would make if the previous skill was Ulfsild`s Contingency. Gamers would be screaming in PVP that it would is to powerful so the devs changes Blastbones, then let everyone cool down about the change. Then they release the Scholarium to us, I believe that`s what they had in mind.

Possible. I use to hit 17k blastbones on players because of the 50% stalking modifier, 13% flame damage taken since everyone was running stage 3 vamp, unleashed ritualist, and stacking crit damage on khajiit. Was also before rallying cry was released, so everyone took much more crit damage.

necro_the_crafter · September 24

IncultaWolf wrote: »

Possible. I use to hit 17k blastbones on players because of the 50% stalking modifier, 13% flame damage taken since everyone was running stage 3 vamp, unleashed ritualist, and stacking crit damage on khajiit. Was also before rallying cry was released, so everyone took much more crit damage.

Yeah had my stalking crit for a huge nubers as well, but it was extreamly rare and a consunquence of ability malfunction. It was super rare for me when stalking would find its target with max modifier, more often it got killed, or timed out.

madman65 wrote: »

The devs got rid of Blastbones because of the Scholarium scripts that were in the future but now out. Just think of how much damage a Blastbones would make if the previous skill was Ulfsild`s Contingency. Gamers would be screaming in PVP that it would is to powerful so the devs changes Blastbones, then let everyone cool down about the change. Then they release the Scholarium to us, I believe that`s what they had in mind.

Yea, think abuot contigensy with incap, soul shred, curse and shards, stacked up whip or ferocious flight. Yea crazy right. ZoS absolutly have to nerf them, right? [kidding]

In fact all of srcibing skills are much simplier and more reliable to use, and most of the time more efficient than necros class kit. So easy answer would be - just skribe yourself a wield soul if you hate skulls or scribe soulburst to deal frost damage + create corpse + apply snare and it will be more effective and easier to use then grave grasp. And now we run ito issue that is present all throughout necros theorycrafting - any build you can put on necro will work better on litteraly any other class (ouside of class sets that other dont have alternatives to, but necros class sets actualy gives necro utility that should have been in their class kit from the start).

This changes are nonsensical. Why make a GLS to simplify necros, and proceed with slapping damage on gravegrasp, ability that require intermediate positioning skills and trained muscle memory, and its actualy doesnt payoff after you learned it. Can you guys name of the top off your head at what range you have to stay to hit both first and second circle to proc chill and DoT? Or to hit second and third to proc DoT and Corpse? Me neither.

At least as it is on live, if you managed to hit second circle it roots enemy in place which helps third circle connect. As well as if hit first its slows and helps second to connect. And its still pretty hard to hit 2/3 circles, most of the time im hitting one or none. Its clear to me as day, if the ability is to be used, it has to be much more reliable. At least all three circles should appear at the same time if you want to remove cc from it. There is no point of second and third to be delayed without its current utility.

Also, arent we using spreadsheet balancing anymore? If DK's talons can have root+damage+dot+synergy, Templar's spears can have root+damage+dot+synergy, Warden's arctic blast can have damage or heal + dot + unblockable stun, than it would be fair to keep at least root on this ability OR make gravegrasp faster and more convinient, and make fear totem fear on impact and after 6 sec + damage on impact + dot stick to feared targets + synergy.

taugrim · September 24

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

In short, corpse consumers need to be worth using in mobile environments. Right now, the only one that is worth using is Deaden Pain, because of the long (and more importantly, sticky) duration or upfront benefit (for the Potency morph).

Anything that accumulate on the ground in fixed locations as a class mechanic is fundamentally flawed in PVP and is even limiting in PVE given the mobility needed in some fights.

Grim Focus builds on the NB.
Crux builds on the Arcanist.

These are infinitely more usable and reliable, because you always have them on you, no matter where the fight goes.

Until ZoS ditches the corpse mechanic, Necro will struggle for relevancy in PVP.

The issue is magnified by ZoS designing itemization and Scribing around corpses. It. Just. Doesn't. Work.

I've never seen such a clunky class mechanic for any class in a modern (last 15 years) MMORPG.