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Make Animate Blastbone not interact with the 5 pet/corpse limit
Dialectic93
✭✭
Hello everyone,
I appreciate all the ongoing balance work the ESO team has been putting into the Necromancer class and the pet mechanics overall. Having extensively tested the Necromancer on PTS, I wanted to propose a quality-of-life and balance adjustment that could significantly improve the gameplay experience and class identity of the Necromancer, particularly regarding the ultimate ability *Animate Blastbone*.
**Current Situation:**
As it stands, the *Animate Blastbone* ultimate counts towards the existing 5 pet/corpse limit that other Necromancer skills and summons respect. This limit is designed to prevent excessive summoned entities from crowding the battlefield and impacting performance and balance. However, this creates a problematic interaction for a number of reasons:
- *Animate Blastbone* is an iconic, high-impact ultimate which visually and functionally differs from standard pet summons and corpse reanimations.
- Consuming one of the precious 5 pet slots can prevent Necromancers from fully utilizing their other pets or summons without unintentionally breaking the limit.
- Players often feel restricted when trying to maximize their builds’ potential, forcing them to choose between maintaining the ultimate and having additional summons or pets.
**Why Should Animate Blastbone Not Count Towards the Limit?**
1. **Enhances Playstyle Fluidity:** Animate Blastbone is designed as a burst ultimate, meant to encourage aggressive and impactful engagements. Not counting it towards the pet limit would allow players to keep their usual summons active, enabling more consistent and strategic play.
2. **Preserves Class Fantasy & Identity:** The Necromancer’s theme revolves around commanding various undead entities, but the ultimate blastbone is distinct in its supernatural presence and high damage output. Treating it separately respects this distinction and enhances immersion.
3. **Balance Considerations:** Since Animate Blastbone has a long cooldown and requires Ultimate points, it already has natural constraints to prevent overuse. Allowing it to coexist with other pets without counting against the limit should not lead to exploitative stacking.
4. **Performance and Clarity:** Unlike permanent summons (e.g., Skeletal Mage or Spirit Guardian), the Blastbone ultimate is a temporary summon with a short duration and impactful burst damage. Excluding it from the pet cap can help streamline the limit’s purpose towards sustained summons rather than short-time ultimates.
**Potential Implementation Ideas:**
- Mark Animate Blastbone as an “Ultimate Summon” category excluded from the pet/corpse limit.
- Add a tooltip note clarifying that it does not reduce the available pet spawn count.
- Monitor performance and balance impacts through PTS feedback and telemetry before live implementation.
**Closing Remarks:**
I believe this change would unlock new build diversity and allow Necromancer players to better express their character’s unique necromantic mastery without feeling unnecessarily capped by the pet limit system. I welcome feedback from the community and the developers on this proposal and hope it can be considered for upcoming updates.
Thank you for your time and dedication to improving ESO!
Edited by Dialectic93 on 27 April 2025 15:37 I appreciate all the ongoing balance work the ESO team has been putting into the Necromancer class and the pet mechanics overall. Having extensively tested the Necromancer on PTS, I wanted to propose a quality-of-life and balance adjustment that could significantly improve the gameplay experience and class identity of the Necromancer, particularly regarding the ultimate ability *Animate Blastbone*.
**Current Situation:**
As it stands, the *Animate Blastbone* ultimate counts towards the existing 5 pet/corpse limit that other Necromancer skills and summons respect. This limit is designed to prevent excessive summoned entities from crowding the battlefield and impacting performance and balance. However, this creates a problematic interaction for a number of reasons:
- *Animate Blastbone* is an iconic, high-impact ultimate which visually and functionally differs from standard pet summons and corpse reanimations.
- Consuming one of the precious 5 pet slots can prevent Necromancers from fully utilizing their other pets or summons without unintentionally breaking the limit.
- Players often feel restricted when trying to maximize their builds’ potential, forcing them to choose between maintaining the ultimate and having additional summons or pets.
**Why Should Animate Blastbone Not Count Towards the Limit?**
1. **Enhances Playstyle Fluidity:** Animate Blastbone is designed as a burst ultimate, meant to encourage aggressive and impactful engagements. Not counting it towards the pet limit would allow players to keep their usual summons active, enabling more consistent and strategic play.
2. **Preserves Class Fantasy & Identity:** The Necromancer’s theme revolves around commanding various undead entities, but the ultimate blastbone is distinct in its supernatural presence and high damage output. Treating it separately respects this distinction and enhances immersion.
3. **Balance Considerations:** Since Animate Blastbone has a long cooldown and requires Ultimate points, it already has natural constraints to prevent overuse. Allowing it to coexist with other pets without counting against the limit should not lead to exploitative stacking.
4. **Performance and Clarity:** Unlike permanent summons (e.g., Skeletal Mage or Spirit Guardian), the Blastbone ultimate is a temporary summon with a short duration and impactful burst damage. Excluding it from the pet cap can help streamline the limit’s purpose towards sustained summons rather than short-time ultimates.
**Potential Implementation Ideas:**
- Mark Animate Blastbone as an “Ultimate Summon” category excluded from the pet/corpse limit.
- Add a tooltip note clarifying that it does not reduce the available pet spawn count.
- Monitor performance and balance impacts through PTS feedback and telemetry before live implementation.
**Closing Remarks:**
I believe this change would unlock new build diversity and allow Necromancer players to better express their character’s unique necromantic mastery without feeling unnecessarily capped by the pet limit system. I welcome feedback from the community and the developers on this proposal and hope it can be considered for upcoming updates.
Thank you for your time and dedication to improving ESO!
6
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Navaac223✭✭✭✭Northern storm : one of the best ults in the game, no counter if you have enough movement speed, awesome damage, aoe, additional effects for extra damage because why not ?
Animate blastbones : creates up to 4 blastbones but you need to stay in a small area for a long time to accumulate corpses and it only works if Masser and Secunda are aligned then add a coinflip for each blastbone to see if they actually focus one target and land before getting stunned or just stuck on a pebble. If the enemy has more than one braincell, they can see the obvious blastbones spawning and counter your 320 ult crippling investment by pressing right click, all for a fraction of the damage of northern storm in the best case scenario
It would be nice if what you suggested was done but it would only make this ult function : it needs a huge buff to make it usable. We're here begging for scraps while other classes get 10x the results for way less effortEdited by Navaac223 on 27 April 2025 21:365 -
YandereGirlfriend✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭Northern storm : one of the best ults in the game, no counter if you have enough movement speed, awesome damage, aoe, additional effects for extra damage because why not ?
Animate blastbones : creates up to 4 blastbones but you need to stay in a small area for a long time to accumulate corpses and it only works if Masser and Secunda are aligned then add a coinflip for each blastbone to see if they actually focus one target and land before getting stunned or just stuck on a pebble. If the enemy has more than one braincell, they can see the obvious blastbones spawning and counter your 320 ult crippling investment by pressing right click, all for a fraction of the damage of northern storm in the best case scenario
It would be nice if what you suggested was done but it would only make this ult function : it needs a huge buff to make it usable. We're here begging for scraps while other classes get 10x the results for way less effort
Probably a lot of options that you try for re-works of this abysmal ultimate but the lowest effort would be to just drop the player Rez component entirely and then drop the price to something like 200 ultimate. Maybe tack on Major Berserk or something for 10 seconds as well or apply like a 70% Snare to the area of the ground that you cast it over to help keep targets in place.2 -
tsaescishoeshiner✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭Maybe ignorant question, but which content is Animate Blastbones used in? It seems like the skill in general just needs a rework, since it's not really a full damage ult.
Maybe the blastbones portion could be switched to one of the Colossus morphs (if used above X ult, consume corpses for blastbones), and this morph could get a healing bonus, or a passive buff so that you're not just sitting on it wasting bar space.PC-NA
in-game: @tsaescishoeshiner0 -
CameraBeardThePirate✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »Maybe ignorant question, but which content is Animate Blastbones used in? It seems like the skill in general just needs a rework, since it's not really a full damage ult.
Maybe the blastbones portion could be switched to one of the Colossus morphs (if used above X ult, consume corpses for blastbones), and this morph could get a healing bonus, or a passive buff so that you're not just sitting on it wasting bar space.
Animate Blastbones is a true damage ultimate. A common misconception is that you need to revive a teammate to summon the Blastbones, but that's false; you only need to consume 3 corpses. The revive is just a nice thing in the rare circumstances that it comes up.
It's used in PvP in niche builds, because while it's not "meta" by any means, it's extremely fun to use and if it works right, it's the hardest hitting ultimate in the game (and it's not particularly close).
Edited by CameraBeardThePirate on 28 April 2025 22:342 -
YandereGirlfriend✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »Maybe ignorant question, but which content is Animate Blastbones used in? It seems like the skill in general just needs a rework, since it's not really a full damage ult.
Maybe the blastbones portion could be switched to one of the Colossus morphs (if used above X ult, consume corpses for blastbones), and this morph could get a healing bonus, or a passive buff so that you're not just sitting on it wasting bar space.
Animate Blastbones is a true damage ultimate. A common misconception is that you need to revive a teammate to summon the Blastbones, but that's false; you only need to consume 3 corpses. The revive is just a nice thing in the rare circumstances that it comes up.
It's used in PvP in niche builds, because while it's not "meta" by any means, it's extremely fun to use and if it works right, it's the hardest hitting ultimate in the game (and it's not particularly close).
Unfortunately, the revive is just dead weight though and a hindrance the ult as a whole because it takes up a HUGE amount of spreadsheet "power budget" that the devs have allocated for the ult (hence the insane cost).
Remove the revive and you free up a bunch of "power budget" to spend in different ways.4 -
StarOfElyon✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭YandereGirlfriend wrote: »Northern storm : one of the best ults in the game, no counter if you have enough movement speed, awesome damage, aoe, additional effects for extra damage because why not ?
Animate blastbones : creates up to 4 blastbones but you need to stay in a small area for a long time to accumulate corpses and it only works if Masser and Secunda are aligned then add a coinflip for each blastbone to see if they actually focus one target and land before getting stunned or just stuck on a pebble. If the enemy has more than one braincell, they can see the obvious blastbones spawning and counter your 320 ult crippling investment by pressing right click, all for a fraction of the damage of northern storm in the best case scenario
It would be nice if what you suggested was done but it would only make this ult function : it needs a huge buff to make it usable. We're here begging for scraps while other classes get 10x the results for way less effort
Probably a lot of options that you try for re-works of this abysmal ultimate but the lowest effort would be to just drop the player Rez component entirely and then drop the price to something like 200 ultimate. Maybe tack on Major Berserk or something for 10 seconds as well or apply like a 70% Snare to the area of the ground that you cast it over to help keep targets in place.
I once suggested dropping the resurrection ability from this morph and dropping the cost down as well. I would love that.2 -
Dialectic93✭✭tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »Maybe ignorant question, but which content is Animate Blastbones used in? It seems like the skill in general just needs a rework, since it's not really a full damage ult.
Maybe the blastbones portion could be switched to one of the Colossus morphs (if used above X ult, consume corpses for blastbones), and this morph could get a healing bonus, or a passive buff so that you're not just sitting on it wasting bar space.
You have no idea how powerfull a necromancer in imperial city can be with the Animate Blastbones, it's literally the only meta spec that can tank and throw 200k dmg in a combo. The problem is you need Batman level of prep time, and ZoS completelly deleted it from pvp this patch, it's not even working as it's supposed to be, it consumes the 3 corpses then adds 3 pets and the corpse/pet tracker doesn't summon em, so even if done correctly, it glitches out and won't happen.Edited by Dialectic93 on 29 April 2025 11:121 -
Dialectic93✭✭Northern storm : one of the best ults in the game, no counter if you have enough movement speed, awesome damage, aoe, additional effects for extra damage because why not ?
Animate blastbones : creates up to 4 blastbones but you need to stay in a small area for a long time to accumulate corpses and it only works if Masser and Secunda are aligned then add a coinflip for each blastbone to see if they actually focus one target and land before getting stunned or just stuck on a pebble. If the enemy has more than one braincell, they can see the obvious blastbones spawning and counter your 320 ult crippling investment by pressing right click, all for a fraction of the damage of northern storm in the best case scenario
It would be nice if what you suggested was done but it would only make this ult function : it needs a huge buff to make it usable. We're here begging for scraps while other classes get 10x the results for way less effort
I do not mind the insane prep time for Blastbones, i just want my 4 skeletal combo to work and not glitch out. It feels like playing a game in the beta now, you throw a ult and nothing happens.2 -
jaws343✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭Has anyone tested the Pet limit in IA?
I was in there the other day, and just with IA pets, you can have 2 permanent ones (3 with the companion), and additional temporary ones. So, with either Sorc or Necro, you are at the limit with only what you have in your class kit.1 -
Navaac223✭✭✭✭Has anyone tested the Pet limit in IA?
I was in there the other day, and just with IA pets, you can have 2 permanent ones (3 with the companion), and additional temporary ones. So, with either Sorc or Necro, you are at the limit with only what you have in your class kit.
If I read the notes well, the cap for pve is 10 while the cap in pvp is 5. We're only talking about the effects of this in pvp0 -
randconfig✭✭✭✭✭YandereGirlfriend wrote: »CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »Maybe ignorant question, but which content is Animate Blastbones used in? It seems like the skill in general just needs a rework, since it's not really a full damage ult.
Maybe the blastbones portion could be switched to one of the Colossus morphs (if used above X ult, consume corpses for blastbones), and this morph could get a healing bonus, or a passive buff so that you're not just sitting on it wasting bar space.
Animate Blastbones is a true damage ultimate. A common misconception is that you need to revive a teammate to summon the Blastbones, but that's false; you only need to consume 3 corpses. The revive is just a nice thing in the rare circumstances that it comes up.
It's used in PvP in niche builds, because while it's not "meta" by any means, it's extremely fun to use and if it works right, it's the hardest hitting ultimate in the game (and it's not particularly close).
Unfortunately, the revive is just dead weight though and a hindrance the ult as a whole because it takes up a HUGE amount of spreadsheet "power budget" that the devs have allocated for the ult (hence the insane cost).
Remove the revive and you free up a bunch of "power budget" to spend in different ways.
Agreed, I've been begging for this change to Reanimate Blastbones. It would be perfect if they would just do a few things: remove the revive allies, reduce the cost significantly, increase the duration of the spawned blastbones so they don't immediately despawn in out of combat situations, and make the blastbones not interact with the corpse limit.0