“What’s on the Slab?”—Necromancer After PTS 11.0.4

sans-culottes · May 13

After four PTS patches in the 11.x cycle, the Necromancer class remains a study in contradiction: high mechanical complexity, low return on investment, and a steady trickle of changes that reduce performance while leaving structural issues intact.

Let’s be clear about what has happened across this and previous cycles:
• Blastbones was renamed Sacrificial Bones, and its morph Stalking Blastbones became Grave Lord’s Sacrifice. Yet the morph still appears under its old name in-game, and the core identity of the ability—arguably the only reliable burst skill in the kit—was replaced with a delayed 15% damage buff. What was once the class’s most distinct and effective tool is now an indirect bonus tacked onto other skills.
• Corpse durations were reduced across the board, from 10 to 5 seconds in many cases. The justification was performance: fewer persistent corpses means fewer calculations. But the result is that multi-corpse skills like Enduring Undeath, Animate Blastbones, and Deaden Pain now fail regularly in real content, especially PvP. The class’s signature mechanic—corpse management—is collapsing under its own restrictions.
• Necro passives like Death Knell and Reusable Parts received tweaks, but none restore the viability or fantasy the class once hinted at. Instead, these changes highlight how fractured the skill lines have become, especially in the wake of subclassing, where hybridization has erased the original design logic.

And still, core issues remain untouched. Corpse consumption fails in combat. Goliath is a bash bot. Grave Lord has one viable damage tool. Bone Tyrant is a relic. And all of it is propped up by tooltip promises that no longer match reality.

Players have pointed this out for years. Feedback threads have catalogued it in detail: persistent bugs, missing functionality, conflicting passives, inconsistent corpse behavior, visual bloat without payoff. Each patch cycle, the class is either ignored or passively nerfed, while other classes receive thematic overhauls or dev engagement. The few changes we do receive are framed as “optimizations,” which is a polite way of saying limitations.

We asked what subclassing would mean for a class built around consumable terrain elements. The answer appears to be: reduce the terrain elements. Delete the skill that works. Tell players they can always slot something else.

And what do we get in response? Silence. No comment from @ZOS_Kevin, no roadmap, no design philosophy. Just a patch notes, a renamed morph, and five seconds before the corpse fades.

So again: come up to the lab. See what’s on the slab. What was once a class has become a salvage yard. Bits repurposed for other systems, mechanics diluted for easier parsing, and a playstyle that used to be distinct now struggling to keep a corpse on the field long enough to do anything with it.

Subclassing was supposed to be liberation. For Necromancers, it’s just another autopsy.

cptscotty · May 13

You even mention blastbones in a discord and its like setting off a bomb. People are very unhappy with Necromancers.

Elvenheart · May 13

This is just my personal opinion, but I’ve always thought they never got necromancers right. You have npc necromancers in the game that can raise armies of persistent skeletons that stay animated until you kill them, but our little measly necromancer doesn’t have enough power to keep one or two skeletons animated for less than a minute.

CameraBeardThePirate · May 13

The corpse changes killing 4 abilities in PvP next patch is really insane.

The devs pushed a performance change that severely nerfs 3 abilities, and makes the Animate Blastbones ult non-functional in PvP, and despite feedback each week of the PTS in both the dedicated feedback post and in standalone posts, as well as multiple pings, the dev team is chugging right ahead.

@ZOS_Kevin This "performance change" broke one of Necromancer's ultimates in PvP and we've received nothing but silence. I thought the team was trying to do better at communication, but clearly that isn't the case.

madman65 · May 13

Elvenheart wrote: »

This is just my personal opinion, but I’ve always thought they never got necromancers right. You have npc necromancers in the game that can raise armies of persistent skeletons that stay animated until you kill them, but our little measly necromancer doesn’t have enough power to keep one or two skeletons animated for less than a minute.[/quote

ESO has been struggling with server performance, I think that they have tried this approach and found the animation was to taxing on the server. I would like to see the Blast Bones come back but I have went with a Damage Done Build and i`m happy with it.

Credible_Joe · May 13

I main necro, and never felt particularly bothered by the past changes. Others' frustrations and criticisms are valid, and I recognize that Necro isn't in a competitive spot as far as PvE goes, but I've had a lot of success in PvP. I don't chase META, and throughout all of the past patches that have had negative sentiment, for the most part, I barely remember what the controversy was about.

That being said, Necro does feel fairly neglected at this point, even from my perspective. Animate Blastbones has always been temperamental at best; even without the reduced cap on pets, during fights where lots of corpses are present, all four blastbones would frequently fail to spawn.

In fact, counting corpses and blastbones as pets at all feels pretty obtuse. Corpses are resources, and blastbones works effectively the same way as Daedric Curse or Magicka Detonation, and should not occupy the same design slot as things like summons (both permanent and temporary), and companions (companions being considered pets was very surprising to me).

Corpses should be treated like Crux for arcanists. Every recent corpse could advances a counter separate from the pet global count which can be consumed the same way it's designed presently, barely making any adjustments. This would eliminate pain points Necros in particular are going to feel when the pet cap gets halved, even if Blastbones remains qualified as a pet.

A bunch of other adjustments could be made for Necro to address a lot of damage / role discrepancies, but without committing to a full tangent, I would start with the corpse == crux solution.

francesinhalover · May 13

But i like grave lords sacrifice! makes my necro look awesome

it just needs buffs.

I always disliked blastbones. I don't like my dps to be bad because i have to use blastbones every 2/3 skills. And i like looking good

I want a simple rotation like i have with arcanist.

i love the necromancer theme. It was my main before arcanist and i struggle a lot with necro's dps due to blastbones.

So no. i don't want blastbones 2.0 on the other morph, i don't want to be forced to use that awfull skill.

ragnarok6644b14_ESO · May 13

I think Necro is just conceptually wonky. The "cool mechanic" (corpse consumption) is a great idea, but the implementation leaves a bit to be desired.

I would combine weak but killy (but otherwise permanent) pets with corpses and have Petless Necro not have to interact with corpses at all - partly because "Petless Necro" doesn't really have any meaning (nor should it).

But that's my opinion, man.

cptscotty · May 13

Whatever you do...dont play a necromancer in a game like Diablo where corpses are the resource...no need making yourself upset

moderatelyfatman · May 14

It may have been better if they never named the class Necromancer but tried something else like Revenant.
At least with Warden they didn't call it ranger so there weren't any expectations that it was going to be an archer or mobile melee style character with a pet instead of an Ice wielding magic user.

sans-culottes · May 14

It’s been just a day since this thread gained traction, and the feedback has been clear: players across content types—PvP, PvE, casual, competitive—are expressing variations of the same thing. Necromancer is conceptually incoherent, functionally restricted, and visibly deteriorating with each patch. From PvP viability to visual fantasy, from pet limits to corpse behavior, the class is collapsing under accumulated workaround.

And the silence from ZOS is as consistent as the feedback.

@ZOS_Kevin, at what point does the team acknowledge that the problems raised here aren’t minor? When a “performance optimization” disables one of a class’s ultimates in PvP and the only response is patch notes, that isn’t communication. That’s abandonment. You said communication was a priority. That requires more than a changelog.

What players are describing—across multiple posts—isn’t balance quibbling. It’s structural erosion. Core class mechanics don’t function. Iconic abilities are either broken or rebranded into irrelevance. The class fantasy has narrowed to a single viable build path, and even that is increasingly undercut by hybridization logic that works against the original design.

Necromancer isn’t underpowered. It’s structurally unsupported. And no amount of vague subclassing synergy will fix that without deliberate, class-specific attention. We’ve offered feedback. We’ve given details. We’ve waited through four PTS cycles. The next step is yours.

And right now, all we hear is five seconds of silence before the corpse fades.

CAB_Life · May 14

Why do sorcerers have permanent pets? Why does every garden variety one-tap garbage NPC necromancer hang around with a cadre of permanent skeletons and zombies in the game world? This has never been explained and does not make coherent sense in the context of ESO itself. Even with some creative fanfiction and suggesting that we are good necromancers who don’t want to permanently enslave people souls, the guards and NPCs seem to disagree and attack us nonetheless.

I understand the need to feel as if you’re doing something different. But different for the sake of different is often just obtuse and creating a square wheel so to speak. The necromancer has had significant structural and core issues since it launched – massive irregularities between player and thematic expectation and execution. Just like all of the individual skill lines should have been enormously overhauled before this multi classing experiment, necromancer should have too, and remains the most egregious example of this oversight.

ajkb78 · May 14

madman65 wrote: »

Elvenheart wrote: »

This is just my personal opinion, but I’ve always thought they never got necromancers right. You have npc necromancers in the game that can raise armies of persistent skeletons that stay animated until you kill them, but our little measly necromancer doesn’t have enough power to keep one or two skeletons animated for less than a minute.[/quote

I know, right? I guess you can justify it to an extent that these NPC necromancers are using powerful foci or taking a great deal of time to prepare their undead armies, but it always felt to me like blastbones should have functioned more like shalks or haunting curse - at least 2 skeletons per cast, so it feels more like you're launching a stream of undead against your enemies. And why couldn't there have been a zombie related skill somewhere? Skeletons, check; bone colossi, check; we even get to raise flesh colossi, but no hint of a zombie even as a stamina morph of something where it would have tied in perfectly with a disease / poison theme.

I used to play my necro quite a lot: originally they really felt essential in a PVE group with being the only source of major vulnerability, but that can be got in so many ways now and it doesn't really feel like there's anything indispensible that necros are offering. But at least a thematic revamp of the skills would help, because right now even from a non meta perspective they just don't feel good to play. They don't feel powerful. They feel more like that NPC necromancer I've-forgotten-where who is trying to reanimate a pretty lowly beast and gets chased off when it tries to bite him on the bum.

kojou · May 14

If I could influence ZOS to change Blastbones, then I would want it to work more like the skill in Infinite Archive when you get the lich transformation.You cast it as a circle on the ground and 3 skeletons rise up from it. They don’t have to be particularly strong (they can fit in the power budget of a typical ground DoT) and the skill would have a cost per second kind of like Ash Cloud (DK skill) and they would last until you run out of magicka instead of a timer. Maybe you could also have them explode after 3 seconds on recast for some burst potential…

I’m sure there would have to be some tuning, but conceptually this would be what I would want, as one of the things I hate about using Necromancer is waiting for Blast Bones to detonate when it gets confused, and throwing off the timing. Having the skill always do something when I press it, would be much preferred over having the skill blacked out because the skeleton is still standing there.

As for corpses, they just need to tune the amount of corpses and the duration they remain, until it becomes usable without hurting server performance. I don’t know what the numbers are, but it sounds like they haven’t found the sweet spot yet.

Veinblood1965 · May 14

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

I think Necro is just conceptually wonky. The "cool mechanic" (corpse consumption) is a great idea, but the implementation leaves a bit to be desired.

I would combine weak but killy (but otherwise permanent) pets with corpses and have Petless Necro not have to interact with corpses at all - partly because "Petless Necro" doesn't really have any meaning (nor should it).

But that's my opinion, man.

Agreed. Necro is the only class I have not leveled to 50 in many years of playing. I made it to level 36 and the skills just feel clunky. It needs some rework.

Deimus · May 14

The blatant ignoring of all the Necromancer feedback this PTS has soured any excitement I did have for subclassing. The only way they will acknowledge this is if it becomes too controversial which could happen after the patch goes live and all the players who don't follow the PTS feel the affects of this like with GLS or if profits take a hit. I still think the only reason we got Major Sorc/Brut and Proph/Sav after asking for years is due to the backlash they faced from GLS.

I've seen so many different solutions on the PTS over the past 4 weeks from passionate players and Necro mains which would solve the 5 pet and corpse limitation issue, and if they didn't like any of them they could just roll that one change back until they found something they did like.

Our concerns are not being taken seriously and their inaction shows that indirectly crippling the Necromancer in PvP is not an pressing issue worthy of correcting or rolling back. You'll never see them do this to another class. Imagine if they limited crux in PvP to 1 for performance reasons, but didn't change the Arcanist skills/passives to compensate and went the entire PTS without even acknowledging this. They can make adjustments for Sorcs and Warden out of concern of maintaining their playstyles/identity, but not for Necromancer. They already have the reputation of messing up the Necromancer from gutting the class after it stopped being a selling point and just leaving it for years so they think they can just do whatever to the class and most players won't care.

They've had 4 weeks to put out any statement or prove this wrong, but it's not important enough to them to do so.

CameraBeardThePirate · May 15

Deimus wrote: »

The blatant ignoring of all the Necromancer feedback this PTS has soured any excitement I did have for subclassing. The only way they will acknowledge this is if it becomes too controversial which could happen after the patch goes live and all the players who don't follow the PTS feel the affects of this like with GLS or if profits take a hit. I still think the only reason we got Major Sorc/Brut and Proph/Sav after asking for years is due to the backlash they faced from GLS.

The only reason they added Major Sorc/Brut/Proph/Sav was because they were confidently incorrect in a reddit AMA when they made a comment about Necro not having those due to them being a "debuff class". They then proceeded to get Bone Goliath'd on in the comments by people telling them that Necro did not in fact have access to very many debuffs at all, and certainly not enough to offset their lack of buff coverage.

That's not a joke by the way, that actually happened.

Pepegrillos · May 15

At this point, necro is just a monument to bad combat design.

Alaztor91 · May 15

I wonder if there is even a vision for long-term or just more band-aid ''fixes''. Ember, Sharp and Zerith-Var none of them summon actual pets, IIRC even ZOS stated that they wouldn't give Companions the ability to summon other entities due to performance reasons, they even added an option to hide other player's pets in Towns.

So, ZOS has known since at least 2022 that ''summonable entities'' apparently have a more noticeable effect on performance when compared to ''normal skills''. They might not have thought about Subclassing back then, but they were obviously aware of the pet/performance problem because you can see that the Warden and Necromancer Companions released after don't actually summon pets either.

Now we are in 2025, Subclassing coming in June and apparently Corpses also contribute to this ''performance issue''. The pet limit is going to be cut in half for PvP, but nothing else is being done to address the gameplay issues that this change introduces(mostly a Necromancer problem), not even something as simple as tweaking the numbers for multi-corpse consuming skills so that they don't need as many corpses to gain the maximum bonus.

Is there a long-term plan for pet related stuff? We saw the ''Vengeance Campaign'' Class skills changes, Scamp/Twilight/Atro/Shade/Bear/Ghost/Skele Mage/S.Bones all of them were tweaked to remove the pet portion of the skill, there where however no major changes to Corpse generation. Are all pet skills going to be turned into ''pseudo pet'' skills like Shalks where the pet is just a visual effect? maybe just the non-permanent ones? what about the Corpse system? is it going to be changed into some sort of visual counter similar to Crux since corpses apparently also have a negative effect on performance?

I don't really expect any kind of answer from ZOS, but it certainly would feel better knowing that there is some sort of long-term plan, especially now that some skills/mechanics are being broken not because of balance, but because of performance reasons.

IncultaWolf · May 15

cptscotty wrote: »

You even mention blastbones in a discord and its like setting off a bomb. People are very unhappy with Necromancers.

For real though..during that pts I literally asked everyone I knew and randoms in-game what they thought and everyone hated it. Most of us still do.

Grave Lords Suckrifice 🪦

sans-culottes · May 15

Tamrielmancer
(after Percy Bysshe Shelley)

In PvE I once did stand
With summon, corpse, and fate in hand.
My minions rose, my build was feared—
But patch by patch, the bones were cleared.

Now subclassed lightnings cross the sky,
And those who ask the devs ask why.
The desert grows. The forum moans.
And in its grave, the Necro groans.

Deimus · May 15

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Deimus wrote: »

The blatant ignoring of all the Necromancer feedback this PTS has soured any excitement I did have for subclassing. The only way they will acknowledge this is if it becomes too controversial which could happen after the patch goes live and all the players who don't follow the PTS feel the affects of this like with GLS or if profits take a hit. I still think the only reason we got Major Sorc/Brut and Proph/Sav after asking for years is due to the backlash they faced from GLS.

The only reason they added Major Sorc/Brut/Proph/Sav was because they were confidently incorrect in a reddit AMA when they made a comment about Necro not having those due to them being a "debuff class". They then proceeded to get Bone Goliath'd on in the comments by people telling them that Necro did not in fact have access to very many debuffs at all, and certainly not enough to offset their lack of buff coverage.

That's not a joke by the way, that actually happened.

Not surprised at all, there are lots of changes especially to Necromancer that are head scratchers and give off the impression that they were either not well tested/rushed or done completely unaware of the conflicts they'd have with other interactions.

To look at it through a positive lens the developers directly engaged with the players and answered questions. They realized their idea for how things were did not match the reality at all and implemented long requested changes. Talking to your players and listening to feedback leads to happy customers with open purses/wallets. They should do more of those and on a regular schedule once every 2-3 months. Would probably open their eyes to a lot of things that are currently brushed off.

icefyer_ESO · May 16

Credible_Joe wrote: »

I main necro, and never felt particularly bothered by the past changes. Others' frustrations and criticisms are valid, and I recognize that Necro isn't in a competitive spot as far as PvE goes, but I've had a lot of success in PvP. I don't chase META, and throughout all of the past patches that have had negative sentiment, for the most part, I barely remember what the controversy was about.

That being said, Necro does feel fairly neglected at this point, even from my perspective. Animate Blastbones has always been temperamental at best; even without the reduced cap on pets, during fights where lots of corpses are present, all four blastbones would frequently fail to spawn.

In fact, counting corpses and blastbones as pets at all feels pretty obtuse. Corpses are resources, and blastbones works effectively the same way as Daedric Curse or Magicka Detonation, and should not occupy the same design slot as things like summons (both permanent and temporary), and companions (companions being considered pets was very surprising to me).

Corpses should be treated like Crux for arcanists. Every recent corpse could advances a counter separate from the pet global count which can be consumed the same way it's designed presently, barely making any adjustments. This would eliminate pain points Necros in particular are going to feel when the pet cap gets halved, even if Blastbones remains qualified as a pet.

A bunch of other adjustments could be made for Necro to address a lot of damage / role discrepancies, but without committing to a full tangent, I would start with the corpse == crux solution.

Personally, this sounds cool. The Crux mechanic is basically just a better version of what Corpses were meant to be, just different execution.

Deimus wrote: »

Talking to your players and listening to feedback leads to happy customers with open purses/wallets. They should do more of those and on a regular schedule once every 2-3 months. Would probably open their eyes to a lot of things that are currently brushed off.

Pretty sure it's industry standard for devs to ignore players and just do whatever they feel like. It's happened in every MMO I've ever played. The higher ups get this "The players think they want X, but they don't, so we'll give them Y and they'll be happy about it." despite players constantly asking for X, or giving X feedback, but they ram Y through regardless. Remember that DoT change ages ago where they nerfed it, overbuffed it, then nerfed it again even worse, all while ignoring players saying that's exactly what was going to happen? U35 I think? I forget it was so long ago and I've been away from the game since and only recently come back. A real "Do you guys not have phones?" moment.

Jagar_Tharn92 · May 16

Death Knell: This passive now increases your Critical Chance by 10/20% against targets under 33% Health if you have a Grave Lord ability slotted, rather than granting 5/10% Critical Chance per Grave Lord ability slotted against enemies under 25% Health.

I honestly was happy about sub-classing, cause some change and new ideas are always welcome, but I hoped that in case someone wanted to keep a pure class build, there would be "advantage". I explain myself better cause this NERF for Death Knell will give the same passive for someone who subclass necromancer and slot just one skill and for those real necromancer who wanna keep a pure class build and get 4-5 Grave Lord skills slotted. This passive was perfect as it was cause it would give a huge buff for pure classes necromancer (4-5 grave lord skill slotted) and a minor buff for subclassing necromancer (1-2 grave lord skill slotted). I thought subclassing was a cool idea to implement a secondary class, but how this things are going for necromancer right now there is no benefit to choose necro class, cause subclassing necro would give me the same buff. On top of it, with this nerf they didn't just eliminate the difference between pure class and subclass, but they also nerf the whole necromancer class, destroying those few abilities and passives still usefull.

PLEASE, TRY TO THINK ABOUT ON THIS NERF AND CHANGE IT AGAIN AS IT WAS, CAUSE WHOEVER SUBCLASS NECRO HARDLY WOULD SLOT FULL NECRO GRAVE LORD SKILLS, YOU ARE NOT BALANCING SUBCLASS, YOU ARE JUST NERFING PURE NECROMANCER BUILS.