Necromancer's Skill Lines Discussion

MashmalloMan

Feel free to discuss what your hopes are for these skill's.

All of this is subject to change.

Skill line names/descriptions.
From the official website.



Concept art of skill lines.
Taken from the Announcement twitch stream. Names of skill lines have already been changed and skills will probably named differently closer to launch.






Ideas from the stream. (These aren’t actual word for word quotes, correct me if I'm wrong)

• Wanted to make this class easy to pick up and play but have a high mastery curve. (Like NB’s DPS potential with a more dynamic rot IMO?)
• Inspiration: Necromancers are focused on 3 schools of magic: illusion, conjuration and destruction.
• “Summon your own corpses and power them up.”
• Some abilities that create corpses and some abilities that spend them.
• Any corpse counts for the gameplay mechanics (Players, NPC’s, ads, even their own summons, Bosses?
• Using corpses to power up skills can be used by more than 1 player like Templar’s Repentance. "Building on that technology" for necromancers.
• “Necromancy isn't perfect, it's really hard to summon things permanently and the summons will fall apart after use.”
• Pets will be more “fire and forget” or “turret like”.
• Bone Colossus Ultimate (Tanking Skill Line) is akin to an illusion skill line spell because it changes your appearance.
• Graveyard (AoE DMG skill) gains DMG when placed on a corpse.
• The AoE heal will do a burst heal like healing springs, placing on a corpse will add a HoT component. (Either Mend Flesh or Release Essence)

My thoughts.

I think twice during the stream people brought up the OP game breaking possibilities of this corpse mechanic. I think all they need to do is make the skills only require 1-3 corpses to buff a skill. The number of corpses could scale certain skills, but having 10 corpses on the floor doesn’t do anything extra for the caster and it seems like it may only require 1 corpse for the AoE Heal and DMG skill Rich referred to for the extra component.

This class is taking a page out of the Warden's design book where each skill line is mostly focused on a specific role instead of the 4 base classes that were sometimes mixed up.

REAPER - In concept: ELEMENTALIST - Damage Dealing
Burning Skull: Class spamable or perhaps this class doesn’t have 1 because this sounds like a single target DoT instead.
Summon Skeleton Mage: Timed summon, maybe providing the major brutality/sorcery buff and giving single target pressure like a DoT. Turns in to a corpse after it’s 20 second duration.
Skeleton Bomber: Like warden’s shalks, probably gives the necro a corpse and provides high burst dmg after a short time after cast.
Graveyard: The class AoE DoT. Buffed by corpses.
Siphon Energy: Resource management tool like Repentance?
[ULT] Bone Dragon Breath: I don’t think you will summon a full dragon, instead just the neck/head will emerge from the ground. Places an AoE cone of fire breath with 1 morph putting a DoT on the floor and the other a DoT on any target hit by the fire breath.

BONE TYRANT - In concept: BONE ARMOR - Tanking
Bone Fetish: ?
Taste of life: Resource management tool like Repentance?
Impaling Spikes: Class AoE root/slow.
Bone Armor: Class major ward/resolve skill.
Consume: AoE heal with maybe 1 morph being % based (tank) and the other max resource/dmg based. Buffed by corpses?
[ULT] Bone Colossus Transformation: Add’s resistances and max health like a wearwolf transformation. 1 morph for DPS with extra dmg and the other for extra healing received and done. Both ults provide the player with a unique skill bar fitting the role.

LIVING DEATH: In concept: SOUL MENDING - Healing
Mend Flesh: Conal Burst Heal like Soothing Spores (warden), corpses buff the skill with HoT for the target.
Summon Skeletal Mage: Instant cast, healing pet, 20 second duration, when it dies off, turns in to a corpse. Shoots off heals to lowest health team mate passively like DK's cauterize, but less burst, higher heals per second.
Restoring Tether: Single Target HoT
Release Essence: AoE ground HoT or buff circle.
Consume Curse: Self buff based on a passive that collects souls, maybe from corpses that you collect souls from that you haven’t consumed yet through other skills.
[ULT] Resurrect: AoE Rez – this looks dope, I asked for this. Cap it at 3 people. Instant cast, people rez within a 3 second animation of rising from the ground with full resources (Invincible during animation). Both morphs provide different buffs for 15 seconds after the rez like minor protection and vitality or minor berserk and endurance, etc.

MashmalloMan

Side note: I remember during the stream there was a poll that asked what skill line you were most excited to play and I'm pretty sure the names for the skill lines sounded more accurate than what was provided in these concept art pictures.

If anyone can find that twitch poll. Please post it here.

Edit: Found it. Thanks @Khydan

Morgul667

I wonder about stam morphs

MashmalloMan

Morgul667 wrote: »

I wonder about stam morphs

Trust me, me too. I don't really play any of my mag alts. We could speculate how some of these could be stam morphs.

I'm guessing there's a couple that stand out as class defining therefore most likely have a stam and mag morph.

I'm hoping summon skeleton mage, skeleton bomber, bone armor, bone dragon and collusus transformation all have Stam morphs.

Khydan

Marshall1289 wrote: »

Side note: I remember during the stream there was a poll that asked what skill line you were most excited to play and I'm pretty sure the names for the skill lines sounded more accurate than what was provided in these concept art pictures.

If anyone can find that twitch poll. Please post it here.

The skill line names are Reaper (DPS), Bone Tyrant (Tank), and Living Death (Heals). Taken from the official site Elswyr page

ccfeeling

I'm so excited about the Bone Colossus Transformation . Because I am a tank fans !

How long it lasts ?

There are 2 type Ultimate forms in the game

Overload : Timer base on Ultimate value , no skills change at all , but the player gets additional buffs during the time , actually the time is pretty short .

or

Werewolf : New skill loadout , timer can be extended by passives , or even last a really long time by absorb the corpses .

DoobZ69

Bone fetish would probably be a similar pull to fiery grip and frozen gate. Its a staple of the tanking tools.
This looks like a Warden tanking design to me which I personally find limiting and the Warden skills clunky/laggy

bone fetish = frozen gate
taste of life = frost cloak or crystalized shield
bone armor = crystalized shield or frost cloak
Impaling spikes = impaling shards
consume = arctic wind

TheNightflame

bone fetish could be a placed thing that pulls enemies too it every few seconds

Chufu

Morgul667 wrote: »

I wonder about stam morphs

Me too

But also this "power up corpses" sounds pretty cool for all styles (tank, heal, dd). So i am curious!

MashmalloMan

DoobZ69 wrote: »

bone fetish = frozen gate

TheNightflame wrote: »

bone fetish could be a placed thing that pulls enemies too it every few seconds

I'd say that would be closer to what it probably is. The concept art shows what looks like an effigy. How cool would it be if every 3 seconds it pulled an enemy within a 20m range to it's location.

Looks like based on descriptions, the necro won't focus on 1 element, instead being the first class to have a dps line focusing on fire/shock/ice at the same time. The original conception of Elementalist along with that description and what they've said so far leads me to believe you can "power up" your skeletal mage and bomber to copy the element of the staff your using. Basically the same way the destro staff skill line works.

Fire staff = your skeletal mage will shoot fire, etc.

Especially with the racial change passives and how it's now easier to work with different elements because they removed element % based passives for instead + base dmg.

Nisekev

Off-topic - I wonder if they'll bring Lich polymorph along with this chapter. Would be neat.

On-topic - Not a fan of turret/bomber summons idea (was expecting Necromancer to be a third class with perma-pet option) or dragon skeleton ultimate either. Those skills don't really fit my idea of stamina death knight in ESO, but gotta try and see first, I guess.