PTS Update 22 - Feedback Thread for Necromancer

ZOS_GinaBruno

This is the official feedback thread for the Necromancer class. Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:

• What are your favorite and least Necromancer abilities, and why?
• Do the Necromancer’s visuals and themes feel unique compared to other classes?
• Do the Necromancer’s abilities and playstyle feel unique compared to other classes?
• Did you enjoy the Necromancer’s corpse generation/corpse spending gameplay?
• Did you receive a bounty for using “Criminal Act” Necromancer abilities in towns? If so, what are your thoughts on the experience?
• Were you aware certain Necromancer abilities were considered “Criminal Acts” prior to using these abilities in towns?
• Does the Necromancer feel faithful to established lore and themes in The Elder Scrolls?
• Do you plan on playing a Necromancer as your new “main” character when Update 22 goes live?
• Do you have any other general feedback?

CaptainVenom

Hey Gina, please post Necromancer's skills on patch notes. I really want to read about them!

LukosCreyden

Yes, could we get a list of Necromancer skills for us console peasants please? I'm soooo excited for the class, I must feed my hype.

SirMewser

I think the class is very well designed, the mini game that involves interacting with corpses is fun and dynamic, as in, there are various ways to use them depending on which skill you've used. The idea of promoting player positioning between it and allies/enemies certainly beats a lot of idle, mind numbing rotations.

The only problem I can think of with the positioning is, in trial runs where players are expected to stack (maybe not so much a necromancer healer but a DD) might struggle with trying to get a corpse right behind or next to a boss/prioritized-add.

Fun, nonetheless.

Aesthetically I like the class, I felt like with Warden (mostly with healing) the colors were too vibrant, cartoonish, and a bit flashy to look at. I think the design and theme is appropriate and looks pretty awesome, from the particle effects to the actual transformation/minion models.

I wish there were more minions, a zombie, skinned hound, shambles, flesh atronach (not colossus, more like the ones from TESIV: Shivering Isle, and no not the gatekeeper either). Just a personal thing really from having played the other TES games.

I certainly will be making a Necromancer healer, it looks very unique and appealing to me.

In the future I hope ESO gets more Necromancer themed sets/abilities, I want to avoid having to run a skill where my dark blue auras of life suddenly get mixed with templar like light beams/waves just to keep it to the Necromancer theme.

highkingnm

Feels powerful, even before I know rotation or the use of skills I was pulling similar damage to some of my live builds. However, the corpse trade off is fantastic. Without corpses I lost a good, but not unfair, amount of power which balances out the top end insanity.

At present my major improvement point would be making it clear What corpses I can use. Often they were already in use from others, but still had blue telegraph. Would be great if it was clear which were able to use by removing the blue tether from used ones.

Canned_Apples

@LukosCreyden
Literally EVERY eso site has ability descriptions up.

It's odd that there aren't any videos of the pts necro up yet.
I want to see it being played/shown-off by ESO players are not gaming site reporters.

Tasear

Was really hard to use corpses as they vanished quickly. This made the gameplay feel less enjoyable then it could be.

BluntLightsaber

So the first thing I did was to try and parse a bit with a mag necromancer, Fairly standard set up with perfect siroria and MoSo Front bar with 2 BT and 1 Arcane on the jewellery, Shadow mundus, perhaps not optimal but close to what I run on live. I could definitely push the numbers a lot higher with some practice and if the PTS would let me fire off skills more reliably!

I am definitely a fan of the corpse mechanic, the use of Stalking Blastbones feels like the key to the rotation and I need to get used to using it more frequently (although from combatmtx it seems to be bugged - it had 100% crit rate in every parse). To elaborate on this, because Stalking Blastbones creates a corpse it allows Mystic Siphon to be cast frequently, which really helps with sustain and, if I am paying enough attention, can be used to empower Boneyard as well.

I picked the Avid Boneyard morph because I thought using my own synergy would be fun for a dummy parse, but so far I'm finding it really clunky to use, can't say whether that's the PTS or the synergy itself though.

icefyer_ESO

Tasear wrote: »

Was really hard to use corpses as they vanished quickly. This made the gameplay feel less enjoyable then it could be.

I agree with this. It was very hard to litter the ground with corpses. I know the 'can recast an ability 1/2 way through the duration to make it drop a corpse' but it's hard when they only last a few seconds so that by the time you drop another one the first has already vanished. Even Blastbones spam makes it difficult to keep corpses around due to the animation of them being formed eating up almost all the corpse time, making it near impossible to take advantage of the morphs that consume multiple corpses. I'm guessing the idea is to have multiple corpse-generating abilities running at once, but even then the short corpse time can get in the way, let alone in the middle of combat when you have to pay attention to the enemies, your allies, the telegraphs, and thinking 'ok, when this drops I'll have 3 seconds to use the corpse or it vanishes'!

All the same I definitely plan on playing one and that + the 'difficult to see the little blue telegraph sometimes' are my only real complaint. Haven't had a chance to test out how they sustain as a healer and if the 200 or so extra magicka regen from having a summon on the field is enough.

Edaphon

What are your favorite and least Necromancer abilities, and why?

My favorites are Venom Skull, Blighted Blastbones, Detonating Siphon and Pestilent Colossus because they all are stamina/disease/poison abilities with 28m range. Perfect for my preferred play style: archer.

Do the Necromancer’s visuals and themes feel unique compared to other classes?

Yes, they do.

Do the Necromancer’s abilities and playstyle feel unique compared to other classes?

Yes. It's a real breath of fresh air to have so many ranged stamina options and the corpse mechanics make the Necromancer really feel different from other classes.

Did you enjoy the Necromancer’s corpse generation/corpse spending gameplay?

I quite like that the corpse mechanics require and award some tactical gameplay but I wish that corpses generated from Necromancer skills would last a few seconds longer.

Did you receive a bounty for using “Criminal Act” Necromancer abilities in towns? If so, what are your thoughts on the experience?

Nope, I didn't use any Necro abilities in towns.

Were you aware certain Necromancer abilities were considered “Criminal Acts” prior to using these abilities in towns?

Yes, I was aware. The big, red warning text in the skill descriptions certainly helps in that regard.

Does the Necromancer feel faithful to established lore and themes in The Elder Scrolls?

I didn't notice anything particularly lore-breaking.

Do you plan on playing a Necromancer as your new “main” character when Update 22 goes live?

I'm seriously considering it. The Necromancer is a well-designed class and fun to play.

Alienoutlaw

looking forward to testing this

Michaelkeir

NA/PS4 Player here....all I have to say to the people testing the Necromancers out is...........Don't mess this up....for the love of Sithis PLEASE don't screw this up. I been waiting since console release for this class and I don't need it nerfed before it's even released.

Vexarius

Absolutely love the class including the mini game and style of pretty much every ability
Just two things for the moment:

- corpses last a very short amount of time so sometimes it’s hard to use abilities (with practice though this might speed up and be OP, I understand)

- the Scythe scales strangely on my character so it looks too big / the handle on the scythe doesn’t match hand position on my character. I know scythes have handles but if it can’t be scaled right, maybe just remove the handle?

DisgracefulMind

icefyer_ESO wrote: »

Tasear wrote: »

Was really hard to use corpses as they vanished quickly. This made the gameplay feel less enjoyable then it could be.

I agree with this. It was very hard to litter the ground with corpses. .

You're not supposed to be able to litter the ground with corpses; that would take the skill out of the class.

icefyer_ESO

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

icefyer_ESO wrote: »

Tasear wrote: »

Was really hard to use corpses as they vanished quickly. This made the gameplay feel less enjoyable then it could be.

I agree with this. It was very hard to litter the ground with corpses. .

You're not supposed to be able to litter the ground with corpses; that would take the skill out of the class.

I mean it's difficult to get more than one out at a time for the skills / morphs that consume multiple corpses at a time because they disappear so quickly.

DisgracefulMind

icefyer_ESO wrote: »

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

icefyer_ESO wrote: »

Tasear wrote: »

Was really hard to use corpses as they vanished quickly. This made the gameplay feel less enjoyable then it could be.

I agree with this. It was very hard to litter the ground with corpses. .

You're not supposed to be able to litter the ground with corpses; that would take the skill out of the class.

I mean it's difficult to get more than one out at a time for the skills / morphs that consume multiple corpses at a time because they disappear so quickly.

I think that it's fine because the abilities you want to use corpses with are quite strong.

That being said, Shocking Siphon is pretty lackluster.

Ermiq

Equipped some not a BiS gear, didn't set up best traits, forgot to use mundus stone, slotted a couple of class skills plus Wall of Elements... And got almost the same DPS as my Warden deals on live. Great. Thanks for reminding me that Warden is the worst magicka dps in the game.

PS: what else options I have when I get in PUG with a Necromancer except leaving the group and getting deserter cooldown?

wheem_ESO

It's obviously too early for us to give really specific feedback right now, but there are a few things that stood out right away:

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

• Did you enjoy the Necromancer’s corpse generation/corpse spending gameplay?

As others have mentioned, the corpse duration is too short on anything that the Necromancer generates themselves. This will likely be a bit of an issue in places like Battlegrounds, where the dynamic nature of the gameplay will be a major limiting factor. I know we don't want situations where you can stack up an absurd amount of corpses to use at will (which would also affect performance, I'm sure), but at the moment it seems like they could stand to last at least a little bit longer.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

• Did you receive a bounty for using “Criminal Act” Necromancer abilities in towns? If so, what are your thoughts on the experience?
• Were you aware certain Necromancer abilities were considered “Criminal Acts” prior to using these abilities in towns?

I was indeed aware that certain abilities were considered "Criminal Acts," and it's nice that there's some very obvious text giving you that information. However, I find this to be an overly tedious mechanic, and would really like some way to turn it off. I received a 277 gold bounty because a Trader NPC out in Glenumbra - not in the city of Daggerfall itself - happened to see my Skeletal Arcanist summon. Getting bounties while leveling up/farming/etc..., or for accidentally bumping a key while in town, is probably going to get old pretty fast.

Ermiq

wheem_ESO wrote: »

I received a 277 gold bounty because a Trader NPC out in Glenumbra - not in the city of Daggerfall itself - happened to see my Skeletal Arcanist summon. Getting bounties while leveling up/farming/etc..., or for accidentally bumping a key while in town, is probably going to get old pretty fast.

I'm so glad to read this. Did you think necromancy is forbidden inside a town walls only? Man, you're doing bad things, it doesn't matter where you do it. Hope they won't change that.

Urvoth

The abilities, animations, icons, and skills all look cooler than sorc's, and all the abilities and passives are actually useful and allow for a ton of build options. The passives also aren't restrictive and are beneficial for both mag/stam and all types of builds. It would be nice if the older classes could be revamped to this level, as some classes (such as sorc) have like a 1/4th of their skills/passives as completely garbage and useless.

FleetwoodSmack

Ermiq wrote: »

wheem_ESO wrote: »

I received a 277 gold bounty because a Trader NPC out in Glenumbra - not in the city of Daggerfall itself - happened to see my Skeletal Arcanist summon. Getting bounties while leveling up/farming/etc..., or for accidentally bumping a key while in town, is probably going to get old pretty fast.

I'm so glad to read this. Did you think necromancy is forbidden inside a town walls only? Man, you're doing bad things, it doesn't matter where you do it. Hope they won't change that.

It's all a matter of paying attention too. Will it get old? Probably not. It'll also make sure necromancers don't duel in towns and often in secret. It's alluring.

wheem_ESO

Ermiq wrote: »

wheem_ESO wrote: »

I received a 277 gold bounty because a Trader NPC out in Glenumbra - not in the city of Daggerfall itself - happened to see my Skeletal Arcanist summon. Getting bounties while leveling up/farming/etc..., or for accidentally bumping a key while in town, is probably going to get old pretty fast.

I'm so glad to read this. Did you think necromancy is forbidden inside a town walls only? Man, you're doing bad things, it doesn't matter where you do it. Hope they won't change that.

But being a Stage 4 Vampire with no helm on, or in Werewolf Form, or having Daedra following you around is all fine and dandy?

FleetwoodSmack wrote: »

Ermiq wrote: »

wheem_ESO wrote: »

I received a 277 gold bounty because a Trader NPC out in Glenumbra - not in the city of Daggerfall itself - happened to see my Skeletal Arcanist summon. Getting bounties while leveling up/farming/etc..., or for accidentally bumping a key while in town, is probably going to get old pretty fast.

I'm so glad to read this. Did you think necromancy is forbidden inside a town walls only? Man, you're doing bad things, it doesn't matter where you do it. Hope they won't change that.

It's all a matter of paying attention too. Will it get old? Probably not. It'll also make sure necromancers don't duel in towns and often in secret. It's alluring.

Sounds more tedious than anything, and yes it will get old. I mean maybe not for people that like to get together and have roleplaying events or something, but for many of us it's just going to be an annoyance.

If I'm out in the world and need to kill something, I can launch burning skulls at it all day long without issue, no matter how many NPCs are around. But if I want to blow it up a little faster, and use a "forbidden" ability to do so, now I have to pay a fine or deal with the hassle of guards because I want to go into town for some reason or other? No thanks.

Edit:
Blastbones damage seems a bit crazy in PvP. I was routinely getting hit for 6k - 8k in Battlegrounds, even with 28.5k physical resist, and 30.3k spell resist. Mag Sorc Matriarch was also quite high - saw a little over 3.3k sometimes, which was >= most of the Necromancer Skulls I was getting hit with.

saganblackblade

After toying with the stam necro i like the feel for the most part. I like the positional play, i like the feel, i like the look and animations. My one makor complaint about the feel is that the scythe doesnt seem to be a must for anyone’s end game pve kit. Would have liked to see it be an option for spammable or at least something worth having in rotation.

JamieAubrey

DO I need to pre-purchase to get the Necro ? I couldn't select it in the create character enu

Edaphon

JamieAubrey wrote: »

DO I need to pre-purchase to get the Necro ? I couldn't select it in the create character enu

You need to log in with one of your other characters first. After that Necro becomes available for you.

Ankael07

Necromancers can get 34 ulti points per 20 seconds outside of combat right now (with a combination of 4 skills). I dont think its intended for any class to do this

The skills are: Necrotic Potency, Intensive Mender, Skeleton Archer/Arcanist and Bone Armor (Corpse consumption passive from Living Death skill line)

Revokus

My first impression is that stamina necro seems to be a lot more powerfull than it's magicka counterpart in pvp.
It's a bit early there might be a good build for magnecro and can't wait to see what people come up with.

At least in no cp mortal coil doesn't heal much and requires a corps so if you're in trouble and there is no corps.. but the ghost heals a lot but not really reliable since it can target any ally.
Other than that Resistant Flesh is a good burst heal but kinda weird with the debuff unless you purge it. Not sure if it will be best heal for pvp yet. The resistance buff doesn't last really long.

I just have a feeling that magnecro is a lot weaker when there is no corps available because there is a delay before you can use usefull skill in battlegrounds.

I'm afraid magnecro will have to use light armor shield and mistform. That's my first impression with light armor magnecro.
And I feel resto staff isn't really an option for magnecro especially with the nerf to resto ult. Nothing really usefull in the restoration staff skill line that necro doesn't already have in living death for pvp.

If I compare it with my Magsorc magsorc is a lot more survivable solo with their shields. I'm not sure what the vision for magnecro is maybe it's intended to stand back in a group ? The stamina version seems to be the more solo friendly pvp approach.

FleetwoodSmack

wheem_ESO wrote: »

Ermiq wrote: »

wheem_ESO wrote: »

I received a 277 gold bounty because a Trader NPC out in Glenumbra - not in the city of Daggerfall itself - happened to see my Skeletal Arcanist summon. Getting bounties while leveling up/farming/etc..., or for accidentally bumping a key while in town, is probably going to get old pretty fast.

I'm so glad to read this. Did you think necromancy is forbidden inside a town walls only? Man, you're doing bad things, it doesn't matter where you do it. Hope they won't change that.

But being a Stage 4 Vampire with no helm on, or in Werewolf Form, or having Daedra following you around is all fine and dandy?

FleetwoodSmack wrote: »

Ermiq wrote: »

wheem_ESO wrote: »

I received a 277 gold bounty because a Trader NPC out in Glenumbra - not in the city of Daggerfall itself - happened to see my Skeletal Arcanist summon. Getting bounties while leveling up/farming/etc..., or for accidentally bumping a key while in town, is probably going to get old pretty fast.

I'm so glad to read this. Did you think necromancy is forbidden inside a town walls only? Man, you're doing bad things, it doesn't matter where you do it. Hope they won't change that.

It's all a matter of paying attention too. Will it get old? Probably not. It'll also make sure necromancers don't duel in towns and often in secret. It's alluring.

Sounds more tedious than anything, and yes it will get old. I mean maybe not for people that like to get together and have roleplaying events or something, but for many of us it's just going to be an annoyance.

If I'm out in the world and need to kill something, I can launch burning skulls at it all day long without issue, no matter how many NPCs are around. But if I want to blow it up a little faster, and use a "forbidden" ability to do so, now I have to pay a fine or deal with the hassle of guards because I want to go into town for some reason or other? No thanks.

Honestly, I'm not at all bothered by it. Blow it up early or suffer the fine. Next.

bluebird

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for the Necromancer class. Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:

- Do the Necromancer’s visuals and themes feel unique compared to other classes?:
The necro is visually very strong and definitely stands out with a strong class identity. The subtle changes in the abiilities' animations to indicate morphs was good (i.e. doubling down on the disease aesthethic). However a huge problem I had was that playing with a lot of necro skills on my bar made me nauseous. I only noticed after some time, but I definitely felt sick after playing around on the dummy for a few minutes. I'm not sure if anybody else had this issue, or if it's just me, please let me know, others here.

I also don't know what might be causing it, but I suspect that the particle-heavy and complex animations of the necro that have several different composite colours each (dark blue and cyan, occasional blue sparkles and other extra effects on top of that, mix in green in using stam morphs) make it visually taxing. Even if others didn't feel dizzy, I do think that the animations are over the top for ESO and the class is out of place compared to the rest. It certainly wasn't so bad when I made a mixed class/wep build, but using several necro class skills is far too much imo, especially compared to other classes which have far fewer skills that produce such obvious visuals, and even when they do they are less complex and also tend to be of a coherent colour scheme.

-Regarding playstyle and corpse generation:
The corpse generation was a great idea, it puts fun and interactibility back into pet builds. The unique playstyle of both stam and mag necros was intact, although stam necro is visibly ahead of every other stam class in identity due to its many stamina morphs.

- Regarding skills and bounties:
Didn't try all criminal skills, but I did get bountry properly for using the risen dead skills so seems to be working. It was also easy to know about it, so good job letting players know about it marked in red warning text on the char creation screen as well as in the skill tooltips.

-Does the Necromancer feel faithful to established lore and themes in The Elder Scrolls?
Generally, yes. Some skills were strange - like the bone fetish and the bone armor, and the graveyard animation with actual gravestones and some other animations - reminding me of 'different franchise name here' rather than Elder Scrolls. I would've expected those skills to be similar to skills that necromancers ingame already cast, spectral hands rather than a bone fetish, blue ritual circle on the ground or some frost magic based snare rather than conjuring gravestones... I think the aesthethics department moved a bit far into the region of over the top spectacle than stay in line with ESO's established necromancy and on the other classes' level.

- Do you plan on playing a Necromancer as your new “main” character when Update 22 goes live?
No, while I have no doubt that mechanic-and-performance-wise necros are a great addition to the game, the class feels a bit too gimmicky for me and I can't look at their skills due to the reasons outlined in the 1st paragraph.

TiaFrye

So, I was fighting necromancers by necromancer in a delve with little quest npc allies presented, walked out from it with 1000 gold for my head. Is that intended? Haven't got any bounty fighting necromancers in the wilds so far.

DeathStalker

I would like to request a stamina morph in the healing tree. Take the healing ability that is a criminal act. On a mag toon, it's double the heal that it is on a stamina toon once fully geared and ready to play. Also, like the others, I wish the corpses lasted a little longer. Other than that, love the class very fun and unique.