PTS Update 22 - Feedback Thread for Necromancer

wheem_ESO

FleetwoodSmack wrote: »

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.

It's cool that it doesn't bother you, but it does bother some others. If ZOS is going to go with this "roleplay" mechanic, they need to make it universal before going live. Vampire, Werewolf (in form, at least), Daedric summons, and perhaps any offensive ability that isn't aimed directly at a hostile NPC should get the same treatment. I think the tedium associated would probably become pretty obvious, pretty quickly, and get the whole thing done away with.

Maybe they could set a toggle for this..."feature," like currently exists with the prevention of attacking innocents. That way role players could have their evil (or good, yet misunderstood) Necromancer that has to be careful about what/when they cast, and everyone else can avoid the headache of accidentally bumping a key in town, or being able to properly engage in combat when necessary.

PS
The NPCs in Spindleclutch 1 don't care if you use various Necromancer abilities around them - hopefully at least all group content is that way.

Qbiken

General feedback:
Major vulnerability shouldn´t exist in game. It´s a way too strong buff for PvE. This is one of those things that will cause immense powercreep and make certain bossfights (looks at 3rd boss in vHoF) even easier to burst down without taking much consideration to mechanics.

ZOS stated that they wanted to reduce the increased powercreep since it´s been brought up numerous times by players over the years. ZOS halted CP-gain (which at best added 1-2% extra dps each patch) as a result of that. But now you add a 150 cost ultimate that lets your group do 30% more damage for the duration.

Co-ordinated groups will be able to utilize this incredibly well, while less co-ordinated groups won´t. This just further increase the gap between high end-game players and those slighlty below (aka the Power-gap, which is a much bigger issue than the so called Power-creep).

Rethink major vulnerability

BluntLightsaber

Here be cheese:

I'm having a lot of fun working on a mag necromancer rotation (even with a high ping (I'm having difficulty getting boneyard to fire off after a barswap)). Some observations:

1. Mystic Siphon: Violently drain the last spark of life from a corpse, dealing x shock damage over 12 seconds to all enemies around the corpse and between you and the corpse... yada yada... I really like this skill, I have been using the aura mastery addon to track the 12 seconds as it seems to elude S'rendarr for the time being (might be me being useless with the addon settings though). The short lived nature of corpses produced by skills can make maintaining a high uptime with this skill frustrating though, going to use the skill to find it greyed out at the moment you press it is... interesting... but that seems like l2p on my part. I'm not sure if I'd advocate for increased corpse duration based purely on this, it might be a different story from the perspective of a tank or healer though.
2. Stalking Blastbones: This skill seems to be critting more than intended. I've been playing in melee range because of trap and Zaan, but Necromancer will definitely be a class that makes good use of Ilambris, so next on the agenda is to play at range and see how the delayed detonation changes my rotation. I will say that even at a constant range it seems to have an inconsitstent delay on detonation.
3. Ricochet Skull: Not much to say about this other than I love it, it's great to have a spammable that isn't elemental weapon, it's 1 out of 50 reasons that necromancer has the most flavour out of all the magicka classes besides maybe magDK.
4. Skeletal Arcanist: Bit of a no-brainer to use this one, I just treat it like any old DoT.
5. Avid Boneyard: Haven't tried the other morph, it's nice to have an easy(when not casting Ricochet Skull) to activate synergy though.
6. Glacial Colossus: I agree that this might be a bit strong, saving this ulti for execute combined with a near 100% crit rate from my passives fills me with glee. Communcating its use with other DDs seems like it'll make necromancers a must have in groups.
7. Passives: Strongest set of passives in a class tree to date? Not much to say, the execute potential is amazing, the extra penetration allows for more flex with CP.

Anywho, here's the cmx (self buffed & debuffed) and superstar:

heng14rwb17_ESO

GO NECRO OR GO CRY !

Ermiq

wheem_ESO wrote: »

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?

On the ESO Live the devs said they going to look how do players react on this new mechanics, look for opinions and feedback, and maybe they'll think about adding the same "criminal" status to other stuff such as werewolf transformation and so on, if players want that.
So, I would suggest you two options:
- feel free to complain more and Necromancer will remain the only class that has a "criminal" status.
- don't complain and maybe we'll get vampires and werewolves become "criminal" eventually.

FleetwoodSmack

wheem_ESO wrote: »

FleetwoodSmack wrote: »

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.

It's cool that it doesn't bother you, but it does bother some others. If ZOS is going to go with this "roleplay" mechanic, they need to make it universal before going live. Vampire, Werewolf (in form, at least), Daedric summons, and perhaps any offensive ability that isn't aimed directly at a hostile NPC should get the same treatment. I think the tedium associated would probably become pretty obvious, pretty quickly, and get the whole thing done away with.

Maybe they could set a toggle for this..."feature," like currently exists with the prevention of attacking innocents. That way role players could have their evil (or good, yet misunderstood) Necromancer that has to be careful about what/when they cast, and everyone else can avoid the headache of accidentally bumping a key in town, or being able to properly engage in combat when necessary.

PS
The NPCs in Spindleclutch 1 don't care if you use various Necromancer abilities around them - hopefully at least all group content is that way.

So for the bolded parts;

They've told us in several places (including ESO Live), that this is a mechanic that they're intending to keep. Instead of dissolving the mechanic outright, they'd instead look at the practicality and usage of it and how the playerbase reacts. It's not going to go any time soon. They said outright that if it's received well enough, they'd start doing the same thing with vampires and werewolves (though we all know how that's going to go). Sorc pets? You don't want to poke that beehive. Trust me, mama. It's not a fun thing to do. Been there, done that, I have the t-shirt (and it's worse than the vampire/werewolf scenario).

As for your PS; They did say that dungeons/raids (will also assume delves), Cyrodiil, the IC, and Battlegrounds would be unaffected by the bounty system. Either you were still too close to civilization to get a bounty in your situation or the livestock is rebelling again and the pigs are talking.

For a toggle, if it floats your boat go for it.

arcsureb17_ESO

There is still no traditional target based debuff type damage over time spell in the whole necro toolkit. I mean you pick a target, you cast the single target dot, then pick another target, and you cast it again and you put it to as many targets as you want (like cripple or swarm).

I know necro wants to feel different from the other classes, but spreading disease is just as much the part of the necro lore as undead pets. And right now there is not a single morph that gives this kind of gameplay. Yes gameplay wise it might have no connection to the other classes but without a traditional dot spell it will have no connection to the true necro gameplay either.

The DoT class doesnt have a single real dot spell. Dissappointing for us spread the disease lovers.

BaylorCorvette

From my testing last night, the Necromancer abilities feel really good to use/weave. The animations look great. There is a ton of diversity in abilities and what they can do/provide, so much so that I'm constrained on bar space as to what to use for PvP and that's saying something considering I'm testing a Stamina Necromancer. I really like the the various Necromancer abilities that have stamina morphs or are useful for a stamina Necromancer. This is in stark contrast to the StamSorc that I main.

Qbiken wrote: »

General feedback:
Major vulnerability shouldn´t exist in game. It´s a way too strong buff for PvE. This is one of those things that will cause immense powercreep and make certain bossfights (looks at 3rd boss in vHoF) even easier to burst down without taking much consideration to mechanics.


Rethink major vulnerability

Rethinking it should be how to handle it for PvE as to not create the problems you're listing. However, for PvP Major Vulnerability is a direct counter to a Wardens AoE Major Protection.

DocFrost72

[*] What are your favorite and least Necromancer abilities, and why?

Oh man, where to begin?

Blastbones is like warden shalks to manage in a rotation, but also gives corpses to use the recovery tool (still learning names, sorry!) and the damage tool. If I had to pick a class that has the single best synergy with itself for pve dps, necromancer takes the cake with the interplay between corpse management and blastbones. Honorable mention for the flesh atronach ult because it looks amazing.

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

Heck yes they do. I actually feel like a slinger of pestilence and death. Only one thing that might be changeable would be to make the Scythe ability purple instead of the warden teal green.


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

Some feel like versions of others (aforementioned blastbones feels like warden shalks) but have their own unique spin. Even the spammable feels engaging, trying to time the third skull.

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

Honestly, it is the best class identity in the game. I genuinely feel like I'm playing a different class and not reskinned x or y.

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

I did not, because I didn't want to have the hassle of it. (I do like the concept in practice mind)

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

Yes. The class has a warning when selecting it in big red letters, as do the criminal abilities. Very much obvious.

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

I really enjoy the feeling of temporary summons, as it fits better with non master necromancers. The disease and pestilence from the stam side really brings the aesthetic together.

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

Yes, both my main character and a second. One healer, one stam dps. Though I suppose the stam dps is just a "late healer"

[*] Do you have any other general feedback?


I think overall it is a very well designed class aesthetically and themetically, but that stam dps is overtuned in a big way. I LOVE that I am using more class abilities than qeapon abilities as a stam class (cannot express how good that feels), but I'm also pulling 7k more unbuffed with no fracture than my templar after 15 minutes of parsing, more than the class I've played for years. Hopefully someone can CMX the source and propose a tuning.

DocFrost72

@Qbiken

Ult cost was 225 as of my testing last night, not the 150 it is listed as on online sources.

Thraben

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

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

[1] What are your favorite and least Necromancer abilities, and why? [2] Do the Necromancer’s visuals and themes feel unique compared to other classes? [3] Do the Necromancer’s abilities and playstyle feel unique compared to other classes? [4] Did you enjoy the Necromancer’s corpse generation/corpse spending gameplay? [5] Did you receive a bounty for using “Criminal Act” Necromancer abilities in towns? If so, what are your thoughts on the experience? [6] Were you aware certain Necromancer abilities were considered “Criminal Acts” prior to using these abilities in towns? [7] Does the Necromancer feel faithful to established lore and themes in The Elder Scrolls? [8] Do you plan on playing a Necromancer as your new “main” character when Update 22 goes live? [9] Do you have any other general feedback?

1)
Great: Death Skythe: Awesome sound, awesome animation.

Could be better: both "Tether" skills are the heart of the class, requiring a risky and self determined playstyle, and both don´t really offer enough reward for the risk/ effort: Shocking Sypon needs chain lighting (/plague cloud) effect when fading away which hits anything between corpse and caster in a wider, wall-of-elements- like area for 3 seconds; and so does Restoring Tether (just with healing spirits)

Bad: Frozen colossus: too expansive, doesn´t feel epic. Conjuring two Flesh Atros who do the same thing for 10 seconds (albeit with less damage) would be better.

2) Yes!

3) Yes.

4) Anything that breaks up boring rotations is welcome. Such as the corpse gameplay. Tether skills lack potency, though.

5) No, because...

6) It is made clear that they are. By the way, changing into a werewolf, doing Vamp things, or using Daedra in cities as well as duelling should be a punishable act, as well.

7) Yes. I solved Morrowind by flying around the heart of Lorkhan in my self enchanted boots summoning at least 7 different skeletons/ daedra. Dagoth Ur was such a noob! Please remember to disable some skills when the player stands before Meridia... or Vanus. Both are not really cool with what we do...

8) I´d prefer a revamped StamSorc with Daedra who scale with the highest stats, and who are summoned like the Nightblade´s shade, a StamSorc able to use conjured weapons like in any Elder Scrolls game, but... you have given up on us apparently. So yes, I will main a StamNecro for now.

9) Many I have spoken to want to have more minions around them as a Necromancer. Just for the feels. The skills "Grave Grasp" and "Bone Totem" are too similar; here you could create something as "Conjure 1 skeleton minion who guard you, and attack anyone who attacks you in melee. 20 seconds duration. Up to 3 minions can be summoned at a time. Every skeleton absorbs 5% damage done to you."

Qbiken

DocFrost72 wrote: »

@Qbiken

Ult cost was 225 as of my testing last night, not the 150 it is listed as on online sources.

Looks better, but I'm still highly sceptical about adding major vulnerability to begin with.

Ermiq

@TiaFrye

TiaFrye wrote: »

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.

This new anti-necromancy mechanic is disabled in delves/dungeons/etc. And the UI element which displays your bounty status is also disabled there. Once you exit an instance you get UI bounty displayed again, so you probably already had the bounty before you've entered the delve.
I was testing necromancy in front of quest-related NPCs in open world and during a quest and they don't care about that, so you shouldn't get bounty unless someone not a quest related witnesses you raising the dead.

TiaFrye

Ermiq wrote: »

@TiaFrye

TiaFrye wrote: »

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.

This new anti-necromancy mechanic is disabled in delves/dungeons/etc. And the UI element which displays your bounty status is also disabled there. Once you exit an instance you get UI bounty displayed again, so you probably already had the bounty before you've entered the delve.
I was testing necromancy in front of quest-related NPCs in open world and during a quest and they don't care about that, so you shouldn't get bounty unless someone not a quest related witnesses you raising the dead.

Thing is there was only quest npcs and enemies, and quest npcs usually ignore your crimes. That's my concern. I can understand getting bounty while roaming over world terrifying peasants, but in a cave full of same necromancers during MQ is hella strange.

Tasear

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

Graveyard cause it looks impressive


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

Really made feel like playing a dark hero


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

Yes without a doubt. On player it looked similar to some things but in actually gameplay felt very different.


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

Fun but vanishes to fast to enjoy it.


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

Was testing with another healer. Didn't think about it being in town. We both ended up dying and playing just on the outskirts.

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

Yeah it was very obvious.

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

Nothing to complain about.

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

Nope! Definitely will play it often though!



Do you have any other general feedback?


Renewing undead it is unclear that this can remove 3 negative effects in the aoe. Reading it most people assume just self removing.

Ermiq

arcsureb17_ESO wrote: »

There is still no traditional target based debuff type damage over time spell in the whole necro toolkit. I mean you pick a target, you cast the single target dot, then pick another target, and you cast it again and you put it to as many targets as you want (like cripple or swarm).

I know necro wants to feel different from the other classes, but spreading disease is just as much the part of the necro lore as undead pets. And right now there is not a single morph that gives this kind of gameplay. Yes gameplay wise it might have no connection to the other classes but without a traditional dot spell it will have no connection to the true necro gameplay either.

The DoT class doesnt have a single real dot spell. Dissappointing for us spread the disease lovers.

What you are talking about is not a TES necromancer but a generic MMORPG necromancer.

Cellentel

My initial feedback from a PvE DPS perspective after some light parsing with the Magicka necromancer:

1. Overall, I like the class a lot. The abilities are interesting, the animations are good, and overall it is fun to play.
2. My favorite part, strangely enough, is that the Necromancer uses all three elemental damage types. This immediately gives it a more unique feel than other classes, all of whom can produce from their class lines one elemental damage type at best.
3. I like that the shock ability that requires a corpse to cast (still working on the names....) is disabled when the there is no corpse to fire it. Likewise, the blastbones ability is disabled when the previous one is still alive. This makes it much easier on a newbie because it’s obvious from the bar when to use something else, even without addons.
4. I like the controller vibration when the blastbones explodes. In addition to being cool, this helped out with my rotation a bit. It would be nice to have a similar visual cue (albeit, not a fully disabled skill) when the graveyard can be cast with a corpse consumption. The corpses themselves are almost impossible to see on the ground with all the AoE effects present, even solo.
5. Likewise, I like how the skull spammable animation very clearly shows your progress towards the third cast. The first cast is with the right hand, the second is with the left hand, and the third is with both hands. In addition to helping manage your skill usage, this adds a bit of visual diversity that most other spammables do not have.
6. I joined a normal Sunspire run, and the ultimates in particular worked really well. The tank nearly feel out of his chair when when the flesh atronach appeared next to him, and the resurrection ultimate saved our butt several times. Please don’t nerf the resurrection ultimate for PvP’s sake, because it is truly one of the best abilities in the game for progression groups. It raises the floor by helping groups recover from what would otherwise be wipes, without providing really any benefit to top-tier score pushing groups.
7. I think it’s cool (but will probably come to regret saying that) that poorly played Necromancers in a group will be able to negatively affect other Necros in the group by consuming all of their corpses. This adds some interplay between group members that isn’t there for the other classes; normally, when another dps is playing poorly, it doesn’t affect your own damage unless you have to res, but with a necromancer you could theoretically find yourself unable to use some of your abilities because someone else got to your corpses first.

My less happy feedback:

1. As a dps at a dummy, I ended up using all five skills from the dps tree, but zero skills from any other tree. I get that this is probably intentional, but I find it a bit tragic that the skill lines are divided so strongly. At least the Warden’s get Winter’s Revenge.
2. As others have mentioned, the corpses despawn super quickly. There’s enough time to be self-sufficient with corpses, but barely...I found that I needed to prioritize recasting the shock ability as soon as a blastbones blew up; if I did anything else first, I’d usually lose my window to cast it at all.
3. The Necromancer inherited one of the more unfortunate parts of the Magden: its DoTs are all over the place. In addition to blockade (8 seconds), we have the graveyard (10 seconds), the shock thing (12 seconds), and the Skeletal mage (16 seconds). This alone makes the rotation very dynamic, even before factoring in things like the corpse mechanism and recasting blastbones. I suspect some of the variation is helpful in terms of corpse production, but please consider normalizing the abilities a little bit.
4. The blastbones tooltip says it lasts 8 seconds, but for the life of my I couldn’t figure out what that referred to. It always seemed to take 3-5 seconds, even at maximum distance. (That said, this keeps one of the neat parts of the Magden; you have the option to cast blastbones/shalks as part a rotation, but you can also use it more frequently for bit more complexity but a bit more damage. That’s neat).
5. I had some issues getting the atronach ultimate to go off. I’d use it, a cast circle would appear on the ground for a moment (despite me automatic casting set in settings), and then I would go on to use another ability and it would not cast.

Overall, great job folks. You’ve come up with something really cool. Just, please, be careful as you tweak it over the course of the pts. Based on the parses I’ve seen so far it is a bit overtuned and can use some tweaking, but be careful about it. Please don’t give us another magden that remains several underpowered even 2 years from release.

kaithuzar

Both morphs of the blighted blastbones skill are scaling outrageously high.
In my fights against them yesterday, The minimum amount of damage I was hit for was 6K, The average was 9-10K & the max was 12k. That is with 20k unbuffed resistances & 2.6k crit resistance.
This paired with bleeds makes for a ridiculously over powered meta.

kaithuzar

There is a very small window to attempt to burst down a necro. This is because players are building tanky, often 27-30k health builds with sword & shield + duel wield & between defensive ultimate(s), potions & their spawned stuff healing them, it’s very easy for them to recover. I don’t necessarily think anything needs to change here yet, as it may just be a situation where I will need to get “more proficient at bursting during that small window”, but it would actually help if I indeed had burst as a melee magblade; concealed strike = wet noodle.

Ankael07

As top notch as the animations look there are some tweaks that can be made. Almost all of them make your weapons disappear while casting and thats not good. My weapon being invisible during half the fight is just immersion breaking

For example, skills like Grave Grasp, Blastbones and Flame Skull (first 2 casts) use your staff arm to cast it but they could use the left arm instead. Other skills like Bone Armor, Spirit Mender and Expunge just makes your weapon vanish unnecessarily

arcsureb17_ESO

Ermiq wrote: »

arcsureb17_ESO wrote: »

There is still no traditional target based debuff type damage over time spell in the whole necro toolkit. I mean you pick a target, you cast the single target dot, then pick another target, and you cast it again and you put it to as many targets as you want (like cripple or swarm).

I know necro wants to feel different from the other classes, but spreading disease is just as much the part of the necro lore as undead pets. And right now there is not a single morph that gives this kind of gameplay. Yes gameplay wise it might have no connection to the other classes but without a traditional dot spell it will have no connection to the true necro gameplay either.

The DoT class doesnt have a single real dot spell. Dissappointing for us spread the disease lovers.

What you are talking about is not a TES necromancer but a generic MMORPG necromancer.

Ye, show me a TES game where necromancers turned into bone golems or instantly resurrected 3 living creatures to their full potential (not as undead servants).

My argument is just as close to TES lore as these things.

SaucyMcSauceface

I love the cl;ass so far, but i have come across a glitch either in the tooltip description, or the skill itself. For venom skull, the tooltip says that
"while slotted, casting any Necromancer ability while you are in combat will count towards the third cast"
I understood that to mean that if I cast blastbones, then detonating siphon, then venom skull, that the skull would be the third cast, and therefore have the bonus. In testing though, it only starts counting casts after you have cast the first venom skull. So if you cast blastbones, detonating siphon, venomn skull, you then have to cast another necro skill, and then Venom skull again before you get the bonus damage. In contrast, if you cast Venom Skull, Blastbones, Venom skull, the second Venom Skull gets the bonus damage.

As noted, I am not sure if this is the intended mechanic, as it also appears that each skill needs to be cast within roughly 3 seconds of the last in order to stack, but the phrasing on the tooltip and the actual execution of the skill are not lined up at the moment. For my two cents, I would prefer it to work the way that the tool tip suggests which is in line with how the crystal frags proc works.

Moonsorrow

Necromancer feels really cool, fun & smooth to play. Skills fire up fast with fluid animations. Effects are cool and you really got a feeling of playing a new class (duh.. but yeah), as a stamina it has nice amount of class skills to use, what makes it really fun.

Stam Blastbones is really fun, damage is super high, even when did a build that not really ups its damage that much. While fun, for balance compared to other classes might have to tone it (Blastbones) down a bit. Even i hate saying that, but yeah.. damage is super high on it. Do not ruin it with overkill nerf though. Pls.

Necro Passives are super good. That 2k health.. opens up possibilities. Torn about things though, many of the passives are so good, that no other class compares to them, so some balance issues are there, but also not want Necro gutted even before it hits live. But yeah, if things go Live like this, Necromancer will be a true destroyer, a force to be reckoned with both in pve and pvp. Really strong.

It is good that it has no class Major Brutality/sorcery so has to make similar decisions like Templar for pvp atleast on skills/sets/weapons.. for pve obviously potions will be used, but at pvp there is most often need for other types of potions than SPP or WPP.

All in all, Necro is a really awesome & good class to play. I wish old classes passives were updated to a same level of relevance as Necros.

ecru

Activating your own syngery for "Avid Boneyard" is a bit awkward because the only place where the synergy can be active is in the very center of the aoe, but the only way to place the aoe directly on top of yourself is to look almost straight down when casting it. This makes it kind of awkward to use if your intention is to cast it and then use your own synergy because you have to either look straight down and cast it, or cast it and move into it to activate the synergy. It would be a lot more intuitive if the synergy was able to be activated by just being inside of the aoe instead of in the very center. Right now it seems like the area where you can activate the synergy is just a bit too small and this makes it clunky/unintuitive to use if the intention is to activate it yourself.

PureEnvelope35

So from what I've tested, it seems that the damage from the Hungry Scythe morph seems to be far lower than the tooltip, especially in duels where Scythe seemed to be hitting a max of 3k, whereas Ricochet Skull was hitting upwards of 7k on average, both have just about the same tooltip but one is doing far more damage than the other.

Not sure if this is a bug or I'm just being a proper spastic, probably a good mix of both to be fair.

Zer0oo

Only did some short first look at necro:

• abilities look and feel good
• skills and passives are better than any other class
• the "mini" game with corpses is nice but not sure if it does not get to "stressful" if you want to make use of this mechanic in a trial situation with a lot of other mechanics going on

Mystic Siphon
This skill seems to be a RULE BREAKER the damage ticks of this skill seem to be 0.3 sec. Should not all skills only tick ever 1-2sec to reduce lag?

The bombing running skeletons seem to crit more often as intended

The necro pets seem to always attack your closest target and not the target you marked to attack (pts lag or intended)

the heal absorption on a spamable skill is too much

Dracane

I just wonder why these new classes get such beautiful animations, clever skills and potent build choices.
Necromancer shows even more, how dearly a rework of the original classes is needed. They have so many trashy passives and abilities and nowhere near the amount of intelligence behind their skill trees.

I also find it questionable, that Necromancer summons are completely untouchable. Allowing no counterplay against the healing wraith and the mage, doesn't seem very balanced. They are instant summons, so they should at least be stunnable.

BluntLightsaber

Feedback on the skill Stalking Blastbones:

The optimal magicka necromancer rotation appears to involve casting Blastbones every 3rd GCD, this gives the class a very satisfying rhythm (similar to stam warden & shalks) but this only really works when standing next to the target (due to the travel time of the skeleton). At range we have three options, slow down weaving, cast it every 4th GCD, or pay really close attention to when it occasionally lets you cast it again after 3 GCDs.

With corpse management already a very fun mechanic and the large part of the learning curve for necromancer it just seems a bit too much to have a rotation that changes so fundamentally in rhythm based on distance from the target. As nice of an idea as Blastbones is (I haven't tried it in pvp so I don't know if these changes would overtune the skill there) I would much rather it be a skill that operated more consistently, i.e. make it possible to activate again every 3rd skill.

Obviously the skill is currently bugged and is overperforming as a result, but even once it has been fixed it'll be a huge chunk of the necro dps and a large part of the class' identity, and I'd prefer it to feel as good as possible to use!

Edit: To add more info...

The skill says that it will increase in damage by 10% for every second spent chasing an enemy, up to a cap of 50%. So on the surface it would seem that the range play of the skill is intended, however this results in a hit of 31420 when next to the dummy vs 33488 when stood roughly at the edge of Blockade range, not enough to compensate for not being able to cast it as frequently.

It seems like the damage ramp up of the skill is intended for chasing down retreating players in PvP. I don't know how to reconcile the two uses but I really like the feel of the skill when stood next to a target dummy and would prefer that feel to be universal, at least in PvE.

XomRhoK

Animation of Death Scythe skill looks lame.
First of all, idea of the Necromancer with scythe is very trivial. I don't remember that in Elder scrolls lore scythes were part of necromancer's arsenal in any form, it looks like bad borrowing. If you want to keep the mechanic of the skill just replace Scythe animation with something else. If you want to keep scythe at least redo it, it just looks bad.

Saelent

I don’t want to snitch on something I really like about the class, but during dolmens I’ve found that if I’m fast enough with the ultimate absorption from corpses ability (just logged out and I am terrible with names) I can catch a few points of ultimate before the body fades and becomes inaccessible.
Is this working as intended?
I hope so, I love the idea of snatching power back from Molag Bal. I’m only mentioning this because I’m not sure if the comparable Templar skill (redemption?) is capable of the same feat.

I made sure not to have any self made corpses out at the time of testing this.