Necromancer PTS Wrapup

ZOS_KNowak

Thank you for all the testing and feedback you’ve given on the new Necromancer class. As this PTS cycle nears its end, we wanted to provide some insight on how we approached the Necromancer going into PTS and how we’ll be evaluating the class after Elsewyr goes live.

The Necromancer class had the distinct advantage of being in development for a long period of time – this gave us a lot of room to iterate and polish the class as much as possible. We adjusted many abilities based on internal playtesting, and even completely redesigned some abilities to better support the gameplay themes of the class. The visits to the studio by the Class Reps and other members of the community aided us in these efforts. We also applied many of the lessons learned from the Warden and our original classes when building the Necromancer, which helped us avoid problem areas such as heavy buff management or a lack of clearly defined strengths and weaknesses.

Because we had so much time to fine-tune the balance and fix the bugs for the Necromancer, we avoided doing too many dramatic changes or overhauls during the PTS cycle. We made some adjustments for the 5.0.2 PTS patch, but limited changes in the following PTS patches to bug fixes. We actively avoided excessive tinkering and last-minute redesigns that wouldn’t get a high level of testing and scrutiny. Given that the Necromancer was built with a lot of new tech and new concepts such as corpse management, having it work correctly and remain stable for this massive Elsewyr patch was the main focus.

While we’re pleased with the current state of the Necromancer class, we know that this is just the start of things. One of the advantages of working on a live game is the continuous improvement we can apply to our classes and combat experience over time. We’ll be keeping a close eye on how the Necromancer performs as you level them up and learn how to use their abilities. Here are just some of the issues that we’ll be closely monitoring after Elsewyr launches:

• Necromancer performance for Magicka and Stamina builds, as well as for Tanking, Healing, or Damage Dealing.
• Necromancer performance in large-scale PvP, with a particular eye on the Reanimate ultimate and their overall area of effect kit.
• Shocking Siphon’s area of effect being difficult to land on very large monsters (like the dragons in the new Sunspire trial).
• Corpse targeting for Shocking Siphon and Restoring Tether being “finicky” in some situations.
• PvP counterplay against the Blastbones.
• The Justice System experience as a Necromancer.

Thank you all for the support during this PTS cycle, and we look forward to seeing many Necromancers in Tamriel in the future!

casparian

ZOS_KNowak wrote: »

One of the advantages of working on a live game is the continuous improvement we can apply to our classes

Do you think that "continuous improvement" is a good term for your approach to other classes, particularly stamsorc and stamplar?

DeathStalker

I have a question about the criminal act skills for Necromancer and the justice system for Monday's patch. The criminal act stuff is my least fav part of this and IMO going to cause a lot of headaches while playing a necromancer that will take a lot of the fun away.

I don't suppose you have decided to wait to implement it until it doesn't affect quests and it's applied evenly like to Vampires and Werewolves and such?

usmcjdking

It's hard to give you appropriate feedback for the simple fact we do not know what the baseline for "acceptable" is.

Is the Stamina Templar an acceptable performance barometer for DPS, or functionality in PVP?
Is the Magicka Warden an acceptable performance barometer for DPS?
Is the Necromancer tank supposed to be better than the Templar tank or should they have equal levels of performance?

You guys do a terrible job of telling us what is working and what isn't working - so when you ask for specific feedback I can only operate on one of two assumption. Assumption a) is that is sucks and does not perform to the highest standard which is so blatantly ahead of everything else. Assumption b) is that it is working as intended or even better than intended since it is ahead of the worst performers who have been in the game since launch - or at least Morrowind.

I cannot give you appropriate feedback unless I have an accurate representative base for overall performance.

edit: A vast majority of my 'class balance' feedback is in relation to my main, the Stamina Templar since that is what I am most familiar with. Every single class bar Stamina Sorcerer is clearly ahead of the Stamina Templar, so all my feedback either boils down to either a) buff stamplar/stamsorc, b) nerf anything that isn't a stamplar/stamsorc.

Stop asking us questions in regards to performance and provide us a clear description of what class/spec expectations are and how you feel they perform so I understand where my core of understanding lies in relation to what you see as balanced.

rafaelcsmaia

If i could define this update in one word, it would be "dissapointment.

You were supposed to adjust class skills, to listen to feedback, yet necro gets all the attention and this polished treatment u mention is utter disrespect with People that play stamsorc or stamplar and have been giving feedback for ages.

This patch only shows its not a lack of capacity, but more like you only work on stuff that will sell more dlc, instead of keeping old playerbase happy.

Own

You guys need better players. I could tell the "Corpse targeting for Shocking Siphon and Restoring Tether being “finicky” in some situations" within the first duel. 30 minutes later the class is too buggy to play and the reasons were obvious why. How did this get tested for so long and not get fixed?

Along with multiple insane changes, some of which turned out to be great and overpowering, that make no sense. why would incap shut down magicka spec and not stun stamina specs? who cares if your ultimate is delayed 3 seconds after the enemy just wasted it on you, possibly giving you free cc? Who is testing this for such long periods of time?

You guys are doing something called "Shotgun Diagnosis" IRL. You find a problem and try to fix it, doesn't work so you change many other things at the same time hoping to fix the problem. It's obvious when abilities change completely every PTS update. You are doing it wrong and running down a rabbit hole of bad players complaining about basic stuff that is counterable by skill.

It's becoming too much and you need actual good players that don't just wear heavy armor and say "I wear heavy armor because I want to be a Juggernaut and don't want to die when jumping into large groups". I saw the Devs vs ReP BG's and it was terrible.

P.S. I also saw a rep saying that bash canceling stop stamina recovery. PSA no one that is good at it holds block to bash cancel. sorry we keybind "Interrupt" and use block/bash canceling sparingly. Console controls require this

Find some actual good players.

Anhedonie

Well, that was a lot of talk about nothing. Thanks for the update though.


PS I can't blame people that say you didn't learn anything from that failure you call warden, even though I like necro more than I hate it.


PSPS

1) Delayed effects don't work well in action game.
2) Long animations don't work well in an action game.
3) Abilities with very limited area of effect don't work well in an action game.
4) Clunky and gimmicky mechanics without smart target don't work well in an action game.

Adenoma

Is there a recording of devs vs players anyone can link? Whenever I wann start to overestimate the dev’s ability to play their own game, I’d like to watch it to ground myself.

Wing

designing abelites around parses and not actual gameplay is dumb, some skills are clearly designed by people that did nothing but sit in front of a target dummy.

if that's what you think your game is about then let us know now so we can move on to something else.

there are so many poorly designed or implemented class skills, some that have been around since day one (looking at you stone fist) and are tuned or rebalanced by once again sitting in front of a target dummy, or looking at an effect spreadsheet to determine what amount of effects and what numbers = a skill

you a lot 5k points to a skill and go "well its ranged so 1k points, damage is 2k, well throw an interrupt on the second cast that's 500, slap a heal on there that's another 1k, and make it silence. . .oh what? the silence is 2k? . . .well make it a normal CC so it can be broken, that drops it to around 1k. . .oh what? that's 500 over? just add in something like its a "rule breaker" that will make it sound cool"

when you design skills around a spreadsheet of effects and with a target dummy as your base line its no wonder you get the convoluted boring skill design we have been given.

how about having a little fun and using some creativity with skill design, and NOT design around a dummy and parses.

Revokus

Glad to know the pain points have at least been heard. Even tough my magsorc looks better in open world, I’m looking forward to levelling a magicka necromancer on monday !

DisgracefulMind

I'm quite shocked the combat team sees Necromancer and thinks it's "polished" in any way, shape, or form. It's buggy, and just lackluster.

Actually, there is nothing really rewarding about using corpses on a Necromancer. Isn't the point of the corpse "mini-game" to make your character more powerful? Yet it feels so detrimental to do so.

If you read through all the Necromancer feedback on the official thread for it, so many people have said the same thing. We didn't even get time to test Necromancer without it being bugged (lol?). There was absolutely no time to even fully test it without some bug skewing damage, or just not being able to use abilities at all. You're throwing Necromancer on to the live server as an incomplete class so we can test is there, it's okay to admit that, but claiming that you wanted high level testing is ridiculous when it was bugged the entire time. It's still buggy.

If the ZoS team thinks this PTS cycle was successful, that's even more worrisome.

TrinityBreaker

Can stam DK get a direct damage spammable please?

SturgeHammer

Would be cool to see a wrap up like this for all major items addressed/added for future patches (class changes, cyrodiil changes, etc).

Vapirko

casparian wrote: »

ZOS_KNowak wrote: »

One of the advantages of working on a live game is the continuous improvement we can apply to our classes

Do you think that "continuous improvement" is a good term for your approach to other classes, particularly stamsorc and stamplar?

Beat me to it. I mean this was supposed to be the major class skills update. Mag DK (and some Stam DK) got a few nice changes, but other than that it was really limited to Stamina NB and Necromancer. Seriously ZOS, what happened to the rest of the classes? Why did you guys call this the class balance patch and then focus solely on just a couple of classes?

ZOS_GregoryV

Greetings all,

After removing a handful of comments, we must remind everyone that all posts are to be kept civil and constructive. We can understand that some players may be upset about the upcoming changes and want to voice their opinions. Please just be sure to keep the rules in mind as well. If there may be any questions in regards to the rules, you are more than welcome to review them here.

Thank you for your understanding,
-Greg-

Mojomonkeyman

Honest question, @ZOS_KNowak,

would you call the development of the Warden class from Morrowind to now "continuous improvement" as well?

I mean, let's just have a look at two outstanding points:
1. Removal of key perks to the most important offensive skills (undodgable bird, fissure stun and finally unblockable fissure) resulting in a huge hit to gameplay, build choice and class identity- check
2. Killing off an entire alternative build choice (HP wardens) with the crippling move on Arctic Blast (Id still like to see some statistics on AB usage by players back then compared to now) - check

I could name at least a dozen other major and minor changes you did to the class, which continuously resulted in the class being less fun, more clunky, more niche - the community called you out on all of those changes - you never even bothered to reply.

Up to now you refuse to give Wardens any postive attention at all - giving the class something back for all the things you took from it. I mean, just compare the NB and Sorc back and forth finetuning over all those patches in the past 2 years to the bare minimum effort strategy youre rolling with when it comes to Warden.

In my personal opinion, your actions speak much louder than your words. You guys have shown that you are not interested in "continuous improvement" and your words are a shallow and somewhat desperate attempt to convince at least some poor souls that hype hype necro will be a whole different story and properly maintained (yeah, right...).

Daedric_NB_187

How come when I read "continuous improvements", it sounds to me in my head "constant nerfs"? In any MMO I have played, no class gets improved over the life cycle of a game. Necro will get dumbed down and nerfed. Especially after it is used in Cyrodiil or BGs for a given length of time. Enjoy now while you can cause a year from now, necro will be a totally different animal from what it is now.

Deathlord92

I will be playing necromancer not sure magic or stamina I’m better on stamina but I love playing as Breton lol and my main will always be stamblade and magblade second pretty please 🙏 buff magblade 🙂

Universe

I wish the Necromancer was actually more "balanced" before its release on the Live servers.
As it stands now, "Necromancer" & "balanced" words can't be in the same sentence...
In many scenarios the class is OP while in other scenarios it is broken.
What will happen: Many players will play this class for months until it will be nerfed in Update 23 and/or Update 24.

It was much better if you listened more to Players feedback during the PTS cycle.
Allowing half constructed game features to reach the Live servers is a mistake.

satanio

Ok. You did kinda gj with necromancer bcs my desire for necroarcher is fulfilled.

templesus

Can we, as a community, get a clear-cut baseline for how you’re approaching balance? The sneak peek we were given and outline as a whole was very contrary to what occurred, NB as a whole got more focus than any other class including Necro, large amounts of bugs were NOT addressed, underperforming classes are STILL underperforming when it comes to both PvP and PvE and weren’t even thrown a bone (Stamplar, Stamsorc to name a few).

“Continuous Improvement” do you really expect your community to buy that? After seeing the state of Magicka Warden 2 years later? After seeing Stamplar continue to be bottom tier dps 5 years later?

Overall this patch was a let down. I thought to myself with a new team hopefully balance will take a turn for the better, yet I’m not even sure I can call what happened this update balance. It looked more like a semblance of dart throws, which is what the playerbase has been accustomed to over the years.

I will say it again. You need to implement a private forums sector, with top end players that can give honest feedback on balance. As it stands there is too much narratives that certain classes are fine or balanced because the people stating such only quest or kill world bosses. We need a private sector forum full of PvE players who have completed atleast 10+ total Vet DLC trials, and PvP players have won atleast 500 duels. As “elitist” as it may sound, it’s the truth. If you want this game to go somewhere, PLEASE input private section of the forums for top end players to give feedback without it being shot down by the masses because of their lack of game knowledge.

Grega

My main from 2015 ongoing is stamplar. Since there are no class change tokens, that will remain. Since all achievements are character bound, I will remain to be focused on playtime on my main.

That said above, I will make a necromancer, level him to 50 and experience skills, then either put him to rest and never play him again or just delete the character. I will then return to play my main. And since y’all are determined to keep stamplar at the bottom of the barrel, my playtime will be limited because: At the end of the day, developers themselves would not go to vsunspire HM with stamplars the way they designed it, so why would we expect end game players guilds will want to take any, eh?

GG ZOS excellent work

CHM228

Animation, Concept, Visual Effects.. are astounding, I like it.

However when it comes to competitiveness, well i'm not sure about it.

Girl_Number8

I wouldn't say polished but Elsweyr looks amazing. You added to PvP, PvE overland, and PvE endgame. It really says a lot about the content you can produce in such a short amount of time. I see you faithfully following your promise of delivering new content 100%. Which I cannot even begin to imagine the workload in meeting such deadlines. So GG Zos!!

Though on the otherside, I think the unusual lopsided heavy nerfs and skill rearranging is taking away the viability of some classes. And making others more bland, losing their identity, that special something, that makes playing that class fun and unique.

This won't be a popular opinion but the class rep program has not helped since murkmire, just look at magblades and many other classes. It's your game but these oddball nerfs seem to be on the classes that needed some buffs.

There is too much favoritism rather then a love for all the classes. Some nerfs can be clearly seen and could be done with some minor tweaking, rather than pulling the whole building down.

I still feel you followed the warden with the necro because the Stamcro far out performs the Magcro. In all honesty, they should of be on par with each other, or the Magcro should of had a slight edge.

When anyone thinks of a Necromancer, you think of magic.

I luv eso and you added a lot of new interesting content which I look forward to playing. I just wish I could experience it on the same level with all the classes.

See you in Elsweyr!!!

Contraptions

I'm just disappointed that the devs think that the necromancer is "polished" and that they're "pleased with the current state" of it.

Necros are the summoner class in most games, and yet here in ESO necros have no permanent pet, no pet and caster synergy, no undead pet variety, no nothing. What an utter joke.

I also don't understand this weird obsession with the corpse generation/spending mechanic that the devs seem to have. I don't think this mechanic is as clever or as fun as you guys seem to think it is. It's just clunky and an additional restriction on the class skills that need them.

Girl_Number8

templesus wrote: »

Can we, as a community, get a clear-cut baseline for how you’re approaching balance? The sneak peek we were given and outline as a whole was very contrary to what occurred, NB as a whole got more focus than any other class including Necro, large amounts of bugs were NOT addressed, underperforming classes are STILL underperforming when it comes to both PvP and PvE and weren’t even thrown a bone (Stamplar, Stamsorc to name a few).

“Continuous Improvement” do you really expect your community to buy that? After seeing the state of Magicka Warden 2 years later? After seeing Stamplar continue to be bottom tier dps 5 years later?

Overall this patch was a let down. I thought to myself with a new team hopefully balance will take a turn for the better, yet I’m not even sure I can call what happened this update balance. It looked more like a semblance of dart throws, which is what the playerbase has been accustomed to over the years.

I will say it again. You need to implement a private forums sector, with top end players that can give honest feedback on balance. As it stands there is too much narratives that certain classes are fine or balanced because the people stating such only quest or kill world bosses. We need a private sector forum full of PvE players who have completed atleast 10+ total Vet DLC trials, and PvP players have won atleast 500 duels. As “elitist” as it may sound, it’s the truth. If you want this game to go somewhere, PLEASE input private section of the forums for top end players to give feedback without it being shot down by the masses because of their lack of game knowledge.

This would be THE WORST for the class rep program and the game. You need well rounded players that can do it all. You also need the middle ground too.

Someone who won a small amount of duels won't help. Especially, since dueling would be the worst way to balance PvP, anyone knows that.

Transparency with your player-base will go a lot farther in helping the game's performance and keeping things fun, rather then isolating a large population of the game's players.

When someone submits feedback perhaps have their build info, what were they playing ie. PvP Cp, Bgs, Non Cp PvP, as they are very different in how you build for and play.

I say this after years of playing on all three platforms.

UppGRAYxDD

ZoS, you want to improve.... Give us detailed explanations on what and why mechanics/skills/classes/races are being looked at, buffed, or nerfed. Don't feed us the nonsensical little notes on the patches after the fact. Give it to us early, often, and increase transparency. You want feedback, but when multitudes of customers offer genuine notes/feedback it gets discounted and/or ignored completely. Also when releasing a New Class in game, simply focus on the new class first!
Don't mess around with other classes until you have the new one set. Instead, how much time and resources were used to mess with incap strike?

Doctor_Zeuss

Disappointed with nearly everything involving classes/abilities this patch.

There is a severe lack of transparency on combat and balance direction.

Sad times for ESO imo.

Kalixte

I think these thanks pretty unappropriate, since you didn't really listen to our feedbacks (except for bugs): Necromancer still overpowered, Incapaciting Strike changes useless, some classes such as Magicka Warden, Stamina Sorcerer or Stamina Templar still in a poor state to give you few examples. So keep them please, I personally don't want them, you are just triggering me even more. Hope your I-Love-Dead-Bodies money making machine thing will work at least. Peace!

Icy_Waffles

I really hope that some changes to corpse mechanics happen. Maybe they last longer and don’t need to be targeted. It’s tedious as is.

darkblue5

I think some people are forgetting that the early release of chapters has traditionally been effectively extended beta-testing for good or ill. IMO good overall but makes us PTS tryhards PO'd.

Magicka necromancer long term has a good base as a well built class.The overall top performing spec in PvP, magsorc, has some of the same basic "problems" as magcro like an obvious easy to counter combo. Since the class is overtuned the fact that it "shouldn't" be good at solo PvP doesn't matter.
The only thing with Magcro that I don't see being fixable by theoretically simple bug fixes and number tuning is how poorly Blastbones works in ranged PVE rotations.

NB's PTS takeover aside

In some ways ZOS should have just nerfed Incap/SA to the ground, nerfed Minor Berserk to the ground, and left magblades continue to be by far the worst PvP spec. Then stamblades would merely move from a close second best to a distant third best solo PvP class and continue to be a putrid group PvP spec. Because the only thing nightblades hate more than nerfs is buffs and buffing nightblades in any way also PO's nightblade haters. That way at least nightblade haters would be happy. Instead stuff like Grim Focus mitigation and Minor Vulnerability on Teleport Strike made everyone livid and removing Major Fracture from Suprise attack made only stamblades livid.
Once the devs got sucked into making Nightblade changes that everyone hated despite it not making sense for some of the changes to be hated.... if they didn't want PvP magblades to continue to be the worst PvP spec and one of the few worst specs at something to also eat nerfs.... then they had to give buffs which would get hated irrationally.

Swear some nightblades rn are convinced that Assassin's Will/Scourge procs will deal 0 damage come Elswyer, and that Teleport Strike applies the Minor Vulnerability to their character instead of their target.
Swear some NB haters think magblades are the second best PvP spec on live and will be invincible come Elswyer while being able to two shot a Seventh/Fury stam dk using new wings with a 28m ranged Mass Hysteria, into a 28m ranged Soul Harvest, and finally into an Assassin's Will proc with a 69k tooltip. And that's just the tool's tip mind you.