How to fix magicka necromancers in PvP.

Baphomet

After having played a magicka necromancer in PvP for some time now, it is obvious there are a few things that needs to be addressed in order to make the class as compeditive as its counterparts. But fortunately, in my opinion, it only takes a few minor tweaks to accomplish this. I'm am going to leave blastbones out of this, because that it a topic on its own - no minor tweaks can fix that.

Magicka necromancers have great survivability and pretty good sustain, but compared to all other classes, many of their ability are not suited for a fast-paced environment like PvP and they hit like a wet noodle . The latter will probably be solved when/if blastbones gets fixed, however, there still are a few things worth bringing up.

1. Ricochet skull - needs to have its animation sped up a bit and a slight damage increase of 5-10% in order to be worth slotting over forcepulse.
2. Unnerving boneyard - should inflict major breach for a few seconds after leaving its AoE - like cinder storm.
3. Avid boneyard - should be able to activate your own synergy after moving out of your own AoE like you can with other synergies.
4. Skeletal mage - it's supposed to be the necro's DoT, but it does too low damage in comparison to other DoTs, and you need to be able to direct its damage when highlighting your target. It's useless when it hits pets and irrelevant players. Useless until you can control who it targets.
5. Shocking siphon - more damage, shorter duration (people move in PvP).
6. Hungry scythe - are you kidding me? Necro's don't need yet another HoT! This ability should come with either a DoT or an execute ability where it does increasingly more damage to targets under 25-30% health. Give them at least one solid melee ability.
7. Beckoning armor - fix it so that it pulls realiably. Also mention in the tooltip that it has a limited range.
8. Bone totem + morphs - this ability should either instill fear instantly or pulse every two seconds. That would make it useful in PvP (it has much potential with a small tweak).

Just my two cents.

Waffennacht

How the hell is Arcanist damage so low? I suppose the idea was that in PvE you're getting a freeish dps to everything.... Even then tho....

It'd have to be doubled to still do less damage than Matriarch (but Matriarch is single target I know, but come on)

Stam necro has everything: CC, execute, dots, spammable that adds synergy with truth, hots, snares, defile, range and melee, roots if desired.

I was thinking of trying a hybrid, but there isn't a single magicka based ability a Stam necro would want (telling me how lopsided the class is in terms of viability)

The corpse mechanic is so difficult to use efficiently that the reward should be massive; as you pointed out - not only is the mechanic itself difficult to use, enemies just move out.

The synergy... OMG that synergy... First off the motha synergy radius of damage should at least be the same radius as the AoE or bigger - that or it's so buggy it only actually deals damage occasionally and I have misinterpreted that to be a smaller radius than it actually is.

I feel like a lot of the abilities just don't fire making some harder to evaluate than most. Is my Deaden Pain actually working? Sometimes for sure.... Did it light up and I move too far from my very short lived corpse? Dunno...

The skull.... It's like Wardens bird but does less damage.... And doesn't heal when it's cast.... And for some reason stamina has the any other necro abilities counts mechanic (definitely feel that should be the magicka version mechanic....)

Meh I say, I'm working on a more health version myself; gonna make something work that isn't a GD Stam necro

katorga

Waffennacht wrote: »

The corpse mechanic is so difficult to use efficiently that the reward should be massive; as you pointed out - not only is the mechanic itself difficult to use, enemies just move out.

This. The siphon ability should consume a corpse at your location and create a beam to the target. Not the other way around. That way the target could not move out of it or float above it.

Was doing Crypt of Hearts 1 last night, noticed the 2nd or 3rd boss (lady in room at top of stair) consistently glitched BB. He would run to her, and stand there till he expired. Then casting detonating siphon on his corpse was unable to damage the boss. I think she floats a little, so it completely messes both skills up.

I seem to be finding at least one boss per DLC dungeon that these two skills simply cannot damage.

Oh well. Worst case, my necro can be extra bank slots.

Adenoma

The siphons should be single target DOTs that are pretty average without a corpse and with a corpse hit pretty hard. It's amazing that for some class that clearly ZOS wanted to be a DOT class (the passives point a lot to this), they have some of the worst access to DOTs.

Blastbones pathing is a known issue, but also the fact that *any* AOE will kill them because they nerfed the HP so much. They're already an extremely predictable mode of burst, but it really sucks to be unable to use that skill versus something like a stamsorc where hurricane just instantly deletes my skele-friend.

The archer/mage are both super underwhelming. They should have some means of controlling targeting.

I agree with @Waffennacht that it's telling that there are basically no magicka skills besides your major resists and the guard ghost that a stamcro would want to use.

psychotic13

The siphon DoT does not need a buff, its actually insanely powerful, it takes time to learn to use effectively, though that being said ive only used it on stam so i wasnt trying to use the corpses for any other skills, i had plenty.

I also have a necro healer and know that isnt the case on magicka, plenty of skills require corpses, some up to 5. There is no way to effectively use those when you cant supply the corpses demanded.

wheem_ESO

Waffennacht wrote: »

How the hell is Arcanist damage so low?

I'd like to know this as well. On PTS, it was in the ballpark of half the damage of a Twin Blade and Blunt or Heavy Weapons proc-bleed, which is too weak IMO, especially given the fact that you can't choose the target, and it isn't "sticky" even in a 1v1. For whatever reason, though, ZOS decided to cut the damage by something like 1/3 between the last PTS patch and early access starting. I've played around with it a bit, but it's basically a wasted bar slot.

Waffennacht wrote: »

The synergy... OMG that synergy... First off the motha synergy radius of damage should at least be the same radius as the AoE or bigger - that or it's so buggy it only actually deals damage occasionally and I have misinterpreted that to be a smaller radius than it actually is.

Yea, the Avid Boneyard synergy is another thing that's making me nerd rage. It's just so unreliable; even when you're against a target that isn't 100% nullifying it with very basic movement, it's sometimes impossible to find the synergy activation location. I died in a BG a little earlier due to; 1) the Intensive Mender bugging out and refusing to heal, and 2) because of this synergy being such a finnicky piece of garbage...I was rooted inside of my own AOE, with 1 enemy player also inside said AOE, and I still couldn't activate the synergy and get the burst heal.

katorga wrote: »

The siphon ability should consume a corpse at your location and create a beam to the target. Not the other way around. That way the target could not move out of it or float above it.

I'm still not a huge fan of that idea, since it could easily be broken by LOS, distance, or presumably even cleansed, causing corpses and resources to frequently be wasted. And it'd even give an obvious visual indicator telling the target that they needed to cancel out your DOT.

Personally, I'd like to see it cause the damage in an AOE around the caster, and/or apply a "sticky" DOT to anyone touched by the beam or AOE.

psychotic13 wrote: »

The siphon DoT does not need a buff, its actually insanely powerful, it takes time to learn to use effectively, though that being said ive only used it on stam so i wasnt trying to use the corpses for any other skills, i had plenty.

I also have a necro healer and know that isnt the case on magicka, plenty of skills require corpses, some up to 5. There is no way to effectively use those when you cant supply the corpses demanded.

You can't learn to use it effectively in PvP, because it's too easy to avoid. Anyone who's halfway decent, not AFK, and not lagging out won't take all that much damage from the damaging siphon.

I'd also have to disagree about the importance of corpses to Magicka builds. The only worthwhile corpse-consuming ability is Renewing Undeath, and it requires one corpse in the target area to activate the cleanse + ground based HOT. For lower MMR BGs, or fighting zergs with a lot of weak players, Necrotic Potency can be fairly decent. But in the higher MMR games, especially when considering organized teams, there just aren't going to be enough corpses around for it to be worthwhile.

The best you could do without players dying, is timing a Blastbones with your Mender, Bone Armor, and Skeletal Mage all expiring at the same time, which would give you 8 seconds of Major Protection. That's quite a few global cooldowns and bar slots to commit, especially since you may not even have that all line that up when it actually matters. Like most everything else in the Necromancer's class toolkit, it's too unreliable to be effective.

There could be an argument made for the other morph though, I guess. You can build up a fair amount of Ultimate even outside of combat with that.