PTS Update 24 - Feedback Thread for Necromancer

ZOS_GinaBruno

This is the official feedback thread for Necromancers. Please read through all the changes in the patch notes and try them out on the PTS before providing feedback in this thread. Thank you!

Winstonshead

Nice nerf

Revokus

Magnecro offence is simply the worst of the worst. Are we supposed to spam Ricochet Skull and use a rarely working Blastbones ? Because there is simply nothing else worth slothing in pvp.

There is nothing unique about Magnecro offence all of their damage abilities are simply not worth using in pvp except the Ricochet Skull no originality whatsoever.

I'm not sure how you want us to kill a decent player with that kit... A half working Blastbones and a spammable aren't going to cut it. Without an execute, no off balance and dots nerfed other magicka classes have a way stronger class kit to kill someone in pvp.

For that I have no shame to say that Magwarden is a 100 % times better at killing someone than Magnecro.

OtarTheMad

I don't see where you are trying to go with this.

Boneyard was bad before this nerf, so was Siphoning Shock. You fixed Skeletal and made it useful last patch but now killed it. Magcro isn't really worth playing in my opinion. Your bar is going to be full of non-necro abilities.

wheem_ESO

Magicka Necromancer's PvP-offense is really mediocre on live, but is essentially getting gutted in this first PTS patch. If my reading of ZOS' math is correct, the Skeletal Mage will do even less damage than it did before Scalebreaker...it increased by 90% last patch, but the current damage is getting cut in half. I can trigger the Necropotence set with my Mender, so the Mage's value really plummets; there hasn't been any announcement of the magicka cost going down, duration going up, or any passive skills changing. Sure, the extra penetration is nice and whatnot, but what exactly am I going to apply it to? An extremely unreliable Blastbones and a spammable? As though that's going to get kills against players that aren't terrible.

This is the exact same predicament Magicka Necromancer was in prior to the Scalebreaker patch, but worse (since the Colossus' Major Vulnerability will never take effect against opponents you'd actually need it against, and the Mage's damage will be even lower than before). Magicka Necromancer just doesn't have a worthwhile offensive toolkit available to it; the only way I can see us having any chance at success against halfway decent players is by playing a really gimmicky burst setup relying on 3x Harmony Jewelry with Avid Boneyard + Blastbones + Meteor + Vamp Drain, while crossing your fingers that the Blastbones actually does what he's supposed to during the midst of your burst attempt. And if it fails, you've got a 20 second cooldown on the synergy and obviously need to rebuild all your ultimate.

Even with the current (live) version of the generic Magicka DOTs, Magicka Necromancer's offense is really bad against decent Battlegrounds teams with healers.

While it's good to hear that ZOS recognizes that Mystic Siphon doesn't function properly, that skill won't be useful in PvP unless it's at least partially redesigned. Having a ground-based DOT with bad damage, a corpse requirement, and an incredibly obvious telegraph just isn't going to cut it (especially since the corpse location often won't be where it would be most beneficial).

Revokus

wheem_ESO wrote: »

Magicka Necromancer's PvP-offense is really mediocre on live, but is essentially getting gutted in this first PTS patch. If my reading of ZOS' math is correct, the Skeletal Mage will do even less damage than it did before Scalebreaker...it increased by 90% last patch, but the current damage is getting cut in half. I can trigger the Necropotence set with my Mender, so the Mage's value really plummets; there hasn't been any announcement of the magicka cost going down, duration going up, or any passive skills changing. Sure, the extra penetration is nice and whatnot, but what exactly am I going to apply it to? An extremely unreliable Blastbones and a spammable? As though that's going to get kills against players that aren't terrible.

This is the exact same predicament Magicka Necromancer was in prior to the Scalebreaker patch, but worse (since the Colossus' Major Vulnerability will never take effect against opponents you'd actually need it against, and the Mage's damage will be even lower than before). Magicka Necromancer just doesn't have a worthwhile offensive toolkit available to it; the only way I can see us having any chance at success against halfway decent players is by playing a really gimmicky burst setup relying on 3x Harmony Jewelry with Avid Boneyard + Blastbones + Meteor + Vamp Drain, while crossing your fingers that the Blastbones actually does what he's supposed to during the midst of your burst attempt. And if it fails, you've got a 20 second cooldown on the synergy and obviously need to rebuild all your ultimate.

Even with the current (live) version of the generic Magicka DOTs, Magicka Necromancer's offense is really bad against decent Battlegrounds teams with healers.

While it's good to hear that ZOS recognizes that Mystic Siphon doesn't function properly, that skill won't be useful in PvP unless it's at least partially redesigned. Having a ground-based DOT with bad damage, a corpse requirement, and an incredibly obvious telegraph just isn't going to cut it (especially since the corpse location often won't be where it would be most beneficial).

This 100 %. Siphons for a start should Siphon the life of an enemy tethered to you not a corpse while still consuming a corpse nearby. And even then the damage is way too low to be viable in pvp. They should be redesigned otherwise I fear they'll never be viable other than pve.

Mystic Siphon is the last ability you learn and should be the most powerful. As it stands now it's the weakest ability I ever saw in a game to damage someone along with Skeletal Arcanist.

Ankael07

Blanket nerfs will be the death of this game. As it was the death of Necromancer's DPS role in PVP

method__01

necrowho? is this a class?more like my new mule toons

BigBragg

At this point in both PvP and PvE, it seems like you only want necros to run support or tanking. I don't understand why you are hitting graveyard even more. I don't understand why you are gutting another ultimate. I don't understand why you are just constantly gutting the gameplay anymore. So over this cycle of strip natch potes.

Nerhesi

You have gone out of the way to introduce a new-ish meta to the game. DoT Meta.
This didn't eliminate the existing, superior, Direct Damage Meta.

Now you've removed it (dots needed to do at least 2.5x damage to be viable).
The necromancer is ***-poor at the current Meta.

Think on how to return the Necromancer to perform with 2.5x DoT damage to at least allow for variety that isn't completely sub-optimal in this game. Perhaps improve the passives such that the DoTs are back to that level for necromancers... or some morph of an ability that improves it or so.

It is obvious by design, that you wanted necromancers to be slightly better at Dots. Slightly better of completely useless is not functional nor desirable.

Nerhesi

The only way a magicka necromancer was anywhere near competitive was to run Entropy, soul-trap, and skeletal arcanist... For once in your game you actually have a viable dot-class! Think about that.. youre the first mmo or rpg that had to wait 5+ years to actually have a dot build! !

I find it hilarious and sad at the same time, that you literally just nerfed all three of those by 50% of that DPS into the ground. Considering that without any nerf, you were still not super-optimal compared to stamsorc, magplar, magblade, etc etc

KillsAllElves

Nerf the necromancer name and call it. *Illusionist*

Still waiting for that necromancer class.

davapoole

every time they alter the skills or sets for so called re-balancing it is always done for resons of people complaining in pvp. Yet it screws up peoples ability to play the game most in pve , yet the reasons for doing it dont exist in pve. Strangely the lead combat designer is also the lead pvp designer so is it any wonder that all the changes for pvp reasons just ignore most of the games player base in pve.. Use the battle spirit to do this instead of impacting so hugely on people ability to play how they want for no reason at all in pve. make the cost higher or drop the damage a bit but using asledghammer to crack a nut is pathetic and they will have to make a massive u turn again in update 25. you adjust in small amounts so its not a stupid amount like this. making all dots useless to try to get people using other skills is forcing them to not use them as they are useless now.People follow the meta because they want to do good damage but now you are forcing your sledgehammer ideas on them and totally negating about 50% of skills in the game. Do either a cost increase or a damage reduction but not both and stop forcing changes for pvp reasons on the pve game that there is no justification for as they should be seperate and not keep causing all these stupid changes again and again. You will swap all these changes back next patch as it has made such a negative effect on the game. You said in eso live that you wanted people to be able to play how they wanted but by doing these drastic changes you have taken that choice away and are just forcing your opinion on to everyone playing the game. i run a guild and within 30 mins of these patch notes coming out all i heard for the next two hours was a constant stream of wtf they cannot be serious at least a 30% damage reduction is not balancing its destroying the dots. These are the worst and most destructive patch notes i have ever seen in 4 years and am sick of hearing everyone complaining about nothing but you destroying all there characters a one fell swoop. Not only does it take you years fixing bugs like the stamina ride bug that no one wants fixing you now try to force your idea of people being able to play how they want by taking away most of there rotations as being viable how is that helping people play how they want. Typical zos *** up but biggest yet well done

ecru

Boneyard now does less or equal damage than some single target direct damage abilities and single target dots without consuming a corpse, which makes it generally not worth casting unless you have a corpse available, especially considering the cost. No other class ground aoe has this restriction, so why does Boneyard? Boneyard also only becomes equal to other class ground aoes once you consume a corpse, which doesn't make any sense given it's requirement. With this restriction on it's damage and placement, it should not be equal, it should do more damage than other ground aoes, and equal damage without consuming a corpse.

Either the corpse requirement needs to be removed, or the damage needs to be increased. It's unfair that necros have this kind of restriction on their usage and placement of their own ground aoe while no other class has this issue.

Daedric_NB_187

Why bother with feedback. Y'all do wtf you want anyways. You nerfed the heck out of these skills the last patch and now you're nerfing it even more?!? I just can't with you people. There is no rhyme or reason with why y'all do what y'all do. Oh well. I got other games to play. I'll go back to Skyrim to get my ES fix. So done with this nerfing every three months ***.

Royalthought

The major vulnerability from Colossus should absolutely be on the first hit. If not the ult doesn't even benefit from the ult. That makes no sense.

To make matters worse, it's a huge and slow telegraph that allows players to avoid any real effect. So in order to make use of it, its best to "attempt" to CC players into it.

But guess what? If you CC players into the ult, the stun on the final hit is also wasted.

Lastly, the corpses disappear way to fast.

Edit: Forgot to add. Make blastbones recastable. Recasting should force the 1st into a corpse and create a new summon. When it gets confused we are out of our burst ability and nothing we can do but wait.

Nemesis7884

honestly it feels waaaay overnerfed...making bonyard and syphon pretty useless and no fun to use... having to use a corpse for bonyard to up dmge didnt make sense in the first place for the ability...

and while i get the change to the colossus making it so short that only a super coordinated team can even make use of it does simply not correspond with the majority of players...

davapoole

why cant the nerf to dots be done with the battle spirit in pvp and leave pve alone as no one in pve is complaining about dots doing too much damage. so why should we suffere when battle spirit can be used to rebalance just pvp and leave pve alone. The majority of gamers [play only pve or mostly pve yet we have to suffer all the nerfs in game for pvp reasons every update. please split them some how so that you can adjust the pvp issues and leave the rest of the game playable instead of everything changing all the time because of pvp

Pyvos

Absolutely gutted with the nerfs to Necromancer. My Skeletal Mage barely felt useful / impactful before 5.2.0, but with it doing 50% of the damage I may as well take it off my bar. Taking Boneyard from 2244 frost damage to 1510? If anything it needed a buff.

The irony here is the claim that you folks felt you really hit the spot with class identity with the Necromancer, and yet the only thing you're doing here is making it more probably that I'll either have to rely even more on Desto+Mages Guild abilities or just stop playing it altogether.

icefyer_ESO

I agree with most of the people here. It's kind of ridiculous that not only our damage is weaker than other classes and now relying on almost entirely out-of-class skills, but our healing is weaker than Warden and such as well, so we can't even excel in that either since other classes have more sustain than us as our main sustain tools require corpses or summons that cost more than they give back, in-class sorcery / prophecy, our main AoE heal requires a corpse and standing in the heal circle the entire duration just to break even with the Warden's version's burst effect alone, not counting the HoT, and costs a good bit more, and now our damage either isn't there or requires a corpse just to break even on our main AoE DPS ability, requiring more effort than any other class just to meet their base results, if that. Add ontop of that that the giant golem ult can't benefit from its own vulnerability makes it even more problematic. It's just all around a rather uncomfortable mess.

And blastbones still breaks often. Half the time it'll just kind of slowly walk towards the target or stand there confused right in the target's face before the duration times out.

NinchiTV

Have you (devs) played a magnecro in pvp? If you did you would know that the skel mage hits like a wet noodle (6k tool tip but realistically hits players in the normal 20k resistances for around 1.5k) why nerf that? I havent seen anybody complain bout the skel mage being over performing like...ever. It needs a buff in damage to around 8k (in a build with 40k mag mag/2k SD, which is pretty standard) or hell maybe even MORE to put it in line with other class dots.

Blastbones is a coin flip. It need to be reliable for us, no other class has to deal with its burst ability having a 50% chance of just completely failing. Make it jump from further away, its dodgeable and blockable and can actually be killed. It has counter play.

Maulkin

For PvP at least Mag Necro is dead, shortly after becoming viable.

- Colossus is a waste of a 225 ult now. Very rarely does any player stand and take a Colossus smash to the face for the full 3 seconds, therefore the Major Vulnerability becomes a non-factor in PvP now.

- The generic DoTs (Entropy, Soul Trap) were compensating for the lack of burst because Blastbones is crap. DoTs nerfed, Blastbones still crap.

The class very badly needs a good, reliable, burst damage skill. Ideally delayed damage like Curse, PotL, Fissure. Not something that gets stunned, killed and blocked for fun. And it also needs a decent damage ultimate. Especially since its hard CC option (Totem) is a ground static ability with a 2" warning.

Suggestions:
- Make Totem stun instant, like Turn Undead
- Make Blastbones immediately jump to the enemy after spawning. And ideally un-CCable too.
- Make Blastbones immediately despawn if the target is out LOS/Range when it finishes spawning.
- Make Blastbones re-castable, killing the first one when you cast a second one.
- Make the first smash of Colossus grant Major Vulnerability instead of the last.

Zalathorm

What they have done is make stacking necros MORE NECCESSARY to get major vuln.

They achieved the OPPOSITE of adding variation. Instead of average guilds getting away with 2-3 necros, now they'll need more.

They needed to make mobs IMMUNE to major invuln for X seconds after it was used once. This way, you could only use 2-3 necros and adding more would not give you more uptime.

Here is what colossus should do:
- Applies major invuln on FIRST hit, (mostly for the PVPers) it lasts for 5 seconds, or 7 seconds, or whatever.
- Enemies afflicted with major invuln cannot be afflicted again for the next 10 seconds, or 15 seconds, or whatever time you want.

The seconds of uptime vs immunity would balance eachother. Longer duration = longer immunity.

wheem_ESO

Zalathorm wrote: »

What they have done is make stacking necros MORE NECCESSARY to get major vuln.

They achieved the OPPOSITE of adding variation. Instead of average guilds getting away with 2-3 necros, now they'll need more.

They needed to make mobs IMMUNE to major invuln for X seconds after it was used once. This way, you could only use 2-3 necros and adding more would not give you more uptime.

Here is what colossus should do:
- Applies major invuln on last hit, it lasts for 5 seconds, or 7 seconds, or whatever.
- Enemies afflicted with major invuln cannot be afflicted again for the next 10 seconds, or 15 seconds

The seconds of uptime vs immunity would balance eachother. Longer duration = longer immunity.

Your suggestion would leave the ultimate in a state of uselessness for PvP. It would be far better for either the Major Vulnerability to take effect on the first hit of the ultimate, or remove that debuff entirely and replace it with something else. I'm tired of the class being utter garbage in PvP just so it's not "too strong" in scripted PvE content.

I had already ditched the Colossus as an ultimate in PvP, mostly due to how easily it gets avoided in most cases - one dodge roll generally means that my 225 cost ultimate did 0 damage and applied 0 debuffs. The only class skills that are worthwhile for offense on the live servers are Blastbones and the Skeletal Mage, and the impending damage nerf for the Mage will remove it from that "list." And since Blastbones is so unreliable, it barely deserves a slot...if there were basically any other alternative for burst, Blastbones would also go on the trash heap.

Having the Major Vulnerability apply on the first Colossus hit would leave it at least quasi-useful, at least for premade groups with good coordination (and a cooldown on the debuff would be fine, IMO). But frankly, I'd rather it just be changed to something else, so that the ultimate could actually be more useful in PvP, while not encouraging "class stacking" in PvE.

Lazarus_Rising

For me as MagNecro it resulted in a DPS loss of 10-12k but i tested it with old build on PTS. Need to do some variation testing to see if i can make it good again. Basically i dropped from 37k dps to 26k dps on 6 mio dummy. No idea how this will turn out now but it‘s week one. Still it hit Necro pretty hard

katorga

We’re aware of the frustrating nature of attempting to use these abilities, which is why we have added a small stop-gap measure in the meantime until we can properly solve the issue.

Love that reasoning, then you nerf the damage. Seriously, no GCD, free to cast, and still no one uses them. Maybe just scrap them entirely and start over.

So basically, over the patch 5.1 and 5.2, they double the cost of the skeletal mage pet. One more source of corpses for the the tether skills gone. This skill is not worth the cost to cast now.

Boneyard...two 33% damage nerfs in two patches. Two cost increases in two patches. Totally useless at 5K cost. Plus is consumes a corpse needed for more important things.

Colossus needs to apply major vulnerability on the first hit.

The fear totem needs to fear on cast.

Blast Bones is still utterly unreliable.

IARTOI

Nerf, nerf, nerf, nerf, nice bring nerfs to already nerfed or unused skills. And don't even think about other buggy skills.

1. "Blastbone" needs a "FIX". I mean real fix. Please try to make it one of useable skill.
2. "SHOCKING" siphon, show me 1 player who using this skill (I'm not meaning the players using this skill for 3% increased damage done). For what purpose any enemy even the PVE monsters can easily avoid from the damage. Why don't you rework it completely? Its good you reduced the damage per tick so make it directly link to enemy for 5 sec if they cant move away and break the link for 3 sec stun them. Also add the cost back. This is the real necromancer skill.
3. Skeletal summon already dealing very low damage and you are keep nerfing it for completely remove from game. Please be more realistic. Noone satisfied from "Necromancer Class" since it released.
4. "Boneyard" you activating your own synergy doesn't deal any damage as said. I mensioned this bug on forums before.
5. Colossus AoE damage is sometimes being roll dodged by enemy players even under the effect area.
6. "Ricochet skull" in Cyrodiil sometimes third cast of ability not proccing the big skull for deal 20% more damage, instead it keeps throwing small ones repeatedly.
7. "Totem" skill is useless. Nothing to say about it.
8. "Grave grasp" and its morphs. What this skill can do? Could someone explain? Why this is exist? "Ghostly embrace" this skill has a slow animation and before you hit the enemy, every living creature can avoid it. I'm not even talking about other morph... Rework this skill too. Even Blackheart bonelord NPC in the Blackheart Haven dungeon has a really good ability but we have useless bones as a real class ability. here is the skill I meant.



Please do something worth to play. All the community got disappointed since the Morrowind chapter released.

magictucktuck

I went from 50k DPS to 33kDPS on PTS.. even my old setup from the last live patch was only around 33k also.. so either there will be a new 50k DPS setup i need to find or DPS as a whole will be WAY lower.

katorga

And why is Necromancer changes always in its own little subset of "combat and game play" rather than "combat and abilities" with the other classes? Are we supposed to assume they are paying extra-special attention to all the class problems?

Anhedonie

Blastbones still don't leap instantly upon forming.
Also, nice cost increase in abilities across the board. It's not like sustain was already bad.
I think I will keep playing WoW classic then.

Zalathorm

wheem_ESO wrote: »

Zalathorm wrote: »

What they have done is make stacking necros MORE NECCESSARY to get major vuln.

They achieved the OPPOSITE of adding variation. Instead of average guilds getting away with 2-3 necros, now they'll need more.

They needed to make mobs IMMUNE to major invuln for X seconds after it was used once. This way, you could only use 2-3 necros and adding more would not give you more uptime.

Here is what colossus should do:
- Applies major invuln on last hit, it lasts for 5 seconds, or 7 seconds, or whatever.
- Enemies afflicted with major invuln cannot be afflicted again for the next 10 seconds, or 15 seconds

The seconds of uptime vs immunity would balance eachother. Longer duration = longer immunity.

Your suggestion would leave the ultimate in a state of uselessness for PvP. It would be far better for either the Major Vulnerability to take effect on the first hit of the ultimate, or remove that debuff entirely and replace it with something else. I'm tired of the class being utter garbage in PvP just so it's not "too strong" in scripted PvE content.

I had already ditched the Colossus as an ultimate in PvP, mostly due to how easily it gets avoided in most cases - one dodge roll generally means that my 225 cost ultimate did 0 damage and applied 0 debuffs. The only class skills that are worthwhile for offense on the live servers are Blastbones and the Skeletal Mage, and the impending damage nerf for the Mage will remove it from that "list." And since Blastbones is so unreliable, it barely deserves a slot...if there were basically any other alternative for burst, Blastbones would also go on the trash heap.

Having the Major Vulnerability apply on the first Colossus hit would leave it at least quasi-useful, at least for premade groups with good coordination (and a cooldown on the debuff would be fine, IMO). But frankly, I'd rather it just be changed to something else, so that the ultimate could actually be more useful in PvP, while not encouraging "class stacking" in PvE.

You're right, I dont pvp. For the sake of PVP, how about major vuln on first hit for x seconds (5, 7, whatever they decide). The same target cannot receive it again for x seconds (10, 15, 20 however it balances with the duration).

We want colossus to be impactful, but not a full raid of necros to be impactful. Easy solution, extend the duration a bit and get rid of stacking.