Magicka Necromancer build for no-CP

Asardes

I noticed I have a set of Shacklebreaker jewelry and a light sash sitting unused in storage so I thought of improvising something around them. It doesn't look that bad, stats wise.
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=217503

The Ancient Dragonguard set, together with Bloodspawn gives:
Over 50% HP 7072 effective spell power on front bar, comparable to some of my other builds that are quite high damage
Under 50% HP 30.2K spell resistance & 28.4K physical resistance on back bar which is quite good for a 5L/1M/1H build
also 1.9K magicka recovery and 1.2K stamina recovery make sustain easy.

I may haven't tested it but it should be OK though I may swap out some of the skills along the way as I usually do.

Thoughts on this? Has anyone tried something similar?

Valykc

Looks pretty good stat wise. Max Magicka might be a bit low and affect some of the damage but I’m not sure if Necro stacks better with high spell damage or high Max magicka. I am testing that too. I’d be a bit worried about the crit resists but since it’s no-cp it should be fine. I’d say try it out and let me know how it goes. I’m testing out a build of my own, I just have to transmute jewelry then I’ll be good to test it. Good luck!

katorga

I like to stack magicka on mine and just skip having to worry about major sorcery, but it works either way. I swap between magicka and stamina all the time. I really enjoy Magicka necro more, and it really gripes me how much better the stamina sets are.

Asardes

Necromancer has no magicka multipliers, like Sorcerer (Bound Aegis), Nightblade (Magicka Flood passive) or Warden (Northern Storm) so it's not such a big advantage investing in that stats. Additionally I'm missing the 20% from CP. I guess I could sacrifice one or two triune pieces for infused or arcane, but I like having a bit higher HP and stamina instead. Necromancer feels really squishy even in PvE, with CP on.

Artorias24

I would use Spirit Guardian, those 10% damage reduction are a lot and you need it.

And you could replace ancient dragonguard with necropotence. Giving you more damage and sustain and also more tankyness from using guardian.

You can Take a look here. More survivibilty and nearly the same damage as yours.

https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=217536

Asardes

katorga wrote: »

I like to stack magicka on mine and just skip having to worry about major sorcery, but it works either way. I swap between magicka and stamina all the time. I really enjoy Magicka necro more, and it really gripes me how much better the stamina sets are.

In no-CP spell damage stacks better than maximum magicka, due to the fact you're missing the 20% CP multiplier. Even so it's just a tad under 30K, considering I play a non-META race, Khajiit. For a Dark Elf, Beton, or High Elf the pool would have been around 31K. But it's a thematic build of sorts, I really like having that extra 10% critical damage bonus, considering the Death Knell passive. For example on this build I have 60% spell critical on enemies under 25% and an 1.6x critical multiplier.

Asardes

Artorias24 wrote: »

I would use Spirit Guardian, those 10% damage reduction are a lot and you need it.

And you could replace ancient dragonguard with necropotence. Giving you more damage and sustain and also more tankyness from using guardian.

You can Take a look here. More survivibilty and nearly the same damage as yours.

https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=217536

If I enable CP on mine the stats are now 9.7K spell power, vs. your 6.2K at HP>50%, and at HP<50%, spell power decreases to 8.8K, but resistances increase to 35.2K spell and 29.9K physical. I don't know how the extra 2K critical resistance compare to 14-15K more resistances at under 50% HP.

Neloth

Asardes wrote: »

I noticed I have a set of Shacklebreaker jewelry and a light sash sitting unused in storage so I thought of improvising something around them. It doesn't look that bad, stats wise.
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=217503

The Ancient Dragonguard set, together with Bloodspawn gives:
Over 50% HP 7072 effective spell power on front bar, comparable to some of my other builds that are quite high damage
Under 50% HP 30.2K spell resistance & 28.4K physical resistance on back bar which is quite good for a 5L/1M/1H build
also 1.9K magicka recovery and 1.2K stamina recovery make sustain easy.

I may haven't tested it but it should be OK though I may swap out some of the skills along the way as I usually do.

Thoughts on this? Has anyone tried something similar?

Some of my thoughts:

1) Maybe you can drop harness (since it's fairly useless in no-cp even with high max magicka), and change it for rendering flesh. Then you can afford running another morph of mender (if you want, both of them are really good).

2) Since you also have 3 corpse-producing skills, you can try to use deaden pain.

3) If you don't deaden pain, imho there is no reason to use mage (it's weak and stupid), you can better slot some better defence + stam sustain skills (sustain purge, mortal coil) and get some more dmg from sets chasing shackle for something else (necro, BTB, etc).

4) having no flame clench sucks from time to time in 1vs1es, which occasionally happen in BGs

Neloth

double comment

Asardes

Neloth wrote: »

Asardes wrote: »

I noticed I have a set of Shacklebreaker jewelry and a light sash sitting unused in storage so I thought of improvising something around them. It doesn't look that bad, stats wise.
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=217503

The Ancient Dragonguard set, together with Bloodspawn gives:
Over 50% HP 7072 effective spell power on front bar, comparable to some of my other builds that are quite high damage
Under 50% HP 30.2K spell resistance & 28.4K physical resistance on back bar which is quite good for a 5L/1M/1H build
also 1.9K magicka recovery and 1.2K stamina recovery make sustain easy.

I may haven't tested it but it should be OK though I may swap out some of the skills along the way as I usually do.

Thoughts on this? Has anyone tried something similar?

Some of my thoughts:

1) Maybe you can drop harness (since it's fairly useless in no-cp even with high max magicka), and change it for rendering flesh. Then you can afford running another morph of mender (if you want, both of them are really good).

2) Since you also have 3 corpse-producing skills, you can try to use deaden pain.

3) If you don't deaden pain, imho there is no reason to use mage (it's weak and stupid), you can better slot some better defence + stam sustain skills (sustain purge, mortal coil) and get some more dmg from sets chasing shackle for something else (necro, BTB, etc).

4) having no flame clench sucks from time to time in 1vs1es, which occasionally happen in BGs

I thought of running Clench, but they seem to have nerfed it. The CC from it was kinda soft even before that. The totem CC is too slow in many mobile fights. I see that Crushing is good against some builds, can stun players winding a Dizzying Swing for example, but for others it's not that good.

Asardes

Another thing I thought of doing was going Restoration Staff back bar, and using one of the heals from there to supplement Intensive Mender (I can also change the morph to Spirit Guardian), and use another set on front bar, for example NMA, but I would lose a lot of defense.

Mojomonkeyman

Asardes wrote: »

Another thing I thought of doing was going Restoration Staff back bar, and using one of the heals from there to supplement Intensive Mender (I can also change the morph to Spirit Guardian), and use another set on front bar, for example NMA, but I would lose a lot of defense.

You really have to playtest your concepts, a lot of necro skills that look good on paper just aren't when put into action (los, kiting, fast moving opponents, etc.).

Just to give you an example - currently bgs are heavily dominated by stamina characters having huge damage stats which translate well into ult - execute spam. Intensive mender doesnt have an initial tick, you have to wait unti second 2 for the first tick and hope it will heal you not someone else - that's oftentimes a death sentence.

Magnecro is really the one class, where you have to playtest every single skill to see if it suits your playstyle and/or is viable.

Neloth

Asardes wrote: »

Neloth wrote: »

Asardes wrote: »

I noticed I have a set of Shacklebreaker jewelry and a light sash sitting unused in storage so I thought of improvising something around them. It doesn't look that bad, stats wise.
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=217503

The Ancient Dragonguard set, together with Bloodspawn gives:
Over 50% HP 7072 effective spell power on front bar, comparable to some of my other builds that are quite high damage
Under 50% HP 30.2K spell resistance & 28.4K physical resistance on back bar which is quite good for a 5L/1M/1H build
also 1.9K magicka recovery and 1.2K stamina recovery make sustain easy.

I may haven't tested it but it should be OK though I may swap out some of the skills along the way as I usually do.

Thoughts on this? Has anyone tried something similar?

Some of my thoughts:

1) Maybe you can drop harness (since it's fairly useless in no-cp even with high max magicka), and change it for rendering flesh. Then you can afford running another morph of mender (if you want, both of them are really good).

2) Since you also have 3 corpse-producing skills, you can try to use deaden pain.

3) If you don't deaden pain, imho there is no reason to use mage (it's weak and stupid), you can better slot some better defence + stam sustain skills (sustain purge, mortal coil) and get some more dmg from sets chasing shackle for something else (necro, BTB, etc).

4) having no flame clench sucks from time to time in 1vs1es, which occasionally happen in BGs

I thought of running Clench, but they seem to have nerfed it. The CC from it was kinda soft even before that. The totem CC is too slow in many mobile fights. I see that Crushing is good against some builds, can stun players winding a Dizzying Swing for example, but for others it's not that good.

It's not like clench is good, magcro just doesn't have a viable alternative. Totem is totally unviable, range specs (like magsorcs or magblades) can just ignore it, while melee skills can just stand on the edge of it going in and out with a portion of skill involved. And that's if they want to stay offensive on you while you camp it, and if you want to follow/finish someone running away, with totem you effectively have no CC.

Asardes

Well I have updated the build, got rid of Harness & Totem, added Clench as CC, Ricochet as spammable and also Braided Tether as extra heal.

Asardes

An alternative build, with Bright Throat, marginally higher spell power but way less stamina & stamina recovery. Usually what kills me when I play magicka is lack of stamina to break free, block sprint & kite, so I'm not sure if it's worth it.
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=217507

wheem_ESO

If you don't use Resistant Flesh and/or Renewing Undeath in BGs, most Stamina players (and some Magicka ones) are going to absolutely dominate you. Like...hard. For one thing, the Intensive Mender oftentimes just flat out doesn't work. It can bug out and float around right on top of you, and not cast a single heal over the entire duration. As I posted on the bug report forum back in June of 2019: "In some instances, it will cast 1 or 2 heals per 8 second duration (instead of the 4 that it's supposed to), but I just completed a Battleground where 7 full duration Menders in a row resulted in a grand total of 0 heals. That's 56 seconds straight of my pet just floating around not doing anything at all, while my Stage-4 Vampire regenerated from ~65% hp to ~80% hp."

Even in cases where the Intensive Mender doesn't bug out, it won't be enough burst healing by itself - especially against any properly built Stamina setup. It's a strong heal when it works (though it doesn't count on BG scoreboard), but it's not going to do much against a ~7.5k Biting Jabs and ~3k Burning Light proc, which will be spammed over and over again. While Braided Tether can help supplement the Mender somewhat, it's really more of a dueling-only skill for Magicka Necromancers, IMO. There are simply too many times in a BG where you'll be forced to out-range or LOS the tether, and if you ever cast it on a player's corpse it'll automatically be broken whenever they respawn.

I also don't find Expunge and Modify to be very worthwhile. Losing the HP is fairly important, and oftentimes what you remove simply won't be worth it. Renewing Undeath is a fairly strong AOE heal (when ground-targets don't bug out, at least), and can remove 3 negative effects from you + each ally if consuming a corpse (which will also trigger the Corpse Consumption passive, of course). The ground-HOT left behind after the corpse consumption also heals in the ballpark of 1k/second for me.

You should also be aware that, without the Harmony + self-synergy gimmick, Magicka Necromancer's offense is fairly bad. Don't expect to do really well against good players with nothing but Blastbones + Magicka Spammable + Colossus, especially since Flame Clench can sometimes cause Blastbones to just fall apart at the end of his leap and do 0 damage (thanks to the target getting moved, I assume - the same thing will often happen with Streak).

Magicka Necromancer has been my main since Elsweyr's early access on PC, and the only time it has had worthwhile offense outside of the Harmony cheese was during Scalebreaker. Once the DOT-crutch was gone, though, the class' killing power went down the tubes. It's a little better now than it was last patch, since Blastbones will no longer stand around blankly staring at its target, but we lost our only decent offensive stun at the same time.

Frankly, I think the only way(s) to be truly effective on Magicka Necromancer is to go full-on healer, or use the Harmony gimmick (which I sort of figure will get nerfed eventually, especially if more people start running it). I've been stubbornly playing a more "normal" build: Necropotence, Bright-Throat's Boast, and Bloodspawn with no Harmony bombing, but it really isn't all that effective to be honest. Assuming I actually have a decent team + decent opponents, it feels like I'm vastly more useful when I spend most of my time healing and cleansing, even though I'm not really set up for it.

Asardes

Usually I find inspiration in the builds of players I go against, but in the case of Magicka Necromancer there were very few to begin with, and 80% of them were either tanks or healers, with the remainder almost entirely made up of that semi-bomber build. I tend to like the more well rounded builds, that can work in many scenarios, just swapping a few skills around, and I was able to find such builds for most of my characters.

Hearing this about the Magicka Necromancer overall reduced offensive capability, hence the niche harmony Avid Boneyard build, gives me a sense of deja-vu. In the last couple of years I've played the game in 3-4 month cycles. I pick up a character, I learn it in PvE, then I go into PvP with it too. Then during the Mayhem I pick the characters trained during the previous year or half year and go in for the achievements. The January-April 2019 period I played Magicka NB. I finished the training in April and I expected to go in for the finishing touches in late July, but that Mayhem got cancelled, so I got my chance only in late January this year. There were other characters shelved for a few months but after a few quick adjustments and 2-3 BGs I found my pace and was able to win without many problems. But NB felt like beating people with boiled spagetti. Besides some stolen kills due to ranged execute I couldn't really do anything for my team. 10-12-15 games passed and nothing improved. In the end I decided to just fill the back bar with heals and act like a hybrid healer of sorts. And I apparently did a decent job at it, even outhealing some Templars occasionally.

I hope I'm not going down the same rabbit hole ...

Asardes

@wheem_ESO

Thanks for the suggestion. I have adjusted my build accordingly. Regarding Resistant Flesh, the skills looks a bit odd at first glance. It applies defile for 4s but the resistance buff only lasts for 3s. A bit like Pirate Skeleton in a skill. Is it really that strong in practice?

wheem_ESO

Asardes wrote: »

@wheem_ESO

Thanks for the suggestion. I have adjusted my build accordingly. Regarding Resistant Flesh, the skills looks a bit odd at first glance. It applies defile for 4s but the resistance buff only lasts for 3s. A bit like Pirate Skeleton in a skill. Is it really that strong in practice?

While being Minor Defiled certainly stinks, especially with Stamina Necromancers' Major Defile also being relatively common in BGs, it's still a pretty good heal. I'm not sure what my record is for landing crit heals on myself, but I've managed a tad over 12k before on a Stam DK teammate (8-10k for crits on other players isn't terribly uncommon).

Renewing Undeath can also be used as somewhat of an alternative, with various upsides and drawbacks. It'll generally heal for somewhere around 2/3 of the amount of Resistant Flesh, while being AOE and potentially cleansing 3 debuffs + dropping a ~1k/sec ground-based HOT. Since it's ground targeted, this also means that you can guarantee the heal on yourself, rather than having it potentially go to someone else on your team that doesn't need it nearly as much as you do in that moment...the "smart targeting" is anything but. However, sometimes ground-targeted skills can bug out and simply refuse to cast, and I swear mine sometimes lags and takes a lot longer to actually fire off than it should.

I personally run both Renewing Undeath and Resistant Flesh, and sometimes go a bit more heal-heavy in playstyle (largely due to the aforementioned issues with Magicka Necromancer's offense being not-so-great without the Harmony gimmick). My bar setup tends to be something like...
Front bar: Agony Totem, Ricochet Skull, Blastbones, Spirit Mender, Degeneration, and Colossus for Ultimate.
Back bar: Summoner's Armor, Rapid Regen, Renewing Undeath, Resistant Flesh, Race Against Time, and Resto Ult.

I think Race Against Time and/or Mist Form is basically mandatory at high MMR in BGs, where Bombard spam becomes incredibly common (and Frost AOE is sometimes a thing as well). And generally speaking, I think Race Against Time is vastly superior to Mist Form, though I suppose the Vampire re-work in 2 or 3 months might change that.

The class Totem is situationally really good, but it's not an offense-focused stun that can be reliably used to set up burst or counter people trying to kite/run away. If you use the Remote Totem morph, I suppose there are some niche situations where you could force someone who's trying to flee into being stunned, but that's not really going to be reliable. But, after seeing a few Blastbones fall apart in mid air without doing any damage after I hit my target with Flame Clench, I ditched that skill entirely; self-countering is garbage. Here's hoping that they'll make Vampire Drain worthwhile again at some point.

If ZOS ever makes the Skeletal Mage and Mystic Siphon worth using, and/or improves Necromancer's ability to utilize DOTs (the class passive isn't enough in its current state), I think Magicka Necromancer will have some potential for decent offense. But for right now, it's basically either run the Harmony gimmick, play a healer, or be very much sub-par.

PS
The Battleground scoreboard can make your damage and healing look worse than they actually are. Necromancer pets (Blastbones, Skeletal Mage, and Spirit Healer) do not have their damage or healing show up on the scoreboard, which also means that you'll get less medals than you really should.

'Course, the same is true for Stamina Necromancers, which helps demonstrate just how much better the "generic" Stamina toolkit is. With a decent build, Stam Necro can have scoreboard numbers that are competitive with most everyone else, even with their main burst (+Major Defile) ability being left out entirely.

Neloth

wheem_ESO wrote: »

Even in cases where the Intensive Mender doesn't bug out, it won't be enough burst healing by itself - especially against any properly built Stamina setup.

100% true, rendering flesh is a must have skill
on magicka you always need either a burst skill or a large shield (first is better), and large shield just not happening in BGs.

and, personally I prefer another morph of mender, since intensive is so buggy, and magnecro can have very high defence when staking mitigations

wheem_ESO wrote: »

I also don't find Expunge and Modify to be very worthwhile. Losing the HP is fairly important, and oftentimes what you remove simply won't be worth it.

It's just about how you use the skill. I use it like sorc's darkdeal - purge some *** when I'm LoSing to regain some resources back (primary stamina). Together with mortal coil it gives you a lot of stam sustain for blocking, and magnecro synergises well with blocking.

wheem_ESO wrote: »

Necropotence, Bright-Throat's Boast, and Bloodspawn with no Harmony bombing,

I used to run these sets, and now I think it's a big mistake. Many of us came to necro from sorcs/NBs, which benefit from max magicka a lot (shield, sorc pet healing), so you naturally want to continue using the same sets and playstyle.

But magnecro scales with spell dmg much better, because:
- you don't need any mag regen sets or enchants, since undead confederate + witchmother + elemental drain alone is fine for your sustain. In addition, some of your skills cost nothing (mortal coil, elem drain), and blasbones are super cheap (900 mag?).
- having NMA on your frontbar doesn't change your sustain at all (omg, blasbones now cost ~70 mag more).
- high spell dmg gives you much better tooltips compared to high mag magicka.

For example, on realistic max magicka setup (fire staff for CC, some defence, some sustain), my blastbones have 14-15k tooltip.
On realistic max spell dmg setup (fire staff, some defence, some sustain), my blasbones have 19-20k+ tooltip, and that's a huge difference in combination with it's +10% dmg modifier, vulnerability (if you chose to run it, I like soul assault against stam opponents more) and other skills.

wheem_ESO wrote: »

Magicka Necromancer's offence is fairly bad.

With blasbones fix, my magnecro has approximately the same offence as it used to have in scalebreaker. Yes, dots are weaker (back then I used to run max magicka setup, so it's unfair to compare tooltips, but if you want it's around 27k vs 21k on entropy), and now I have blasbones, which reliably hit every 3-5 seconds now + skill slot for elem drain, which buffs my dmg even further.

Yes, having no CC sucks, but not many classes have decent CC now. So all I want on my magnecro is instant totem and blast bones secondary effect fix.

Asardes

Any thoughts on the new Kjalnar's Nightmare set? On paper it has some nice potential for burst damage or hard CC. Also fits with the necromancy theme pretty well

Asardes

If the builds is weighed more towards healing, then I could go Inferno front bar & Restoration staff back bar. If using Radiating Regeneration - a skill which I like very much - then I could get 200 more magicka recovery out of it by using the Maelstrom restoration staff, one of my all time favorite sets.

Neloth

Asardes wrote: »

Any thoughts on the new Kjalnar's Nightmare set? On paper it has some nice potential for burst damage or hard CC. Also fits with the necromancy theme pretty well

I haven't farmed it yet. If there is and add-on, which shows stacks progress (like action duration reminder for ass will), it can be good with melee totem and shock staff. Its free +8% dmg (from shock), +8% mitigation (totem minor protection), group utility from totem->colossus, area of denial for potato stam builds from totem (like old sorc mines). Thats compared to our flame clench setup.

Asardes

Neloth wrote: »

Asardes wrote: »

Any thoughts on the new Kjalnar's Nightmare set? On paper it has some nice potential for burst damage or hard CC. Also fits with the necromancy theme pretty well

I haven't farmed it yet. If there is and add-on, which shows stacks progress (like action duration reminder for ass will), it can be good with melee totem and shock staff. Its free +8% dmg (from shock), +8% mitigation (totem minor protection), group utility from totem->colossus, area of denial for potato stam builds from totem (like old sorc mines). Thats compared to our flame clench setup.

The issue I see with this set that in many pitched fights in BGs it's quite hard to hit the same enemy consistently with LA even if you tab-target. I have the same issue with the NB bow procs. Maybe it's a niche set for 1v1 dueling. I have the head already, but I'm not very keen on using the set ye.

Neloth

Asardes wrote: »

Neloth wrote: »

Asardes wrote: »

Any thoughts on the new Kjalnar's Nightmare set? On paper it has some nice potential for burst damage or hard CC. Also fits with the necromancy theme pretty well

I haven't farmed it yet. If there is and add-on, which shows stacks progress (like action duration reminder for ass will), it can be good with melee totem and shock staff. Its free +8% dmg (from shock), +8% mitigation (totem minor protection), group utility from totem->colossus, area of denial for potato stam builds from totem (like old sorc mines). Thats compared to our flame clench setup.

The issue I see with this set that in many pitched fights in BGs it's quite hard to hit the same enemy consistently with LA even if you tab-target. I have the same issue with the NB bow procs. Maybe it's a niche set for 1v1 dueling. I have the head already, but I'm not very keen on using the set ye.

yes, very good point. And it's even harder when you target a stamina build, which frequently dodges some LAs.
Maybe it's possible to run dawnbreaker + totem in noCP, I'm going to try it too.

daemonor

Well in my head I imagined calurions+spinners with 1pc lord walden and 1 piece chudan inferno/resto to be strong, but it was absoloutely dissapointing. The projectile was easily dodgeable and the damage felt lackluster, not the defense or sustain.
I'm thinking of trying NMA+kena+lich backbar and asylum inferno frontbar and see how the damage/sustain feels then, tho i gotta say magnecro feels even weaker than magnb in no cp bgs.

Axx_Xa

NMA + Succession + Balorgh (Potentates Resto back bar) that’s my setup for BGs

Bullseyebudx

Asardes wrote: »

If the builds is weighed more towards healing, then I could go Inferno front bar & Restoration staff back bar. If using Radiating Regeneration - a skill which I like very much - then I could get 200 more magicka recovery out of it by using the Maelstrom restoration staff, one of my all time favorite sets.

I'd go resto back bar with tri-stat food & pots.
SnB worked well in U23 and at that point resto was overkill.
I'd get better resource management out of SnB, but I ran resto bb all through U24.
The synergy with near-death experience is incredibly strong.
I've tried slotting a living death ability on both bars but it can be tight sometimes.
I wouldn't worry about mag recovery too much just HA.
Potentates is good I used that until I got BRP resto but I'd personally say it's strictly better if you're using healing ward even with the unperfected version.

Axx_Xa

I feel that BRP is bad on magNecro no need to have healing ward on your bb. Already enough HoT. The 5% dam reduction from Potentates works better for me at least.

Bullseyebudx

Axx_Xa wrote: »

I feel that BRP is bad on magNecro no need to have healing ward on your bb. Already enough HoT. The 5% dam reduction from Potentates works better for me at least.

Yah for your build you'd want Potentates you're not stacking resistances, you're a glass cannon.
I'm stacking resistances so I don't end up needing Potentates, I'd rather have the healing and a damage shield.
Now that I think about it though Potentates is probably a better default option for any necro over BRP/HW.
BRP/HW is probably more build specific.

Asardes

Another version of the build I thought about:

Front bar New Moon Acolyte, back Bar lich, 2 Willpower rings and Bloodspawn. I also have restoration staff from lich set so I can use that one on the back bar as well instead of 1H+S
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=218691