Necromancer abilities could benefit from QoL changes

TheDarkRuler

Right now I am playing both variants of the Necromancer class for months (StamCro only 2-3 weeks since i did not like it much in PVE, MagCro alot longer in PVE content). I recently swapped back to other chars for the Western Skyrim events and played MagPlar and MagDK alot. I noticed that albeit you can play a Magicka Necromancer on good overall damage other classes have it alot easier to smoothen their DPS have less stress with their rota.

I recently discussed with a friend in guild chat on how you could increase necromancers user-friendlyness without buffing or nerfing much, just giving a slight increase in comfort.

1.) Flame Skull / Ricochet Skull / Poison Skull
This skill is the current spamable skill but it really puts a strain in long playthroughs since you have to click all the time. I'd love to have this skill changed into a channeled skill that will lob three skulls in sequence over 1s. No changes in dps and effects.

2.) Blastbones / Blighted Blastbones / Stalking Blastbones
Sometimes you misclick and send the Blastbone towards a wrong enemy. I'd like if you could redirect the blastbone towards a new target while active for free.

3.) Avid Boneyard
Just being able to use your own synergy feels lacking compared to the massive bonus from reducing enemy resistances. Also in groups the effect isnt that great. I'd suggest that the damage bonus from the graveyard should go up to +100% (from 50% if you use a corpse upon cast).

4.) Detonating Siphon / Shocking Siphon / Mystic Siphon
The damage burst only applies at the very end of the skill after about 12 seconds. This is extremely underwhelming compared to the Magicka variant which restores resources. I'd support a change that will provide Major Brutality too while the skill is active! Shocking and Mystic Siphon should also grant Major Sorcery.

5.) Ruinous Scythe
The effect to set enemy off-balance should always apply but only once every 10seconds per target.

6.) Summoners Armor
Reducing only the skeleton summoning skills seems lacking. I would suggest to provide a cost reduction to ALL Necromancer abilities while active.

7.) Bone Totem / Agony Totem / Remote Totem
I would like to increase the radius and stun frequency of the Remote Totem morph to have a faster CC.

8.) Empowering Grasp
The bonus to Spirit Mender / Skeleton Mage (and their morphs) is ok but should also affect Blastbones in the area. Additionally all allies affected could receive Minor Berserk.

9.) Animate Blastbone
The cap of only 3 Blastbones feels too low for such an expensive ability when compared to resource regeneration. I'd suggest to increase the cap from 3 to 5 and reducing skill costs by 33%.

10.) Resistant Flesh
The bonus to resistances should be doubled since the current bonus is based on healing done. And since Healing is reduced to 50% in PVP the resistances in PVP are even worse.

11.) Expunge / Hexproof / Expunge and Modify
Health costs should be reduced on all skill variants. Resource restore in Expunge and Modify should be greater too.

12.) Skeleton Mage / Skeleton Arcanist / Skeleton Archer
The ability should not be recastable while active to prevent accidental resetting.

Those are some things that I wished to have as Necromancer. I am not 100% sure if some of the aforementioned things are considered overpowered since I dont have complete overview over all mechanics ingame. Feel free to discuss in this thread.

GrigorijMalahevich

@TheDarkRuler just out of curiosity - how long have you been playing this game?

Changes look serious and well thought, maybe it would be a good idea if you could provide same feedback for all classes?

TheDarkRuler

GrigorijMalahevich wrote: »

@TheDarkRuler just out of curiosity - how long have you been playing this game?

Changes look serious and well thought, maybe it would be a good idea if you could provide same feedback for all classes?

I started in the closed beta but i took some breaks during the monthly subscription times because I wasnt able to afford the monthly costs every time. But ever since its Buy2Play without the need to pay per month i've been active every once in a while.

TheDarkRuler

I am curious about other people feedback too.
Right now I am not sure if this thread wasnt read at all or if ppl disagree or agree with it

ealdwin

I don't have much experience with the Necromancer class, so I can't provide much feedback. Overall, though, these changes seem nice. A few thoughts: (numbers correspond to numbers in original post)

1. While I like the proposed change to Flame Skull, there is a concern. The change to a channel might ease up the rotation in PVE, but it could also cause the skill to become clunkier in PVP.

6. As far as Ruinous Scythe is concerned, I'm pretty sure Off Balance has its own cooldown on players (15 sec? Someone correct me if I'm wrong), so a cooldown might not be needed.

12. Absolutely.

That's at least my initial thoughts.

Tulshe

My problem with necromancer is his short duration of abilities. Spirit and skeleton archer/mage only last 16 sec, bone armor has 20 sec, boneyard only lives for 10 sec. When playing as necromancer I feel like I constantly cast these skills to renew them and, if done perfectly, can squeeze in couple spam skills before they expire. I want summons and buffs be morr prolonged, I don't mind according cost increase.
And another pet peeve is blastbone. Sometime it does not cast, maybe due to me not aiming directly at enemy. It wouldn't hurt to be able to cast blastbone without a target if I'm in combat, just let it automatically chase closest enemy. And its cast time is atrocious. By the time it assembles I feel like I can go out, sit in my car, go to cemetery, dig a corpse, return home and blastbone will be still gathering his bones together.

Sephyr

With the Blastbones bit, that'd work if Stalking Blastbones did as it was actually intended--however being that it's been over a year that they 'fixed' the ability where the base and it's morphs all leap upon cast, the only timing you'd have to redirect the ability is if you're LoSing your target. They'd have to first fix Stalking to work as intended and being that it's been this long already, I think they've just opted to just leave it as is.

Icy_Waffles

Generally these kind of posts are pretty flawed, but I will give credit where credit is due, this are some great ideas.

I am in favor. I’m not sure on the pvp implications of skulls being a channel though is the only thing. I don’t generally pvp much but just a thought.

Abstraqt

Honestly the main things from a PvP standpoint is adding an actual useful secondary effect to skeletal mage and blast bones. At the moment they are both ok but BB is broken and mage is just an average dot with no secondary effect

zvavi

Tbh I don't think any of these are QoL, most of them are buffs and/or mechanic changes.

the1andonlyskwex

It seems like a lot of these are buffs to abilities that are already pretty good.

In my experience the main pain points for necromancers are:
1) Too many abilities have very short durations (particularly stuff under 10 seconds), which makes managing a rotation difficult
2) The corpse management minigame makes breaking your rotation more punishing than it is for other classes (I particularly notice this when healing)
3) Blastbones targeting seems unusually sensitive, which causes it to feel unreliable (because it doesn't always go off when you expect it to)

TheDarkRuler

[quote="the1andonlyskwex;c-6996676"In my experience the main pain points for necromancers are:
1) Too many abilities have very short durations (particularly stuff under 10 seconds), which makes managing a rotation difficult[/quote]

I noticed that one too.
By the time i finished a two-bar casting sequence the graveyard has already expired. Perhaps it could receive a duration buff. Arcanist/Archer could get +4s base too.

ImSoPro

Sephyr wrote: »

With the Blastbones bit, that'd work if Stalking Blastbones did as it was actually intended--however being that it's been over a year that they 'fixed' the ability where the base and it's morphs all leap upon cast, the only timing you'd have to redirect the ability is if you're LoSing your target. They'd have to first fix Stalking to work as intended and being that it's been this long already, I think they've just opted to just leave it as is.

The old BB did nothing but get lost in traffic and drink on the job. Now that it leaps it at least hits the target a lot more often. They just need to change the secondary effect since it’s not traveling a distance anymore unless the target is outside the 15 m leap radius

wsmith97ub17_ESO

The suggestions are mostly bad for pvp, you would be interrupted non stop, then killed off.

Drdeath20

TheDarkRuler wrote: »

Right now I am playing both variants of the Necromancer class for months (StamCro only 2-3 weeks since i did not like it much in PVE, MagCro alot longer in PVE content). I recently swapped back to other chars for the Western Skyrim events and played MagPlar and MagDK alot. I noticed that albeit you can play a Magicka Necromancer on good overall damage other classes have it alot easier to smoothen their DPS have less stress with their rota.

I recently discussed with a friend in guild chat on how you could increase necromancers user-friendlyness without buffing or nerfing much, just giving a slight increase in comfort.

1.) Flame Skull / Ricochet Skull / Poison Skull
This skill is the current spamable skill but it really puts a strain in long playthroughs since you have to click all the time. I'd love to have this skill changed into a channeled skill that will lob three skulls in sequence over 1s. No changes in dps and effects.

2.) Blastbones / Blighted Blastbones / Stalking Blastbones
Sometimes you misclick and send the Blastbone towards a wrong enemy. I'd like if you could redirect the blastbone towards a new target while active for free.

3.) Avid Boneyard
Just being able to use your own synergy feels lacking compared to the massive bonus from reducing enemy resistances. Also in groups the effect isnt that great. I'd suggest that the damage bonus from the graveyard should go up to +100% (from 50% if you use a corpse upon cast).

4.) Detonating Siphon / Shocking Siphon / Mystic Siphon
The damage burst only applies at the very end of the skill after about 12 seconds. This is extremely underwhelming compared to the Magicka variant which restores resources. I'd support a change that will provide Major Brutality too while the skill is active! Shocking and Mystic Siphon should also grant Major Sorcery.

5.) Ruinous Scythe
The effect to set enemy off-balance should always apply but only once every 10seconds per target.

6.) Summoners Armor
Reducing only the skeleton summoning skills seems lacking. I would suggest to provide a cost reduction to ALL Necromancer abilities while active.

7.) Bone Totem / Agony Totem / Remote Totem
I would like to increase the radius and stun frequency of the Remote Totem morph to have a faster CC.

8.) Empowering Grasp
The bonus to Spirit Mender / Skeleton Mage (and their morphs) is ok but should also affect Blastbones in the area. Additionally all allies affected could receive Minor Berserk.

9.) Animate Blastbone
The cap of only 3 Blastbones feels too low for such an expensive ability when compared to resource regeneration. I'd suggest to increase the cap from 3 to 5 and reducing skill costs by 33%.

10.) Resistant Flesh
The bonus to resistances should be doubled since the current bonus is based on healing done. And since Healing is reduced to 50% in PVP the resistances in PVP are even worse.

11.) Expunge / Hexproof / Expunge and Modify
Health costs should be reduced on all skill variants. Resource restore in Expunge and Modify should be greater too.

12.) Skeleton Mage / Skeleton Arcanist / Skeleton Archer
The ability should not be recastable while active to prevent accidental resetting.

Those are some things that I wished to have as Necromancer. I am not 100% sure if some of the aforementioned things are considered overpowered since I dont have complete overview over all mechanics ingame. Feel free to discuss in this thread.

It would not be wise to give 1 class near everything but it this is a well thought out list. Good job

TheDarkRuler

wsmith97ub17_ESO wrote: »

The suggestions are mostly bad for pvp, you would be interrupted non stop, then killed off.

Scythe would only off-set enemies every 10s. Perhaps even less frequent than mentioned since someone told that the immunity is about 12-14s. The same with fear... the frequency of application might be high but after a breakfree you have immunity towards it for some time! Far from being away a interrupt-game all the way.

Sephyr

ImSoPro wrote: »

Sephyr wrote: »

With the Blastbones bit, that'd work if Stalking Blastbones did as it was actually intended--however being that it's been over a year that they 'fixed' the ability where the base and it's morphs all leap upon cast, the only timing you'd have to redirect the ability is if you're LoSing your target. They'd have to first fix Stalking to work as intended and being that it's been this long already, I think they've just opted to just leave it as is.

The old BB did nothing but get lost in traffic and drink on the job. Now that it leaps it at least hits the target a lot more often. They just need to change the secondary effect since it’s not traveling a distance anymore unless the target is outside the 15 m leap radius

From the ability itself:

Every second the skeleton spends chasing its target increases the damage of the explosion by 10%, up to a maximum of 50% more damage.

It leaps and hits it's target, but it's not based on the distance--rather it's in fact the time traveled. Which means the most you'll ever see without LoSing with the max distance, is 10% when it could be in fact much, much more. Either way, we're arguing semantics here--the secondary benefit is not working properly.

TheDarkRuler

Drdeath20 wrote: »

It would not be wise to give 1 class near everything but it this is a well thought out list. Good job

I know the post is a bit older now but since i just started a Warden... if anything the Warden has almost every keyword available in his class set. Major Brutality/Sorcery, Major Prophecy/Savagery, Minor Berserk, Major Expedition. So giving Nekros at least one of the core keywords shouldnt be an issue!

Firstmep

My main gripe is scythe being a tank skill, I wish it was a viable melee spammable.
I really don't like all the Stamina classes like warden necro DK with ranged spammables.
Also the Stam scythe should really do poison or disease dmg.

Xuhora

Well presented

i have my regards with point 1 and 2

1) isnt it the point of a spammable to be clicked every second? i mean if you compare it to other spammables (crystalized weapon, flurry, jabs, uppercut) all of them need to be clicked once every second, since you spam them. you would have to suggest a rework of ALL spammables, not just QOL for Necros

2) have you tried redirecting it like a sorc pet? Y+leftclick to attak Y+rightclick to stop. i dont know if that works, since my Necro is a tank and does not use the blastbones

Sephyr

Xuhora wrote: »

Well presented

i have my regards with point 1 and 2

1) isnt it the point of a spammable to be clicked every second? i mean if you compare it to other spammables (crystalized weapon, flurry, jabs, uppercut) all of them need to be clicked once every second, since you spam them. you would have to suggest a rework of ALL spammables, not just QOL for Necros

2) have you tried redirecting it like a sorc pet? Y+leftclick to attak Y+rightclick to stop. i dont know if that works, since my Necro is a tank and does not use the blastbones

Blastbones leaps before you can direct it. If it was working as intended, one could probably test this more efficiently however as it is--you can't direct anything with Blastbones aside from the initial fire. In theory, it's probably the same if it was working properly as they intended Blastbones to be a 'fire and forget' pet.

Atherakhia

A lot of the skills listed are garbage to begin with and your changes really don't improve them in any meaningful way. I'm really not sure what you're trying to do with some of your suggestions?

1.) The skulls are a spammable. They're meant to be used repeatedly. They are similar in damage to other spammables and work in a similar way to other spammables. The problem with the skulls is their slow travel time which makes them incredibly easy to counter in PvP or be wasted in PvE. Your solution really doesn't do much but change them into a ranged Jabs type skill but would ultimately not really change much? I don't know why you'd want this change. If they were to redesign the skill entirely, make it act more like the DK spammable (three floating skulls around you that you can launch at your target) but enhance it further by making the skull auto activate on a target that's close range with a short cooldown so they don't just tripe blast. But really, the skill just needs a faster travel time and a better secondary affect.

That all said, your change would be better served on the Bow spammable Snipe. There are a lot of desyncing issues related to the Snipe skill and make it a channeled ability that did 3 successive shots over a short duration would solve that problem.

2.) Blast Bones targetting issues are minor in contrast to the numerous mechanical issues the skill has. Things like the skeletons leaping on moving targets and exploding and dealing no damage. Things like them walking up to a target and just standing there until they deconstruct and do no damage. Locking after activating forcing you to bar swap. And the largest problem being the magicka morph does absolutely nothing and has been 100% useless for 8 months now. These are the issues that need to be fixed in my opinion. The issue you described sounds more like a player error.

3.) I'm in the minority here, but self-synergy was a horrible idea and should never have been an option for this class. Now that harmony has been nerfed, this skill is pretty weak and a horrible skill overall that's good for little else than vicious death spam in zerg PvP. This entire morph should just be removed and make the other morph the offensive morph. Replace avid boneyard with a heal morph. Hell, mirror it after Life Amid Death where Avid will heal and if a corpse is around it will leave a lingering HOT and you could effectively delete Life Amid Death entirely and replace it with a new skill.

4.) First, the mage morph is entirely underwhelming too as the mag return is quite low. What's it come out to, 200 regen? The stam morph is quite useful for DPS considering it's free. I'd rather see these skills just have their damage increased a little and change the targetting mechanic to be between the corpse and the target as opposed to the corpse and the Necro. This simple change would make these skills at least useable in PvP and while probably still not useful, they'd at least be an option.

5.) Off-balance has a cooldown on its own so your change is more than reasonable. But these skills really aren't used at all other thank tanking or trolling in PvP. The class is desperately in need of an execute skill and Scythe is often suggested as the place to put it. I'm in agreement with that and would like to see the scythe skills changes to deal more damage to lower health targets.

6.) I really don't have anything bad to say about the Necro armor skills in particular, but armor skills in general in this game should be changed to all last longer.

7.) As with armors, I really don't have much to say about the totems. I think they work well for what they are. The one change I would propose is to make the ranged morph make it pulse immediately when cast. This way it could provide the class a reliable ranged stun. The ranged morph isn't of much use when you consider you cast it at a location, it agros everything around it, and they charge you leaving the area before the totem can stun them. This would make the morph a must have morph so perhaps the other morph should be improved to make it remain competetive. But may not be needed.

8.) Empowering Grasp needs to be changed entirely. This skill was marginally useful before they changed it a patch or 2 ago because at the very least it acted like an AOE immobilize. Now it's basically worthless because it's so easy to dodge. If the first area stunned, second immobilized, and third snared and each circle put a stacking DOT on the target that would probably have been useful. But right now it's awful. I do agree with your change though about it impacting blast bones. Make the circles apply a DOT that can be stacked up to 3 times to do elevated damage (200/400/800 or something like that). Then make one morph remove the stacking dots and instead be a permanent circle around the caster that empowers minions within in and deals 200 damage to nearby targets. Make the other morph work like it does now but the DOT could explode at the end.

9.) I've honestly never even used this morph. I'd be fine with this change, but it's rare to have so many corpses available to summon that many. the only way that would happen is if a trial was wiping and I used it. But would it also res 5 targets? That may be overpowered. Honestly, I'd rather they changed this skill so the other morph DRAMATICALLY reduced the cost, no longer resed players, and did something more offensive oriented. One of the larger problems with mag classes in general is they don't have access to cheap ultimates. Necro specificallly has none to choose from. If they'd change this to something like a 150pt ultimate that always summoned 3 'lesser' blast bones or something it would be more fun. It could then be empowered if you consumed corpses when casting.

10.) This skill is fine and will be even better now that defile is being nerfed considerably. It synergizes well with the purge to cast a big heal and use the purge to remove the defile.

11.) I'd agree with this but I honestly don't have any problems with the skills so not sure they need changing.

12.) I disagree with this. Recasting our skills when they have been up for half their duration is a valuable mechanic to allow us to create corpses. These skills do suck though. The archer is somewhat viable but from a PvP perspective still useless. The Arcanist is just bad. It's such a meager amount of damage and the AE is so small to be effectively useless anyway. These skills should provide a boost to the caster and nearby allies. They could be given on use skills like Mag Sorc as well to detonate. Anything would be nice but right now these skills are bad and used for nothing but a weak DOT hardly worth casting.

I do feel the Necromancer class as a whole needs a rather substantial overhaul. But it has so many legitimate problems, some on the skills you mention, that minor tweaks like you propose aren't really going to solve anything. Everyone needs quality of life changes... things like our buff skills simply lasting longer, mana costs being reduced considerably, etc. But the Necro needs much more than QOL at this time.

YandereGirlfriend

Some thoughts:

• Love the idea of the Scythe being an Excute. Incredibly thematic and needed utility for the class.
• I also hate the idea and gameplay of a self-synergy. Not sure what a better replacement would be though.
• Remote Totem absolutely should stun on-cast rather than having the 2-second delay. It's already a skill shot compared to single-target stuns so you may as well get some reward for it.
• I actually really like the IDEA of Empowering Grasp given the new changes to how Empowered works. I would love to see this as an ability that could provide high-uptime on Empower to the group that Necro supports could use. Would make a Necro healer incredibly valuable. The other functionality--powering up our own pets--is completely useless and should be stripped away entirely. Can also strip away the Minor Maim and make it a purely buffing skill. Then either reduce the cost of the skill to Blastbones level to enable its use as a semi-spammable (on the group) or increase the length of the Empower duration from 3 seconds to ~8 or so.
• Animate Blastbones should be much cheaper (~75 Ultimate) and simply summon the three Blastbones from the ground without the need for corpses. That would make it an interesting damage alternative to Colossus depending upon the situation.

TheDarkRuler

1.) Perhaps the Scythe could get up to +250% bonus damage to all targets below 25% health. Threshold and bonus should be worse than execute from twohanded weapons since it is an AoE execute.

2.) I personally would love a Blastbone spawning graveyard. Might be too overpowered though.

3.) Sounds like a nice variant to have fear upon cast.

4.) To be honest i am not 100% sure how to buff/change that ability morph into something that is worth using.
Just Empower might be ... weak.

5.) Animate Blastbones as a Blastbone spawner would be cool. Perhaps removing the revival function entirely by reducing ability costs might be a good solution.

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Some thoughts:

• Love the idea of the Scythe being an Excute. Incredibly thematic and needed utility for the class.
• I also hate the idea and gameplay of a self-synergy. Not sure what a better replacement would be though.
• Remote Totem absolutely should stun on-cast rather than having the 2-second delay. It's already a skill shot compared to single-target stuns so you may as well get some reward for it.
• I actually really like the IDEA of Empowering Grasp given the new changes to how Empowered works. I would love to see this as an ability that could provide high-uptime on Empower to the group that Necro supports could use. Would make a Necro healer incredibly valuable. The other functionality--powering up our own pets--is completely useless and should be stripped away entirely. Can also strip away the Minor Maim and make it a purely buffing skill. Then either reduce the cost of the skill to Blastbones level to enable its use as a semi-spammable (on the group) or increase the length of the Empower duration from 3 seconds to ~8 or so.
• Animate Blastbones should be much cheaper (~75 Ultimate) and simply summon the three Blastbones from the ground without the need for corpses. That would make it an interesting damage alternative to Colossus depending upon the situation.

Zodiarkslayer

@TheDarkRuler
Honestly, I have stopped reading at No. 6. Your proposals (until then) will drive all other classes into obsolescence. Creating one class to rule them all is a bad thing. It makes the game limiting at best and boring as hell if you are honest.

TheDarkRuler

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

@TheDarkRuler
Honestly, I have stopped reading at No. 6. Your proposals (until then) will drive all other classes into obsolescence. Creating one class to rule them all is a bad thing. It makes the game limiting at best and boring as hell if you are honest.

Doubt it. The changes from 1-5 (since you stopped at 6) are minor changes at most.
If those were to be included it would not impact the balance much.
Also this is a discussion thread, not a "I am ranting and not giving any explanation but now I am outta here".

katorga

I've been playing Necro since it was released and swap back and forth from mag to stam when I get bored.

Common problems: blastbones still gets locked out from casting far to often. It still sometimes forgets to do anything when it is cast. Siphon can still turn you away from target. The pets attack/heal the wrong target or just plain fail to cast far to often.

To start off, Magcro was totally useless during the AOE tests. If they go forward with planned AOE changes the class will go from worst PVP class to totally unable to PVP at all class. Global cooldowns, ramping costs, and such destroy Magcro. (Stamcro sailed through with zero issues).

Siphons...the mag version is useless, too low damage, too little resource return. The stam version is great. With enough in trash pulls you can spam it for a free AOE. Detonating ANY time it ends is a much better morph than 100 magicka per second. Siphons are PVE only, they are non-functional in PVP.

Expunge and Modify should return resources equal to the heal cost, a little less than double what it returns now.

I actually like the self synergy on Boneyard, it is a good burst heal, but with the buff to Major Armor penetration, the other morph is better.

The burst heal should lose the defile debuff. Both morphs are entirely unsuited to PVP.