For the love of Mannimarco, give necromancer Major Sorcery this PTS cycle.

Urzigurumash

OtarTheMad wrote: »

Twohothardware wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

This is not necessary. Drink a potion for that, like everybody else already does. Necromancers need to be buffed, but them lacking buff skills is intentional by design as the class focuses on debuffing enemies. That worked out well for them until ZOS decided to make major vulnerability something that regular item sets can provide.
Add more debuffs, be creative. We don't need every class to be exactly the same as every other. That would be boring.

You can't expect your average casual player to use crafted potions on cooldown plus this removes your ability to use other potions that are better for situations like tri stat in PvP.

Major Brutality/Sorcery is one core buff that every class should have built in so they're on parity for damage without the use of potions.

Well, players can also get brutality/sorcery from Mages Guild too, and at least with Degeneration you can control who gets hit with the dot and you get the mages guild passives too, plus Necros have a dot passive so that's good. Putting the buff on a useless ability like Skeletal summons, or a majority of the Necro offensive tool kit isn't helping its damage

Yes it would help our damage:
1. Prebuffed, now I can cast Bones as soon as I'm within 28m rather than spending that first GCD for Degen
2. Another stack of Death Knell, near 100% uptime on Dismember
3. Another corpse I can turn into 6 Ult

Question is would that improve our damage MORE than Degen's DoT? Worth noting I play Stam so the Mages Guild Mag passive and the Magicka Steal from Degen's status effect are not important. I should also note I'd be quite happy with putting Brutality on Poison Injection also and giving Venom Arrow some additional effect, and/or giving Flying Blade a 28m range like it used to have but keeping the immediate proc of Brutality it didn't used to have. This would give sCro more parity with mCro on this matter since as you imply - Degen is hardly a bad skill on Mag. Neither is Rally on Stam but it's boring to have to slot 2h just for prebuffable Brutality - which is, imho, ultimately better than Degen, Venom Arrow, and certainly the 22m Flying Blade, since we can hit a fully buffed Bones the moment we're in range.

Remiem

OtarTheMad wrote: »

Well, players can also get brutality/sorcery from Mages Guild too, and at least with Degeneration you can control who gets hit with the dot and you get the mages guild passives too, plus Necros have a dot passive so that's good. Putting the buff on a useless ability like Skeletal summons, or a majority of the Necro offensive tool kit isn't helping its damage.

However, I am thinking that this discussion is pointless because ZOS will probably just throw those buffs on those abilities, and people will celebrate... for like 5 seconds and quickly realize that now instead of a crap ability... they just have a shiny crap ability. "But I have sorcery and prophecy now... why am I still getting owned in Cyrodiil"... because the necro offensive abilities are pure garbage in Cyro.

Good summary.
I don't know what's the obsession with slapping brutality/sorcery on the arcanist summon that tickles people for 300 damage every 2 seconds, or prophecy/savagery on siphon, I guess it will help your dizzy swinger: spooky scary skeleton edition but not someone who wants to play an actual class with an actual combo made out of class skills they can kill players with.
Dismember? a weak 1.5k pen and it's already up when you need it with blastbones, Death knell? A near worthless passive in PvP situations, it's good in PvE where you parse on a trial boss with 300 millions hp and a long execute phase, I would take a basic damage modifier like all the other classes have over it in a heartbeat.

Shove sorcery/brutality somewhere in the passives like @strepsels suggested, but at some point one damage skill at the very least should be reworked into something to replace boneyard, you can't just remove basically half a class' burst then leave them high and dry, imagine if ZOS decided to just straight up delete sorcerer's c-frag proc, dk's molten whip proc or nb's bow proc? That's basically what happened with necro.

OtarTheMad

Urzigurumash wrote: »

OtarTheMad wrote: »

Twohothardware wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

This is not necessary. Drink a potion for that, like everybody else already does. Necromancers need to be buffed, but them lacking buff skills is intentional by design as the class focuses on debuffing enemies. That worked out well for them until ZOS decided to make major vulnerability something that regular item sets can provide.
Add more debuffs, be creative. We don't need every class to be exactly the same as every other. That would be boring.

You can't expect your average casual player to use crafted potions on cooldown plus this removes your ability to use other potions that are better for situations like tri stat in PvP.

Major Brutality/Sorcery is one core buff that every class should have built in so they're on parity for damage without the use of potions.

Well, players can also get brutality/sorcery from Mages Guild too, and at least with Degeneration you can control who gets hit with the dot and you get the mages guild passives too, plus Necros have a dot passive so that's good. Putting the buff on a useless ability like Skeletal summons, or a majority of the Necro offensive tool kit isn't helping its damage

Yes it would help our damage:
1. Prebuffed, now I can cast Bones as soon as I'm within 28m rather than spending that first GCD for Degen
2. Another stack of Death Knell, near 100% uptime on Dismember
3. Another corpse I can turn into 6 Ult

Question is would that improve our damage MORE than Degen's DoT? Worth noting I play Stam so the Mages Guild Mag passive and the Magicka Steal from Degen's status effect are not important. I should also note I'd be quite happy with putting Brutality on Poison Injection also and giving Venom Arrow some additional effect, and/or giving Flying Blade a 28m range like it used to have but keeping the immediate proc of Brutality it didn't used to have. This would give sCro more parity with mCro on this matter since as you imply - Degen is hardly a bad skill on Mag. Neither is Rally on Stam but it's boring to have to slot 2h just for prebuffable Brutality - which is, imho, ultimately better than Degen, Venom Arrow, and certainly the 22m Flying Blade, since we can hit a fully buffed Bones the moment we're in range.

Worth noting that neither playstyle is wrong but I don't do stamina so I can't speak on it. Degen's DoT is nothing worth writing home about anymore but it's damage I can control who it hits plus Rapid Rot helps out and also MG passive Everlasting Magic.

I try to have, at least in PvP, at least one mages guild and one fighters but I usually end up with two mages because I use Meteor as my ult so I get 4% Max Magicka and 4% Magicka Recovery because of that. Plus with a FG ability I get 3 ultimate whenever I kill someone, which piles up in PvP and 3% more weapon/spell damage. Not to mention if I use a FG damaging ability, which I do sometimes, I do 10% more damage to vampires and WW and we all know that like 99% of Cyrodiil are vampires now. I am not too concerned with Death Knell in PvP. BB is okay when it works for sure, I like Blighted morph for Defile plus having a stam costing ability helps with resources. BB still gets really confused though and just stands there staring at an enemy. Obviously, Dismember is important, I toy around with tether sometimes in PvP since it's free I can just keep recasting it until I hit one of my corpses or an NPC but if I don't have it on my bar my monster set is usually Balorgh so combo that with light armor, I can usually make up for the missing Dismember.

Maybe I'm nuts lol but I don't have any issues on any other classes, just necro. I also don't think it would be a big of an issue, Necro's offensive abilities being meh in Cyrodiil if Magicka players had more options to go to replace abilities. If the classes offensive abilities are crap then we only got Mages Guild and Destro staff to turn to. Whereas stamina players have fighters guild, 2h, DW, and bow as options.

JerBearESO

OtarTheMad wrote: »

JerBearESO wrote: »

OtarTheMad wrote: »

JerBearESO wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

This is not necessary. Drink a potion for that, like everybody else already does. Necromancers need to be buffed, but them lacking buff skills is intentional by design as the class focuses on debuffing enemies. That worked out well for them until ZOS decided to make major vulnerability something that regular item sets can provide.
Add more debuffs, be creative. We don't need every class to be exactly the same as every other. That would be boring.

The problem I see with this is that you should not be forced into a potion based solution. And the other means of getting these buffs all require skill slots which move Necro away from its own kit. We need to be able to generate corpses, but we have to slot non Necro skills for these buffs which squeezes out room for a truly Necro build....

I do agree Necro should focus on debuffs for its playstyle, but no longer by trading away buffs which have become entirely core to all builds. They really should solve their lack of buffs through skeleton summon once and for all. With how they are overloading skills nowadays, having summon buff both majors it's crying for is absolutely fine

Even with those buffs necro abilities will still be not worth slotting though in a majority of modes. You can’t work the corpse system in PvP, I only got 2 necro abilities on my bar in Cyrodiil which are resistant flesh and summoners armor. Every other ability comes from other skill lines and I am forced to do this because necro offensive abilities are either situational or trash.

Basically in PvE I am a Necromancer but every other game mode I am an Elementalist or a Proc Set Master.

Putting those buffs on skeleton summon should free up 2 slots and give the crit to your backbar. That's the point

If you are talking about front bar set and back bar set I don't do that... I just do the old 5pc/5pc/2pc set up... or subbing out a monster set pc for a mythic. I also don't use the summons in PvP.

This is what I am toying with in Cyro atm. I am doing Heartland Conqueror (going to switch this soon tho) and Dreugh King (seeing what having Sorcery/Brutality up at all times does since it's the 5pc bonus.) I mess with my bars and sets all the time so they could change tomorrow lol.

Bar 1
Force Pulse
Blighted Blastbones
Flame Reach (for knockback)
Caltrops (breach and slowing)
Camo Hunter
Ice Comet

Bar 2
Resistant Flesh
Race Against Time
Summoner's Armor
Vigor
Deaden Pain/LA Shield
Resto Ult

Sorry I wasn't clear at all. So what I mean is, currently to have major brutality/sorcery we need to slot a skill for it that is not a Necro skill. Either 2hand or bow or mages guild. Then for savagery/prophecy we go with either of the guild skill options on frontbar. But by putting both on skeleton summon we would gain a free skill slot while obvious fitting skeleton in, so kinda like 2 considering the goal is to give Necro better access to its own kit, and we would be gaining savagery/prophecy on the backbar to top it off.

With this change we would see corpse play become more of a thing and Necro feel more like well...Necro. it may seem way overloaded but ZoS seems to be moving towards overloading something skill wise on each class so Necro needs an overloaded skill anyway, and skeleton would be the one for it

Urzigurumash

Remiem wrote: »

I guess it will help your dizzy swinger: spooky scary skeleton edition but not someone who wants to play an actual class with an actual combo made out of class skills they can kill players with.

Exactly, it would be a small mechanical and thematic boost for a 2h/DW/Bow based offense. This is how I compare classes, what's the best D Swinger, the best Snipe Spammer, the best Spin 2 Winner. That's 3 subclasses within a Class compared to the 1 Ardent Flamer, the 1 Animal Companionser, the 1 Herald of the Tomer, etc. Your thoughts on Death Knell and Dismember maybe don't speak from experience in using Executioner, Poison Injection, or Spin 2 Win. All Necro needs for these is a small numerical boost to be on par with Sorc and Warden. Because StamDK has rather been deleted and is now just a different way to allocate attributes on an Ardent Flameser. If your Bones is killed or missed your target, it could be 2 or 3 ticks of Poison Injection before you're able to summon your next Bones, or maybe you're in range for Executioner and want to hit it and not spend a GCD raising another Bones, etc.

"Stam" Whip simultaneously deleted StamDK and made it the single strongest spec, if that makes any sense. Absolutely my views pertain only to Necromancy-themed Warriors/Thieves.

Urzigurumash

To be clear @Remiem I'm under no delusions these buffs would be sufficient to make a true Gravelord on par with an Ardent Flamer, restoring Graverobber to its prior strength and giving Totem an instant stun definitely seems like a reasonably prudent way to restore some of MagCro's lost power.

And the addition of these buffs alone still may not be sufficient to elevate sCro to the level of sDen or sSorc, Sorc has Curse and Crystal and Deep Fissure is the best ability in the game, but it's a start and is extremely unlikely to suddenly elevate sCro to a level so OP it degrades the fun of PvP, as we saw with the transformation of sDK from a lumbering D Swinger to an invincible high speed Ardent Flamer.

Twohothardware

I just don't know why they keep adding more major buffs to Nightblade but are ignoring adding even the most basic ones like Major Sorcery to Necromancer when is being voted the lowest performing class right now.

Melzo

And what's the use of these buffs for a necromancer?? I see no reason to give the necromancer these buffs. Your damage will not increase. I only see that from this the buff that distributes dk, sets and potions will become irrelevant. Why do you need skills, potions and sets that give these buffs? For the last year since patch 35, I haven’t used anything other than potions that give these buffs. Trite if you give a skeleton archer one of these buffs, then the skill from the guild of magicians will become worse since it does less damage and this is an imbalance. Why does a class skill do more damage than a generic skill that gives an analogous buff. Want to use only necromancer skills i.e. sets, dk ally and potions. And give some kind of garbage to the necromancer from which he will suffer for another two years without any updates, since the necromancer already has a lot of major buffs. And that's what everyone will say even though he'll still be a *** class.

The Necromancer needs damage, not the crappy buffs he will suffer from for the next two years without updates.

Twohothardware

Remiem wrote: »

OtarTheMad wrote: »

Well, players can also get brutality/sorcery from Mages Guild too, and at least with Degeneration you can control who gets hit with the dot and you get the mages guild passives too, plus Necros have a dot passive so that's good. Putting the buff on a useless ability like Skeletal summons, or a majority of the Necro offensive tool kit isn't helping its damage.

However, I am thinking that this discussion is pointless because ZOS will probably just throw those buffs on those abilities, and people will celebrate... for like 5 seconds and quickly realize that now instead of a crap ability... they just have a shiny crap ability. "But I have sorcery and prophecy now... why am I still getting owned in Cyrodiil"... because the necro offensive abilities are pure garbage in Cyro.

Good summary.
I don't know what's the obsession with slapping brutality/sorcery on the arcanist summon that tickles people for 300 damage every 2 seconds, or prophecy/savagery on siphon, I guess it will help your dizzy swinger: spooky scary skeleton edition but not someone who wants to play an actual class with an actual combo made out of class skills they can kill players with.
Dismember? a weak 1.5k pen and it's already up when you need it with blastbones, Death knell? A near worthless passive in PvP situations, it's good in PvE where you parse on a trial boss with 300 millions hp and a long execute phase, I would take a basic damage modifier like all the other classes have over it in a heartbeat.

Shove sorcery/brutality somewhere in the passives like @strepsels suggested, but at some point one damage skill at the very least should be reworked into something to replace boneyard, you can't just remove basically half a class' burst then leave them high and dry, imagine if ZOS decided to just straight up delete sorcerer's c-frag proc, dk's molten whip proc or nb's bow proc? That's basically what happened with necro.

All of Arcanists offensive skills are good so it's hard to choose what to slot but with Necro you basically have Blastbones for PvP. The Arcanist passives are then really overloaded too. If you slot 5 Herald of the Tome skills on your front bar you get 4955 penetration but Necro only gets 1500 penetration from the Dismember passive. Arcanist's Cruxweaver armor also applies Minor Breach to the target when you're hit.

JerBearESO

In regards to the mentioned situation of these major buffs being useless on non class skills, pots, and set effects if every class has them in their kit. They could change those non class skills, pots, and set effects to minor....

Also kinda off but why haven't they made a third type yet? Minor, Major, Mega...er?

CameraBeardThePirate

Melzo wrote: »

And what's the use of these buffs for a necromancer?? I see no reason to give the necromancer these buffs. Your damage will not increase. I only see that from this the buff that distributes dk, sets and potions will become irrelevant. Why do you need skills, potions and sets that give these buffs? For the last year since patch 35, I haven’t used anything other than potions that give these buffs. Trite if you give a skeleton archer one of these buffs, then the skill from the guild of magicians will become worse since it does less damage and this is an imbalance. Why does a class skill do more damage than a generic skill that gives an analogous buff. Want to use only necromancer skills i.e. sets, dk ally and potions. And give some kind of garbage to the necromancer from which he will suffer for another two years without any updates, since the necromancer already has a lot of major buffs. And that's what everyone will say even though he'll still be a *** class.

The Necromancer needs damage, not the crappy buffs he will suffer from for the next two years without updates.

It doesn't matter if your damage doesn't increase, having these buffs in your kit gives the class more options. It means you have more space on your bar for utility, can use different potions, or even different sets. Buffs like Brutality and Sorcery should be accessible for everyone.

Twohothardware

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/639957/anyone-else-feel-that-necros-are-kinda-meh#latest

Every day a new forum discussion on how Necro is underperforming and yet the only change this PTS cycle is a slight buff for the ultimate which is the least of the problem.

OtarTheMad

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Melzo wrote: »

And what's the use of these buffs for a necromancer?? I see no reason to give the necromancer these buffs. Your damage will not increase. I only see that from this the buff that distributes dk, sets and potions will become irrelevant. Why do you need skills, potions and sets that give these buffs? For the last year since patch 35, I haven’t used anything other than potions that give these buffs. Trite if you give a skeleton archer one of these buffs, then the skill from the guild of magicians will become worse since it does less damage and this is an imbalance. Why does a class skill do more damage than a generic skill that gives an analogous buff. Want to use only necromancer skills i.e. sets, dk ally and potions. And give some kind of garbage to the necromancer from which he will suffer for another two years without any updates, since the necromancer already has a lot of major buffs. And that's what everyone will say even though he'll still be a *** class.

The Necromancer needs damage, not the crappy buffs he will suffer from for the next two years without updates.

It doesn't matter if your damage doesn't increase, having these buffs in your kit gives the class more options. It means you have more space on your bar for utility, can use different potions, or even different sets. Buffs like Brutality and Sorcery should be accessible for everyone.

Okay so this does not make sense to me, you say it doesn’t matter if your damage increases… but that’s the foundational issue with Necromancer, it’s class damage is garbage. Now maybe you mean PvE, which would kind of make sense but overall out of all of the different modes in this game (PvE, PvP Cyrodiil, dueling, BGs) necro is only really good at one of them. (PvE)

So, why would it matter if you can use different potions, sets and stuff if the necro abilities still aren’t worth slotting? I want it to be better, feel smoother, not fail in a different way.

OtarTheMad

JerBearESO wrote: »

OtarTheMad wrote: »

JerBearESO wrote: »

OtarTheMad wrote: »

JerBearESO wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

This is not necessary. Drink a potion for that, like everybody else already does. Necromancers need to be buffed, but them lacking buff skills is intentional by design as the class focuses on debuffing enemies. That worked out well for them until ZOS decided to make major vulnerability something that regular item sets can provide.
Add more debuffs, be creative. We don't need every class to be exactly the same as every other. That would be boring.

The problem I see with this is that you should not be forced into a potion based solution. And the other means of getting these buffs all require skill slots which move Necro away from its own kit. We need to be able to generate corpses, but we have to slot non Necro skills for these buffs which squeezes out room for a truly Necro build....

I do agree Necro should focus on debuffs for its playstyle, but no longer by trading away buffs which have become entirely core to all builds. They really should solve their lack of buffs through skeleton summon once and for all. With how they are overloading skills nowadays, having summon buff both majors it's crying for is absolutely fine

Even with those buffs necro abilities will still be not worth slotting though in a majority of modes. You can’t work the corpse system in PvP, I only got 2 necro abilities on my bar in Cyrodiil which are resistant flesh and summoners armor. Every other ability comes from other skill lines and I am forced to do this because necro offensive abilities are either situational or trash.

Basically in PvE I am a Necromancer but every other game mode I am an Elementalist or a Proc Set Master.

Putting those buffs on skeleton summon should free up 2 slots and give the crit to your backbar. That's the point

If you are talking about front bar set and back bar set I don't do that... I just do the old 5pc/5pc/2pc set up... or subbing out a monster set pc for a mythic. I also don't use the summons in PvP.

This is what I am toying with in Cyro atm. I am doing Heartland Conqueror (going to switch this soon tho) and Dreugh King (seeing what having Sorcery/Brutality up at all times does since it's the 5pc bonus.) I mess with my bars and sets all the time so they could change tomorrow lol.

Bar 1
Force Pulse
Blighted Blastbones
Flame Reach (for knockback)
Caltrops (breach and slowing)
Camo Hunter
Ice Comet

Bar 2
Resistant Flesh
Race Against Time
Summoner's Armor
Vigor
Deaden Pain/LA Shield
Resto Ult

Sorry I wasn't clear at all. So what I mean is, currently to have major brutality/sorcery we need to slot a skill for it that is not a Necro skill. Either 2hand or bow or mages guild. Then for savagery/prophecy we go with either of the guild skill options on frontbar. But by putting both on skeleton summon we would gain a free skill slot while obvious fitting skeleton in, so kinda like 2 considering the goal is to give Necro better access to its own kit, and we would be gaining savagery/prophecy on the backbar to top it off.

With this change we would see corpse play become more of a thing and Necro feel more like well...Necro. it may seem way overloaded but ZoS seems to be moving towards overloading something skill wise on each class so Necro needs an overloaded skill anyway, and skeleton would be the one for it

Thanks for clearing that up, I see what you’re saying. It’s just, for me, in that scenario I lose more than I gain because I like the mages and fighters guild passives in PvP. Let’s say both buffs do get out on skeletal summons, I’m still not slotting it.

When I look at gaining those buffs plus penetration passive vs losing some max magicka, magicka recovery, weapon/spell damage, even more ult gen and increased damage to vamps (which are 95% of Cyro atm) I just see that for my playstyle I am losing too much.

However, if the abilities get overhauled and are better and smoother and maybe necro still gains those buffs then okay… now I’m gaining more. Overall though I am okay with Necro not having major sorc/brut. It’d be cool if they had the minor versions of that though, pretty unique since only Templars have it rn.

Darkstorne

My biggest wish is that ZOS would rethink major buffs like this entirely.

They're such huge sources to damage output that they really aren't optional. Which means some classes having access to them while others don't (and some have access to them passively) feels unbalanced, and any build that lacks access to them feels incomplete. You're forced into slotting skills or potions that provides access to them, rather than it feeling like a choice. And buff upkeep is never a fun gameplay mechanic.

I really think the game would be so much better if these kinds of buffs were just removed from the game, with the power rolled into our characters as baseline (which would further help raise the floor without affecting the ceiling), so we can slot skills that we actually want to use instead, and freeing up a few skills for ZOS to redesign into more exciting active abilities.

CameraBeardThePirate

OtarTheMad wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Melzo wrote: »

And what's the use of these buffs for a necromancer?? I see no reason to give the necromancer these buffs. Your damage will not increase. I only see that from this the buff that distributes dk, sets and potions will become irrelevant. Why do you need skills, potions and sets that give these buffs? For the last year since patch 35, I haven’t used anything other than potions that give these buffs. Trite if you give a skeleton archer one of these buffs, then the skill from the guild of magicians will become worse since it does less damage and this is an imbalance. Why does a class skill do more damage than a generic skill that gives an analogous buff. Want to use only necromancer skills i.e. sets, dk ally and potions. And give some kind of garbage to the necromancer from which he will suffer for another two years without any updates, since the necromancer already has a lot of major buffs. And that's what everyone will say even though he'll still be a *** class.

The Necromancer needs damage, not the crappy buffs he will suffer from for the next two years without updates.

It doesn't matter if your damage doesn't increase, having these buffs in your kit gives the class more options. It means you have more space on your bar for utility, can use different potions, or even different sets. Buffs like Brutality and Sorcery should be accessible for everyone.

Okay so this does not make sense to me, you say it doesn’t matter if your damage increases… but that’s the foundational issue with Necromancer, it’s class damage is garbage. Now maybe you mean PvE, which would kind of make sense but overall out of all of the different modes in this game (PvE, PvP Cyrodiil, dueling, BGs) necro is only really good at one of them. (PvE)

So, why would it matter if you can use different potions, sets and stuff if the necro abilities still aren’t worth slotting? I want it to be better, feel smoother, not fail in a different way.

Giving more flexibility with your bar space can lead to more damage elsewhere - that's how build crafting works.

Edit to explain more:
Not having to run blue or green pots means you'll have more sustain through tri pots, more tankiness through resist pots, maybe even more ult Gen (if you're rich of course). All of these things can in turn lead to more damage because each of these could allow for changes in the build elsewhere - for example, you might be able to swap off of a sustain mundus now that you can run tri pots, or maybe swap to damage jewelry glyphs.

Tonturri

Darkstorne wrote: »

My biggest wish is that ZOS would rethink major buffs like this entirely.

They're such huge sources to damage output that they really aren't optional. Which means some classes having access to them while others don't (and some have access to them passively) feels unbalanced, and any build that lacks access to them feels incomplete. You're forced into slotting skills or potions that provides access to them, rather than it feeling like a choice. And buff upkeep is never a fun gameplay mechanic.

I really think the game would be so much better if these kinds of buffs were just removed from the game, with the power rolled into our characters as baseline (which would further help raise the floor without affecting the ceiling), so we can slot skills that we actually want to use instead, and freeing up a few skills for ZOS to redesign into more exciting active abilities.

These kinds of non-unique named buffs are valuable in that they help control stacking. I also enjoy ESO's method for allowing more support based, instead of everything being about green numbers.

Having a named buff such as major sorcery limits force multiplier supports by ensuring that if one person can give group wide major sorc (just as an example), that role is 'filled' - otherwise you could end up with multiple supports giving 20% spell damage buff, and it would spiral out of control (much like how augmentation evokers just did in WoW and were immediately re-tuned).

I think the buffs are useful in that respect to both create and enforce limits on support-based characters - be it skills, gear, synergies, etc. That said, ZOS has definitely gone overboard - it feels like they have things flipped, giving named buffs when it should be a unique stackable buff, and a unique stacakble buff when it should be named in some cases, so you end up with effectively 'dead' skills like the mages' guild DoT where it's only used if a class lacks that buff, otherwise it's just completely ignored...Which, imo, isn't how it should work. Turning the mages' guild DoT to provide a unique, but likely weaker, spell dmg buff would make it much more interesting.

I definitely do want more exciting active abilities - but I also want to be able to buff allies and have some interplay between getting buffs for myself. It just doesn't look like ZOS has a solid idea on how they want to go about allocating different sources of character power. I think they felt that necro was/would be fine cause it would have some rare, but powerful Major debuffs, and at the time it was the only class with a build-spend mechanic...But then they nerfed the rare major debuffs and made them easier to get, *and* necro's build-spend mechanic was tuned to just be 'they need this to go from much worse to better, but still worse than other classes'.

Best example: Armor buffs. It's ridiculously disappointing that the best thing ZOS has been able to come up with is 'give everyone an extremely generic get-major-armor-buff skill'.

techprince

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/634688/necromancer-a-heavily-neglected-class/p1

Twohothardware

Necro is the only class without access to Major Sorcery.

Necro has so many skills and you’re left wasting a slot and running a throwaway Mages Guild skill to get one of the most essential buffs.

CameraBeardThePirate

Twohothardware wrote: »

Necro is the only class without access to Major Sorcery.

Necro has so many skills and you’re left wasting a slot and running a throwaway Mages Guild skill to get one of the most essential buffs.

It's the only class without a plethora of things. I get that this last PTS cycle was supposed to be small changes, but that didn't stop them from giving one of the major buffs that necros lack to nightblade, completely unprompted. To not even do this small change in the last cycle doesn't really give me any hope that they understand why the class is hurting so bad.

OtarTheMad

Beyond buffs, since I doubt a complete overhaul of the Grave Lord class line will happen. I’d say the least I’d ask for is:

- skulls spammable to be sped up
- At least two reliable damage over time abilities. Whether that’s adding a dot to BB or Skeletal summons somehow or whatever… Necro’s have a DoT passive and need more DoTs.
- Fear totem to be fixed

Urzigurumash

Melzo wrote: »

And what's the use of these buffs for a necromancer?? I see no reason to give the necromancer these buffs. Your damage will not increase. I only see that from this the buff that distributes dk, sets and potions will become irrelevant. Why do you need skills, potions and sets that give these buffs? For the last year since patch 35, I haven’t used anything other than potions that give these buffs. Trite if you give a skeleton archer one of these buffs, then the skill from the guild of magicians will become worse since it does less damage and this is an imbalance. Why does a class skill do more damage than a generic skill that gives an analogous buff. Want to use only necromancer skills i.e. sets, dk ally and potions. And give some kind of garbage to the necromancer from which he will suffer for another two years without any updates, since the necromancer already has a lot of major buffs. And that's what everyone will say even though he'll still be a *** class.

The Necromancer needs damage, not the crappy buffs he will suffer from for the next two years without updates.

Fair enough @Melzo , yes absolutely Gravelord needs buffs to its damage to be on par with Ardent Flame - this is more important to overall health of the class sure I can agree. But that doesn't preclude appending the damage/crit Major buffs to some of the skills too. Why not, it's a start, it's not like it would hurt the class.

In other words there's no good reason not to have them, so that's why many of us continue to insist we get them.

CameraBeardThePirate

OtarTheMad wrote: »

Beyond buffs, since I doubt a complete overhaul of the Grave Lord class line will happen. I’d say the least I’d ask for is:

- skulls spammable to be sped up
- At least two reliable damage over time abilities. Whether that’s adding a dot to BB or Skeletal summons somehow or whatever… Necro’s have a DoT passive and need more DoTs.
- Fear totem to be fixed

Absolutely agreed. These are the biggest things (simplified of course) that the class really needs. Sticky DoTs, better feeling spammable, on demand stun.

JerBearESO

Hey if they actually make skulls slower, but make them undodgeable and maaaaybe unlockable, they would be pretty spooky and worth slotting for dodge block bypass. I like the idea of the skull slowly making its way towards your victim xD

TX12001rwb17_ESO

Maybe this is the reason why I feel the Necromancer is the only class that NEEDS the Oakensoul ring, it lacks so many core buffs that it has fallen behind.

LukosCreyden

After spending a lot of time messing around with many builds and classes that are just naturally superior to magcro, I have come to the conclusion that nothing else but magcro will inspire me to play the game again.

I just want the class to work smoothly, not have useless RP skills and at LEAST be able to buff itself. I don't even care about flat numbers buffs, I just want the class to be playable.

Come on ZoS, one of your crowns whales is flopping around on the beach. You gotta drag it back into the ocean with some much-needed necromancer fixes!

NuarBlack

Maybe a controversial take but major sorcery should just be deleted from the game entirely not added to more classes, along with other major buffs. Buff homogenization ruined the game and contributed to the bar space options problem.

Would rather all class sources of Major Sourcery changed to comparable unique damage buffs that give build variety rather than just being another mandatory bar slot.

A pipe dream I know but if Necro gets major sorcery it will just further cement the homogenization direction until the only thing different between classes and builds is the tool tip icon.

CameraBeardThePirate

NuarBlack wrote: »

Maybe a controversial take but major sorcery should just be deleted from the game entirely not added to more classes, along with other major buffs. Buff homogenization ruined the game and contributed to the bar space options problem.

Would rather all class sources of Major Sourcery changed to comparable unique damage buffs that give build variety rather than just being another mandatory bar slot.

A pipe dream I know but if Necro gets major sorcery it will just further cement the homogenization direction until the only thing different between classes and builds is the tool tip icon.

Unique buffs are not the way to go. A long time ago unique buffs were extremely common in the game and it was utterly horrible for balancing. Named buffs should be kept to prevent arms race scenarios.

NuarBlack

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

NuarBlack wrote: »

Maybe a controversial take but major sorcery should just be deleted from the game entirely not added to more classes, along with other major buffs. Buff homogenization ruined the game and contributed to the bar space options problem.

Would rather all class sources of Major Sourcery changed to comparable unique damage buffs that give build variety rather than just being another mandatory bar slot.

A pipe dream I know but if Necro gets major sorcery it will just further cement the homogenization direction until the only thing different between classes and builds is the tool tip icon.

Unique buffs are not the way to go. A long time ago unique buffs were extremely common in the game and it was utterly horrible for balancing. Named buffs should be kept to prevent arms race scenarios.

Played since Beta and I'd disagree. It was just buffs were done badly, not that they weren't homogenized. It was that some stacked while others didn't. It was a whole other batch of problems. You can have the same balance so long as skills have a back end power budget that is the same.

Also what arms race has it eliminated anyway? This thread is literally asking to accelerate that arms race you claim was eliminated. The arms race just changed to slowly adding access to every named buff to every class kit and the imbalance being who has access to which ones.

Urzigurumash

NuarBlack wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

NuarBlack wrote: »

Maybe a controversial take but major sorcery should just be deleted from the game entirely not added to more classes, along with other major buffs. Buff homogenization ruined the game and contributed to the bar space options problem.

Would rather all class sources of Major Sourcery changed to comparable unique damage buffs that give build variety rather than just being another mandatory bar slot.

A pipe dream I know but if Necro gets major sorcery it will just further cement the homogenization direction until the only thing different between classes and builds is the tool tip icon.

Unique buffs are not the way to go. A long time ago unique buffs were extremely common in the game and it was utterly horrible for balancing. Named buffs should be kept to prevent arms race scenarios.

Played since Beta and I'd disagree. It was just buffs were done badly, not that they weren't homogenized. It was that some stacked while others didn't. It was a whole other batch of problems. You can have the same balance so long as skills have a back end power budget that is the same.

Also what arms race has it eliminated anyway? This thread is literally asking to accelerate that arms race you claim was eliminated. The arms race just changed to slowly adding access to every named buff to every class kit and the imbalance being who has access to which ones.

The status quo dictates Necro gets more named buffs in its kit. That's the simple truth of the matter. I agree very much with @TX12001rwb17_ESO , in PvP seems to me there's one class only which is most efficiently ran with Oakensoul, and to me that seems like objective proof that Necro needs more named buffs. @Melzo do you disagree with that, that Necro is alone in being most efficiently played with Oakensoul? This is exactly what I mean about increasing access to Gravelord passives, a small increase in overall power but a massive increase in viable build options.