Pre release beta necromancer abilities + scrapped ultimate

IncultaWolf

With more and more people starting to voice their thoughts and concerns about this class and how it's lacking, I wanted to bring up a couple things some might find interesting.

So originally scythe had heal absorption attached to the stamina morph, negating a small amount of enemy healing



In a developer commentary video before Elsweyr came out, one of the devs stated that the original ultimate ability for the necromancer was scrapped for the flesh colossus instead. You can actually see what this ultimate use to be from concept art, and in the public dungeon labyrinthian, the group boss garneld the hollow uses this original ultimate, summoning a skeletal dragon breath attack, if you use cc tracking and combat alert addons, it even says "glacial colossus" when he uses the ability interestingly enough, and further providing proof that this was the original necromancer ultimate.

https://youtu.be/5euiq2JtL58

Erickson9610

I wish we had these abilities on Necromancer today. That bone dragon Ultimate looks especially cool! Plus, having heal absorption tied to the stamina morph spammable would've been a really fun tool to use in PvP.

CameraBeardThePirate

Heal absorption should be made more readily available. The current sources don't negate nearly enough or with good enough frequency to matter.

Oh also buff necro.

Alaztor91

Would be nice if Blastbones worked consistently like pretty much every other offensive skill in the game. It kinda sucks when your only redeeming class offensive skill is so unreliable against anything that is not a stationary target, specially when similar ''burst'' skills from other classes(Scorch/Grim Focus/Crystal Frag/etc) don't have to suffer this.

OtarTheMad

Blastbones worked in PTS that I remember, what messed it up forever was players who freaked out and didn't read the patch notes or test it. They said it was too fast, didn't have counters, and hit too hard but... speed was fine, had all kinds of counters and the damage hit too hard because of a known bug during that time. ZOS went on the change the ability because of the "feedback" and.. RIP BB.

It's a shame... it was fun.

ArchangelIsraphel

I was looking forwards to that dragon ultimate during the release of Elsweyr. So sad we got that hideous flesh atronach that looks like every other atronach mob instead. It made the class skills a bit mundane, if you ask me. The dragon would have been so much cooler.

IncultaWolf

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

I was looking forwards to that dragon ultimate during the release of Elsweyr. So sad we got that hideous flesh atronach that looks like every other atronach mob instead. It made the class skills a bit mundane, if you ask me. The dragon would have been so much cooler.

I prefer the dragon over the atronach as well. It's already been announced that class specific sets will be coming out in the future, there may be an opportunity to do something like replace the ultimate, like the cryptcanon vestments mythic does.

IncultaWolf

And here is the official concept art I mentioned in my post

OtarTheMad

To go further with @IncultaWolf's post here are the others: (Apparently more than just the cooler Dragon Ult was changed)






It seems that Impaling Spikes became Grave Grasp... Impaling might have been better.

Dagoth_Rac

I feel like the dragon breath code was recycled for the Arcanist Watcher ultimate, in terms of a creature doing a stream of damage angled down from above.

Tyrant_Tim

Wow, how unfortunate that the abilities deviated from the original artwork.

Current Necromancer is nowhere near the concept art, and their abilities are just flat out ugly.

Besides just about every ability on Necromancer, I would say Templars need their Aedric Spear animations completely redone and Warden needs to be untethered from Vvardenfell.

colossalvoids

I remember concept arts and previews, it was a pretty good class in development but imo failed terribly and I still can't start enjoying one. Even looking at old icons that were actually distinctive from each other is reminding me why I don't want to login on one currently. Same icon issue with arcanist actually, but bit less so as it was probably decided prior and *** recoloured at the last moment.

Michaelkeir

- I still wish we had actual pets that lasted more than a few secs.
- I wish we had an ultimate flesh or Skeleton Atro that lasted 20 secs and actually moved around to attack targets.
- I wish we actually got melee minions or zombies.
- I wish we had actual curses or dots we placed on targets instead of these ground based corpse ones we currently have.

I understand how close to sorcs this sounds as a class but I still wish we had it.

emilyhyoyeon

The dragon ultimate would've been a mistake in the same way that the warden animal abilities being heavily Morrowind-focused was a mistake.

Also, a flesh atronach is way more appropriate for a TES necromancer than a bone dragon. Whichever dev is responsible for that change has my eternal gratitude.

BasP

OtarTheMad wrote: »

To go further with @IncultaWolf's post here are the others: (Apparently more than just the cooler Dragon Ult was changed)



It seems that Impaling Spikes became Grave Grasp... Impaling might have been better.

That picture of Impaling Spikes reminds me of the Bone Harvest skill from Grim Dawn, which was one of my favorite skills to build around as a Necromancer. It would have been so cool if Impaling Spikes made it into ESO's Necromancer kit (if the skill would be a bit similar to that GD skill).

The Bone Dragon looks good too, though I actually think the current Ultimate is pretty nice as well. I've never really liked summoners or pet classes (aside from Rangers) in RPGs, so I don't mind that ESO's Necromancer doesn't have a lot of pets.

Anhedonie

I imagine dragon ult had collision issues in many places.

The way devs forever broke Blastbones during initial PTS test tho...that's very unfortunate.

CameraBeardThePirate

Anhedonie wrote: »

I imagine dragon ult had collision issues in many places.

The way devs forever broke Blastbones during initial PTS test tho...that's very unfortunate.

I doubt it would have anymore collision issues than the colossus as they're roughly the same size (and the dragon one could simply be shrunken slightly). I mean if you throw a colossus in a small corridor it clips like crazy anyways.

Anumaril

I'm still hoping beyond hope this class gets a full-scale overhaul in the future. Necromancer has always been my go-to playstyle in TES games and I really hate how it was done in ESO, basically becoming more of a "dark wizard" than a proper necromancer.

The lack of minion abilities is my main gripe. We don't need permanent summons or anything (although that would be cool), but we certainly need more/better offensive minions than what we have. I don't FEEL like a necromancer when I play it in ESO since I'm not swarming my enemies with minions and empowering my skeletons during the battle (the only minion that fights alongside us is the skeletal mage/archer, which feels very lacklustre). The focus of the gameplay is on ME when it should be on my MINIONS.

NPC necromancers do this rather well, where they summon a minion to fight you at MELEE range and then they cast spells to empower it, sometimes making it so you NEED to deal with the empowered minion because if you go right for the necro you'll die by the minion before you can finish off its master. Player necromancy should be like this but boosted.

I think the way Demonology Warlocks work in World of Warcraft (at least in the Legion expansion) is a great example of how ESO necros should also work. In that game you summon a small SWARM of minions, each lasting between around 6–20 seconds (with 1 permanent minion), and your main focus is empowering them to increase your damage. Pets can even serve as tanks, which is really cool in solo play where you can buff your tank pet and even get away with soloing low-ranked dungeons.

We need this kind of gameplay in ESO. I'm tired of being a dark wizard. I want to be a necromancer.

Necrotech_Master

a lot of those concept arts look way better than the current necromancer

my other problem with necromancer is all of the class skills marked as criminal acts, like i get necromancy is supposed to be outlawed, but it makes a necromancer very annoying to play in a town

ive finished fights in the overland and then got dinged by a wandering merchant because my heal ghost didnt despawn yet, its just annoying

its the only class that has these restrictions, which also make dueling in towns impossible because you will get killed by guards (i know vamp and ww have criminal acts too, but most people dont use vamp skills, just for the passives, WW its easy enough to not use in town but still annoying you have to untransform to go into a town)

IncultaWolf

Almost positive it would have been better than grave grasp

Anumaril wrote: »

I'm still hoping beyond hope this class gets a full-scale overhaul in the future. Necromancer has always been my go-to playstyle in TES games and I really hate how it was done in ESO, basically becoming more of a "dark wizard" than a proper necromancer.

The lack of minion abilities is my main gripe. We don't need permanent summons or anything (although that would be cool), but we certainly need more/better offensive minions than what we have. I don't FEEL like a necromancer when I play it in ESO since I'm not swarming my enemies with minions and empowering my skeletons during the battle (the only minion that fights alongside us is the skeletal mage/archer, which feels very lacklustre). The focus of the gameplay is on ME when it should be on my MINIONS.

NPC necromancers do this rather well, where they summon a minion to fight you at MELEE range and then they cast spells to empower it, sometimes making it so you NEED to deal with the empowered minion because if you go right for the necro you'll die by the minion before you can finish off its master. Player necromancy should be like this but boosted.

I think the way Demonology Warlocks work in World of Warcraft (at least in the Legion expansion) is a great example of how ESO necros should also work. In that game you summon a small SWARM of minions, each lasting between around 6–20 seconds (with 1 permanent minion), and your main focus is empowering them to increase your damage. Pets can even serve as tanks, which is really cool in solo play where you can buff your tank pet and even get away with soloing low-ranked dungeons.

We need this kind of gameplay in ESO. I'm tired of being a dark wizard. I want to be a necromancer.

Oh I completely agree, necromancer is my main character and I've put hundreds of hours into this class in pve and pvp since it came out. They've completely gutted the class in pvp to the point where the only unique thing it has is blastbones, all the other grave lord abilities are useless in pvp right now. The tethers need to be completely reworked I think, but I wouldn't mind if they reworked most of the class, so many useless abilities like grave grasp and blood sacrifice, the other morph of resistant flesh which I haven't seen used ONCE in pve or pvp in the years necro has been out.
Empowering grasp needs to buff the minions while slotted, not requiring you to cast the meme ability and hope it actually hits your pets. There's so many criminal restrictions on the class, like you said can't even duel in towns, so it deserves to be strong imo.