PTS Update 41 - Feedback Thread for Combat & Classes

JerBearESO · February 17

Tyrant_Tim wrote: »

Twohothardware wrote: »

JerBearESO wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

I am shocked that you're going through with deleting the most used skill in Necro's kit.

Blastbones really needs that Stalking modifier in PvP. You're effectively killing the class off without it.

Just quoting to add on: it also needs the flame damage instead of disease for pvp to account for all the vampires. It's actually losing that damage modifier as well....

The Undeath passive on Vampire just needs to be changed to provide only damage reduction against Monsters or something and then every player in PvP won't be running Vampire just for that one passive.

Or, have the passive only active on bars that hold. Vampire skills. The only great one is a backbar option so you would be able to catch people on their front bars with that change.

If they wanted to be aggressive with it, Undeath could scale with however many Vampire abilities you have slotted, equalling 30% at all 6.

True. Although the point I was making was in regards to the additional damage vampires take for stalking BB being fire damage. The shift to using the other BB morph removes that aspect of the ability's damage in the current vamp infested PvP meta.

But yes for the 1746438294 time we want Undeath nerfed to the ground PvP wise for sure, that is true.

Vorkk8383 · February 17

PrinceShroob wrote: »

I'm excited to test the changes to Blastbones once they hit live, but I am a bit concerned. Since there's been a lot of complaints about getting rid of Stalking Blastbones, specifically, I'm not sure why y'all're doubling down on changing that morph rather than changing Blighted Blastbones. Is it because of problems with Stalking Blastbones' bonus damage working unintuitively? Given the outcry about changing it, I don't think people care much if it only works in niche situations.

I've been thinking that a good change to make to Blastbones would be to allow the player to cast it again to explode the current Blastbones where it is and summon a new one. One major issue with Blastbones is that the Blastbones is AI-controlled and can lose its target, and it can't be recast again until the 7-second duration is up. This change would mean that after 2.5 seconds (the time period after which the Blastbones normally leaps at its target), recasting the skill detonates the existing Blastbones where it is and summons a new Blastbones, which similarly pursues its target and explodes and again can be detonated after 2.5 seconds.

The intention is to allow you to explode your current Blastbones if it gets lost without having to wait the entire 7 seconds for it to despawn, and to streamline rotations by not requiring that the Blastbones reach its target before using the skill again.

The Blastbones would still have a delay before it can be detonated, since otherwise it'd be an extremely strong AoE spammable.

Maybe Stalking Blastbones could be reworked to deal 10% more damage (if I recall correctly, the extra damage based on how long the Blastbones takes to reach its target does not work unless the target LOS the Blastbones; otherwise, the Blastbones leaps to its target, which does not count as "chasing its target" and means the skill only deals the minimum 10% extra damage) and explode the current Blastbones when recast, and Blighted Blastbones could be changed to Sacrificial Bones?

I don't think you understand that we will not have enough corpses to do what we must to maximize our already poor DPS.

CameraBeardThePirate · February 17

PrinceShroob wrote: »

I'm excited to test the changes to Blastbones once they hit live, but I am a bit concerned. Since there's been a lot of complaints about getting rid of Stalking Blastbones, specifically, I'm not sure why y'all're doubling down on changing that morph rather than changing Blighted Blastbones. Is it because of problems with Stalking Blastbones' bonus damage working unintuitively? Given the outcry about changing it, I don't think people care much if it only works in niche situations.

I've been thinking that a good change to make to Blastbones would be to allow the player to cast it again to explode the current Blastbones where it is and summon a new one. One major issue with Blastbones is that the Blastbones is AI-controlled and can lose its target, and it can't be recast again until the 7-second duration is up. This change would mean that after 2.5 seconds (the time period after which the Blastbones normally leaps at its target), recasting the skill detonates the existing Blastbones where it is and summons a new Blastbones, which similarly pursues its target and explodes and again can be detonated after 2.5 seconds.

The intention is to allow you to explode your current Blastbones if it gets lost without having to wait the entire 7 seconds for it to despawn, and to streamline rotations by not requiring that the Blastbones reach its target before using the skill again.

The Blastbones would still have a delay before it can be detonated, since otherwise it'd be an extremely strong AoE spammable.

Maybe Stalking Blastbones could be reworked to deal 10% more damage (if I recall correctly, the extra damage based on how long the Blastbones takes to reach its target does not work unless the target LOS the Blastbones; otherwise, the Blastbones leaps to its target, which does not count as "chasing its target" and means the skill only deals the minimum 10% extra damage) and explode the current Blastbones when recast, and Blighted Blastbones could be changed to Sacrificial Bones?

You're wrong about Stalking Blastbones - it's already based on a timer, not the actual distance it walks.

By default, that means it gets a 10% damage boost over the other morph, which is further boosted by crit damage, Encratis, Engulfing Flames, and Vampire vulnerability. It's simply the better morph in 90% of scenarios.

Twohothardware · February 18

Lotus Flower is another Warden skill that needs to be updated because it doesn't make sense with recent changes to similar skills on other classes.

Why does DK's Inferno and Nightblades Shadowy Cloak provide Major Prophecy/Savagery passively on both bars but Lotus Flower has to be cast? Also the healing on Lotus Flower is the same as Siphoning Attacks on Nightblade but this PTS NB's skill now heals passively just for dealing damage.

Faulgor · February 18

TDVM wrote: »

Necromancer needs serious improvement, I don't understand why ZOS turn a blind eye to him, where is the class Major Brutality and Major Sorcery? ALL classes have these buffs., and it would be nice if the necromancer had something that could be at or above the level of Major Brutality and Major Sorcery, but no! This is at least what a necromancer requires, the game has not only Quests and PvE, but also PvP!

I just want to remind people that magicka Templars don't have Major Sorcerery/Brutality, either.

My favorite healers are Templar and Necro, and both have to use spell power potions when running dungeons. It's costly and feels unfair.

Dogvahkiin · February 18

Can anyone please confirm if the "new" Blighted Blastbones morph can still be casted out of combat?

M_Chudan · February 18

In my opinion, the necromancer is a very weak class and these changes will not change that. It has weaker and unnecessary abilities than Blastbones, for example:
1. Bone Totem and all its morphs are almost never used due to useless effects;
2. Grave Grasp is not used anywhere at all because it does not provide anything necessary and useful;
3. Unnerving Boneyard is an unnecessary morph applied by Major Breach and so constantly weighs on the enemy and only allies can activate the synergy;
4. Expunge, why is this ability needed when there is the Purge ability!?
5.Life amid Death is also a dubious ability; healers always have Illustrious Healing on their panel and this is more than enough
6. Flame Skull, the ability is good but it is very slow and its visual implementation discourages its use

Sorry for the mistakes, English is not my native language

Grim_Overlord · February 18

Dogvahkiin wrote: »

Can anyone please confirm if the "new" Blighted Blastbones morph can still be casted out of combat?

As on live, Blighted can be cast when not in combat provided there is a target. Grave Lord's Sacrifice and the new base morph on PTS cannot be cast until combat is initiated.

MashmalloMan · February 18

Twohothardware wrote: »

Lotus Flower is another Warden skill that needs to be updated because it doesn't make sense with recent changes to similar skills on other classes.

Why does DK's Inferno and Nightblades Shadowy Cloak provide Major Prophecy/Savagery passively on both bars but Lotus Flower has to be cast? Also the healing on Lotus Flower is the same as Siphoning Attacks on Nightblade but this PTS NB's skill now heals passively just for dealing damage.

100%.

Looking at Critical Surge under the same lens.

Critical Surge doesn't last 60s long like Lotus, Channeled Acceleration, or Molten Armaments yet is effectively in those same skill categories.

Critical Surge needs to proc from crits and you need to cast it every 33s, albeit it gives 3300 instead of 1800, the one plus side. Leeching Strikes you never have to cast it and can effectively get similar heals/s due to it proccing from any damage dealt forever, it never stops healing you.

Casting it gives a completely new effect, as if the passive wasn't strong enough for virtually no cost in the scaling 4000 to 0 HP, a "resource" which is already free due to heal over time stacking, to get 2k mag and stam at the same time, while Dark Deal gives 3.6k stam for 2.7k magicka in a 1 second cast that can be interrupted.

I won't even touch on how broken Siphoning Attacks is. Thats a whole other level of stupid.

Why does this 1 skill do the best part of 5 other skills in the game, with no management necessary, no light attacks, no casting, just deal damage and profit.

Oh you could say "Surge gives Major Brutality, Dark Deal gives minor force and minor berserk"..

NB already gets Major Savagery/Prophecy, Minor Expedition, and Major Ward for doing virtually nothing. Do we really want to go down that road? We're gonna act like minor berserk is hard to get when Camo Hunter exists, to which NB has ample space to fit because they don't need an armor skill and their sustain skill is also their HOT?

I don't like putting on my tin foil hat, but gosh, the NB favoritism has been outstanding the past 2-3 years. Even on a patch you said you were focusing on Sorc (thank you for what you did do, it was decent), you manage to buff DK and NB, while nerfing Templar and Necro. I don't get it.

Aldoss · February 19

MashmalloMan wrote: »

I don't like putting on my tin foil hat, but gosh, the NB favoritism has been outstanding the past 2-3 years. Even on a patch you said you were focusing on Sorc (thank you for what you did do, it was decent), you manage to buff DK and NB, while nerfing Templar and Necro. I don't get it.

The current combat team's favoritism is absolutely absurd. The only way siphoning made it out of a pitch meeting is that either none of the devs actually care about the game they're designing for or that someone with a massive amount of pull only plays NB (looking at you @ZOS_Gilliam) and has a grossly biased view for just how easy life already was for NBs coming into this patch where they (allegedly) weren't the focus.

It's unbelievable. Not even trying to hide their favoritism anymore...

MashmalloMan · February 19

I like the general idea of allowing for 2 different playstyles, I hope you continue to do this for other classes because you can't rely on the colour of resource cost to create class identity for you anymore (like no pet sorc vs pet sorc)... but both of Necromancer's new skills feel a bit under budget. Above is how I would change the skills to behave differently, yet provide better bang for their buck.

Gravelord's Sacrifice is no longer a dead cast, making it feel more impactful to use, you become the target for the BB explosions with them dealing half the regular tooltip damage. The skill now gives 3 corpses instead of 2 for an average of 1 every 6.6 seconds instead of 1 every 10 seconds. The current design makes corpse generation way too tight with Boneyard and Siphon using 3 corpses every 20 seconds. With Skeleton Mage, this introduces 4 corpses every 20s, a tiny bit of wiggle room.

Blighted Blastbones doesn't get the original 10-50% Stalking modifier, but it does get the base skills +10% damage bonus and burning instead of diseased. Diseased damage is not as beneficial with all the flame damage modifiers in the game. Major Defile remains to keep the debuff nature of BB, but doesn't double dip with minor defile from Disease procs.

Both skills scale based on highest resource instead of being locked to mag or stam. Blighted as a 3s mini game skill costing stamina is WAY too punishing for Mag Necro's.

This retains the original playstyle more, buffs it up a bit (which has been necessary for awhile now), removes the awkward stalking modifier and makes Gravelord's Sacrifice a more well rounded skill.

Imagine this for a second. Imagine casting Deadly Cloak for 20s major evasion and nothing else. That is what the current design feels like, it's just a buff with no real effect you can instantly feel. Corpse gen is worse so that being there isn't a "plus".

RaptorRodeoGod · February 19

So new blastbones has zero circumstances where the player becomes the corpse now? Booooo.

I like the rest of the changes with it though

CameraBeardThePirate · February 19

I like the direction of Grave Lord's, as it helps alleviate some of the issues; however I think there's still some major issues to note:

Doing away with the self corpse is a little disappointing - the Necro Set from IA is still bugged, so GLS was a nice way of still being able to use that mechanic.

As someone who's been using Venom Skull a lot recently in PvP, the skill desperately needs a slight projectile speed increase. It doesn't need to be Force Pulse level by any means because it does great damage, but it's almost impossible to land in PvP outside of melee range - negating the point of adding a corpse to it in that environment.

Changing the buff to all class abilities also helps things a bit - it gives much more reason to slot Scythe. It also cuts down on the ceiling of the inevitably disgusting Destro Ult builds you're going to see in Cyrodiil. However, it still doesn't buff the Reanimate Blastbones ultimate and Graverobber.

Overall the change is a step in the right direction, but I think there are just a handful of tweaks the class as a whole desperately needs. The kit is still very clunky, and cutting down on globals needed to cast Blastbones is not going to help with that as much as it should. The rotation is just as clunky as before - you've just replaced blastbones with Skull and made corpse gen worse.

Also - Blighted really should still have the Stalking Modifier, even if it only goes up to 25% instead of 50% to offset for the Defile. Both morphs are still going to be an overall damage nerf, which is far from what the class needs.

H_E · February 19

Will we have to option for a refund on the necromancer class now that is become a pay to loose option, or a warning like the toy mounts that inform you its useless and only their for aesthetic reasons?

a 20% damage nerf on the main damage sources of an already damage struggling class, or you can use the new morph and get a worse blast bones half as often and deal even less then you would with the nerfed blast bones

just feels absolutely horrible to login to this class anymore

C_Inside · February 19

I'd also like to remind my necro brothers and sisters that this misguided change to Blastbones was done so that people who found necro hard to play and moved onto a different class can now have an easier time playing the class they're not using.

Alaztor91 · February 19

While I think that the 9.3.3 changes to Grave Lord's Sacrifice are a step in the right direction, they don't completely fix the issues that it has when you compare it to old Stalking Blastbones.

While you now technically have access to ranged corpse generation and better AoE via Flame Skull, I don't really think that it feels as fluid as it was with old BB. Old BB allowed you to basically generate a Corpse every 3s, but you didn't have to use 3 GCD for that.

Now, instead of having to cast BB every 3s and keep the rest of your rotation relatively simple, you now have to make sure that you cast Flame Skull 3 times before every Boneyard or Siphon cast (that's basically 9 Flame Skull, 2 Boneyard and 1 Siphon, in a simple static 20s rotation) which imo feels way more complicated. This also gets way more convoluted if you have to switch targets.

I thought that ''help reduce the intense demand and complex rotation requirement of the class'' was one of the main reasons for this change.

brandsnipe · February 19

Alaztor91 wrote: »

While I think that the 9.3.3 changes to Grave Lord's Sacrifice are a step in the right direction, they don't completely fix the issues that it has when you compare it to old Stalking Blastbones.

While you now technically have access to ranged corpse generation and better AoE via Flame Skull, I don't really think that it feels as fluid as it was with old BB. Old BB allowed you to basically generate a Corpse every 3s, but you didn't have to use 3 GCD for that.

Now, instead of having to cast BB every 3s and keep the rest of your rotation relatively simple, you now have to make sure that you cast Flame Skull 3 times before every Boneyard or Siphon cast (that's basically 9 Flame Skull, 2 Boneyard and 1 Siphon, in a simple static 20s rotation) which imo feels way more complicated. This also gets way more convoluted if you have to switch targets.

I thought that ''help reduce the intense demand and complex rotation requirement of the class'' was one of the main reasons for this change.

Exactly, it seems to make it more complicated. Necro has A LOT of problems but BB hindering my rotation wasn't one.

Alaztor91 · February 19

Here is yet another BB replacement suggestion:

Cast Time: Instant, Target: Self, Duration: 20s(?), Cost: X Magicka (dynamic cost would be ideal)

Imbue yourself with necrotic energy, generating a Blastbones stack every 3(?) seconds, up to 2 stacks. While active, your Light and Heavy Attacks consume a stack to summon a flaming skeleton from the ground that will leap to your target and explode, dealing Y Flame Damage to nearby enemies and creating a Corpse at the target location.

Cost would be drastically increased since it's a 20s(?) ''buff'' now, but this would allow you to keep the AoE damage and ranged/consistent corpse generation that current BB provides, while at the same time making the rotation easier since it would simply rely on you doing LAs/HAs and reapplying the skill every 20s(?), instead of casting BB every 3 seconds. Damage might need to be reduced a bit, to account for the fact that you are gaining extra GCDs. Morphs could be many things: a Major Debuff, a DoT attached to the explosion, a Snare, etc.

This would also use pretty much the same animations that current live BB has. The 2 stacks max would help in situations when your target dies prematurely or when BB pathfinding AI gets confused, which end up being ''wasted'' casts with old BB (please also make BB non-targetable similar to Skeletal Mage, so we no longer have to deal with BB being crowd controlled).

Also, since the summon is tied to the LA/HA activation, we no longer have to deal with the ''greyed out skill'' problem that happens when old BB decides to just time out. Your rotation would no longer change if BB decided to take a few more seconds to explode or not explode at all.

MashmalloMan · February 20

I appreciate the attempt to fix some of Gravelord's Sacrifices issues like corpse gen and AOE DPS, changing it to class damage instead of Grave Lord was a no brainier as it only really buffs 3 abilities which already deal less damage to begin with. Kudos.

However a lot is missing and you still haven't compensated Blighted Blastbones properly.

Issues:

1. Gravelord's Sacrifice requiring the use of a 2nd skill in Flame Skull is a bit awkward and tight for build crafting. It doesn't make sense to me that this new mechanic reduced the power budget of the skill so much, you felt it was necessary to nerf it by 5% and remove the self corpse. It's a very weird idea to claim play as you want, but force a user of this skill to use Flame Skulls to make it beneficial. What if the user wanted to use Sythe as their Spammable or something not in class. While it's appreciated that you listened about the corpse problem, you created a new one. The skill itself should generate corpses on its own, it should not require skulls to do so.

Example could be: "Dealing any direct damage while this ability is active will spawn a skeleton after 2.5s that explodes for x damage to all nearby enemies (like 33% of Blastbones). This effect has a 3 second cool down."

Now a user could use Sythe, Archer, Siphons Explosion, Colossus, etc instead of specifically skulls.

2. The 3rd cast of skulls AOE from Sacrifice does not feel impactful whatsoever. There is no noticable animation, vfx, or sfx, it feels unfinished. I have no idea when it procs, I have no idea how far the damage extends to, and I have no idea when a corpse is ready until 1gcd later. That's if I see it at all in real content. It feels cumbersome. As an example, Arcanists Runeblades has a big AOE you can see on the 3rd rune. Much more intuitive.

3. Seeing as the 3rd cast of Flame Skull is now half the purpose of using Sacrifice, it makes it more apparent than ever before that Richochet Skull is behind, a morph where the centerpiece is AOE can now be used on the objectively better morph with Venom Skull.

First, add the mechanic from Venom Skulls "casting Necromancer skills counts towards the 3rd cast" to the base skill.

Second, make the effect work on any bar.

Third, increase the projectile travel time, this applies to Cliff Racer too.

Richochet Skull can now benefit from this mechanic and be a useful tool for Sacrifice. Venom Skull can get a new morph effect(not DPS related). Please stop making morphs where 1 is objectively better DPS. With hybridization, this kills build diversity.

4. Sacrifice still feels like a dead cast. It's not a fun skill to engage with and you can't use it outside of combat making it a terrible buff skill where skills like Critical Surge don't have this problem. There is no spectacle. The skeleton that jumps to you does nothing but make a corpse. It should deal some damage or apply a 20s AOE dot to the caster. Look at skills like Blade Cloak and imagine all they did was give major evasion without the blades. That is what this skill feels like.

5. Last but not least. Please improve Blighted Blastbones. Reduce the base skills class and dot damage to 10%, then allow BB to have that as well. Give it dynamic cost. Fixed!

OolongSnakeTea · February 20

A lot of good comentary about Hugs the Blast Bone vs what is needed. And its still just a very tone deaf feeling update for this correction.

The necromancer is already parsing so low, and while its position in the DPS world is a support-utility style, it just feels so unfair to the players who like this play style.

The between the low damage, the lack of burst it can generate for itself for short fights, and the bar economy it needs to even be half as good- its a done for class in its current state. If could even be allow the basic of 'on both bars' like a lot of classes are getting these days, or even half of a potion buff- it would be in a slightly better position.

Trying to address its Action Per Second play style is an unneeded salve on the problem.

Grim_Overlord · February 20

I posted this in another thread on accident, but wrote it to go here originally. Sorry for posting the same thing in two plaes.

Testing this latest change to Necromancer, the goal of making the rotation less complex by have Grave Lord's Sacrifice has backfired as now with Skulls being the main source of corpses, if you want to run a Magicka stacking setup, you need to spam Ricochet Skull even more than you used to with Stalking Blastbones. We replaced Blastbones every three casts with making sure to hit Skull three times before your graveyard or siphon need to be refreshed on top of managing Grave Lord's Sacrifice which itself needs to be cast every 17 seconds. This has done nothing to solve the complexity of Necromancer DPS as they still have 0 bar space flexibility with these changes and are now just as micromanagy as before while hitting slightly less hard and with the glowing skeleton hugging the caster instead of exploding on enemies.

To summarize here, this change has created the exact same scenario for Necro DPS as the morph change intended to address, just with a focus on skulls rather than Blastbones, which in turn has made the class's rotation's flow even clunkier than before, with the clunkiness being located in the obsessive counting of skull casts to ensure enough corpses are present to go around.

I am aware that Blighted still offers the same playstyle as before, but it has its own glaring issues. As others have mentioned ad nauseum, it is a damage nerf from Stalking. That aside, it presents a massive sustain issue for Magicka Necromancers as they stand because it is cast every three seconds, even with its cost reduction. If one wants to play a Magcro, you either have to choose between having sustain issues with Blighted or having corpse issues, and thus less damage, with Sacrifice. This feels like a lose-lose scenario for Magcros and a slight, plain damage nerf for Magcros and Stamcros. I'm not saying to abandon the morph, options and diverse morphs are great. However, this latest change goes against the spirit of the change to Stalking Blastbones in the first place.

Aldoss · February 20

MashmalloMan wrote: »

2. The 3rd cast of skulls AOE from Sacrifice does not feel impactful whatsoever. There is no noticable animation, vfx, or sfx, it feels unfinished. I have no idea when it procs, I have no idea how far the damage extends to, and I have no idea when a corpse is ready until 1gcd later. That's if I see it at all in real content. It feels cumbersome. As an example, Arcanists Runeblades has a big AOE you can see on the 3rd rune. Much more intuitive.

Animations cost money. If necro is going to get animations that come with their bandaid fixes, ZOS is going to need to fund those costs somehow.

Oh wait...

Kalle_Demos · February 20

Here we are again. Zos accomplishing the EXACT OPPOSITE of their stated goals. Funny how often that happens. And lets not forget this silly 'in combat' requirement. Right now, all a necro has to do in order to gain bonuses from the corpse generation mech is to...cast Blastbones. But should the pts go live they'll have to...initiate combat, presumably with skulls or a light attack and then...activate the abomination...and then three more skulls for a corpse. This sounds sooo fun... I, for one, cannot wait for the reaction of the wider player base once this goes live.

VixxVexx · February 20

Make the corpse mechanic into a self-corpse counter, it clearly isn't working.

Bone Tyrant:
- Give Scythe execute scaling like Tentacle.
- Make armor buff create a corpse on cast not when it runs out.
- Increase the radius of all tethers to 8-12 meters like Harvest.
- Make Totem a useful instant stun
- Make Grasp an AOE root like Talons or Encase with a secondary effect.

Grave Lord:
- Make Skull a non-projectile skill similar to Crushing Shock. (+clean up cast animation)
- Revert BB changes and make it automatically cast a second time like Sub Assault.
- Increase Grave Robber synergy damage or put the burst into Detonating Siphon.
- Give Skeletal Mage Major Sorcery and Brutality (and make it dot damage not direct)
- Increase Siphon radius and explosion damage.

Living Death:
- Remove defile from Flesh heal.
- Increase amount of negative effects removed From hexproof.
- No idea for Life amid Death
- Make mender untargetable
- Increase the radius of tether to 8-12 meters, 5 meters is nothing (look at the melee range increase you did recently)

This game's version of a Necromancer should be something where you play around with the amount of corpses vs number of pets active, and grant different up and downsides based on the relationship between these two numbers.

Current Necromancer skills just have no impact at all right now. Literally not a class.

silentxthreat · February 20

im glad to see 45k hp tanks with mdw nerfed but we also need to fix the set way of fire that still procs off every tic of rending slash. it was supposed to be fix a few patchs ago but still going on strong. We also need to nerf vat staff which does 10k dps by itself on a short cd with no mana cost

Turtle_Bot · February 20

VixxVexx wrote: »

Make the corpse mechanic into a self-corpse counter, it clearly isn't working.

Bone Tyrant:
- Give Scythe execute scaling like Tentacle.
- Make armor buff create a corpse on cast not when it runs out.
- Increase the radius of all tethers to 8-12 meters like Harvest.
- Make Totem a useful instant stun
- Make Grasp an AOE root like Talons or Encase with a secondary effect.

Grave Lord:
- Make Skull a non-projectile skill similar to Crushing Shock. (+clean up cast animation)
- Revert BB changes and make it automatically cast a second time like Sub Assault.
- Increase Grave Robber synergy damage or put the burst into Detonating Siphon.
- Give Skeletal Mage Major Sorcery and Brutality (and make it dot damage not direct)
- Increase Siphon radius and explosion damage.

Living Death:
- Remove defile from Flesh heal.
- Increase amount of negative effects removed From hexproof.
- No idea for Life amid Death
- Make mender untargetable
- Increase the radius of tether to 8-12 meters, 5 meters is nothing (look at the melee range increase you did recently)

This game's version of a Necromancer should be something where you play around with the amount of corpses vs number of pets active, and grant different up and downsides based on the relationship between these two numbers.

Current Necromancer skills just have no impact at all right now. Literally not a class.

I thought mender was already untargetable, it just took 10% of the damage you take while its active (essentially 10% mitigation). At least, I've never been able to target it or hit it with anything.

Genuinely curious here, I want to know if I missed something with mender.

CameraBeardThePirate · February 20

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

I like the direction of Grave Lord's, as it helps alleviate some of the issues; however I think there's still some major issues to note:

Doing away with the self corpse is a little disappointing - the Necro Set from IA is still bugged, so GLS was a nice way of still being able to use that mechanic.

As someone who's been using Venom Skull a lot recently in PvP, the skill desperately needs a slight projectile speed increase. It doesn't need to be Force Pulse level by any means because it does great damage, but it's almost impossible to land in PvP outside of melee range - negating the point of adding a corpse to it in that environment.

Changing the buff to all class abilities also helps things a bit - it gives much more reason to slot Scythe. It also cuts down on the ceiling of the inevitably disgusting Destro Ult builds you're going to see in Cyrodiil. However, it still doesn't buff the Reanimate Blastbones ultimate and Graverobber.

Overall the change is a step in the right direction, but I think there are just a handful of tweaks the class as a whole desperately needs. The kit is still very clunky, and cutting down on globals needed to cast Blastbones is not going to help with that as much as it should. The rotation is just as clunky as before - you've just replaced blastbones with Skull and made corpse gen worse.

Also - Blighted really should still have the Stalking Modifier, even if it only goes up to 25% instead of 50% to offset for the Defile. Both morphs are still going to be an overall damage nerf, which is far from what the class needs.

After fiddling on the PTS, my view of this skill has changed completely.

It's garbage. It makes your PvE rotation even more complicated before, as you can now only create targeted corpses after max stack skull casts - on Magicka toons with Ricochet Skull, it may as well not even create a corpse. Between keeping your other buffs and DoTs up, and swapping targets to kill adds/mechanics, the rotation feels much more difficult than before. It's basically impossible now to keep up both Graveyard and Siphon, when before with Blastbones it was rather trivial.

To top it all off - Necro is still receiving a net nerf in damage no matter which Blastbones/Sacrifice morph you use. That's not acceptable ZOS - Necro was already behind and only run as an EC proc - something that's not really going to be feasible anymore given the changes.

It also doesn't buff all of your necro abilities as stated - Avid Boneyard's Graverobber and the Animate Blastbones ultimate remain unbuffed.

This was a failure of your stated goal, and from week 1 has been a rather insulting change to all the Necro mains out there.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_Gilliam

For the love of God, revert the change entirely and let it cook a little longer. Pushing it out and saying "we'll fix it later" is a slap in the face to your players, and the current state of the ability is atrocious.

necro_the_crafter · February 20

Casting the specific morph of skill now affects THIRD cast of another skill is something new definitely.
Surly it wont cause more confusion then casting bb every three seconds.

But anyway thanks for listening to our feedback, its nice to see that issues with GLS are worked on. Keep up the good work guys!

Also can we have frequency of the exilirating drain returned to 0.7 sec, and maybe aplly hemmorage with each tick? since this spell lost cc on the end of cast and minor expedition its seen zero use in any enviroment, please consider making it into good single target channel for the sake of a draincro i want to play next patch in pvp. It has been long time since this game had at least semiviable fun niche PVP builds.

CameraBeardThePirate · February 20

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

VixxVexx wrote: »

Make the corpse mechanic into a self-corpse counter, it clearly isn't working.

Bone Tyrant:
- Give Scythe execute scaling like Tentacle.
- Make armor buff create a corpse on cast not when it runs out.
- Increase the radius of all tethers to 8-12 meters like Harvest.
- Make Totem a useful instant stun
- Make Grasp an AOE root like Talons or Encase with a secondary effect.

Grave Lord:
- Make Skull a non-projectile skill similar to Crushing Shock. (+clean up cast animation)
- Revert BB changes and make it automatically cast a second time like Sub Assault.
- Increase Grave Robber synergy damage or put the burst into Detonating Siphon.
- Give Skeletal Mage Major Sorcery and Brutality (and make it dot damage not direct)
- Increase Siphon radius and explosion damage.

Living Death:
- Remove defile from Flesh heal.
- Increase amount of negative effects removed From hexproof.
- No idea for Life amid Death
- Make mender untargetable
- Increase the radius of tether to 8-12 meters, 5 meters is nothing (look at the melee range increase you did recently)

This game's version of a Necromancer should be something where you play around with the amount of corpses vs number of pets active, and grant different up and downsides based on the relationship between these two numbers.

Current Necromancer skills just have no impact at all right now. Literally not a class.

I thought mender was already untargetable, it just took 10% of the damage you take while its active (essentially 10% mitigation). At least, I've never been able to target it or hit it with anything.

Genuinely curious here, I want to know if I missed something with mender.

Mender is not targetable, although from time to time there is a bug that pops up where it can LoS your own abilities (i.e., if it's in your crossbar you can't cast a targeted ability), although that bug hasn't popped up in a while.

JerBearESO · February 20

brandsnipe wrote: »

Alaztor91 wrote: »

While I think that the 9.3.3 changes to Grave Lord's Sacrifice are a step in the right direction, they don't completely fix the issues that it has when you compare it to old Stalking Blastbones.

While you now technically have access to ranged corpse generation and better AoE via Flame Skull, I don't really think that it feels as fluid as it was with old BB. Old BB allowed you to basically generate a Corpse every 3s, but you didn't have to use 3 GCD for that.

Now, instead of having to cast BB every 3s and keep the rest of your rotation relatively simple, you now have to make sure that you cast Flame Skull 3 times before every Boneyard or Siphon cast (that's basically 9 Flame Skull, 2 Boneyard and 1 Siphon, in a simple static 20s rotation) which imo feels way more complicated. This also gets way more convoluted if you have to switch targets.

I thought that ''help reduce the intense demand and complex rotation requirement of the class'' was one of the main reasons for this change.

Exactly, it seems to make it more complicated. Necro has A LOT of problems but BB hindering my rotation wasn't one.

It is now. Say hello to sacroBones, "the solution" to the problem you didn't have, that becomes the problem it aims to solve. Now that is some next level paradox 😀