Move sacrificial bones to skeletal mage

brandsnipe

Keep blastbones how it is with adjustments to stalking blastbones
Skeletal warrior now uses your max resource and while slotted on either bar, gain major brutality and sorcery. Summon a skeletal mage or archer for 20 seconds, while active, increase the effectiveness of your gravelord and DOT abilities by 15%.
-skeletal arcanist increases the effectiveness to 20%
-skeletal army no longer applies the buff, but instead summons 2 skeletal mages or archers that deal a 2% increase in damage every second for 20 seconds

I think this would make the skill viable and you wouldn't butcher blastbones. I would argue increasing the duration to 24 seconds because one of my problems with necromancer is the short durations and constantly having to recast skills.

Lystrad

While having the sacrificial bones effect and brutality/sorcery on the same skill feels a bit overloaded and I generally don't like the idea of putting passive major buffs onto damage skills since it means they basically immediately invalidate neutral utility abilities with the same effect as options*, I'll admit this feels like a better way to get the same effect than the currently proposed change.

*For that reason I would prefer brutality/sorcery go to one or both of the bitter harvest morphs, though I recognize that the existence of degeneration in the mages guild skill line as a dot that gives brutality/sorcery complicates things so it's probably fine.

brandsnipe

Lystrad wrote: »

While having the sacrificial bones effect and brutality/sorcery on the same skill feels a bit overloaded and I generally don't like the idea of putting passive major buffs onto damage skills since it means they basically immediately invalidate neutral utility abilities with the same effect as options*, I'll admit this feels like a better way to get the same effect than the currently proposed change.

*For that reason I would prefer brutality/sorcery go to one or both of the bitter harvest morphs, though I recognize that the existence of degeneration in the mages guild skill line as a dot that gives brutality/sorcery complicates things so it's probably fine.

Thanks for the feedback. It would be an overloaded skill and i can get behind putting brutality/sorcery on a bitter harvest morph. Having played necro in pve and pvp, and trying to make it work, my main complaints are the damage is underwhelming, even with blastbones.. the rotation becomes so clunky.

xylena_lazarow

Necro skills are lacking especially in PvP and need:

Melee spammable
Major weapon damage buff
Major crit chance buff
Reliable instant stun

Blastbones should hit reliably, not at random intervals, and it should not be targetable.

Necro buff timers should be extended and line up with each other. The armor is 20 seconds, the ghost is 16 or 8 seconds, the tether is 12 seconds... dear god why?

CameraBeardThePirate

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Necro skills are lacking especially in PvP and need:

Melee spammable
Major weapon damage buff
Major crit chance buff
Reliable instant stun

Blastbones should hit reliably, not at random intervals, and it should not be targetable.

Necro buff timers should be extended and line up with each other. The armor is 20 seconds, the ghost is 16 or 8 seconds, the tether is 12 seconds... dear god why?

Fwiw, Venom Skull IS a melee spammable. It's unusable at range, but much more fluid at point blank.

brandsnipe

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Necro skills are lacking especially in PvP and need:

Melee spammable
Major weapon damage buff
Major crit chance buff
Reliable instant stun

Blastbones should hit reliably, not at random intervals, and it should not be targetable.

Necro buff timers should be extended and line up with each other. The armor is 20 seconds, the ghost is 16 or 8 seconds, the tether is 12 seconds... dear god why?

This class is extremely clunky and was implemented poorly.

i11ionward

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Necro buff timers should be extended and line up with each other. The armor is 20 seconds, the ghost is 16 or 8 seconds, the tether is 12 seconds... dear god why?

Oh yeah, I'm not the only one who thinks that the duration of necro buffs just sucks.

About the topic. The idea of ​​​​creating an alternative morph of blastbons is a good idea, but the current implementation is not good. I hope ZOS will read the feedback and before the last PTS week we will see a better form of skills.

P.S. give a skill stun for necro, pls...

brandsnipe

i11ionward wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Necro buff timers should be extended and line up with each other. The armor is 20 seconds, the ghost is 16 or 8 seconds, the tether is 12 seconds... dear god why?

Oh yeah, I'm not the only one who thinks that the duration of necro buffs just sucks.

About the topic. The idea of ​​​​creating an alternative morph of blastbons is a good idea, but the current implementation is not good. I hope ZOS will read the feedback and before the last PTS week we will see a better form of skills.

P.S. give a skill stun for necro, pls...

Yup. Every class provides major prophecy/savagery or major sorcery/brutality, 4 classes provide both... necro has neither.. Warden gets minor vuln with bugs and major AND minor breach on an aoe damage skill. Necro has an ultimate that applie major vuln but is telegraphed and easily avoided. Major breach from boneyard is a 6m radius and it doesn't stick.. being that necro is a DLC class, its baffling how bad it is.

MashmalloMan

So this is cool and all but completely avoids the issue they raised which for better or for worse, the new skill aims to fix by giving a substantial bonus you need to sacrifice BB to get. Offering Necro's a different avenue to structure their damage kit around instead of relying on the 3s window that BB requires of them is the objective. This doesn't fix that.

If anything, this idea just reinforces the 3s window because why would you not use BB in conjunction with a 20% buff? It also makes BB hit as hard as Grim Focus, but no mini game, as an aoe ability, that can't be dodged. If you thought dying to Grim Focus was annoying, just wait..

I get that necro needs work, it always has since the stupid class relied sooooo heavily on a broken synergy bomb since launch which they gutted and didn't replace, but this idea isn't realistic in the slightest. The fact that the vote has 19 to 1 currently at least shows necro's are starved for balance adjustments and willing to take anything.

I didn't vote because I don't agree or disagree. My take is this..

1. Blighted needs dynamic cost and the Stalking multiplier added back in to keep the original identity they intended to keep.
2. Sacrificial Bones should apply a small dot centered on the caster like Blade Cloak.... Or.... Spawn an additional BB at 10s that jumps to the caster. Both the first and second BB should deal a small amount of damage, like 40% of the new Blighted morph. Without any damage and less corpses, it feels like a boring dead cast skill adding to more management and little payoff you can actually feel. It would be like a skill giving only major brutality and nothing else. Feels bad.
3. All morphs of Skele Mage should provide Major Brutality/Sorcery or Major Savagery/Prophecy.
4. Convert Skele Archer into a short duration(6s-10s), single target dot. When paired with Sacrificial Bones, it brings back some of the burst lost from BB, but in a high pressure dot form with a bit less management than the 3s BB window their attempting to offer. Damage multiplier per hit remains, but happens faster. For players with BB, you now get a strong short duration dot to add your burst combos doubling down on the high management skill ceiling you like to play with.
5. For Skele Arcanist, add in the multiplier Archer has at 50% value. It kind of sucks right now.. But it remains as a valuable, long duration "dot" for easier skill rotations zos wants the player to have an option for.

Will this fix the whole class? No, but it aligns with their vision and fixes the problems Sacrificial Bones has introduced, while fixing a long standing problem of no brutality/savagery in class.

Skulls still needs a bit more bang for their buck, as well as a huge projectile speed increase. As a quick suggestion, all morphs should have the "every cast of any Grave Lord skill adds a stack" instead of only the stam morph getting that. That 50% bump is essential and spamming 2 crap versions of it on mag necro really sucks just to get some aoe. A skill like force pulse always aoes and although it doesn't get 50%, it does have 3 direct hits instead of 1 making it proc status effects more frequently closing that DPS gap. Add something new to stam like a single target dot on 3rd cast, for being a dot class, it has very little dots lol.

brandsnipe

MashmalloMan wrote: »

So this is cool and all but completely avoids the issue they raised which for better or for worse, the new skill aims to fix by giving a substantial bonus you need to sacrifice BB to get. Offering Necro's a different avenue to structure their damage kit around instead of relying on the 3s window that BB requires of them is the objective. This doesn't fix that.

If anything, this idea just reinforces the 3s window because why would you not use BB in conjunction with a 20% buff? It also makes BB hit as hard as Grim Focus, but no mini game, as an aoe ability, that can't be dodged. If you thought dying to Grim Focus was annoying, just wait..

I get that necro needs work, it always has since the stupid class relied sooooo heavily on a broken synergy bomb since launch which they gutted and didn't replace, but this idea isn't realistic in the slightest. The fact that the vote has 19 to 1 currently at least shows necro's are starved for balance adjustments and willing to take anything.

I didn't vote because I don't agree or disagree. My take is this..

1. Blighted needs dynamic cost and the Stalking multiplier added back in to keep the original identity they intended to keep.
2. Sacrificial Bones should apply a small dot centered on the caster like Blade Cloak.... Or.... Spawn an additional BB at 10s that jumps to the caster. Both the first and second BB should deal a small amount of damage, like 40% of the new Blighted morph. Without any damage and less corpses, it feels like a boring dead cast skill adding to more management and little payoff you can actually feel. It would be like a skill giving only major brutality and nothing else. Feels bad.
3. All morphs of Skele Mage should provide Major Brutality/Sorcery or Major Savagery/Prophecy.
4. Convert Skele Archer into a short duration(6s-10s), single target dot. When paired with Sacrificial Bones, it brings back some of the burst lost from BB, but in a high pressure dot form with a bit less management than the 3s BB window their attempting to offer. Damage multiplier per hit remains, but happens faster. For players with BB, you now get a strong short duration dot to add your burst combos doubling down on the high management skill ceiling you like to play with.
5. For Skele Arcanist, add in the multiplier Archer has at 50% value. It kind of sucks right now.. But it remains as a valuable, long duration "dot" for easier skill rotations zos wants the player to have an option for.

Will this fix the whole class? No, but it aligns with their vision and fixes the problems Sacrificial Bones has introduced, while fixing a long standing problem of no brutality/savagery in class.

Skulls still needs a bit more bang for their buck, as well as a huge projectile speed increase. As a quick suggestion, all morphs should have the "every cast of any Grave Lord skill adds a stack" instead of only the stam morph getting that. That 50% bump is essential and spamming 2 crap versions of it on mag necro really sucks just to get some aoe. A skill like force pulse always aoes and although it doesn't get 50%, it does have 3 direct hits instead of 1 making it proc status effects more frequently closing that DPS gap. Add something new to stam like a single target dot on 3rd cast, for being a dot class, it has very little dots lol.

brandsnipe

brandsnipe wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

So this is cool and all but completely avoids the issue they raised which for better or for worse, the new skill aims to fix by giving a substantial bonus you need to sacrifice BB to get. Offering Necro's a different avenue to structure their damage kit around instead of relying on the 3s window that BB requires of them is the objective. This doesn't fix that.

If anything, this idea just reinforces the 3s window because why would you not use BB in conjunction with a 20% buff? It also makes BB hit as hard as Grim Focus, but no mini game, as an aoe ability, that can't be dodged. If you thought dying to Grim Focus was annoying, just wait..

I get that necro needs work, it always has since the stupid class relied sooooo heavily on a broken synergy bomb since launch which they gutted and didn't replace, but this idea isn't realistic in the slightest. The fact that the vote has 19 to 1 currently at least shows necro's are starved for balance adjustments and willing to take anything.

I didn't vote because I don't agree or disagree. My take is this..

1. Blighted needs dynamic cost and the Stalking multiplier added back in to keep the original identity they intended to keep.
2. Sacrificial Bones should apply a small dot centered on the caster like Blade Cloak.... Or.... Spawn an additional BB at 10s that jumps to the caster. Both the first and second BB should deal a small amount of damage, like 40% of the new Blighted morph. Without any damage and less corpses, it feels like a boring dead cast skill adding to more management and little payoff you can actually feel. It would be like a skill giving only major brutality and nothing else. Feels bad.
3. All morphs of Skele Mage should provide Major Brutality/Sorcery or Major Savagery/Prophecy.
4. Convert Skele Archer into a short duration(6s-10s), single target dot. When paired with Sacrificial Bones, it brings back some of the burst lost from BB, but in a high pressure dot form with a bit less management than the 3s BB window their attempting to offer. Damage multiplier per hit remains, but happens faster. For players with BB, you now get a strong short duration dot to add your burst combos doubling down on the high management skill ceiling you like to play with.
5. For Skele Arcanist, add in the multiplier Archer has at 50% value. It kind of sucks right now.. But it remains as a valuable, long duration "dot" for easier skill rotations zos wants the player to have an option for.

Will this fix the whole class? No, but it aligns with their vision and fixes the problems Sacrificial Bones has introduced, while fixing a long standing problem of no brutality/savagery in class.

Skulls still needs a bit more bang for their buck, as well as a huge projectile speed increase. As a quick suggestion, all morphs should have the "every cast of any Grave Lord skill adds a stack" instead of only the stam morph getting that. That 50% bump is essential and spamming 2 crap versions of it on mag necro really sucks just to get some aoe. A skill like force pulse always aoes and although it doesn't get 50%, it does have 3 direct hits instead of 1 making it proc status effects more frequently closing that DPS gap. Add something new to stam like a single target dot on 3rd cast, for being a dot class, it has very little dots lol.

MashmalloMan wrote: »

So this is cool and all but completely avoids the issue they raised which for better or for worse, the new skill aims to fix by giving a substantial bonus you need to sacrifice BB to get. Offering Necro's a different avenue to structure their damage kit around instead of relying on the 3s window that BB requires of them is the objective. This doesn't fix that.

If anything, this idea just reinforces the 3s window because why would you not use BB in conjunction with a 20% buff? It also makes BB hit as hard as Grim Focus, but no mini game, as an aoe ability, that can't be dodged. If you thought dying to Grim Focus was annoying, just wait..

I get that necro needs work, it always has since the stupid class relied sooooo heavily on a broken synergy bomb since launch which they gutted and didn't replace, but this idea isn't realistic in the slightest. The fact that the vote has 19 to 1 currently at least shows necro's are starved for balance adjustments and willing to take anything.

I didn't vote because I don't agree or disagree. My take is this..

1. Blighted needs dynamic cost and the Stalking multiplier added back in to keep the original identity they intended to keep.
2. Sacrificial Bones should apply a small dot centered on the caster like Blade Cloak.... Or.... Spawn an additional BB at 10s that jumps to the caster. Both the first and second BB should deal a small amount of damage, like 40% of the new Blighted morph. Without any damage and less corpses, it feels like a boring dead cast skill adding to more management and little payoff you can actually feel. It would be like a skill giving only major brutality and nothing else. Feels bad.
3. All morphs of Skele Mage should provide Major Brutality/Sorcery or Major Savagery/Prophecy.
4. Convert Skele Archer into a short duration(6s-10s), single target dot. When paired with Sacrificial Bones, it brings back some of the burst lost from BB, but in a high pressure dot form with a bit less management than the 3s BB window their attempting to offer. Damage multiplier per hit remains, but happens faster. For players with BB, you now get a strong short duration dot to add your burst combos doubling down on the high management skill ceiling you like to play with.
5. For Skele Arcanist, add in the multiplier Archer has at 50% value. It kind of sucks right now.. But it remains as a valuable, long duration "dot" for easier skill rotations zos wants the player to have an option for.

Will this fix the whole class? No, but it aligns with their vision and fixes the problems Sacrificial Bones has introduced, while fixing a long standing problem of no brutality/savagery in class.

Skulls still needs a bit more bang for their buck, as well as a huge projectile speed increase. As a quick suggestion, all morphs should have the "every cast of any Grave Lord skill adds a stack" instead of only the stam morph getting that. That 50% bump is essential and spamming 2 crap versions of it on mag necro really sucks just to get some aoe. A skill like force pulse always aoes and although it doesn't get 50%, it does have 3 direct hits instead of 1 making it proc status effects more frequently closing that DPS gap. Add something new to stam like a single target dot on 3rd cast, for being a dot class, it has very little dots lol.

My idea is an absolutely loaded skill and most likely never makes it out of testing. If they would upgrade blighted BB like you mentioned, i think the feedback would overall be better, but i see most eople and myself running blighted BB most of the time though because dots suck and the other gravelord abilities are underwhelming. For a while it looked like they didn't know which direction to take this class and i had hoped it would have gone more towards an undead summoners class with the corpse mechanic tied into it, but they intend on this class to be a DOT class and it just doesn't have the toolkit to do that. I think the class would need a major rework in order to play how they envision. You know necro is the only class that doesn't offer either major brutaluty/sorcery or major savagery/prophecy? 4 classes offer both buffs. The boneyard morph that applies major breach has a 6m radius and the debuff doesn't stick. Major vuln with the ultimate is telegraphed and so easily dodged. This class has nothing going for it..

JerBearESO

MashmalloMan wrote: »

So this is cool and all but completely avoids the issue they raised which for better or for worse, the new skill aims to fix by giving a substantial bonus you need to sacrifice BB to get. Offering Necro's a different avenue to structure their damage kit around instead of relying on the 3s window that BB requires of them is the objective. This doesn't fix that.

OK buuut I don't see the loss of about 20k pre crit damage every 3 seconds to be made up for with a 20% DoT buff. That would need to be about 6.7k in bonus DoT per second which would require about 33.5k in pre buffed DoT per second to be equal to the loss of BB.... where am I getting that much DoT pressure when the class has no real DoTs.

And let's not even consider "other grave lord abilities" haaaaaa....

brandsnipe

JerBearESO wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

So this is cool and all but completely avoids the issue they raised which for better or for worse, the new skill aims to fix by giving a substantial bonus you need to sacrifice BB to get. Offering Necro's a different avenue to structure their damage kit around instead of relying on the 3s window that BB requires of them is the objective. This doesn't fix that.

OK buuut I don't see the loss of about 20k pre crit damage every 3 seconds to be made up for with a 20% DoT buff. That would need to be about 6.7k in bonus DoT per second which would require about 33.5k in pre buffed DoT per second to be equal to the loss of BB.... where am I getting that much DoT pressure when the class has no real DoTs.

And let's not even consider "other grave lord abilities" haaaaaa....

Exactly. This BB change does nothing to fix the problem with necro's garbage offensive toolkit. @MashmalloMan did suggest increasing the damage of blighted to match stalking and i can tell you i would run blighted 100% of the time over the new morph, as i believe most people would too. Annnd Now we're back to square one. @ZOS_GinaBruno necromancer will need at least a partial rework..

MashmalloMan

JerBearESO wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

So this is cool and all but completely avoids the issue they raised which for better or for worse, the new skill aims to fix by giving a substantial bonus you need to sacrifice BB to get. Offering Necro's a different avenue to structure their damage kit around instead of relying on the 3s window that BB requires of them is the objective. This doesn't fix that.

OK buuut I don't see the loss of about 20k pre crit damage every 3 seconds to be made up for with a 20% DoT buff. That would need to be about 6.7k in bonus DoT per second which would require about 33.5k in pre buffed DoT per second to be equal to the loss of BB.... where am I getting that much DoT pressure when the class has no real DoTs.

And let's not even consider "other grave lord abilities" haaaaaa....

Read the rest of my comment?

JerBearESO

MashmalloMan wrote: »

JerBearESO wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

So this is cool and all but completely avoids the issue they raised which for better or for worse, the new skill aims to fix by giving a substantial bonus you need to sacrifice BB to get. Offering Necro's a different avenue to structure their damage kit around instead of relying on the 3s window that BB requires of them is the objective. This doesn't fix that.

OK buuut I don't see the loss of about 20k pre crit damage every 3 seconds to be made up for with a 20% DoT buff. That would need to be about 6.7k in bonus DoT per second which would require about 33.5k in pre buffed DoT per second to be equal to the loss of BB.... where am I getting that much DoT pressure when the class has no real DoTs.

And let's not even consider "other grave lord abilities" haaaaaa....

Read the rest of my comment?

It was very long