For the love of god, fix Empowering Grasp

Darth_LucSky · February 15

Necros are already getting a massive hit this update by losing their best damaging skill, the least that could be done was to fix the extreme jankiness of the Empowering Grasp morph. The idea behind the morph is nice.. It doubles as a crowd control and a support skill, but it's just horrendously difficult to actually apply the buffs to groups members, and it's just straight impossible to get your necro pets to get this buff. 75% of my Empowering Grasp casts do not buff my pets, and there is no consistent way to apply these buffs to said pets (I could'nt get my Spirit Mender to get buffed by this skill, EVER, even though the skill itself says that Spirit Menders should get their healing increased).
Please just make the buffs from Empowering Grasp affect all my pets and team members everytime I cast it, instead of having them stay inside of the small areas just to get the buffs. The support part of this morph is already extremely short (10 seconds), necros should NOT be chasing team members and pets and spamming this skill in order to buff them only 25% of the time, and only for a very short duration.
My proposed changes are simple: Leave the crowd control part as is, make the support part of the Empowering Grasp morph (the Empower granted to allies, and the 1000 extra damage/healing provided to pets) affect all group members and/or pets instantly after every cast.
This simple change could go a long way for a big variety of builds and help the class climb out of the dumpster a bit.

IncultaWolf · February 15

I'm glad other people are finally mentioning this ability, it is by far the WORST ability in the necromancer toolkit, you can hit your pets, and like you said, 75% of the time it just straight up does nothing, you'll know when your pets are buffed by this ability because they have a blue glow around them. It's just almost impossible to actually make it work unless you're standing completely still and meticulously target your pets who are also standing still, using this ability in actual combat is almost pointless if you want the buff for your minions.

Also I'm pretty sure it's bugged/broke at some point during a previous patch because my spirit mender NEVER gets the buff, and I remember the last time using this ability many months ago, the healing ghost did get the buff from empowering grasp, right now it does not.

This just feels like a failed class with how many issues it has, and necromancer was honestly just carried by the old harmony trait, and old major vulnerability being 30%

Here's a video of me wasting all my resources trying to land this ability on my pets, and it not doing anything

https://youtu.be/ieo7ROe89Vo?si=7Kw3OmWVweynC5-d

CameraBeardThePirate · February 15

Another example of "if anyone on the dev team even tried to use this skill once they'd realize how bad it was".

Tyrant_Tim · February 15

There’s only one use for the skill, and I don’t even know if it’s intended.

If you build your character with high movement speed, you can use it as an escape, because you’ll run faster than the hands come out of the ground and anyone on your tail will get hit by a few of the rings, I used to run it on a BowCro and that very niché use of the skill was awesome, but honestly there’s no reason one of the morphs couldn’t be reworked into something else entirely.

Lalothen · February 15

Tyrant_Tim wrote: »

There’s only one use for the skill, and I don’t even know if it’s intended.

If you build your character with high movement speed, you can use it as an escape, because you’ll run faster than the hands come out of the ground and anyone on your tail will get hit by a few of the rings, I used to run it on a BowCro and that very niché use of the skill was awesome, but honestly there’s no reason one of the morphs couldn’t be reworked into something else entirely.

Like, for example, one morph could be reworked into some sort of buff ability - let's call it "Sacrificial Grasp" - that buffs the Necro's DoT damage for 20s and allows them to be personally treated as a corpse for the duration?

Nah, better to take Necro's best dps skill and eviscerate it.

xDeusEJRx · February 15

I said it before, they need to make it conal AOE similar to how Dragonknight Talons work. Some people think it wouldn't be good still, but I think it'd benefit more in buffing your necro summons, especially Blastbones and how confused it gets at times.

They could still give it the delayed pulse outward effect and different effect per status, just make it conal instead of a straight line. For an ability that's meant to enhance your offense, it's not super reliable.

IncultaWolf · February 15

Lalothen wrote: »

Tyrant_Tim wrote: »

There’s only one use for the skill, and I don’t even know if it’s intended.

If you build your character with high movement speed, you can use it as an escape, because you’ll run faster than the hands come out of the ground and anyone on your tail will get hit by a few of the rings, I used to run it on a BowCro and that very niché use of the skill was awesome, but honestly there’s no reason one of the morphs couldn’t be reworked into something else entirely.

Like, for example, one morph could be reworked into some sort of buff ability - let's call it "Sacrificial Grasp" - that buffs the Necro's DoT damage for 20s and allows them to be personally treated as a corpse for the duration?

Nah, better to take Necro's best dps skill and eviscerate it.

I even suggested they move that buff over to empowering grasp weeks ago...why destroy blastbones

C_Inside · February 15

A very simple way to make this skill actually useful would be to have it give the 1000 extra damage/healing while having the skill slotted on either bar. That would actually encourage both necro damage dealers and healers to at least have another class skill slotted.

Ideally though, I'd change this morph completely as giving group members Empower is completely pointless. Instead, I'd change it so instead of giving Empower and stunning enemies, activating it would give another 1000 damage/healing to your summons for 20 seconds. So a total of 2000 if you chose to waste a cast on a buff during combat, or only 1000 if you leave it as a bar buffer.

Tiphis · February 16

They tried to give it 3 separate uses at once but failed to see how practical it was to actually use each. So basically like incap but as this is on necro and not a nb it probably won't be fixed.