What for YOU made necromancer's rotation clunky?

brandsnipe

For me BB never made my rotation clunky. I got down the timing pretty well for my burst. My PvP burst would go, BB, comet, flame clench and it worked pretty good considering how bad the class is. Now the targeting on BB was horrendous, but when it hit, i nuked more people than not. The rotation issue for me in both PvE and PvP is the constant upkeep of skills because necro doesn't have the buffs/debuffs in the class kit, the small radius boneyard and totem and recasting of that skill, the line of sight issues with corpses, and more. I end up running non class skills just so i dont have to constantly keep casting the same abilities, causing sustain issues and clunkiness. My enemy moves, time to cast boneyard again... crap they moved again, and again.

StarOfElyon

I never had a problem with the rotation because I wasn't trying to squeak out every ounce of damage. When I did play DD with my necro, I did just fine casting Blastbones when my syphon needed a corpse to be refreshed.

I chose to make that character into a tank to have an Altmer necro tank for fun. it wasn't because the rotation was a problem.

Jammy420

Never had a single problem with Necro except for the consistency of it. Seeing as there is no option for that, no vote.

C_Inside

I'd vote for "Never had a problem with Necro rotation" either. My OG character is a necro and even when I was a complete beginner only doing the main quest and overland content I never found Blastbones to be hard to play with. Now when I'm doing vet content and occasionally doing vet HM stuff I still don't find it difficult. It's literally the same as casting any other skill but instead of "4" or "5" on my keyboard I press "2".

ceruulean

Micromanaging too many skills.

The only corpse generation skill you have on demand is Blastbones which requires a hostile target. I cannot prebuff tethers, which are essential for sustain, until one of my summons approaches 5 second expiration. On top of that, to get Major Sorcery Brutality, I also need to use Degeneration or a weapon skill like Shouded Daggers. I literally cannot prebuff anything out of combat except Major Resolve and Wraith. Even if I prebuff a tether using the dead summon, if I move too far the tether disappears so what's the point?

When other classes just get passive sustain for existing and the ability to prebuff, without pulling mobs, it feels really bad

OtarTheMad

Micromanaging too many skills.

For me the issue was more about corpse management and micromanaging the skills in a way where they are effective. Example: making sure my siphon tether is lined up correctly so I can damage the boss, if not then recasting it until it latches onto a closer corpse, and constantly recasting boneyard because I need the boss to stay in it.

BB wasn’t my favorite skill at all, pretty clunky and in PvP still got confused and stood around but all I wanted was a sticky dot added to it, not it scrapped completely.

OolongSnakeTea

Micromanaging too many skills.

Its not to many skills its the lack of bar economy for me. I have to run so many things like FG/MG to get buffs for example. The lack of burst for shorter fights and the over all just feeling weak in solo content unless there are a lot of adds to feed me.

robpr

None of those two in particular, but BB skill in general and sometimes Siphon doing 360 no-scope targeting Archer's corpse for no particular reason.

When I hug the boss then its fine, but if I have to play at a distance it really throws the rotation timers until BB finally hits the target. Closest to this are Warden Shalks, but those can be freely recasted if target suddenly moves. With BB, if their AI do some derp and decide to AFK or get confused and do not jump, you can't do much - can't do Graveyard, because it will be unpowered. Can't place siphon, because no corpse.

tsaescishoeshiner

Blastbones. It's just not always up at the same interval, especially in content with moving parts. On a parse or stationary boss in melee range, it's pretty consistent. I'd rather do something on a more even interval than have to wait to see blastbones explode before I can hit the button again.

Compared to the old version of Scorch (warden), which had a 3-second delay but never varied, so it was much more predictable. It still felt very impactful, though.

Blastbones isn't something that prevents me from doing well with necro, it just feels occasionally really clunky and distracting. I've done vSS, vet DLC dungeon HMs, vet Vateshran/Maelstrom on necro, so I've had plenty of time to get used to it, and there are just always times when the timing isn't exact, or Mr. Skellington stands still and takes his time. I wouldn't say that I'm regularly distracted by it, I actually find blastbones kinda cool. But when someone says "this could be improved" it's like yeah ... agreed.

I think this change isn't just for casual players, but trying to address longtime feedback that started back when necromancer was on the PTS : P Imagine the forum threads about blastbones if Necromancer was released today lol. "It's buggy" "You can't control where the corpses are" "It's necessary for damage but hard to use" etc.

And I'm mostly seeing people complaining about the change seeming like a damage nerf, not on how fun or consistent blastbones is to use. (I find it fun when it's working, but distracting). I suggested other ideas than the rework we got on PTS, but I see why the skill was singled out to be changed.

If the visuals for the Flame Skull were improved, I think this new setup from PTS patch 9.3.3 would be sorta cool.

Remathilis

Blastbones 3 second cast

All of the above.

I personally find BB's boom boom clap rhythm hard to manage, but to be fair the whole package is not great. Tethers are hard to manage, the summons are too short, skulls is slow, etc. I enjoy my Necro healer (even if they aren't top tier) but DPS rotation is so complex and such that it isn't worth it.

I just feel bad that Necro works best in support roles rather than damage.

xylena_lazarow

Micromanaging too many skills.

They're both major problems. In PvP your timers include 20 seconds for the armor, 8 or 16 seconds for the ghost, 12 seconds for the tether... these are all way too short and inexplicably misaligned. They did it right on Arcanist making them 30 seconds, including the one that also passively gives you the major wd/sd buff that Necro doesn't even get.

Blastbones is a nightmare to use trying to guess if/when it will actually hit your target, and a nightmare to fight against as it randomly ignores tab target and body blocks anyway. There is nothing immersive about summoning a skeleton that stands there doing nothing, then keels over. Make it work similarly to Warden's bird attack, consistent and untargetable.

KlauthWarthog

Actually targeting and using corpses.
A fixed 3s rotation for BB was trivial compared to a sorcerer's crystal fragments, which pops at random.

Grim_Overlord

Micromanaging too many skills.

I'd like to add under my vote on micromanaging too many skills that obviously we are going to use our skill bars to the best possible, but with Necromancer letting one skill drop off feels like a death sentence in terms of PVE DPS. Longer timers won't fix this either, but instead a rebalancing of what the Necromancer's kit brings to the table is necessary. For example Archer/Arcanist feel like a dead cast because their damage is often outpaced by non-class skills. Even doing something small such as making them count as a damage over time effect, which they function as and were treated like when timers and tick counts were adjusted a few major updates ago, would go a long way for making the class feel more cohesive and rewarding for playing it well.

Deimus

Micromanaging too many skills.

Casting BB every third move isn't difficult I get the frustration with BB not always leaping to its target, but that's a PvP issue and rarely happens in a more static PvE environment. The low timer on Necro abilities is a pain, but it's there for the corpse mechanic and to mimic the traditional Necromancer minion micromanagement play-style without the minions.

brandsnipe

Micromanaging too many skills.

Deimus wrote: »

Casting BB every third move isn't difficult I get the frustration with BB not always leaping to its target, but that's a PvP issue and rarely happens in a more static PvE environment. The low timer on Necro abilities is a pain, but it's there for the corpse mechanic and to mimic the traditional Necromancer minion micromanagement play-style without the minions.

Even in PvP i dont have many issues with bb. I think they should add onto a morph of boneyard for it to have a larger radius and produce corpses.

Benzux

Blastbones was definitely a bit of a learning curve, but I got the hang of it after some time - it's essentially just "Press the button when it's not greyed out" . At least I can't accidentally recast it too early like Warden Shalks can be.

What really grinded my gears though was Flame Skull. I didn't think they could make a worse-feeling class spammable than Cliff Racer, but my god did they manage. From day 1 Flame Skull has felt incredibly clunky to use, at least for me. Swapped it out for destro spammable almost immediately, which made things much smoother in the rotation, but I felt really bad about not using the class spammable, especially since it means I lose out on one stack of crit chance from the passive from not having it slotted.

Don't have access to PTS so I haven't gotten the chance to test out the new morph, but based on all the discussion, I'll be eager to give it a go when things go live.

Jestir

Blastbones 3 second cast

Some combination of BB, queing issues with the 3rd skull cast, generally clunky skill timers and tethers clinging to the "wrong" corpse have made the class relatively unfun to play

haelgaan

Blastbones 3 second cast

BB every third cast is mind numbing, plus the skill is janky as hell and often doesn't go off properly.

necro was a massive letdown, for what it could have been.

MashmalloMan

Micromanaging too many skills.

Grave Lord's Sacrifice - week 4

Deimus

Micromanaging too many skills.

brandsnipe wrote: »

Even in PvP i dont have many issues with bb. I think they should add onto a morph of boneyard for it to have a larger radius and produce corpses.

For me it's mainly NBs and Sorcs. If Sorcs streak sometimes it gets confused or it chases and never leaps. NBs are a double edged sword, when they stealth BB stops, but if they miss cloak by a milisecond BB will let me know where they went if they're near he'll leap if they ran he'll lead me to them like a hound

The graveyard generating corpses every 3 or 4 seconds would be a thematic way to keep ranged corpses. I'd be down for that even if your first cast doesn't get the 30% buff every cast after will.

RaptorRodeoGod

Blastbone's targeting feels like caca, like any other single target spell would trigger correctly, but blastbones often doesn't

Rasande_Robin

Skull is clunky and now it will be our main spammable...

kojou

I didn't have an issue with the 3 seconds of Blast Bones, but I did have an issue with it not finding a target and just standing there so I couldn't cast if when it came up in the rotation again.

The spammable is ok in PvE, but I can see why it is not loved in PvP.

I am even ok with the number of skills, but not having a corpse in the direction you happen to be looking always made Siphon kind of a wonky ability.

For me, Necromancer is a class that if I practice with I can make it work, but I never really loved how it worked. It is just too fiddly with no real benefit in terms of DPS over other classes.

Necrotech_Master

i disliked the lockout on blastbones until it exploded

that actually varied the cast quite often depending on how reliably blastbones went off on the target

i also disliked the necessity of the corpses for many of the skills to be useful, which it was a constant battle to keep enough corpses for use with the tethers or actually spending GCDs casting real dmg skills

the skeletal mage/archer was also extremely disappointing and weak, it always felt like it was never doing anything in terms of dmg, it was so weak i wish it had some other kind of additional buff to actually warrant using

the1andonlyskwex

I never really had a problem with the 3 second casting. My problem was always BB's wonky targeting (compared to other skills) and the fact that the 3 second delay would turn into a 5+ second delay whenever the skeleton got confused.

I also don't particularly like dealing with accidental Criminal Acts in town or the corpse management mini game when pug healing vet dungeons (where it's easy to run out of corpses when things get hectic).

Urvoth

Blastbones frequent casting was never the problem. It's that the class doesn't actually have many damage abilities and the ones it does have are quite static and require corpse timing to be effective. Skulls is also slow and has a clunky animation. The main issue with Blastbones is that it is frequently stuck in CC and is often LOS'd or kited. There's also no real damaging class ultimate. Colossus is a debuff tool and really doesn't need to work that way on both morphs, and Goliath form is just a survival tool since the damage it does outside of a niche bash build is pretty minimal. Animate blastbones is also clunky, expensive, and inconsistent.

MashmalloMan

Micromanaging too many skills.

Honestly. They could fix blastbones so easily by just dropping the original design philosophy they've held on to for seemingly no reason for so long.

..Why is it an AI that has to deal with pathing issues? Scorch and Haunting Curse are so similar to this ability, but just behave in more simplistic ways

Example of a new version:

1. Remove the health, targeting, pathing, AI, all of it.

2. Behaves more like curse. Cast on a target, after a 2s delay, the skeleton jumps from the ground below them and explodes instantly. The animation is about a second long, but follows the movement of the player. 1s is quick enough that it wouldn't look weird.

3. The target is made aware by a glowing blue ring under their feet and skeleton hands clawing on the ground, itching to get out, for the 2s before it explodes.

Fixed. Now you can 100% of the time always cast it every 3 global cooldowns because it will always explode at the exact same time as it's no longer an AI.

They'd have to rework the res ult a bit, but that shouldn't be too hard. Stalking modifier is already gone, although they should 100% compensate that, it doesn't necessarily have to be that specific mechanic.

moo_2021

The current BB is just fine in PvP.

Want improvement? 1) explodes whenever killed, and 2) player can summon a new BB regardless whether there is still one running.

VoidCommander

Blastbones 3 second cast

The fact you didn't mention the 2-second cast option for blast bones tells me you might not fully understand the true painpoints of necromancer. Having to rapidly adjust the order of abilities used based solely on if you were close enough to your enemy for Blastbones to insta-detonate is incredibly annoying.

Before anyone gets hot and bothered about "muh skill issue," the problem doesn't lie in that it is now by far the hardest rotation in the game with the long overdue rework of Nightblade's abilities now in play, but the problem instead is that there is no payout for all that extra effort that is put in. Necromancers are kind of pathetic in terms of damage output when directly compared to how difficult it is to get that damage. Sure Wardens have a worse off time for damage numbers, but a Warden DPS is much easier to play than a Necro DPS, so I expect it to be less effective at the peak of play.

brandsnipe

Micromanaging too many skills.

VoidCommander wrote: »

The fact you didn't mention the 2-second cast option for blast bones tells me you might not fully understand the true painpoints of necromancer

LMAO get out of here.

MrMeeseeksCanDo

Hitting a skill once per second is how the game is played with some exceptions so the rotation is fine. The main issue for me is the corpse minigame in high mobility fights when the only ranged corpse generator is inconsistent, has a 2.5 second delay and tethers need that corpse to even be casted.
I think it is a nice idea to make Flame Skull and morphs a corpse creator too but they should not take away Stalking Blastbones. The current iteration of necromancer changes on the pts is just as complicated if not more so and the delay before tether and graveyard (at max damage) can be casted has increased. Therefore, the changes on necromancer hasn't even accomplished the stated goals. Of course it is more friendly if you want to do a HA build.