Was all of the necromancer feedback ignored?

Erikx

What do you guys think?

i_azazei_i

Oh definitely

StarOfElyon

Did they even see the feedback? That is the question.

StarOfElyon wrote: »

I'm making an updated version of my Necro ideas thread from 2023 (https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/633137/suggestions-for-necromancer-changes). One thing that ZOS has been doing lately is making skills require less micromanagement and loading them with multiple functions:

Cephaliarch's Flail:
Infuse your arm with abyssal magic to form tentacles that lash out at your foes dealing 1939 Physical Damage, healing yourself for 969, and generating Crux. Enemies are immobilized for 3 seconds and marked with Abyssal Ink for 20 seconds. Deals up to 100% more damage to enemies with less than 50% Health. You deal 5% increased damage to enemies drenched in Abyssal Ink.

Tome-Bearer's Inspiration:
Etch a series of runes onto your weapon that pulse with power once every 5 seconds. Each pulse enhances your class abilities, and striking an enemy with one deals an additional 1161 Magic Damage and generates Crux if you have none. While slotted on either ability bar, gain Major Brutality and Major Sorcery, increasing your Weapon and Spell Damage by 20%.

The Necro needs this same treatment.

Blighted Blastbones: cost determined by the highest resource.
(I have mourned the loss of Stalking Blastbones and I have accepted that fact that I'm just going to have to change my Necro)

Death Scythe:
As I have seen suggested on the forums, both morphs of the Necro scythe should get execute scaling. I agree that this would be a great and very needed addition.
- Hungry Scythe: should also apply life steal to all enemies hit.


Skeletal Arcanist/Archer: grants major sorcery/brutality when slotted on either bar. Increase the damage that their attacks do.

Shocking Siphon: while slotted on either bar grants major prophecy/savagery and increases damage done by 3%. The AOE remains on the ground even if the tether breaks early.
- Mystic Siphon: the increased Health, Magicka, and Stamina Recovery persists even if the tether breaks early.
- Detonating Syphon: the damage AOE now sticks to you.

Flame Skull:
- Riccochet Skull/Venom Skull: applies burning/poisoned status effects. (Increase travel speed)

Spirit Mender: when active, applies minor cowardice to attackers.

Bone Totem: summons an effigy of bones up to 28 meters away. After 1 second, the totem begins fearing nearby enemies every 2 seconds, causing them to cower in place for 4 seconds. (Changed to allow both morphs to be targeted)
- Warding Totem: (Formerly Remote Totem) grants minor protection when standing in the area of effect.
- Agony Totem: afflicts enemies in the area of effect with minor vulnerability.

Restoring Tether: the effects persist on the player even if the tether breaks early.

Render Flesh:
- Blood Sacrifice: consumes a corpse to grant you Major Courage for 10 seconds.

Expunge: reduces the cost of all your abilities by 3% while slotted on either bar.

Bitter Harvest: when slotted on either bar, reduces your damage taken by 3%.


ULTIMATES:
Frozen Colossus: Unleash a decayed Flesh Colossus to pulverize enemies in the area. The Colossus smashes the ground three times over 3 seconds. Dealing damage applies Major Vulnerability to any enemy hit for 12 seconds.
- Glacial Colossus: does frost damage and stuns enemies on the second hit instead of the third.
- Pestilent Colossus: smashes the ground only once and does disease damage. Afflicts enemies with a pestilence that does damage over time.

Animate Blastbones: instead of resurrecting allies, this ultimate summons up to three blastbones to attack the nearest opponent. Summoned Blastbones are immune to being crowd controlled (other than by another ultimate). Reduce the cost of this ultimate to 200, down from 320, to make it more usable.

(\__/) ||
(•ㅅ•) ||
/ 　 づ

MashmalloMan

StarOfElyon wrote: »

Did they even see the feedback? That is the question.

Of course they did, but they ignored it. There's a big difference.

See proof below. That was much of the discussion, that aoe dps and ranged corpse generation was lost, so with the most recent change, they aimed to fix that. It was just terribly implemented and could have been handled much better. If they saw comments about these 2 issues, then they also saw comments about dynamic cost and stalking modifier missing from the new Blighted Blastbones morph. They simply don't agree or think they know better, but refused to comment on that as the most common feedback given about all this.

• We’ve seen a lot of great feedback for the new functionality these abilities have gone through, highlighting both the good and bad that the rework provided. Things are on the right track but we’ve seen many of the short comings that came with the initial proposals. The main areas we’re hoping to improve on with this pass are the following:
  • Your Area of Effect damage capabilities when not taking the Blighted morph, as sacrificing the explosive lad led to a large loss
  • The disruption to the natural flow of corpse generation and consumption, as having all of your corpses spawn around you as the caster led to a highly restrictive playstyle that forced you into melee, while making tethers far more cumbersome to use than intended
• The above adjustments should help alleviate some of the issues the rework imposed, while still offering relatively familiar advantages and experiences to the original ability, but with a simpler to use and build around rotation. We’ll continue to keep an eye on this ability and its morphs as the year progresses and data comes in; we’re aware that the ability likely still hasn’t hit its perfect mark just yet, but we’re hopeful that it’s still an improvement for a large amount of players who were previously put off by how demanding the class was.

OtarTheMad

Definitely ignored. I think either ZOS has a vision for Necromancer that our feedback didn’t match or they are testing out different ideas for ability changes and while our feedback was read, aren’t sure that’s where they want to go

Alaztor91

OtarTheMad wrote: »

Definitely ignored. I think either ZOS has a vision for Necromancer that our feedback didn’t match or they are testing out different ideas for ability changes and while our feedback was read, aren’t sure that’s where they want to go

It would be nice to have a Dev post explaining ZOS ''vision'' on the Necromancer class. If the main reason for Blastbones change really was to provide an easier alternative rotation, I don't see how the latest version of Grave Lord's Sacrifice accomplishes that.

Should other classes also fear having their iconic skills reworked out of nowhere?

Deimus

I'll post this again as it really needs to be addressed by ZOS to the community instead of being swept under the rug.

@ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_GinaBruno Do you have plans to clearly communicate your intentions for the future of the Necromancer class to the players?

If there is a roadmap for a Necromancer class overhaul communicating that will do a lot to alleviate the frustration of players. Especially those with 100s or 1000s of hours dedicated to a class that is continuously stripped of it's capabilities and feels like it's lagging behind. Many issues with the new skill were pointed out on day 1 with no changes until week 3 that many players feel adds more complexity to the rotation.

So is this the first change of many and we are not yet able to see the full picture, or if there is no class overhaul planned why have the years of feedback and ideas to ease the pain points gone ignored?

My final inquiry as a *whispers* pvp enjoyer what are your expectations and plans for Necro especially Magcro in this environment as a class with no reliable stuns or cc and now no burst damage in their class kit?

You've mention multiple times of wanting to improve communication. Opening a dialogue and creating a level of transparency with your intentions for the class and how it could remedy these issues will be a great step forward to re-establishing goodwill and meet the expectations of the community.

merpins

Long answer: Yes.
Short answer: Ye.

xthrshx

Templar’s most iconic skill destroyed. Now Necro’s. Who is next?

Turtle_Bot

Alaztor91 wrote: »

OtarTheMad wrote: »

Definitely ignored. I think either ZOS has a vision for Necromancer that our feedback didn’t match or they are testing out different ideas for ability changes and while our feedback was read, aren’t sure that’s where they want to go

It would be nice to have a Dev post explaining ZOS ''vision'' on the Necromancer class. If the main reason for Blastbones change really was to provide an easier alternative rotation, I don't see how the latest version of Grave Lord's Sacrifice accomplishes that.

Should other classes also fear having their iconic skills reworked out of nowhere?

The following spoiler contains the changes to the main skills of the listed classes that I can currently think of (likely many more that I have missed).

Sorcerer:

• Crystal blast (this was the main AoE capability the class had) replaced with crystal weapon (a stamina buff/proc/delayed burst)
• Overload 3rd bar (the main way sorc was able to fit the required utility onto their bars) completely deleted
• Bound armaments (buff to light attacks, which included overload, had this aspect deleted and given nothing back)

Templar:

• Jabs (we all know this one)

Warden:

• Shulks (mag duration changed from 3/6s to 3/9s)

Necro:

• Blast bones (stalking) reworked into GLS

Agreed that a "Vision of X class" or a "Feedback/communication on big changes to X ability" type thread where the devs explain their vision for each class or communicate and talk about their proposed changes more directly would be good to help bring players onto the same page as the devs.

Big changes like those listed above, all should have been given their own official feedback threads (separate from the general class/combat feedback threads in the PTS section) where the devs can do the following:

• Communicate the reasons for these changes in greater detail.
• Directly answer questions/concerns about why the changes are being made to help create that understanding
• Put forward that vision for the class in more detail
• Obtain and discuss relevant feedback in an easy to find way
• Be able to announce adjustments to address pain points that arise from these types of changes in a timely manner that is easy to locate and discuss.

---

@ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_GinaBruno The following paragraphs and spoiler below are a couple of suggestions to look into for communicating and discussing big changes to important class abilities that would go a long way to help alleviate community frustrations.
I understand that it may not always be possible to openly discuss many of these changes and creating a separate thread for every single change is definitely not practical, but a separate feedback thread for when big changes are made to key class abilities would go a long way to helping organize feedback to be easy for the team to find, discuss and address and is basically an expansion on the developer comments that you guys are currently doing in the patch notes. This will be especially helpful for big changes to key abilities such as:

• the stalking blast bones or crystal blast complete redesign
• the removal of vital secondary functions of abilities such as overloads 3rd bar and bound armaments buff to light attacks
• the adjustments to important timings and visuals to key abilities such as jabs/shulks

It would also help immensely to have one member of the dev team that was involved with making theses big changes to such key abilities, take maybe 30 mins to an hour out of their day, once a week for each week of the PTS cycle (or at least on the 2 major weeks that the big changes are made, that being weeks 1 and 3 of the PTS), to go through these specific feedback threads and maybe answer some of the more common/prominent questions/concerns that have been put forward in these threads about such a big change to key abilities.

An example of how it could work would be in the official feedback thread for Gravelord Sacrifice and Blast Bones:

The thread is started with a list of the changes, the reasons the team wants to make those changes and the teams overall vision for the class regarding how it will look once the changes have been implemented (future potential changes or concerns that are going to be addressed).

With Blastbones/Gravelord Sacrifice, taking the key questions/concerns provided in the feedback such as:

• lack of ranged corpse generation
• awkward rotations that require a lot of concentration and effort due to skulls depending on GLS to generate corpses
• loss of stalking modifier and damage type change from flame to disease that results in a significant DPS drop
• sustaining BB being an issue despite the cost decrease.
• GLS requires being in combat to use it

Then in a quote that is also added as an edit to the original post in that thread, a team member can provide answers to these concerns in week 3 PTS, and even take some of the ideas presented to overcome these concerns with these changes to reach a final version of the ability by week 5 that everyone (well the majority) can be happy with.

Some possible answers to the above example concerns over these changes to BB could be put forward during week 3 of PTS as follows:

We have gone through your feedback over the past couple of weeks and have heard the concerns over the changes to blast bones and the issues with gravelord sacrifice, as such we will be aiming to look into the following potential adjustments over the remaining weeks of this PTS cycle and anything we cannot address this PTS cycle, we will look to address this before the start of, and include them in, the next patch announcement.

• Lack of ranged corpse generation: "The team is looking into having skulls now generate a corpse on every third cast as part of the base skulls ability (this is not dependent on GLS being active)."
• Awkward rotations: "With the team looking to separate skulls corpse generation from GLS, this should make it less awkward, especially when combined changes we are looking into to address another concern listed below.
• Loss of Stalking modifier: The team will look into giving Blighted a 5-10% base damage increase (this makes up for the base stalking modifier) and the diseased status proc makes up for the damage type change from flame to disease damage which resulted in a net loss of damage due to no longer being buffed by sets/skills that buffed the damage done by flame damage abilities."
• Sustaining Blighted: "The team is looking into scaling the cost of this morph off the lowest (or highest) max resource so that both stamina and magicka necromancers can sustain the old playstyle easier."
• GLS requiring being in combat to use: "The team is looking into making the ability usable outside of combat as a ground targeted or a self buff ability. This will also help address the issue of awkward rotations listed above as the ability can now be cast pre-combat."

We hope that these changes will help alleviate your concerns regarding the rework of Blast Bones to Gravelord Sacrifice and please feel free to include other feedback regarding these changes and we will look into it as soon as possible.

Follow this up with the following as each change is made:
Week 5 of PTS:

• We are still working on making Skulls (and morphs) create a corpse at its target location on every third cast.
• Blighted Blastbones has had its base damage increased by 8%. This will aim to account for the lost damage that the stalking modifier provided.
• Now guaranteed to proc the Diseased status effect on hit. We hope that this will aim to offset the loss of damage that this ability had from no longer being flame damage that was likely to be buffed by multiple external effects.
• We are still working on trying to have gravelord sacrifice be castable outside of combat, but it is taking time to get right. We are aiming to have it done by patch release, but cannot guarantee it will be finished by then.

With a final follow up at the end of the final week of the PTS:

• Skulls and morphs now generate a corpse at their targets feet on every third cast.
• We were unfortunately unable to get gravelord sacrifice to be castable outside of combat in time for the release of this patch. However we will continue to keep working on it with the aim to release it as soon as possible, hopefully during a mid-patch maintenance, with the aim of having it ready at the latest by the announcement of the next patch.

By having a separate official thread for the big changes as outlined in the spoiler above, it helps to provide an understanding and create a good discussion and understanding of changes and by showing the potential ideas that are being explored to address the concerns it brings the community along with the dev teams vision for the class.

Uvi_AUT

They ignored all the feedback, not just Necromancer.

ProudMary

Uvi_AUT wrote: »

They ignored all the feedback, not just Necromancer.

ZOS has a pretty dismal track record of listening to and effectively communicating with the player base on all levels.

i.e.- jabs animation

It not just feedback on necro's that gets dismissed.

KlauthWarthog

Would be neat if they were to clearly state what the expected weaknesses and strengths are for each class. But, they won't.
Remember when they randomly pointed out that DKs were supposed to have bad sustain, with DKs having the direct opposite of that problem?
Yeah, they are not going to set themselves up to another oopsie of the sort.

moo_2021

xthrshx wrote: »

Templar’s most iconic skill destroyed. Now Necro’s. Who is next?

Sorc streak plez

IncultaWolf

xthrshx wrote: »

Templar’s most iconic skill destroyed. Now Necro’s. Who is next?

Arcanist after the new dlc class is released

lostineternity

moo_2021 wrote: »

xthrshx wrote: »

Templar’s most iconic skill destroyed. Now Necro’s. Who is next?

Sorc streak plez

I have a good idea on how to improve Streak, @ZOS_Kevin. Please contact the developers.

The first morph of Streak teleports the sorcerer backward instead of forward and applies a 70% snare for 10 seconds. The second morph will stun the sorcerer in place for 5 seconds and applies Major Breach for 10 seconds. If you use Streak two times within 10 seconds, the sorcerer dies immediately because teleportation isn't safe.

Also, Dragonknights can whap themselves because why not? We can't judge people for their deviations. Nightblades' cloak makes them visible on the map to all enemies within a 1km radius instead of providing invisibility. Wardens' bestial abilities have a 50% chance to go out of control and attack the warden. Templars' plastic fork (also known as Jab) can break during a fight, resulting in 75% less damage for an hour. Arcanists' tentacles can go into full hentai mode with their owner.

I guess I could be a star on the ZOS combat balance team with such ideas.

xylena_lazarow

PvP Necro timers are still a disaster and its PvP class kit is still glaringly missing:

Major wd/sd buff
Major crit chance buff
Reliable instant stun
Reliable spammable
Viable sticky DoT

moo_2021

Don't people just use wrath of elements or master dw for sticky dot?


S&B charge is my instant stun and power slam is my spammable. The one bar ring provides all buffs... very cheesy I know

xylena_lazarow

moo_2021 wrote: »

Don't people just use wrath of elements or master dw for sticky dot?

Yes but the reason we do this is because the actual dot skills are still nerfed and underperforming in PvP since u35, or nonexistent in the case of Necro. Proc sets are a bandaid on a PvP class balance problem.

IncultaWolf

UNIVERSALLY known by the entire eso player base and content creators as the worst class in the game, I've been suffering on necromancer this pvp event and I literally have random people whispering me saying stuff like "props for playing necro in this time of age"

Also within like the 50+ hours I've put into cyrodiil this event, I've only seen like 5 other necromancer players, how does a class get this neglected for so long? I really don't get it. I hope the combat/class balance team is proud, happy 10 year anniversary!

Urvoth

Ignored completely

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

PvP Necro timers are still a disaster and its PvP class kit is still glaringly missing:

Major wd/sd buff
Major crit chance buff
Reliable instant stun
Reliable spammable
Viable sticky DoT

It’ll also be missing burst on the magcro side after the update

JonesFPS

You know they could actually do some great things if they would talk to some of the more knowledgeable playerbase. Or do some continues testing of things on pts outside of their "major updates" to see where their "minor adjustments" end up.
First big step should be seperating pvp and pve balance. but hey xD

StarOfElyon

moo_2021 wrote: »

Don't people just use wrath of elements or master dw for sticky dot?

No. I have pride.

StarOfElyon

IncultaWolf wrote: »

UNIVERSALLY known by the entire eso player base and content creators as the worst class in the game, I've been suffering on necromancer this pvp event and I literally have random people whispering me saying stuff like "props for playing necro in this time of age"

Also within like the 50+ hours I've put into cyrodiil this event, I've only seen like 5 other necromancer players, how does a class get this neglected for so long? I really don't get it. I hope the combat/class balance team is proud, happy 10 year anniversary!

I get tea bagged. 😂

Urvoth

StarOfElyon wrote: »

moo_2021 wrote: »

Don't people just use wrath of elements or master dw for sticky dot?

No. I have pride.

Having generic skills that can fill similar roles also isn’t an excuse for ZOS to not flesh out the necro kit. Any class can use vate/mdw and still have their normal class damage kit to pull from, but necro is the only class that’s mandated to use sets like that to have any sort of consistent damage. The damage kit is just so severely lacking compared to other classes.

gariondavey

xthrshx wrote: »

Templar’s most iconic skill destroyed. Now Necro’s. Who is next?

Getting 3 stacks of whip is too complicated. Molten now only gets 1 stack. The animation has been changed to a gentle, playful, flirtatious whipping motion.

Getting 5 stacks of assassin's will takes too long. Stacks remain at 5 but can only be fired every 4 seconds. Critical damage and chance increased by 15 percent. Animation has been changed to be very minute to not give away the fact that you are casting a high damage skill. Sound has been removed because assassins are supposed to be sneaky, dangit!

ADarklore

xthrshx wrote: »

Templar’s most iconic skill destroyed. Now Necro’s. Who is next?

So how was Templar's iconic but severely OP skill destroyed?!? Are you complaining about the slight nerf or the animation?

Aldoss

gariondavey wrote: »

xthrshx wrote: »

Templar’s most iconic skill destroyed. Now Necro’s. Who is next?

Getting 3 stacks of whip is too complicated. Molten now only gets 1 stack. The animation has been changed to a gentle, playful, flirtatious whipping motion.

Getting 5 stacks of assassin's will takes too long. Stacks remain at 5 but can only be fired every 4 seconds. Critical damage and chance increased by 15 percent. Animation has been changed to be very minute to not give away the fact that you are casting a high damage skill. Sound has been removed because assassins are supposed to be sneaky, dangit!

ZOS'd this for you:

Assassin's Will has been updated to FINALLY bring NBs up to par with all other classes that have delayed burst. In previous patches, this skill was modified to no longer require pre-casting to gain stacks. In this patch, we have removed the requirement to fire the skill and Assassin's Will will now fire immediately, when it's available, whenever your active target is stunned. We have also increased the critical chance of this skill to always be 100%, as we've heard many complaints that having to stealth prior to casting Assassin's Will was too challenging of gameplay for most NBs.

We apologize for not making these adjustments sooner.

Erikx

Haha the overwhelming answer is yes. Man I really thought about coming back to the game but this is the first time I won’t buy the expansion. The combat team clearly doesn’t care about player feedback they just do random changes to core combat 3 times a year and drink everyone’s tears. Idk why people still come back to this game and have hope.

xthrshx

ADarklore wrote: »

xthrshx wrote: »

Templar’s most iconic skill destroyed. Now Necro’s. Who is next?

So how was Templar's iconic but severely OP skill destroyed?!? Are you complaining about the slight nerf or the animation?

It wasn’t a slight nerf. Damage per hit was nerfed. And an entire hit was removed. And it procs burning light less. That’s three separate nerfs in one patch.

And all that was power just moved into Jesus beam, rather than distributed across other skills. So now plar really does only have one OP skill and little else.

And yes the animation is hilariously bad.

Rkindaleft

Alaztor91 wrote: »

OtarTheMad wrote: »

Definitely ignored. I think either ZOS has a vision for Necromancer that our feedback didn’t match or they are testing out different ideas for ability changes and while our feedback was read, aren’t sure that’s where they want to go

It would be nice to have a Dev post explaining ZOS ''vision'' on the Necromancer class. If the main reason for Blastbones change really was to provide an easier alternative rotation, I don't see how the latest version of Grave Lord's Sacrifice accomplishes that.

Should other classes also fear having their iconic skills reworked out of nowhere?

Did the same thing with Templar Jabs

Just revert it and buff Necro a different way. Nobody likes this.

They still suck in PvP, they don't have Brutality or Sorcery in their class kits, the other non-reworked morph of blastbones still has tethering issues. They've been in an inconsistent spot since the Harmony changes ages ago. In PvE they're awful as DPS except for using EC in trials.