Necro Blastbones Changes: Time for a Class Rename?

Michaelkeir

Every time I see a necromancer thread I get a little bit of hope that just maybe the devs will listen this time. I’m glad to see so many popping up as of late.

My gripe with this class is that it just doesn’t feel like an Elder Scrolls necromancer. Mainly in the pet department. I’m not asking for a screen full of pets, but at least 1 long lasting one. If I could snap my fingers and fix the class I’d add the following………..

- 1 long lasting pet or permanent one. Change the mage or archer to having a longer lasting timer if need be and either buff the damage or add a major buff.
- The ability to buff our summons reliably. The in game necromancers have this ability as a form of beam they attach to their pets.
- A real sticky DoT. A true curse ability. We need this on a class with a dot passive.
- A ultimate that actually summons a bone Goliath or flesh colossus for a few secs that actually moves around and attacks.
- Make the spirt mender not heal, but causes a debuff on the enemy as it attacks while it’s active. Some type of fear debuff. Or allow it to cast a DoT attack.

These are just wishful thinking. I want to love this class, I really do. But it is hard because it just doesn’t feel like a necromancer.

Ugrak

The necromancer needs more necromancy.

i.e., kill something; raise it as a thrall. Maybe it can work like the sorcerer overload ultimate, but empowering the thrall.

Also, as an alternative to having too many distinct pets running around, a crowd could be done like the warden healing thicket. For example instead of the tombstones in boneyard, it could look like a pack of bone flayers.

The purge skill would be a lot more interesting if it transferred the dots to enemies surrounding the necromancer, or perhaps into the thrall so that it procs those status effect on attacks during their duration.

There was talk of the scribing system possibly allowing soul magic to consume soul gems. That kind of stuff would be an interesting option for necromancers. e.g. if you don't have a corpse, activate it twice to consume a soul gem in place of the corpse or something along those lines (I have thousands of them).

moo_2021

Naftal wrote: »

Does no-one complaining about necro know that we have hybrid scaling for abilities? You don't need to use the magicka morph just because you have more magicka than stamina.

It was flame damage. Fire >>> all else in pvp because of vampires

Faulgor

Ugrak wrote: »

Also, as an alternative to having too many distinct pets running around, a crowd could be done like the warden healing thicket. For example instead of the tombstones in boneyard, it could look like a pack of bone flayers.

Gods I hate those tombstones so bloody much lol.
They are so cartoony.

Meanwhile, a skill with great visuals like Grave Grasp lingers in obscurity.

DigiAngel

Welcome to the new "Mortician" class...

Lazarus_Rising

Anumaril wrote: »

Lazarus_Rising wrote: »

A necromancer does not have to be a summoner only. If you are familar with Last Epoch you can see that a more like Death Magic Mage would also be great. Undead minions are mandatory of course but they are ways to make a necromancer more interesting. Still i do not get the vision from ZOS. Some kind you are the living corpse idk.

Yeah I understand that too. it doesn't only need to be about summoning minions. But I do think that should be a big part of it, or at least be reflected in more than just Skeletal Mage/Archer.

i full agree with you. Not only they should have introduced a minion system in the first place but some way to interact with them. (Empowering grasp to buff them is simply not effective)

OldStygian

Faulgor wrote: »

Ugrak wrote: »

Also, as an alternative to having too many distinct pets running around, a crowd could be done like the warden healing thicket. For example instead of the tombstones in boneyard, it could look like a pack of bone flayers.

Gods I hate those tombstones so bloody much lol.
They are so cartoony.

Meanwhile, a skill with great visuals like Grave Grasp lingers in obscurity.

Same. All that's required is to remove the stupid tombstones. The other wispy/colour visuals are perfectly fine, just lose the janky headstones

EnerG

Imo necro needs to be sorcerer 2.0 make 2 summons permanent, give the morphs diffrent effects and active abilities and keep the rest as is

Make the skeletal archer and mage perma, reduce the damg to compensate, make the healing ghoul work like twilight where the heal is an active press and give it a morph that does dmg.

OldStygian

EnerG wrote: »

Imo necro needs to be sorcerer 2.0 make 2 summons permanent, give the morphs diffrent effects and active abilities and keep the rest as is

Make the skeletal archer and mage perma, reduce the damg to compensate, make the healing ghoul work like twilight where the heal is an active press and give it a morph that does dmg.

So much this.

Require a corpse to create if needs be and is a criminal act to have them active around NPC's.

These are the kind of things I want from a necro in an rpg

Vorkk8383

EnerG wrote: »

Imo necro needs to be sorcerer 2.0 make 2 summons permanent, give the morphs diffrent effects and active abilities and keep the rest as is

Make the skeletal archer and mage perma, reduce the damg to compensate, make the healing ghoul work like twilight where the heal is an active press and give it a morph that does dmg.

I would normally disagree, but it's clear that ZOS doesn't know how to fix the necro nor can they listen to our suggestions, so I'd rather play a copy of a not-so-broken class than the necro as it currently is. I'm only logging in for my daily rewards atm and thinking about what I want to do. I paid for six months, sadly. Every time that they make a change to the necro, they made us suck more. It's tough to find the will to play my necro anymore and I'm not wanting to create a brand new main.

Michaelkeir

EnerG wrote: »

Imo necro needs to be sorcerer 2.0 make 2 summons permanent, give the morphs diffrent effects and active abilities and keep the rest as is

Make the skeletal archer and mage perma, reduce the damg to compensate, make the healing ghoul work like twilight where the heal is an active press and give it a morph that does dmg.

I’d pay money for this change honestly.

Carylas

Ugrak wrote: »

The necromancer needs more necromancy.

Totally agree. I've always wondered why they didn't give the class similar skills to the ones we see NPC necromancers cast. I have a necromancer character but I feel like the rotation is a bit clunky and the class doesn't really make me feel like a necromancer tbh.

OsUfi

EnerG wrote: »

Imo necro needs to be sorcerer 2.0 make 2 summons permanent, give the morphs diffrent effects and active abilities and keep the rest as is

Make the skeletal archer and mage perma, reduce the damg to compensate, make the healing ghoul work like twilight where the heal is an active press and give it a morph that does dmg.

Hard disagree. Trading DPS and heals for minor convenience? From one of the lowest rated classes? Nope. Archer, mage, and spirit need a wee buff, deffo not a nerf.

Rasande_Robin

"Necro Blastbones Changes: Time for a Class Rename?"

Yes! I'm already on board with it. I'm a clownomancer. I play with corpses!

Remathilis

Skeleton minion should work like sorcerer scamp: always there and does something on "recast"

Ghost minion should work like either netch (long duration) or Twilight (always on small DPS with burst heal)

Blastbones should work like shade; temp summon that gets a few hits in a then crumbles.

But no, we got three summons that don't outlast a decent dot

FelisCatus

Lazarus_Rising wrote: »

Despite every feedback they did go through with it. Nothing to be done anymore sadly.

Our overlords know better than us, remember U35.

StarOfElyon

Anumaril wrote: »

With the new update Blastbones was changed into a self-buff ability. There are other posts already about how lacklustre it is, but I'd like to focus on class identity here. Necro was already a class barely living up to its name, with only one proper offensive pet summon (Skeletal Mage/Archer), and then one quasi-pet summon in the form of Blastbones. But now with Blastbones gone we only have the 1.

Removing a necromancer's minion summons does nothing but eviscerate the class fantasy of being a necromancer in the first place, which wasn't exactly stellar to begin with. To say I'm disappointed with this change would be putting it lightly. I simply do not feel like a necromancer anymore, as what little class identity there was is being clawed away. If ZOS wants to continue down this route, then consider renaming the class "Dark Sorcerer" instead of "Necromancer". Otherwise, I'd kindly ask to rethink the approach to playing a necromancer.

A big part of being a necromancer should be about summoning minions to serve you in combat (not even permanent ones!). The damage rotation should ideally be about (re-)summoning the minions as they expire, empowering them, and then using a spammable like Flame Skull. Additionally, I think minions should also cost corpses to summon, emphasising the fact that you're raising the dead and not just spawning them out of Oblivion the way you might do with daedric minions. It might take slightly longer to wind up your damage potential in the beginning of an encounter, but that can be offset with other corpse-generating spells.

Addressing the elephant in the room:
Yes, Blighted Blastbones remains available as an offensive morph of the ability. But I don't consider this sufficient. First of all, if I'm playing a magicka necromancer, why should I be forced to use the stamina morph of a spell just to feel a shred of class identity while playing? We're basically being told to play un-optimally if we want to enjoy our own class fantasy. Furthermore, when necromancy in the Elder Scrolls universe is constantly associated with blue, why on earth should magicka necromancers be forced to use a summon with a green theme like Blighted Blastbones? It's not thematically coherent at all, and irks me to no end when I'm using my spells.

If ZOS is adamant on leaving necromancer class identity to languish, then at least throw us a bone by having the resource cost of Blighted Blastbones be determined by your highest max quantity secondary resource (if you have more max magicka than max stamina, it costs magicka, etc). Then have the colour change accordingly as well.

I always thought of them as corrupted versions of Templars 😅

That's how it started with my Necromancer, at least. Bringing people back from the dead was like a natural progression for healing magic, right? RIGHT???

Mesite

I like the the skulls and the scythe. With the scythe you get to attack at melee range which I miss with the destruction staff. We could call it bouncy-slash mashup