Flames of Oblivion vs Skeletal Mage Inconsistency

CameraBeardThePirate

In U35 (the dreaded DoT nerf patch), Necromancer's Skeletal Mage/Arcanist/Archer received a 50% stealth nerf to its damage alongside the other DoT nerfs. This was done despite the fact that these skills are NOT DoTs, and instead count as direct damage. They cannot be commanded like normal pets, and seemingly attack enemies at random (despite supposedly attacking the "nearest" enemy).

DK's Flames of Oblivion did NOT receive this same nerf, despite functioning almost identically to the Skeletal Pet. Flames of Oblivion is a direct damage "DoT" effect that damages enemies at random nearby, and is quite potent, often clocking in near the top of DK's damage done in CMX during an encounter.

Why was an already lackluster skill so heavily nerfed, when nearly identical abilities in other class kits weren't? The Skeletal Pets are NOT DoTs, are not buffed by Rapid Rot/Thaumaturge, and can be blocked/are reduced by Esoteric. The skill was neutered for seemingly no reason.

What's more is that despite Skeletal Mage (and for that matter, Spirit Mender) functioning nearly identically to Flames of Oblivion and Cauterize, they are further held back by the fact that they can't proc sets due to being pets, and their damage/healing still doesn't show up on BG scoreboards.

@ZOS_Kevin Is the team aware of this inconsistency? Since the nerf was not in the patch notes, was it intended?

danko355

I think, the answer to your question is that developers themselves might prefer to play dragonknights and enjoy this class, while no one really cares about the necromancers. But this is something they will never confirm

Alaztor91

You would expect that pets, especially temporal ones like Skeletal Mage/Spirit Mender would have some sort of upside to account for the inherent downsides of being a pet skill in this game. What is the point of having ''DoTs'' or HoTs with legs if they perform numerically and mechanically worse than DoTs or HoTs without legs.(yeah I know the ghost has no legs lol)

ZOS has spent the last years standardizing skills, normalizing stuff like damage values, resource cost, DoT/HoT duration, etc and yet we still have plenty of cases where inconsistencies like this stay ignored for months/years.

One would expect that normalizing skills to fit into a mold would make balance easier for them, but it seems that somehow, we still have to wait months/years for glaring inconsistencies to be addressed. At least when Classes had unique stuff years ago you could argue that the ''unique'' factor made balancing them a more difficult task. What is the excuse now?