Companion Necromancers may not need Summons or Corpses

Erickson9610

One of the persistent themes across the Companion implementation of Player Classes is that no Companion is allowed to summon their own pets. The biggest case for this was with the implementation of the Companion Sorcerer toolkit — the skill "Quick Fix" was taken directly from the heal component of Winged Twilight. Also note that sometimes Companion Classes will rearrange skills into a different order than the Player Class counterparts — an example of this is the Companion Templar toolkit, which took the Companion counterpart of Puncturing Strikes and Sun Shield (the Player counterparts are both in the Aedric Spear skill line) and moved them to the Blazing Might (damage dealer) and Brilliant Shield (tank) skill lines, respectively.

So, with this knowledge in mind, remember that Companions have 3 skills per damage dealer/tank/healer skill line, and those skills are directly derived from the Player version of those skills. Here is how ZOS could design the Necromancer Companion, if they wanted to remove the possibility of a Companion summoning a pet of their own:

• Damage Dealer
  • Flame Skull (single target damage)
  • Boneyard (ground AoE damage over time)
  • Death Scythe (cone damage, taken from the Player Necromancer's tanking skill line)
• Tank
  • Bone Armor (Companion 20% damage mitigation)
  • Bone Totem (AoE defense buff)
  • Grave Grasp (AoE crowd control)
• Healer
  • Render Flesh (single target heal)
  • Expunge (negative effect purge)
  • Life amid Death (ground AoE heal)

The fact that narrowly dodging all of the summon and corpse/tether skills is possible suggests that this could be the direction ZOS takes with the design of the Necromancer Companion toolkit. The other 6 skills (Bitter Harvest, Sacrificial Bones, Skeletal Mage, Shocking Siphon, Spirit Mender, and Restoring Tether) all require a corpse or summon a pet.

Also, remember that each Companion's Ultimate is unique to them. We don't know what Companion Necromancer Ultimates there may be, presuming we get more than one Necromancer Companion in the future, but so far every Companion's Ultimate has resided in their damage dealer skill line. Maybe future repeated Companion Classes will have their Ultimates in the tank or healer Class skill lines?

Finally, here's a snippet from the Companions Q&A, which provides some insight into the process of adapting Player Classes into Companion Classes:

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Q: How does the team decide which class skills to copy for companion skills? Previous companions such as Bastian and Isobel provided unique buffs and debuffs that stacked with Major and Minor effects (such as Bastian's Searing Weapons providing a unique 15% damage buff to Light and Heavy attacks rather than providing Empower); however, Sharp-as-Night and Azandar provide named buffs and debuffs such as Minor Vulnerability. Why was this change made and will the older companions be updated?
Bastian and Mirri have thematic Ultimates (for example, Bastian is implied to have anger issues and his Ultimate is called Unleashed Rage). However, later companions do not. Were Bastian and Mirri's Ultimates intended to be thematic and if so, why have the other companions' Ultimates not been?

TM: Typically, we like to work with the combat designer who worked most heavily on the given class and who really knows the ins and outs of it. They take a look at the class abilities and put forward a list of what they think is a compelling kit for the companion, modified to suit the specifics of companion combat. We talk through the choices and make tweaks and substitutions until everyone is satisfied. We also monitor companions after launch to make sure our assumptions about certain abilities were in line with how players actually use them. We do have a list of items we want to address regarding our previously released companions to keep them relevant.

For your second question – All the companions have unique Ultimates and we try to make sure they feel like a natural fit for their respective companion. That said, I think that’s clearer in some cases more than others – Bastian having a temper has a natural synergy with what a Dragonknight ultimate might be. I can say it’s something we’re discussing with our newest companions, so we do try to keep theming in mind.

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