PTS Update 43 - Feedback Thread for Classes & Abilities

Skjaldbjorn · July 9

BananaBender wrote: »

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

As a longtime Warden main, I'm baffled by the changes to Wardens. You guys put in so much effort in the last two years to solidify their identity as a frost mage. Now, it feels like you're going back on that work. Why?

My guess would be because the modification necessary to make Frost Staff DPS a thing killed any other iteration of Warden that wasn't a support. That's not good design.

Making warden just another class that fully relies on Rapid Strikes and Maelstrom 2h isn't good design either. As of this patch I feel like warden has no identity what so ever. It feels like a necromancer with green skills and less damage. Frost damage was the only thing making warden stand out even in the slightest

And honestly, the biggest thing that made the frost damage so damn good wasn't even the staff, it was the massive buffs to chilled. Chilled is a HUGE portion of our damage now, which is also very unique. Master frost still guarantees chilled, so it should still be fairly competitive.

ESO_Nightingale · July 10

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

BananaBender wrote: »

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

As a longtime Warden main, I'm baffled by the changes to Wardens. You guys put in so much effort in the last two years to solidify their identity as a frost mage. Now, it feels like you're going back on that work. Why?

My guess would be because the modification necessary to make Frost Staff DPS a thing killed any other iteration of Warden that wasn't a support. That's not good design.

Making warden just another class that fully relies on Rapid Strikes and Maelstrom 2h isn't good design either. As of this patch I feel like warden has no identity what so ever. It feels like a necromancer with green skills and less damage. Frost damage was the only thing making warden stand out even in the slightest

And honestly, the biggest thing that made the frost damage so damn good wasn't even the staff, it was the massive buffs to chilled. Chilled is a HUGE portion of our damage now, which is also very unique. Master frost still guarantees chilled, so it should still be fairly competitive.

I did 1 parse last night because combat metrics was not working and my usual double ice staff settup returned 117k which on average is a tiny little bit less dps than i averaged before the betty buffs. I'm currently focused on how strange arctic blast feels at the moment since i can't test properly and havent tested other non ice generic settups but it's probably equalling out in single target due to master ice + auto chilled proc from reach spam. I'm pretty sure ice staff backbar is dead in the water, i might mess around with snb backbar now that we have access to chilling throw which is super fun. Back before they made the piercing cold change i thought the only thing they should change was chilled direct damage but they did both chilled and added piercing cold ice staff damage. Now that that's gone, I'm eager to see if this change truely does equalise it like we originally wanted.

BananaBender · July 10

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

BananaBender wrote: »

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

As a longtime Warden main, I'm baffled by the changes to Wardens. You guys put in so much effort in the last two years to solidify their identity as a frost mage. Now, it feels like you're going back on that work. Why?

My guess would be because the modification necessary to make Frost Staff DPS a thing killed any other iteration of Warden that wasn't a support. That's not good design.

Making warden just another class that fully relies on Rapid Strikes and Maelstrom 2h isn't good design either. As of this patch I feel like warden has no identity what so ever. It feels like a necromancer with green skills and less damage. Frost damage was the only thing making warden stand out even in the slightest

But...they still use frost damage. Winter's, Arctic Blast, frozen enchant, etc are all still very good. Using a different weapon doesn't really make you "unique", because tons of weapons are used in various content. Bow/bow is hella good on Taleria. If a Warden uses bow/bow for Taleria, are they suddenly unique?

They do use those abilities, but now it plays like any other class. It was the only dps class that could utilize a different spammable and gear to make it stand out as something different. Now as I said it's exactly like playing a Stamcro. You use Rapid Strikes, a semi spammable, Blade Cloak, Barbed Trap and Siphon (on Necro, Camo hunter or Cutting dive depending how the sustain is going to be in trials.) Back bar being Stampede, Winter's Revenge or Boneyard, Carve, (one flex slot) and Netch or Archer. These two classes play identically the same with extremely slight differences. Don't get me wrong, Stamden was suffering from this problem previously already of having to fill the bar with as few class skills as possible, since none of them do sufficient damage, but now Magden is also in the same boat.

Taleria is a poor example since Bow/Bow is only good there because how the hitbox interacts with Blackrose bow AND Rapid Strikes does not work there at all. Any class which uses Rapid Strikes and 2h is better off using Bow/Bow on Taleria.

But at the same time, yes it does make it more unique to play something that isn't DW front bar everywhere. I just wish builds would use Bows and Staves because they are viable, not because the class skills just aren't worth using. Such is the case with Templar and why they go with Bow Bow on single target, same with Sorc and the same will be for Warden.

BananaBender · July 10

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

Durham wrote: »

Not very happy with the Warden changes. From a PVP perspective polar over performs. Arctic blast did not. I would rather make polar do what has been suggested and leave arctic blast as is.

Please leave the damage passive as is or just reduce it to 10%. This is a drastic change that no one is really asking for.

Just for context, imagine if they treated the other classes with the absurd idea they gave Warden.

Necros only get their damage passive when wielding a 2h weapon.

DKs only get theirs when wielding a fire staff.

Templar only gets theirs when dual wielding.

NB only gets theirs when using a bow.

Sorcs only get theirs when using a lightning staff.

This was terrible design from jump. No one wants this, and no one should. Warden shouldn't be punished with it.

This would honestly be way more interesting and fun rather than having the current state of weapons where all classes get good damage if they are using dual wield. Pretty much everything else is a dps loss with a few exceptions. Do I think dual wield should be nerfed? Absolutely not, but I think it would make the game way more interesting if DKs would get slighly better performance with Inferno staffs, Sorcs with lightning etc.

I can see that Warden was weighted waaaay too heavily into ice staves, but I think it would be much better to play into the characteristics of the class rather than have everyone run the exact same weapon combinations.

Dual wield could be a solid safe choice or even the best one to go for in certain situations, but not be the best in slot in every single scenario.

BananaBender · July 10

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

BananaBender wrote: »

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

As a longtime Warden main, I'm baffled by the changes to Wardens. You guys put in so much effort in the last two years to solidify their identity as a frost mage. Now, it feels like you're going back on that work. Why?

My guess would be because the modification necessary to make Frost Staff DPS a thing killed any other iteration of Warden that wasn't a support. That's not good design.

Making warden just another class that fully relies on Rapid Strikes and Maelstrom 2h isn't good design either. As of this patch I feel like warden has no identity what so ever. It feels like a necromancer with green skills and less damage. Frost damage was the only thing making warden stand out even in the slightest

And honestly, the biggest thing that made the frost damage so damn good wasn't even the staff, it was the massive buffs to chilled. Chilled is a HUGE portion of our damage now, which is also very unique. Master frost still guarantees chilled, so it should still be fairly competitive.

I only got to do a little bit of testing with Master's Ice staff before my CMX broke down, but the damage was a good 10-15k lower than on other setups. Even Asylum Inferno out performed it as did a scribing spammable.
Chilled is a good source or damage still, but none of your skill choices reflect that. You no longer build your setup around it like you used to. Which I can see someone seeing a bit boring since it was the only way to do good damage on Magden, but at least it was something different. Now it's a nice extra that you might notice after the fight if you look at your CMX, but other than that you don't see that reflected in your gameplay.

Good_VS_Evil · July 10

master_vanargand wrote: »

Don't change "Undeath" to vampire stage 1.
The current PTS forces everyone to be a vampire in PvP.

Max 10% damage reduction for free with almost no risk is a terrible idea.

"Undeath" should be vampire stage 3.
Don't penalize non-vampire players in PvP.

You do understand that this is a NERF for Vampires right? Vampires are outright just FLATLY losing 20% Damage Mitigation forever. That should be your talking point, not "Undeath" being forced to stage 3.

Who cares if its 10% Max damage reduction at stage 1/2 when ALL vampires period are losing 20%, they are effectively much squishier now and vulnerable for absolutely nothing in return.

We are going from 30% to 10% and are being given absolutely nothing in return, that is the issue here.

EDIT: Checked your post history, that explains it all...you just HATE Vampire players and want them gone from PVP. Extreme Bias from you.

Udrath · July 10

Make vampire undeath stage 3 and change it to minor protection at all times.

Good_VS_Evil · July 10

I think if you are going to take away 20% Damage Mitigation from Vampires then there needs to be something given to Vampires in return. Whether thats lowering the non-vampire ability costs, lowering the cost for vampire abilities, reducing fire damage penalties or tweaking the actual skill-line damage numbers.

Further to that point you have effectively made it pointless to be Stage 2, 3 or 4. Players should be rewarded for becoming a stronger vampire not penalized. I could go off lore wise how this makes no sense either with what Lamae Bal has said but I will stay practical because thats what matters now.

Please dont bring this to live, or atleast dont bring it to live without buffing Vampires in other areas to make up for the 20% Damage Mitigation loss we are receiving.

ESO_Nightingale · July 10

BananaBender wrote: »

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

BananaBender wrote: »

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

As a longtime Warden main, I'm baffled by the changes to Wardens. You guys put in so much effort in the last two years to solidify their identity as a frost mage. Now, it feels like you're going back on that work. Why?

My guess would be because the modification necessary to make Frost Staff DPS a thing killed any other iteration of Warden that wasn't a support. That's not good design.

Making warden just another class that fully relies on Rapid Strikes and Maelstrom 2h isn't good design either. As of this patch I feel like warden has no identity what so ever. It feels like a necromancer with green skills and less damage. Frost damage was the only thing making warden stand out even in the slightest

And honestly, the biggest thing that made the frost damage so damn good wasn't even the staff, it was the massive buffs to chilled. Chilled is a HUGE portion of our damage now, which is also very unique. Master frost still guarantees chilled, so it should still be fairly competitive.

I only got to do a little bit of testing with Master's Ice staff before my CMX broke down, but the damage was a good 10-15k lower than on other setups. Even Asylum Inferno out performed it as did a scribing spammable.
Chilled is a good source or damage still, but none of your skill choices reflect that. You no longer build your setup around it like you used to. Which I can see someone seeing a bit boring since it was the only way to do good damage on Magden, but at least it was something different. Now it's a nice extra that you might notice after the fight if you look at your CMX, but other than that you don't see that reflected in your gameplay.

This is sad to hear

boi_anachronism_ · July 10

All they need to do to balance out pvp and pve for blades is to move some damage from merciless or spammables in their dots. They only ever buff single target on blade. I honest to god dont get it.

CameraBeardThePirate · July 10

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

Durham wrote: »

Not very happy with the Warden changes. From a PVP perspective polar over performs. Arctic blast did not. I would rather make polar do what has been suggested and leave arctic blast as is.

Please leave the damage passive as is or just reduce it to 10%. This is a drastic change that no one is really asking for.

Just for context, imagine if they treated the other classes with the absurd idea they gave Warden.

Don't worry, instead of tying Necro's damage to a weapon, they got rid of their main damage skill entirely :^)

Skjaldbjorn · July 10

BananaBender wrote: »

Now it's a nice extra that you might notice after the fight if you look at your CMX, but other than that you don't see that reflected in your gameplay.

What? On a Stamden parse with DW/2h my chilled does 8-10k. How is that a "nice extra?" That's a massive chunk of damage.

FoJul · July 10

I wish I could simply put my feedback in a few short sentences, to sum up every class as a whole, but that's pretty much impossible.

I love to see a little love to Strife and its morphs. (Nightblade Siphoning spammable). Fixing functionality was a huge W. However, the damage seems to still be lackluster compared to Elemental weapon AND crushing shock. I understand swallow soul has a heal added to it, but there is no reason it should be doing ~30% worse than other spammables because of it.

Nightblade as a whole, has no reason still to be part of a trial/dungeon group. Still heavily underforming for PvE. I want to be able to play Nightblade (rangeblade specifically) again in PVE. It would mean the world to me.

Additionally, Templar. Puncturing sweep, still doesn't feel complete. Taking the additional jab away and shortening the length of the Jab, still cut the damage output of this ability. I feel we still haven't had any changes to accommodate this change. The damage could be adjusted to fit earlier patches.

Backlash and its morphs, I don't know if its a bug, or if its just me and my friend are extremely unlucky, but this ability seems to not want to Crit in most cases. with 47% crit chance and fighting with backlash for over 3 minutes on enemy player and on target dummy, the crit's were closer to 25%. Now I could be just unlucky, but I wouldn't even run a crit build on Templar if Backlash did decent burst damage like every other class.

DK is still amazingly strong. IMO I think their damage is overtuned. With the guranteed status effects, and the crazy DoT potential.

Sorc, I mean lets be honest in PVP that shield is WAY too strong. No one can disagree with that.

Warden seems decent minus the huge nerf. As a whole it feels ok.

Arcanist, outside of beam is unplayable I feel like.

Necromancer, it's going in the right direction, but giving us another more 20 second buff hurts the clunky playstyle it already has. Some skill buffs just need to be longer than 20 seconds. Just missing 1 second of damage is huge, now think of how many buffs, necro has to reapply, constantly.

This concludes my personal experience on PTS. Thanks for coming to my TedTalk.

pklemming · July 10

Removing the guaranteed heal and the execute scaling is not really on, if you are trying to get us to use the other morph. You had roughly a year to balance this and had time before that too. After this time, the class should not need nerfing, unless it was deliberately overpowered in the first place in order to make sales for a new pack.

Stop with the nerfs. We were promised minimal changes. Not being able to use flail as a heal when there are no mobs in front is not minor, nor is removing our only execute ability.

This also applies to the change for necros no longer being able to create corpses out of combat. You just decided that NOW this is not ok, but it was ok up until this point. What changed?

Warden is a big sigh. They needed help, they didn't get it. Arctic blast change is not great for an already struggling class. Why a situational heal?

Nightblades got a minor buff and just plain confused that skills now belong to different lines. Again, after how long? Really?

What Templars said, "What we really need it a longer duration empower.. Yes, that is what we want". What Templars want is our old animation back.

It does seem that weird changes go ahead, regardless of whether the players actually want them. What we would really like is to have stability in a class, without wondering what is going to be tinkered with next.

Any class balances should have been done years ago, and with new classes on, or just after release. Suddenly deciding a skill is overpowered several years on seems nonsensical. Did you really take years to actually notice? If so, why?

It feels like changes are done to show they are doing something. No players appreciate nerfs. Especially not nerfs patch after patch. It smacks of bad maths.

pklemming · July 10

I forgot vampires. You turned them from a situationally useful skill line to a high situational skill line(unless you thieve a lot). The recent mitigation calculations do not favour the undeath skill overly well either. You took that in to account, right?

StShoot · July 10

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

Ice staff is still fine on Warden DPS, it's just that other weapons were buffed. We went from +12% damage for ice staff wardens to +8% damage for all DPS.

So players who enjoy ice staff haven't lost much. Frost Reach, Master's Ice Staff, and Chilled Procs all still work.

The fact that other weapons might deal more doesn't prevent frost warden from doing just about everything they do on Live.

It's impossible for them to make every weapon the best over all others, so I think it's better to make more build options viable.

Except you forget that other weapons have their own statlines, so you actual loose much more than the 4 percent (12%->8%) because you missout the crit from dual dagger etc.
Also the piercing cold passive didnt prevent you from using other weapons either, i fail to see the logic there, it just raised froststaffs to the lvl of other weapons. You can turn this whole argument around, tbh.

I love how players claim (tbh 1 player xD) that they were forced on froststaff this patch while failing to realise that they will be forced on dualwield in the next patch. The current dps diffrence between frosstaff and dagger is way lower (12%damage done vs.1314 critvalue) than it will be in the next patch (0%dmg vs.1314 critvalue), because keep in mind that the 8% will also be aplied to daggers.

Skjaldbjorn · July 10

StShoot wrote: »

Except you forget that other weapons have their own statlines, so you actual loose much more than the 6 percent (12%->8%) because you missout the crit from dual dagger etc.
Also the piercing cold passive didnt prevent you from using other weapons either, i fail to see the logic there, it just raised froststaffs to the lvl of other weapons. You can turn this whole argument around, tbh

Yeah, it definitely did chief. 2% damage vs 12%. Our only damage ramp in our passive kit. We were entirely chained to frost staves. Crit from the daggers wasn't making up that gap, especially when you consider how strong the Master staff was with guaranteed chill. Also, it's 4%, not 6%. 8 + 4 = 12.

To your own logic, this new passive doesn't prevent you from using frost staves. It just means they're not the only viable option.

Really think about this in context. Trial groups require Major Berserk because 10% is a lot of damage. Trial groups require Major Vuln because 10% is a lot of damage. Trial groups require Major Slayer because 10% is a lot of damage.

However, when it comes to this passive, magically, 10% is negligible. This wasn't 10% to frost. This was 10% to everything. 10% to chilled, to shalks, to bear, to literally everything.

Paschgon · July 10

Firstmep wrote: »

My thoughts so far:
...

Scribing: people asked for longer duration on major buffs, instead you nerf them all down to 10 sec.
Did you guys ever use trample before? Do you seriously expect me to use a 1.5 second cast time skill that randomly fires off down yonder unless I precisely aim to gain major savagery for 10 whole seconds?
Btw Elemental explosion doesn't have prophecy and savagery...

Long casting and execution times are simply catastrophic for PvP.

Trinotops · July 10

Part of the problem with Undeath on live is that the benefits just completely outweigh the drawbacks. There's basically no reason not to be a vampire in PvP.
Health recovery penalty? Worthless stat thanks to Battle Spirit, who cares.
Fire and Fighters Guild skill damage increase? Irrelevant compared to the overall survivability increase.
Sustain penalty? Probably the biggest drawback, but it still can easily be built around and is well worth the massive safety net that Undeath provides.
With the new change, everyone is just going to be stage 1 vamp instead of stage 3. Even with a lower value, Undeath is still worth it because the drawbacks to get it will be lesser as well.
Undeath needs to be changed so that people have to actually consider if they should be a vampire or not. You could even balance it without directly changing the amount of damage reduction it gives by moving it to stage 4 or lessening the health recovery penalty of Battle Spirit so that there is a worthwhile alternative.

StShoot · July 10

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

Yeah, it definitely did chief. 2% damage vs 12%. Our only damage ramp in our passive kit. We were entirely chained to frost staves. Crit from the daggers wasn't making up that gap, especially when you consider how strong the Master staff was with guaranteed chill. Also, it's 4%, not 6%. 8 + 4 = 12.

To your own logic, this new passive doesn't prevent you from using frost staves. It just means they're not the only viable option.

Really think about this in context. Trial groups require Major Berserk because 10% is a lot of damage. Trial groups require Major Vuln because 10% is a lot of damage. Trial groups require Major Slayer because 10% is a lot of damage.

However, when it comes to this passive, magically, 10% is negligible. This wasn't 10% to frost. This was 10% to everything. 10% to chilled, to shalks, to bear, to literally everything.

Tbh you are the one who always claims that froststaffs will still be viable in the next patch, yet you somehow always fail to see that the diffrence between dual wield and froststaffs is curently much closer than it will be in the next patch.
Moreover in another thread you said that you want other weapons to be competitive and that you dislike it to be forced to play a certain weapon and i understand that, yet with a competitive mindset you will always be forced to play a certain weapon, because there will always be that one weapon that does x% more dmg than the others.

For example there would have been a way to make other weapons viable without deleting froststaff wardens from the game by just raising the passive from 2% to 6% (or whatever was % needed) and let the weapon passive bridge the remaining gap.

Also ty i corrected that mistake, i dont know how that happened

Aces-High-82 · July 10

Firstmep wrote: »

Aces-High-82 wrote: »

Firstmep wrote: »

My thoughts so far:

Arcanist: Honestly good change, especially.for pvp. Finally arcanist will have to spend Crux on the offensive instead of just spamming shields ad nauseum.

Nb: i like them moving skills in the proper skill lines, but in was hoping it would be accompanied by some healthy downward adjustments to their burst dmg. No class wearing 3 proc sets should be hitting 12-15knburst with their skills on top.

Sorc: Hardened ward is the most complained about skill atm and instead of addressing it they gave sorcs max range shalks.

Templar: the one change to dark flare isnt going to make the skill usable. Lose the empower from this morph for a better buff or debuff. No heavy attack builds will use a cast time spammable when the other morph is a 22 sec duration aoe that deals passive damage.

Warden: Soft caps? Also, tanky 45k hp wardens sure needed the extra block mitigation.

Necro: you have given in class access to major buffs, but this only brings necro to where bad classes were like 5 years ago. We have arcanist, dk, nightblades and sorcs getting every buff under the sun just for slotting already powerful skill on any bar, and instead of doing that for necro you put their major buffs on offensive abilities. Ask templars how many of them use sun fire for the major prophecy.

Scribing: people asked for longer duration on major buffs, instead you nerf them all down to 10 sec.
Did you guys ever use trample before? Do you seriously expect me to use a 1.5 second cast time skill that randomly fires off down yonder unless I precisely aim to gain major savagery for 10 whole seconds?
Btw Elemental explosion doesn't have prophecy and savagery...

Ohh...Curse ist now applying 10k pen?

It does full aoe damage around the target.

Sorry but the good part about shalks is the pen you apply and the large area you cover.
How one compares it to Curse goes beyond my mind.

BananaBender · July 10

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

BananaBender wrote: »

Now it's a nice extra that you might notice after the fight if you look at your CMX, but other than that you don't see that reflected in your gameplay.

What? On a Stamden parse with DW/2h my chilled does 8-10k. How is that a "nice extra?" That's a massive chunk of damage.

It is good damage, but as I said previously it's no longer something you build around. You slot Winter's Revenge, Arctic Blast and a Frozen enchant and that's it.

What I'm trying to say is that previously your build was around the Chilled status effect and Warden was the only class in the game who could make a build relying on a status effect. And in my opinion that's what made them fun to play and unique. They didn't stand out with their performance, but the gameplay was different. Now you still do a good amount of damage with Chilled, but the gameplay is dead. Right now there is no reason apart from roleplay to use an ice staff on a Warden.

As @StShoot said previously, raising the buff from 2% to something like 6% would bring other weapons much closer, if not making DW still better, without completely removing the Ice mage theme from the game.

techprince · July 10

Please move Major Sorcery/Brutality buff from Jabs to some other skill for Templars. Or better yet, make it a slottble buff applicable from any bar. Tieing this buff to a spammable is problematic.

FuryOfTyphon · July 10

tonyaccount wrote: »

As a player who only plays one character(which is a necro) the necro changes are largely awesome and I'm happy with them. But now that we are at finally at fixing and it probably takes a while until it happens again, I would propose the following changes:

1. As others have mentioned, moving the Major Sorcery/Brutality from Skeletal Mage to Grave Lord's Sacrifice would make it more accessible for PvP without really having impact on PvE. Skeletal Mage is quite bad in PvP and necros desperately need the extra slot to be somewhat competitive.

2. Make the Major Sorcery/Brutality/Prophecy/Savagery work on both bars, allowing them to be slotted on backbar if necessary. Again a nice QOL change that adds a little bit of flexibility.

3. Give Necro a respectable CC. I would suggest Empowering Grasp stunning anything that it hits, up to a maximum of 2 players, prioritizing closer targets. It is quite difficult to line up against a distant target, but when used well would do a good job.

4. Make the Avid Boneyard morph purely selfish and buff its size from 6m to 8m. Change the synergy damage back to pre-nerf damage a few patches ago(slight buff), and change the tooltip to "You or an ally standing in the graveyard can activate the Grave Robber Synergy, dealing X Frost Damage to enemies in the area and healing for the damage done." This will be useful in both PvP and PvE, giving you a reliable burst synergy and a heal that others can't steal. A unique and fun interaction that the game needs more of.

5. Buff the Skeletal Mage to a viable state and make it attack the target your Blastbones/heavy attack targets. Since U35 this ability has just been low impact and necro could use a PvE damage buff. We are talking about pretty much doubling the damage of the mage, that's how bad this ability is.

Please consider doing these first two at the very least.
Having Major Sorcery/Brutality without having to slot an extra ability or use potions is a massive buff

Twohothardware wrote: »

tonyaccount wrote: »

As a player who only plays one character(which is a necro) the necro changes are largely awesome and I'm happy with them. But now that we are at finally and it probably takes a while I would propose the following changes:

1. As others have mentioned, moving the Major Sorcery/Brutality from Skeletal Mage to Grave Lord's Sacrifice would make it more accessible for PvP without really having impact on PvE. Skeletal Mage is quite bad in PvP and necros desperately need the extra slot to be somewhat competitive.

2. Make the Major Sorcery/Brutality/Prophecy/Savagery work on both bars, allowing them to be slotted on backbar if necessary. Again a nice QOL change that adds a little bit of flexibility.

3. Give Necro a respectable CC. I would suggest Empowering Grasp stunning anything that it hits, up to a maximum of 2 players, prioritizing closer targets. It is quite difficult to line up against a distant target, but when used well would do a good job.

4. Make the Avid Boneyard morph purely selfish and buff its size from 6m to 8m. Change the synergy damage back to pre-nerf damage a few patches ago(slight buff), and change the tooltip to "You or an ally standing in the graveyard can activate the Grave Robber Synergy, dealing X Frost Damage to enemies in the area and healing for the damage done." This will be useful in both PvP and PvE, giving you a reliable burst synergy and a heal that others can't steal. A unique and fun interaction that the game needs more of.

5. Buff the Skeletal Mage to a viable state and make it attack the target your Blastbones/heavy attack hits. Since U35 this ability has just been low impact and necro could use a PvE damage buff. This is the ability to buff.

All of these are solid recommendations.

For the last 5 years not a single person has been intentionally running Skeletal Mage on Necro in PvP so to tie the largest most important Major buff to that skill is not really helping the class. Skeletal Mage does next to no damage to players in PvP and is a wasted skill slot.

Put Major Brutality/Sorcery on a different widely used skill like Blastbones so that whether you’re in PvE or PvP your most important buff is on a skill everyone uses.

These guys get it.

If you really want to help the class, it needs to be viable for both PvP and PvE.
Putting the most important damage buff on a skill that only works in one half of the game makes little sense.

Throw us a bone here (pun intended) and attach this buff to Blastbones PLEASE

@ZOS_Kevin

Pevey · July 10

I did Vateshran last night, and it occurred to me that with the new warden passives, after next patch I would have to forego picking up the red health orbs to avoid lowering ALL my damage by 8%. Only class that would be hindered in that way. This makes no sense. And it would make the class even more complex and inaccessible with esoteric gotchas.

TDVM · July 10

According to ZOS necro should have the most debuffs to debuff his opponents, but at the moment necro doesn't look like he can really debuff anyone.

Let him have a minimum number of useful buffs for himself, but debuffs should be the most among all classes

What's worth changing:

Bone Armor - Change Minor Resolve to something else since Vigor already has Minor Resolve, for example Minor Vitality it will be useful for pve and pvp

Skeletal Mage - Remove Major Brutality and Sorcery and add Major Brutality and Sorcery passive if necromancer absorbs corpses for 10 sec, this will be balanced as Restoring Tether lasts 12 sec and Shocking Siphon 20 sec. Instead, give Minor Prophecy to Skeletal Mage. This will be good in conjunction with Shocking Siphon which will give Major Prophecy

At this point what's worth changing it for necro to start becoming what ZOS intended it to be.
With the other skills that were touched on in up43 it is not yet clear if they will be useful in certain situations

master_vanargand · July 10

Pevey wrote: »

I did Vateshran last night, and it occurred to me that with the new warden passives, after next patch I would have to forego picking up the red health orbs to avoid lowering ALL my damage by 8%. Only class that would be hindered in that way. This makes no sense. And it would make the class even more complex and inaccessible with esoteric gotchas.

Well, it may be inconvenient, but when I did the RTA, I ignored all the orbs.
Don't worry, there's no problem.

CameraBeardThePirate · July 10

TDVM wrote: »

Bone Armor - Change Minor Resolve to something else since Vigor already has Minor Resolve, for example Minor Vitality it will be useful for pve and pvp

Uh no. Keep Minor Resolve on Armor. Not being forced to run Vigor is one of the biggest buffs Necro is receiving this patch. Bar space is critical on Necro, and the actual heal from Vigor isn't necessary because you have a myriad of other great healing options.

akasha167 · July 10

Vampire Undeath passive nerf change is a horrible, horrible idea.

The drawback (fire damage, skill cost, health regen, etc.) was totally acceptable until now.

We're taking a different approach now, granting bonuses at a base line to remove its restrictiveness, while also reducing the power density so it is far less enabling for survivability.

Why ? Who stated that it was "restrictive", and too powerful ? Actually you're not removing the restrictiveness. You're just making it a stage 1 "bonus" because you nerfed something that didn't need to be nerfed.

Just being a stage 3 vampire was not the key to "enable" that survivability. If a character is already squishy, it will still be squishy even with a damage reduction up to 30% (which is also multiplicative, not additive). If you take a severe hit at full HP, you will take 100% damage from that hit anyway. And If you ever survive that initial attack, then you will start to take benefit from that gradual damage reduction.

In real situation, and again because it's multiplicative, 5-10% will mostly turn out to give no concrete bonus. You will just be a squishy character with stage 1 drawback (or whatever stage you're at). It's exactly the same issue for the necromancer 3% damage reduction passive, which practically gives nothing.

The damage reduction calculation needs a fix, not the vampire. And if you think being a vampire stage 3 in PvP is an issue (and I don't think it is), then please do work on a solution for PvP. Because Undeath passive is not an issue in PvE. Oh yes, now probably everyone in PvE will turn into vampire stage 1.

Pevey · July 10

master_vanargand wrote: »

Pevey wrote: »

I did Vateshran last night, and it occurred to me that with the new warden passives, after next patch I would have to forego picking up the red health orbs to avoid lowering ALL my damage by 8%. Only class that would be hindered in that way. This makes no sense. And it would make the class even more complex and inaccessible with esoteric gotchas.

Well, it may be inconvenient, but when I did the RTA, I ignored all the orbs.
Don't worry, there's no problem.

It's just bad design to have a feature built into an encounter that one class cannot avail themselves of without significantly reducing their damage. It takes a while for new players to even be aware of all of these things. Many will not even realize they are hindering themselves.