Yet Another Necromancer Thread

BasP · July 22

So I thought I'd wait until the week 3 patch notes before posting, hoping that the Necromancer would receive some more attention. But, alas, that wasn't the case. Please let me preface the rest of the post by saying that I:

Appreciate the attention and the buffs that the Necromancer has received in week 1
Don't know much about PVP, so I'll just stick to some PVE references in this comment
Know that the DPS on a Trial Dummy isn't everything, because other factors such as cleave and utility are important too

When it comes to high-end PvE, it seems like Necromancers aren't really better off than before. The only change is that they can more easily use Heroism Potions, but that was already an option in U42 as well if someone used, for example, Traveling Knife as a semi-spammable with the Major Prophecy/ Savagery Affix alongside Degeneration. In the hands of a good player the Necromancer apparently does around 133.6K DPS on a Trial Dummy in U43, which is pretty similar to (for example) this 134K parse from U42. And of course Blastbones was used in those parses - GLS users seem to do around 120K DPS, which is a pretty big difference.

Meanwhile, for example, Templars can do 139K DPS, the recently buffed Stamden can do 143K DPS and Sorcerers can even get to 150K DPS. Nefas also ranked the Necromancer somewhere in between A and B for Trials DPS recently, which isn't impressive. Hence, I think that it would be nice if the Necromancer would receive some more buffs. Considering that Necromancers are widely seen as the worst class for PvP (please correct me if I'm wrong), I'd say that any buffs should be useful for PvP instead of just PvE as well.

I suppose that an easy change to make would be to increase the damage done buff you gain by slotting Siphon, which might make that skill worth front barring in PvP too.
And/or individual skills could be tweaked, as countless of others have suggested before (such as giving Blighted Blastbones the modifier Stalking Blastbones used to have, increasing the damage the Skeletal Arcanist does etc.)
And/or an increase in Weapon & Spell Damage could be added to one of the passives, like Undead Confederate ("While you have a Sacrificial Bones, Skeletal Mage, or Spirit Mender active, your Health, Magicka, and Stamina Recovery is increased by 200 and your Weapon and Spell Damage is increased by 5%.")
Alternatively, the Necromancer could receive a second damage done buff just like Wardens. It could be added to a passive like Dismember ("While a Grave Lord ability is active, your Spell and Physical Penetration are increased by 1500 and your damage done is increased by 5%.") As Necromancers are far from OP in PvP, such a buff probably wouldn't even need to be tied to a certain Health threshold.
Or perhaps a Necromancer could have its Weapon and Spell Damage be increased by 100 for 15 seconds whenever it created a corpse, stacking up to 4 times. And when a Necromancer consumed a corpse while at 4 stacks, it could explode for X Disease Damage or something. (This isn't a serious idea by the way, as it'd be too much effort to implement. Might have been fun, though.)

StarOfElyon · July 22

There's so much they could have done. People have complained about the skulls being too slow, for example. I can literally watch someone in pvp pause and look at the venom skull flying their way and then casually dodge roll it. I'm trying to use the skills but they're so BAD. And we've literally been sitting here for years saying exactly how they can be made not-bad. Sigh. 😔

propertyOfUndefined · July 22

I think most necromancer players (myself included) were happy to get any sort of buff, as it feels like they've been neglected for years. This post isn't wrong though. Even with the buffs, the class is sadly lacking.

NuarBlack · July 23

The skills core functions need fixed now. Also more synergy with class passives.

As some have mentioned skulls needs to be made to feel better to weave and sped up.

The class needs a sticky dot to go with all the passives. The damage tethers should just apply to your target not to corpses. ZoS can make a half dozen sets with tethers like that just fine so necro should be fine with one built in.

Skele mage should just lightning staff heavy attack that way it benefits from the dot passives and also provide some AOE. Although I'd be fine without the AOE if it added some real single target dps that was viable in pve and pvp.

KingLewie_III · July 23

Ultimately, this class would be viable in both PVP and PVE if they just reverted all the changes they made to the class over the last 3 to 4 years.

We've seen Intensive Mender and Mortal Coil both get cut in half in terms of healing.

Mage and Archer which were already lackluster skills, had their tool tips reduced even more with the DOT changes, even though they don't qualify as DOT damage.

Stalking Blastbones doesn't even exist anymore and was replaced with a skill that under performs in comparison to Blighted Blastbones, which itself was under performing compared to Stalking.

The Harmony rework also crippled this class, and nothing was given to necromancer to cushion the extinction of it's only REAL burst combo. Would have been pretty easy to say "the Graverobber synergy is increased by X% if a corpse is consumed upon casting"... but instead they nerfed not only the synergy but the DOT portion of the ability as well. In its current state on the live server, it's a lesser version of Caltrops.

A few good changes were made over the years, like the reduction in cost for Class Ultimates, and what they did with Ruinous Scythe. But when compared to what other classes have received (Nightblade, Sorc, Warden, DK) it pales in comparison. And at least Templar had a solid run of being essentially unkillable by stacking Spell Damage before it got hit with the Nerf Hammer.

CameraBeardThePirate · July 23

At the end of the day, all these posts are pointless.

They'll spoonfeed us the same canned responses saying "Your feedback is important to us" but ultimately continue to implement changes that demonstrate the opposite.

alpha_synuclein · July 23

NuarBlack wrote: »

The skills core functions need fixed now.
The class needs a sticky dot to go with all the passives. The damage tethers should just apply to your target not to corpses. ZoS can make a half dozen sets with tethers like that just fine so necro should be fine with one built in.

Skele mage should just lightning staff heavy attack that way it benefits from the dot passives and also provide some AOE. Although I'd be fine without the AOE if it added some real single target dps that was viable in pve and pvp.

Yup. Class sticky DoT is a long overdue. And mage needs proper targeting AND better damage. Temporary summons that require recasting should be stronger than passive ones.

Tethers as they are now (ground based and need corpses) should do more damage than ground based AoEs that can be instantly repositioned. And much more than something so easy to use like arcanist beam...

marcel91x · July 23

@BasP

As you mentioned: The parse of Necro is around the 134k while Templar is on 139k and Warden + Arcanist are even slightly higher.

There is a easy less complicated fix to everything: What is an Necromancer? What makes an Necromancers special?

He/She raises the dead! Why not buff the Skeleton minion (archer+mage) by a 15-20% dmg bonus to tweak the dps sim numbers to hit between Templar and Warden in parse? If the Skeleton pet does 15-20% more dmg it becomes worth it for PvP too and to run it as this pet can be annoying when stuck on a player that you try to take down because it suddenly does good dmg. The skeleton pet does not enough dmg to use it in PvP sadly so people run another skill.

Just make the Skeleton pet (mage + archer) by like 15-20% stronger and all is good. It will contribute with each hit to your parse.

BasP · July 24

marcel91x wrote: »

@BasP

Why not buff the Skeleton minion (archer+mage) by a 15-20% dmg bonus to tweak the dps sim numbers to hit between Templar and Warden in parse? If the Skeleton pet does 15-20% more dmg it becomes worth it for PvP too and to run it as this pet can be annoying when stuck on a player that you try to take down because it suddenly does good dmg.

I definitely wouldn't be against a 20% buff to the Skeletal Mage instead of one of the generic damage done buffs I mentioned, seeing as just increasing the damage done is more of a bandaid fix that doesn't really promote using class skills.

Would it be enough to bring the Necromancer up to the Templar/ Stamden level? Math has never been my strong suit, but if we look at that 134,863 DPS parse, the Skeletal Archer dealt 6,455 DPS. If the skill would be buffed by 20%, it would deal 7,746 DPS instead and the parse would go up to 136,154 DPS (so in the end, the Necromancer's DPS would only be increased by 0.96%). 136K is nothing to sneeze at, of course, but it would still be well below some of the other parses I linked to.

So in that case, I'd say that Blighted Blastbones could be buffed as well. If BB would deal 10% more damage, for example, the DPS would be increased by another 2,100 and it would end up being a 138,254 DPS parse - almost equalling that Stamplar.

But considering that the Skeletal minion and Blastbones are both less reliable than, say, Power of the Light and Radiant Oppression (as the minion can attack random enemies instead of your preferred target and BB can bug out), I'd even go as far as saying that I wouldn't mind another small buff alongside the hypothetical 20% and 10% buffs that would have already been given.

StarOfElyon · July 27

BasP wrote: »

marcel91x wrote: »

@BasP

Why not buff the Skeleton minion (archer+mage) by a 15-20% dmg bonus to tweak the dps sim numbers to hit between Templar and Warden in parse? If the Skeleton pet does 15-20% more dmg it becomes worth it for PvP too and to run it as this pet can be annoying when stuck on a player that you try to take down because it suddenly does good dmg.

I definitely wouldn't be against a 20% buff to the Skeletal Mage instead of one of the generic damage done buffs I mentioned, seeing as just increasing the damage done is more of a bandaid fix that doesn't really promote using class skills.

Would it be enough to bring the Necromancer up to the Templar/ Stamden level? Math has never been my strong suit, but if we look at that 134,863 DPS parse, the Skeletal Archer dealt 6,455 DPS. If the skill would be buffed by 20%, it would deal 7,746 DPS instead and the parse would go up to 136,154 DPS (so in the end, the Necromancer's DPS would only be increased by 0.96%). 136K is nothing to sneeze at, of course, but it would still be well below some of the other parses I linked to.

So in that case, I'd say that Blighted Blastbones could be buffed as well. If BB would deal 10% more damage, for example, the DPS would be increased by another 2,100 and it would end up being a 138,254 DPS parse - almost equalling that Stamplar.

But considering that the Skeletal minion and Blastbones are both less reliable than, say, Power of the Light and Radiant Oppression (as the minion can attack random enemies instead of your preferred target and BB can bug out), I'd even go as far as saying that I wouldn't mind another small buff alongside the hypothetical 20% and 10% buffs that would have already been given.

Oh yeah I love seeing blastbones take off in the wrong direction.

Alaztor91 · July 28

Skeletal Mage could have its damage buffed by 50%(to dial back the stealth nerf it received a while ago) and the skill still wouldn't be OP.

ZOS seems to live in a world where Blastbones never gets crowd controlled/bugs out, where enemies never move away from your Siphon, where Skeletal Mage always attacks the target you want, and where you can hit targets with all 3 areas of Ghostly Embrace.

techprince · July 28

Modify rapid rot passive to allow it to buff summons damage. This will make up for the loss of damage from stalking blastbones.

Turtle_Bot · July 28

techprince wrote: »

Modify rapid rot passive to allow it to buff summons damage. This will make up for the loss of damage from stalking blastbones.

This should have been done ages ago (or at least have mage/archer also count as DoTs to work with this passive, especially since they got nerfed like DoTs back in U35).

CameraBeardThePirate · July 29

Alaztor91 wrote: »

Skeletal Mage could have its damage buffed by 50%(to dial back the stealth nerf it received a while ago) and the skill still wouldn't be OP.

ZOS seems to live in a world where Blastbones never gets crowd controlled/bugs out, where enemies never move away from your Siphon, where Skeletal Mage always attacks the target you want, and where you can hit targets with all 3 areas of Ghostly Embrace.

It's because they do all their balancing via a spreadsheet and dummy humping.

Not a single person that plays necro in actual content would try out Grave Grasp and say "you know this skill is cool but needs to do damage, that would definitely make it a good skill because the issue certainly isnt with the entire design of the skill!"

Runefang · July 30

For a class to be viable in PvE cleave damage is king so dummy numbers are all but irrelevant. You need to have good enough single target numbers while achieving the cleave damage required.

DKs and Arcanists are by far the best classes in that regard, Templars are not too far behind with Necros in 4th place. Sorcs, Wardens and NBs are left in the dust.

Tiphis · July 30

StarOfElyon wrote: »

There's so much they could have done. People have complained about the skulls being too slow, for example. I can literally watch someone in pvp pause and look at the venom skull flying their way and then casually dodge roll it. I'm trying to use the skills but they're so BAD. And we've literally been sitting here for years saying exactly how they can be made not-bad. Sigh. 😔

They paused in surprise because in pvp you only see skulls about once a month if that. Frankly I'm not 100% sure when the last time I saw one was.

They should've made one of the skull morphs a psuedo-melee spammable very similar to dk's stone giant. It would check a box for cc too as necros don't have particularly good options and bar space is limited. Heck go basically the same as stone giant and during the initial ground pound thing have it make the next BB instantly form. It would only happen every 4th cast of the skull stone giant skill just like it does on the actual stone giant skill so wouldn't be constant.

Zezin · July 30

Runefang wrote: »

For a class to be viable in PvE cleave damage is king so dummy numbers are all but irrelevant. You need to have good enough single target numbers while achieving the cleave damage required.

DKs and Arcanists are by far the best classes in that regard, Templars are not too far behind with Necros in 4th place. Sorcs, Wardens and NBs are left in the dust.

Sorcs are doing alright, even more so now with the new buffs, I do agree on Wardens and NBs being lacking tho, all of this was a consequence of U35 making dots so much weaker.

NuarBlack · July 30

Tiphis wrote: »

They should've made one of the skull morphs a psuedo-melee spammable very similar to dk's stone giant. It would check a box for cc too as necros don't have particularly good options and bar space is limited. Heck go basically the same as stone giant and during the initial ground pound thing have it make the next BB instantly form. It would only happen every 4th cast of the skull stone giant skill just like it does on the actual stone giant skill so wouldn't be constant.

I like this idea. Only thing I'd change is that instead of applying the stagger mechanic debuff and homogenizing classes more you let DK have that and instead give it a unique stacking DOT like hemorrhage so necro has something that has synergy with the rest of its kit. Plus, I think necro needs direct solo help and group utility if needed can be added elsewhere.

xDeusEJRx · July 30

I definitely believe they could do a lot more for necro but I'm also of the belief that Necro would've never gotten any buffs period.
I think ZOS typically favors whatever the most recent monetizable chapter is (which in this case it's Gold road's scribing and Arcanist) so they'd focus all resources into bettering that, so Necromancer would never see any updates. However I'm glad they got something rather than nothing.

Also I like that the changes aren't extremely gamechanging either, because let's be honest, no one wants to see any class get the Nightblade treatment getting both offense and defense overtuned to hell.
I mean it might be fun for a little bit to see an OP Necromancer after being trash-tier for a bit but I'd rather small incremental buffs than the game itself being turned on it's head and everyone in the game re-rolling to Necro.

More than anything I want Necromancer to be playable and not in a nonfunctional state that it currently is where all the skills and passives feel like they were randomly generated.

TDVM · July 30

They can't hear us, and I remind them that Necromancer is a purchasable class.

Horny_Poney · August 1

For the necro healer this is just a giant nerf. Again.

All the new buffs don’t apply to healers. After all the previous nerfs, the only thing that left to healers was one of the best ult regen. And now it’s gone, which means the necro healer as absolutely no purposes anymore, it’s totally useless. This is not what would people expect of a paid class.

BasP · August 1

techprince wrote: »

Modify rapid rot passive to allow it to buff summons damage. This will make up for the loss of damage from stalking blastbones.

That would definitely be a nice starting point, though I wouldn't be opposed to a separate buff to Skeletal Mage as well.

I mean, I'd say that Dark Shade functions pretty similar to the Skeletal Mage and that skill deals 623 damage every two seconds in an 8m radius, compared to the 478 damage the Skeletal Arcanist deals in an 5m radius (so the base damage is 30.3% higher, which isn't insignificant). Considering that SA will grant a Major Buff now, dealing a bit less damage might be warranted, but it wouldn't need to be 30% less.

Which brings me to Flames of Oblivion, a skill that also grants a Major Buff, deals direct damage to multiple targets and lasts a while, just like the Skeletal Arcanist. FoO, however, apparently has a 15m radius and deals 1799 damage every 5 seconds (which I believe comes down to 50.5% more damage per second than the Skeletal Arcanist). Not to mention that the Major Buff from FoO is granted passively while the skill is slotted on either bar, which is a nice QoL thing.

Considering ZOS is sometimes 'accused' of spreadsheet balancing, I don't really get why the Skeletal Arcanist deals significantly less damage than the abovementioned skills and also has a smaller radius. If anything, I'd say that the damage Arcanist (and Dark Shade) deal should be closer to FoO, while the DPS from the single target morph Skeletal Archer should surpass FoO.

forum_propagandist · September 25

comeon zos necromancer needs some love

OtarTheMad · September 25

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Alaztor91 wrote: »

Skeletal Mage could have its damage buffed by 50%(to dial back the stealth nerf it received a while ago) and the skill still wouldn't be OP.

ZOS seems to live in a world where Blastbones never gets crowd controlled/bugs out, where enemies never move away from your Siphon, where Skeletal Mage always attacks the target you want, and where you can hit targets with all 3 areas of Ghostly Embrace.

It's because they do all their balancing via a spreadsheet and dummy humping.

Not a single person that plays necro in actual content would try out Grave Grasp and say "you know this skill is cool but needs to do damage, that would definitely make it a good skill because the issue certainly isnt with the entire design of the skill!"

To be fair, I've been saying they need to put damage on either Grave Grasp or the other morph because Necro needs damage outside of the damage skill line but I have also been saying the skill itself should also change with it cuz it's slow.

I don't know what is going on with Necro, I have been playing since beta and I have never seen a class so underwhelming for so long. We Necros have basically been saying the same stuff since 2020.

necro_the_crafter · September 25

If gravegrasp was made into a 1 patch, that has a circular area with diametr of 6m or more, that is AoE targetable, instant cast, deals 75% of standart AoE Damage or more, applies DoT, root and creates a corpse, it would become a key ability that necros was looking for all of that time. It would allow necros to setup for blighted and corpsebuster, as well as for any ulti followup like dawnbreaker, rend, collossus. It would grant acsess to a sticky DoT. It would generate a corpse in the area you want it to be.

But, instead we had all of cc removed, which removed all of real combat scenario use, and its just another dummy parsing abilty.

And I want to point out that scribing skills would be better to achive the same as the gravegrasp trying to do:
First cast:

Prebuff wiith this, will deal damage, apply a snare and enervation thats way better for PvP than maim.

After a GCD cast this, roots + creates a corpse as well as gives minor courage.
And it will hit everyone the radius around and effects would be applied to everyone. It will cost yoou more mana, but you will get all the effects you want 100% of the times you use this. and all of this takes 2 gcd to execute, one to prebuff contigensy and second to release a burst. And all the effects will be proced in 1 gcd.

While gravegrasp takes 1 gcd to cast and 0.666 sec to fully come to the effect. And then comes imposibility to hit all 3 at static targets so we are looking at 66% effectivness against static enemies. And enemies that are moving have to follow specific pattern, or get cornered in order to get hit by all 3 which is happens less often then people avoiding whole thing after get hit with 1 patch or even aviod it entierly. Which puts this ability on average 33-66%(~45%) effectivness of what stated in the tooltip, if we aint counting times its gets completly avoided or when you have yours target cornered, but if we do, then times that ability doesnt hit anything heavily outweights amount of times you able to score 3/3.

Urvoth · September 25

Grave Lord's Sacrifice is still severely lacking and isn't really a viable option in most cases. It's still not an insta-buff and the class still just lacks too much base damage to make a 15% boost that useful. Most of the offensive skills are just so slow and clunky too. Grave Grasp getting a sticky dot is nice but it's difficult to even land on people in pvp due to the gimmicky circle mechanic and how insanely slow it is. It's basically a cast time skill in terms of how bad the delay is before hitting anything.

Navaac223 · September 25

While we're at it, why is blighted blastbones affected by negate? There is no good reason for it since it costs stamina and it basically disables your only source of burst for 10 sec for the duration of the negate since the blastbones stays in the area. Remember that mage guards in cyrodiil always cast these..

Alaztor91 · September 25

Navaac223 wrote: »

While we're at it, why is blighted blastbones affected by negate? There is no good reason for it since it costs stamina and it basically disables your only source of burst for 10 sec for the duration of the negate since the blastbones stays in the area. Remember that mage guards in cyrodiil always cast these..

The game treats the BB skeleton as an NPC and that is why Negate stuns it instead of silencing it(can you even Silence NPCs?). ZOS obviously doesn't care or they would change the BB skeleton to behave more like the Skeletal Mage one. Another similar skill, but with superior design, like Scorch from Wardens is not treated as an NPC by the game, it just works as an extension of your character like most other skills in the game, but with a ''summon creature animation''.

This has been a problem with BB since Necro release back in 2019 btw, but there were not that many PvE encounters with Negate before IA so people are noticing it more.

YandereGirlfriend · September 25

Navaac223 wrote: »

While we're at it, why is blighted blastbones affected by negate? There is no good reason for it since it costs stamina and it basically disables your only source of burst for 10 sec for the duration of the negate since the blastbones stays in the area. Remember that mage guards in cyrodiil always cast these..

I would take this one step farther and ask why is Blastbones affected by CC at all?

Last I checked, non-permanent pets aren't affected by CC. Blastbones is the strange exception.