Necromancer feels incomplete

mr1sho

I just can't put my finger on it but I feel this class lack something I switched back and forth with my necromancer and my dragon knights I can go toe to toe with my dks but Everytime I'm on my necro Im just getting the works done to me the skills feel clunky and even with best and slot gear eTc I feel like the necro lacks the power I don't know maybe it's just me

I feel like the necro pets should function like sorcs and necro bos missing passives buffs how are you guys playing with necro ATM?

OsUfi

mr1sho wrote: »

I feel like the necro pets should function like sorcs and necro bos missing passives buffs how are you guys playing with necro ATM?

Good god, no. We have just had the pets buffed. If they were to act like sorc pets they would be nerfed into the ground. The absolute last thing necros need is a re-nerfing after our recent buffing.

As for how I play my necro, it's all I play, and I love her. She can tank, heal and DPS with ease. I like the Blastbones every 3rd cast/heavy attack rhythm. Corpse mechanic is fun. Feels a little bit different from the other classes, despite the homogenizing blandification of everything with the hybrid updates.

ESO necros are awesome.

TDVM

Necromancer at the moment is a class with no future, it's getting either minimal improvements or bad ones. Recently they changed the magical skeleton bomber, so it is not even used in pve because it has become useless. And that's not to mention pvp where this class is completely dead and only those who don't know about class balance (i.e. very few) play it.

OtarTheMad

Necromancer is really in a tough spot because:

- main burst got changed into a self buff, which is broken atm and the other morph which remains burst isn’t as strong
- Class has a DoT damage passive with no sticky dots so that’s fairly useless
- Siphon, graveyard are easily avoidable, although the change to Grave was good
- Did they ever fix Fear totem where it doesn’t fear after 2 seconds? I don’t use it but if so that’s unslottable
- Main spammable is slow and very easy to dodge.

I could go on but you get it. It’s the one class where you must go outside the class in order to get some things. Even with the sorcery and brutality buffs added would you rather take broken, low damage abilities over fairly solid passives you get with MG and/FG PLUS a sticky dot. I don’t, doesn’t matter that Entropy isn’t meta damage… it’s pressure I need for PvP and other game modes.

You combo that MG ability with some of the new Soul Magic scribing abilities, turn those into dots with that Oblivion damage choice… add some fun and you got an okay Necromancer. However, going outside the class for abilities that suit the class should be an option not a must.

LukosCreyden

Changing the rubbish stamina morph of blastbones so that it has a sticky DoT would be cool. Getting rid of the horrendous new self buff would be great but we know that criticism of new class changes are not welcome (templar, NB).

Necromancer is the epitome of squandered potential and a failure of class design.

C_Inside

Necro also feel incomplete because many of its skills are buggy and don't function correctly. From Blastbones just standing there for no reason, to tethers breaking on the smallest incline, to a new one I just found today. The new Ghostly Embrace iteration doesn't do any bonus damage when landing a crit. I already posted a bug report you can find here if you want more details + screenshots https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/664534/ghostly-embrace-doesnt-do-bonus-critical-damage#latest

It's just baffling to me that every time they change the functionality of a necro skill specifically they half-ass it completely. No other class gets this treatment.

MJallday

C_Inside wrote: »

Necro also feel incomplete because many of its skills are buggy and don't function correctly. From Blastbones just standing there for no reason, to tethers breaking on the smallest incline, to a new one I just found today. The new Ghostly Embrace iteration doesn't do any bonus damage when landing a crit. I already posted a bug report you can find here if you want more details + screenshots https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/664534/ghostly-embrace-doesnt-do-bonus-critical-damage#latest

It's just baffling to me that every time they change the functionality of a necro skill specifically they half-ass it completely. No other class gets this treatment.

Templar’s disagree

Useless spamables that hit with all the ferocity of a wet peice of spaghetti and an execute thats only viable after 90% of health has gone

NoireJin the Witchking

OsUfi wrote: »

mr1sho wrote: »

I feel like the necro pets should function like sorcs and necro bos missing passives buffs how are you guys playing with necro ATM?

Good god, no. We have just had the pets buffed. If they were to act like sorc pets they would be nerfed into the ground. The absolute last thing necros need is a re-nerfing after our recent buffing.

As for how I play my necro, it's all I play, and I love her. She can tank, heal and DPS with ease. I like the Blastbones every 3rd cast/heavy attack rhythm. Corpse mechanic is fun. Feels a little bit different from the other classes, despite the homogenizing blandification of everything with the hybrid updates.

ESO necros are awesome.

Im glad you are enjoying the class and it works for you but the numbers and the average necro player sentiment would indicate that on the whole necros leave a lot to be desired. I am like you, i love Necros and i tried other classes but the fantasy never stuck. However the overall player experience both in my opinion and others give credance to necros feeling super clunky and without rythm. Sure you can do your heavy attack and blast bones combo with 80k dps on a one build setup but that then relegates you to a heavy attack build with a 2.5 second delayed skill. it doesnt speak to how the class /feels/

For example, arcanist have a nice rythm, build 3 cruxes and get your benefits to your damage with the bonus of cool effects. With Necro, there isnt a cadence. You have to focus on corpses which for the most part is super hard to see when bunch of skills are flying around and then your dots/healing are dependent on limited time corpses all the while you're trying to lock in your main burst ability which is a delayed one, leaving dungeon mob expereinces quite boring as by the time blastbone activates most mobs are dead. The class just feels clunky in most competetive enviroments.

The main thing is when every other class has instant damage abilities available to them, and when necros have so many skills which are delayed or dependant it seems quite contrasted. If everyone else were on the same playing field with skill cadence then yeah, necros would be fine. But that is objectively just not the case. Its less to do when how necros are and more to do with where they land in the overall arch of every other class and their access to damage and cadence. its like comparing slang to iambic pentameter. fast and accessable > slow and delayed.

mr1sho

NoireJin the Witchking wrote: »

OsUfi wrote: »

mr1sho wrote: »

I feel like the necro pets should function like sorcs and necro bos missing passives buffs how are you guys playing with necro ATM?

Good god, no. We have just had the pets buffed. If they were to act like sorc pets they would be nerfed into the ground. The absolute last thing necros need is a re-nerfing after our recent buffing.

As for how I play my necro, it's all I play, and I love her. She can tank, heal and DPS with ease. I like the Blastbones every 3rd cast/heavy attack rhythm. Corpse mechanic is fun. Feels a little bit different from the other classes, despite the homogenizing blandification of everything with the hybrid updates.

ESO necros are awesome.

Im glad you are enjoying the class and it works for you but the numbers and the average necro player sentiment would indicate that on the whole necros leave a lot to be desired. I am like you, i love Necros and i tried other classes but the fantasy never stuck. However the overall player experience both in my opinion and others give credance to necros feeling super clunky and without rythm. Sure you can do your heavy attack and blast bones combo with 80k dps on a one build setup but that then relegates you to a heavy attack build with a 2.5 second delayed skill. it doesnt speak to how the class /feels/

For example, arcanist have a nice rythm, build 3 cruxes and get your benefits to your damage with the bonus of cool effects. With Necro, there isnt a cadence. You have to focus on corpses which for the most part is super hard to see when bunch of skills are flying around and then your dots/healing are dependent on limited time corpses all the while you're trying to lock in your main burst ability which is a delayed one, leaving dungeon mob expereinces quite boring as by the time blastbone activates most mobs are dead. The class just feels clunky in most competetive enviroments.

The main thing is when every other class has instant damage abilities available to them, and when necros have so many skills which are delayed or dependant it seems quite contrasted. If everyone else were on the same playing field with skill cadence then yeah, necros would be fine. But that is objectively just not the case. Its less to do when how necros are and more to do with where they land in the overall arch of every other class and their access to damage and cadence. its like comparing slang to iambic pentameter. fast and accessable > slow and delayed.

The skill delays makes no sense to me either no other class has so much delays

DTLight

IMO, Necro used to feel absolutely great and it just worked pretty well. It was OP at times, but instead of small fixes to help fix that, they just kind of... hit it with a big hammer and [snip] it up a lot instead. Really silly

[edited for profanity bypass]

StarOfElyon

You can make a Necro work if you don't use Necro skills. But whatever you can do on a Necro, you can do better on another class.

StarOfElyon wrote: »

We got some buffs but we also got a restriction out on corpse creation. Now we can no longer create corpses outside of combat, meaning no mortal coil for me if I'm standing on a flag or guarding a relic waiting for a nightblade to try to gank me. SMH. All I can do is sigh. It seems like only certain classes are given riches to make life easier but necromancer's must always pay a price to get anything at all.

Anyway, I adjusted some of my ideas now that some of them are not relevant anymore:

This is an updated version of my Necro ideas thread from 2023 (https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/633137/suggestions-for-necromancer-changes) with adjustments accounting for the Update 43 patch notes.

One thing that ZOS has been doing lately, especially with the Arcanist class, is making skills require less micromanagement and loading them with multiple functions:

Cephaliarch's Flail:
Infuse your arm with abyssal magic to form tentacles that lash out at your foes dealing 1939 Physical Damage, healing yourself for 969, and generating Crux. Enemies are immobilized for 3 seconds and marked with Abyssal Ink for 20 seconds. You deal 5% increased damage to enemies drenched in Abyssal Ink.

Tome-Bearer's Inspiration:
Etch a series of runes onto your weapon that pulse with power once every 5 seconds. Each pulse enhances your class abilities, and striking an enemy with one deals an additional 1161 Magic Damage and generates Crux if you have none. While slotted on either ability bar, gain Major Brutality and Major Sorcery, increasing your Weapon and Spell Damage by 20%.

My first suggestion is to give Necromancers the same treatment. My suggestions for skills follow.

Blighted Blastbones: cost determined by the highest resource.
(I have mourned the loss of Stalking Blastbones and I have accepted that fact that I'm just going to have to change my Necro)

Death Scythe: (both morphs)
Deals more damage based on the enemy's missing health. Cost determined by the highest resource.
- Hungry Scythe: should also apply life steal to all enemies hit, in addition to healing the caster over time.

Shocking Siphon: The AOE should remain on the ground even if the tether breaks early. (Increase the radius size too)
- Mystic Siphon: the increased Health, Magicka, and Stamina Recovery persists even if the tether breaks early.

Flame Skull:
- Riccochet Skull/Venom Skull: applies burning/poisoned status effects. (Increase travel speed)

Bone Totem: summons an effigy of bones up to 28 meters away. After 1 second, the totem begins fearing nearby enemies every 2 seconds, causing them to cower in place for 4 seconds. (Changed to allow both morphs to be targeted)
- Warding Totem: (Formerly Remote Totem) grants minor protection when standing in the area of effect.
- Agony Totem: afflicts enemies in the area of effect with minor cowardice.

Restoring Tether: the effects persist on the player character even if the tether breaks early.

Render Flesh:
- Resistant Flesh: (remains unchanged)
- Blood Sacrifice: consumes a corpse to grant you Major Courage (or Major Berserk) for 10 seconds.

Expunge: reduces the cost of all your abilities by 3% while slotted on either bar.

Bitter Harvest: when slotted on either bar, reduces your damage taken by 3%.

Boneyard increase the radius to 8 meters.


ULTIMATES:
Frozen Colossus: Unleash a decayed Flesh Colossus to pulverize enemies in the area. The Colossus smashes the ground three times over 3 seconds. Dealing damage applies Major Vulnerability to any enemy hit for 12 seconds.
- Glacial Colossus: does frost damage and stuns enemies on the second hit instead of the third.
- Pestilent Colossus: smashes the ground only once and does disease damage. Afflicts enemies with a pestilence that does damage over time.

Animate Blastbones: instead of resurrecting allies, this ultimate summons up to three blastbones to attack the nearest opponent. Reduce the cost of this ultimate to 200, down from 320, to make it more usable.

Urzigurumash

StarOfElyon wrote: »

You can make a Necro work if you don't use Necro skills. But whatever you can do on a Necro, you can do better on another class.

StarOfElyon wrote: »

We got some buffs but we also got a restriction out on corpse creation. Now we can no longer create corpses outside of combat, meaning no mortal coil for me if I'm standing on a flag or guarding a relic waiting for a nightblade to try to gank me. SMH. All I can do is sigh. It seems like only certain classes are given riches to make life easier but necromancer's must always pay a price to get anything at all.

Anyway, I adjusted some of my ideas now that some of them are not relevant anymore:

This is an updated version of my Necro ideas thread from 2023 (https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/633137/suggestions-for-necromancer-changes) with adjustments accounting for the Update 43 patch notes.

One thing that ZOS has been doing lately, especially with the Arcanist class, is making skills require less micromanagement and loading them with multiple functions:

Cephaliarch's Flail:
Infuse your arm with abyssal magic to form tentacles that lash out at your foes dealing 1939 Physical Damage, healing yourself for 969, and generating Crux. Enemies are immobilized for 3 seconds and marked with Abyssal Ink for 20 seconds. You deal 5% increased damage to enemies drenched in Abyssal Ink.

Tome-Bearer's Inspiration:
Etch a series of runes onto your weapon that pulse with power once every 5 seconds. Each pulse enhances your class abilities, and striking an enemy with one deals an additional 1161 Magic Damage and generates Crux if you have none. While slotted on either ability bar, gain Major Brutality and Major Sorcery, increasing your Weapon and Spell Damage by 20%.

My first suggestion is to give Necromancers the same treatment. My suggestions for skills follow.

Blighted Blastbones: cost determined by the highest resource.
(I have mourned the loss of Stalking Blastbones and I have accepted that fact that I'm just going to have to change my Necro)

Death Scythe: (both morphs)
Deals more damage based on the enemy's missing health. Cost determined by the highest resource.
- Hungry Scythe: should also apply life steal to all enemies hit, in addition to healing the caster over time.

Shocking Siphon: The AOE should remain on the ground even if the tether breaks early. (Increase the radius size too)
- Mystic Siphon: the increased Health, Magicka, and Stamina Recovery persists even if the tether breaks early.

Flame Skull:
- Riccochet Skull/Venom Skull: applies burning/poisoned status effects. (Increase travel speed)

Bone Totem: summons an effigy of bones up to 28 meters away. After 1 second, the totem begins fearing nearby enemies every 2 seconds, causing them to cower in place for 4 seconds. (Changed to allow both morphs to be targeted)
- Warding Totem: (Formerly Remote Totem) grants minor protection when standing in the area of effect.
- Agony Totem: afflicts enemies in the area of effect with minor cowardice.

Restoring Tether: the effects persist on the player character even if the tether breaks early.

Render Flesh:
- Resistant Flesh: (remains unchanged)
- Blood Sacrifice: consumes a corpse to grant you Major Courage (or Major Berserk) for 10 seconds.

Expunge: reduces the cost of all your abilities by 3% while slotted on either bar.

Bitter Harvest: when slotted on either bar, reduces your damage taken by 3%.

Boneyard increase the radius to 8 meters.


ULTIMATES:
Frozen Colossus: Unleash a decayed Flesh Colossus to pulverize enemies in the area. The Colossus smashes the ground three times over 3 seconds. Dealing damage applies Major Vulnerability to any enemy hit for 12 seconds.
- Glacial Colossus: does frost damage and stuns enemies on the second hit instead of the third.
- Pestilent Colossus: smashes the ground only once and does disease damage. Afflicts enemies with a pestilence that does damage over time.

Animate Blastbones: instead of resurrecting allies, this ultimate summons up to three blastbones to attack the nearest opponent. Reduce the cost of this ultimate to 200, down from 320, to make it more usable.

Can you? When was the last time you saw somebody competively brawling on the class on our server? Tanking yes, VD delivery yes, but when I see some of the better players taking a spin at it they're not even defeating mid tier players on mid tier classes (like me).

Urzigurumash

DTLight wrote: »

IMO, Necro used to feel absolutely great and it just worked pretty well. It was OP at times, but instead of small fixes to help fix that, they just kind of... hit it with a big hammer and [snip] it up a lot instead. Really silly

True for its strongest ever role as Magicka AoE obviously. True for my old preferred use as a Stamina DoT conveyer. Somewhat true for the Magicka Duelist that was quite strong for some time. (Graverobber + DoT passive nerf, change to status effect + proc interaction)

But for the Stamina D Swing Brawler that was so popular, I can't think of a specific nerf other than Intensive Mender, and the HOT Frequency change to Tether.

StamSorc and to a lesser extent StamDen are still really strong D Swing Brawlers, so it's not the playstyle itself.

Did I overlook something? I think in some thread or another people get into what I'm getting at - there's been some global changes which did a number on Necro.

[edited to remove quote]

Alaztor91

-Offensive burst skill that relies on NPC pathing AI and is also vulnerable to CC and LoS. ✓
-Glorified ground DoT that relies on Corpse placement and also breaks on LoS. ✓
-Spammable with an awfully slow projectile travel time. ✓
-Offensive summon with pitiful damage that you can't even command. ✓
-Grave Grasp and morphs. Do I really have to comment on this one? ✓
-No reliable CC. They are either delayed, impossible to aim or a proc that you can't really control. ✓

Clunky skills? Yeah, you are not wrong there.

LamiaCritter

Me just sitting here, hating Necromancer, because the Necromancer class does not give me the literal army of the dead that was advertised to me in the initial ads, skill advisor and such...

And somehow, for some gods forsaken reason, the IA Lich transformation is bizarrely, a better necromancer than the class literally dedicated to the black arts. I still absolutely seethe at this notion.
When I think necromancer I think 'army of the endless dead' and multiple skeletons mauling and swarming my enemies.

Not.. *Checks notes*

... a barely noticeable DPS ability, poorly reskinned as a so-called "summon" that barely even lasts .... what... 15 seconds?
And a meager little ghost whose healing I barely ever notice????????


ZOS what gives? When will my Necromancer actually feel like a necromancer? ;_;

mr1sho

LamiaCritter wrote: »

Me just sitting here, hating Necromancer, because the Necromancer class does not give me the literal army of the dead that was advertised to me in the initial ads, skill advisor and such...

And somehow, for some gods forsaken reason, the IA Lich transformation is bizarrely, a better necromancer than the class literally dedicated to the black arts. I still absolutely seethe at this notion.
When I think necromancer I think 'army of the endless dead' and multiple skeletons mauling and swarming my enemies.

Not.. *Checks notes*

... a barely noticeable DPS ability, poorly reskinned as a so-called "summon" that barely even lasts .... what... 15 seconds?
And a meager little ghost whose healing I barely ever notice????????


ZOS what gives? When will my Necromancer actually feel like a necromancer? ;_;

Agree necromancer should command more dead pets if they revamp the class skills in the future hopefully they will give us toggle pets

Anumaril

I understand the sentiment, but disagree that necro pets should function like sorc pets.

It fits into the class fantasy that necro pets are temporary (corpses decay, after all). So that's not a huge problem to me, but rather that the pets we do have deal next to no damage (skeletal mage/archer), or if they do deal damage (blastbones) they can hardly be called pets at all because they insta-die as soon as they're summoned.

Layer on top of that the fact that you're never truly raising the dead, as it were. You don't summon these minions from corpses, you just open a portal and spawn them.

So the solution in my eyes is to lean into the whole "temporary pets" thing and add one or two more temporary minion summons (melee, etc) that actually do damage, with an empower spell alongside it so you can focus on buffing them in combat, increase their speed, etc, and then resummon them when their timer goes off. And summoning should be contingent on having a corpse nearby to summon FROM, balanced of course by increasing corpse generation from other necro spells (or even having minions leave corpses of their own, so you can infinitely re-raise them).

Stafford197

Biggest part IMO is the feeling of the class.

I’ve never seen a “Necromancer” class that plays so little like a Necromancer. We can’t even raise the dead!!!!

ESO homogenized all classes and Necromancer had it the worst. Nearly every skill is a copy from another skill line.

Flame Skull - Typical spammable but worse
Blastbones - Typical delayed burst like Scorch but it requires a target, and is disguised as a weird exploding skeleton
Graveyard - Typical class AoE DoT
Skeletal Mage - Typical boring DoT, and is disguised as a summon with no special behavior
Shocking Siphon - Unique Ability, viable but trash in PvP
Colossus Ult - Unique Ability and viable

Death Scythe - Unique Ability and viable
Bone Armor - Typical class Major Resolve ability
Bitter Harvest - Unique Ability and viable
Bone Totem - Trash Ability that also makes no sense for a Necro to have, should be totally reworked
Grave Grasp - Unique Ability but trash, needs rework
Goliath Ult - Unique Ability and viable

Render Flesh - Typical class Ranged burst heal
Expunge - Unique Ability and viable
Life amid Death - Typical class AoE HoT, also is trash and makes no sense thematically for how it heals.
Spirit Mender - Typical boring HoT, and disguised as a summon with no special behavior
Restoring Tether - Unique Ability, viable but garbage in PvP
Reanimation Ult - Unique Ability, but wasted chance to have an AoE “Raise Undead” type of morph

Can all of this can be fixed? Yes, very easily.
Will it ever be fixed? Of course not.

And so then you have a class where most of its abilities are extraordinarily uninspired copies of other class abilities, as well as often buggy, clunky, and ineffective. Necromancer is the most unique class thematically in most games that have them, but in this case it’s so uninspired that it’s more like a Dark Mage caster kind of class with some gimmicky stuff like throwing around gravestones and covering yourself in bones.

Deimus

Well that's because the class is incomplete. When the class released it was clunky, but it worked. All the nerfs took a lot away from the class including the two best sources of damage (Graverobber was obliterated and Stalking BB was removed) and left us with the clunk without giving anything equivalent to make up for what was lost. This recent patch is the most positive attention the class has received from zos since it was released. Kudos to them for moving in the correct direction, but don't pack your bags because the job isn't done.

GLS still isn't going to cut it. Turn it into a sticky DoT or keep the buff and add an interaction with corpses consumed during the buff's duration to raising stalking spectres or mini blastbones that attack your target creating a more reliable offensive use of the corpse mechanic. This move can't just be a pure buff it needs a damage component to it.

If it's going to be a pure buff the value needs to be higher than even the 20% it had on the PTS otherwise it's just a waste of what was the best damage skill the class had. GLS<Blighted BB<Stalking BB if GLS isn't at least equivalent to Stalking BB then it's an unfinished skill or a failure.

The slow Flame Skull issue can be fixed by making it undodgable it's a necrotic skull let it act like a homing missile cackling as it chases its target.

Tethers should not break on LoS this is a very movement intensive game, and it is the closest thing we currently have to a sticky DoT

Skeletal Minion needs a 20-30% damage buff it's our only real offensive minion that sticks around and makes us feel like a Necromancer so it should be more impactful in the damage it deals.

Bone Totem should fear instantly the rest of the skill is good let it be the reliable on command stun the class desperately needs.

During the PTS I wasn't too fond of the Ghostly Embrace change, but it's been growing on me. It still isn't a reliable stun, but it has its uses in PvP.