Necropotence was designed with a singular purpose in mind, and has trundled along fufilling that niche purpose for years. But now post Morrowind in the era of "stack all the Magicka" it suddenly needs to be nerfed hard, for a reason unrelated to it's entire purpose even?

Item Sets

• Necropotence: Reduced the Max Magicka increase granted by this Item Set to 3150 from 4000

Please remember: Necropotence was designed pure and simple to empower Combat Pets. It was introduced early in the game's history to empower Daedric Summoning Sorcerors (at the time, considered the game's joke build) as Max Magicka was the only stat those Combat Pets scaled from. Nightblades Summon Shade also worked to proc it, but since they do such little damage Nightblades used Necropotence for "free" Max Magicka, while the Warden and their bears didn't yet exist in the realm of possibility. It is literally the only set of gear in the entire game based around combat pet empowerment.

Necropotence was a niche set, unpopular even on Magicka Sorcs as their pets were "trash tier" so the only users of Necro were Nightblades for the longest time (immortal, single slot pets on a timer). When the game scaled up to VR16, Necro remained capped out at VR14 level gear... it wasn't really until One Tamriel scaled everything to the player Necro saw some resurgence, even on Pet Sorcs (pets eventually received scaling with crit as well). Then of course the eventual Volatile Familiar bugfix led to the "pet meta", Morrowind led to "stack Magicka, oh look a set with 4000 magicka" and here we are.


But now Necro is being nerfed by a whopping 850 magicka, almost 1/4... and compared to the stamina variant it's looking kind of stupid now:

New Draugr Hulk
(2 items) Adds 989 Max Stamina
(3 items) Adds 989 Max Stamina
(4 items) Adds 989 Max Stamina
(5 items) Adds 2540 Max Stamina
(+5507 Stamina)

New Necropotence
(2 items) Adds 989 Max Magicka
(3 items) Adds 989 Max Magicka
(4 items) Adds 989 Max Magicka
(5 items) While you have pets active, increase Max Magicka by 3150
(+6117 Magicka)

Wow, so having to keep Combat Pets alive (outside Shades which can't be killed) for any benefit compared to just putting Hulk on and having 100% uptime is only worth a 610 difference now? =/
For added sillyness, here's the new Destruction Mastery too:

New Destruction Mastery
(2 items) Adds 989 Max Magicka
(3 items) Adds 689 Spell Critical
(4 items) Adds 140Spell Damage
(5 items) While you have a Destruction Staff equipped, your Max Magicka is increased by 2521
(+3510 Magicka)

Yeah, using a Destruction Staff and only that staff is worth 1997 less resources than just wearing Draugr Hulk. Shields OP but Vigor is fine I guess? I don't like to PvP, who knows. But it looks really incredibly dumb having no requirement gear give greater resources or near equal returns to gear that has a strict requirement to be met. But I'm getting off track and rambling a bit:

Necropotence

It was designed for empowering Combat Pets at a time when Max Magicka was the only scaling they actually had. Now they have other (crit) scaling and the game has changed, and Max Stat spam sets seem to be an issue (IIRC this is Necropotence's first ever nerf in the history of ESO, stealth OP for years huh?) Necropotence is better off being reworked back to it's original purpose rather than being dragged along to be used for the meta then discarded like a snot-covered tissue.

So, I propose the only Combat Pet focused set in the game retain it's original purpose and look a little something like this:

Proposed New Necropotence
(2 items) Adds 989 Max Magicka
(3 items) Adds 989 Max Magicka
(4 items) Adds 989 Max Magicka
(5 items) Your pets do an additional 20% damage

Sorceror summons, Nightblade Shades and Warden Bears are all effected. It could even be extended to buff Morkuldin (crafted), Maw of the Infernal (monster) and Shadowrend (monster) armor sets and increase their viability as DPS options, which they are terribly struggling to get out of joke status in the realm of proc sets like Selene. Maybe Shadowrend isn't so much a DPS option, but it does do damage so I'll include it. We won't talk about that Infector set with the 5 second summon until it gets a 15 second duration and actually... functions properly.


Alternatively, here's a similar one but with scaling per pet present:

Alternative Necropotence
(2 items) Adds 989 Max Magicka
(3 items) Adds 989 Max Magicka
(4 items) Adds 989 Max Magicka
(5 items) Your pets do an additional 5% damage for every pet you have active
(Pets from other players DO NOT COUNT, only your own summons/procs!!)

This version instead scales with the number of pets active at once: Wardens would only get 5% with just the Bear, Nightblades would get 5-10% (depending on Shade morph) and Sorcerors 5-15% if they have Familiar, Twilight AND Storm Antronach Ult all fighting at once. But once you throw armor sets into the mix it can climb even higher (defensive pets like Sentinel of Rkumganz, Engine Guardian would count while active). The highest possible combo would be +25% damage, requiring Morkuldin, Maw of Infernal/Shadowrend and all three Sorceror summons active at one time... which also happens to requiring said Sorc to be dual-weilding to get that many set pieces, and takes all 12 weapon/armor slots. A true pet build, none of this "lol one pet slotted for Necro I'm golden" nonsense.

That's just my initial thinking, I'm sure someone can crunch the numbers far better than I could. But the fact remains Necropotence is a combat pet based set... always has been. If it just gets slapped around to deal with shield scaling and max magicka stacking and loses too much Magicka, what purpose will it serve anymore?

Again, it's literally been the only Combat Pet empowering set since it was first introduced... we should get to at least keep the one set we have. Without the +4000 magicka on the final set bonus, would anyone other than dedicated pet users what to use it anymore? It won't be jacking up shields anytime soon.