Has ZOS ever acknowledged how terrible Magicka Necromancer is?

wheem_ESO · July 2019

I first posted about Magicka Necromancer's issues in this thread on day 1 or 2 of Elsweyr being on the PTS, and it's all still relevant today, nearly 3 months later. In fact, the only changes that have happened between then and now have been nerfs; reducing Blastbones' health from 10k to 7.5k, making it run slower, and adding a delay to its gap closer, all while it was already the least reliable burst damage ability in the game (Magicka morph especially).

Something that was hard to tell on PTS, due to not having good opponents for the most part, is that Necromancer sustain is also really bad. It takes more magicka to keep the Undead Confederate passive up than you'll actually gain from it, and even with fairly substantial cost reduction Mystic Siphon barely returns more magicka than it costs. And that's assuming that you're able to get the full 12 second duration on the Siphon, which you frequently won't (either due to having to LOS or out-range the corpse, or using it on a player who respawns).

Has ZOS said anything publicly about recognizing the sorry state Necromancer is in right now? I haven't seen anything on the PvP forums, other than mentioning the nerf to Goliath Bash-spam a few days before the relevant patch.

Waffennacht · July 2019

I've only heard off hand comments that Necromancer is getting buffed in the pts notes

wheem_ESO · July 2019

The Necromancer-specific patch notes, which weren't available at the time I created this thread, are:

Grave Lord
Blastbones:

Removed the delay of the skeleton summoned from this ability and its morphs before it would attempt to leap to its target, to help reliability.
Reduced the minimum range of the leap ability to 7 meters from 5 meters to reduce situations where the Blastbones becomes confused on what to do, causing it to stand still, pondering its own existence.

Boneyard:

Increased the cost of this ability and its morphs to 3780 from 3510.
Decreased the damage by approximately 32% per tick.
Increased the bonus damage modifier for consuming a corpse to 50% from 20%.

Pestilent Colossus:

Reduced the escalating damage bonus each hit this morph deals. The total adjustment will result in an approximate 5% damage reduction.

Skeletal Mage:

Increased the base cost to 4320 from 2430, and increased the damage per tick by approximately 90%.

Skeletal Archer (morph):
- The archer’s base damage no longer ranks up by 1.1% per rank.
- Reduced the scaling bonus to 2% per hit from 10%, which ranks up to 5% at Rank IV.

Shocking Siphon:

This ability and its morphs will now update their hitboxes when fighting large enemies.
These abilities no longer have a resource cost, and now scale off your highest offensive stats.
Decreased the damage per tick by approximately 14%.

Mystic Siphon (morph):
- This ability now restores 35 Magicka per tick at Rank IV, down from 75.

Bone Tyrant
Bitter Harvest:

The heal from this ability and its morphs is now properly synced up with the essence you absorb, resulting in less of a delay.
Increased the healing per tick by approximately 11%.

Bone Goliath Transformation:

Fixed an issue where you could occasionally become stuck as a terrifying giant after casting this ability or its morphs, and never return to your frail, humanoid form. You must now find other ways to usher terror into Tamriel.

Living Death
Render Flesh:

Fixed an issue where the Befouled star from the Shadow tree was applying to the Minor Defile from this ability and its morphs.

Restoring Tether:

This ability and its morphs no longer have a resource cost, and now scale off your highest offensive stats.
Decreased the healing per tick by approximately 14%.

Mortal Coil:

Reduced the Stamina return per tick to 35 from 79 at Rank IV.

Spirit Mender:

Increased the cost of this ability and its morphs to 4320 from 2430, and increased the healing per tick by approximately 90%.

Intensive Mender (morph):
- This morph now heals for twice as much per tick, rather than 3 times. Reduces the duration in half, but also reduces the cost to half.

So I guess they recognize at least some of the issues, though I still think it's going to remain the hands-down worst class in the game for PvP.

katorga · July 2019

wheem_ESO wrote: »

The Necromancer-specific patch notes, which weren't available at the time I created this thread, are:
Grave Lord
Blastbones:
Removed the delay of the skeleton summoned from this ability and its morphs before it would attempt to leap to its target, to help reliability.

Reduced the minimum range of the leap ability to 7 meters from 5 meters to reduce situations where the Blastbones becomes confused on what to do, causing it to stand still, pondering its own existence.

Boneyard:
Increased the cost of this ability and its morphs to 3780 from 3510.

Decreased the damage by approximately 32% per tick.

Increased the bonus damage modifier for consuming a corpse to 50% from 20%.

Pestilent Colossus:
Reduced the escalating damage bonus each hit this morph deals. The total adjustment will result in an approximate 5% damage reduction.

Skeletal Mage:
Increased the base cost to 4320 from 2430, and increased the damage per tick by approximately 90%.

Skeletal Archer (morph):
The archer’s base damage no longer ranks up by 1.1% per rank.

Reduced the scaling bonus to 2% per hit from 10%, which ranks up to 5% at Rank IV.

Shocking Siphon:
This ability and its morphs will now update their hitboxes when fighting large enemies.

These abilities no longer have a resource cost, and now scale off your highest offensive stats.

Decreased the damage per tick by approximately 14%.

Mystic Siphon (morph):
This ability now restores 35 Magicka per tick at Rank IV, down from 75.

Bone Tyrant
Bitter Harvest:
The heal from this ability and its morphs is now properly synced up with the essence you absorb, resulting in less of a delay.

Increased the healing per tick by approximately 11%.

Bone Goliath Transformation:
Fixed an issue where you could occasionally become stuck as a terrifying giant after casting this ability or its morphs, and never return to your frail, humanoid form. You must now find other ways to usher terror into Tamriel.

Living Death
Render Flesh:
Fixed an issue where the Befouled star from the Shadow tree was applying to the Minor Defile from this ability and its morphs.

Restoring Tether:
This ability and its morphs no longer have a resource cost, and now scale off your highest offensive stats.

Decreased the healing per tick by approximately 14%.

Mortal Coil:
Reduced the Stamina return per tick to 35 from 79 at Rank IV.

Spirit Mender:
Increased the cost of this ability and its morphs to 4320 from 2430, and increased the healing per tick by approximately 90%.

Intensive Mender (morph):
This morph now heals for twice as much per tick, rather than 3 times. Reduces the duration in half, but also reduces the cost to half.

So I guess they recognize at least some of the issues, though I still think it's going to remain the hands-down worst class in the game for PvP.

Overall, it looks like Mag Necro got nerfed. Like it needed it. But I think all of the magicka classes got hammered this patch. I think stam necro will be a sleeper class next patch.

wheem_ESO · July 2019

So I hopped on the PTS right quick to check a few tooltips, and here are some comparisons from the same Magicka Necromancer in the same gear: Lightning Staff, 2,888 Spell Damage with Major Sorcery, 33,313 Max Magicka, and CP active with 40 points in Thaumaturge (and no Mage's Guild passives because I'm bad and/or lazy).

Skeletal Mage:
Live - 2,639 damage every 2 seconds
PTS - 5,030 damage every 2 seconds

Mystic Siphon:
Live - 24,588 damage over 12 seconds (2,844 magicka return, 2,690 magicka cost)
PTS - 22,428 damage over 12 seconds (1,260 magicka return, no cost)
(These numbers were from looking in my skill book, not having the ability on my bar, so no +3% damage counted)

Mortal Coil:
Live - 18,288 damage over 12 seconds (2,844 stamina return, 2,690 magicka cost)
PTS - 15,264 damage over 12 seconds (1,260 stamina return, no cost)
(These numbers were from looking in my skill book, not having the ability on my bar, so no +3% healing counted)

Entropy
Live - 8,043 damage over 12 seconds
PTS - 22,830 damage over 10 seconds

Soul Trap
Live - 7,710 damage over 10 seconds
PTS - 22,830 damage over 10 seconds

Shock Reach
Live - 5,114 damage up front, and 7,045 over 8 seconds
PTS - 4,403 damage up front, and 18,260 over 10 seconds (but no longer stuns)

One other thing I checked was Ricochet Skull vs Force Pulse on PTS. The class spammable has a tooltip for me of 8,188, while Force Pulse shows 2,641 x3 (which comes out to 7,923 total), and a potential for 8,807 splash damage (at skill rank 1). We have to take into account that the skull gets +20% damage and up to 2 bounces on every third cast, but also feels clunky to weave with for me; I clip my light attacks with it quite frequently.

As a point of comparison with the above listed DOTs, I checked my Magicka Warden's Fetcher Infection on the live server (it got a damage increase on PTS, but I haven't looked at it there yet). With a Lightning Staff, 2,346 Spell Damage with Major Sorcery, 38,072 Max Magicka, Minor Berserk active, and 4 Animal Companion abilities slotted (which is +12% damage on live, but would be +8% on PTS), I had a tooltip of 22,026 damage over 10 seconds. Keep in mind that this should be the tooltip for the "weak" cast of the ability, since the +50% bonus every other cast doesn't show up on the tooltip.

I'm curious about how a DOT-oriented Necromancer build might work out; perhaps dropping a spammable all together, and heavy attacking between Blastbones and DOT applications. Necromancer sustain is pretty bad, and even if you manage to get 100% uptime on Mystic Siphon without ever having the tether broken (and good luck with that in PvP), you're looking at the equivalent of ~200 Magicka Recovery (though I think it'll work while in Mist Form or Ice Staff blocking). If the damage and regen were actually reliable, it might earn its place on my bars. But as it stands right now...no.

'Course, while Necromancers get +10% DOT damage from a passive, the lack of a class DOT sort of hurts the idea a bit. If I tried the same type of setup on my Warden, I could get +6% damage on Soul Trap and Entropy (Piercing Cold passive), as well as having a strong class-DOT to go along with them. I guess I'll just need to see what sort of actual damage numbers the DOTs and Skeletal Mage are capable of in PvP.

Looked at in a vacuum, Magicka Necromancer's offense should be improved a fair bit in the current iteration of patch 5.1. How it'll stack up to everyone else's changes, no one can really say for sure yet.