YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Sadly, as a magRomancer in PvP, you are pretty much just a "Colossus Bot" and needed only for your ultimate in combination with Balorgh's.

Anything else can be achieved better with another class.

BohnT2 wrote: »

Atherakhia wrote: »

While I agree with almost everything you've said from a PvP perspective, it is worth noting that (mag) Necromancer isn't that far below where it needs to be in PvE so increasing damage will likely throw things out of whack substantially. That doesn't mean there aren't very clear areas that could be improved though.

Take an Execute for example. Necromancers have a 'quasi execute' with Death Knell. Does this talent only increase crit chance with Grave Lord abilities? I don't know. But if not, it can be changed to do just that and then you could make Scythe the execute. This wouldn't have any real impact on PvE damage but would be monumentally useful in PvP.

Making the Siphon skill be useful in PvP would certainly help things a lot. Making the siphon between the target and the corpse for example. The problem with this is would it cause these skills to break in PvE content? In theory Zaan was fixed this patch so perhaps making the tether link between the target and the corpse would work? Again, assuming it doesn't bug out, this would have a large impact on PvP and no real change for PvE.

Arcanist is probably the second easiest thing to improve. Right now it's just a very weak DOT and little else. But we know they can make pets have activated abilities. If Grave Grasp also applied a DOT perhaps people would use it and the Empower morph would get more play and that alone could be all Archer/Arcanist need. Who knows, but this one shouldn't be so difficult to fix.

But above all, they need to finally get around to getting Stalking Blast Bones to have an actual morph. It has been months and this thing does nothing. We saw them give Shalks the ability to recast themselves. Why not make a corpse left behind by stalking blast bone consume its essence and detonate a second time if it wasn't already used? Why not make it apply a DOT to the target too? Hell, make it dizzy swing and make it so the first skeleton sets them off balance and a second will stun. Anything for crying out loud.

I have several rework ideas for the necromancer toolkit:

Blastbones should no longer be considered a pet as this already comes as disadvantages for many things as it's not seen as your own damage.

Arcanist should be changed to apply a defiled corpse directly to an enemy which deals dot damage every 2 seconds (just like it does now but is now target based) applying this skill grants major sorcery/ brutality. Stamina version keeps the current effect. Magicka version could be change to only deal damage every 4 seconds but with double the damage per tick.

Tether should be reworked to be between you and the target (like zaan, vate destro).
In order to keep a corpse mechanic the tether now consumes up to 3 corpses over the duration that are in the tether.
Detonating siphon instantly deals the AoE damage.
Mystic siphon creates an ground AoE that deals damage for 4 seconds while restoring 100 mag/s.

Scythe gets reworked to an execute that scales the same way as executioner and becomes a single target ability.
Stamina version deals poison damage and applies poisoned status effect.
Magicka version becomes ranged (compare 3rd boss in Castle Thorn) with a 250m minimum traveltime and deals ice damage and creates a body every 3rd cast (which then synergizes with the reworked tether)

Remote totem gets changed to be an equivalent of the necromancer talons from the last boss in UG meaning it sends out talons in a straight line, when they hit an enemy they deal damage and explode after 0.5 seconds for the AoE damage standard in a 6m range dealing magic damage. Enemies hit are affected by minor vulnerability.

Grave grasp gets reworked completely:
Ghostly embrace sends out skeleton hands that pull an enemy off his feet stunning him through block but not dodge and dealing the same damage as reverb/clench do to him.

BohnT2 wrote: »

It is widely agreed on that magicka necromancer has the worst offensive toolkit of any spec by far.
This goes so far that any set or tool that makes magnecro able to kill enemies can be seen as overperforming.
Be it Dots during scalebreaker, harmony pre nerf, OF and procs since greymoor.

When going through the toolkit it's no suprise why magicka necromancer is as bad as it is.

Riccochet Skulls: deal the same damage as other spammables but have a higher minimum traveltime than skills like force pulse (250ms) or elemental weapon (<200ms due to ranged LA minimum traveltime).
It's secondary effect is also very weak, 20% additional damage on every third cast along with a useless AoE isn't worth it.
Additionally the secondary effect stops working after you've been hit by a guard's eclipse and the only way to fix it is relogging.

Stalking blastbones have no secondary effect for 6 months now and even if you get the whole 50% damage increase you're dealing half the damage you could have dealt if the skill had properly worked. Additionally the skill often doesn't work at all, the bomber will take way too long to start moving, doesn't explode when reaching the target or doesn't deal any damage because the target simply walked away.

Graveyard: after the needed nerf to harmony graveyard went from a 20 second cooldown high burst ability to a 20 seconds wait for a 4k hit. There really isn't a point using this skill anymore.

Skeleton arcanist: Dots in general offer 2 things in eso, first additional damage outside of the ability you've used in that gcd and secondly they allow you to deal damage to dodging targets if your other skills are dodgeable and stays on a target that you can't attack right now be it via LoS or that they've ran out of your range. Well this isn't the case for this walking cotton ball thrower. Enemies walking away won't be damaged by it as it can't catch up, you can't control which target to attack, if there's an enemy with 60k hp right next to you and someone with 500hp 5m away it will never attempt to hit the guy with low Hp even though that's the target you'll want to focus.

Shock Siphon: not only does this skill deal pitiful damage to begin with, no it's also the skill in the game with the highest requirements to ever land a hit. First you have to have a body on the ground, any LoS between you and the body will break it, the target has to be between you and the body. And if you manage to do all that the skill hits for 5k damage over 12 seconds max.

And that's it, there's no other offensive skills a necromancer could use.
Scythe? Deals pitiful damage and has no offensive debuff/ buff.

You also don't have access to an offensive stun as grave grasp is not only extremely unreliable no it also doesn't deal any damage.

When looking at passives that could be a saving grace you'll be disappointed.
Having an "execute" that gives you additional crit chance when slotting skills from a skill line that you don't want to slot because they're dead weight doesn't help at all.
To make matters worse crits in PvP don't deal meaningful damage unless you build for them.
Everyone else will run procs and malacath because it results in basically a 100% crit chance while also buffing procs that couldn't crit to begin with.

Having a passive that increases your dot damage done by 15% sound great doesn't it? Well too bad that the only skills that counts as a dot for necromancer is graveyard and the tether we have already established that neither of those skills are worth using or that 15% extra damage would make them viable.

The only passive that actually increases your damage gives you 1.5k penetration that is a ~2.3% damage increase but it doesn't really matter because your damage is trash to begin with.

There is also no hope for magnecro to compensate those short comings with non class skills:
Using flame clench to have an offensive stun will give you the great experience of knocking enemies out of the range of your bombers resulting in them dealing 0 damage.

Hoping to get an execute next patch with impulse? Nope even against an enemy with 1% hp impulse deals only about 50% additional damage while doing minor damage to begin with.

Also there is no cheap ultimate that you could use on necromancer, the cheapest one you have access to is Dawnbreaker at 125ult cost but it doesn't benefit from light armor penetration or most of your CPs.
The next one is soul assault which is far from good unless you're pushing it to broken levels with a certain set.
Followed by meteor, delayed damage but you have no chance of forcing a hit and you can't really couple it with any damage because you can't rely on your bomber to hit the target in time or to hit the target at all, which will lead to you wasting 3 gcds and 200 ult and the enemy just holding block with no risk of dying.

Magicka Necromancer desperately needs to have itself freed from the slaver that is the idea of having 1 damage, 1 tanking and 1 healing skill lines.
The Class needs an actual execute on a skill that executes on demand and doesn't require you to sacrifice the blood of 13, 90 year old virgins that have performed the chicken dance prior to the ritual while singing "God save the Queen" in Swahili.

Mag necro needs an actual offensive rotation in PvP that consists of more thing than weak spammable - weak spammable - weak spammable -waiting for bomber to finally explode - weak spammable - bomber - weak spammable - waiting for 200+ ult.

All tanking and healer needs can be satisfied via morphs there is no reason to dedicate full skills to either of those archetypes when a single morph can do the job just as well.