Stalking Blastbones idea.

Skullstachio · December 2020

I just had an idea on how to not only fix the stalking Blastbones, but to even slightly give it a touch up, lemme know what ya think.

Stalking Blastbones: (CRIMINAL ACT) Summon a flaming skeleton from the ground after 2.5 seconds. The skeleton runs after the target, remaining in close proximity to them while dealing [929 / 939 / 950 / 959] Flame Damage to enemies within 6 meters 1.5 seconds after assembly, then once every 1 second for 3 seconds before Exploding, dealing [4647 / 4698 / 4750 / 4797] Flame Damage to all enemies nearby. Creates a corpse on death. Recast to prematurely detonate the Blastbones, dealing 10% extra damage for each second close to expiration. Up to a maximum of 50% bonus damage.

New effect: Blastbones now persists for its full duration, deals Consistent flame damage to the target and nearby enemies shortly after assembly before exploding. Can be recast, prematurely detonating any of your summoned blastbones for bonus damage.

Notes:

It can be recast prematurely to inflict bonus damage based on how close it is to expiration, up to 50% bonus damage.
- The recast only works after the Blastbones has been completely assembled.
- The bonus damage starts ticking 0.5 seconds after the 2.5 second animation, starting with 10% bonus damage at 3 seconds, and hitting 50% at 7 seconds, leaving a 1 second gap for players to recast for maximum damage, failing to recast in time will result in less damage.
- Most importantly, if it is not recast before expiring, it does not deal bonus damage as only the recast gains bonus damage. Thus players are rewarded well if they can time the recast close to the Blastbones expiration.
The damage per second before the explosion is approximately 20% of the final explosions full damage.
- Overall, there is at most 4 ticks of small flame damage before exploding.
This morph has incredible synergy if used with the Reanimate Morph “Animate Blastbones” but the Stalking Blastbones ability would have to be slotted in order to Properly utilise the bonus damage from recasting stalking Blastbones.

Wuerstal · January 2021

(PvE perspective, not much of a PvPer)
I see the direction you are trying to go but for me this sounds:
a) to much of a hustle to deal with. One of the two things will be the used default: You never detonate it or you always detonate it prematuraly. If you recast it, you lose an additional skill you could have used (i.e spamable). Not sure if this would be something you want. It could mathimaticly work out with the dmg boost, but what is gained from that for the overall experiance of playing it?
If you do not recast to detonate, you will just lose a ton of dps. Right now, PvE necros cast it everytime after 2 skills resulting in upto 20k dps. now, with your suggestions you will have 3-4 seconds of 1-2k dps to then have it explode. So you would only cast it every 4th skill thereby reducing the dmg almost to half. The AOE dmg of 1-2k will not compensate for that.

b) Personal oppinion: I hate it when the skills are made more complex than they need to be just for complexitys sake. What is gained from your suggestion?

c) I have never seen anyone use "Animate Blastbones". Ever. Would your suggestion change it? No.
The Ult costs are extrem. The Colossus is the far supirior Ultimate with less ultcharge required. If someone would use Animate Blastbones, they'd only use it to resurrect other players. And that is something that I'd hope is just not needed. But when it is, ok. Wouldn't justify to change BB.

Thats just my oppinion thou. Maybe I am missing something. Maybe I am not. But for me personaly (an a friend whos main dps is a necro) this doesn't really sound like a good change. But then again: Maybe I am just to stubborn to see the benefits.

The only thing that needs change is the magicka morph of BB. The bonus is useless. But no need to rework the entire skill.

Revokus · January 2021

I predict there still won't be any changes to Blastbones or anything good at all for magcro next patch just more nerfs lol.

The devs will think the class is fine because of proc sets + malacath.