Spectre's Caller - Flames of Ambition - New

Waffennacht · December 2020

Spectre's Caller - Magicka Necromancer

https://youtu.be/8gROKIhy20M

Race: Dunmer
Food: Smoked Bear Haunch
Mundus: Atronach
Attributes All Magicka

Vateshran's Lightning Staff - Sharpened Trait - Double Damage Poison
Skoria x1
Spectre's Eye x3/x5 Restoration Staff - Defending Trait - Glyph of Weakening
Mark of Pariah x5
Malacath's Band of Brutality

4 Impenetrable trait, 3 Nirnhoned trait, all health enchantments
Jewelry x2 Protective x1 Infused, 3 Spell Damage Glyphs
5 Heavy 2 Light

Skills:
Lightning Staff: Degeneration, Agony Totem, Elemental Drain, Intensive Mender, Stalking Blastbones, ult: Reanimate Blastbones

Restoration Staff: Necrotic Potency, Summoner's Armor, Rapid Regeneration, Resistant Flesh, Race Against Time, ult: Ravenous Goliath

Spectre's Eye is one of the best back bar sets available to a magicka build. the 20% damage reduction (10% if maintaining full resistance) is one of the biggest buffs available and to have access to it with 100% uptime on necromancer with no effort at all is extremely valuable. As you can tell in the video the build is extremely tanky even in this high damage meta. I think this is one of the best sets to run on the back bar, pairs well with any other sets or set ups. Being craftable makes it very easy to make to your armor preferences.

I went with High Resistance because I believe in this meta mist form is not a good option and block is only a temporary solution. This way you have access to high mitigation all the time even when facing a high penetration build.

I am definitely still using Reanimate Blastbones as my main burst ultimate. Prepare to see a lot of necromancers using this ult.

If you have any questions or comments please feel free to post!

@Beardimus @Joy_Division @MurderMostFoul , all forum goes, and the whole xbox community. Thank you all of you!

*********** Old Build ************
Magicka Necromancer "Gravecaller"

You've Never Seen This Before! (Not in a BG)
Ive enjoyed this build so very much. Ive enjoyed it so much so I'm gonna make a stam version!

Closed a lot of gaps in mag necro with this IMO

Fully Buffed

https://youtu.be/mQNNTOPFFIU

Race: Dunmer
Mundus: Atronach
Food: Bewitched Sugar Skulls

Sets:
Eternal Vigor x5
Trainee x2
Vateshran Lightning Destroy front - Sharpened - Shock damage glyph
Maelstrom Arena Resto back - defending/powered ideally - Magicka steal glyph
Balorgh x2
Malacath's Band

All Magicka Glyphs (I did say all Magicka, however Bal is tri stat in reality)
Heavy x7 is what I have, but can go 6 H, 1 Light or Medium

Ideally, divines, well-fitted, or impregnable traits depending on preference.

Jewelry: x2 Infused, 1 Arcane, (3 infused works wonders too) 1 infused spell damage glyph, 1 infused tri regen glyph, 1 Arcane spell damage glyph

Skills:
Destro Front Bar:
Degeneration, Stalking Blast bones, Elemental Drain, Intensive Mender, Silver Leash, Animate Blastbones

Resto Back Bar:
Necrotic Potency, Summoner's Armor, Rapid Regeneration, Resistant Flesh, Race Against Time, Life Giver (having Combat Prayer, Rapid Regen, and Ward Ally as morphs)

This has been an idea I've had for a long time; just never thought it would work though... Oh does it work however.

If you check out the video, the first few clips (OW No CP IC) and the next one are my fav. Especially as the IC one happened while I was recording for character stats lol, 3 red v Gravecaller.

Reanimate Blastbones is key, its how I bring down the tankier opponents... When all added up can be something like 47k tooltip damage!

Many thanks to @Beardimus @Unfadingsilence @MurderMostFoul (you may be in there as an ally in a clip if it didn't get edited out, us pwning together) @Joy_Division (you're very knowledgeable!) @paulsimonps @wheem_ESO All forum-goers, and special thanks to All Xbox Players!

Please feel free to leave any questions or comments

Joy_Division · December 2020

Kudos to making use of Animate Blastbones. I think people forgot about this ulti when ZOS (sort of) improved the pathing the skeles take. It always had powerful potential. Pretty impressive demonstration of making a build that can take advantage of necro's strengths (survival) and finding a way to overcome its crippling weakness of getting KBs vs good players. Necros are also pretty terrible at keeping close to opponents that want to run; that's clever using of Silver Leash to help negate that.

Since all the cool kids seem to use the other mender morph (the one that gives 10% mit), I'm wondering if you use Intensive because it generates corpses faster or if you feel it is just better. I find the skill difficult to use because you've got to wait for it to start healing and its short uptime means a lot of micromanagement, but I haven't played much Necro so that just might be inexperience.

As a side note, I find your videos and explanations / commentary informative and clear.

Waffennacht · December 2020

@Joy_Division your comments mean a lot to me, but to your question: yes primarily to generate corpses faster. Without another source I cant wait for another 8 secs to get a corpse. The heal is really solid, but primarily for a corpse.

Id love to see a set that as a by-product created a corpse.

Thanks again

RiskyChalice863 · December 2020

This is a really cool build! Very creative! Thanks for sharing—I found it really interesting.

Seems like the healing (and health recovery) is really strong, as is the sustain—so I imagine it’s really hard to kill this without a really strong and well timed burst or multiple players piling on you during a stun. And, on the other side of things, your burst looks extremely good.

I guess the only downside to the build is how long it’d take to build up the ultimate for Animate Blastbones. That’s a really expensive ultimate, so I imagine, even with Necrotic Potency, you’re spending a lot of time just staying alive while doing some damage with normal Blastbones, Vateshran’s, Degeneration, and light attacks, with some Silver Leashes thrown in. As you mention, that can kill really squishy opponents, but of course there’s quite a lot of people that that wouldn’t bring down.

Do you have issues with people noticing your ultimate happening and just blocking it? Depending on how tanky someone is, I imagine blocking it could make the burst only do somewhere between like 30%-65% of their health. Which is still a lot (especially at the high end of that), but the follow up on the ultimate won’t be high so you won’t be able to kill less squishy people if that’s all the ultimate does to them. I guess you have the option of using Silver Leash on someone right after you use your ultimate to stop them from blocking though. I suspect this build has a bit of the element of surprise though. Seeing Animate Blastbones is so uncommon in PvP—I actually can’t remember ever seeing someone use it in a BG—that they don’t instinctively know to block even though the visual cue for it is pretty obvious and the damage doesn’t come instantly so it is definitely a telegraphed burst. I’d like to think that if I encountered this, I would have the wherewithal to block or use Elusive Mist when I saw the visual cue, but the reality is I’d probably just die to it.

Waffennacht · December 2020

@RiskyChalice863 I find you to be spot on. No one expects, nor most have ever even seen Animate Blast bones. I know I hadnt till I started using it lol.

The ult gain isnt as bad as one would think. I initially thought the ult would be too expensive as well, but i hadnt kept in mind that the ult drops essentially 3 more corpses, ur own BB, Mender and Summoned and gain a ton of ult via necro (and maybe even an enemy corpse or two?) So after I use it im usually sitting at 110 ult.

Youre again correct Smith squishy vs most not, but in BGs theres usually someone to target to put pressure on until ult is ready.

Love your comment. Thank you!

Josira · December 2020

Holy shite this looks impressive!
ive tried a lot of things trying to get mag necro to work...
I dont think I'll be able to get this build working without a race change on my mag necro unfortunatly but Im super glad you have made what looks to be a pretty damn good build! (My Mag Necro is a Khajiit unfortunatly,and Malacath;s band would not be the best on it...but ive been thinking of race and name changing him depending on what is released next chapter,if there isnt a new class,just skill lines)
Animating Blastbones is fun! but I always wish that it had less cost,and didnt res allies,to allow for the reduced cost.
Also dont have Balorgh's...but,,yeah..my problem was always trying to get light armor builds working the last few patches heh..

RiskyChalice863 · December 2020

Waffennacht wrote: »

@RiskyChalice863 I find you to be spot on. No one expects, nor most have ever even seen Animate Blast bones. I know I hadnt till I started using it lol.

The ult gain isnt as bad as one would think. I initially thought the ult would be too expensive as well, but i hadnt kept in mind that the ult drops essentially 3 more corpses, ur own BB, Mender and Summoned and gain a ton of ult via necro (and maybe even an enemy corpse or two?) So after I use it im usually sitting at 110 ult.

Youre again correct Smith squishy vs most not, but in BGs theres usually someone to target to put pressure on until ult is ready.

Love your comment. Thank you!

Interesting point regarding the ult generation. If you kill a couple people with it (40 ult), and use Necrotic Potency on the 3 Blastbones corpses from the ult, as well as ones from BB, Mender, and the Armor right afterwards, you’re looking at 76 ultimate. Given some normal ult gen from light attacking during that burst, I can see how you’d be sitting at about 110 ult right afterwards. And then you can probably generate upwards of 2.5 to 3 extra ult per second from Necrotic Potency. At that point, we’re talking an Animated Blastbones every 35-40 seconds if you’re in combat. That’s not super long actually, and you have the tools to survive in a fight until that’s up.

Given that 35-40 second window (which is longer if you’re not constantly fighting), I suspect this isn’t a build that could get some enormous 25+ kill game in a BG, since there just wouldn’t be enough burst windows to do that and the damage outside that burst window isn’t high enough that you’d be able to constantly kill everyone otherwise. But, as you mention in the video, I can totally imagine that 10 kills and 1 death is a typical result from this build. That burst is reliably going to kill people virtually every time you use it, so I can imagine its basically a guaranteed roughly 10 kills a game, and you’re really hard to kill.

wheem_ESO · December 2020

I think this is the first time that I've actually seen someone other than myself use Animate Blastbones. While it has some potential for strong burst, I wasn't a huge fan of the current implementation. It's true that most people won't recognize the substantial telegraph, but once some of the better players see it a few times I think they'll start nullifying it pretty easily.

Magicka Necromancer doesn't have the ability to stun through block (Vampire's CC is far too finnicky and unreliable), and the delay + telegraph on the ultimate are enough that even very laggy players should be able to block it the vast majority of the time. 'Course, people with decent mobility can oftentimes avoid Blastbones without needing to block, especially since the ones from the Animate ultimate aren't targeted (which also leads to them sometimes picking different targets from one another - a seemingly common problem during group fights). It always makes me sad to see my Stalking Blastbones fall apart mid-leap, doing 0 damage, just because the enemy player had Major Expedition, or sprinted, streaked, dodge rolled, etc...which works even if they have no idea that the Blastbones is incoming and they're just trying to reposition themselves.

Joy_Division wrote: »

Since all the cool kids seem to use the other mender morph (the one that gives 10% mit), I'm wondering if you use Intensive because it generates corpses faster or if you feel it is just better. I find the skill difficult to use because you've got to wait for it to start healing and its short uptime means a lot of micromanagement, but I haven't played much Necro so that just might be inexperience.

My main issue with the Intensive Mender is that when the skill bugs out for me, which is very frequent in PC-NA Battlegrounds, it becomes mostly worthless. While it's possible to generate a corpse once every 4 seconds with the Intensive Mender, that becomes very GCD...intensive. If you allow the duration on Intensive Mender to expire before re-summoning, then each morph is actually capable of generating 1 corpse every 8 seconds, with the only differences being that the Spirit Guardian will cost more (which may not matter with the amount of regen in his setup), but also provide mitigation during the time that it's bugged out and not casting heals.

If Zenimax ever gets around to fixing this ability-breaking bug, I may go back to using the Intensive Mender, which I originally started with over Spirit Guardian. But I've reported the issue multiple times, going back to at least June of 2019. That's when I posted this thread on the bug report forum, which got 0 replies and 83 views (and if those aren't unique views, a chunk of them would be from me checking back to see if there were any replies). As I mention there, I had just completed a BG where 7 full duration Intensive Menders in a row - totaling 56 seconds and 7 GCDs - resulted in absolutely no heals whatsoever.

Josira wrote: »

Animating Blastbones is fun! but I always wish that it had less cost,and didnt res allies,to allow for the reduced cost.

Agreed. I'd also like to see some other tweaks, in order to make it a bit less telegraphed and/or more difficult to hard-counter. As it stands right now, there really aren't any good offensively oriented ultimates available to Magicka Necromancers. They're all very expensive and too easily countered, whether it's the Colossus, Meteor, Destro Ult, Animate Blastbones, or...well I guess that's about it unless you use Goliath or Vampire Lord forms and manage to stay on top of your target for the duration. Even then, you'll generally lose your Blastbones damage if they're actively trying to kite or flee, since he'll get left too far behind to ever connect.

PS
My bad for sounding like a Debbie Downer in your build guide, especially since it's cool to actually see someone having some success with Magicka Necromancer. But the class really needs some bug fixes and design improvements. Or just give up and make it like Stam, with such strong generic skill lines and defense mechanisms that you can basically ignore most of the class stuff and still remain somewhat competitive without crutching on proc sets.

MurderMostFoul · December 2020

Super fun looking build, and thanks for the shout out! I can't say I'm looking forward to facing off against that in BGs.

I bet the stam version could be even burstier. Scary.

Juhasow · December 2020

Waffennacht wrote: »

@Joy_Division your comments mean a lot to me, but to your question: yes primarily to generate corpses faster. Without another source I cant wait for another 8 secs to get a corpse. The heal is really solid, but primarily for a corpse.

Id love to see a set that as a by-product created a corpse.

Thanks again

ZoS actually made sure opposite will happen. They've changed sets like engine guardian to no longer count as corpse because in their opinion it was giving too much adventage to templars who could use repentance on it.

Dorkener · December 2020

Nice out of the box thinking, I don't think I've ever considered that ult - it looks fun as hell and at least as effective (if not more) than collosus. (At least outside of coordinated ult dumps).
I also like the "supporty" nature of the setup (if you decide to do so), crosshealing/support is the only reason to run mag over stam in BGs imho. Think I'll try something similar with my argonian, use 1-2 triglyphs + spellpower pots, drop degeneration for another support skill (or maybe boneyard + harmony hmmm

).
Thx for posting!

Waffennacht · December 2020

Thanks for all the feedback!

My last two builds were purposely focused on Stamplar and Mag necro as I feel they are the current weakest PvP no CP classes.

But I also wanted to make it Fun. Most important thing to me is fun, (getting pwned isnt fun either tho lol)

I feel like if somehow (no way) reanimate got popular it would be easily countered, but I dont see that and I see it retaining the surprise factor if used.

But @wheem_ESO (no bothers here bud!) makes excellent points.

After trying a few stam things out, a part of me goes "stam is so Good... Why dilute it?"

If something comes to me, ill definitely share

Love all of the comments!

ImSoPro · December 2020

I was just saying on Reddit how intensive mender can literally keep you alive by itself. It smacks for 8k heals per and it’s still like 5-6k in BGs and no one talks about it. It just has to be front barred because of the short life time it’s a lot of recasting. This is a cool build, I want to experiment with the Vateshran staff I just haven’t gotten around to farming it. I finally made a pretty decent magcro PVP build myself recently after quitting on the class but it’s great to see other people enjoying magcro on PVP. Interesting use of silver leash as well.

Volckodav · December 2020

big + kuddo for the idea, the build and trying to do something with a magcro! I love mine but really feel underwhelming, i.e facing stamden that face tank all damage and are still super good DD.

I've tried it myself and I feel that the burst windows is really short and they doge it on open field, but maybe in BG it will be better, I will give it a try again!

Waffennacht · December 2020

After playing around with the other mender, I prefer the intensive one all around, though on stam the other makes sense because intensive's tooltip is the same (for a stam character)

Vateshran staff is almost necessary with the lack of consistent pressure (degeneration aint gonna do it lol)

@Volckodav I see it being way better in BGs than OW, in BGs just about everyone is nearby and has a finite amount of escape room; btw stealth is also a hard counter.

Btw everyone, I seriously doubt a stam version is viable. Wayyyyyyyy more clunky, first time ever I was preferring mag necro over stam.

Then i saw other sets and are trying something new on stam cro.

Metemsycosis · December 2020

Seems every build has ev and malacath. Not a shot at you, you're one of my faves. Yet another build that looks like wicked fun to play

Volckodav · December 2020

@Metemsycosis u can find on this forum a very nice HA that play differently, I use it my great success on my magden. Without EV and malacath

and very useful on wall def, as I play a lot cyro no cp

Volckodav · December 2020

@Waffennacht for sure I will give it a go in BG, and again big thanks for sharing, imo that really the 1st purpose of our forum

And btw I give myself a little challenge for xmas holidays, I go making rank 3mini no CP on my 16 char (Stam and mag of each class + specific) with each of them a build as different as possible. So this build is perfect for this too as I was struggling with magcro

wheem_ESO · December 2020

ImSoPro wrote: »

I was just saying on Reddit how intensive mender can literally keep you alive by itself. It smacks for 8k heals per and it’s still like 5-6k in BGs and no one talks about it. It just has to be front barred because of the short life time it’s a lot of recasting. This is a cool build, I want to experiment with the Vateshran staff I just haven’t gotten around to farming it. I finally made a pretty decent magcro PVP build myself recently after quitting on the class but it’s great to see other people enjoying magcro on PVP. Interesting use of silver leash as well.

I started with Intensive Mender myself, even though everyone else used the Spirit Guardian morph (though they were virtually all Stamina builds, so I guess that makes sense). But the constant bugging out and failing to heal was giving me a nerd-rage induced eye twitch, so I switched morphs. The Spirit Guardian also refuses to heal a huge percentage of the time for me, but at least the mitigation/passives are still there. And micromanagement is reduced as well, which is also a plus I suppose.

Perhaps you other guys aren't experiencing the pet bug as often as I am, so I have to ask - are any of you running Swift jewelry, the Steed Mundus, Major Expedition with a high uptime, frequent sprinting, etc...? I sometimes wonder if the bug is caused by the pet teleporting when getting too far away from the player, like Sorcerer pets sometimes do (which also causes them to gain full health and become invalid targets). My pet will oftentimes float inside my chest, clipped into my character model, when it bugs out and I'm standing still. Then when I start moving it'll warp around rather than float smoothly. 'Course, sometimes it'll move normally and stay right next to me but still not cast any heals, so there could be several different things causing it to bug out.

Waffennacht wrote: »

Vateshran staff is almost necessary with the lack of consistent pressure (degeneration aint gonna do it lol)

btw stealth is also a hard counter.

You can substitute out the Vateshran staff for a BRP one, if you have it available. It's more harsh on your sustain, and the DOT can be cleansed, but it's also AOE, won't get broken by LOS, and helps counter both stealth and dodge roll. In fact, the DOT ticks themselves will break stealth if they're already on the target, without you having to cast the AOE again (which I assume is unintentional).

Grimlok_S · December 2020

You're right, I had no idea that reanimate morph existed.

That's a really neat + sneaky interaction.. Seemed to catch most of those players by surprise. Love to see it, keep it up!

Zekka · December 2020

Really cool build, though most players killed in your showcase are below 810 cp and seem rather inexperienced, I don't know how well it would work against more experienced players.
I really hope that ZOS make Animate Blastbones a fully-fledged moderate cost offensive ultimate one day because since the nerf to Major Vulnerability, Colossus became plain bad for how much it costs (and it never worked well with the only decent stun magnecros can get, flame clench).
Sure, there is Ravenous Goliath that most magnecros already run, it is good but easily kiteable when used on the least mobile class in the game so this change would help magnecro's offense a lot.

Waffennacht · December 2020

Zekka wrote: »

Really cool build, though most players killed in your showcase are below 810 cp and seem rather inexperienced, I don't know how well it would work against more experienced players.
I really hope that ZOS make Animate Blastbones a fully-fledged moderate cost offensive ultimate one day because since the nerf to Major Vulnerability, Colossus became plain bad for how much it costs (and it never worked well with the only decent stun magnecros can get, flame clench).
Sure, there is Ravenous Goliath that most magnecros already run, it is good but easily kiteable when used on the least mobile class in the game so this change would help magnecro's offense a lot.

Remember im on xbox, so im gonna guess the inexperienced players are gonna be at a higher number.

I.e. EU (ESP PC) is gonna have a much "tougher" pool of players.

There's typically one or two Leaderboarders on opposing teams, but I havent seen more than that at once.

I wish so much that the bones morph would just summon skeles, not bring back allies and have a much more reduced cost. Using that ult is the most necromancer feeling thing ive had.

I had a clip of a 1v1 against |xBaked| (xbox player, others should recognize the name) unfortunately an ally got an attack in, making it unworthy of keeping

Again though, Xbox has got to have the easiest competition imo

Waffennacht · March 2021

https://youtu.be/FU0Whj2xFas

Glory · March 2021

This is a fun build! I remember on Necromancer release PTS the blastbones did way more damage intended and Animate was a massive wombo-combo...

Regarding Intensive vs. Spirit Guardian:
In previous testing I found that you generally gain more defensive value from the 10% damage mitigation when you start taking >12-14k damage per second. That is the rough breakpoint where spirit guardian's damage mitigation becomes more effective HPS than intensive mender.

That ignores the cost of an additional GCD, the innate bugginess of the cast as @wheem_ESO mentioned, the group healing potential of intensive, and the additional corpse-gen of intensive. Overall, in actual playtesting they're both fairly viable, although I tend to gravitate towards spirit guardian as I value the extra GCD more than I value the corpse in fights.

Waffennacht · March 2021

@Glory thanks for the comment! Glad you noted the corpse generation of intensive; that's the main use; s corpse on call every 3.5 (so 4) seconds. I dont like potentially waiting 8 sec to produce a corpse (worst case scenario)

Ive tried to make it where the defense of the build allows for lower mobility to stay close to corpi without using a defensive ult.

The only reason I havent tried as much on a Stan version is the slower corpse generation; but if you're having success with guardian that'd make me think its viable (though in the current meta it may just be a weaker version of a goods stam build)

Again ty!

Seraphayel · March 2021

+1 for builds that are not meta-chasing. Really like it!

At first I thought that this is some kind of weird interaction and bug that you indeed revive your dead Blastbones with the Ultimate until I saw that that's a special morph, lol. Nevertheless, very cool!

Scardan · March 2021

Wait a second. Animated Blastbones works without allies corpses? Lol. I am stupid for thinking that having a player corpse was requirement to use this skill at all xD

Waffennacht · March 2021

Scardan wrote: »

Wait a second. Animated Blastbones works without allies corpses? Lol. I am stupid for thinking that having a player corpse was requirement to use this skill at all xD

Its a two part ult : first part is revive up to 3 allies;

Second part is consume up to 3 additional corpi to get BB for each.

I am sad its not a BB for allies and Corpi; thatd be too awesome

Waffennacht · March 2021

I have updated the build and will be posting everything soon;

Changed how people thought about Reanimate BB.

I think this time a particular set will see more play than it has ever before soon

Seraphayel · March 2021

Oh I am very much looking forward for some new content and your build in PvP action!

MurderMostFoul · March 2021

Waffennacht wrote: »

I have updated the build and will be posting everything soon;

Changed how people thought about Reanimate BB.

I think this time a particular set will see more play than it has ever before soon

Lol, you've undone yourself!

Last time we were in a BG together (brawling on purple flag in University) I definitely made sure to keep my distance if there were several corpses on the ground. But maybe you were running something else and you just put the fear in me?!? The paranoia factor is real!