Necromancer Boneyards and Harmony, Necromancers, Lets Be Heard...

godchucknzilla · February 2023

Time and time again, the persons who make decisions about what is changed in ESO have misunderstood the balance of the game in relation to CP PVP. What they plan to do with the change to the Graverobber self synergy and the Harmony jewelry trait will extremely hurt the playability of the Necromancer class in CP PVP. I've played a necromancer to max level, Grand Overlord 2, in Alliance War Greyhost Cyrodiil while running combat metrics and analyzing the 1v1 and 1vX fights I've been in. Without Harmony and Graverobber, the Necromancer does not have enough burst to kill people who are stacking armor and percentage damage reduction, while retaining enough damage reduction to survive the insane damage output of the Stamina Dragon Knight and Magicka Nightblade. Not to mention the necromancer burst is telegraphed while being blockable, because you have to put a huge graveyard underneath your opponent to complete the combo so there is plenty of counterplay if the necromancer is using the combo alone, without help from another different profession's crowd control because guess what, the Necromancer has lousy access to good crowd control. Furthermore Major Evasion reduces the damage of all of the AOE Necromancer damaging abilities by twenty percent, which is huge and possibly overlooked by the developers. The Magicka Night blade is pumping out three times the burst of the Necromancer with harmony and the Graverobber synergy on live. Furthermore, the Graverobber synergy has a huge 20 second cool down. Five light attacks are 5 seconds, to charge Assassin will for a burst combo that hits upward to 20k battle spirit reduced damage. Incapacitating strike is cheap at 75 ultimate and impale deals big damage to secure the kills at long range, then the night blade has excellent healing with Dark Cloak and Vigor, where the Necromancer was already hit with a big nerf to the healing of spirit guardian and please don't say Necro has mortal coil that breaks on line of sight. On top of the awesome Nightblade single target kit, Nightblades can bomb huge groups from stealth with proxy, albeit Necromancer can do this too with potions. Once these changes go live Necromancer will no longer be able to bomb nearly as effectively and if you want to bomb you are better off choosing Nightblade.

The character diversity of the game in relation to class balance will be damaged by the choice the developers plan to make with no damage Harmony and the huge 30%+ damage reduction to the boneyards self synergy. I've read these forums and many others feel the change is just over the top, u35 was very unfavorable and it seems u37 is going the same way.

@ZOS_GinaBruno, @ZOS_Kevin or @ZOS_MattFiror

CameraBeardThePirate · February 2023

Vet Necro player here. Thousands of hours across 2 necro toons. Mostly play PvP, but I enjoy endgame PvE content such as Trifecta runs etc. Long comment inbound.

Here's the thing: I don't entirely mind Graverobber going away. Was it OP? No, not at all. It was strong, but more importantly it was the only thing keeping Necro afloat.

The real issue is that the devs have removed the Graverobber playstyle without adding anything else in return. Necro's class kit is severely lacking. There are 3 major pain points that absolutely need to be addressed.

1) No access to Major Sorcery/Brutality or Major Prophecy/Savagery. The lack of either of these buffs in the class kit means that necromancers are forced to run 2 non-class abilities to get these buffs, or are forced to run Blue/Green potions.

2) No class identity. The class identity was high aoe burst via Blastbones and Graverobber, but without Graverobber they will not fit this role nearly as well as other classes like Warden or Nightblade. They have DoT passives that could make them a strong DoT class, but they only have 2 class DoTs, both of which are AOE which hinders their use in both PvP and more mobile PvE fights.

3) Clunky class mechanics and abilities - especially offensively. This issue goes in tandem with both of the points above. It's no secret that Blastbones often acts drunk; when it works it's an exceedingly strong burst ability, but the weirdness with targeting makes it inconsistent. This would be ok, but Blastbones isn't the only Necro ability to behave inconsistently. The Arcanist/Archer and Spirit Mender both have their own targeting issues. Why is it that Necromancer can't command their Pets with the Command Pet keybind? Beyond just the targeting, their class skills are often sidegrades to non class skills at best. Skulls is worse than nearly every other spammable option, the Arcanist and Archer don't do nearly enough damage to warrant their targeting issues, and skills like Empowering Grasp or Bone Totem are bordering on useless in every scenario. "Buffs" to the timers for the Arcanist/Archer actually nerfed Necromancer pretty harshly, as it reduced Corpse Generation for their other skills (since you need to wait half the duration of the ability before it generates a corpse). Couple all of this with the fact that Necros don't have an on demand class stun and you'll find that Necros end up running very few class skills as a result.

Necro has been crutching on Harmony/Graverobber for a long time. Was it overnerfed? Absolutely - the nerf to the Harmony trait was more than enough to make necromancers remove Boneyard from their bar, so the additional nerf to the damage really only hurts Necromancers using the Graveyard to give their teammates a synergy in a group setting.

So what does Necro need?

Firstly, Necromancer is a very lopsided class. Defensively they don't need much, but offensively they're dead in the water. Here are some basic things I think would vastly improve the necromancer kit:

- Access to one or both of the Major Offensive buffs via a class skill

- Access to an on demand stun (something every other class has now)

- A sticky class DoT. This could be tied with the first point, as giving Necro a sticky DoT that also gives them Major Sorcery/Brutality or Prophecy/Savagery would help alleviate the issues they have with bar space.

- Easier corpse management. Corpses should last twice as long as they currently do. Corpse gameplay is extremely clunky and could use another pass, but at the very least this change would mean that Necros don't have to micromanage as much to get the most out of their skills

- A substantial buff to their spammable. There is no reason (across any class) that a class spammable should be the worst option in 90% of gameplay scenarios. As it stands, there is no reason to use Skulls over a weapon spammable, Silver Shards, or Elemental Weapon. What's wrong with it, exactly? There are two major things wrong with this spammable. First, the projectile speed is far too slow to be useful in PvP. Second, neither morph's added effect is really enough - the damage is lackluster and the added effect of 20% damage on the third cast is nowhere nearly as powerful as something like the added effects of Concealed Weapon/Surprise Attack/Whip.

- Being able to command the Archer/Arcanist as well as the 3 Blastbones summoned by the Animate Blastbones ultimate with the command pet keybind/medium weave. As a necromancer, I want to be able to control the poor souls I've reanimated and bound to my control, but as it stands, it feels much more like I called in a few drunkards that might do what I want them to but will likely just hang around and waste my time.

These changes would put Necro in a good-but-not-great spot. The truth is that a lot of their class mechanics are just too clunky. Necromancer requires far too much micromanagement and still only barely keeps up with other classes. Plenty of their abilities could use tweaking - Empowering Grasp for example should probably give its buff passively while slotted, as hitting the pets with this ability is an example of this unfun and unpractical micromanagement.

@ZOS_Kevin please pass this along to the dev team. Harmony was the only thing keeping the class afloat, and whether or not it gets nerfed, Necromancer needs serious changes to remain viable and fun to play in today's meta.

Necrotech_Master · February 2023

i would also agree with camerabeard

the entire necromancer kit just feels kind of clunky and doesnt synergize well with most of the passives

as well as being gimmicky with the corpse management and weak/dumb summons

sharquez · February 2023

They are ALMOSLY COMPLETLY DELETING not only a playstyle from Necro but a staple one that they have actively molded and pushed us towards with the way the skills and sets build on the class.

It would be one thing if it were a measured adjustment but they are just slapping the face of everyone who bough the class and the billions of collective gold invested to follow THEIR CURATED vison for the class.

One day FOMO is going to stop working to keep player retention up. I wouldn't be surprised if that day comes sooner rather than later.

This has in no uncertain terms upset a great many people.

acastanza_ESO · February 2023

Harmony bombing absolutely needed to go away.
That said, it was the niche that Necromancer had been pigeonholed in in PVP. Now that Harmony is gone (for the better), it's definitely time to reexamine Necromancer's toolkit in light of the fact that this level of massive damage is no longer an option that has to be accounted for.

propertyOfUndefined · February 2023

I've played necromancer almost exclusively since it was introduced. I have 3 necromancer characters of different races and builds.90% of my in-game time goes to PVP.

Like @CameraBeardThePirate , I don't mind doing away with the synergy. I also agree that something should be done though, or the class' viability as a damage dealer in PVP will suffer greatly. The way I see it, the only necromancer builds you'll see will be the occasional healer, and the perma-block tanks. As a damage dealer, there's nothing the class brings to the table that other classes can't do better. Even its viability as a "controller" archetype pales in comparison to the warden, which has all manner of AOEs, CC, roots and snares.

Urvoth · February 2023

As someone with thousands of hours in magcro that has mained it since release, both in pvp and pve, I'm quite happy with harmony getting reworked and Graverobber being adjusted. The self-synergy + aoe Boneyard cast was extremely clunky and often quite inconsistent in laggy environments. Plus, it being the primary crutch for magcro pvpers to be viable ruined build theorycrafting since all your jewelry trait options automatically defaulted to harmony, and the already cramped bar space was restricted even more by being forced to run Boneyard on every build.

That being said, necro has a great defensive kit but the offensive options are the most limited out of any class, as others above have mentioned. The only actually viable offensive skill for mag after this nerf will be Blastbones, which we all know is also incredibly inconsistent. On top of that, there's no access to standard self buffs, on-demand stuns, executes, or even an applied dot on a class with a dot passive. There isn't even a "selfish" offensive class ult option (Colossus only useful for group vs group, Goliath(non-bash) doesn't do enough dmg and is clearly designed to be defensive, and the res ult is also clunky, inconsistent, and really only useful for group vs group). Besides that, stamcro has clearly been the beneficiary of the hybrid changes, getting access to magcro's signature resistant flesh and the higher damage Blastbones mag morph. The stam scythe also was the only offensive necro skill that's actually been properly reworked since the class came out in 2019.

ZOS has somewhat of a pattern of updating one aspect of a kit/design (usually making thing feel unfinished) and then leaving follow-up changes for a patch or two down the line after they evaluate the impact of the original decision. I'm hoping this'll be the case for necro, since the rest of the class badly needs reworks and it was unlikely to get those necessary redesigns while bombers were running around in Cyro 1 shotting zergs.

godchucknzilla · February 2023

Repost from other combat thread, just so there is twice as much chance to be seen

Hey @ZOS_Kevin ,

If harmony damage is removed then Graverobber should be buffed at least 40 percent from its value on live, not nerfed 40 percent. Think Major Evasion - this buff makes the Necromancer damage too low because the damage is all AOE. Harmony is only unhealthy when ball groups of 12 use it on single players and we need to start addressing cross healing which is way more unhealthy than Harmony. What is up with Major Defile being so dang weak now? Major defile was the Necromancer main debuff but now it does almost nothing. Why do we have Major defile at 16 percent, Baseline it should be 20 percent and Minor defile should be 10 percent??

Items to combat ball groups and stacks of players were a fad that is unhealthy? We need to have ways to kill stacks of players and this was already solved with dark convergence, rush of agony, plaguebreak and vicous death. Having bombing flavor and class diversity is a good thing not everyone wants to play Nightblade to bomb.

The necromancer doesn't need to be redesigned to be more like the other classes, cause then why not just play the other classes. Lets keep it the master of AOE style alive and strengthen what's already weak about it. Buff Graverobber if removing Harmony. Currently the necromancer is too buff heavy having to run 4 buffs is too many and they are way too short. Summoner Armor and Spirit Guardian need to be like 30 seconds long. Corpses need to last twice as long and when players die they should generate a corpse next to their body so when they respawn the tether doesn't vanish.

The Stamina and Magicka Scythe don't do nearly enough damage to be in line with the other class melee skills such as concealed weapons, and they are reduced 20 percent by major evasion, which is now meta and built into the Nightblade kit. At 3800 weapon damage Ruinous Scythe does 5400 tooltip damage, at 3800 weapon damage Concealed Weapons does 7100, 40 percent more damage, mind boggling, and concealed weapons isn't reduced by Major Evasion at all. Can we get some more damage on this Scythe? I realize the the Skull projectile is suppose to be the comparison to Conceal weapons but this scythe is hitting like a wet noodle compared to say Brawler with the Master Weapons.

katorga · February 2023

This was the last nerf remaining to kill the class. To be honest, ZOS has added sets and skills *specifically* designed to bomb large groups of players. Now, a necro harmony bomber is called out as a problem? This is just ZOS devs reserving a playstyle for NB.

Regardless of the removal of harmony, Necromancer has too many skills and mechanics that ineffectual or do not work in PVP (and in some cases PVE):

Grave Grasp and morphs - too slow, too delayed to use in pvp. The pet buff never works because the pets are behind the ground aoe. It needs to buff them automatically on cast.

Agony Totem and morphs - too slow, fails to stun on first 2s tick. This needs to stun instantly on case and every 2s after.

Blastbones - still fails to do anything way too often.

Mystic Siphon and morphs - Usess in pvp, a pain in high movement pve. So bad it is free to cast.

Archer Pet - too slow, nearest target, damage too low, only usable in duels

Skulls and morphs - damage and secondary effects too low and too weak compared to concealed weapon.

Damage mitigation too low. My NB with major evasion and its access to major/minor debuffs has on average higher % damage mitigation than my necro.

My DK can chain cast Corrosive for close to 100% uptime of 97% damage mitigation and 100% penetration because it can generate ultimate while in this form. Why is this not allowed for Goliath (and vampire) utlimates; It should be consistent.

It is the only class without native, class access to major sorcery/brutality.

propertyOfUndefined · February 2023

I'd like to also add that the poor state the class is in in PVP does not instill much confidence in players like me that the arcanist won't suffer the same fate. Please prove me wrong!

sharquez · February 2023

propertyOfUndefined wrote: »

I'd like to also add that the poor state the class is in in PVP does not instill much confidence in players like me that the arcanist won't suffer the same fate. Please prove me wrong!

Oh its beyond doubt that Arcanists will be busted at launch and other classes nerfed to make sure they have a niche.
It's demonstrable precedent.

Probably have an AOE tentacle pit that is essentially Dark convergence for an ulti.

sharquez · February 2023

Dang None of the Necros even trying to go down without a fight. It was a great few years of fun since Elsweyr. Shame the class we all payed 60 bucks for is basically being deleted and no alternatives or improvements are being offered. Guess we gotta shell out again?

NordSwordnBoard · February 2023

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

As a necromancer, I want to be able to control the poor souls I've reanimated and bound to my control, but as it stands, it feels much more like I called in a few drunkards that might do what I want them to but will likely just hang around and waste my time.

You don't like the sitcom you're in?

"A Necromancer with a serious agenda is undermined by incompetent underlings who are reanimated under the influence of substances that impair motor skills and decision making. Hilarity ensues attempting mundane acts and chaos ruins the best laid plans." From the creators of "Dark Convergencing" and "The Oblivion Solution"

Ankael07 · February 2023

The class needs a complete rework which they dont have the time for this patch. Next patch they'll be 100% focused on adjusting Arcanist skills and the patch after that is supposedly the 'maintenance' patch that will be about bug fixing.

I wouldnt expect any proper Necro updates for at least a year. I hope devs prove me wrong

KingLewie_III · February 2023

They really don't need an entire rework. Defensively the tool kit is there, the problem is you can't put out enough damage to make other players stop beating your head in, so then you run into a sustain issue trying to out heal the damage/get out of the way spamming RAT.

I would like to see blast bones just fire off like a missile as soon as its animated, instead of wandering around like he lost his car keys somewhere. Change the damage to scale off distance traveled rather than time.

Some kind of sticky class DOT would synergize with its passive 10% DOT bonus. Flame Skull is clunky, slow moving, and underwhelming compared to Silver Shards or even Force Pulse, which are available to any class.

The cherry on top is how expensive the class ults are. Reanimate blast bones could be VERY fun and effective, if it didn't cost 350 ult. This can be fixed by putting a stipulation into the ult like Incap has. Where if you cast it after a certain amount, it has a secondary effect. So, make it cost 200 and raise 3 blast bones, but if you cast it at 300 it can resurrect 3 players as well.

Melzo · February 2023

KingLewie_III wrote: »

They really don't need an entire rework. Defensively the tool kit is there, the problem is you can't put out enough damage to make other players stop beating your head in, so then you run into a sustain issue trying to out heal the damage/get out of the way spamming RAT.

I would like to see blast bones just fire off like a missile as soon as its animated, instead of wandering around like he lost his car keys somewhere. Change the damage to scale off distance traveled rather than time.

Some kind of sticky class DOT would synergize with its passive 10% DOT bonus. Flame Skull is clunky, slow moving, and underwhelming compared to Silver Shards or even Force Pulse, which are available to any class.

The cherry on top is how expensive the class ults are. Reanimate blast bones could be VERY fun and effective, if it didn't cost 350 ult. This can be fixed by putting a stipulation into the ult like Incap has. Where if you cast it after a certain amount, it has a secondary effect. So, make it cost 200 and raise 3 blast bones, but if you cast it at 300 it can resurrect 3 players as well.

Well, of course. Half of the skills do not work or there are better analogues. Pretty much the entire first skill line, with the exception of blastbones, is useless. The second line of skills is frankly weak. There is no damage and similar skills of other classes are much better. And there are two bad facts. Expensive ultimates and six skills that contradict each other.

And I wrote for six months that the necromancer was frankly weak. But he got two nerfs. Some may disagree, but skills with hot healing have become garbage. Although healing is the main defense of the class. There is no stun or immobilization or slowdown. Although health regeneration is the main defense, it was nerfed twice out of the blue. Even then, the necromancer was not strong, but now his damage was destroyed. Can you suggest something else to nerf this class? Ghost and mortal coil restores 1000 health per second. This is a ridiculous figure given the fact that there is no other protection other than this.

You can tell stories to anyone. But in fact, very few people play these classe. Everyone understands that the class is outright ***.

yadibroz · February 2023

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Vet Necro player here. Thousands of hours across 2 necro toons. Mostly play PvP, but I enjoy endgame PvE content such as Trifecta runs etc. Long comment inbound.

Here's the thing: I don't entirely mind Graverobber going away. Was it OP? No, not at all. It was strong, but more importantly it was the only thing keeping Necro afloat.

The real issue is that the devs have removed the Graverobber playstyle without adding anything else in return. Necro's class kit is severely lacking. There are 3 major pain points that absolutely need to be addressed.

1) No access to Major Sorcery/Brutality or Major Prophecy/Savagery. The lack of either of these buffs in the class kit means that necromancers are forced to run 2 non-class abilities to get these buffs, or are forced to run Blue/Green potions.

2) No class identity. The class identity was high aoe burst via Blastbones and Graverobber, but without Graverobber they will not fit this role nearly as well as other classes like Warden or Nightblade. They have DoT passives that could make them a strong DoT class, but they only have 2 class DoTs, both of which are AOE which hinders their use in both PvP and more mobile PvE fights.

3) Clunky class mechanics and abilities - especially offensively. This issue goes in tandem with both of the points above. It's no secret that Blastbones often acts drunk; when it works it's an exceedingly strong burst ability, but the weirdness with targeting makes it inconsistent. This would be ok, but Blastbones isn't the only Necro ability to behave inconsistently. The Arcanist/Archer and Spirit Mender both have their own targeting issues. Why is it that Necromancer can't command their Pets with the Command Pet keybind? Beyond just the targeting, their class skills are often sidegrades to non class skills at best. Skulls is worse than nearly every other spammable option, the Arcanist and Archer don't do nearly enough damage to warrant their targeting issues, and skills like Empowering Grasp or Bone Totem are bordering on useless in every scenario. "Buffs" to the timers for the Arcanist/Archer actually nerfed Necromancer pretty harshly, as it reduced Corpse Generation for their other skills (since you need to wait half the duration of the ability before it generates a corpse). Couple all of this with the fact that Necros don't have an on demand class stun and you'll find that Necros end up running very few class skills as a result.

Necro has been crutching on Harmony/Graverobber for a long time. Was it overnerfed? Absolutely - the nerf to the Harmony trait was more than enough to make necromancers remove Boneyard from their bar, so the additional nerf to the damage really only hurts Necromancers using the Graveyard to give their teammates a synergy in a group setting.

So what does Necro need?

Firstly, Necromancer is a very lopsided class. Defensively they don't need much, but offensively they're dead in the water. Here are some basic things I think would vastly improve the necromancer kit:

- Access to one or both of the Major Offensive buffs via a class skill

- Access to an on demand stun (something every other class has now)

- A sticky class DoT. This could be tied with the first point, as giving Necro a sticky DoT that also gives them Major Sorcery/Brutality or Prophecy/Savagery would help alleviate the issues they have with bar space.

- Easier corpse management. Corpses should last twice as long as they currently do. Corpse gameplay is extremely clunky and could use another pass, but at the very least this change would mean that Necros don't have to micromanage as much to get the most out of their skills

- A substantial buff to their spammable. There is no reason (across any class) that a class spammable should be the worst option in 90% of gameplay scenarios. As it stands, there is no reason to use Skulls over a weapon spammable, Silver Shards, or Elemental Weapon. What's wrong with it, exactly? There are two major things wrong with this spammable. First, the projectile speed is far too slow to be useful in PvP. Second, neither morph's added effect is really enough - the damage is lackluster and the added effect of 20% damage on the third cast is nowhere nearly as powerful as something like the added effects of Concealed Weapon/Surprise Attack/Whip.

- Being able to command the Archer/Arcanist as well as the 3 Blastbones summoned by the Animate Blastbones ultimate with the command pet keybind/medium weave. As a necromancer, I want to be able to control the poor souls I've reanimated and bound to my control, but as it stands, it feels much more like I called in a few drunkards that might do what I want them to but will likely just hang around and waste my time.

These changes would put Necro in a good-but-not-great spot. The truth is that a lot of their class mechanics are just too clunky. Necromancer requires far too much micromanagement and still only barely keeps up with other classes. Plenty of their abilities could use tweaking - Empowering Grasp for example should probably give its buff passively while slotted, as hitting the pets with this ability is an example of this unfun and unpractical micromanagement.

@ZOS_Kevin please pass this along to the dev team. Harmony was the only thing keeping the class afloat, and whether or not it gets nerfed, Necromancer needs serious changes to remain viable and fun to play in today's meta.

He need a skull pet

DC137 · February 2023

Please don't change Harmony its the only pvp build I've ever worked towards to properly try pvp and i was 90% finished grinding for it!