Nercromancer.

Here in this disscution I want to share my expirience with a class as a average player, and give a feedback, hopefully to devs, about how it feels to play a class in general both PVP and PVE.


I feel thats class becomes more lacking over the patches and its not in terms of dps, survivabilty or capability of doing any kind of content, its in its design and power fantasy feel.

As it is right now necros feels as it spells do so little for what they are designed to be. Additional corpse mech attached to the class makes you think that it will be a fun resourse managment game outside of your general magika and stamina, but in reality you doesnt even notice it while playing. Only time you notice that there is a corpse generating-consuming mechanic is when you are running tethers, outside of them its really unnoticable. In your active skills there is no really great indication that you are doing mech correctly or doing it at all.

Lets run over necro spell kit :

Flaming Skull - no corpse mech;
Blastbones - creates a corpse;
Graveyard - consumes corpse to get a flat 30% dps increase;
Sceletal Mage - creates a corpse;
Shocking Siphon - consumes a corpse for rapid ticking ground/stick to player/ tether dot - doesnt work without a copse, hence has no resourse cost;
Colossus - no corpse mech;

Death Sythe - no corpse mech;
Bone Armor - creates corpse;
Bitter Harvest - consumes corpses for health based hot and ulti gen;
Totem - no corpse mech (fear is delayed, buffs and debuffs it provides a minor and wildly spread in the game, high cost, red circle(pvp));
Grave Grasp - no corpse mech (has a cool summons buff, but high cost and tricky to hit both enemies with the debuff, and summons with the buff)
Bone Goliath - no corpse mech;

Render Flesh - corpse mech on one of the morphs to heal additional target;
Expunge - no corpse mech (worse then maras balm, like every other dispel that isnt maras balm);
Life Amids Death - consume corpses to add aoe hot, aoe purge on one of the morphs;
Spirit Mender - creates a corpse;
Restoring Tether - consumes a corpse for rapid ticking ground/stick to player/ tether hot - doesnt work without a copse, hence has no resourse cost;
Reanimate - corpse mech on one of the morphs, super gimmicky one;

Passives:
Direct corpse mech:
Reusable parts - great sustain passive, 50% cost reduction on summons;
Corpse consumption - ulti gen;

Non dicrect corpse mech:
Undead Confederate - great sustain passive, flat 200 mag and stam reg;
Death Gleaning - sustain passive, resourse gain on enemies dying;

To sum it up:

4 spells creates corpses;
1 in gravelord spelltree, for 30% dps on ground dot;
1 in bone tyrant for healthpool based heal with ulti gen;
2 in living death for ground hot/aoe pugre and burst heal on two targets;

1 ulti moprph (reanimate blastbones) uses it to gain something unique, but not realiable;

5 out of 6 ulti morphs doesnot contribute to this mech;
5 spells (1/3 of our kit) doesnot contribute to this mech;
2 spell ties directly to the mech by tethering to a corpse and have no other cost, 100% mech dependancy;

Passives mech interaction only provides sustain.

Now with it in mind lets talk about gameplay.

Lets start from the begining, you pick up the class, and on your journy to level 50. You are starting with a simple ability kit that is single target spammable, aoe damage-self heal, and burst single target heal, which is quite basic toolkit. As you progress you are introduced to yours first summon - blastbones, then you picking up your major resolve buff, and the dispel. At this point you getting familiar with corpse generation as yours summon and armor buff leave a corpse, then on the third classline spells you get corpse consuming spells - graveyard, bitter harvest and life amids death.
Pacing of necro leveling is really well done, you arent given a bunch of spells that you dont know what to do with, you learn step by step as you progress. At level 50 of skill trees you are given you tethers, that are free of cost(exept needing a corpse to cast) which is make you feel like you mastered the necromancy, sucking those sweet resourses from a fallen foe while dealing aoe dot damage, or healing yourself and allies. But something feels wrong. When progression of character ends you realise that you arent getting anything new to your ability kit, and especialy for mag necro, it starts to feel lacking.

PvE. Its decent. Rotation feels smooth, numbers are okay. Biggest problem in that regard is no class unique group utility like minor buffs. But when its start to feel realy lacking its animations and effects. Screen shakes on colossus slams and blatsbone makes them feel impactful, they are really sweet to look at. Problem is Flaming skull and sythe, they are visually good, but skull projectile speed makes it look like itsa baloon you throw, and sythe dosent feel like your char puts any effort into swing.

Necro ultis are not really great:
Colossus thats a group utility major vulnerability debuff, no longer unique, doesnt feel like decent damage ult (hi standart/atro/soul harvest/cresent sweep/northen storm) in solo pve(arenas, openworld) and pvp(hard to land cuz red circle), debuff is purgable, damge is average (assasins will can hit close to , or even harder then all three atro hits)
Bone colossus transformation gives a lot of survivability, great for tanking, but doesnt offer anything outside of tanking exept gimmicky bash build
Reanimate is group support utility that is kinda niche, has a huge cost,and you dont really want to die in this game if you going for any high end content, but great for pugging, and small scale pvp

Necro class kit in PvP. It has no synergy with its own skills. There is no spells that feels good to combo into each other. Lets go over exaples:

Dk leash comboes with itself, it sets enemy offbalance if its rooted(claws) or stuned (fossilize\obsidian shard),
and other morph: applying dots stacking up huge whip;

Sorcs have curse into mages wrath into ult into streak into frags combo, crazy to land, feels satisfying. And line up of the cpmbo is interchangable, making of kinds of sorc (mag/stam/hybrid) have a combo around curse -> streak with crystal wapon into dizzy swing, with twin slashes into any proc and all that kinds of stuf. Also its range pressure alsi shines in any build with daedric armaments, overload, frags and curse

Templars isnt in greatest spot right now, but at least they spells do combo into each other. Jabs and Cresent sweep ticks, burning light, PoTL, strongest execute and unblockable spear, you at least can play around that.

NB. Incap->bow. boom.

Wardens. Magicka ones suffer from same generic range class spammable. But, right now they have an Ice Stuff buffs, that make them really decent class capable of putting on half range pressure with deep fissure, frost reach and arctic blast stuns. Stamina ones have also decent variety, they can play around fissure->dizzy->dawnbreaker, fissure-> northen strom -> arctic blast -> spin to win and a few decent dots like render slashes and flies.

And necros. Stamina one has blastbones -> dizzy -> dawnbreaker. If blastbones doesnt lose his target and desides to go for 8 sec John Travolta cosplay.
Magika can summon blastbones and spam force pulse.
Avid boneyards synergy, that made mag necro stand out in pvp was nerfed, jewelry trait that enabeld it - reworked, and now mag necro lacking any burst.
Class have no execute, ouside of death knell which is indirect execute passive, adding crit chanse for gravelord spells at 25% enemy health.

Now for suggestions. I actually have a quite detailed diagrams that will serve as solid arguments to my suggestion. Paint pics.


On this slide of my presentation you can observe what i came up with for adjustment to a flaming skull. Well idea that I came up with, its to make it like Rakkhat barrage attack, but instead lasting for 0.8s, that fires 4 smaller skull projectiles in one target. It will add a channeler flavor to the class, making you feel like the dark mage you are, also synergising with rapid rot passive. Venom skull could be left unchanged, in case you still want to have a instant spammable.


Blastbones is necros bread and butter. But I think something has to be done to compensate for its "reliability". my suggestion its to make a beam, that binds blastbones to a targeted enemy. Beam serves only as a guide for our blasbone. If an enemy runs out of its range, goes to stealth, or die before blastbone reaching it -> beam breaks, instantly killing our blastbone, dealing something like 30-50% of bb tooltip and refunds 30-50% of its costs.


Now for my poor graveyard. Having a burst tied to it its actually a way to go. Problem with self synegry was all on harmony trait and absence of GCD. My suggestion is making it a more of a catarsis spell then upfront brust. Placing graveyard consumes up to 3-6 corpses in the area over 1-2 seconds, dealing X damage for a corpse consumed(or increasing damage of avid synergy by a %). That way it would me more telegrafed, and can only be used with a setup.


Now to make a necromancer actually being THE undead summoner. My suggestion for sceletal mage adjust its actually making this spell a buff( prophecy/savagery). With a twist. You critical hits on the target make a bolt of necrotic energy ricochet from the target into nearest corpse, animating it(sceletal mage/archer) to fight at your side for X secs up to three times. Even cutting mage damage down three times to compensate for the amounts of undead you summon will make it a very welcomed change , will satisfy me at least, and will play into necromancer fantasy of owerhelming your enemys with amounts of undead you summon.


Idea that made write it all down. Class execute. You swing your sythe (with dks charged whip animation) in attempt to behead your target, harvesting their essense. Each hit on an enemy that under 50% health apllies a Death Touched debuff, up to 3 stacks, that deal X fire dot that scales in proportion to enemys lost health. If a target dies with 1 stack or from 1 hit, you reassemble target corpse into weaker version of blastbones (80-40% damage of bb tooltip) that seeks nearest enemy. Im my head this spell looks like it was in the game but then was removed for being too cool.


Other stuff.
(A) Totem should have empovering grasp buff effect on your summons. And making summons AI stay in totem radius will also be great.
(B) Grave grasp could be a ground aoe ability that functions simillar but based on timer, applying each effect for every 2 second per enemy( if you stand in it you get 2s slow, then 2s root 2s stun). One morph could be for pve tanks to debuff adds in radius with minor weap/spell damage debaff, and other one should aplly stun on recast, like warden seeds burst heal on recast.

Its also would be cool to see colossus made into summonable flesh atro, that will have no cost on summon, but will have a timer, and huge interaptable summon time (around 6s). Catch is pressing its active component will consume corpse for him to do something prolonging the timer.

Thats all of the suggestion I have, my hope its not to see my ramblings being considered or implemented, but to show what an average necro enjoyer expects his class to be. Hope my feedback helps.