Necromancer (The Gravelord tree we need) + other skill reworks

AvidNecro · February 1

Edited: @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin *** I would like to volunteer, to be the new Necromancer Class Representative, if given the opportunity***

I truly enjoy that the dev team is recognizing and making attempts to help the necromancer class. As a Necro main on Xbox NA and content creator on YT, I would like for @ZOS_GinaBruno to please take the time to hear me out.

Again, thank you for taking a look at the class and creating new ideas to try and help it perform better. Here are some tips that myself and others would agree, that would be appropriate for competitiveness in balance and class identity.

Gravelord Tree

-Flame skull and both its morphs (Ricochet skull/ Venom skull), increase its speed to match force shock and its morphs (Crushing shock/ Force Pulse), to better land on the target without missing repetitively, losing out on burst potential. Also include the 3rd cast of both morphs in the reusable parts to help with sustain. Damage otherwise is fine.

-Blast bones U41, The damage of this skill and its morph Blighted blast bones is appropriate, however blighted blast bones needs a bump in damage in respects to the other burst potential, other classes have. As far as the new morph goes Grave Lord Sacrifice, I believe this is a strong attempt in the right direction and I feel the skill needs time to be worked on in the next few weeks of the PTS. My propose would be... Keep the skill as is... but add AOE damage when the skeleton jumps to you for the buff, almost like a bomb. This would pair nicely with the new passive it gives with the bonus damage and combined with the lack luster graveyard synergy (Avid Boneyard) this could be some serious AOE damage with the new 20% added damage and DOT provided by the new skill morph. This would create a niche playstyle and could actually make the player feel like a necromancer.

-Graveyard and its morphs need some adjusting. The base skill and Avid boneyard either need a buff in damage (without the help from grave lord sacrifice), or a reduced cooldown on the synergy itself from 20 down to 10, basically the duration that the boneyard is up for anyways. This synergy cooldown would pertain to the necromancer skill only and global cooldowns for synergies for everything else in the game would remain the same 20 sec. As far as Unnerving boneyard, the radius needs to be increased drastically up from 8 meters to be effective whatsoever. Make it the same as Templar cleanse ritual and even remove the damage if need be. This would be a competitive morph, forcing the player to chose burst, or providing support

-Skeletal Mage and its morphs need 2 things... Attach Major Sorcery/ Brutality to base skill and both morphs, and increase the DOT damage a bit. What exactly that % increase needs to be, I don't know, but make it so that its competitive to other DOTs like dragon knights. It makes no sense that the necromancer has a passive to increase DOT damage with some of the weakest and hardest to land DOTs in the game.

-Mystic syphon and its morphs are probably one of my favorite skills in the class. This skill and its morphs need to have major prophecy/ savagery attached to it while slotted (on both bars) and make mystic syphon a sticky DOT to the enemy player and detonating syphon, remain a corpse skill, allowing the player to detonate on command with a shorter uptime (similar to Diablo IV) detonating corpses.

-Ultimate Animate Blast Bones, PLEASE reduce the cost and take away the player revive to make it a army of the dead skill, and tie the revival tool to the other morph, separating PvP and PvE aspects of the skill

Passives are great and I love the buffs.

RaptorRodeoGod · February 1

I agree with most of your points, and I really like that blastbones/grave lord's sacrifice idea. It keeps the identity of the new skill and tho old skill at the same time.

I think the sticky dot should be a skeletal mage morph though, as those are kind of based off sticky dots, kind of not. Make the morph into a skeletal parasite, that holds onto the target and deals damage, and drops a corpse once it dies/is purged.

I think the siphons should stay as is, because they're literally one of 2 damage corpse consumers. Getting rid of another corpse consuming ability kinda defeats the point of corpses in the first place. And they already have a unique 3% damage bonus for everything, I just think they should make that portion active on both bars.

AvidNecro · February 1

RaptorRodeoGod wrote: »

I agree with most of your points, and I really like that blastbones/grave lord's sacrifice idea. It keeps the identity of the new skill and tho old skill at the same time.

I think the sticky dot should be a skeletal mage morph though, as those are kind of based off sticky dots, kind of not. Make the morph into a skeletal parasite, that holds onto the target and deals damage, and drops a corpse once it dies/is purged.

I think the siphons should stay as is, because they're literally one of 2 damage corpse consumers. Getting rid of another corpse consuming ability kinda defeats the point of corpses in the first place. And they already have a unique 3% damage bonus for everything, I just think they should make that portion active on both bars.

I see your point. I guess I got carried away with them only because I just desperately want useful skills. I’d rather have a hard time choosing skills because of how good they are vs trying to use the same skills because everything else is crap, lol

Turtle_Bot · February 1

but add AOE damage when the skeleton jumps to you for the buff, almost like a bomb. This would pair nicely with the new passive it gives with the bonus damage and combined with the lack luster graveyard synergy (Avid Boneyard) this could be some serious AOE damage with the new 20% added damage and DOT provided by the new skill morph. This would create a niche playstyle and could actually make the player feel like a necromancer.

This is actually such a cool idea @ZOS_Kevin if you could pass this on to the relevant team, that would be awesome.

-Skeletal Mage and its morphs need 2 things... Attach Major Sorcery/ Brutality to base skill and both morphs, and increase the DOT damage a bit. What exactly that % increase needs to be, I don't know, but make it so that its competitive to other DOTs like dragon knights. It makes no sense that the necromancer has a passive to increase DOT damage with some of the weakest and hardest to land DOTs in the game.

Either this skill or the tethers definitely need to grant major sorcery/brutality, that's for sure.

I think what would help the most with archer/mage is to make their damage count as both pets and DoTs (i.e. can be buffed by effects that increase both). At the moment they still count as pets (so they don't gain bonuses from DoT passives), but their damage also got nerfed to be that of sticky DoTs back in U35. So their damage got reduced while not gaining any of the benefits that come with slotting actual DoT abilities. Fixing this would go a long way for this skill.

-Mystic syphon and its morphs are probably one of my favorite skills in the class. This skill and its morphs need to have major prophecy/ savagery attached to it while slotted (on both bars) and make mystic syphon a sticky DOT to the enemy player and detonating syphon, remain a corpse skill, allowing the player to detonate on command with a shorter uptime (similar to Diablo IV) detonating corpses.

This is an interesting rework for tethers. make detonating into a more bursty focused DoT (better in PvP) while mystic is a more sustained DoT (better in PvE).

-Ultimate Animate Blast Bones, PLEASE reduce the cost and take away the player revive to make it a army of the dead skill, and tie the revival tool to the other morph, separating PvP and PvE aspects of the skill

Yeah, something like this needs to happen for this morph imo. Leave the group support/resurrection to the other morph and this one becomes the DPS morph.

AvidNecro · February 1

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

but add AOE damage when the skeleton jumps to you for the buff, almost like a bomb. This would pair nicely with the new passive it gives with the bonus damage and combined with the lack luster graveyard synergy (Avid Boneyard) this could be some serious AOE damage with the new 20% added damage and DOT provided by the new skill morph. This would create a niche playstyle and could actually make the player feel like a necromancer.

This is actually such a cool idea @ZOS_Kevin if you could pass this on to the relevant team, that would be awesome.

-Skeletal Mage and its morphs need 2 things... Attach Major Sorcery/ Brutality to base skill and both morphs, and increase the DOT damage a bit. What exactly that % increase needs to be, I don't know, but make it so that its competitive to other DOTs like dragon knights. It makes no sense that the necromancer has a passive to increase DOT damage with some of the weakest and hardest to land DOTs in the game.

Either this skill or the tethers definitely need to grant major sorcery/brutality, that's for sure.

I think what would help the most with archer/mage is to make their damage count as both pets and DoTs (i.e. can be buffed by effects that increase both). At the moment they still count as pets (so they don't gain bonuses from DoT passives), but their damage also got nerfed to be that of sticky DoTs back in U35. So their damage got reduced while not gaining any of the benefits that come with slotting actual DoT abilities. Fixing this would go a long way for this skill.

-Mystic syphon and its morphs are probably one of my favorite skills in the class. This skill and its morphs need to have major prophecy/ savagery attached to it while slotted (on both bars) and make mystic syphon a sticky DOT to the enemy player and detonating syphon, remain a corpse skill, allowing the player to detonate on command with a shorter uptime (similar to Diablo IV) detonating corpses.

This is an interesting rework for tethers. make detonating into a more bursty focused DoT (better in PvP) while mystic is a more sustained DoT (better in PvE).

-Ultimate Animate Blast Bones, PLEASE reduce the cost and take away the player revive to make it a army of the dead skill, and tie the revival tool to the other morph, separating PvP and PvE aspects of the skill

Yeah, something like this needs to happen for this morph imo. Leave the group support/resurrection to the other morph and this one becomes the DPS morph.

I appreciate the feedback. Makes me happy that other people share the same insight and want to see the class thrive!!!

Urvoth · February 1

We shouldn't be forced to use a stam semi spammable if we want to keep using blastbones. Necros are thematically a mage/caster class both in popular media and in TES lore, and being forced to use a stam semi spammable completely destroys magcros as a playstyle.

Tessitura · February 1

They need to axe the Graveyard and Siphon corpse spenders in the Gravelord tree. They need to just be button presses that consume nearby or far away corpses. One should turn corpses into disposable undead minions to throw at the enemy maybe they have a miasma cloud around them that applies aoe dots so it doesn't lose it aoe aspect, the other needs to be the sacrificial effect they want to replace blast bones with. You summon a minion from a corpse that runs to you and dies to give you the buffs and maybe some resources back. To me, thats the only change necromancer needs has a whole and we are not getting it.

MashmalloMan · February 1

Basically what I've been saying, Sacrificial Bones is a great way to mix up Necro's toolkit, but it feels a bit half baked.

Here's my take on it. This wouldn't fix all of Necro's problems, but it would fix the majority of the problems introduced in this patch and the long standing 1 of not having an in class major Brutality/Sorcery option.

Skeletal Mage

Add Major Brutality/Sorcery for 10s on cast.
- Skeletal Archer
  - Retains 10s Major Brutality/Sorcery.
  - Rework into a 5s summon that casts a version of Toxic Barrage dealing and increasing in damage each second to 1 target.
  - Helps players that give up Blighted Blastbones retain some burst and corpse generation in the form of a strong, but short, single target dot.
- Skeletal Arcanist
  - Double the duration of Major Brutality/Sorcery to 20s.
  - Retain the aoe damage dealt from live.

Blastbones

Sacrificial Bones
- This morph now also applies a weak, 5m aoe dot to the caster to reinforce the idea of it being a dot focused option for Necro's to build around. This damage is relatively minor as the main focus is the 20% damage multiplier.
- This gives it a bit more oomph as a skill on it's own instead of requiring the caster to use another skill to see any actual damage related results.
Blighted Blastbones
- This morph now retains some of the power from Stalking Blastbones, by increasing in damage dealt for each second it spends chasing it's target by 10% up to 50%.
- This morph now scales based on your highest max resource.
- These 2 changes fully retain the original concepts of Blighted and Stalking Blastbones.

Grim_Overlord · February 1

Wholeheartedly agree with the change to Animate Blastbones. Regarding Skeletal Arcanist/Archer, Graveyard, and the Siphons, these skills in general would benefit greatly from an overhaul all around. The siphons are the closest to decent if given Major Brutality/Sorcery, with their issues being tied more closely to corpses disappearing as you target them, though the effect of Mystic Siphon being additional recovery doesn't feel very inspired or helpful for the class overall.

Arcanist and Archer both need to be updated to DOTs, and like Blastbones ought to be, freed from pets being unable to proc sets. While I understand Sorcerer pets not being able to proc with their basic attacks, the activated ability of the scamp can proc sets as it counts as non-pet damage because it has to be cast. All of the Necro pets are temporary and require recasting and as they, thematically, are more an extension of the caster than a summoned daedra, it would make sense they are able to proc sets this way. Outside of these mechanical changes, they still just don't deal enough damage to be taken seriously and would benefit greatly from some extra utility on both morphs to warrant their use beyond Archer in single target fights.

Graveyard is one of the worst offenders for Necromancer as a class. While the core of the skill, the damage increasing with corpse use, is fine, the morphs offering self-synergy use or Major Breech doesn't do much for the class. The Breech should be moved to the base skill and while I wouldn't take away Avid's unique morph as it is used across a few build types, this would open up Unnerving to bring something else to the table that actually synergizes with Necromancer as a class such as further debuffs to enemies in it by making them 100% more likely to be inflicted with Status Effects or something. As a side note, the visual on this skill is very cheesy and would be better fit by a static pool of skeletal hands similar to what grave grasp has going on. Turning Gravegrasp into Boneyard's effects as described here would be great, as then another skill could be made in Gravelord even, such as a zombie sticky-dot summon. That I realize though is a tougher ask.

Point is, the direction they are taking with sacrificial bones is nice in that it is thinking about what the core of the class wants to be, that being decay and DOT effects. While I still prefer Blastbones and have outlined my morph thoughts on Blighted a few places elsewhere(if nothing else please hybridize the cost with the higher resource pool), the core of their focus should remain as is demonstrated in sacrificial bones, in not only promoting that decay themed playstyle but also in making the skills all synergize towards that theme.

TX12001rwb17_ESO · February 1

Here is a change they need to make, rename Skeletal Arcanist, were that an Arcanist why isn't it using Arcanist skills? why is spamming lightning attacks and not rune blades or fatecarver?

IncultaWolf · February 1

TX12001rwb17_ESO wrote: »

Here is a change they need to make, rename Skeletal Arcanist, were that an Arcanist why isn't it using Arcanist skills? why is spamming lightning attacks and not rune blades or fatecarver?

Yeah, it made sense back in 2019, but it's just out of place now. I'd love to see the sacrifice buff put on the magicka skeletal minion

IncultaWolf · February 1

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_RichLambert

Just sharing my feedback on the necromancer changes

I'd suggest leaving both morphs of blastbones alone, and put that buff on another necromancer skill, empowering grasp perhaps, that ability needs a rework as is, it hardly ever lands even if it hits your pets. If this change does go through, it's also an indirect nerf to animate blastbones ult and empowering grasp for magicka users. And like others have said, it takes away range corpse generation. If the combat team is dead set on reworking stalking blastbones, at least buff up the blighted morph, it is also getting indirectly nerfed with the defile changes and was already weaker than stalking.

I think the best thing to do is put the sacrifice buff on the skeletal minion, and have a toggle on the pet, like sorcerer summons, so they still have their damage function, but if you activate the ability again, it will self-destroy and give you the buff. The skeletal archer/arcanist still don't count as damage over time, so the necro passives don't even buff them.

Necromancer still lacks a lot of self buffs other classes already have, such as major brutality/sorcery.

Blastbones, and the spirit mender still don't count towards your scoreboard in battlegrounds, and they also cannot proc any sets in the game.

AvidNecro · February 3

AvidNecro wrote: »

Edited: @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin *** I would like to volunteer, to be the new Necromancer Class Representative, if given the opportunity***

-Blast bones U41, The damage of this skill and its morph Blighted blast bones is appropriate, however blighted blast bones needs a bump in damage in respects to the other burst potential, other classes have. As far as the new morph goes Grave Lord Sacrifice, I believe this is a strong attempt in the right direction and I feel the skill needs time to be worked on in the next few weeks of the PTS. My propose would be... Keep the skill as is... but add AOE damage when the skeleton jumps to you for the buff, almost like a bomb. This would pair nicely with the new passive it gives with the bonus damage and combined with the lack luster graveyard synergy (Avid Boneyard) this could be some serious AOE damage with the new 20% added damage and DOT provided by the new skill morph. This would create a niche playstyle and could actually make the player feel like a necromancer.

-Ultimate Animate Blast Bones, PLEASE reduce the cost and take away the player revive to make it a army of the dead skill, and tie the revival tool to the other morph, separating PvP and PvE aspects of the skill

I would like to note that I have extensively tested my new build until update 41, and I stand by my thoughts on animate blast bones needing a reduced cost, and carrying the revive portion of the skill over to the other morph and leaving it there. I'm thinking base cost should be equivalent to some other higher costing ultimate's, such as destructive ulti or meteor even maybe? 200-250 ultimate cost I think is more than fair for a purposed change.

Really do hope some classic buffs are tied to some necro skills too such as major sorcery/ brutality and major prophecy/ savagery. aka raise skeleton/ syphon.

Lazarus_Rising · February 3

You are a good one Avid. Still watching your videos even when im not playing currently. I admire your energy to still play necro in pvp.

StarOfElyon · February 4

We are in agreement on a number of these. You can see where in the ideas in the spoiler.

StarOfElyon wrote: »

Here are some ideas that I have to add some more utility to the skills on the class.

Hungry Scythe: also applies life steal to all enemies hit. (I think this still won't make the spammable very good for damage but at least it'll add to the use for survivability)

[Also, life steal should probably be tied to a status effect too]

Skeletal Arcanist/Archer: grants major sorcery/brutality when active.

Mystic/Detonating Syphon: grants major prophecy/savagery when slotted. Both morphs apply a damage over time to targets that stick to them after touching the tether.

Flame/Venom skull: applies burning/poisoned status effects. Does additional damage to targets afflicted with a status effect. No longer does increased damage on third cast but instead does increased damage on low health enemies.

Spirit Mender:
- Spirit Guardian: when active, applies major cowardice to attackers. (I just like the idea of the ghost scaring attackers.)
- Intensive Mender: increases the healing over a shorter period of time. (Buff the healing more please)

Bone Totem: summons an effigy of bones up to 28 meters away. After 1 second, the totem begins fearing nearby enemies every 2 seconds, causing them to cower in place for 4 seconds. (Changed to allow both morphs to be targeted)
- Warding Totem (Formerly Remote Totem): grants minor protection when standing in the area of effect.
- Agony Totem: afflicts enemies in the area of effect with minor vulnerability.

ULTIMATES:
Putrid Colossus (formerly Frozen Colossus): Unleash a decayed Flesh Colossus to pulverize enemies in the area. The Colossus smashes the ground three times over 3 seconds. Dealing damage applies Major Vulnerability to any enemy hit for 12 seconds.
- Frozen Colossus (formerly Glacial Colossus): does frost damage and freezes (stuns) enemies on the first hit instead of the third. (If a stun is too strong, the first hit can apply a strong snare instead)
- Pestilent Colossus: smashes the ground once and does disease damage. Afflicts enemies with a pestilence that does damage over time. (In PvP ultimates are all about burst and that's what necros lack so I tried to make the bursty part of these ultimates at the beginning of them)

Animate Blastbones: instead of resurrecting allies, this ultimate summons blastbones to attack the nearest opponent. It consumes corpses in the area to summon up to three more blastbones. Summoned Blastbones are immune to being crowd controlled (other than by another ultimate). Reduce the cost of this ultimate to 200, down from 320, to make it more usable.

TX12001rwb17_ESO · February 4

Here is a change:

Skeletal Arcanist

Summon an ACTUAL ARCANIST or change the skill name.

AvidNecro · February 4

Lazarus_Rising wrote: »

You are a good one Avid. Still watching your videos even when im not playing currently. I admire your energy to still play necro in pvp.

Thank you my guy, appreciate all the support I can get. And thank you for your kind words!