Some ideas to actually improve Necromancer

VanLo83 · February 7

So yeah, after reading the necromancer nerf patch notes and gawking in disbelief at my screen for what must have been an hour or so, I started thinking about possible scenarios that would actually improve Necromancer, maybe even fix it? I'm curious to see what the community thinks about these changes I'd propose to the devs:

-Let's start with Blastbones... yeah awch. So ZOS REALLY wants to change this skill to make it more accessible to "slower" or less "focused" players to use? Perfect in my opinion really, missing even a single cast of whatever Blastbones you're using (majority of us will be using Stalking Blastbones for obvious reasons) hits your overall DPS in a major way. So, let's keep the idea of it turning into a buff. Heck let's change BOTH versions of Blastbones into a buff. What should be changing on this department from experience with the class is simple; keep the duration to 20s that's fine, but change the 20% increased damage buff to including ALL forms of damage, including dots, weapons skills, the works. Also since the Corpse mechanic is SUPER important to us Necros (it powers our abilities and in some fights it's hard to keep killing mobs) every 3 seconds it should generate a corpse at the players feet. Magicka version of Blastbones can maybe add some type of buff and the stam one another buff. I mean there's options for this.

-Skeletal Mage/Skeletal Arcanist/Skeletal Archer, it'd be nice for them to get a lovely DPS boost and an increase to their duration from 20s to about 30s to give em a chance to actually inflict some proper damage. I'd also add the Major Brutality/Sorcery to this skill, makes it more on par with the self buffs of other classes and adds that extra little Necromancer flavor to such a buff skill.

- Rapid Rot passive should be buffed as well to compensate for the massive DPS loss of the Blastbones changes. Increase it from 10% DoT bonus damage to 20% at least.

-Flame Skull and it's morphs should get a DPS increase as well, again due to the blastbones changes.

-Grave Grasp... honestly I've never seen it used before or never really used it myself. It's just one of those abilities I find to be useless. I'd guess a larger radius for the effect would be nice and a longer duration the buff from the morph would be good too. 10 seconds just feels way too short right now.

-Bone totem and it's morphs. Honestly I'm clueless about these as well. I've never seen the point in this skill and it's morphs especially when you keep in mind that other classes do the debuffs and buffs way better. Total rework would be nice, make it into a more pet centric kind of system, or an extra way to generate corpses to compensate for the blastbones changes?

-Death Scythe and it's morphs are ok... not good... not great... just ok. This could definitely do with a lovely buff on the damage department. Or maybe make this ability and it's morphs a sure fire way of applying certain status effects? Could work well with the status effects changes.

This is an idea not tied to any of the skills right now but I always get the feeling when I play Necromancer that... I'm not really a necromancer at all... more like a dark sorcerer or something like that? The fact that a class that lends itself perfectly to being a pet class doesn't even get a single perma pet is simply weird. I've learned to accept it over the years but every time a new player or someone new to necromancer asks about this, it's like you're telling them they kinda wasted their money on Necromancer. I'd love for a system like Sorcerer or Warden, tie a pet to an ability slot and give us the choice maybe? Don't need a circus with us but something that makes us look like... well... actual Necromancers would be nice.

Sorry for the long wall of text and this is from the point of view from a DPS Necromancer player. I know the tanking branch fairly well too but I'm rather clueless when it comes to healing on the class. And these changes I propose are based on my own opinions on the class. I would love however to get some input from my fellow necro players about this because what ZOS is proposing right now might very well end the Necro class at least on the DPS scene.

IncultaWolf · February 8

Someone made a very good suggestion earlier on how to rework blastbones so it doesn't lose its damage identity, but also be viable for players who struggle to cast it every 3 seconds during a parse.

Make blastbones apply a STRONG 10 second DoT and get rid of or significantly lowering the initial direct damage.

Grim_Overlord · February 8

I keep seeing the DOT idea being attached to Blastbones, but they could also take this opportunity to make a morph that leans into the summoner aesthetic by making a morph summon 3 Blastbones at once. One of them launches itself as the skill currently functions on live, being after 2.5 seconds. After another 2.5 seconds, the second one launches, and after another 2.5 seconds, the third. The initial cost of the summon remains the same as it is currently, but charges you the cost again each time a skeleton leaps, the first being paid for on the cast. If you wanted to, you could recast this every three seconds still to mimic Blastbone's current functionality, however this version of the skill could also come with buffs for having skeletons up and following you, such as each skeleton following you from this ability increasing your damage done with DOTs by 3%, for a total of 9 for the first 2.5 seconds after casting the skill, dropping to 6 after, and so on until each skeleton leaps. This could be interesting mechanically as you could choose to treat it as a permanent 6% increase to DOT damage from casting Blastbones every three seconds, or use it as an auto-casting Blastbones for 9 seconds.