A slightly different angle and some suggestions on the problems of Necromancers

chessalavakia_ESO · June 28

Disclaimers:

Necromancer characters have never been my predominant character build in any Elder Scrolls title. I have one on each of my accounts in ESO. I had a couple in Skyrim, one on Oblivion, and one in Morrowind.
I do not PvP or PvE at a high level.
This is probably irrelevant as my impression from the AUA is that Necromancer changes are probably already in the works https://old.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/1d3fs29/official_gold_road_update_42_aua_thread_may_29/

What are the problems in my view?

When you played as a Necromancer type character in other Elder Scrolls titles, you might not be the most powerful build overall but, you were generally a powerful summoner that could do some things other builds might not be able to do.

In ESO, this doesn’t really feel like the case as you seem to generally be doing the same things that any other build does in a more awkward fashion.

You also hit the issue if you try to play with other players in even a semi-optimized fashion that the Necromancer is both rather unwieldy as they can need to put more effort in to get results and short on buffs compared to other classes. Players can mitigate the lack of buffs by using Oakensoul but, if you do so you quickly run into the question of why you are choosing to be a Necromancer at all.

World Change Suggestions:

Add some hidden Necromancer Lairs that can be accessed by using Necromancer abilities near them:

Aside from some nice dialogue options, being a Necromancer is primarily a liability at the world level due to the reaction of npcs to the usage of Necromancer abilities. Having some small areas that only your class could access could add a bit of interest. I'd suggest starting with just small areas with a bit of loot and a few minor npcs. If the areas appeal they could expand a bit and perhaps be implemented for other groups.

Skill Change Suggestions:

Living Death:

Reanimate: While slotted the ultimate number will be displayed. Reanimates a single target. Consumes only the Ultimate amount required to reanimate the target. The cost to reanimate a target depends on what the target is. Targets that for balance reasons cannot be reanimated will instead produce a Blastbones. NPC reanimation that does not produce a Blastbones will last for only 20 seconds. (If the NPC’s are too weak, they could potentially be given the buffs that companions can get.)

Extended Reanimation: Doubles the duration of NPC reanimation.

Animate Blastbones: Functions as it is now except it now also restores Magicka and Stamina for each ally you attempt to resurrect.

Explanation:

I’ll admit that it’s probably a bit of power creep to stack all of that on Animate Blastbones but, otherwise you are stuck making one of the existing morphs get wiped out which will annoy the people that use it.

Reanimate will probably not be that impressive from a functionality stand point as most NPCs aren’t very strong but, I think it can provide a significant amount of Necromancer feeling to the class.

Obviously, it's possible the engine can't handle this so it might not be doable.

Expunge: While slotted on either bar the cost of your abilities are reduced.

Explanation: This is intended to slightly increase the payoff of running a two bar setup and using the ability.

Restoring Tether: While slotted on either bar your healing is increased

Explanation: This is intended to slightly increase the payoff of running a two bar setup and using the ability.

Corpse Consumption: When you use an ability on a corpse you gain Major Prophecy and Savagery, increasing your Spell and Weapon Critical rating by 2629 and 5/10 Ultimate. Ultimate can only be gained once every 16 seconds.

Explanation:

The Necromancer runs on the short side buff wise. This change cuts down on the shortage in an area where the Necromancer is not unique while also leaning into an area where the Necromancer is already a bit unique and special. I realize that people would likely rather have Major Brutality and Sorcery but, that is one of the ways the Necromancer is unique as it is the only class without a source of that buff.

Undead Confederate: Also applies when you have an NPC reanimated.

Bone Tyrant:

Bone Goliath Transformation: Increase the duration by 5 seconds

Explanation:

The Bone Goliath has a high degree of similarity with Blood Sion. Changing the duration will slightly increase the differences between the two while making Bone Goliath a bit more impressive.

Grave Grasp: Produces a corpse in the third area

Ghostly Embrace: Reduces cost as the ability ranks up.

Empowering Grasp: No longer reduces cost as the ability ranks up. Always provides the caster with Empower. Always buffs your summons and now buffs reanimated npcs.

Explanation:

The Necromancer has a limited supply of abilities that quickly generate corpses. Grave Grasp thematically fits with corpse generation and can be a bit on the weaker side. Empowering Grasp is gaining more reliability when it comes to buffing yourself and your npc allies (The buff can miss you when it’s used on uneven terrain and your allies are rarely positioned where it can hit them well) at the cost of losing the reduction of cost to the other morph.

Grave Lord:

Skeletal Mage: Grants Minor Force

Explanation:

The idea here is to once again lean in on making criticals a bit stronger on the Necromancer and to make the summoning abilities feel a bit more powerful.

Ability Reordering:

Living Death:

Expunge: Move from rank 4 to rank 42.
Spirit Mender: Move from rank 30 to rank 4.
Restoring Tether: Move from rank 42 to rank 30

This will enable players to interact with summoning allies and tethering at earlier levels.

Bone Tyrant:

Bitter Harvest: Move from rank 20 to rank 30.
Bone Totem: Move from rank 30 to rank 42.
Grave Grasp: Move from rank 42 to rank 20.

As the earlier changes make Grave Grasp a corpse builder, we want to enable players to have access to it at an earlier period around the time that they get access to several of the corpse spenders.

TLDR:

Necromancer is underwhelming compared to playing similar builds in other Elder Scrolls games as well as compared to the other classes in ESO.

Suggestions for improvement:

Add secret Necromancer Lairs
Reanimate can res npcs
Skills that reduce costs apply to both bars
Corpse Consumption grants Major Prophecy and Savagery
Grave Grasp can build corpses
Rotate ability order to better fit combat while leveling.

CameraBeardThePirate · June 28

None of these changes besides the Prophecy/Savagery on corpse consumption would help Necromancer.

The problem is 2 simple things.

First is that the entire Corpse Consumption system is trash. It's buggy, unwieldy, and literally only serves to make their skills weaker. To be on even footing with any other class, they have to play a silly corpse minigame. Compare that with Arcanist: Arcanist abilities are still strong without max Crux, and become even stronger with max Crux.

Second is that their kit has little synergy and lacks nearly every mandatory buff/utility in the game. They have no movement speed, no Power buff, no Crit buff, no usable stun (no, the totem and grave grasp do not count as usable because they're inconsistent and delayed), a very bad armor debuff (Graveyard should apply its armor debuff with a duration like Caltrops), and have very little damage, relying instead on Proc Sets.

Despite @ZOS_Gilliam stating they were supposed to be "the Debuff class", they have fewer debuffs than half the classes, including fewer debuffs than Nightblade and Warden, which both have nearly double the buffs and utility skills that necros do. Most of their debuffs are mediocre, and either only good in PvP (Defile) or better sourced elsewhere (like your tank for Breach or Ele Sus). Great balancing decision. Pretty clear that the "debuff class" statement was an excuse made up on the spot when it's very obviously not the case to anyone who's even looked at Necromancers kit.

Urzigurumash · June 28

There is a Crit buff in Death Knell. I think it and Death Gleaning should get the both bar treatment, and for sure sticky Breach on Graveyard, and maybe make the self-cast Graverobber do a stun or something.

A ranged AoE Stun would be immensely strong - and now I think there is room in the Power Budget for it. Let's be honest when Dark Convergance came out MagCro was still OP like it was when people were less familiar with Totem and stood in its AoE.

Otherwise I agree with everything in both of the above posts. The Necro Lair is a neat idea.

Deimus · June 29

I really like the Necromancer's lair idea especially since they still have the criminal system tied to Necro skills so they can't duel in cities. It could be similar to the Outlaw's Refuge, but with more of the utility of a town and maybe a special vendor with a rotating inventory. To cater to non Necro players who would not stand for the raw in the middle class getting something cool it could allow vamp or ww players.

I'd also like the necromancer to be a competent summoner with at least 1 semi permanent minion, but they don't want the Necromancer to be a minion based class. So I don't see the reanimate change ever happening. It's interesting to see what a casual content player would change since most reworks come from a PvP or endgame PvE perspective.

The both bars for the Necro tethers, bitter harvest, and expunge have been suggested quite a bit and should be implemented at this point in the game.

I think the corpse consumption granting much needed buffs via passives could be a neat idea, but the duration per corpse would need to be significant for example 5-10 seconds per corpse with a max duration of 30 seconds. It should also stack instead of resetting the timer like Bitter Harvest (Hope they change that for the skill and its morphs as well.) whenever a new corpse is utilized.

Grave Grasp is just a mess of a skill currently, but if they want to keep the buff your minions in whatever future and hopefully better variant we get it should automatically apply it by casting the skill like you said.

Gray_howling_parrot · June 29

I agree with what others have said about the corpse generation and consumption mechanic being absolute trash. Feels horrible alongside having very short buffs and many of which are irrelevant and barely useful. Their toolkit is simply just VERY lacking.

The biggest thing from a "feel" perspective for me is it doesnt feel like a necromancer even remotely. Why are there no permanent minions? If you play necromancer in virtually any other game you are CONSTANTLY surrounded by many minions and it feels great amassing hordes of minions to do your bidding. This just isn't a thing in ESO and is just another part of ZOS's "vision" like their vision with AOE taunting, which I'll never personally understand.

CameraBeardThePirate · June 30

Cooperharley wrote: »

I agree with what others have said about the corpse generation and consumption mechanic being absolute trash. Feels horrible alongside having very short buffs and many of which are irrelevant and barely useful. Their toolkit is simply just VERY lacking.

The biggest thing from a "feel" perspective for me is it doesnt feel like a necromancer even remotely. Why are there no permanent minions? If you play necromancer in virtually any other game you are CONSTANTLY surrounded by many minions and it feels great amassing hordes of minions to do your bidding. This just isn't a thing in ESO and is just another part of ZOS's "vision" like their vision with AOE taunting, which I'll never personally understand.

Permanent reanimated minions aren't really an Elder Scrolls thing. TES necros have always been mainly about summoning temporary minions for each fight or reanimating the fallen enemies you kill in the middle of the fight. Besides, permanent pets in ESO suck. Like a lot. They take up two bars, and are practically worthless outside of the Twilight Matriaech active heal ability.

Permanent pets on necro would gut the class without a total overhaul of the corpse system, which newsflash, will never happen. Necro also already suffers from barspace issues, and sacrificing another bar slot for a mediocre pet would just exacerbate that problem.

chessalavakia_ESO · July 1

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

None of these changes besides the Prophecy/Savagery on corpse consumption would help Necromancer.

The problem is 2 simple things.

First is that the entire Corpse Consumption system is trash. It's buggy, unwieldy, and literally only serves to make their skills weaker. To be on even footing with any other class, they have to play a silly corpse minigame. Compare that with Arcanist: Arcanist abilities are still strong without max Crux, and become even stronger with max Crux.

Second is that their kit has little synergy and lacks nearly every mandatory buff/utility in the game. They have no movement speed, no Power buff, no Crit buff, no usable stun (no, the totem and grave grasp do not count as usable because they're inconsistent and delayed), a very bad armor debuff (Graveyard should apply its armor debuff with a duration like Caltrops), and have very little damage, relying instead on Proc Sets.

Despite @ZOS_Gilliam stating they were supposed to be "the Debuff class", they have fewer debuffs than half the classes, including fewer debuffs than Nightblade and Warden, which both have nearly double the buffs and utility skills that necros do. Most of their debuffs are mediocre, and either only good in PvP (Defile) or better sourced elsewhere (like your tank for Breach or Ele Sus). Great balancing decision. Pretty clear that the "debuff class" statement was an excuse made up on the spot when it's very obviously not the case to anyone who's even looked at Necromancers kit.

I tried to limit changes that would shift the balance heavily in PvP areas as it's not my area of expertise at all and as a result it would be easy to mess up. Since the Necromancer is a paid class that isn't necessarily appealing due to the morality/corpse mechanics I think it is safer to lean towards being on the weaker side than the stronger side.

I'm not a huge fan of consumer mechanics but, the reality is that is a big chunk of the design of the class. I was trying to adjust things a little bit so it might appeal a bit more to people that liked that style of play in prior games without messing it up too much for people that like it as is and without hopefully clashing too much with the developer's vision.

For a consumer style ability to be balanced, it's probably going to need to under-perform a bit without the consumption. Otherwise either the consumption isn't going to do much and thus people may as well not bother or the consumption is going to be overpowered.

I'd definitely agree that the Necromancer frequently compares poorly to the Arcanist but, to me much of that is because the Arcanist is a bit overloaded and overpowered.

I'm not sure ESO really has enough class skills for it to be a good idea to try to get the PvP Meta stuff on every class. I think you could quickly hit the point of the classes all feeling samey for even the people just doing overland content.

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Cooperharley wrote: »

I agree with what others have said about the corpse generation and consumption mechanic being absolute trash. Feels horrible alongside having very short buffs and many of which are irrelevant and barely useful. Their toolkit is simply just VERY lacking.

The biggest thing from a "feel" perspective for me is it doesnt feel like a necromancer even remotely. Why are there no permanent minions? If you play necromancer in virtually any other game you are CONSTANTLY surrounded by many minions and it feels great amassing hordes of minions to do your bidding. This just isn't a thing in ESO and is just another part of ZOS's "vision" like their vision with AOE taunting, which I'll never personally understand.

Permanent reanimated minions aren't really an Elder Scrolls thing. TES necros have always been mainly about summoning temporary minions for each fight or reanimating the fallen enemies you kill in the middle of the fight. Besides, permanent pets in ESO suck. Like a lot. They take up two bars, and are practically worthless outside of the Twilight Matriaech active heal ability.

Permanent pets on necro would gut the class without a total overhaul of the corpse system, which newsflash, will never happen. Necro also already suffers from barspace issues, and sacrificing another bar slot for a mediocre pet would just exacerbate that problem.

One could potentially implement permanent pets via item sets or mythics as the Elder Scrolls does have precedent for that and it wouldn't impact the classes ability economy.

In Morrowind, you could make constant effect summoning items.

In Oblivion, you had the Staff of Everscamp