How Do You Feel About the Necromancer Changes?

sans-culottes
sans-culottes
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I’ve seen a lot of strong reactions to the Necromancer rework—especially regarding the removal of Stalking Blastbones, the new Grave Lord’s Sacrifice, and the ongoing pathing/AI issues. I’m putting up this poll to see if most of us feel the same way or if the changes are working for some folks.

Main Concerns
• Loss of Stalking Blastbones: Has it affected your rotation or the class’s feel?
• New Grave Lord’s Sacrifice: Does it fill the gap, or does it feel underwhelming?
• Pathing & AI: Are you still dealing with minions that wander off, waste casts, or fail to engage properly?
• Overall Class Identity: Do you still feel like a fearsome necromancer, or has the class lost some of its flavor?
Edited by sans-culottes on March 4, 2025 5:16PM

How Do You Feel About the Necromancer Changes? 55 votes

Loving the Changes—Everything feels smoother, and the new abilities are a step in the right direction.
1%
Azrael_1976 1 vote
Mostly Okay, With Issues—Some positives here, but certain elements (like AI or missing skills) still bug me.
12%
coop500MorvanBasPLunaFloradrip_fromtheinkwellBananaBenderRenato90085 7 votes
Neutral—I can roll with it, but I’m not especially happy or unhappy.
16%
WNAPosadzkib16_ESOkojouSheridanGorbazzurkIlithyaniatomofhyruleSoarorajoerginoTinkerhorn 9 votes
Mostly Unhappy—The class has lost some of its appeal; I wish they’d change a few things.
23%
HatchetHaroRhezblodDeimusBlkadrtheoverseerDestaiValarMorghulis1896emilyhyoyeoncarthalisthe1andonlyskwexHorny_PoneyIncultaWolfJinKC98 13 votes
Completely Disappointed—Necromancer doesn’t feel right anymore—time for a rework or a full revert.
45%
icefyer_ESOSolarikenghost_bg_ESORomoUlvichThoraxtheDarkshezofBrodsonLukosCreydenMichaelkeirUrvothIshtarknowsVoxAdActaDigiAngelDrakeHellfireMarronsuisseJiveSaltsSxFureyBetweenMidgetsflaxegg 25 votes
  • theoverseer
    theoverseer
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    Mostly Unhappy—The class has lost some of its appeal; I wish they’d change a few things.
    Necro was already a mess. Now it's a weaker mess.
  • Renato90085
    Renato90085
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    Mostly Okay, With Issues—Some positives here, but certain elements (like AI or missing skills) still bug me.
    in Pve this class still good,I just wish Zos fix necro 10+ skill bug first and in PvP better some.
  • Elvenheart
    Elvenheart
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    For me, necromancers are ok, both before and now, so I would say the changes were good. I just wish we could be as powerful as npc necromancers who have persistent pets, in some cases armies. I love the lich transformation in IA, that’s when I really feel like a necromancer.
  • LukosCreyden
    LukosCreyden
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    Completely Disappointed—Necromancer doesn’t feel right anymore—time for a rework or a full revert.
    I just wanna play a spooky mage without worrying about my main class skill breaking.
    It broke when it used to attack my enemies and it still breaks now that it is supposed to attack me.
    Struggling to find a new class to call home.Please send help.
  • ZOS_GregoryV
    Greetings all,

    After removing a handful of non-constructive posts, we ask that all members of the community keep the Community Rules in mind when posting.

    Regards,
    -Greg-
    The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited - ZeniMax Online Studios
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  • Morvan
    Morvan
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    Mostly Okay, With Issues—Some positives here, but certain elements (like AI or missing skills) still bug me.
    Necro is performing pretty nicely with corpsebuster, Stalking Blastbones rework was a bad change, but we can just pick the other morph and ignore that, makes no difference for me.

    Overall, the class is on a better spot right now than it has been for a great while.
    @MorvanClaude on PC/NA, don't try to trap me with lore subjects, it will work
  • OsUfi
    OsUfi
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    *Sigh* Repost as my first post was removed.

    I cannot vote as none of the options align perfectly with how I feel. I would have liked to have seen an "other" option.

    I loved the necro before and after the changes. We can run as tanks, healers and DPS and fill some niche roles. I enjoy necro in PvE and PvP. Scribing improved my love of necros with the addition of soul magic, enabling me to run a more Elder Scrolls necromancer, playing with soul gems. 12/10 would explode a skeleton again.
  • sans-culottes
    sans-culottes
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    Completely Disappointed—Necromancer doesn’t feel right anymore—time for a rework or a full revert.
    OsUfi wrote: »
    *Sigh* Repost as my first post was removed.

    I cannot vote as none of the options align perfectly with how I feel. I would have liked to have seen an "other" option.

    I loved the necro before and after the changes. We can run as tanks, healers and DPS and fill some niche roles. I enjoy necro in PvE and PvP. Scribing improved my love of necros with the addition of soul magic, enabling me to run a more Elder Scrolls necromancer, playing with soul gems. 12/10 would explode a skeleton again.

    I’d encourage you to select the first option, given that you seem happy with the past and present decisions with this class. The examples aren’t something to constrict you. Instead, they simply serve to highlight some of the things folks who feel things are good/neutral/bad might say. In Likert scales, “Other” gives too much noise and doesn’t help to effectively gauge agreement.
    Edited by sans-culottes on March 4, 2025 9:38PM
  • BasP
    BasP
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    Mostly Okay, With Issues—Some positives here, but certain elements (like AI or missing skills) still bug me.
    I have to say that I liked almost all of the changes to the Necromancer skills that were in U43, along with the Corpseburster set. Those things combined really made me enjoy playing with my Necromancer again for a while.

    That said, I do feel that the class could use some more improvements. Grave Lord’s Sacrifice is pretty bad, the DPS the Skeletal Mage deals is underwhelming, Blighted Blastbones could benefit from the modifier Stalking Blastbones had (so that it at least deals more damage when it just stands there for a while before attacking your enemy), the new Ghostly Embrace could've been better (I would've liked the effects of the three patches to be additive) and so forth.
  • JinKC98
    JinKC98
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    Mostly Unhappy—The class has lost some of its appeal; I wish they’d change a few things.
    Seriously need the Stalking Blastbones back and they need to make the Blastbones invincible, like it has a health bar!
  • shezof
    shezof
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    Completely Disappointed—Necromancer doesn’t feel right anymore—time for a rework or a full revert.
    necro skill animations are bugged. this class never feels fluid to play. somehow i always feel intrigued by necro and it always disappoints
  • Soarora
    Soarora
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    Neutral—I can roll with it, but I’m not especially happy or unhappy.
    I’m a tank, so the changes haven’t affected me yet. The poor class immobilize is something I have learned to work around by now.
    PC/NA Dungeoneer (Tank/DPS/Heal), Trialist (DPS/Tank/Heal), and amateur Battlegrounder (DPS) with a passion for The Elder Scrolls lore
    • CP 2000+
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    • All Veterans completed!

      View my builds!
  • sans-culottes
    sans-culottes
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    Completely Disappointed—Necromancer doesn’t feel right anymore—time for a rework or a full revert.
    BasP wrote: »
    I have to say that I liked almost all of the changes to the Necromancer skills that were in U43, along with the Corpseburster set. Those things combined really made me enjoy playing with my Necromancer again for a while.

    That said, I do feel that the class could use some more improvements. Grave Lord’s Sacrifice is pretty bad, the DPS the Skeletal Mage deals is underwhelming, Blighted Blastbones could benefit from the modifier Stalking Blastbones had (so that it at least deals more damage when it just stands there for a while before attacking your enemy), the new Ghostly Embrace could've been better (I would've liked the effects of the three patches to be additive) and so forth.

    Great post! I really wanted to like the new Ghostly Embrace—definitely had potential. Your suggestion would go a long way toward improving this skill. As it’s currently implemented, it’s too unreliable in PVE and too easy to avoid in PVP.

    It’s cool that 41 people have already responded. 27 of the 41 respondents have thus far indicated some to a high degree of disapproval with the current direction. 6 of 41 are neutral to the current state of the Necromancer class. 8 of 41 have indicated some to a high degree of approval with the current state of the class.

    One respondent indicated an inability to respond. However, if we assume that approval with the past and present state of a thing x in conditions y and z allows us to infer strong agreement (i.e., 12/10–a degree of approval outside a standard scale!) with x in condition y alone, then it follows that we have 42 respondents. We could then add one to the eight indicating some agreement (9/42, or 22.429%), and one to the otherwise sole respondent who indicated a strong level of agreement (2/42). That’s all to say: We’d then have 2/42 (1/26th, or 3.846%) indicating strong approval.

    Keep the responses coming! More data will always help. :)
    Edited by sans-culottes on March 5, 2025 3:39PM
  • icefyer_ESO
    icefyer_ESO
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    Completely Disappointed—Necromancer doesn’t feel right anymore—time for a rework or a full revert.
    Yeah. I did Infinite Archives the past couple weeks as a bit of a warmup to getting back into the game, seeing what I missed the past few years... Necromancer is pretty weak for damage and so-so for healing at best... For comparison I popped on my arcanist and was just melting through foes even in healer gear because crux is such a simple mechanic, ontop of just overall massively higher damage numbers, while corpses are basically hard carried by the Corseburster set to even be somewhat viable and useful (Which only applies to damage, meanwhile arcanists can run any set they feel like and even apply crux to healing while mecromancers are forced to run this set if they want their class mechanic to be even remotely useful!), which I don't have yet, meaning my necromancer struggled pretty badly. Meanwhile even for healing arcanist just has so many goodies from buff circles to ally armor, debuffs and more.

    For example the leaping blast bones deals about 8k in healer gear, while my healer-geared arcanist gets the damage laser to deal about 30k over the whole channel which is about how long the skeleton takes to assemble itself, find a target, then leap and explode, meanwhile the arcanist is just lasering people all the way to the back-line. And that's without having 3x crux loaded up for double damage and a massive almost-50% cost discount for it, because I didn't go the morph that adds extra channel time and thus hits per crux making it even more damage and went for the barrier morph instead for a bit of extra survival. That's almost 60k damage, in healer gear, SIX TIMES what my necromancer was doing with blastbones, WITHOUT the morph that gives it an extra 3 ticks and thus an extra almost 9k at a 45% cost discount too over the 4 second channel that fires all the way in a line at huge range that can also be traited to give a defense bubble, vs an 8k explosion that takes those 4 seconds doing nothing and gives almost nothing else but a minor healing debuff!

    Also the crux-generating ability hits 3x and explodes on the third hit in a huge circle, which is a lot better than the skull taking 3 entire separate casts, costing mana each time, to bounce to an extra target or two on that third cast with the bouncing morph meanwhile the Arcaist's ability detonates every single cast in an AoE without a target limit meaning they need to cast 1/3 as much to get vastly better results ontop of fueling their class mechanic with every cast without even thinking about it which feeds back into the ludicrous laser above. Necromancer's design is showing its age something bad and definitely needs brought up to par. It's honestly so skewed it's not even funny and makes me a bit wary of returning if the balance is that lopsided.

    The healing is much the same. Their basic heal hits 3x and with one morph can even give allies it heals ultimate charge! Then you have the laser heal which can restore resources, multi-person barriers they can spam that can either be stronger if you do spam or heal like the resto staff healing bubble on multiple people, has a ground circle that can provide resources and heal while also giving nearly every minor buff in the entire game, and another one that gives armor, plus a weapon-enchanting skill that gives them yet more resources ontop of sorcery buff just for having it slotted on EITHER bar so you don't even have to double-bar it, though I'm not entirely sure if that works on heals or not. Meanwhile Necro has... a circle heal that can cleanse if it eats a corpse that no one uses as far as I'm aware, a rez ult that can be useful but also is rarely run to my knowledge, and a healing ghost that basically just acts as a single-target Grand Healing and just kind-of tickles healthbars compared to the damage coming in.

    Makes me wish Necro got a rework to bring it up closer to Arcanist standards as far as ease of use and all that goes. Most of its damage just feels like it tickles enemies and the necro healing feels like it's lacking by comparison, which is a shame because I originally got into the game as a necro. I loved the idea of a class that used such traditionally-dark magic to help and heal, and it just seems that Arcanist does everything a necro can do other than the rez ult but way better to the point it makes me wonder if anyone even runs a necro anymore other than gimick corpseburster dps builds! If the only reason a spec is viable (not even necessarily GOOD, just "usable"!) is because one set is carrying it that hard it's probably a pretty bad sign on how the game's balanced.

    Edit: Also didn't know editing apparently removes my vote from the post, but it should be pretty obvious what I voted.
    Edited by icefyer_ESO on March 5, 2025 11:40PM
  • Deimus
    Deimus
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    Mostly Unhappy—The class has lost some of its appeal; I wish they’d change a few things.
    The class is in the best place it's been in years and it's still fighting to not to be last place in pvp. So they're moving in the right direction, but they aren't there yet.

    GLS is the worst skill change in this game's history. The U43 changes were all good most of them have been requested by players for years. My favorite was the change to Ghostly Embrace it was an amazing surprise only for it to become useless in pvp the following patch. Many cc skills have damage (streak, talons, chain, eruption, javelin, charge, cripple, flail) but we have to be cautious of giving Necro a cc with damage.

    Corpseburster is probably the most fun and thematic the class has felt since they killed the unique class identity of Harmony and Graverobber shame it's on a set, but if you play Necromancer in ESO you take what you can get.

    Skeletal minion needs a damage boost, GLS needs to go away, tethers shouldn't break on los, execute scaling needs to be put on Scythe or Skulls, the class needs an instant hard cc no delays, and Skull needs to be undodgable.

    For passives I'd change Last Gasp, and Rapid Rot completely. Last Gasp is just underwhelming they can add a unique buff or debuff to the class to replace it. I wish it wasn't so, but Necro fails at being a DoT class and Rapid Rot would feel more at home on a dk. My hopes for a reasonable sticky DoT on Necro are gone so change it to increase AoE damage by 15% or increase your damage and healing done by 2% for each corpse in the area up to 20%. For Death Gleaning and Undead Confederate I'd alter them. I'd have your minions dying count towards Death Gleaning as well to give it use in boss fights and pvp. For Undead Confederate I'd alter it to 150 health, mag, and stam recovery per active minion. Rewarding those that lean fully into the class kit with 450 recovery while most builds will still benefit with 300 recovery.

    That's what I would change for my idea of balance, but if sorc with Hardened Ward and Streak is considered balanced by ZOS standards then Necro needs a lot more than this to become a balanced class.
    Grave Robber - Robbed
    Harmony - Shattered
    Stalking Blastbones - Sacrificed
    Corpse Consumers - Buried
  • sans-culottes
    sans-culottes
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    Completely Disappointed—Necromancer doesn’t feel right anymore—time for a rework or a full revert.
    Deimus wrote: »
    The class is in the best place it's been in years and it's still fighting to not to be last place in pvp. So they're moving in the right direction, but they aren't there yet.

    GLS is the worst skill change in this game's history. The U43 changes were all good most of them have been requested by players for years. My favorite was the change to Ghostly Embrace it was an amazing surprise only for it to become useless in pvp the following patch. Many cc skills have damage (streak, talons, chain, eruption, javelin, charge, cripple, flail) but we have to be cautious of giving Necro a cc with damage.

    Corpseburster is probably the most fun and thematic the class has felt since they killed the unique class identity of Harmony and Graverobber shame it's on a set, but if you play Necromancer in ESO you take what you can get.

    Skeletal minion needs a damage boost, GLS needs to go away, tethers shouldn't break on los, execute scaling needs to be put on Scythe or Skulls, the class needs an instant hard cc no delays, and Skull needs to be undodgable.

    For passives I'd change Last Gasp, and Rapid Rot completely. Last Gasp is just underwhelming they can add a unique buff or debuff to the class to replace it. I wish it wasn't so, but Necro fails at being a DoT class and Rapid Rot would feel more at home on a dk. My hopes for a reasonable sticky DoT on Necro are gone so change it to increase AoE damage by 15% or increase your damage and healing done by 2% for each corpse in the area up to 20%. For Death Gleaning and Undead Confederate I'd alter them. I'd have your minions dying count towards Death Gleaning as well to give it use in boss fights and pvp. For Undead Confederate I'd alter it to 150 health, mag, and stam recovery per active minion. Rewarding those that lean fully into the class kit with 450 recovery while most builds will still benefit with 300 recovery.

    That's what I would change for my idea of balance, but if sorc with Hardened Ward and Streak is considered balanced by ZOS standards then Necro needs a lot more than this to become a balanced class.

    This is an insightful post. Thanks for the detailed response! Corpseburster has been a nice change of pace, and it’s sort of a shame that this gameplay is dependent on a set. It’s added some more depth to the gameplay—and subjectively, “feels” a little more necromancer-y.

    Part of the problem for me is a disjointed class kit. Grave Lord’s Sacrifice was and is baffling. It’d be great if ZOS would at least say, “Hey, we know there have been some strong feelings about this. We don’t have any news yet. If that changes, then we’ll let you know.” 🤷‍♂️
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