If you guys are limiting the amount of corpses and pets to a combined total of 5 in PvP then you need to alter how Bitter Harvest, Reanimate Blastbones, and Enduring Undeath works. If you don't you are punishing players who want to play more into the Necromancer kit as they won't be able to keep their minions up while getting adequate utility from corpse consumers.
Skeletal Mage is your Major Brutality and Sorcery, Blastbones is your damage, and Mender is your unique mitigation. All 3 should be constantly up leaving room for only 2 corpses. In PvP this means you'll have to swap to your backbar to cast Deaden Pain every 7 seconds this won't allow for time to line up your burst and bring back the feeling of being a buff simulator that we just got rid of.
Unless there is a dead player in the area Animate Blastbones will onlly get those 3 corpses if you forgo one of your buffs or damage which if you're playing into that build you want a Blighted Blastbones ready to launch with the 3 from the ult. That also raises the question of will those 3 Blastbones count as pets and override another minion or just only raise 1 or 2 just to not put you over the cap of 5 pets since Blighted Blastbones x4+ Skeletal Minion + Spirit Mender = 6 pets. The same situation for Enduring Undeath you will NEVER have 5 corpses without dead players in the area now. As mentioned by other Necromancer players the class script loses a lot of value from this change as well.
Necromancers aren't prevalent in PvP enough to cause noticeable performance drops in fact every time I see another Necromancer player with decent alliance level it's a bunny hopping celebration! We duel and usually bond over how cool it is to see another Necromancer player then trade tips and tricks we've picked up to find success on the class. I've never had that experience on any other class in ESO. If you want to cap something to improve PvP performance I'll suggest for the millionth time to limit heal/shield stacking, but since we're here these are my suggestion to keep the cap while not further penalizing the few Necromancer players in PvP.
Bitter Harvest/Deaden Pain
- This skill should max out at 2 corpses consumed. If we keep the current values for Deaden Pain this would mean each corpse will trigger the HoT and Major Protection for 12 seconds while granting 6 ultimate. Due to the imposed limitations the value of each corpse rises drastically so the power they grant should as well.
Animate Blastbones
- Summons a Blighted Blastbones with 1 corpse, at 2 corpses summons an Enhanced Blastbones that deals 3x the damage of a normal Blastbones, and at 3 corpses summons a Detonating Bone Colossus that deals 5x the damage of a Blastbones. The goal is to limit the summon to a single pet while maintaining the strength. With the power creep in this patch and the high ultimate cost an extra oomf from 3 corpses to those who want to play into the feeling of a Necromancer wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility. It's also to make up for losing the amazing feeling of having a mini minion army that Animate Blastbones gave us, but keeping the 3 Blighted Blastbones isn't a realistic option anymore.
Enduring Undeath
- Same as Bitter Harvest/Deaden Pain consumes a max of 2 corpses and the HoT duration per corpse consumed is increased by 12.5 seconds.
Necromancer Class Mastery
- An extra 20% on all your resources is a HUGE boon, and even with the power creep having it max out at 5 corpses is too strong. It's already hard to hit the 20% cap, but with this change it will become increasingly rare. I suggest for the first 3 corpses it increases your stats by 3% instead of 2%, for the next 4 it increases your stats by 2% like normal, and for the last 3 it increases your stats by 1%. This will front load some of the benefit and make it more worthwhile in an environment when the player can't make more than 2-3 corpses while allowing them to maintain the same benefit in larger scale fights with more player or npc corpses to utilize.
@ZOS_Kevin Without changes similar to these Necromancer players in PvP will rarely get full functionality from casting these skills. The limitations placed on the player in the name of game performance and not combat balance means these skills are unjustly getting a heavy nerf so increasing the duration/power per corpse consumed to compensate for the loss of effectiveness players will experience otherwise is a fair compromise.
Soundinfinite wrote: »Dragonknight 5% passive buff to flame damage + 6% flame debuff on enemies = 11% Buff to Flame Damage
Warden 10% buff to Frost Damage
Sorc 5% buff to Shock Damage
The DragonKnight and Warden's 11% to 10% is negligible and balanced, the buffs delivered in 2 different ways to give ample an ample boost to those damage types while engaging in element specific combat. Thus they are on par with each other.
Sorc is HALF as effective...shock damage automatically equals lower DPS out of the gate based on these Passives of the Classes alone.
Thus, a purley flame mage, or frost mage, will hit harder and have higher benchmarks.
And an Elementalist, will always want to favor one of those 2 damage types...leaving shock (And what the Sorc offers to an Elementalist) as the defacto weakest option.
This is even before we break down the effectiveness and what is offered in the lines themselves....
A Sorc and the gutting of non-pet perks of the class, mostly utility skill shock line, and weaker passive buffs to elemental effects makes it pale and underpowered and is the weakest link in an Elementalist or Lightning Mage build.
Shock damage in itself is underpowered compared to its 2 elemental counterparts...and needs a buff.
Fire is optimal DPS with raw skill options, buffs (Further buffed by sets like Behemoth) and the strongest elemental status effect.
Ice has a strong ground in being tanky with crowd control while offering better damage passive buffs in both the wardens raw frost damage buff as well as highetned status effect chance (250% more) and a raw buff to that status effect that can overpower even the Fire Burning effect.
Shock has non of this, with lowest raw buffs, weakest status effect, and a debuff that is on a built in game wide timer from all sources (Exploiter Off Balance) and a Sorc line that is underpowered.
Finedaible wrote: »With sub-classing I think it is time to replace the weapon/spell damage granted by the Fighter's Guild Slayer passive with something else.
Isn't the elephant in the room the fact that we get passives? With some exceptions most all skill trees are kind of naturally divided into DPS/TANK/HEAL abilities.
I'm not saying active-ability only subclassing won't also increase the power cap but clearly the fact that you can stack 3 DPS trees, 3 healing trees, or 3 tank trees worth of passives is kind of obvious?
Isn't the elephant in the room the fact that we get passives? With some exceptions most all skill trees are kind of naturally divided into DPS/TANK/HEAL abilities.
I'm not saying active-ability only subclassing won't also increase the power cap but clearly the fact that you can stack 3 DPS trees, 3 healing trees, or 3 tank trees worth of passives is kind of obvious?
tomofhyrule wrote: »Isn't the elephant in the room the fact that we get passives? With some exceptions most all skill trees are kind of naturally divided into DPS/TANK/HEAL abilities.
I'm not saying active-ability only subclassing won't also increase the power cap but clearly the fact that you can stack 3 DPS trees, 3 healing trees, or 3 tank trees worth of passives is kind of obvious?
“with some exceptions” meaning all four basegame classes?
Three of the Class lines are strictly divided, all of which are DLC Classes. The basegame ones have themed lines, not necessarily lines by role.
I do think the passives are being quite problematic here, and it may help to standardize them - some lines have “with an X ability slotted” as a caveat, and others just allow you to have a 10% power boost just for paying 2 (ok, well 4) skill points.
tomofhyrule wrote: »Isn't the elephant in the room the fact that we get passives? With some exceptions most all skill trees are kind of naturally divided into DPS/TANK/HEAL abilities.
I'm not saying active-ability only subclassing won't also increase the power cap but clearly the fact that you can stack 3 DPS trees, 3 healing trees, or 3 tank trees worth of passives is kind of obvious?
“with some exceptions” meaning all four basegame classes?
Three of the Class lines are strictly divided, all of which are DLC Classes. The basegame ones have themed lines, not necessarily lines by role.
I do think the passives are being quite problematic here, and it may help to standardize them - some lines have “with an X ability slotted” as a caveat, and others just allow you to have a 10% power boost just for paying 2 (ok, well 4) skill points.
Jesus Beam as a 5s channel is truly mind-boggling. Who would EVER use this in PVP? Literally no one. 5s is a lifetime to expect to channel anything uniterrupted. And Stamplars can no longer sustain it either.
Furthermore, why are Templar DPS skill still split across 2 trees? Would this not be the ideal occasion to consolodate and streamline their abilites as we’ve done with classes from Warden onwards? Spears and Jesus Beam belong on one tree, with the defensive options like Eclipse moving to the Spear Tree as that’s technically the “tanky” one.
All the animations are massively bugged the longer I play on pts its become more noticeable.
Sounded like yall were trying to speed up the light attack animation but instead sped everything up? Doesnt seem right.
Can Blighted Blastbones receive this treatment please?
Blighted Blastbones can be:
-CCed after spawning and if the CC is long enough, be completely disabled until the skill becomes available to use again(the game won't allow you to recast the skill if the Skeleton is still ''active'', even if it is stuck in a CC which it can't break), thus ''wasting the skill cast''
-Affected by Silence Ground AoEs(and end up completely disabled until the AoE ends or BB timer runs out), even though it is a ''Stamina Skill'' and even if casted outside the AoE effect. I assume this happens because the Skeleton is treated as an NPC and is Stunned instead of Silenced(BB can't use break free)
-Unable to reach the target under certain conditions like for example if the target teleports to an unreachable location(Sarydil in Coral Aerie), or the target ''phases out''(Darkshard in Bedlam Veil). The main issue with this is that unlike most skills that would simply ''fail'' in this scenario, the Skeleton will just stay there doing nothing until the duration of the skill runs out and most of the time won't attempt to pick a new target.
Changing this skill into a ''visual effect that completes the attack'' similar to something like Scorch from Wardens would imo greatly improve the skill and make its usage in combat scenarios smoother and more reliable. There is no scenario in where this particular skill being a ''summoned entity with AI'' ends up being better than a ''visual effect that completes the attack'' gameplay wise.
randconfig wrote: »
Can Blighted Blastbones receive this treatment please?
Blighted Blastbones can be:
-CCed after spawning and if the CC is long enough, be completely disabled until the skill becomes available to use again(the game won't allow you to recast the skill if the Skeleton is still ''active'', even if it is stuck in a CC which it can't break), thus ''wasting the skill cast''
-Affected by Silence Ground AoEs(and end up completely disabled until the AoE ends or BB timer runs out), even though it is a ''Stamina Skill'' and even if casted outside the AoE effect. I assume this happens because the Skeleton is treated as an NPC and is Stunned instead of Silenced(BB can't use break free)
-Unable to reach the target under certain conditions like for example if the target teleports to an unreachable location(Sarydil in Coral Aerie), or the target ''phases out''(Darkshard in Bedlam Veil). The main issue with this is that unlike most skills that would simply ''fail'' in this scenario, the Skeleton will just stay there doing nothing until the duration of the skill runs out and most of the time won't attempt to pick a new target.
Changing this skill into a ''visual effect that completes the attack'' similar to something like Scorch from Wardens would imo greatly improve the skill and make its usage in combat scenarios smoother and more reliable. There is no scenario in where this particular skill being a ''summoned entity with AI'' ends up being better than a ''visual effect that completes the attack'' gameplay wise.
I don't like this suggestion; blastbones is a pet and is useful in PvP as a way to intercept enemy attacks, your suggested change would make it not a pet and not block any attacks in PvP.
sans-culottes wrote: »randconfig wrote: »
Can Blighted Blastbones receive this treatment please?
Blighted Blastbones can be:
-CCed after spawning and if the CC is long enough, be completely disabled until the skill becomes available to use again(the game won't allow you to recast the skill if the Skeleton is still ''active'', even if it is stuck in a CC which it can't break), thus ''wasting the skill cast''
-Affected by Silence Ground AoEs(and end up completely disabled until the AoE ends or BB timer runs out), even though it is a ''Stamina Skill'' and even if casted outside the AoE effect. I assume this happens because the Skeleton is treated as an NPC and is Stunned instead of Silenced(BB can't use break free)
-Unable to reach the target under certain conditions like for example if the target teleports to an unreachable location(Sarydil in Coral Aerie), or the target ''phases out''(Darkshard in Bedlam Veil). The main issue with this is that unlike most skills that would simply ''fail'' in this scenario, the Skeleton will just stay there doing nothing until the duration of the skill runs out and most of the time won't attempt to pick a new target.
Changing this skill into a ''visual effect that completes the attack'' similar to something like Scorch from Wardens would imo greatly improve the skill and make its usage in combat scenarios smoother and more reliable. There is no scenario in where this particular skill being a ''summoned entity with AI'' ends up being better than a ''visual effect that completes the attack'' gameplay wise.
I don't like this suggestion; blastbones is a pet and is useful in PvP as a way to intercept enemy attacks, your suggested change would make it not a pet and not block any attacks in PvP.
Calling this a “pet” has always been a bit of a stretch of the term. It lasts for a few seconds. Why even bother?