I’ll have to try some things out when I get home so I can make a full report, but I would like to start with one question for the Combat team:

Based on the current patch cadence (and the events to be tested from the patch notes), it seems that U49 will drop somewhere in the area of March. That means that we don’t expect any major balance changes to happen for another 5 months or so. So, is the combat team satisfied with the current balance in PvE and PvP?

I’ll also link the preliminary thread that was started before we got the official thread: ( https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/683025/update-48-combat-balancing-changes ), and I’ll be back later in the week with a more thorough report

What do you mean changes? There was one change to Whirlwind and it was completely random.

Where can we see "any combat or class changes coming in U48"?

Class Abilities: 2 fixes
Guild Abilities: 1 fix
Weapon Abilities: 1 change & 2 fixes
World Abilities: 1 fix
Grimoire: 1 fix

Is this content really worth feedback on?

Second major update and the team is still not addressing balancing issues. This is beyond disappointing.

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Grim focus and morphs still scale drastically higher than most ultimates other than takeflight. This delayed burst skill should be at least equivalent to deep fissure or blastbones or curse. Even with the incap damage boost, I am fairly certain incap still doesn't hit harder than merciless. An ultimate......that takes 10x as long to build up and use.

• Merciless = 2.1476 dmg/wd
• Relentless = 1.9524
• Dawnbreaker = 1.627
• ice comet = 2.0880
• incap = 1.7354
• takeflight = 2.2764
• haunting curse = 1.3558
• Blastbones = 1.627
• deep fissure = 1.627

Not to mention how obscenely strong the rest of the toolkit is with the skill giving prophecy while also giving access to the slotted passives and crit. That is an entirely other discussion to be had.

Some of your comparisons are very misleading here.

Dawnbreaker, Ice Comet, blastbones, deep fissure, haunting curse are all AoE abilities.

You are not taking into account the damage over time effects of Ice Comet and Dawnbreaker.

You are not taking into account the extra damage components of Haunting Curse (hits twice), Deep Fissure (Hits Twice) and Blastbones (Applies diseased)

You are not taking into account the extra effects of Deep Fissure (Applies Major and Minor Breach), Dawnbreaker (Stun or Extra Weapon and Spell Damage), and Incap (extra damage done to target for 8/12 seconds)

The only really fair comparison damage wise is Incap since its ST. But the extra 20% damage done from Incap MASSIVELY outweighs the loss in damage.

MincMincMinc wrote: »

I mean we can write out a novel comparing all of these at once if you want, discussions of that nature on the forums tend to just bounce around because there are hundreds of "what about this" gotcha points.

In pvp what matters most right now in this crit burst turtle meta is singular instant ticks. We are very very far from a sustained damage meta, so the curse multiple hits and even the deep fissure multiple hits is not even a factor.

The delayed burst from shalks in combination with a merciless dump is a big part of those burst setups, man. First shalks pop debuffs the target, second shalks pop lined up with contingency into merciless (or conti into incap) is huge. You're also able to easily do a burst combo around both shalks detonations.

That's not to say bow proc and assassination in general aren't overtuned, they are; assassination could lose half the flanking crit boost from Master Assassin + get the buff to Pressure Points reverted to 2% per skill and it would STILL be one of the strongest lines in the game for both pve and pvp.

Increasing grim focus to 10 stacks from 5 was brutal and should be reduced, probably to 6 for relentless, 7 for merciless, surprise attack could lose its guaranteed crit every 3 seconds and it'd still be one of the strongest if not the strongest ST spammable available.

Subclassing gave everyone access to significantly more bonus crit damage (alongside monomyth in the same patch), so it isn't terribly shocking that the line which gives a huge amount of crit chance just from slotting bow proc (let alone if they use more assassination skills) is heavily outclassing other options.

Necromancer Living Corpse from Patch 11.2.1

(Discussion thread I made about this)
https://tinyurl.com/Living-Corpse

Bone Tyrant

• Bone Armor: This ability and its morphs no longer summon a corpse when they end or their abilities are refreshed after 10 seconds. Instead, these abilities now grant you Living Corpse if cast while in combat, which allows you to cast a (singular) corpse consuming ability on yourself. This effect is applied instantly but has a 10 second cooldown to ensure the same corpse consuming ability cadence is met.

This is a really awesome change imo. I'm sure Necro mains were requesting this feature when the class set came out so it's nice to see it finally implemented. Also, usually performance changes to abilities hurt identity more often than not, so it's nice to see this is a win/win situation for once.

My only gripe is how long changes like this take, especially since the main reasoning was performance instead of class identity or balance, and appeared week 2 of a of a "minor" patch. It makes me scratch my head because you made such a meaningful change appear simple to implement in 1 week. Has this been worked on for months or did someone come up with this in a few days? Do this more. We're begging you.

With subclassing, I've been thinking about skill lines in a different context where each should be treated as mini classes that can perform well on their own. Necromancer in comparison to Arcanist didn't feel like it met that goal when it comes to corpse vs crux mechanics. Every skill line for Arcanist has a crux generator that can be spammed, and crux spenders for massive payoffs, Necro doesn't do this very well. There was an attempt to make Ghostly Embrace the corpse generator for this line, but as we said back when it was released, it's too clunky to be reliable and should be simplified. For spenders in this line, Bitter Harvest is probably the best for the entire class, so thats not the issue.

I'm not a Necro main, but if you asked me, you need to work on Living Death and Grave Lord with these core principles in mind too.

On the subject of Living Corpse, here's some minor changes I'd love to see for Flame Skull:

Flame Skull

• This skill and all morphs now apply Living Corpse instead of creating a corpse nearby on the 3rd cast. The travel speed has been increased by +64% resulting in a travel time of 1s at 28m instead of 1.45s to match similar skills like Wield Soul.
  • Ricochet Skull
    • 2nd cast now gives +25% damage and +1 enemy hit nearby, 3rd cast behaves the same.
  • Venom Skull
    • The "while slotted" effect based on Necromancer skills cast now works from either bar.

Also, I could see an argument for giving Living Corpse to Blastbones morphs instead, the morphs would have a fun dynamic of self vs targetted Living Corpse, however GLS would make Bone Armor redundant. I feel it would be too clunky to time everything correctly with the 3s delay on GLS.

I wanted to give credit where it is due (assuming that its reported bugs get fixed, of course!) for the Living Corpse mechanical change! This is definitely the sort of change that moves the needle in terms of class quality of life and usability.

So I would like to officially petition that Grave Lord's Sacrifice get the same treatment as another self-targeted ability.

If we are to truly dream big, however, let us also apply this to targets of damage abilities such as Blighted Blastbones and Skulls. Necros currently do not have a true "sticky" DOT and that would allow them to append Siphon to a target even in mobile conditions or PvP (assuming that you remain close enough for the tether to continue), which would, again, be a significant quality-of-life win that helps to flesh-out the Necromancer toolkit.

It would be marvelous to be able to apply Living Corpse to a friendly target for the purposes of the healing tether but I am not really sure how that would work mechanically since the only remaining corpse-generating skills (Mender, principally) do not behave that way. Perhaps Mender could gain a target (reticle icon if on another player, otherwise defaults to self) and then to have Living Corpse applied that way?

TLDR; The Living Corpse change is huge and is a step in the right direction toward solving the issue of clunky corpse targeting system and increasing the quality-of-life for Necros. But it should be extended farther and applied to additional skills and skill types!

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

I wanted to give credit where it is due (assuming that its reported bugs get fixed, of course!) for the Living Corpse mechanical change! This is definitely the sort of change that moves the needle in terms of class quality of life and usability.

So I would like to officially petition that Grave Lord's Sacrifice get the same treatment as another self-targeted ability.

If we are to truly dream big, however, let us also apply this to targets of damage abilities such as Blighted Blastbones and Skulls. Necros currently do not have a true "sticky" DOT and that would allow them to append Siphon to a target even in mobile conditions or PvP (assuming that you remain close enough for the tether to continue), which would, again, be a significant quality-of-life win that helps to flesh-out the Necromancer toolkit.

It would be marvelous to be able to apply Living Corpse to a friendly target for the purposes of the healing tether but I am not really sure how that would work mechanically since the only remaining corpse-generating skills (Mender, principally) do not behave that way. Perhaps Mender could gain a target (reticle icon if on another player, otherwise defaults to self) and then to have Living Corpse applied that way?

TLDR; The Living Corpse change is huge and is a step in the right direction toward solving the issue of clunky corpse targeting system and increasing the quality-of-life for Necros. But it should be extended farther and applied to additional skills and skill types!

Personally I think giving Living Corpse to Flame Skull and Blastbones would be overkill, they both have roughly a 3s cooldown which feels balanced on their own, but having both would negate that cooldown and reduce how unique it feels. I think it's a no brainer to give it to Blastbone morphs like you described, but on the other hand, it would be a nice way to give Flame Skull something unique, especially since BB is already near perfect as is. GLS it would be great to get rid of the clunkiness, but frankly that skill needs to be redesigned from the ground up.

For Living Death, that's a great point about giving access to a friendly targetted Living Corpse. However, I wouldn't mess with Mender, I think it's fine as is, but this would be a great opportunity to introduce an actual corpse generator that you can "spam" so why not give it to Render Flesh? Maybe give it a "this effect has a 3s cooldown" to balance it out, but yeah, it could easily fit on all morphs as is.

That to me, would be peak class identity and design, each line has a unique source of Living Corpse that plays into the playstyle of that line. You can use each line individually in subclassing with the one source, or like a power ranger, combine all 3 lines for pure classing and get access to the 3 different types.

• Grave Lord = Enemy applied
• Bone Tyrant = Self applied
• Living Death = Friendly applied

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

I wanted to give credit where it is due (assuming that its reported bugs get fixed, of course!) for the Living Corpse mechanical change! This is definitely the sort of change that moves the needle in terms of class quality of life and usability.

So I would like to officially petition that Grave Lord's Sacrifice get the same treatment as another self-targeted ability.

If we are to truly dream big, however, let us also apply this to targets of damage abilities such as Blighted Blastbones and Skulls. Necros currently do not have a true "sticky" DOT and that would allow them to append Siphon to a target even in mobile conditions or PvP (assuming that you remain close enough for the tether to continue), which would, again, be a significant quality-of-life win that helps to flesh-out the Necromancer toolkit.

It would be marvelous to be able to apply Living Corpse to a friendly target for the purposes of the healing tether but I am not really sure how that would work mechanically since the only remaining corpse-generating skills (Mender, principally) do not behave that way. Perhaps Mender could gain a target (reticle icon if on another player, otherwise defaults to self) and then to have Living Corpse applied that way?

TLDR; The Living Corpse change is huge and is a step in the right direction toward solving the issue of clunky corpse targeting system and increasing the quality-of-life for Necros. But it should be extended farther and applied to additional skills and skill types!

Love these suggestions, and would love to see the corpse mechanic re-thought. Necromancers got buffs in the past few patches that feel like bandaids. Bottom line is that the class is just built on a shaky foundation.

They're still the red-headed step child, just covered up with a few layers of makeup so you don’t notice the black eye so much from a distance.