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Early thoughts on Necromancer refresh

Ratzkifal
Ratzkifal
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I know it's pretty early for this one, but there is no reason not to start early with the feedback.

First of all I want to highlight what I think is already good about the Necromancer and then I want to get into some of the points I think should be improved. This will by no means be an exhaustive list, so feel free to comment your own thoughts down below what you like about Necromancer and what you want to see improved.

Here we go.
What I like about Necromancer:
  • I like the fire-and-forget approach to Necromancy. Micromanaging pets feels bad so Necromancer not having to deal with that is great. It's also fits the TES lore aspects of Necromancy not being a permanent affair - at least not without considerable prior preparations, which a Necromancer in a lair has, but a wandering Necromancer doesn't. Which brings me to my next point...
  • I like how the corpse mechanic creates a strong identity around standing your ground or creating danger zones that your enemies have to avoid. That puts them naturally at odds with Templars, who also like to stand their ground, which is kind of perfect thematically. I'm not necessarily a fan of the implementation of the corpse mechanic in every single case, but there absolutely is strong identity and theme here.
  • I like the healing options for Necromancer. Having a ghostly healer, a tether that heals everyone between you and the corpse as well as everyone around you (Braided Tether) is neat. The Reanimate Ultimate has its issues, but when you do make the decision to slot it and you do get to use it, it can quite literally turn a lost fight into one that can still be turned. There aren't many moments in this game that feel better than or as good as that. When talking about class identity, from a design perspective, we should ask ourselves what are these classes' hero moments? For the Necromancer healer that is their hero moment. It's moments like these that spark joy and make you feel good about having brought a Necromancer, because only a Necromancer could have done what you just did.
  • The skills in Grave Lord are all awesome, maybe except for Shocking Siphon. Other than updating the visuals and the "feel", I wouldn't actually change much in that skill line. Just the numbers, probably the passives. Throwing a burning skull at your opponent is such a simple but cool thing to do that we kind of take for granted. It's just a shame the skill still doesn't feel as good to use as something like Force Shock from destruction staff.
  • Scythe and Bone Armor are also great skills in terms of theme and power. Bone Armor has a bit of a short duration in my opinion, but the recent change to have it grant you a corpse upon cast, that you can even use out of combat to prepare feels grea and has turned the skill from "kind of bad" to "kind of great" in my opinion. The Bone Goliath is also cool as a concept, but it has its issues.

What I dislike about Necromancer:
  • With Major Vulnerability becoming a mainstream debuff effect that plenty of sets in this game can provide, Necromancer has pretty much lost its raison d'être - it's reason for being. Before you'd invite a Necro to any raid just to get that debuff. That was good, because it meant that even when Necromancer was in a bad spot balance wise, they'd still be allowed to join. None of the other classes lost theirs. If Major Vulnerability hadn't been put on so many sets, even the Arcanist meta in PvE would not have been able to get all Necros kicked from the group. So with it being gone, what's the point? The Revive ultimate never has to be used in ideal conditions, so that's not a reason for good groups to bring a Necro. That's a crutch, only useful to groups that are still learning. If we can't make Major Vulnerability uniquely Necro again, we need to give them something else.
  • Too many tethers. Braided Tether is fine, because it's also an AOE around you. And Detonating Siphon has its uses when you are using Corpse Burster for example. But Mystic Siphon and Mortal Coil are pretty much identical skills, with one for damage and the other for healing, but neither really feels great or unique. I would turn Braided Tether into the base functionality of the healing skill and come up with better morph choices, while I think Shocking Siphon needs to be replaced with something else entirely. Perhaps a skill that turns a corpse into a bomb to keep the fun part of Detonating Siphon alive and to double-dip with Corpse Burster for some fun interaction.
  • As mentioned earlier Flaming Skull does not feel great to use. It was improved recently, yes, but there are still issues with weaving. Until those are resolved, and the use case over Force Shock or Snipe is made more clear, I won't see myself using this spammable.
  • Sacrificial Blastbones. That ability makes no sense. You expend power to animate a skeleton so the skeleton can... die again? Where are you gaining that power from exactly? This skill has the functionality of a corpse consuming ability, not a corpse generating ability. Actually, why not put this on the other morph of the corpse detonator ability I described above? It can't be that hard to take Blighted Blastbones and give it a different coat of paint with a different secondary effect and make it cost magicka. That's what we've had and I think that's what we want back. Especially if we move the empowering ability over onto what became of Shocking Siphon.
  • The damage over time theme. I feel like Necro has a bit of a split personality here. I explained what I dislike about Shocking Siphon earlier but other than Boneyard, it's also the only damage over time ability in the Necro's kit despite the class supposedly being more focused on it. Necro actually seems to be quite the burst oriented class. That isn't to say that it doesn't make sense for Necromancers to get a bonus to damage over time effects. It's very thematic for a Necro to afflict the enemy with lots of damage over time effects and debuffs that eventually overwhelm the enemy in a battle of attrition, but the classes kit is just nothing like that. I think we can work with status effects some more, especially considering how diverse the damage palette of the Necro already is, so why not lean into that more? Maybe take inspiration from sets like Serpent's Disdain or Xanmeer Spellweaver (or both) to give Necros a boost that everyone will appreciate with the option of building fully around it if you so choose.
  • I already mentioned Bone Goliath, but I feel the entire Bone Tyrant skill line needs work. Bone Goliath is kind of weak and not all that useful. Sure it can save your life for a few seconds, but it's also not doing much else. At least Vampire ult and Corrosive Armor deal more damage and heal more, with DKs also get their resources restored thanks to their passive. By comparison Ravenous Goliath is just sad. Meanwhile Pummeling Goliath is pretty much only relevant for Bash Builds and Bash Builds cause lag, which is very sad. For a playstyle that's already so obnoxious due to the lag it causes even in duels and the ability to go all in on resistances while being rewarded with increased damage, I don't think we need to then also give them AOE damage. Enough about Goliath though. Grave Grasp still misses the mark. Get it? Because that ability is difficult to land and easy to miss! Why not make it a targetted cast that then immobilizes in an aoe around the target? Bone Totem is also a bit meh. Sure, it's more useful than Grave Grasp, but not exactly cool either. I think we could make this ability generate a corpse and turn Remote Totem into another summon because the tank Necro doesn't have any summons which feels unfortunate. Maybe a ghost that's chasing your enemy to fear them, or a skeleton with a shield that protects allies?
  • Finally the pet/corpse limit is just a very sad thing to have. I understand that it was implemented for performance reasons, but I think this is taking things too far. There has to be a better solution than 5 pets/corpses.

Wishlist and more ideas:
While I was playing Infinite Archive I got the Necromantic transformation and thought to myself, why can't Necros get something as cool as this ability? So I thought why not let the revive ultimate be a little like the Lich synergy from infinite archive. You use it, it spawns very many temporary pets that swarm your enemy until they expire and leave corpses, regardless of whether somebody was revived (except you can't target them, to not make it an obnoxious bodyblocking mess) and cause your enemy to die by a thousand cuts, while still retaining the ability to revive up to 3 allies in the target area. That way nobody would feel bad for bringing this ultimate and the healer would be happy to use it, especially if the other morph could leave an area where it was cast that provides allies in it with a shield or strong heal over time so the ult can compete with Barrier.
The other idea was the Lich transformation as a more damage focused alternative to Goliath. Sure, Lichdom is usually a permanent affair, but let's handwave that away for the rule of cool, say the appearance is a dreadful illusion of what your Necromancer might become in the future, while temporarily empowered from whatever unholy ritual you just used (or perhaps this was your true form all along and your normal appearance is the illusion). Gameplay wise, something fun that's probably not balanced at all would be to have skills cost 0 magicka for the duration of the ultimate. Sounds busted, I know, but if we take away the extra health and replace it with extra max magicka (just for the damage/healing calculation) I can see that being neat. We increased the cost of skills like Time Stop to ridiculous 8k magicka because otherwise it would be too powerful. But ultimates should be powerful and would give you a somewhat brief window of being able to spam Time Stop before the duration runs out and you are left with a skill that's mostly unusable on your bar, making it somewhat fair... maybe?
Finally I think it's a Criminal Act from the developers that Necromancer have not even one single passive or active skill interacting with soul gems. I think we should incentivise Necros to use Soul Trap, maybe by having a passive triggering from using a soul magic skill, or from filling a soul gem. Or give them their own modified version of soul trap. I can understand why we wouldn't give Necromancer something that consumes a filled soul gem, since we don't want people to randomly run out of soulgems and realize they have to revive at a wayshrine, but especially on higher levels you end up with more soul gems than you'll ever need. You could even make reviving as a Necromancer cost no soul gem if that was the problem! Perhaps Shocking Siphon (since it's unlocked way down the line) or whichever ability has replaced it, could have a line that says if this ability was cast with no valid corpse in the area, it instead consumes a soul gem and is centered around you. Flavor-blast the Necro with extra soul gem utility!


Anyway, these are my ideas.
I was actually involved in hypothetical Necromancer class discussions back before Warden was even a thing and we all believed they couldn't/wouldn't turn an NPC/villain class into a playable class. So being here again and talking about design philosophy of the Necromancer is a bit nostalgic. I made some suggestions back then that turned out pretty close to what Necro ended up being - with in hindsight some admittedly very flawed ideas, like Necro having no self buffs and instead being debuff focused (which backfired, because potions exist and made Necros too strong at first and then in need of nerfs, resulting in them now having all of those buffs after the nerfs left them too weak). I hope my understanding of the game has improved since then.
Edited by Ratzkifal on February 27, 2026 4:04AM
This Bosmer was tortured to death. There is nothing left to be done.
  • Urvoth
    Urvoth
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    I think the current corpse mechanic needs to go away and be replaced by another resource-building/spending option. It's cool in theory but it's incredibly stagnant gameplay-wise, and horrendous to use against constantly moving targets or if you have to kite and break line of sight.

    I and probably every other necro main agrees that Stalking Blastbones needs to come back. That was my favorite skill in the entire kit since release just for ZOS to randomly delete it. The Sacrificial Bones buff should just be put on the mage/archer. If that's too strong being separated from blastbones, make it buff necro abilities and dots by a flat 200 instead of a percent.

    Necro has no minor team buff passive like every other class has.

    A lot of necro's issues boil down to the skills being clunky and not very useful in dynamic combat situations. There's also a weird lack of class identity, as it's stuck in-between wanting to be a DOT, debuff, and burst class, yet not really succeeding well at either.

    I hope the devs take their time and really overhaul necro. It's definitely the class that needs it the most.
  • Alaztor91
    Alaztor91
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    I would really like to know what ZOS is going to do with Corpses(and Pet limit), since if you look at the ''Source of Power/Power Fantasy'' chart it seems that the mechanic is staying. I would assume that they tax the server more than something like Crux since it has to maintain the data related to their position on the map or something, which is probably one of the reasons why they despawn after a certain amount of time and why there is a hard cap.

    If the above is true I would like to see Necro pet skills reworked into a ''visual pet'' type of skill similar to something like Scorch or what they did with the Mad Tinkerer proc, we already know they can do this because it's what they did in Vengeance with most(all?) pet related skills. Corpses could also be redesigned to function similar to Crux, so you get a stacking buff on your character when stuff dies/skill generates one, and skills would just consume stacks to get the empowered effect. Lastly, I would also like the Tether skills to be redesigned into a ''targeted tether'' similar to something like Wrath of the Elements/Mender's Bond so that they don't require ground targeting and can also work with this new Corpse system.

    No more BB getting stuck in a Negate/Long CC, no more Tethers breaking because there was a pebble in the ground, no more 9k0vlcbuf4w2.png


  • Radiate77
    Radiate77
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    Here is what we need...

    1. Melee Minion(s) with health bars.
    2. Better scaling of abilities.
    3. Complete removal of Tethers.
    4. An actual skill line for Soul Magic.
    5. Entire rework of Goliath.
    6. Cleaner animations similar to concept art.
    7. Respect. Don’t bury us out back for years again.
    Dragon Priest [Restoring Light, Draconic Power, Grave Lord]
    Death Knight [Grave Lord, Winter’s Embrace, Siphoning]
    Pyromancer [Ardent Flame, Dawn’s Wrath, Earthen Heart]
    Summoner [Living Death, Grave Lord, Daedric Summoning]
    Ranger [Animal Companions, Green Balance, Shadow]
    Druid [Earthen Heart, Animal Companions, Stormcalling]
    Elementalist [Stormcalling, Winter’s Embrace, Ardent Flame]
    Dawnguard [Dawn’s Wrath, Restoring Light, Ardent Flame]
  • Last'One
    Last'One
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    The Necromancer is probably my favorite class in The Elder Scrolls (for lore reasons and such). But I barely play it. Why? Because of the ridiculous “criminal act” mechanic. I honestly don’t have many suggestions on how to improve the class, but if I had to start somewhere, removing that criminal-act nonsense would be my top priority.

    This didn’t make much sense even before subclassing, and now that subclassing lets us mix things like Necromancer and Templar, it’s just absurd. It feels like only someone with no idea what Elder Scrolls lore is would allow that combination to exist while still keeping the criminal-act restriction. It’s just 100% nonsense.
    Honestly, this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen in a game that calls itself "The Elder Scrolls."

    After that? Well, after that, any changes to make the class better are welcome.


    Edited by Last'One on February 27, 2026 8:57AM
  • Wup_sa
    Wup_sa
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    I think the corpse system we currently have would be great, but the class needs a passive which allows them to blow up similarly to corpse buster set, but just tone it really high to make the class the strongest in aoe. Necros kit needs bug fixes and more buffs/debuffs, other than that the class would be extremely strong at least in PvP they would be dangerous to go up against in closed places because of all the stacking aoe dmg.
  • tmacedo
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    Just to note, you mentioned IA thing being better than something in the actual class. I ask myself the same question regarding mystic fabled/vallina/RG hot dogs meteors and templars nova. Why the sun isnt a little better than a meteor of sorts? Too mich (unused) power in the sinergy.

    Anyway i'm somewhat new to necro and wanna roll one, but i dont know the extent of zos modificarions.
  • Renato90085
    Renato90085
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    if pet AI still suck,i hope zos can delete pet part in game and buff other skill,they are useless too long
  • ZhuJiuyin
    ZhuJiuyin
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    I've always wondered whether development teams conduct any market research before developing new skills, animations, or classes. Do they gather information on player preferences and pain points beforehand? Otherwise, why release skills like Grave Lord's Sacrifice that completely contradict market demands?

    In my opinion, any new skill, animation, or class should undergo market research and have a prototype shown to players before production. In some games I've played, limited-time events are held before releasing new characters, breaking down the character's skills or animations into special abilities for that event. After the event, players are invited to rate these special abilities to assess whether the new character meets market demands.

    In ESO, the Infinite Archive and Vengeance would be most suitable. Simply provide limited-time rewards, then include prototype skills and animations under development in the event for players to experience early, and collect player feedback after the event. This allows new skills, animations, or classes to be modified before release, reducing the likelihood of releasing products like Grave Lord's Sacrifice or Warden Mastery that don't suit player preferences or break balance, while also reducing the cost of rework or customer complaints later.
    "是燭九陰,是燭龍。"──by "The Classic of Mountains and Seas "English is not my first language,If something is ambiguous, rude due to context and translation issues, etc., please remind me, thanks.
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