The Elder Scrolls Online » Discussions


The Necromancer Class

  • March 1, 2019

    Before I begin I'd like to give a shout out to Alcast's Breakdown of the Necromancer Class and you might want to check out the ESO forum post, Necromancer - what we know so far... to get a better understanding of what's already been revealed. This is more of an opinion thread than informing you of all the details.

     

    With the information we currently have I wanted to start a bit of a discussion on what your hoping to see from the Necromancer Class, and breaking down your thoughts on what's been revealed so far. It's obviously a few months from release, but considering the Necromancer is a bit unique because it wasn't initially planned as a Class I think it has the potential to be really fascinating. 

    If you want a bit of direction here are a few questions to get you started :D 

    Is there anything you'd like to see from specific skills? Any predicitions on what they may actually be? 

    Do you like the idea of some Necromancer abilities possibly causing a negative reaction with NPC's? If so, do you think this needs to spread to (for example) The Werewolf Form? 

    Are there any possible issues you have with the class at the moment, or issues that you can forsee? (other than balancing issues...which are probably going to happen regardless). 

  • Member
    March 2, 2019
    Leaving the mechanics aspect of the class well alone for now, what I am excited about is its integration with the justice system. Knowing that being overtly necromantic in public is going to effect how people react and give you a bounty, I think that's going to really help immersion... And hopefully make dueling happen away from cities! I'm curious to know more about the lore and background going on, and how much freedom we get to reinterpret that. The classes tend to have an assumed backstory - Dragonknights get trained in skills used by the Akaviri Dragonguard, Templars have a Stendarr connection, Wardens have the ability to shape the world like Spinners do and share that connection to Y'ffre and the Green.. I wonder if it's assumed we're part of the Worm Cult? I mean, it's not in your face and we can imagine what we want for our characters, but I do like to tie my characters into that established lore as closely as possible. So knowing those details will then dictate my interest in the class. Can I feel like I'm a priest of Arkay and make that work within the lore of the class? That's what interests me :D
  • March 2, 2019

    Leaving the mechanics aspect of the class well alone for now, what I am excited about is its integration with the justice system. Knowing that being overtly necromantic in public is going to effect how people react and give you a bounty, I think that's going to really help immersion... And hopefully make dueling happen away from cities! I'm curious to know more about the lore and background going on, and how much freedom we get to reinterpret that. The classes tend to have an assumed backstory - Dragonknights get trained in skills used by the Akaviri Dragonguard, Templars have a Stendarr connection, Wardens have the ability to shape the world like Spinners do and share that connection to Y'ffre and the Green.. I wonder if it's assumed we're part of the Worm Cult? I mean, it's not in your face and we can imagine what we want for our characters, but I do like to tie my characters into that established lore as closely as possible. So knowing those details will then dictate my interest in the class. Can I feel like I'm a priest of Arkay and make that work within the lore of the class? That's what interests me :D

    Cool topics :D

    On the justice system integration, I'm intrigued to figure out how that's going to work because it feels like something that could be a bit of a pain at times. Like, there are a few quests that you complete in plain view of NPC's so I wonder if it's going to trigger then. It could make any fights in the cities (Duels or PvE) really interesting if you have to moniter which skills have an effect and you try and avoid using them. I think it could either be really nice and add a massive amount of immersion to the class that I think the others miss with some of their skills (I feel like using skills in cities could at least get a guard to approach you like Shouting does in Skyrim.). Well, maybe not but I think it'd be interesting if classes had these little unique effects for using their skills you know. 

    Possible Spoilers for ESO, Skyrim, Morrowind and Oblivion below!

    As for the lore. I'm not really well versed on Necromancy in Lore, but it's something that seem relatively common when you think about it. How many quests involve spirits being bound to objects or places, or good old fashioned zombie summoning? In just about every game it's just about as common as bandits, and it seems to be a continous story element. The Dragon Priests (or the Dragon Cult in general), Alduin, The Worm Cult, Bloodthorn Cult, Bretons in general seem to bind ghosts a lot....Hell even getting to Tiber Septim's armour in Oblivion involved Necromancy. 

    It's just really common so there's a lot of ways they could take it. Would some sort of Ideal Master relationship be an interesting angle for the Lore? It provides a somewhat neutral point rather than shoving you towards the Worm Cult (which I think could be a little immersion breaking) and it would mean we get more Lore on the Soul Cairn which would be fascinating to see. 

  • Member
    March 2, 2019

    Dragonborn2021 said:

    Cool topics :D

    On the justice system integration, I'm intrigued to figure out how that's going to work because it feels like something that could be a bit of a pain at times. Like, there are a few quests that you complete in plain view of NPC's so I wonder if it's going to trigger then. It could make any fights in the cities (Duels or PvE) really interesting if you have to moniter which skills have an effect and you try and avoid using them. I think it could either be really nice and add a massive amount of immersion to the class that I think the others miss with some of their skills (I feel like using skills in cities could at least get a guard to approach you like Shouting does in Skyrim.). Well, maybe not but I think it'd be interesting if classes had these little unique effects for using their skills you know.

    That's a good point. I wonder if it will have an independent Justice System rather than integrating into the one already present. I mean, as you said there are loads of quests in and around populated areas. As it stands now, you become Disreputable if anyone sees you stealing which will cause guards to try to arrest you (I love the ones who flirt with you during that attempt :D ). If you then evade arrest, you get bumped up to Notorious and the bounty increases too. I can't imagine the system working like that, it's too clearly defined. Maybe a citizen would be suspicious and make a comment about feeling a chill in the air or something else to let you know they're a bit suspicious, but perhaps it would take blatant and repeated necromantic acts before they realise what they're seeing. Looking at those skill lines, summoning a dragon in the middle of Wayrest could be too overt and immediately have you clapped in irons, but some of the more subtle skills could be dismissed at first by citizens. Agreed about class skills causing comments from NPCs, would be well cool!

    Dragonborn2021 said:

    Possible Spoilers for ESO, Skyrim, Morrowind and Oblivion below!

    As for the lore. I'm not really well versed on Necromancy in Lore, but it's something that seem relatively common when you think about it. How many quests involve spirits being bound to objects or places, or good old fashioned zombie summoning? In just about every game it's just about as common as bandits, and it seems to be a continous story element. The Dragon Priests (or the Dragon Cult in general), Alduin, The Worm Cult, Bloodthorn Cult, Bretons in general seem to bind ghosts a lot....Hell even getting to Tiber Septim's armour in Oblivion involved Necromancy. 

    It's just really common so there's a lot of ways they could take it. Would some sort of Ideal Master relationship be an interesting angle for the Lore? It provides a somewhat neutral point rather than shoving you towards the Worm Cult (which I think could be a little immersion breaking) and it would mean we get more Lore on the Soul Cairn which would be fascinating to see. 

    Necromancy isn't exactly something I'm particularly knowledgeable about either. I think it's common enough that pretty much every culture finds it abhorrent to varying degrees, and iirc, that's the angle they've taken when they revealed the class for the Elsweyr promo/reveal stream. In terms of lore, this Justice System potentially tells us that every culture finds it abhorrent enough for it to be ilegal - and I'm not totally sure if that's ever been explicitly said before. So it makes me wonder how much the average citizen knows, how much they recognise as being necromancy compared to any other type of magic. I'm guessing they don't know that much: In Skyrim people comment if you've got an active effect running, things like "get that magic away from me" and "ooh pretty colours" and "try not to set fire to anything" but other than that they don't demonstrate enough familiarity to be specific - "be careful with that dual-cast Firebolt..."

    But totally the Ideal Masters would be more fitting than the Worm Cult as a background detail. From what I remember, mages enter into pacts with the Masters by offering up souls in exchange for power and access to spells like Conjure Mistman. The ability to summon undead without needing a body to work with must be pretty awesome for a necromancer! That said, maybe such a background is too similar to the Sorcerer class? That class is all about making pacts with Daedric beings, and as the Ideal Masters seem to have their own demi-plane or pocket realm, we could say they are potentially Daedric entities themselves.

    I really like the Dragon Priest angle, Deebs. Considering this is the year of the dragons return in terms of ESO's narrative, I think it would be really cool if they went with that as the lore behind the class. All we've seen of the Dragon Cult is from the Nordic perspective in Skyrim but now we should actually get to see that from a different point of view. How did the ancient Khajiit view dragons? We know the beasts ruled all of Mundus so the kitties must have had their own version of the cult. How that differs and learning more is something I'm well stoked about!

  • March 2, 2019

    That's a good point. I wonder if it will have an independent Justice System rather than integrating into the one already present. I mean, as you said there are loads of quests in and around populated areas. As it stands now, you become Disreputable if anyone sees you stealing which will cause guards to try to arrest you (I love the ones who flirt with you during that attempt :D ). If you then evade arrest, you get bumped up to Notorious and the bounty increases too. I can't imagine the system working like that, it's too clearly defined. Maybe a citizen would be suspicious and make a comment about feeling a chill in the air or something else to let you know they're a bit suspicious, but perhaps it would take blatant and repeated necromantic acts before they realise what they're seeing. Looking at those skill lines, summoning a dragon in the middle of Wayrest could be too overt and immediately have you clapped in irons, but some of the more subtle skills could be dismissed at first by citizens. Agreed about class skills causing comments from NPCs, would be well cool!

    Oh that could be interesting...I think they'd probably be a bit chill about it to be honest because the Necromancer Class is probably going to be kind of huge for new players (since it's a new class.) so I can't see it being a quick, straight 5 gold for using [insert skill] just because it's the sort of thing that new players might just find annoying (especially since they don't have the gold to pay fines most of the time). 

    Necromancy isn't exactly something I'm particularly knowledgeable about either. I think it's common enough that pretty much every culture finds it abhorrent to varying degrees, and iirc, that's the angle they've taken when they revealed the class for the Elsweyr promo/reveal stream. In terms of lore, this Justice System potentially tells us that every culture finds it abhorrent enough for it to be ilegal - and I'm not totally sure if that's ever been explicitly said before. So it makes me wonder how much the average citizen knows, how much they recognise as being necromancy compared to any other type of magic. I'm guessing they don't know that much: In Skyrim people comment if you've got an active effect running, things like "get that magic away from me" and "ooh pretty colours" and "try not to set fire to anything" but other than that they don't demonstrate enough familiarity to be specific - "be careful with that dual-cast Firebolt..."

    Hadn't really thought of it but that's fair...yeah I'm not sure how common people would react to it, 

    But totally the Ideal Masters would be more fitting than the Worm Cult as a background detail. From what I remember, mages enter into pacts with the Masters by offering up souls in exchange for power and access to spells like Conjure Mistman. The ability to summon undead without needing a body to work with must be pretty awesome for a necromancer! That said, maybe such a background is too similar to the Sorcerer class? That class is all about making pacts with Daedric beings, and as the Ideal Masters seem to have their own demi-plane or pocket realm, we could say they are potentially Daedric entities themselves.

    I suppose, nah I mean that makes sense. I hadn't really thought about the idea of the Ideal Masters being semi-Daedric in nature but...I wonder if the Ideal Masters have their own realm or if they just live there. I mean, obviously there's a real gap in our knowledge there, we just can't say much about them. But it's possible that rather than the Soul Cairn being the realm of the Ideal Masters, they're just a powerful group (singular entity?) that's similar to the Augur of Dunlain in nature...

    Again, hard to say because it's something that just hasn't been covered yet, but I think they do have the freedom to say whatever they want about the Ideal Masters if they went this route.

    I really like the Dragon Priest angle, Deebs. Considering this is the year of the dragons return in terms of ESO's narrative, I think it would be really cool if they went with that as the lore behind the class. All we've seen of the Dragon Cult is from the Nordic perspective in Skyrim but now we should actually get to see that from a different point of view. How did the ancient Khajiit view dragons? We know the beasts ruled all of Mundus so the kitties must have had their own version of the cult. How that differs and learning more is something I'm well stoked about!

    Yep, that's what I meant by mentioning the Dragon Priests :P I mean, that actually does sound really cool, and it's an angle that could be really interesting and fit in rather well with the Season of the Dragon. Heh, I guess it's something that could be interesting regardless of how it works with the Necromancer (in other words, if it does or if it doesn't).

  • Member
    March 14, 2019

    Great thread and really excited to see what evolves from the new class when it drops in May. 

    Is there anything you'd like to see from specific skills? Any predicitions on what they may actually be? 

    We know some of this, but I think last I checked the morphs and their effects are still somewhat unknown. 

    Do you like the idea of some Necromancer abilities possibly causing a negative reaction with NPC's? If so, do you think this needs to spread to (for example) The Werewolf Form? 

    I echo Phil in that it will be interesting to see how this integrates with the justice system and how others react to you. On the other hand I get that it's somewhat necessary because of how they've built the MQ around the theme of necromancy and the Worm Cult but I'd like to have a little more leniecy when it comes to at least naming some of the skills. They feel a little negatively skewed to me, but really that's just sort of small beans and I'm mostly just interested to play it and see how it goes.

    Are there any possible issues you have with the class at the moment, or issues that you can forsee? (other than balancing issues...which are probably going to happen regardless). 

    I'm a little worried it may be unbalanced, but I'm sure if it is that ZOS will nerf it before too long. I'm actually most interested to play a necromancer healer using the Living Death and Restoration staff skill lines. I have a sorceror character that I sort of always envisioned as a medium and it will be cool to sort of make her new again with these new abilities. :D

  • Member
    March 14, 2019

    One thing I'd really want from this class is for the majority of their abilities to play off their being corpses nearby, some of the abilities they spoke about in the stream get more powerful if cast over a corpse of some kind. They don't have to just be more powerful, they could gain additional effects or duration if cast on or near a body. Really I just don't want it to be a gimmick that they attach to 2 or 3 of the class' abilities, it should be something that the class is built around since they are Necromancers. My current plan for when the class is released is to create a healer and I would love it if there was that duality to the skills, where you are using the dead to heal or buff yourself and allies.

  • Member
    March 15, 2019

    There's a lot of excitement for the necromancer healer, but c'mon guys, Bone Dragon:

    It's got to be Necromancer damage-dealer for the first build, surely? :D

  • March 16, 2019

    There's a lot of excitement for the necromancer healer, but c'mon guys, Bone Dragon:

    Bone Dragons indeed Phil...wait, eh we'll just ignore the possibly odd sounding nature of that sentence :P

    I'm definitely with you though, my first build is probably going to be DPS - Necromancer, but I'll be kind of interested to see what role they generally take up. I'm a little weary that they have Tanking and Healing as two of the skill trees. To be fair they seem to be a bit more varied than 'pure Tank/Healing' and I imagine the class is going to be insane as a Support-Class, but I would've liked something like DPS, Summoning, Tank/Healing combo or something...Something that kind of mimicks the Templar set-up a little more (Where you kind of have DoT Fire, Damage and Healing as skill lines) rather than the Warden set-up...Like when you break it down you literally have Damage/Summons, Tanking and Healing for both Wardens and Necromancers which just has me a bit worried I suppose. 

    I'm a little worried it may be unbalanced, but I'm sure if it is that ZOS will nerf it before too long. I'm actually most interested to play a necromancer healer using the Living Death and Restoration staff skill lines. I have a sorceror character that I sort of always envisioned as a medium and it will be cool to sort of make her new again with these new abilities. :D

    From memory wasn't the Warden initially a bit unbalanced? I think I remember the Guardian being insanely good in the early days but it's obviously all evened out a bit by now. I imagine that there will be a slight unbalance, but I'd rather they start off with it being a bit more powerful (and I hate to be cynacil, but that'd definitely draw new players in more...try out the brand new powerful, awesome class) then starting it off as weaker than other classes.

    We know some of this, but I think last I checked the morphs and their effects are still somewhat unknown. 

    That's what I know at the moment, though I think the skill effects are still mostly unknown as well. 

  • Member
    March 17, 2019
    Hmm, bone dragon. I wonder if that's going to be a morph of the ultimate: you can choose the breath weapon for AoE DOT or morph it into something more penetrative :p The poor Warden got a bit over-nerfed, yeah :D Not that it really effected me much for the content I do to be fair, and I think it really only effected the pro's. I have taken her and her bear through trials and vet dungeons and, as long as she pulls her weight, I'm content. I think with the Warden they emphasised the skill lines' role-specific abilities, something they've continued with the Necromancer by the looks of it. So we get a damage-dealing skill line, a healing skill line and a tanking skill line. I think that was just to make it easier for players to know what skills would be most beneficial for the role they want to play. Any class can be any role, but I think they just made it easier to see. Like, my stamden damage-dealer doesn't use many skills from Winter's Embrace for example, and really only use Green Lotus from the Green Balance line. Of course, I'm free to dip into other skills if needed, and do have a flex spot for putting a healing or defensive skill to suit the content I'm running - that's to say, i wouldn't last long in VMA if I use all the skills I would for a dps dungeon role. So with the Necromancer, we're probably seeing a versatile class with each skill being more clearly role-specific than the older classes. Sorry if text wall from my mobile.