Opening
I am not here to give a full class rework like you might expect, I am not here to rinse and repeat the age old demands for sources of Major Buffs. I am here to explain how one would make Necromancer a better class and it is the mechanic of the class it's self. It's biggest problem for longest time has been it's class mechanic, the creating and consumption of corpses. This in it's self is not the problem, the problem is the way necromancer consumes it's class resource, the corpses. These static points on the ground that our consumers get fixed to. It's clunky, easily countered, and the build up is never truly worth the reward when dpsing and even healing. ZoS made a poor attempt at addressing this by first making the necromancer the corpse, and then by removing it's best dps skill for a buff you could accidentally LoS. (For which I shared some very heated words and suggested people play another game, I still stand by that.) ZoS blundered their attempt but the corpse is in fact the key to this. The fix is changing the way we use them and building a actual class interaction.
My suggestion is simple, change Skeletal Arcanist/Archer to a radiant corpse consumer which raises a max of three skeletons that attack your target and act as mobile corpses. I'll explain further below.
The Main Mechanic
Its 5th skill, should be a corpse consumer. You press the button and it consumes up to 3 corpses within' x meters. The consumed corpses became risen minions that attack your focuses target and are not able to be targeted so as to avoid clutter. These minions act as corpses for all other corpse interactions. You can tether to them with your tether skills, you can attach the Boneyard to them so it moves, and there morphs she be elemental minions. The Magicka morph will infuse them with an aura of Fire, Lightning, and Ice. The Stamina morph Disease, Poison, and Bleeding. Each aura pulses as a aoe and can inflict the related status effect. To help keep track of the minions uptime, you can have Lich Crystals float around you, one for each minion, when one fades so does the crystal and you know its time to re-apply.
With this, your corpse consumption becomes less clunky as the button press is a radiant thing that no longer requires to to root yourself to one spot only to have the boss, mobs, or enemy players walk away from it so now it's useless. Plus it adds a very strong thematic core to the Necromancer that doesn't step on the toes of other pet classes. This is the core of the fix to me, everything else is secondary to this. However I have a suggestion for further interactions with this core mechanic.
Boneyard Interaction
Boneyard now being linked to these moving corpses means it can interact in a unique way, there are many potential interactions one could come up with but I have two suggestions for morphes to change the gameplay up and make it more satisfying.
Morph One: Sacrifice.
The first morph is simple, after casting Boneyard and attacking it to a minion, the button gets replaced with a new skill, Sacrifice. The ends the boneyard and causes it to detonate all minions within it's field of effect. They explode dealing the remainder of Boneyards damage all at once and applying the status effects of the minions within. (Burning, Concussion, Brittle, ect.)
Morph Two: Creeping Death.
This morph would make it so Boneyard applied Major Breach to all within it's area of effect, but also make it so the minions inside the field now apply a stacking slow each time they hit, after reaching a set number of stacks it stuns the target it applies Minor Vulnerability. (Debuffs and Status effects I think are very on theme.)
Closing
There are other potential suggestions that could benefit but these are the core things that would create a dps identity for Necromancer. The Dev's mishandling of my favorite class as put such a sour taste in my mouth I am on a hiatus from this game for a indeterminate amount of time. But I refused to leave without putting this out into the world first so it can probably be ignored. I am sure some of you will hate it, some will love, and many will have their own ideas. But this is what I think would be the best move for the class and it's corpse problem.
