New Job Necromancer

[Sedalia]

The necromancer job philosophy

The job itself is not like the other healers, they draw their power from others' suffering or anger, or the anger and malice of the dead. They are psychotic by nature. A person's life is a fleeting dream to them. These are beings that transcend the mortal coil by using forbidden magic called blood magic.

Weapon choices
This class has two weapons the reaver which is a one-handed scythe mean for reaving souls of the damned. The other hand is your offhand weapon, a doll which would go into your shield slot. Think of this as your soul collector and catalyst for your magic as well as functioning as an untargetable pet that cast spells when you do.

Abilities up to level 30
Hatred/malice. When you cast hatred your doll casts malice. These are two different spells that are additional effects and this case one is a single target spell and the other a dot spell.

Blood pact. Placing this on a target player, all the damage you deal to a target 30% of it will heal the player and 30% of the damage the player target has blood pact on will heal you for 30%.

Damnation. This places a black sphere on a monster target which grows bigger over time. The more spells you hit the target with, the bigger the sphere gets. After 15-18 seconds the sphere will drop, healing allies and damaging target. Depending on which phase the black sphere grows will determine the debuffing on the target.

Pain. This spell takes 20% of your HP and either buffs allies with increased vitality by 10% or lowers enemies' vitality and HP by 10%. This ability lasts on you for 15 minutes. There are multiple ways you can use this ability. You can use it as you do protect, only it's only one person at a time. When used on enemy target the debuff lasts making bosses easier to defeat than normal. This is their main source of utility and is why it is so powerful. You can either make your tank tankier by 10% or make the boss weaker by 10%.

Soul Reaver. This is an 1000 potency attack that can only be used when target has 15% of life left. When using this ability you heal all nearby friendly targets for 15-20% of their HP. This is your big heal as well as an execute. The additional effect is that you gain a soul. If you kill the target you gain three souls. This spell is similar to a Scholars' AEther Flow but the Necromancer can only use it when they are near death. This also give them soul power.

Soul Power/healing. There are two forms this job can heal. By syphoning blood from the enemy and transporting it to a friendly target. This creates a double draining effect - life syphon and life transferrence. You are the one who life syphons and the doll life transfers. This causes a powerful heal over time effect which keeps the tanks or whoever you are trying to heal healthily.

Soul Transfusion. When a target enemy dies with this effect on the enemy will light up certain abilities. This doesn't necessarily have to be limited and kill a bunch of monsters before you raid etc. However, in dungeons, this is really powerful because you can use off cd heals the moment something dies in battle.

This job is both a heavy damage caster that uses damage to heal others as well as placing debuffs on the target enemy making it easier to kill. The purpose of this job is to be a counterpart or the other side of the coin of Astrologian. It is about making your enemies suffer by keeping your team alive.

[ReiMakoto]

Can we get a tally going for the number of necromancer requests at this point.

Other than your potencies being whack, theyre never going to do a healer that revolves around damaging to heal others, it would either be broken good with near 100% uptime, or really terrible cos theyll gimp its output to deal less damage that the others even with 100% uptime, so people who are good at the other healers and can maintain uptime will just be superior.

[Stepjam]

Can we get a tally going for the number of necromancer requests at this point.

Other than your potencies being whack, theyre never going to do a healer that revolves around damaging to heal others, it would either be broken good with near 100% uptime, or really terrible cos theyll gimp its output to deal less damage that the others even with 100% uptime, so people who are good at the other healers and can maintain uptime will just be superior.

Some MMOs do have leech healers, though I dunno if that sorta gameplay would really work here. Maybe it would be like WHM lillies except you do damage to get your ability procs.

Lore wise, necromancy is a nono. They've made it pretty clear that necromancy is frowned upon, as is desecration of the dead in general.

[Theodric]

Lore wise, necromancy is a nono. They've made it pretty clear that necromancy is frowned upon, as is desecration of the dead in general.

The lore can be enhanced and adjusted in many ways. The writers could easily have a distinct style develop based around bargaining with the spirits of the dead or some such. There's other MMO's out there with Necromancy themed jobs/classes and it's also manifested as an actual playable job in a previous Final Fantasy game. A number of players would also approve of the option to have another job that dabbles in powers that are frowned upon, which is a pretty common trope in JRPG's in general.

[Lauront]

I'm not surprised it keeps coming up - it's one of the more popular jobs out there, e.g. as per this and this. Be it Necromancer, or through some other job (e.g. time mage), I'd like a caster dps predominantly focused on darkness, especially since BLM will retain its focus on fire/lightning/ice, whatever one makes of Foul/Xeno. A healer along these lines wouldn't be unwelcome, either.

[SamRF]

Lore wise, necromancy is a nono. They've made it pretty clear that necromancy is frowned upon, as is desecration of the dead in general.

I think this just makes the job more appealing to players and perhaps it's done on purpose. Sometimes feel like they put those necromancy references to hype up the job.

Have we actually seen a real necromancer ourselves in this game? I barely remember where the necromancer references were tbh but I do remember the general vibe they were given.

I remember some characters who were necromancer-ish but as far as I'm aware they aren't actually the "necromancers" that's refered to in lore. This just makes me think there's an even bigger chance they may keep the potential reveal with a job announcement.

Idk much about the lore though so I might be missing the mark completely.

And btw aren't summoners also still frowned upon?

[BasicBlake]

Frowned upon and straight up outlawed are a bit different.

I know I’m one of the few that don’t want a necromancer in the game no matter the role, but I have a really hard time wrapping my head around a “Necromancer” from a hero of the story perspective.

I can only think of Necromancer references in Palace of the Dead. Between Edda and the other magus guy.

[Theodric]

Well, thankfully Eorzea is simply a small piece of the Source itself. Just because a particular art is frowned upon and/or outlawed within Eorzea it doesn't rule out such arts being taught and embraced elsewhere. Since we've already explored pretty much every corner of Eorzea itself at this point it'd be pleasant if the story began to revolve around other parts of the Source from here on out. I thoroughly enjoyed exploring Kugane in no small part because it wasn't strictly beholden to Eorzea's way of life. In some ways it was similar yet in many others it was distinct.

Necromancy could easily be written to be a key part of a foreign culture without the taboo it has within Eorzea. Or it could just be written to be a grim necessity as a means to fight fire with fire. Much like how other MMO's and many single player games handle such powers.

[Seraphor]

Well, thankfully Eorzea is simply a small piece of the Source itself. Just because a particular art is frowned upon and/or outlawed within Eorzea it doesn't rule out such arts being taught and embraced elsewhere. Since we've already explored pretty much every corner of Eorzea itself at this point it'd be pleasant if the story began to revolve around other parts of the Source from here on out. I thoroughly enjoyed exploring Kugane in no small part because it wasn't strictly beholden to Eorzea's way of life. In some ways it was similar yet in many others it was distinct.

Necromancy could easily be written to be a key part of a foreign culture without the taboo it has within Eorzea. Or it could just be written to be a grim necessity as a means to fight fire with fire. Much like how other MMO's and many single player games handle such powers.

Yoshi P once mentioned he liked the idea of making an Eastern 'Onmyoji' status-related caster DPS job.
The in game lore of this is kinda along the lines of Geomancy/Onmyoji being similar to the Conjury/Thaumaturgy dichotomy.
It's a somewhat forbidden branch of blood magic involving sacrifices and whatnot.

While I doubt it could work as a status mage in XIV's current climate, I could see it working as a dark mage.
Although I'd personally prefer Geomancer to give us spells like Quake and Tornado.

[Lauront]

Black magic and white magic were forbidden, and now the former is undergoing a slow revival. How they justify it lorewise is limited only by their creativity and such things are malleable in any event.

And as per the above posts, yes, other jobs along an "onmyoji"/exorcist/oracle line, or even time mage (with a flavour similar to Gaia's) are also possibilities for a caster using darkness.