Ysuran Touch Build?

[Xabrin]

I'm playing co-op with Dorn the Barbarian and his damage is trouncing mine....how do you build Ysuran the Necromancer to do good damage with his touch spells. Any advice I find just says yeah you can build him however, melee, touch, spell or minion and he'll still do great but my damage sucks.
I'm trying dual wielding and it seems to help but my damage is still poor.

[Hobbes09]

You're comparing the best melee damage dealer in the game against the worst melee damage dealer in the game. Frankly, Ysuran's touch spells are pretty mediocre. Spells in general tend to lend toward much more limited damage since the damage is much more set with limited ability to upgrade. Ysuran's the most powerful character in the game, but its not due to raw damage potential. It's his ability to pop a shield, ray of enfeeblement, bring out a tank-y summons, slow enemies while hasting allies, and oh hey here's a couple abilities which does some damage as well.

[Xabrin]

Weird how all the old builds and guides say Ysuran can do anything well, melee, touch, ranged, minion etc and not you're saying he's the worst melee damage char.
Almost like you kn ow ♥♥♥♥ all.

[Xirce]

damn, immediate hostility.

[Hobbes09]

Those old builds and guides seem to be working out real well for you, that you need to come here and ask this.

But ok. Let's break it down. Ysuran's most damaging touch spell in Vampiric Touch. With Empower it can do a maximum of 120 points per activation. Not too shabby for an ability that you can throw points at from the start and only affects half the enemies in the game.
Now let's compare to Dorn. We'll go easy, give him a...flawless bastard sword. That maxes out at 72 damage per swing. Now add in 3 damage for weapon proficiency. Now add in strength (we'll go easy and say he capped out at 18 so...4). Then add enchantments, there's another 20+ points at least. Then add barbarian rage. We'll say you're not wearing armor enhancing it so it's maxed at an additional 30 points of damage. So a fairly low level barb is hitting at probably a max of around 130 with that setup with much higher potential. But wait...he's dual wielder. So he's swinging two of those. Also, he has combos and Combat Reflexes, so he's swinging much faster. Meaning in the space it takes Ysuran to get of his most powerful touch attack, an Act 2 Dorn is quadrupling his damage.

Or you could go with melee weapons. Of course Ysuran can't use two-handed weapons in either hand. Also he doesn't get two-weapon skill so his percentages are always nerfed well below 100%. Also due to his lack of skills affecting his to hit he will be whiffing his strikes a lot more. He also doesn't have combat reflexes, but he does get the much better haste...which is more useful as a party buff than for yourself. Oh, and no Improved Criticals or Deathblow so you won't be getting anywhere close to the same number of criticals and won't be hitting close to as hard when you do.

The strength of Ysuran isn't his ability to melee or even really do damage. He can summon a powerful creature, has very powerful buffs, and most importantly he can tank. With high shield, slow, haste and ray of enfeeblement he can laugh off most enemies on Extreme while plucking at them with consistent and mostly ranged damage. What he won't be doing is hitting enemies as hard as the game's premiere melee character.

[gendelf]

Originally posted by Hobbes09:

Those old builds and guides seem to be working out real well for you, that you need to come here and ask this.

But ok. Let's break it down. Ysuran's most damaging touch spell in Vampiric Touch. With Empower it can do a maximum of 120 points per activation. Not too shabby for an ability that you can throw points at from the start and only affects half the enemies in the game.
Now let's compare to Dorn. We'll go easy, give him a...flawless bastard sword. That maxes out at 72 damage per swing. Now add in 3 damage for weapon proficiency. Now add in strength (we'll go easy and say he capped out at 18 so...4). Then add enchantments, there's another 20+ points at least. Then add barbarian rage. We'll say you're not wearing armor enhancing it so it's maxed at an additional 30 points of damage. So a fairly low level barb is hitting at probably a max of around 130 with that setup with much higher potential. But wait...he's dual wielder. So he's swinging two of those. Also, he has combos and Combat Reflexes, so he's swinging much faster. Meaning in the space it takes Ysuran to get of his most powerful touch attack, an Act 2 Dorn is quadrupling his damage.

Or you could go with melee weapons. Of course Ysuran can't use two-handed weapons in either hand. Also he doesn't get two-weapon skill so his percentages are always nerfed well below 100%. Also due to his lack of skills affecting his to hit he will be whiffing his strikes a lot more. He also doesn't have combat reflexes, but he does get the much better haste...which is more useful as a party buff than for yourself. Oh, and no Improved Criticals or Deathblow so you won't be getting anywhere close to the same number of criticals and won't be hitting close to as hard when you do.

The strength of Ysuran isn't his ability to melee or even really do damage. He can summon a powerful creature, has very powerful buffs, and most importantly he can tank. With high shield, slow, haste and ray of enfeeblement he can laugh off most enemies on Extreme while plucking at them with consistent and mostly ranged damage. What he won't be doing is hitting enemies as hard as the game's premiere melee character.

Hey, thanks i found that useful. Op is an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

[Serious Kraken]

If you max out fireball and cast it directly in front of an enemy, all of the fireballs hit the same target and do good damage. You can cast it very quickly with little mana cost too. Technically that's not touch, but functionally it is similar.

[Syris]

Originally posted by Serious Kraken:

If you max out fireball and cast it directly in front of an enemy, all of the fireballs hit the same target and do good damage. You can cast it very quickly with little mana cost too. Technically that's not touch, but functionally it is similar.

Ysuran can't learn fireball he's a Necromancer focused Wizards meaning Evocation magic is locked out of him. You're probably confusing him with the Sorceress in the first game. Ysuran's premiere AoE spell is Enervation.

[unclesporky]

Originally posted by Hobbes09:

Those old builds and guides seem to be working out real well for you, that you need to come here and ask this.

But ok. Let's break it down. Ysuran's most damaging touch spell in Vampiric Touch. With Empower it can do a maximum of 120 points per activation. Not too shabby for an ability that you can throw points at from the start and only affects half the enemies in the game.
Now let's compare to Dorn. We'll go easy, give him a...flawless bastard sword. That maxes out at 72 damage per swing. Now add in 3 damage for weapon proficiency. Now add in strength (we'll go easy and say he capped out at 18 so...4). Then add enchantments, there's another 20+ points at least. Then add barbarian rage. We'll say you're not wearing armor enhancing it so it's maxed at an additional 30 points of damage. So a fairly low level barb is hitting at probably a max of around 130 with that setup with much higher potential. But wait...he's dual wielder. So he's swinging two of those. Also, he has combos and Combat Reflexes, so he's swinging much faster. Meaning in the space it takes Ysuran to get of his most powerful touch attack, an Act 2 Dorn is quadrupling his damage.

Or you could go with melee weapons. Of course Ysuran can't use two-handed weapons in either hand. Also he doesn't get two-weapon skill so his percentages are always nerfed well below 100%. Also due to his lack of skills affecting his to hit he will be whiffing his strikes a lot more. He also doesn't have combat reflexes, but he does get the much better haste...which is more useful as a party buff than for yourself. Oh, and no Improved Criticals or Deathblow so you won't be getting anywhere close to the same number of criticals and won't be hitting close to as hard when you do.

The strength of Ysuran isn't his ability to melee or even really do damage. He can summon a powerful creature, has very powerful buffs, and most importantly he can tank. With high shield, slow, haste and ray of enfeeblement he can laugh off most enemies on Extreme while plucking at them with consistent and mostly ranged damage. What he won't be doing is hitting enemies as hard as the game's premiere melee character.

From a GameFAQs post 12 years ago:[gamefaqs.gamespot.com]

This is one of the more confusing things about the feats of the game.

Ysuran's touch spell damage gets stacked with whatever weapon you are wielding at the time, and the weapon's effects also stack. For example: If you use shocking grasp with a damage range of 1-10, and you have a morningstar with 20-30 damage, your attack range will be 21-40. If that morning star is also equipped with ice/poison/fire/whatever, that effect will also happen to the enemy. If you dual-wield and use a touch attack, both weapons will hit the enemy, but I'm not 100% sure if the damage will stack on both. I think it will only stack with the main-hand weapon. You can also wield a crossbow while using touch attacks, and the damage & effect of the crossbow will stack. However, contrary to some faqs on this site, touch attacks cannot be delivered from range.

Once you get the upgrade, you will have access to abilities called Claws of Darkness, Shadow spray, Shadow shield, and Shadow Conjure. Claws of Darkness will replace any weapons you wield when it is cast, but the claws also do decent damage and have some other special effects. This feat can be stacked with touch spells as well.

However, I'm not sure where you're getting Vampiric Touch + Empower = 120 damage. 66 damage max + 45% = 95 damage.

A flawless morning star (12 max, * 4 flawless) deals up to 48 damage. Enchant it with jacinth and topaz to +5 and you can deal ((6 max + 8 max) * 5) 70 more damage, though to stay comparable with your calculation we'll leave it at 20+ points as you said, which gets us to 68 damage. You're dual wielding these so that's 136 damage, but then add the Vampiric Touch damage as well and suddenly it's fairly respectable and comparable to the numbers you set up: 260 for dual-wielding Dorn and 231 for dual wielding Vampiric Ysuran. Dorn is attacking faster, but Ysuran is draining health as he goes, plus his other utilities.

At least one source I read seemed to think that Claws of Darkness doesn't overwrite your normal weapons' damage but adds on top of all of this, which would add 21-36 damage (empowered? not sure) and weaken enemies by 24%.

Originally posted by Syris:

Originally posted by Serious Kraken:

If you max out fireball and cast it directly in front of an enemy, all of the fireballs hit the same target and do good damage. You can cast it very quickly with little mana cost too. Technically that's not touch, but functionally it is similar.

Ysuran can't learn fireball he's a Necromancer focused Wizards meaning Evocation magic is locked out of him. You're probably confusing him with the Sorceress in the first game. Ysuran's premiere AoE spell is Enervation.

Obviously he was talking about Flame Arrow.

But I don't agree that it's the most effective, which I've found out experimentally and by calculation. 5 empowered arrows at max damage is "only" 105 damage. Empowered Enervation can do 65, but doesn't require getting up in the face of any enemy and applies to all enemies in its range. In practice this is much easier. And empowered Shadow Spray is up to 87 per ribbon.

[Hobbes09]

Originally posted by unclesporky:

However, I'm not sure where you're getting Vampiric Touch + Empower = 120 damage. 66 damage max + 45% = 95 damage.

Bad math. Was probably tired and tried shorthanding the equation.

Anyway, booted up the game quick to see about everything and yeah, touch spells do take melee weapons into account.

However...

Ysuran's melee still isn't good. To get the damage you're looking for is a lucky late game build (for the morning star, which across four characters I haven't seen dropped) or an Extreme mode build in which you're ignoring spellcasting (or the strength of the character). But Ysuran still has issues in melee beyond that. He will not have a very high to hit, meaning enemies will frequently shrug damage entirely. He has an extremely low critical chance, not having access to that feat. And more importantly, he doesn't have two weapon feats. And that's the big rub in your calculation. The first skill gives you 90/30, meaning unskilled is probably 80/20. So both weapons combined to 100% damage. What was even more notable is that weapon enchantments didn't seem to add on top of the damage. There's no claws of darkness plus weapon plus enchantment plus touch spell uber combo (the claws both took away the weapon damage and the dual wielding). The best you can do in melee damage is either straight weapon attacks, or vampiric touch with a weapon. Which, without doing the math, mostly had me striking around 130-190 range, give or take with everything added.

Loaded up Dorn by comparison and he's hitting around 180-400 per swing, two swings per attack, and regularly critting for 700-1100.

It's playable, but not anything close to comparable and considering the build setup and luck required, not to mention it does significantly less damage than his Shadow Spray, makes him a rather poor melee character in terms of killing ability.

[Cato]

Interesting Ive just started a necromancer game - but I find his melee really bad - to the point where I just use a x bow to kill people

I found the heal Cleric easier - I got her up to 300 damage per swing with critical and over 100 armour! (she had high armour early too) maybe it depends on drops...

[Bluesy]

Necro's melee damage is always going to be awful compared to other characters, much in the same way the monk's fists are trash compared to any character with two weapons, including the monk (monk fist build has to pick between enchanting gloves with critical chance/attack speed/damage gem/crit damage/life steal whereas a character dual wielding weapons can do all of the above). You can beat the game with any build or setup but some are going to take 5x longer than others.

Necro is the best character in the game because of bugged damage reduction stacking...shields and ray of enfeeblement mean basically nothing can hurt you, even on extreme mode, it works out to be effectively 99% damage reduction or something silly.

The devs messed up pretty bad not having spell damage scale with a stat imo, poor Ysuran doing 200-300 damage per spell while Doorn is running around critting every other swing for 1500+ is lame.

Theres also other significant balance issues like armor AC being mostly worthless as it only effects enemy hit chance and on higher difficulties they hit you 100% of the time no matter how high you stack AC, life steal weapons stepping on the cleric's toes pretty hard, etc.

All that said my last run was a "bad" staff monk with coldfire weapons just because I like the viusal effect and 100% had a good time haha.

[XJ9]

Your 30% movement speed ability for 20 seconds actually increases attack speed as well, so it turns any melee character into a god in co-op.

I find his act 3 shadow ability, the dark claw, very strong. Idk exact name, but it hits 5 times and can be spammed every second. I found it very powerful.

[June]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.