Explain Necromancy to me

[Seltin]

I kind of dont understand how these builds work. I see a lot of people use Strength based necromancers, which is what I dont follow. The necromancy spells seem to be based on Intelligence. Does that change when using a str or fin based weapon instead of a wand or something? Or if it doesnt change and I use a 1h sword for example, would I need to put points into Str and Int, so I can do decent damage with my sword and with Necro spells?

[Brakiros]

Originally posted by Loune:

Originally posted by Lightbane:

My cleric that has a point in warfare to make use of shield toss has 11 points in necro so when my 1100 shield throw goes off she heals for 1210 and because it can bounce and hit a second target that's 2240 healing. So its a very potent build especially if its a support character and you don't want to put any healing on them.

Shield Toss OP indeed lol

Yeah I buffed necro on her just so she stayed healed because she's Lv14 Hydro for heals, but if you want it to be more useful having necro on a shieldless character so they're exposed more often can reliably keep them healed, like on a 2H I have a 2H sword on my battle mage that has 50% cleave.

[zenebatos1]

WHile its called necromancy its actually More liek blood magic or sorcery, since the 2 only spells that actually deals with the dead are Bone widow and Bloated corps.

Necro is often used on Str characters because all the Necro spells deals physical dmg.

Now like someone suggested you can be full Intel with a bit of Str with a Staff and be more on the caster side of the Necro and a few points in warfare since Staffs are considered melee weapons( think Shaolin monk style) for stuffs like Battering ram for knockdowns or phoenix dive for mobility.

An incarnate summon with Power infusion and farsight infusion does the trick, Use bloodrain then summon the incarnate in the blood for an extra buff and damaging Incarnate( specially if you go something like 10 Necro 10 SUmmoning.

Now if you don't want to use Incarnates but bone widow instead then go for 6 SUmmoning, it will be enough to boost your Widow and then put some points in Geomancer for the poison skills to heal the Bone widow while damaging the foes.

[Lava Alien 1000]

Originally posted by Breizhpanda:

Totally depending on your team composition i guess. Personally, I play a mix between necromancer/summoner wich works pretty well. Most of my points go to intelligence/const

im going for Necromencer and Geomancer build (due my character being undead) and outside of raising undead creatures i want to unleash poison plagues and diseases upon my enemies lol.

[IlluminaZero]

Its too bad there are no INT scaling physical staves to go full in Necromancer - Warfare.

The main reason why necromancy is popular with Two-Handers in particular is that many believe the life regen will help them despite armor being far more important. Doubly absurd since these same players tend to ignore Polymorph and it's plethora of STR scaling and general utility skills.

[Seltin]

Originally posted by Lightbane:

My cleric that has a point in warfare to make use of shield toss has 11 points in necro so when my 1100 shield throw goes off she heals for 1210 and because it can bounce and hit a second target that's 2240 healing. So its a very potent build especially if its a support character and you don't want to put any healing on them.

Wow 1100 shield throw? How? What level is your toon? What determines shield throw damage?

Also, the healing portion, do you have to cast a spell prior to doing damage to get healed back up or is it some kind of passive?

[IlluminaZero]

Originally posted by Seltin:

...What level is your toon?...
...toon...
toon

I and I suspect many others know the answers to your inquiry. Seeing this poor choice of words - Reading the ability description will suffice.

[Loune]

Originally posted by illuminazero:

Originally posted by Seltin:

...What level is your toon?...
...toon...
toon

I and I suspect many others know the answers to your inquiry. Seeing this poor choice of words - Reading the ability description will suffice.

Toons are bad choice of wording? how ?

Shield Toss's damage scales with the ARMOR(both sides) which the shield provided, which make it very powerful. Oh it also has relatively low CD too

[[GAY] stoni mahoni]

I just tested this with the respec mirror. Necromany spell damage usually scales with intelligence, but other things usually don't.

Spells that do not scale with int are: Bloodsucker (depends only on amount of blood and character level, it seems) and can also be used offensively on decayed targets, Bone Cage (seems to scale with character level), All Summons (scale with summoning), Deathwish (scales with lost hp only), living on the edge (flat invincibility, no scaling needed), shackles of paint (no scaling needed), Last Rites (no scaling needed), silencing stare (applies status effect, no scaling necessary), Black Shroud (environmental effect + debuff, no scaling needed).

While the damage of decaying touch and bloodstorm does scale with intelligence, those spells also apply decay to enemies with no/low physical armour and this can be well worth it if you have strong healing spell (whoch never scale with intelligence but skills instead).

Then there is also life steal,which works for everyone who deals damage.

[NotSure]

Originally posted by Seltin:

I kind of dont understand how these builds work. I see a lot of people use Strength based necromancers, which is what I dont follow. The necromancy spells seem to be based on Intelligence. Does that change when using a str or fin based weapon instead of a wand or something? Or if it doesnt change and I use a 1h sword for example, would I need to put points into Str and Int, so I can do decent damage with my sword and with Necro spells?

Necro is very useful if you use fane, as in addition to poison necromancy can also heal him

[Hariwulf]

Necromancer is awesome. Grants Phys damage (mostly) and heal on hit.
Necro IMO shines with a melee Crit build, like 2 Handed or Rogue style.

Str 1 each lvl
Int 1 each 2 lvl, up to 20
Wits 1 each 2 lvl, up to what you want it to be

Warfare (10+), Necro (5 max) and Idro (5 max)

Opportunist, Portrait of health, Executioner.....

Enjoy a death machine

[wendigo211]

Necromancy is a wierd school, since it's the only spell school that doesn't increase it's own damage (warfare increases its damage). Int will improve the spells, so having a couple of points on a mage so you have the option to deal physical damage is a pretty good choice.

It also works for melee builds, since the heal from damage ability can be nice. While they get the Warfare scaling, they probably don't get much Int scaling, so they don't get much damage from it either.

You would really need an Int/Warfare build to really max the damage from it, but that would be a really wierd character.

It probably works best on a mage that's using Hunstman (although there's no high ground on decaying touch) or Savage Sortilege crit to boost damage.

[Iry]

Originally posted by Pharnham:

Necromancy harms Fane. I tried that before and he was definitely getting damaged instead of healed. That two-magister fight on the ship in the beginning.

Have they changed that recently?

Since launch. Necromancy only hurt ‘zombies’ back in EA.

[Atma]

Originally posted by Bill Cosby:

So, basically, the build for Strength Necro is you get two points usually in necromancer just so you can use it to self heal. It also gives you abilities to heal from blood on the ground and just increases your survival. Someone with a 2 handed weapon deals massive damage, and usually can break armor quick.

So if he heals 20 percent of his damage after the armor, and gets a 300 damage hit at level 9, he just healed himself for 60 health points. If he has living armor, now 35 percent of that heal becomes magic armor. That is one hit, so if he does two hits, he will get 120 health points, and 42 magic armor. Its a VERY strong melee build since now you can focus heals one someone else.

I tried this with living armor the other day, but I wasn't getting any magic armor from hits.. : /

[Ashera]

Necromancy works for strength builds because necro does physical damage. It is boosted by warfare. You don't even need int at all. You can just pump pure strength/warfare use a 2h and generally just bash things, if you can't reach use a mosquito swarm or whatever.

There is a nice mod that makes hammers scale from INT. This makes necro even stronger as you pump warfare+int and do tons of damage with melee and necro spells rather than just tons of damage with melee/warfare skills and decent damage with necro.

[Brakiros]

Originally posted by Seltin:

Originally posted by Lightbane:

My cleric that has a point in warfare to make use of shield toss has 11 points in necro so when my 1100 shield throw goes off she heals for 1210 and because it can bounce and hit a second target that's 2240 healing. So its a very potent build especially if its a support character and you don't want to put any healing on them.

Wow 1100 shield throw? How? What level is your toon? What determines shield throw damage?

Also, the healing portion, do you have to cast a spell prior to doing damage to get healed back up or is it some kind of passive?

Yeah its one of the end game shields, Red Prince in my first place through he could murder anything with shield toss as I had 3 giant masterwork runes for the 120% increased phys armor increase.