Necromancer + Warfare ...Staff?

[ksoiza5]

I read somewhere that while wielding a Staff, Warfare abilities scale with Intelligence. Anyone know what truth there is to this?

I was considering a necromancer build with around 3-5 points in necromancer, full warfare and not sure yet about the rest. I was hoping to find a way to maximise damage output from my warfare skills, using necromancer mainly for healing from the damage I deal and maybe go for Crit Damage too.

[Novia]

Just tested it, it most certainly does scale with intelligence, but the damage inflicted by the staff from warfare abilities is elemental dependant on the staff instead of straight up physical, meaning its not gaining the full benefits of warfare's boost, unless I missed something, not a pro opinion here.

Strangely enough, the tooltip suggests warfare abilities used in this manner are still resisted by physical armour... food for thought. :)

In any event; Necromancer spells benefit greatly from warfare, being primarily physical damage themselves. And let's just face it, it's a solid choice no matter your build type is.

[Tarshaid]

If you want to maximize the warfare damage with a staff (that does scale with intelligence), you're going to need to level the elemental school related to said staff. So you're likely going to need a choice: either you pump warfare to increase your necromantic spells damage, or you pump geo/hydro/aero/pyro to increase your warfare skills damage.

Also, as pointed out by Novia, the warfare CC will still check physical armor no matter what, so you're going to manage enemy armor quite well if you want to CC anything.

[Pyromus]

As Tarshaid said, warfare will unlock abilities to use with the staff, but not affect its damage. Which isn't a big deal, as you really only need like 2 points to get most skills, and 3 gets all but one. On the lack of cc point though, medusa head in polymorph is a great source of cc for melee magic users. Anyone who gets in melee range of you is instantly petrified, and you can launch a wider aoe version with it as well.

[Gamefever]

Basically dont use a staff on a Deathknight, use a normal 2 hander.

Staffs deal elemental damage, and they benefit a great deal from a character that uses the element of the staff.
There is even a Elemental Staff Warrior build out there on Youtube you could check it out, pretty much max out the damage that a staff can do, its not quite a magic user...Mostly you just smack stuff with the staff and it dies.

[ayrtep]

Yes, staff and warfare skills work, but warfare does not buff staff damage, only two-handed and spell skill lines. Also a little awkward as warfer skills are stopped by physical armour.

So my loan wolf Necro/Staff suggestion.
First, put a point in warfare and maybe scoundrel.
Then max two-handed. You carry 4 staves at this point and use whatever works best.
You're around level 5-7 now. You have a choice of what order to do stuff now, but max Necromancy and two spell lines out of :
Geomancer for venom coating and armour boosts.
Hydrosophist for healing, and Vampiric hunger, and magic armour boosts.
Pyrokinetic for Sparkling Swings and some utility.
And don't forget living armour talent <- what makes it work.

[LaserGuy]

If you want to use multiple damage types, an alternate approach is to dump points into polymorph and use the extra attribute points to raise INT. Polymorph has a lot of great skills for a melee character anyway...

[Godwoken Dovahkiin]

Staff is not good for necro tbh. First of all necro skills do physical damage and the status are physically resisted while staff will do magical damage. So if you're trying to lower something you probably wont do it efficiently.

You can however try to use skills that scale with weapons. Like for example Bull Horns, such a great skill for almost anything really. The bleed is resisted by physical armor but with Torturer you can bypass this. You are better off making an int battlemage, give it staff or dual weild wands with example fire damage so it scales with pyro. You can add a few necro points just for the life steal as you will dish out a lot of damage and will heal greatly plus some nice necro support skills. Staff + Bull Horns + Torturer + Opportunist = some good damage.

If you just want to mix necro with warfare then you just gotta use a physical oriented weapon. Unless you're making a hybrid abomination that makes no sense just for fun and handicap yourself. But anything is possible really.

[ayrtep]

Staff build: Trick is to not use most necromancer skills except skills like Bone Cage which scales with Int and Geomancer. So maybe max Geomancer first. In fact my suggestion would be to complete Geomancer and Pyrokinetic skill lines first - Max out your damage potential. Only put a couple of points in Necromancy early then add more in the endgame for the healing.

I think Polymorph is too strong and Chamelan cloak should be banned. Anyway, I don't allow my builds to use Polymorph for that reason, but you can add it to any build.