Necro builds not the best for a ranged mage kind of character?

[Very serious person]

Or maybe I'm just making the build wrong. I'm fairly new to the game, and from fantasy like games and movies one imagines a necromancer is a squishy guy in the back raising corpses and casting spells. I tried that and I'm finding that many of the skills for a necromancer don't have a very long range, the ability itself replenishes your HP when you deal damage and there is also an ability which allows an enemy to take whatever damage you receive. It a necromancer, in this game, is someone who is supposed to be in the front getting punished like melee characters. Am I right, or is there a good way to make a necro character who stays back? I'm looking for efficiency. The build making thing and party synergies and whatnot are what most fascinates me about this game, and I want to understand it.

[Chaoslink]

Necromancers don't really come online until you have the main source spells in the mid game around level 13 or so. Until then, you get by on being a sort of pseudo support more than anything. Most players go full summoner until level 12 then swap over to full Necro afterwards.

You're not going to be summoning things. Even the Bone Widow you get at some point isn't too strong unless you invest Summoning, where the Incarnate is better. Think of Necromancer more like a Blood mage rather than a dead-raising summoner. Its borderline the most powerful skill in the game, but only comes online late game when you're basically spamming your "ultimate" over and over. Without that, its just strong AoE physical damage.

Crafting the Corpse Explosion spell helps early on, Pyro and Necro skillbook crafted together, but aside from that, your offensive abilities early game are weak.

[Speed]

How to Necro [docs.google.com]

[arrak]

For me:
Necro has formidable "must use" close range "touch" abillities. (that ignores enemy
magic armour)
So i made her executioner.
Build her though "battlemage" way as executioner. being two-hander.
Necro, in this build, does Not need warfare to have a high stike/dammage rate.
As necro has heal abillities, i gave her Hydro, which is good for restoring magic arnour,
amongst other things.

Making her my main char, adorned her high initiative. Enemies prefer to "fllee", from
such a build, and therefore she has powerfull necro in later game for range, to
punnish them for fleeing.
in early game, i used teleport (from armour item), to slap the fleeing, back to me .... you cant fllee from me bro ...

This is my "Noob" build ;)

Edit:
As Chaoslink said: "Bloodmage" is the correct stamp

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by arrak:

Necro, in this build, does Not need warfare to have a high stike/dammage rate.

Kinda confuse me with this as Warfare is the single best damage scaling skill investment you can make. Whether you use the Warfare abilities in combat or not, there isn't any other skill you can put into that yields a better result in damage output.

[arrak]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

Originally posted by arrak:

Necro, in this build, does Not need warfare to have a high stike/dammage rate.

Kinda confuse me with this as Warfare is the single best damage scaling skill investment you can make. Whether you use the Warfare abilities in combat or not, there isn't any other skill you can put into that yields a better result in damage output.

My fighter gets warfare.

necro gets necro + elemental

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by arrak:

My fighter gets warfare.

necro gets necro + elemental

Right, but Necro points don't give any damage. Warfare scales physical damage like that dealt by Necro spells. No other skill investment gives more damage to Necro spells. Even if you don't learn any "spells" from Warfare, you still want it if you want your Necro spells to hit hard.

[Yojo0o]

It's really simple: Necromancy is physical damage, warfare improves physical damage, necromancers want warfare.

[arrak]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

Originally posted by arrak:

My fighter gets warfare.

necro gets necro + elemental

Right, but Necro points don't give any damage. Warfare scales physical damage like that dealt by Necro spells. No other skill investment gives more damage to Necro spells. Even if you don't learn any "spells" from Warfare, you still want it if you want your Necro spells to hit hard.

Originally posted by Yojo0o:

It's really simple: Necromancy is physical damage, warfare improves physical damage, necromancers want warfare.

So what you are saying is i must build a Pure necro build, to invest in warfare as
second point spending. It makes sense though.

The only reason i did not spend on warfare was that warfare does not scale
Her abillities, as she has No abillities that requires warfare to scale. 2 flies with one swat like ...

Even then, my necro hits damn hard anyway. Will drop as healer too, next playthrough, too spend on warfare, as you sugest
Gave her one elemental type magic as a Plan B (as backdoor), for enemies are mostly resistant to something.

As is now:
+Hydro, complements her healing + replenish magic armour + freeze enemies +
hit with other hydro spells + (her range of necro stuff that cripples and maims)
+ etc.

Spending on warfare, i would be removing one elemental type magic from my
"party", and closing one "backdoor"

[canuck250]

Originally posted by arrak:

So what you are saying is i must build a Pure necro build, to invest in warfare as
second point spending. It makes sense though.

So necro spells deal physical but scale from int. So you only need enough points into necro to learn the spells you want. Then warrior for physical boost. Then Poly which lets you put more points into INT. That is how you build a "pure" necro, at least the strongest form of it.

Originally posted by arrak:

Spending on warfare, i would be removing one elemental type magic from my
"party", and closing one "backdoor"

Instead of warfare, scale back points from your other elements to 2, as that is most of the useful spells. Then dump the rest into poly for more int. Which will also scale the dmg of your other magic. Necro is handy like that.

But this version is more for cc and support then damage, so as long as your other party has the damage then it is good to go.

[arrak]

Its a unfortunate that polly points are not boosted through armour or trinkets.
So you have to physical invest. Armour supports hydro generously, so i can pop 3 points
there ... shall see
Only 4 necro spells need intel to scale.
Two of them, decay and desease, peerce armour, and i abundantly use those every fight.

[canuck250]

Originally posted by arrak:

Its a unfortunate that polly points are not boosted through armour or trinkets.
So you have to physical invest. Armour supports hydro generously, so i can pop 3 points
there ... shall see
Only 4 necro spells need intel to scale.
Two of them, decay and desease, peerce armour, and i abundantly use those every fight.

Kind of like scaling necro physical through warrior, you scale magic damage through poly. Depending on what you want, it is not unfortunate, also almost every build can use poly skills. You said you didn't want to give up magic schools to max warfare for physical damage so I was just suggesting the alternative. The 4 necro skills you talk of is one way the class is balanced I guess, too many offensive spells and you would run wild, I have always wished they had a few more options. However going into poly and getting adrenaline gives you some great combos.

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by arrak:

The only reason i did not spend on warfare was that warfare does not scale
Her abillities, as she has No abillities that requires warfare to scale.

Are you not using the Necromancer spells? Because Warfare scales physical damage. All types of physical damage, including Necromancer spells. It'll even scale the physical damage dealt to undead by casting healing on them as that translates into physical damage.

Mosquito swarm? Gets damage from Warfare. It doesn't get damage from Necromancer. Necro points only increase the lifesteal from all attacks. It has no effect on damage in any way.

To add to that further, Warfare multiplies your damage differently. One point of Warfare says if gives 5% physical damage so you might think its the same as a point of Strength or Intelligence, but it isn't. Warfare is worth much more. A character with 40 Intelligence would multiply the base damage of a Necro spell by 200%. If you had 10 points in Warfare, it would effectively make your Intelligence of 40 worth 70 instead for 350% damage. This is because the 50% increase in physical damage that 10 points in Warfare gives, applies AFTER intelligence modifies the base damage of the spell. This means that each point in Warfare makes your scaling attributes worth more as well.

If you deal physical damage, no matter how, Warfare is the best stat to increase. Playing an archer? Take Warfare. Dagger wielding rogue? Warfare. Anything that deals damage to physical armor benefits from Warfare, even grenades.

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by arrak:

Spending on warfare, i would be removing one elemental type magic from my
"party", and closing one "backdoor"

True, but physical damage doesn't have resistances. Notihng in the game except for one story enemy has physical resistance to my knowledge (I think there is one enemy with like 20% somewhere but I forget specifically). So your other characters might want that backdoor damage, but there's no real reason for it to be your Necromancer since they should be mostly a physical damage character.

Try it that way next time and compare the damage from that to the character you're playing now. Or just simply go to the mirror and respec the Hydro points to Warfare and try it in one fight and see the difference. IT might surprise you how ridiculous it gets.

[FIRE]

They're good early too, you just need decaying touch and heal spells as well. And some clever usage of shackles of pain.

You can also get corpse explosion very early which hits like a nuke.

Usually if you're not an experienced player they're gonna be hard to build well on your own though. You need to know how good some effects (like decay) are beforehand and know that heals deal physical damage with it which is also increased by warfare. You also need to know that warfare is your main damage stat not necromancy.

Basically you just focus one target down with either your team members or your own heavy single target damage, then teleport either the corpse to a group of enemies or the reverse and use corpse explosion. You'll get even stronger later on but this is what you need to focus on early.

[arrak]

I really want to thank you all for being so helpfull in taking your time to share
valluable info :)

Damn ... i really learned a lot here.
My first playthrough.
I really like the Forum here of this game. Only nice people here.