Guide to Necromancy

Discussion in 'Necromancer' started by ARCHIVED-Jasuo, Mar 17, 2011.

  1. ARCHIVED-Jasuo Guest

    This is only a guide to work off of, I highly encourage all necros to get out and figure things out for yourselves just as I did when I started playing this game many years ago. I'll be continually updating this thread as I continue to play and as the game evolves.
    For new necromancers, welcome to the class, it has developed into a great class and will hopefully continue to improve with some Dev love and player feedback.
    In Game Communication with other summoners/join everfrost.summoner
    Changes to the game
    Class ChangesThe greatest change Velious brought is shared stats with the pet! Yes that means all that crit chance, potency, crit bonus, cast haste and reuse is now transfering to that little fellow following you around. It has become quite a little monster. (it only took us 6 yrs to get there!)
    Accelerated Decay is now passive and no longer drains health.
    All pets now use spells instead of combat arts (this only affected scout pet and tank pet). No word on how the AA's boosting CA hit rate will affect it.
    The scout pet now has a new buff it casts which grants dehate, physical mitigation and a chance to proc a temp buff which absorbs some magical based attacks(called Necrotic Alacrity). The pet also possesses the "turnstrike" ability which is a passive AE avoid unless direct.
    Stat ChangesWith the Velious expansion came some great changes for us. We now only need to worry about intelligence and stamina when gearing up. 1 stamina is equal to 10hps, likewise 1 intelligence is equal to 10 power and also nets about 1.8% potency per 100ish points. Primary focus should be on increasing personal intelligence as it also affects the pet's damage.
    Encounter ChangesEncounters in the game whether solo or raid now all (Velious zones only) have a potential to critically cast spells or CA's and melee attacks therefore the need for critical mitigation is huge for even soloing in the new lands. Most quested items have a decent amount of critical mit to make you survive the easy zones, make sure to run some Public Quests for easily obtained grouping armor and some awesome runes.
    Necromancer Info
    Order of importance for gearing up is:
    Critical %
    Potency
    Critical Bonus
    Casting speed
    Reuse
    Ability Mod
    Note: For the hardest encounters in the game you will need ~230% critical chance.
    Necromancer Spell Name Changes for the old returning necromancer
    Pets
    I'll breifly talk about the pets to bring any returning necros up to speed and alleviate the common questions new necros have. They all base their damage off your own intelligence, so the higher your own intelligence is the higher their damage abilities will be ( I haven't tested this for their auto attack). With shared stats they get our critical mitigation, critical chance, critical bonus, potency, casting haste, reuse, recovery and ability mod...all that added to whatever they have innately and based off AA choices. All pets currently cast a raid-wide buff (Beyond the Grave) giving 5% reduction in resistability, 3% max power bonus, 3% potency and 5% weapon accuracy.
    Undead Knight (tank pet)- the most resilient of our pets, can withstand a beating and is capable of holding aggro off us better than it used to, you'll still have to watch that threat meter and hold back. (The last time I actually cast this pet to use it for a real soloing session was the beginning of the Rise of Kunark expansion.)
    Nightshade (scout pet)- the single target DPS pet which now also acts as a semi-bard with a new group buff that offers dehate, spell based stoneskin, mitigation and defense. They've improved it alot, but can still not perform anywhere near what it should be doing, an increase in base auto attack damage, more innate DPS mod more hitpoints and some improvements to it's AA line would get it inline. Still the worst dps choice.
    Grim Sorcerer (mage pet)- hands down the best pet we have at our disposal for both single target and multi target encounters, it also does amazingly well during soloing. With all the AA choices we get and the shared stats this pet becomes an absolute monster.
    Necromancer Deities
    Bertoxxulous (best) or Anashti Sul for DPS
    Cazic-Thule or Bristlebane for soloing
    Character Tradition choices
    Choose those racial traits which give casting haste, magic skills like disruption, some type of mitigation gain (hopefully physical mit), any stamina or intelligence stat gain, and hitpoint gain.
    Character Trait choices
    All intelligence, all physical mitigation (as this is the hardest to increase via gear and buffs), and all max health choices (for lifeburn and surviving).
    Necromancer AA Choices
    Raid/Group/Uber Soloer DPS SetupHere's a guideline for anyone interested in tweaking their dps (it's ok to steal the Undead Horde enhancement points for elsewhere)
    http://www.beetny.com/eq2aa/?e02sa4...31e@2aaa8@2a@21
    Here's another setup I've been playing around with since my cast haste/reuse is so high and swarm/dumbfires are useless
    http://www.beetny.com/eq2aa/?e02pa4...1e8@1aaa@3a@21
    Solo SetupThis setup encompasses everything needed for survivability of you and the pet while not sacrificing too much dps, again it's just a personal choice on most AA's and is to be used as a guide.
    http://www.beetny.com/eq2aa/?e02k14...31e@2a@2a@1a8a1
    Buffing
    For raiding hope for a solid DPS group with an Illusionist and/or Troubador in it, with current mechanics (as of today 17 Mar 2011) ask for Time Compression (TC) over Upbeat Tempo (UT) as it will give you the most bang for your buck, unless there is a competent wizard in group in which case it'd be less hassle to get UT. Ask the troubador to place you near top of the Jester's Cap rotation for toxicity and lifeburn reuse. Request Synergism from the Illusionist and Peaceful Link from the Coercer (hopefully they have the crit bonus enhancements). Depending on the healer in group, request the spare hitpoint buff as it will boost your lifeburn damage. If you have a fury in group beg for Primal Fury as it gives an Intelligence boost and procs cast haste (can also proc potency and/or reuse if they get the adornment/AA). Furies are some of the best healers to have when lifeburning. Other healers also offer great benefits like hitpoint buffs, cast haste, damage procs, etc. Get to know the healer classes and what you can expect from them, every player is different so don't judge the whole class based off a few bad or amazing instances.
    Easy tips for maximizing dps
    Necros are for dps, regardless of what anyone else tells you, your role in life is to dps.
    Create macros for soulrot, bloodcoil and pandemic for "/pet attack", this will keep the pet firing away at your target without you needing to use the pet window to send it in. Be careful of grouping with tab targetting tanks.
    Lifeburn often, within first few secs of the pull so that there is a chance for it to be up at end of the fight.
    Keep the Lich buff on at all times, there is absolutely no reason to not have it on, I don't care how many times someone tells you it can kill you or it drains too much life...they're really full of it. It's primary function is power replenishment but do not forget the damage proc.
    Hide any deity pets and get rid of fluff pets as they cause unneeded lag, ruining DPS.
    Always keep food and drink with high intelligence and/or stamina, it's cheap and provides a boost to damage and survivability.
    Build your character around itself, not what groups or raids offer you, this way if you happen upon a poorly setup group you won't be hurting as bad and you'll likely out-perform those around you. It also aids in soloing as you can handle harder fights with less down time.
    Contact Info
    Unrest.Sciomar
    Sciomar@live.com
    Feel free to post questions here as well and anyone with further info, your post will be taken into consideration.
  2. ARCHIVED-Jasuo Guest

    Necromancer Epic Walk Through
    [IMG] [IMG]
    [IMG]
    **Secrets of Vazaelle currently does not boost auto attack damage so only the mage pet is getting the best increase.
  3. ARCHIVED-Jasuo Guest

    Pet and Lich Appearances
    (Master Quality)
    Mage
    [IMG]
    Tank
    [IMG]
    Scout
    [IMG]
    Lich
    [IMG]
  4. ARCHIVED-Germs666 Guest

    Nice post it's good to see you're back contributing to the necromancer community.

    I feel though stamina and physical mit seem to be better choices for the character tree simply because stamina gives HP for survivabilty, gives bigger lifeburns and more Soulburn damage as well.

    I would like to see what white/red/yellow adorns you recommend. I'm seeing Huge lifeburns on flames due to higher HP in general and I'm wondering if speccing for maximumcaster/ pet heath/reuse is worth a shot instead of speccing int.
  5. ARCHIVED-Jasuo Guest

    I can agree with stamina for 200hp, it's not huge but decent compared to 20 intelligence which is roughly 0.45 potency and 200 power. Physical mit was already my recommendation...and should be a no-brainer for every caster out there. I'm still looking over the yellow and red adorns but figured I should do a post about them too, will add once more time.
    Since posting this I gained a significant amount of reuse and have tried specing from the 8 in reuse to 8 in stat gain to try it out.
  6. ARCHIVED-Jasuo Guest

  7. ARCHIVED-Solarax Guest

    i tend to think casting and reuse> crits and potency
  8. ARCHIVED-Macaron Guest

    Like to post, for solo my AA is set up to make my mage pet a tank while it still dose it's dps. For solo purpose.