Curse

IndyCC · May 24, 2005, 02:27 PM // 14:27

I have been running an alt Elem/Necro. He is about lvl 10 now. Primarily he is a pyromancer (I know not original but it fit the RP of the character). So basically looking at going 10 points in fire magic 11 points in energy storage and the last ten points in either death or blood magic. My goal here obviously is to be a character with extremely high damage, but is clearly a support class and is obviously very vulnerable (every advantage balenced with weakness). I understand the death magic is all about raising pets and basically creating a wall to protect you, however is blood magic more of a damage dealing type attribute or does the cold damage in the death magic section represent that?

In terms of skills I really havent looked that far ahead since he is only level ten at the moment. He is currently running with flare, glyph of lesser energy, firestorm, and lava front. The other four skills are basically filler and are not used.

Edit: Oh yeah, I'm thinking ranged here. So no vampiric touch type deals. I'm thinking if I am that close in battle I will surely be seeing myself drop a lot.

kalaris · May 24, 2005, 03:27 PM // 15:27

for PvE goodness, try Death, the pets will help you in the leveling process, also death isn't ONLY corpses, you do get a fair amont of other spells..

if you find you are not liking death, try curses, try death, you don't have to stick with one build the whole game, it is a good thing.

Myodato · May 24, 2005, 03:33 PM // 15:33

I'm curious as to why you don't consider curses an option ? You already have great damage dealing capability from Fire, so why not add a few curses to soften up the enemy ready to recieve it ?

IndyCC · May 24, 2005, 03:58 PM // 15:58

It is a thought on curses, but I am wanted to specialize strictly to damage dealing which is why I want to lean away from pets as well unless they do high damage as spells. Specialize so someone else softens them up and I nuke em to kingdom come. I know death has the cold damage spells but I am not totally sure if those are really higher damage than the blood sacraficial spells.

BChan · May 24, 2005, 04:16 PM // 16:16

if i were going to play as your toon i would go earth or fire, and curses. Basically you drop a whole bunch of paracitic bonds and then go kamakaze in their group. Between heals and your paracitic bond you should enough heals to survive the fray. Then just add in plague sending and plague touch for more fun (bleeding and poison getting sent out to those attacking you sux for them.

IndyCC · May 24, 2005, 08:23 PM // 20:23

Maybe I should phrase this question differently. If you are looking at the necromancer and pretending there is no such thing as an elementalist which attribute is more ranged direct damage, blood or death?

Obvious answer would be ranger and pick up a bow, that isnt what I am really looking for here. Esspiecally since as an elem I prefer items in my hand that focus on adding to my energy management.

IndyCC · May 27, 2005, 04:51 PM // 16:51

Anyone have any opinion on this at all?

Yojinj · May 27, 2005, 05:01 PM // 17:01

Blood has more ranged direct damage dealers.
Shadow Strike, Vampiric Gaze (and you hitpoints from that one) Life Siphon.
Only ranged direct dmg dealer in Death Magic that is useful is Deathly Swarm. Up to 3 targets that get dmg.

rii · May 28, 2005, 01:05 PM // 13:05

My advice is dont use Blood, ever

.
Ok, so it does damage... ok so it heals you.... but for how much? 50???
Its not worth it. In a battle, your gonna cycle through several thousand hit points if youve got good monks. Whatsmore, the sacfrificing thing is a bit crazy. Again, unless its really worth it dont sacrifice, and theres nothing in blood worth it.
Death is good, but youll find that when you raise that minon, the battles actually ended.... ask yourself why there is a corpse there anyways... so unless you want pve, dont use death. Curses is really the way to go. They are actually worth it, and it could help with your ele nuking. Your fire (good man) - so you doing aoe damage. How about shadow of fear? Reduces attack speed aoe. How about enfeebling blood, reduces damage aoe. There are lots of things curses can give you that will make aoe a lot more effective.

igormak · May 28, 2005, 02:22 PM // 14:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by rii

Whatsmore, the sacfrificing thing is a bit crazy.

but thats the way to the victory, BiP is one of the best necro skills. And it makes necro the best support class in the game, which leads to the thought that there must be necro in every balanced team..

rii · May 28, 2005, 08:17 PM // 20:17

Blood is Power Gives a mox of 5 pips of energy. on top of the original pips, and we're gonna assume that your casting this on say a monk (whats a warrior gonna do with it?)
then, each pip of energy represents 1 energy every 3 seconds. So a caster at normal (4 pips) gets 4 energy every 3 seconds. With BiP, they get 9 pips, which translates as 9 energy every 4 seconds, or 1 energy every 0.44 seconds. Ok lets put this into a practical situation. A monk, whos spamming divine booned/divine favour orison (normal orison doesnt really cut it). This is 5 energy. Divine boon takes off 2 but apparantly thats after theyve been healed for the 68 extra

.
A normal monk will cast orison once every 3.5 ish seconds.
A monk with BiP will cast an orison every 2.2 seconds.
So, for using an elite slot, and sacrificing 33% of your max health, youve made this guy roughly 30% more efficient. I think. Im a bit tired so my maths is hazy. Let me work this out in health per second.
boon favour orison = 168 health.
actual time for 5 energy on nomrmal monk = 3.75 seconds.
Therefore 168 health every 3.75 seconds, which is 44.8 hps.

BiP monk: Orison every 2.2 seconds.
Therefore hps is 76.36
If 44.8 = 100%
1 = 2.23%
76.36 = 170.23%

Therefore BiP results in a 70% increase in efficiency for a monk spamming orison. Im not going into the details on anything else, it took long enough.
Now, the mitigating factors. Youve wasted your elite. This means you cant have other things, and i would provide an example or a necro elite that kicked ass but there really arent many. Therefore im going to be sarcastic, and say your missing out on AURA OF THE LICH!!!! and how could any balanced team not have aura of the lich???
Whatsmore, the caster has also sacrificed 33% of their health, which is a whopping 175 health (assuming superior vigour). This is the equivalent of an orison, so that means that every say 10 seconds (assuming your keeping this going on one guy) your reducing effieciency of your monk. Im not going to work this out, its probably about 5-10% or something.

So, after all that..... BiP puts up the monks efficiency by 60-65%, and youve one third killed yourself. Want to cast it on someone else as well? Please, cast it on three people and do us all a favour

.

Now unless some smart ass is gonna tell me its stacks, and that ive just wasted 10 minutes of my life (remember thats still 3 shots and your down), remember this: youve just put all your points in blood. Now, im gonna pick out 7 other skills from blood and well see what we can get:

Awaken the Blood: Combo with BiP to totally whip yourself. adds single figures to most spells.

Dark Fury: Its like Balthazars Spirit, except only half as good, is inverted, and doesnt last as long.

Order of Pain: along with ootv, these are the magic, but you have to recast it every 5 seconds :S.

Vampiric Gaze: With this baby you can do TEN DPS....

dam. thats 4 and i cant continue... ok im just kidding about, all classes have crappy skills, but necro has got it down to a tee.

igormak · May 28, 2005, 09:28 PM // 21:28

Divine booned monk has 1 pip energy less, that means BiP increases monks effectiveness up to 85%. Thats almost 2 healing monks instead of one and necro/smth with 7 slots of nonelite skills. It can be necro/monk: blood,protection, soulreaping. Which means youve got protector (without shield of regen though, lets say it equals to 0.8 of standard protector) and 1.8 healing monk. Well, I see increase here..

Or other option here:
Necro with Dark aura using Dark Pact outputs 80dmg in 3seconds to single target and 40dmg to all others at cost of 5 mana. (All these figures ignore armor which means ALOT when fertile season and wards are on). Lets say u cast Bip every 10 seconds dealing 40 dmg to every1 around, meantime you cast 3 Dark Pacts. It sums to 160dmg to every1 and +120 to the DarkPact target. Can elementalist make same damage when ward against elements and fertile is used?

And have you heard about mark of subversion? Better version of backfire, a little bit less damage, but heals you and 3 times faster casting speed. Combine it with backfire and put some crap on top to be removed.. Enemy caster out for 10seconds or dead noob caster.

Yes, necro has crappy skills. Dont use them instead of shouting "necro sux".
Its pity to see that people havent played with good necroes...

rii · May 29, 2005, 09:07 AM // 09:07

Im not shouting 'necro sux', im saying they are broken and that blood is awful.
BiP... ok 85%... i still dont think thats worth it for all mitigating factors. Yes, i appriciate that there is an increase, just not a worthy one.

doing dark aura and dark pact results in a loss of roughly 107 health, per cast. So you casting it 3 times results in a loss of 160 damage to everyone and 120 to target as you said, but a total of 321 damage to yourself.

In regards to fertile season, whilst armour ignoring damage is wonderful (everyone loves it), fertile season is usually stacked by most 'pro' users of it to extreme lengths, so whilst yes youve done 280 damage to one person theyve got several thousand health anyways and that just isnt much of a dent, considering in at max 30 seconds theyll be putting down another 3840 health :S

And while yes, mark of subversion is a nice spell on a monk or support character, its not so hot on eles and mesmers, whose target is usually foes. Thats why backfire is better (in my opinion), it works on everyone. MoS is predominantly monk only (or similar).

And i have played with good necros, they were cursers

. There was one death in early tombs who managed to sustain a constant army of about 20 minions (for an entire 20 minute battel), which I was also quite impressed with (although im not an expert on minion degen rates). That was good also. But of all the necros ive seen, i havent met a good blood. Im not saying there is nothing good in blood, its just they have side effects like 50dps to yourself.

igormak · May 30, 2005, 11:15 AM // 11:15

I was wrong with 85%.

Imagine the situation:
team has divine booned healing monk spamming Orison, Word and Dwaynas. (all cost 5 energy).
the monk runs out of mana: Monk: I have 0 energy!
Lets examine, lets say, following 20 seconds of the game. The monk will get 20 energy during that time (4pips -1 for boon= 3 energy every 3 seconds). Which means he could cast 4 healing spells.
Now we have BiP Necro, who casts Bip on the monk when monk has 0 energy and after 10 seconds he casts BiP again. Now monk will get 32-33 energy more. He will cast heaing spell every time on necro after Bip, that will take 10 energy away.
So we get 110% increase in monks effectiveness. Which leads to conclusion that 1 healing monk + bip necro > 2 healing monks.
gl spamhealing

rii · May 30, 2005, 02:01 PM // 14:01

Actually i recind the comment about blood... theres nothing in it except BiP, and if i want a good team im not scafricing a line for that. Its a good skill, we've established that, but 33% (while sort outable) means your going to be a bit limited to sacrfice anything else, which is what the rest of blood is about.
Mark of Subversion is not a good skill. Yes, 9 seconds and your out. Yes, its uncommon so most people wont know what the hell is going on. Backfire it is not. 119 is importantly more than 79. 119 more or less cancels out most monk heals, reducing them to a max of 50 ish. This reduction in overall heal actually shuts down monks. MoS is utterly useless against most casters that arent monks, and 79 does not shut down a monk. The fact that is fails the spell doesnt matter much. Arent monks the first ones to go? Backfire works better in that situation.... its more damage.

If i need energy management there are plenty of options that come from much more useful lines. Off the top of my head, inspiration. And you dont kill yourlsef either. o, and there are other good skills too, which i always find handy

I looked at dark pact and dark aura yesterday:
Monk/Necro
Divine favour: 12
Death: 12
Divine Intervention
Aura of the Lich
Dark Aura
Dark Pact
Healing Touch
Signet of Agony
Plague Sending
Touch of Agony.

This.... is a truly awful build.
I would not touch this build with a large pole, with an even longer pole on the end. But, i worked out that over about 20 seconds you could kill yourself and nuke an aoe for about 656 damage. Thats a good figure, but the casting time and fact that everyone would run away, combined with the fact you kill yourself, makes it not worth it.

If i really, really want to do damage, id get a load of curses, hex the whole battlefield, then do something like echoed Feast of Corruption. Its not 656, its about 200, but at least you dont die from it, youll actually hit it, and the hexes serve a purpose.

Epinephrine · May 30, 2005, 02:36 PM // 14:36

That's a horrible Dark Aura build.
Aura of the Lich does nothing in it, and you have no blood magic.

A Dark Aura build should be doing way more damage.
16 Blood/15 Death
Dark Aura
Dark Pact
Touch of Agony
Death Nova
Putrid Explosion

That's a nice start. Death nova on self, run in and blast away like mad.
Your Dark Aura does 50 damage in AoE each Touch and Pact
Touch is dealing 110 damage to target for 38 health
Pact is dealing 100 damage to target for 38 health.
If you die you do the extra AoE to hopefully down them (100 more damage). Putrid explosion (120 AoE) if you manage to kill someone before dying.

rii · May 30, 2005, 04:57 PM // 16:57

well this is where my lack of playing necro really shines through...

thats fair enough dps (around 50-100, cant be bothered for the exact number) , but to achieve it you've sacrificed a lot. To get the damage, youve got lots of runes, which has reduced your max health to 380. This is a bit of a weakness for start, but i dont really care about that. Also, you seem to have negelcted (unless i missed it), the health lost when dark aura is triggered. According to team builder (so im not sure if its totally accurate) this is a loss of 20 health per cast, so you actually loose 58 health per cast of each spell.
To kill someone, you need about 5 casts, say three touches and two pacts (thats a 530 hp target, so lets hope they dont get healed

), which then results in a loss of 290 health for yourself. As above, your health is only 380, so youve made a big sacrifice (.......) to get this one guy. In fact, its almost a one for one trade off. Whatsmore, on a necros energy budget, your pushing yourself. With an attribute spread like that, your not going to be able to invest in anything like soul reaping (not that you want it pvp anyway), so youve got 30 basic and then just say +15/20 from focus and armour. Might be a bit over, maybe a bit under. Whatever.
Your then looking at a cast order of:
Death Nova
Dark Aura
Touch of Agony
Dark Pact
Touch of Agony
Dark Pact
Touch of Agony
(or something hauntingly similar)
and theres the kill (hopefully). Thats a total energy loss of 40 energy, out of a pool of around 45. Again, your bleeding yourself dry (....) to kill this guy, although this is a sacrifice more redeemable than the health thing.
The damage aoe is also good, but personally id rather not go for this. Once youve nuked your target, anything up from a fireball is going to take you out, so alert monks are going to be needed, but im sure they have better things to think about i.e. the enemy dps rather than the necro at the back who almost killed him/her self.

Whatsmore, anything like a OMG PROTECTIVE SPIRIT will screw you up, since your now trading health for health, and you dont have the energy. I wouldnt bring up counters in most situations, since theres a counter to everything, but the health loss produces a different dimension to the whole thing.

Epinephrine · May 30, 2005, 05:09 PM // 17:09

No, you are right - it does a crapload of damage to yourself. The good thing is that yes, it does, but your monk is expecting it.

Secondly, while it might seem mediocre, those 6 casts also deal area damage, so you are nuking everything in a radius - hopefully catching multiple opponents. The lack of health isn't a big deal, as the sacrifices are percentages anyway, so it matters little whether you are at 500 max or 300 max, at least for the damage you deal to yourself. Now, if you have a good monk you can live afterward, but I agree, you wipe yourself out taking out an opponent pretty much, but the hope is that you catch a few others with the blast, and that you took out the right opponent. Since you are loading for a kill, and not sustaining the damage you pack items for extra energy with a hit to your energy regeneration (after all, who cares if you don't regain fast, your job is to kill). You can gain extra time alive from your other three slots, and dying just provides a nice blast of extra damage anyway. I don't imagine it'll be a popular build, but it can nuke.

Oh, and I don't believe protective spirit does a thing to it really - the damage from Aura is separate from the damage from Pact, so in fact it limits each component of the assault to 10% per hit, so instead of a pact dealing 50+50 = 100, it will probably deal roughly 48+48 = 96, I can take a 4% loss of damage and while it knocks a bit more off the Touches it is still substantial damage.

rii · May 30, 2005, 05:22 PM // 17:22

Didnt know of that...... ok backfire then

My point isnt that you cant nuke em goddarn, the point is blood isnt good. i think, if i scroll up to the top of the page i can find out the orignial point of this thread. Even though this build uses blood, the death spells make it useful, the only thing blood does it give it the fuel. and while we're here, ill throw in the metaphorical 500 cents that soul reaping and death are also pretty dry. death has its uses, but so does smiting. In fact everything has 'uses' its just some of em can be done better by someone else.

Epinephrine · May 30, 2005, 05:47 PM // 17:47

Lol, I guess it really depends on your PoV. Backfire is cute, and shuts down any spammed spell for as long as it takes to remove it. Remember, you have 3 free slots and a team too. I could for example counter the Backfire by saying I'll start with Hex Breaker on

Who says I'm not a Nec/Mesmer, and I may have channeling for sustained casting. Perhaps I am integral enough to the build that they have put a life attunement on me, allowing them to easily keep up with my sacrificial damage? Maybe I am trying to die in a strategic spot for the Death Nova followed by a Glyph of Sacrificed Well of the Profane? There are simply too many strategies in this game to make blanket statements.

My point is that Blood has uses, even if it requires using two attributes. I'd have to agree that the necro lines are not as well suited to PvP overall as they are to PvE, but there are some good skills in the various lines anyway. Are they great? No, they try to do two things at once (damage and heal) and do neither well for the most part - are there exceptions? Yes. Have we seen all the strategies? No. Will anyone make a PvP Necromancer that is worth having in every team? Probably not. In some teams? Probably.