Curse

Red Locust · Jul 19, 2005, 07:02 PM // 19:02

OK I'll be honest here, I don't have much love for necros. Most of my PvP builds involving a necro secondary have used one, sometimes two necro skills max, and I frown upon seeing necro primaries running around.
So my first pve char was a Me/N (not too hot, but i wanted to unlock mesmer skills early to play some tombs). I was still getting used to the skill rewards system and went and blew a lot of skill points on skills which were later given as quest rewards. Needless to say, I didn't even come close to unlocking all skills.
I later went through the pve with a mo/w and e/r, and have unlocked pretty much all skill for those 4 professions.

So long story short, I'm stuck with having to do pve with a necro/mesmer, and I really have no idea how to make an effective pve all-out necro, and I need you guys to give me a good idea for a build. I'm thinking something like a minion master with a skill setup like the following:

animate bone fiend
blood of the master
death nova
putrid explosion
taste of death
offering of blood{e}
well of blood
mark of pain

attributes will be death/blood/curses with some in soul reaping

The idea here is to crank out the bone fiends, get them all to target something while mark of pain hits all adjacent enemies, then when something dies, mass genocide ala putrid explosion follows. Taste of death for emergencies (best heal in the game), blood of the master to keep my babies alive, offering of blood for energy, and death nova cause I couldn't think of anything better.

So will this thing work? Will I be able to crank out the mass bone fiends? Or am I just gonna be the laughing stock while my fiends get killed in a couple hits before I get the chance to build up a decent army?

Epinephrine · Jul 19, 2005, 07:30 PM // 19:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Red Locust

OK I'll be honest here, I don't have much love for necros. Most of my PvP builds involving a necro secondary have used one, sometimes two necro skills max, and I frown upon seeing necro primaries running around.
So my first pve char was a Me/N (not too hot, but i wanted to unlock mesmer skills early to play some tombs). I was still getting used to the skill rewards system and went and blew a lot of skill points on skills which were later given as quest rewards. Needless to say, I didn't even come close to unlocking all skills.
I later went through the pve with a mo/w and e/r, and have unlocked pretty much all skill for those 4 professions.

So long story short, I'm stuck with having to do pve with a necro/mesmer, and I really have no idea how to make an effective pve all-out necro, and I need you guys to give me a good idea for a build. I'm thinking something like a minion master with a skill setup like the following:

animate bone fiend
blood of the master
death nova
putrid explosion
taste of death
offering of blood{e}
well of blood
mark of pain

I'd ditch Blood of the Master for Verata's Sacrifice as soon as it becomes available. Death necros have a few rough missions with very few corpses, and entire areas of the game with few corpses, making it rough.

I play a Blood/Curses necro, though I'm more Curses Blood atm... Great fun, though I have a switch of gear to play as a death necro should I feel like it. As long as you are willing to respec sometimes it can be great fun - also, while they look bad the necro sacrifice spells can be really devastating - they recharge fast, cast fairly quickly and as long as you use them when you can afford to they are quite reasonable. Anyway, I wouldn't go off and decide immediately to play Death - play around with them, try combos of all of them - there are a lot of neat skills and some are surprisingly fun to use, especially in PvE

theclam · Jul 19, 2005, 08:10 PM // 20:10

Let's go through your skills:
1. Animate Bone Fiend - Good skill.
2. Blood of the Master - Not as good as Verata's Sacrifice, but it will do until you can get that.
3. Death Nova - Bad skill for using with Fiends. Fiends usually die away from the enemy. This works much better with Minions or Horrors.
4. Putrid Explosion - Another good skill.
5. Taste of Death - This is mediocre. It's decent with Death Nova and Minions or Horrors, but those die pretty quickly, anyway. You also won't be getting hit that much. Necros don't seem to attract much aggro in PvE.
6. Offering of Blood - I think this is a crappy elite for a primary Necro. You're getting a lot of energy through Soul Reaping, anyway.
7. Well of Blood - Also a good skill.
8. Mark of Pain - I'm not a big fan of this skill. It only works on physical damage (meaning Necros, Mesmers, Elementalists, and Monks won't trigger it through their damage skills or attacks) and it doesn't affect your target, only those foes adjacent to it.

While you've got some good skills, your build as a whole is lacking. You have 5 1/2 skills (everything but Offering of Blood and Mark of Pain, with Death Nova as the 1/2) that are useless without corpses. In addition, you're using 4 different Attributes.

If you want a minion master, I'd do something like this:

11+1+1 or 10+1 Blood Magic
11+1 or 12+1+3 Death Magic
8+1 Soul Reaping

Animate Bone Minions/Fiend
Death Nova/Verata's Sacrifice
Deathly Swarm/Shadow Strike/Vampiric Gaze/Life Siphon/Life Transfer
Deathly Swarm/Shadow Strike/Vampiric Gaze/Life Siphon/Strip Enchantment/Rend Enchantments/Life Transfer
Deathly Swarm/Shadow Strike/Vampiric Gaze/Life Siphon/Mark of Subversion/Life Transfer
Deathly Swarm/Shadow Strike/Vampiric Gaze/Life Siphon/Well of Blood/Well of Power/Life Transfer
Blood is Power/Blood Ritual
Resurrection Signet

With this, you can either go with Minions and Death Nova or Fiends and Sacrifice. It's not really worth it so save Minions, since they die in a couple hits, anyway. Death Nova doesn't work well for Fiends since they're not in melee combat.

Then you'll have 4 slots to put in direct damage and a few utility spells. Deathly Swarm does good AoE damage, although it's quite slow. Shadow Strike and Vampiric Gaze always do the amount of damage listed, regardless of armor or buffs, in my experience. Life Siphon does good supplemental damage, as well as keeping you alive. Mark of Subversion, Rend Enchantments, and Strip Enchantments work very well against Monks, often the scourge of a group. Well of Blood and Well of Power make it much faster and safer, especially if you only have one Monk in a 6 person team or two Monks in an 8 person team.

Blood is Power and Blood Ritual are amazing spells. Anyone will love you for casting these on them, except for maybe a Warrior that only uses Adrenaline for attack skills. Blood Ritual is more expensive, requires you to touch your target, takes longer to cast and cooldown, and gives less energy. However, it doesn't take up an elite slot and it is more efficient in terms of life sacrificed per point of energy given.

1-3 of your skills will require corpses, depending on your build, instead of 5 1/2.

With Fiends, you'll want as much Death Magic as possible. With Minions, this isn't as important. Take note that one cast of Minions will set off Soul Reaping twice, making them very energy efficient. If you're using Blood is Power, try to get your Blood Magic to 13 for the +6 bonus.

Red Locust · Jul 19, 2005, 08:49 PM // 20:49

The idea behind mark of pain was that with all 10+ fiends focusing fire on one person, and with most mobs usually clumping up around the tank, I'd be getting lots of damage out of it. I could probably spare some points in curses for the spell, although I'm not quite sure if it'd be worth it.

If protective spirit/bond also works on sacrifice damage, I'd be interested in a N/Mo with prot. spirit/bond and BiP to spam it on the entire team, else I'm not too fond of sacrificing lots of health.

And about verata's, does it cancel out the natural degen of minions, or does it add up for a net regen of, say, 5pips (or whatever it is)?

theclam · Jul 19, 2005, 09:21 PM // 21:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Red Locust

The idea behind mark of pain was that with all 10+ fiends focusing fire on one person, and with most mobs usually clumping up around the tank, I'd be getting lots of damage out of it. I could probably spare some points in curses for the spell, although I'm not quite sure if it'd be worth it.

This would probably work ok.

Quote:

If protective spirit/bond also works on sacrifice damage, I'd be interested in a N/Mo with prot. spirit/bond and BiP to spam it on the entire team, else I'm not too fond of sacrificing lots of health.

Prot. Spirit/Bond do not work on sacrifice damage. BiP/BR really do depend on having decent Monks and a couple life stealing skills. After you use it, cast Vampiric Gaze. A Monk will be more than happy using a 5 energy Orison of Healing on you, since you gave him, 20 energy, bringing you up to about 90% health. BiP can be the difference between wiping in a long battle and surviving without losing anyone.

Quote:

And about verata's, does it cancel out the natural degen of minions, or does it add up for a net regen of, say, 5pips (or whatever it is)?

Let's compare them:

Verata's Sacrifice:
Sac 10% health. Heals all undead allies for 160-360 over 8-18 seconds (this is effectively what it does, unless you hit the +10 regen cap with a Well up, which would make Verata's actually heal for a bit less).
10 Energy | 2s Cast | 30s Cooldown

Blood of the Master:
Sac 10% health. Heals all adjacent undead allies for 30-99.
10 Energy | 1s Cast | 5s Cooldown

For Blood of the Master to heal as much as Verata's Sacrifice does, you'll have to use it about 4 times, depending on your level of Death Magic. That's 30 more energy, 2 seconds more casting time, and 30% more health sacrificed. Still, if you spam Blood of the Master as much as you can, you'll be able to cast it about 5 times for every time you cast Verata's Sacrifice. So, if you're using it constantly, Blood of the Master would heal for more, albeit at a much higher cost. In normal usage, Verata's Sacrifice will heal for more. Plus, it sucks having to get adjacent to the undead to use Blood of the Master.

Epinephrine · Jul 20, 2005, 08:50 PM // 20:50

I think you'll find that juggiling 3 attributes as a minion master will be difficult - you'll either have weak curses, weak minions or low energy;

I really like necro, I find it to be a lot of fun, but to some extent it requires that you put a ot of points in. If you look at the cost of running an undead army (a decent one, like you seem to want) you'll notice that Fiends cost 25 energy to raise. That's a substantial amount of energy; they also need maintenance, in the form of sacrificed life and energy if you want them to last; given that they operate at a range you can actually keep them going more easily. This pretty much requires a major investment in Soul Reaping. In order to do decent damage and last a while you'll want high death magic as well; now for curses you want the mark of pain to hurt folks - well, it's going to be pretty tight trying to get all that.

My advice: party up with a necro or W/N that uses Mark of pain if you want it; they'll have experience in calling it out and clumping foes to use it, it frees up your points to get the 15 Soul Reaping and 16 Death that you really want

Or, you could go the route I went and pump your Blood and Curses and work as a support/sniper type. My blood enables me to delver nice quick bursts of damage as well as heal my party with blood wells (and Well of Power soon!); the curses reduce incoming damage and slow opponents, while I contribute to area damage with a Mark of Pain - for fun I loaded Awaken the Blood on my skillbar instead of Enfeebling Blood and pumped my Curses to 17 - the enemies just melt when your warriors frenzy the Mark - at 3 hit a second or so that one spell is delivering over 130 damage in anarea that ignores armour, per second. I like my Mark of Pain

Heck, I carry a sword as a weapon switch and get right in on the action =if I think I can safely do so; it's fun to see the -1 pop up and knowing that you just delivered a 40 point hit to everyone around you.

As to sacrifices, you get used to them, and given that you have life stealing abilities they're not so bad, you can snipe a guy with Dark Pact, Shadow Strike, Dark Pact, Vampiric Gaze, Dark Pact in a short bit of time and have dealt over 300 damage that ignores armour at only a small loss of life, as you used life gains in the chain.