Curse

killer_sss · Oct 13, 2006, 03:02 PM // 15:02

I am searching for some ideas for builds with a necromancer leading his army into battle. my first thoughts on this were war/necro because of the increased armor but after thinking about it. it would be awefully hard casting without that energy renewal. i'm mainly looking for ideas for a build. can be any skill from any chapter including Nightfall. main thing Needs minions and needs a way to fight.

ty ahead of time for all your efforts.
btw i have done a search and saw the one in the guides n/w with sword skill and rest minion stuff.

Jetdoc · Oct 13, 2006, 04:29 PM // 16:29

The most common build for a necromancer charging into battle is known as a Meleemancer...a N/W.

There is a post not too far down the page that gives a typical build for it.

And yes, many people believe that this build is inferior to other melee classes. It's definitely fun to play with, however.

killer_sss · Oct 13, 2006, 10:17 PM // 22:17

not what im looking for ty anyhow.

i have brought this idea from diablo basically. there they had a necromancer that could lead his army into battle, fight, and curse enimies.
im looking for a way to kind of bring this into guild wars by making a necro that can fight/summon/and exploit minions to either heal or cause dmg.

skills i am planning on using unless i get something better
taste of death
death nova

Scherzando · Oct 14, 2006, 03:30 AM // 03:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by killer_sss

im looking for a way to kind of bring this into guild wars by making a necro that can fight/summon/and exploit minions to either heal or cause dmg.

What else is a MM other than that? You taste of death if you're in a real pinch, otherwise your minions are your wall to keeping aggro from you. Death Nova those with low life to bomb over 100 dmg to all surrounding foes, plus disease. With necromancer low armor you wouldn't want to rush into battle, unless you are a W primary and wish to cast, but then you have the energy problem...

killer_sss · Oct 14, 2006, 04:00 PM // 16:00

thats the key thing i want to charge and fight. minions also but i would like to do some dmg i dont wana sit back. guess this comes from my war backround. im looking for some way to fight and cast. minions are mainly for support and additional dmg. i want to be the prince or king that charges into battle not sit and let his minions lash it out.

few more things adding to build
don't care about number of minions really prolly will use as bombs nehow.
need some sort of attack/defend

skill thoughts adding
deadly riposite
riposite
boneties defense
some sort of sword attack
flesh golem
deathly swarm
malign intervention
putrid explosion
putrid flesh/rotting flesh
heal signet

Tsai · Oct 14, 2006, 05:43 PM // 17:43

look out for dark bond, i may be wrong in the name there but its definatly something bond. its an enchant that causes 75% of dmg dealt to u to be suffered by ur closest minion. Its a blood req but doesnt require that many points to allow u to keep it up indefinatly (assuming its not stripped or interupted)

also jsut remembered, theres another enchatn tho i cant rememeber its name, when ever you get a condition, its transfered to your closest minion

SolarAdept · Oct 15, 2006, 03:14 PM // 15:14

its called infuse conditions. google meeleemancer, or just try making a N/W and play with the skills to see what works for u best.

Venus was her name · Oct 16, 2006, 09:21 PM // 21:21

Mm can make brilliant tanks

used to use the Mm as the tank in 3 man Sf runs

Arkantos · Oct 16, 2006, 09:36 PM // 21:36

Theres no room for a mm/swordsman. Just the main MM skills take up about half the bar (4), then rez (1) and then the utilities (BR, B Rit, HA, etc.) And then the attributes, 16DM ~9SR, rest blood/healing.

Progor · Oct 21, 2006, 10:01 PM // 22:01

Ok, the concept won't have the synergy that I'm sure it has in Diablo, but it is possible. So here goes.

~~~ Ok, after writing this really long post, I arrived upon an awesome synergy between the Dervish skill Wearying Strike, and the Necro skills Infuse Condition and Contagion. Add some Vampiric Horrors and Reap Impurities for healing, Dark Bond for defense, Blood of the Master to keep the Vamps up, and Dark Aura to make those sacs hurt the enemy too, and you have a really cool Commando Mancer build. Skip down to the bottom if you don't want to read all this. It's actually a really good looking build. Let me know what you think. ~~~

You're going to have minions, and you don't want a weakness to holy damage, so go with Minion Master armor. Try to keep 5 minions up for the 15 bonus AL.

You're going to be on the front lines, so you need defense. Go with Dark Bond. This is like having 80 extra armor. You'll still be vulnerable to life stealing and other unclassed damage, but you'll avoid a great majority of the damage.

You have access to Infuse Condition, but in PvE conditions aren't all that common, so its probably not worth the slot.

Minion choice. Well, Vampiric horrors are a good choice for the added defense from their constant healing, but they might get in your way and are costly. Bone minions are cheaper and recharge faster, and since you are only going to have room for one animate skill, this should probably be it. However, since you are planning to focus more on bombing, you'll probably end up using the Nightfall elite Jagged Bones. If that works out, the Shambling Horror will give you a two-for-one deal if it dies while enchanted with Jagged Bones, making it possibly the best choice.

Minion bombing with this build would revolve around 3 skills: Jagged Bones, Death Nova, and Feast for the Dead. This will help keep your other minions alive without the sacrifice cost of Blood of the Master. However, due to its 10 second recharge, you might need to take BotM as well, we'll see how it fits. If you take BotM as a meleer, you should make every effort to take Dark Aura as well, so you will continue to cause damage while healing your minions. This should show you that the bombing idea actually requires more skills and doesn't synergize as well with the minion commando concept as a minion master build. You should probably use BotM to keep the minions alive and Dark Aura to do the AoE damage instead of spending 2 seconds casting Death Nova. It's possible that you will do more damage with your axe during that time anyway, especially if Death Nova only hits one foe.

So that leaves the attack skills. If you're going to be doing physical damage, you should use adrenaline attacks, so you don't leave that great resource untapped. However, you will be doing other things as well, so you shouldn't load up on high adrenaline skills. The lowest adrenaline attacks with useful effects all happen to be axe mastery skills: penetrating chop, penetrating blow, and dismember. You should use dismember first, and follow up with one or both of the others once you build up adrenaline. Consider using the Nightfall blood hex Mark of Fury to speed up adrenal gain.

Increased attack speed is also a good thing to have for any melee attacker, and the Nightfall strength skill Flail offers a good adrenaline-based choice for this, with the drawback of slower movement. However, it won't last long with the points you have for strength, so this drawback won't be that big of a deal.

Alternatively, Dervish skills might also be used to interesting effect, though it will cost energy. Consider Lyssa's Assault: same bonus damage as Penetrating Chop, free since you'll always have Dark Bond up, and hits up to 3 foes every time. Reap Impurities costs 10 energy, but heals you if the enemies you hit are suffering from conditions... the Jagged Horrors that Shambling Horrors turn into automatically make their targets bleed on every hit. This has the potential to be an excellent heal if you hit three bleeding foes. Whirling Charge is an option for increased attack speed, though this might spread your attributes and skills too thin. If you use Infuse Condition, you can use Wearying Strike with no drawbacks. It's a low energy, fast recharge, good damage skill that adds Deep Wound. Mystic Sweep might be good if there are more than 3 enchantments in a build. Besides, a Scythe weilding necro is just an awesome concept in and of itself.

Finally, healing and energy management are required. The Nightfall Soul Reaping skill Signet of Lost Souls provides both. Taste of Death is also an alternative, and works well in a bombing type build.

-=+ Conclusion +=-

You really need about 12 skill slots to make this really awesome. However, I think there's a good subset that will give you the concept you are looking for with good synergy.

Let's see what we can do with the 8 skill limit:

Death Magic: 10+1+3
Soul Reaping: 10+1
Axe Mastery: 11

Animate Bone Minion
Blood of the Master
Dark Aura
Dark Bond
Taste of Death
------------------
Jagged Bones [E]
Dismember
Penetrating Chop
-------OR--------
Whirling Axe [E]
Dismember
Mark of Fury (move a few points into blood magic)

This build would use Jagged Bones immediately followed by Taste of Death (they should both auto-target the closest minion) for a big self heal and 2 energy that doesn't even cost a minion. Alternatively, Whirling Axe only costs 2 adrenaline and could be used every swing with MoF. The other axe attacks still provide a cheap melee offense, and Dark Aura allows you to keep your minions alive with BotM while still dealing damage to your closest targets. I chose Bone Minion because it will get you started faster, but you might switch to Shambling Horror after you get used to it and see how it works out.

=====================

The N/D build is even more interesting.

Death Magic: 10+1+3
Soul Reaping: 10+1
Scythe Mastery: 11

Animate Vampiric Horrors
Dark Bond
Infuse Condition
Blood of the Master
Dark Aura
Contagion
Wearying Strike
Reap Impurities

This build works because with Infuse Condition, you are counted as getting a condition and instantly transferring it to your minion (fragility fires twice). So, Contagion should pick up on that and spread any conditions to your surrounding foes, particularly the weakness put on you by wearying strike. Furthermore, this will sacrifice 5% of your health, firing off Dark Aura with every swing, making Wearying strike do 47 shadow damage on top of its +23 bonus damage, 8 second deep wound, and the contagious weakness. This weakness will trigger the healing from Reap Impurities, but you need to make sure you hit 3 targets or it may not keep your health up. The Vampiric Horrors will help a lot in this regard, and you should take hardly any damage from melee foes around you anyway, since they'll all be weakened and your minions will absorb 75% of what little damage they do. The only downside is the difficulty of keeping a good supply of Vampiric Horrors up without a second minion, but you don't need all 9 of them up... 5 should be enough to counter the sacrifice, and you'll help out some with the Reap Impurities. Be sure to get a 20/20 Death Magic wand and focus.

Maybe this build finally finds a good synergy between the Necro class and the Dervish, so we can actually have a reason to weild a scythe. Let me know what you think.

Progor · Oct 21, 2006, 10:10 PM // 22:10

server error, sorry for double post.

hellchan · Oct 24, 2006, 03:21 AM // 03:21

interesting build will try it with the dervish skills. i find it having to fulfill too many conditions b4 being ''turned on''though

Blackhawk · Oct 24, 2006, 05:06 AM // 05:06

Someone else posted a "wonky build" based on this "Meleemancing MM" idea and it was proved to be a complete load of crap.