Curse

Rey Lentless · May 25, 2005, 05:05 PM // 17:05

I think it's one of those things that you'd notice if it wasn't available to you. Hard to appreciate it until you have energy problems that you wouldn't otherwise have.

It definitely works better with certain builds, but I still think it's pretty powerful.

The Shrodekill · May 26, 2005, 04:10 AM // 04:10

i prefer elementalist primary because i DONT use minions therefor getting the benefit of soul reaping at its max. so i use energy storage and blood all the way. I am pretty much a damage dealer and a healer at the same time and never dies... excellent. i use vampiric gaze and touch against very high armor enemies because well... they ignore armor. well of blood allows me to heal teammates and myself. many other blood skills give me health such as strip enchantment and mark of subversion (these also give problems to enemy casters) i dont think this would be GREATLY affective in pvp but not terrible due to the vampiric skills ignoring armor. major problem in this build is u have to have a lot of energy to use all of these skills. i constantly find myself the last one alive in PvE and pull out a res. signet on our monk and they res everybody else.
i am currently in the desert and just recently found necros usefullness... quite opposite of what many people are saying. i think necro skills have gotten more useful over time. earlier i could just blow everybody up with a single phoenix wheras now i die to fast to get one off and when i do... very little damage due to high armor enemies.
NECRO SKILLS OWN!

TheEntity · May 26, 2005, 02:45 PM // 14:45

I am going high death and blood magic with some soul reaping and curses thrown in. I find Death Magic to be a very effective damage dealing set. Deadly Swarm, Vile Touch, Putrid Explosion, Necrotic Transversal (a very underrated power) and minions are all very effective.

I am a corpse exploiter. I use corpses to heal, do damage, and raise minions. I then use minions to do damage, heal, and as energy batteries. I am currently only level 13 but find that I can do a very good amount of damage in teams. A couple comments on powers that I saw people post...

Soul Reaping - I find this to be a wonderful power for the minion master. I typically alternate between minions and non-minion power set ups. When I am using minions it is a wonderful thing. Bone minions + Death Nova + Taste of Death + Soul Reaping is a great combo. Keeps you healed and in Energy and damages your enemies.

Death Magic - I love Death Magic. It has a number of spells with decent damage (Deathly Swarm and Vile Touch come to mind) and all the corpse/minion powers are great. At my current level I can dish out large amounts of damage with Deathly Swarm, Necrotic Transversal, and Putrid Exlplosion.

Siphon Life (Life Siphon?) - I really like this power. Sure, it doens't do uber damage but it does have one awesome feature...it stacks on you. When fighting a number of enemies you can tab through them casting Siphon Life on each on and the healing properties stack per cast. With a good amounts of points in Blood Magic the spell lasts for a while. I have been able to pretty much tank some groups by keeping a few Siphon Lifes stacked on me at all times.

Xight · May 27, 2005, 12:15 AM // 00:15

I use this:

Free Slot (usually Signet of Capture) (pvp I put in an enchantment stripper)
Soul Feast or Taste of Death
Putrid Exposion (pvp I put in vampiric gaze)
Summon Bone Horror
Heal Area (pvp Orison of healing)
Life Bond
Balthasar's Spirit
Resurrect

Put most of the skills into death, and split the rest between protection/soul reaping.

The Idea:
Bone Horror + Heal Area = Mana batteries for next battle. Can let your group kill things, and at the end of the battle your minions come around you to cast heal area. Gaining like 50 mana to heal during battles is nice.

vs Swarms. Kill one thing then spam Putrid Explosion. Can usually kill another which gives you mana (soul reap).

Balthasar's Sprit + Life Bond = If your familiar with the map/mission, and there's a lot of melee swarms then lifebond can save your group's healer a lot of hassle. You might suffer on mana/health a little, but your saving your main healer a ton. Life bond with high protection really keeps a tank or 2 alive as well as you. You still get the 1 point of energy even if you take -0 damage from the Life bond. If there's a lot of mes creatures then they'll shatter your enchantments. (which is kind of useful since your lifebond doesn't protect against life degen and lets you use your mana).

Res well. Always good to have repeatable rez on the mission. (with henchmen it's great since they so weak they're like corpses you bring along with you). (I solo'd Althea's ashes at 11 with just henchmen, and only died once)

Over all your balanced to do anything, heal or take out swarms. Just so long as it's not a swarm of giants. Then well hope you learn to borrow some of your minion's legs to run faster.

pHobac · May 27, 2005, 02:18 AM // 02:18

Personally, I dont think that any one can say "This is the best way to play this class" or "This is what this class is used for" Because there are so many different things you can do with a class combo. My main character is a lvl 20 N/Mo that has beaten the game. I dont do any direct spells really, except for the occasional deathly swarm against enemies that dont leave corpses.

Instead I use all of my energy to summon and heal Bone Horrors and Bone Fiends. With a 16 in death I raise lvl 18's and heal them well with veratas sacrifice. Add to that the high Soul Reaping for energy, I only have 43 max so if I stack two summons I am basically out, but the soul reaping keeps me going.

And with Heal Area I can give my minions health back when not in combat to complement the Veratas Sacrifice. Although there are times when I have too many summons so some of them are too far away to get the area heal, but I can usually manuver myself into a position where I can get them all.

I may not have any big damage spells, or visible AoE spells like Firestorm, but you will defininetly notice me in a fight. 20-30 summons, split between horrors and fiends (i never use Bone Minions because they die too fast and dont do any real damage) is a very noticable thing.

So I would say that while necro's dont always do the most direct damage. A good summon nec is a definite head turner. The ability to run up to a mob of lvl 24+ enemies and not have to attack or use a single direct damage spell is cool and for me at least, the most fun aspect of being a necro.

Schorny · May 27, 2005, 07:25 AM // 07:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by pHobac

A good summon nec is a definite head turner. The ability to run up to a mob of lvl 24+ enemies and not have to attack or use a single direct damage spell is cool and for me at least, the most fun aspect of being a necro.

But for me as a healer it's so damn boring. My best friend is a necro and when we play he always has some of these bone-whatevers and then hardly anybody takes damage, because these bone-whatevers take all the damage.

So kind of boring for me to play together with a necro

toastgodsupreme · May 27, 2005, 02:11 PM // 14:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Schorny

But for me as a healer it's so damn boring. My best friend is a necro and when we play he always has some of these bone-whatevers and then hardly anybody takes damage, because these bone-whatevers take all the damage.

So kind of boring for me to play together with a necro

Oh no! If there's ANYONE I want to partner with, it's a good healer.

I think my most IDEAL set up would be:

Me: N/Mo with my minion mastery
Friend: N/Mo with soul reaping, healing, and protection pumped.

If I could get this setup, I'd grab life bond and toss it on my friend (even though I won't put any in protection), and I'd have my friend put life bond on me (the point of this being that if my friend gets swarmed, they aren't going to be destroyed immediately. My taking half the damage will allow him/her to live long enough for us to regroup.).
After that, we both throw life bond on one bone horror each (not the same one though). This is just a starting tactic. Keeps the initial guys alive long enough to be useful until the army shows up.

This is where the fun would start... I keep raising the dead, friend throws heals on my boys as needed (but not overly, because hey, they are just meat shields). And I throw death nova out as much as possible.

We're in the back, heal area a few times, and the minions keep exploding causing sweet damage and poisoning.

The reason I like death nova over putrid explosion is because my minions will hone in on a bad guy and are almost always next to one. Smart bombs baby.

pHobac · May 28, 2005, 05:31 AM // 05:31

Quote:

But for me as a healer it's so damn boring. My best friend is a necro and when we play he always has some of these bone-whatevers and then hardly anybody takes damage, because these bone-whatevers take all the damage.

So kind of boring for me to play together with a necro

It may be boring for you, but I like it! Even if all you do is cast orison on me every 30 seconds after I sacrifice 17% of my health.

LegendsEnd · May 28, 2005, 06:17 PM // 18:17

After having played over a hundred hours with my N/Me, I can say that in PvE they own. I went with a Soul Reaping/Death Magic build and Putrid Explosion would just dominate. Deathly Swarm is great when there are no corpses and Vile Touch bypasses armor. The bone horrors weren't that great but bone fiends are nice. The minion/death nova combo isn't as awesome as I thought it would be. Late in the game when stuff stops having corpses, a Death/Blood build is nice, with deathly swarm and vile touch from death, lots of damage dealing spam skills.

In PvE however, while the blood magic is great and all, soul reaping is useless. With my N/Me I would much rather have had Me/N for fast casting, and the mesmer armor allows for some good balance between extra energy and armor.

So basically for those who didnt bother to read; Primary Necro PvE = Good
Primary Necro PvP = Ew

buggsy · May 28, 2005, 06:23 PM // 18:23

After having weaken and faintheartedness cast on my warrior character, I became completely useless.

Well of blood is so effective, my monk character sometimes has nothing to do but watch the battle unfold.

Life stealing spells are the most mana efficient for any caster class. If your taking damage, you can not only heal yourself but you inflict damage on the enemy. Vampiric gaze. 60 life steal, 60 damage. Thats an capped orisin of healing, and a capped armor piercing lightening spell rolled up into a 1 second casting time. Not too shabby. My elite is life transfer. 8 health regen for 12 seconds. 16*12=192 life steal and damage for only a measly 10 mana. No other class can pull off healing and damage like that nomatter how much mana you use. (although sometimes, hexes can be prematurely removed)

I tried using death nova in conjunction with vengeance, but that just kept making my teammakes angry.

I thought it was a good combo.

Yukito Kunisaki · May 28, 2005, 09:22 PM // 21:22

N/Mo is 'backwards'? Wth?
W/Mo is backwards too then
E/Mo has his classes mixed up as well.

What many smart alecs fail to understand is that there IS NO bad class combo! muahahahahah.

One just has to figure out a build, that's all. The former favorite was the W/N but apparently, news has gotten out that they suck as being self sufficient come late game since HoT + DoT = bad energy management for a 20E warrior. I went curses W/N. Curses in terms of energy/effect ratio is quite good with some effects lasting 30seconds + [faintheartedness/shadow of fear] Preventing/slowing damage is a LOT better than healing it away.

E/Mo [omg this noob doesn't know how to make a good character] Sheesh I felt like slapping the person who said this at Hell's Precipice. Monk + Energy Storage + Earth anti-anything wards = [hah hah our party can't die!]

You said you made an N/Mo. Well. I've seen and heard quite a bit about them. [we'd rather have a Mo primary due to Divine Favor!!!] These people obviously haven't partied with my teammates. We had a Monk Primary and a N/Mo following as support. let me tell ya that Mo WILL run out of energy unless he gets it from either a Me secondary or Blood is Power. N/Mo have nearly infinite energy concerning deaths on the battlefield. Wanna protect your teammates and heal them too? Go Curses/Soul Reaping/Healing Prayers. Make the enemies deal less damage and your healing job should be easier [barbs and what not can make foes easier targets too]

Yukito Kunisaki · May 28, 2005, 09:29 PM // 21:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by buggsy

After having weaken and faintheartedness cast on my warrior character, I became completely useless.

Well of blood is so effective, my monk character sometimes has nothing to do but watch the battle unfold.

Life stealing spells are the most mana efficient for any caster class. If your taking damage, you can not only heal yourself but you inflict damage on the enemy. Vampiric gaze. 60 life steal, 60 damage. Thats an capped orisin of healing, and a capped armor piercing lightening spell rolled up into a 1 second casting time. Not too shabby. My elite is life transfer. 8 health regen for 12 seconds. 16*12=192 life steal and damage for only a measly 10 mana. No other class can pull off healing and damage like that nomatter how much mana you use. (although sometimes, hexes can be prematurely removed)

I tried using death nova in conjunction with vengeance, but that just kept making my teammakes angry.

I thought it was a good combo.

Your teammates obviously don't have any respect for your elite coolness! ^_^ From what I read previously however, the health stealing powers of Blood magic are about 50-75% efficient due to their nature. Hurt enemy + heal yourself. What would heal better per mana usage? Healing Breeze or Life Siphon? [don't bring in Life transfer for it is an elite skill

] If you are going to use life stealing skills, bring some sacrifice spells as well. I've never laughed sooo hard watching dark pact mulch someone into pieces at the same time Life Siphon PLUS Transfer was on them...

Xellos · May 28, 2005, 10:13 PM // 22:13

Lately, alot of korean teams and a lot of PUG's started going mass bone fiends in tombs. I have no idea why, but maybe it's because of the lack of warriors and effectiveness of piercing attacks. It seemed to work somewhat against us when we were half asleep and there were two teams sandwiching us with that strategy.

Okra · Jun 07, 2005, 11:57 PM // 23:57

lvl 20 N/Mo here

Necros rock.

two words: Grenth's Balance.

Taking away 1/2 of a boss's hitpoints with one spell is pretty cool.

and heal area + blood of master + bone minons = good time