Necromancer as Primary Healer?!?
 

Unlike many necromancers, I much prefer to work in a group than pure soloing. It gives you a chance to try different strategies beyond the ol' DOT/fear/slow combo.

I've been in several parties where I've ended up the only person capable of restoring health to the other party members (Dark Empathy at 8th, Shadow Compact at 20th, etc, etc.). It also works well when you partner with a melee class.

Set up your spells so that you focus on all the ones that deal with your health and mana. The DOTs, like Leech; the life transfer spells, like Lifetap; the mana restoring spells like Dark Pact, Allure of Death; and of course, your 'healing spells'.

That leaves you a few slots open for misc. stuff like Fear/Screaming Terror for crowd control, direct damage spells, and buffs for your pet.

The trick with necro healing is that is isn't mana intensive; instead, it's based on your health. As long as you've got it, you can give it away.

So, while the melee classes are beating away, you start draining the enemies, and then transfer your life to the team. Many of the spells are efficient, they just work slowly.

Run a health/mana spell on your self; cast health/health spells on your party, and the suck life away from your targets, keeping your life in check.

The trick is to start early. Start healing people right away when they start to take damage. Don't wait until they're almost dead - your spells don't work the same as a cleric.

I've found in many parties without a strong healer, you can do the job in a pinch. Of course, having your pet as an extra tank is always an asset to the team.

And with a single melee partner you can use this strategy with almost no downtime. End every fight with 90% mana and ready to kill more.

My regular group members are spoiled. They've worked with other necromancers who don't use the healing capabilities of the class. Some even REFUSE to cast healing.

Playing the healer is one of my favorite roles, and I'll often volunteer to do it.


Strategy Submitted on: Tuesday, January 16, 2001

Reposted on: Wednesday, March 15, 2023

Thanks to Typhuss Boneshaper, Saryrn

Yes, necro heals are amazing, especially together with a bard playing regen song. Can keep healing endlessly as long as you have a tappable mob nearby

I trioed Uulump. Pally HoT stacks with necro heal for basically the equiv of torp. EoT chased the stupid frog into the water and the 56 Druid spot healed.

I suspect a necro can roll a reverse heal on a tank 24/7. Even unslowed trash blues that’s like 2x chloroblasts in 30 seconds. Yea, for sure so long as the MT isn’t taking much over 30hp/sec loss.

The main problem is that Shadowbond has a cooldown equal to its duration, so you can only ever heal one person every 24 seconds; and it's 125 HP every 6 seconds, so while it will generally sustain a tank through a steady, easy XP grind, it can't save anybody's life if they're in trouble. The moment anything goes wrong, the necro healer concept falls apart completely. Being limited to 20 healing per second on one target at a time is only viable if it's a strong group effortlessly grinding low blues. Anything remotely tough and it won't cut it.

Vanguard: Saga of Heroes was honestly genius for many reasons. My main there was a blood mage, whose main role was as healer but played a secondary role as caster DPS. It was basically a lifetapping healer class with other cool RP shit like buffs that were disgusting symbiotic leeches you would place on your allies.

This made me think of that lol.

I forgot Shadowbond is 125; that’s not quite as good. I just remember it stacking with the Pally HoT for the same 300/tick of torpor. In fact, it would stack work torp for 425/tick. Compared to CH which is over 400/second.

Strictly as the only group healer you can stack Shadowbond and Corporeal Empathy (2.5 sec cast, 9 CD, 215 hps = extra 18hp/sec). Which isn’t out of bounds; for tough short fights shamans frequently torp and chloroblast.

You would have to be outclassing stuff For bond to keep up. To Jimjam’s point, finding a 54 necro willing to step into a healers shoes can open up some camps. Chardok CE, the Hole, Velks. All very easy with even a monk tanking. I just wouldn’t have aspirations of venturing into lower dogs for very long.

The key is dispelling the heal so you don’t have to bond/vex constantly. I’ve also done juggs with just Necro heals. It’s good for most content.

While the heal debuff is dispellable, it is by no means consistent. I've been the healer in groups on my necro and Cancel Magic gives at best a 50% chance to dispel the first debuff slot. Half the time, it just won't dispel it even if it's in the first slot--and then it will instead dispel the next debuff, which means that on top of being saddled with a 125/tick self-dot, you also have to eschew any other buffs. No HP buff, no regen, you'll even dispel your own leech recourse half the time. So while Shadowbond self-dot can technically be dispelled, it's not as simple as saying you can just remove the debuff and avoid the degen. There's a number of caveats to that. At a minimum, you'll be operating completely unbuffed while saddling yourself with a 500-damage dot at regular intervals when you probably have something like 1k-1.2k HP unbuffed. It's not comfortable at all.

To be quite frank, while it is possible for a necro to keep a group alive if the content is very easy, there is a reason nobody wants to run with that. It's too much of a hassle and too likely to result in some random person's death because all the necro can do is maintain a mediocre HoT on a single target at a time.