How do I play my Necromancer? Confused..

[meanhappyguy]

I recently worked on a necromancer to level 14, and here is what I found:

1) at level 8, if you hold out for a level 9 pet, it is going to be hard for you to out-damage your pet--meaning it will take half of the xp. The best work-around for this was to find someone else to duo with. As long as you are in a group, even just one other person, your pet can do 100% of the damage and your group still gets 100% xp. I think my best group at level 8 was a duo with another necro, and we just let our level 9 pets speed through mobs--I chain-pulled for our pets.

2) You're right, at level 8 we don't get a new dot, but at lvl 12 you get 3 or 4 new dots, and you can load them all up on a mob if you want, for some massive DoT damage. From 8-11 I mostly life-tap tanked the mobs, feeling the same as you--that my dots were pretty weak, especially at level 11. At level 12, I was able to pull some even and yellow cons and fear-dot them, with pretty good success.

As far as later down the road, necro pets do get weaker--your pet isn't going to mow through dark blues in your 30s and 40s, like it can at level 8, but Necro spells improve a whole lot. You can heal, cc, dps, fear, feign death, etc.