Necros in Velius

[Andyman976]

Hi all,

So I'm trying to determine if I should stick with my necro into vel. I'm not sure how much of a power boost we get both item wise and spell wise, nor am I familiar with the content and how necros perform solo , group, and raid wise.

My friend is making a shaman, and I am considering rerolling a monk to duo. It appears as though velious is a huge melee centered expansion from what I can tell. Do casters get left in the dust? Can monks solo at max level as well as necros with all their uber gear?

Any info or stories is appreciated, thank you!

[Tecmos Deception]

Imo they'll be solid. I mean, you aren't going to own lodi like a geared shaman or do 150 DPS like a geared rogue or be showered with pixels like a main tank/cleric. But necros can DPS very well between pet and dots on targets short of actual raid bosses, their rezzes and corpse summons and twitches are handy for raids, they've got a bunch of cool spells for small group play (feign, harmshields, ivu and invis, etc).

You can always level a monk with your sham buddy then pick your monk or necro based on which you prefer when your buddy gets leveled up. Sham is a great partner for either class.


Solo necros are strong, but not like a shaman or enchanter. You're better at farming lower-level stuff, grindy stuff, than aiming for big-ticket solo items. Duos/trios necros are solid with the right partners, especially if they can be charming. In groups necros are underrated imo. Health transfers, faster dots, lifetaps, pet DPS, pulling potential, roots and a mez, and more; they're versatile not unlike a bard or enchanter. Raids I think you'll generally be twitching and helping on CRs? Essential though not glamorous.

[Andyman976]

Do we get any decent upgrades in vel? It seems like melee get all the nice gear.

[Tecmos Deception]

Everyone gets upgrades in Velious. I'd say necros benefit the most from new gear of the int casters, since they're the int class that can make the most use out of AC and HP and resists in non-raid settings. It's still not a HUGE deal like it is for melee or shamans though.

[Andyman976]

Why are those more important for shams? And why do shams get such a power jump in vel ?

[Uteunayr]

You get some fantastic gear for a Necro come Velious. Not only does your epic become more easy to attain, but the darkness clickie on it will begin to stack with roots. Using this with a variety of different clickies (VS Staff, Fear Stick, etc) allows for some very powerful mass slaughter.

The mana machine you run with becomes far more powerful as by stacking things like the Coldain Ring, Aura of Battle, and a Zlendie Heart, as an Iksar you can get into positive HP gain while using Demi-Lich, and with very minimal loss while standing using the same. This provides around +31 mana a tick at all times, which is an incredibly powerful mana machine.

The great advantages, beyond this, is more related to play style. Few classes will offer you as much variety in different styles of approach each situation, even if it cannot always be executed perfectly. In other words, if you dislike just charming, you can go fear kite. If you dislike fear kiting, you can go root rot. If you don't want to charm, root rot, or fear kite, then you can group and play the support game. The variety you have at your fingertips is virtually unparalleled. That doesn't mean that you are without disadvantages.

The drawback you will find with Necromancers is that the DoTs, while they can be quite powerful, are quite often resisted. Some exploiting of necro related spells in earlier times of the server resulted in some significant nerfs to the efficacy of our lifetaps.

Additionally, and probably the biggest issues necromancers face until a few expansions later, is handling summoners. It is entirely possible to handle certain summoning mobs through clever use of pet and aggro mechanics. This is why Tecmos refers to us not going to be comparable to a shaman: Our pet soaking summon shenanigans can't be done that easily on a dragon that would quickly eat our pet before we can manage to do a thing with it. And once a necromancer gets summoned, we get eaten, whereas a Shaman can force slows and use their high health and armor values to soak. Additionally, we lack the mezzing ability to take down packed rooms one at a time, unless they are undead. Our short term mez is insufficient for breaking rooms of 4+ mobs, and so many high end targets become dicey to say the least.

There are ways to handle summoners, but probably not dragons in which your pet is going to get eaten too quickly for your FD shenanigans to really work. You can charm and handle rooms, but they have to be undead and in the right situation. It isn't until necro pets are significantly buffed and pet tanking becomes a legit strategy (PoP I want to say) for a necromancer soloing that these situations become more manageable.

However, note that this is an extremely high skill cap. The one big agreement Tecmos and I came to in the Necromancer versus Enchanter thread is that for Necromancers to do some of the type of shenanigans an Enchanter can, the Necromancer has to work a great deal harder.

Velious gives us some great things, but we don't get many exciting spells. Arch Lich, while it looks cool, is totally balls. We get group DMF, which is nice... We also get a burst heal, which is fantastic for the support game. But that's about it.

But in conclusion, necromancers are a fuck ton of fun, there's a lot of variety, and a lot of room to grow and enhance your skills. Once you've had Demi Lich, it's really hard to go back to playing other classes... The mana addiction is severe. So that's the one thing I'd say to be careful if you decide to stick Necromancer, it is really hard to play any other caster when you see how damn slow everyone's mana bar recharges.

[Andyman976]

That's very helpful thank you!

Summoners scare me now. So would a nec/sham duo be able to handle high level stuff on vel? Are me lees just mopping the floor with our dps I'm vel? I thought out life taps were pretty good about not being resisted.

Also what are the clicky staffs you mentioned, can they be used from inven?

[noleriand]

*gasp* Ute endorsing the Fear Stick? Why I never. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

One of the biggest things I'm worried about with Velious that hasn't been pointed out is the dearth of undead available in Velious. Aside from Icewell Keep, Dragon Necropolis, TOFS, and Velks, there just aren't many undead mobs that we can perform our quasi-enchanter antics on, like lull and charm. Not to mention that aside from DN and TOFS, these undead mobs are sequestered away somewhere out of the way and usually mixed in with a disproportionate number of live mobs. Oh, and the DN undead are bellycasters, so hope you have hp/ac stacked hard if you want to charm those. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Melee gets some insane gear in Velious, and mobs also get a huge boost to HP (among other stats), so sustained mana-free DPS becomes the name of the game for raid encounters. Necros are a caster's best friend though, since even now if I'm being lazy and only doing one twitch every minute I can contribute 15 mana/tick to my raid, and over a long Velious boss fight this can be quite a boon. We also get an awesome new FD at 60, a new lich with spectre illusion (come on, that's f'ing awesome), and plenty of hp regen loot we can take back to old content and play with.

So necros get sort of pigeonholed into doing CRs and mana batterying in Velious, at least in a raid setting. Like Tecmos said, not the most glamorous jobs but someone has to do them, and we get the toys to do them well. Plus, we can go back to Kunark and old world content with powerful new Velious gear and have fun solo or in group. While we may not be powerful enough to do a lot of super impressive stuff in Velious, we do get more powerful while other more necro-friendly content stays the same.

So yes, I'm looking forward to Velious as a necro. Personally, I'd make a monk and level up with your friend, because it never hurts to have another character leveled up and you won't know if you like it more until you try it.

http://wiki.project1999.com/Nightshade_Scented_Staff
http://wiki.project1999.com/Staff_of_the_Dreaded_Gaze
http://wiki.project1999.com/Shissar_Deathspeaker_Staff

These are the clicky staves that Ute was mentioning. As you can see, they are all 2HB and must be equipped to use.

http://wiki.project1999.com/Ring_of_Dain_Frostreaver_IV

This doesn't have to be equipped though! Although I would right now if Sirken handed me one.

Summoners should always scare you. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] Unless you can effectively fearkite them.

Only experience I have with necro/shaman duo is levelling up, and it is a great duo for that. I'm trying to think what necro would bring to the table for a shaman in a high end duo though. Our DPS is never really that stellar, but we can do the old vexing/dispel trick for the best healing efficiency outside of a Donals BP, we can twitch, and we can certainly provide some respectable (although not stellar) DPS. Maybe a debuff if you can get one of the 'Scent of' spells to land (which I have never been able to do reliably).

Melee dps mop the floor with our dps already. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I get a decent number of lifetap resists on highish end mobs now, and it will probably only get worse in Velious, where mobs have more MR.

[Daldaen]

All 3 Coldain Rings with clicky must be equipped to click. You're looking at a link that references live, where they removed all must equip to click restrictions.

[Nirgon]

Parsed wizard at 181dps with jboot refresh. Can't imagine with bane line how awesome its gonna be as a wizard owning the charts.

Feed wizards mana and patch heal with cancel magic to remove recourse they haven't fixed. You should be able to solo grind faction really well (heads/helmets) as a necro too.

And actually on longer fights like Lady Nev in ToV your patch heal sploiting will be super bad ass.

Necro gets zheart in Velious and summon corpse robe 8).