[Skip to skills if not interested on my intro]
Hello everyone,
Welcome to my Necromancer C1 Thread Feedback. On this topic I will be talking about how the class is treating me so far at the moment and what I believe needs improvement as well as how. I hope this will be useful to anyone wishing to go through Necromancer. Hoping to get some professional feedback from those who are Necromancers themselves at higher and lower ranks.
I’ll start with saying that after reading and researching a lot on the class, as I did before with Thaumaturge as well. I still chose to do it my way, create my own class build. I chose to play Necromancer, regardless of all the negative feedback and hate that the class was and is receiving. The class so far (Lv6 class) has been treating me fairly nice and I have very little complaints about it. Although I do like the class, there are still a few things that really piss me off about it and that I cannot stand. So, lets begin.
-Necronomicon
The class has a Necronomicon system. It relies on the amount of bodies absorbed/gathered by the player. Each skill consumes a certain amount of corpses(bodies) when used. You have a maximum total of 300 corpses that can be gathered to use your skills in battle. No corpses in your Necronomicon means none of your Necromancer skills will be useable. You can buy pots from the Necromancer NPC to add 30 corpses to your Necronomicon. The pots cost 500 silver each, have a cooldown of 30 seconds after use and can become very costly after a while. Corpses are consumed very fast, having these pots in a way is kind of a must for emergency uses. The system is great and has a lot of potential. But the system itself needs either a good overhaul, or a few tweaks to make it better manageable.
-Skills
- Gather Corpse - Collect Enemy Corpses
The skill itself in a way is sort of useless, but sadly it is the only way you can gather corpses(without pots) until you reach C2. When using the skill, the only way you can gather a corpse is if you kill the mob(enemy) while using the skill. With it being a rather low damage skill, it can be a challenge to gather corpses while grinding or in dungeons. Even with Swell left and right arm, takes me a good 2-3 hits to kill those high HP mobs, so you can have some sort of idea of how low the damage of the skill is. The skill also takes a few seconds to gather, specially when not killing your mobs. The skill will animate gathering corpses even though nothing is being gathered, not letting you move for a good 2-3 seconds.
The skill however has a wide AoE with a rather long range, which is good. It also has 3 charges, instant cast with only a 10 second cool down.
Needs MAJOR improvement.
- Create Shoggoth - Summon your pet - 30 Corpses, 240s CD.
The pet is ugly as usual, let’s get that one out of the way. The skill is based on cards that are chosen by you like Sorcerer, only it has it’s differences. Your SP will not drain for the duration of your pet being active which is fantastic. But, only 3 types of cards can be used to summon the pet; Animal, Plant and Mutant-type. And I don’t know about you, but the amount of cards that I have matching these types aren’t many. We basically don’t have a lot of choices when it comes to the cards. The cards don’t change the appearance of your summon either. Pet is pretty tanky, not sure if it’s the defense or the HP. Attack-wise… Kind of slow, medium damage, definitely needs improvement. I did not have issues with the pet not following me or falling behind, the pet actually protects me really well in PVE.
-HP attribute makes it more tanky, I guess the more the better, why not I’ll take it.
-Decay attribute, more damage to missile attacks.
Needs moderate improvement.
- Flesh Cannon - Literally the way it is titled - 15 corpses - 20s CD.
Now this skill is where most of your damage comes from. This is the one, where you shine in C1. It also requires a lot of precision, a lot of concentration and calculation with bosses or mobs that tend to move a lot, specially with party members that wont stand still and like to kite the ■■■■out of everything. Damage scales really nice, great AoE ratio (8 in game, 5 on websites, can someone confirm which?), with a total of 16 hits. Casting time takes quite a while, and you get easily interrupted. You can choose to go WIZ3 to make this easier, with additional damage, or go Linker/Cryo3 to fix the movement issue. Many players out there choose Linker and Cryo anyways so don’t worry so much about the gathering/movement issue, you’d be better off taking Wiz3 and anything else that can amplify your damage.
No actual complaints with Flesh Cannon, pretty balanced skill.
-Attribute 50% chance of Decay for 15 seconds.
Needs little to no improvement
- Flesh Hoop - Encircle yourself with corpses that damage mobs - 5 corpses 25s CD, 15s Duration.
Flesh Hoop seems to be fine the way it is. I don’t want to compare it to sub-zero shield from Cryo, because I don’t think is necessary. It has great attack scaling, cooldown is perfect. I don’t believe anything needs to be changed for Flesh Hoop. Maybe add a Decay attribute.
-Weakening enemy attack attribute for 4 seconds, have not obtained it yet. Don’t feel like I need it at this point.
Needs little to no improvement.
- Dirty Pole - Think of a pole, that’s dirty - 5 corpses 30s CD, 22s-50s Duration, 15-29s Decay duration.
I don’t see the use of this skill so much. Maybe to show it off, but there’s nothing special about it. The only reason why I would get this skill is for the Decay effect. The only problem is that my pet already gives me that luxury. Terrible attack scaling. Why would I waste points on this skill? At least to me, I have no use for it. What I do see is some kind of pole that can gather the mobs together and lock them in place. Like the Tree of life from Cryo, to give an example. Common make this skill useful, or just call it shi-tty pole instead. Dirty Pole itself is not worth using, therefore I wouldn’t bother putting one point on it.
-No attributes… Why?
Needs MAJOR improvement
Skills suggestions
Gather Corpses -
This skill needs to either be re-modified or replaced. I read from other players discussing about attributes giving you corpses on each skill somewhere around the forums but that’s a lot of attributes to add just for corpses. A simple way, I think, Gather Corpses could be a buff with a long-term duration. The higher the level, the more corpses you can gather killing monsters using any skill or AA for as long as the skill is active. Or make it a passive skill if it needs to go that far.
If the skill sounds too good, take it to C2 and bring Disinter to C1, because Disinter is actually the skill that we need to gather corpses more efficiently(fairly to be exact).
Create Shoggoth -
Card system needs to be re-looked at for the pet. Gives us a larger choice of cards to use, maybe let their appearance change also? If not, I believe the pet needs some sort of attack range increase, AoE attacks, AoE ratio.
Flesh Cannon and Flesh Hoop -
No changes in mind
Dirty Pole -
Skill is useless, needs to be re-modified or replaced. The ability to gather mobs and lock them in place for a certain amount of time will greatly increase the Necromancer experience and the skill itself, making it actually useful.
Different ways to gather corpses
- Crystal Mine 1F - High quantity of low HP monsters.
Linker / Thaumaturge
Ok so here we go. The choice between Linker, Thaumaturge or a DPS class seems to be pretty flexible at least with my build. Quickcast, Surespell, and Magic Missile from Wiz3 makes my life alot easier. So much easier for me to not worry about what I should be mixing my Necromancer with.
You’ve got 2 choices and a simple question. How can a Necromancer benefit from it?
Support - All you are doing is adding support to your build for other players, but you are the MVP. You will be the most beneficial party member, if it does not work with you, throw it away.
You can choose Linker1, or even Linker2 if you feel like being more helpful. I personally think that it is better to stick to one class as much as you can, for as long as you can benefit from the additional skills depending on your end goal. But let’s stick to our rule, if the skills are not beneficial to you, drop it.
Joint Penalty is extremely helpful to Necromancer, giving you a higher AoE ratio and higher damage. You can also gather linked mobs with Hangman’s Knot, and hold them in place for a certain period of time. This fixes alot of the issues that you will have with casting time, precision, and AoE ratio. Flesh Cannon as well as gather corpses could benefit greatly from them, being these are your most used skills. Linker is a great choice and will make your journey a lot easier. C2 and 3 do not give you any skills that you can benefit from. You will benefit from 2 skills at C1, C2 will only amplify them.
You can also choose Thaumaturge2. I wouldn’t personally choose Thaumaturge unless you were going to C2 or C3. At C1 there’s only 1 skill that you will benefit from which is Swell Left Arm. Decent amount of Magic attack, kind of a low duration for a buff. If you are only thinking of going C1, I would stick to Linker, you will benefit from more skills by going that route. Shrink body does give you an additional 40% magic damage, but the skill is kind of tricky to use. The skill is helpful, but I rather have Joint Penalty over Shrink and a little bit of damage. I also think that you will have more damage with Linker1 than going Thaumaturge1.
When you choose C2 you gain 2 skills that you can benefit from (Reversi, Swell Right Arm), as well as gaining lv 10 on left arm which gives you a huge upgrade on damage, also doubling the duration of the skill. At this point Thaumaturge beats Linker by 1 additional skill. With the amount of damage that you will be doing, is not necessarily a problem to drop Linker skills.
Thaumaturge3 is kind of iffy. Swell Brain got nerfed not too long ago making it not entirely useless but just not worth it for a C3 skill. Reversi looks more like a C3 skill than Swell Brain after nerf. I was going to hit C3, more damage is more damage, but it would be a waste for a Rank 6/7 just for a little bit of INT. I do not recommend going Thaumaturge C3. Choosing C3 will give you an even bigger damage upgrade, but I actually prefer going Necromancer2.
Linker gives you more control
Thaumaturge makes you stronger
You can also choose a DPS listed below. These were advised to me, if you know more please @ me.
Cryomancer3
Pyromancer2
The biggest issue I’ve encountered so far playing Necromancer is the gathering of corpses. It is rather difficult to do so, as well as not having enough corpses stored in the Necronomicon. Either the system needs a number higher than 300, the gathering of corpses needs to be raised and made to gather much easier and faster, or the consumption of corpses reduced by 50-75%.
So far I have not had any other major issues with the class. Sure it has it’s many CONs, but I do enjoy playing it and I have a lot of fun using the Necromancer class. I do not regret Necromancer as my Rank 6 choice and I am looking forward to C2 at Rank 7.
I will update the Thread if anything else comes up in the future, as well as reaching Rank 7 for a C2 Necromancer review. Hope this helps some of you guys in any way, if anyone has any questions please ask, suggestions leave them down below.
Thanks for reading.
If you have questions about why I chose Thaumaturge over Linker I will answer those are they are asked.
~Relkos