some stuff about necro-lich cold/darkness no pets

[sofocles]

been trying a few things with necro,no pets.

Cold line is pretty weak, there is no hard hitter, and although ice shards dmgs a group its too weak.. why isnt there a single target high dmg spell?

Frozen ground on the other hand hits much better and has freezing chance.

Shatter... i dont get mobs to freeze so often... so im not sure this is usefull at all..

Uttercold: if ur going to go ice this one is a must, but again , not sure if ice is the better option

spell/grave line
im trying to see how cold flames works out...
Vampiric gift is clearly late game... 250 magic sustain is pretty harsh. started to use it at around lvl 27



Darkness spells
spell/nightfall
Invoke darkness is a good beam hitter, low cooldown
(the rest havent tried them)
Celestial/star fury (lich 6)
Moonlight ray is "invoke darkness clone" so with the 2 you have good serious damage every other round - thats my main weapon .

Spell/shades is a must if ur going darkness for Frostdusk (5/5 = +10%dark dmg -50% dark resistance to mobs)- the rest... havent been good with them

Any suggestions on how to make cold work? can somebody explain me how does freeze chance happen?
what about the clone? is it usefull?

[Pigslayer]

Chill of the Tomb can wipe out entire rooms of enemies in 2-3 casts. You need a lot of cold+ gear. The other ice talents are okay.

[sofocles]

yeah thats the question... why invest in cold at all? darkness seems to me a much easier choice, i could completely ignore all cold lines , focus on darkness early on and maybe around lvl 36? invest in cold? (even if , at all)

I think the whole cold line should be fixed... no single target, no high dmg hitter cooldowns so so... and the freeze chance seems pretty low.
players ussually die against bosses not against normal mobs so i rather have a single target or beam than all aoe spells.
So yeah ice aoe isnt bad but against bosses i find it lacking.

the lich star line is also a "meh" line... specially the 4th spell which is aoe stun (most mobs high lvl ignore that...) what a waste of a 4th lvl spell effect...

And the other problem: its pretty hard you find very good items that boost both darkness and cold...

maybe the only good way to play lich is pet lich?

[supermini]

the lich star line is also a "meh" line... specially the 4th spell which is aoe stun (most mobs high lvl ignore that...) what a waste of a 4th lvl spell effect...

Starfall is very useful, as any anorithil will tell you. It's a good aoe spell that does stun...what's not to like? There are stun immune bosses, sure, but a mass of stun immunes is hardly a common sight.

maybe the only good way to play lich is pet lich?

A high level pet-less necro lich with forgery of haze (for double nuking) is on par for damage and crowd control with most other classes. It's also boring to play (that's a bit subjective, but I know I'm not the only one who feels that way).

[stinkstink]

Another problem with caster necros is that there's no staff subtype that boosts both cold and darkness damage, so you're pretty much stuck hoping you can assemble the Spire of Telos.

[supermini]

Another problem with caster necros is that there's no staff subtype that boosts both cold and darkness damage, so you're pretty much stuck hoping you can assemble the Spire of Telos.

That's if you even bother with cold spells. I can see chill of the tomb being useful, the rest not so much.

[Pigslayer]

Using Forgery of Haze as an ice necro is pretty dangerous. You'll eventually be killed by your clone. IIRC Chill of the Tomb when maxed has a radius of 6, and it can one-shot you if you're focusing exclusively on ice damage.

Ice necros require too much effort. And they still end up being inferior to alchemists and corruptors. My pet lich was actually fun to play.

[Velorien]

I had high hopes for necromancers, but I've actually found both styles to be disappointing in different ways.

My pet necros waste all their time managing minions who insist on walking out of the necrotic aura and disintegrating during auto-explore (and going ghoul for Retch means even more micro-management and no lichdom), while my caster necros lack versatility with only a couple of decent damage spells, little by way of debuffs or crowd control, and pretty much no form of defense other than Blurred Mortality and "kill it first" (whereas even the purest nuke class, the corruptor, has cheap and easy healing, a powerful shield and a specialised teleport).

With that said, the necro feedback I've seen so far is remarkably mixed. Some praise Forgery of Haze while others say their forgeries only end up using low-level talents; some worship Vampiric Gift while others dismiss it; some have great fun with Starfury while others find it a grave disappointment (no pun intended); and so on.

[tiger_eye]

I won with a cold/darkness no pets necro recently:

http://te4.org/characters/6887/tome/964 ... a22b8e5e82

The style of play was similar to a simplified archmage, but the class seemed more hardy due to Blurred Mortality and Vampiric gift (and Premonition).

The only spell in Nightfall/Grave/Ice that seemed underpowered to me was Shatter. I had no problem killing things (even the final bosses), and the class wouldn't be the same without Impending Doom

Note that my character has magical sustains using 490 mana, yet still has 358 mana to use. Yes, some of the sustains can be expensive, but it's also easy to get plenty of mana in the game.

Another problem with caster necros is that there's no staff subtype that boosts both cold and darkness damage

Yeah, I wished I could have commanded a staff to give both darkness and cold damage boosts.

[sofocles]

great to see new ideas on the post.

more info on that cold darkness petless win? what were your main dmg spells? (specificly on bosses)

As i said I ended up feeling the 2 direct dmg darkness spells (both lvl1) are much more usefull than the cold lines (around lvl 40), not to mention they become beams at some point, so all the better.

The build has no problems with ussual mobs but i feel it lacking hard hitting spells on bosses, also detrimental effects except impeding doom are meh...

The leech life ring seems to add to vampiric gift making it much better . (anybody tried?)

I havent explored forgery of the haze.. im guessing if i choose to pass on cold i can get that to 5/5 pretty fast and with darkness chances of getting killed by your clone are less.

[sofocles]

hey tiger_eye why didnt you go lich anyway? It would seem the natural way for a necro?

[kazak]

I did a darkness-only, no pets, lich win a few days ago (roguelike, no deaths other than my lich sacrifice). Actually thought it was a really strong, fun character to play.

Well, it wasn't quite darkness-only....impending doom is pretty central to the class. I played it offline (I don't have a good internet connection at home), so no link to the vault. Basically I maxed all the darkness spells (including star fury spells), blurred mortality, impending doom, forgery, frostdusk, and lich'd at lvl 24. No cold spells, no vampiric.

Damage bonus is easy to stack, as you're essentially relying on a single damage type, but I had both darkness and arcane at around a 90% or so bonus by endgame (I played a higher and got the Telos prodigy, which is great for necro casters). Both beams were hitting at around 900 each pretty reliably, as I had crit chance well over 70. I also got the meteor crash prodigy once I became stun immune, and the procs from the Black Robe pushed damage up even higher.

In addition to the range 10 beam spells, you have easy and reliable access to stun, blind, slow, and confusion. The banes were doing well over a hundred each turn in the late game and last for like 7 turns. You also have several AOE spells, which makes things pretty versatile. With level 5 lichdom, you're pretty hardy, with good hp and the extra 250 from blurred mortality (which I only needed once or twice).

And of course you have forgery, which has no drawbacks and can either double your damage entirely, or just hang out and blast things while you run and hide behind something.

And that's probably the real beauty of the class--you can make coward tactics really shine here. Most things were pretty easy to just explode right up front, or whiddle down as they wander around stunned, slowed, and confused/blinded. But for anything scary, you totally just hit impending doom and then just phase or teleport away. Or if it's crazy scary, throw up a shield, cast forgery, then hit impending doom and phase/teleport away. Pretty much your ideal scenario in this game is to be able to damage something without taking damage, and caster necros can do that really well. The Celia quest is a joke for instance--open a tomb, impending doom, then phase door. Repeat if necessary (though it typically won't be). Same with bosses, though I often hung around and just crippled them with slow, stun, blind/confuse, and just blasted away with the beams. Champion of Uhr'ruk's spell feedback? Just cast forgery and take off.

Got by fine without Vampiric...had 3 points in healing light from escorts, Higher's regen talent, 3 shielding runes (including reflection), displacement shield (never really used it tbh), and the good hp from lichdom and blurred mortality. Had about 700 mana since I wasn't running a bunch of costly sustains, and you're using two different resources, so I never even went empty until the last battle.

I didn't go cold because it's harder to stack damage between the two, you're spreading yourself thinner, a lot of common things resist it, and your forgery will kill you. Not to mention that, especially with the LOS changes, Chill of the Tomb is pretty awful. It's damage gets high quickly, but so does its range--unless you can throw it to maximum range every cast, you inevitably nuke yourself (used to be able to throw around corners easily enough but that doesn't work with symmetric LOS). With darkness, not a lot resists it (how common are dreads and shadows?), you can't nuke yourself, and your forgery absolutely will not kill you. And if all of your damage talents are maxed out, then there's really no weak talents for your forgery to waste time on.

All in all, just seems strange to me that it's not considered a stronger build. It really was a pretty easy win, and I can't really even think of any enemy that I had to opt out of because I just couldn't take him.

[sofocles]

Kazak seems you had the same ideas I did but you played the whole thing through (and in roguelike)

SO 2 thumbs up!

the one thing that surprised me was that you never used vampiric... oh well i never understood the potential of forgery or impeding doom.

maybe necros should use their own life to boost their powers... that would make vampiric MUCH more interesting.

Playing only darkness , wasnt it a bit boring? Besides the beams what other darkness spells did you use? ?Star fall any good?

I think they should change the whole cold line... i dont find it interesting at all.

[kazak]

Heh, thanks. You know, to be honest I've never actually gotten Vampiric up and running, so maybe I just don't know what I'm missing. I mean, it's expensive, so you need to wait til you have a decent mana pool. And it comes at the end of a tree that I didn't want to put points in. I'm one of those types that hates having to to spend points on stuff I'll never use, and if I plan to use forgery then Chill of the Tomb is annoying. Finally, in my experience, liches are typically pretty robust, with good life and resistances. Just way less fragile than a lot of other classes, so I got by fine without.

This was the first time I made good use of Forgery. I'd played the same character a few days earlier but died to one of those portals that generates greater demons that happened to spawn in one of the prides. Anyway, with that guy I'd just dropped some points into forgery for the hell of it, and then realized that everything was going down so much faster. So the second time around I just worked it in deliberately, to good effect.

Impending doom, just...yeah. I mean look at it, it quickly scales to the point where it'll do either over 100% of an enemies life, or like 800 - 1000 points even early game. And it's arcane damage, which is seldom resisted. And it stops healing. So that's just one thing that's always been fun--impending doom something and teleport it away. It does trivialize a lot of encounters.

I liked playing only darkness. Using one element, it's easy to stack +damage and damage penetration. Makes equipment choices simpler. The spells have good crowd control effects. And not much is immune to it anyway. I tried playing a cold-only and just started hating it around Daikara, with all the cold-immune and cold-resistant enemies that always travel in packs. Darkness is way better--the only real likely problem is dreads, which typically don't travel in packs (unless you get a dreadmaster and stick around long enough for him to summon), so you can just use Doom and move on.

To me it wasn't boring. Your spell set gives you various status effects, with various shapes and sizes. So the interesting part is just figuring how best to combine them. If you have a cluster of enemies, you have two ball spells that hit decently hard and somewhat immobilize them. If they're still standing you can lay down your field of blind/confuse or just pick them off with your beams. But the spells are strong enough that most things go down with a one two combo of Invoke Darkness and Fear the Night (or Moonlight Ray once it's available). And the guy is robust enough that I didn't have to be too cautious at all times--being really fragile and thus having to be overly careful all the time is something that I find tedious, though I'm sure that's probably the fun part for others.

The only attack spells I rarely used were twilight surge and shadow blast. Still maxed them though, as I had the points and I figured my forgery would end up casting them even if I didn't. All the other spells I cycled through pretty frequently, depending on the situation.