CiP: Madness Necromancer -in memoriam

[Mankeli]

My higher necromancer: http://te4.org/characters/121593/tome/0 ... b200fc9011

So this guy just reached a pretty good milestone which is level 24. Level 24 means that 1) Sacrifice tree is unlocked 2) Uttercold is online -finally no more point floating in invoke darkness and 3) Highborn's bloom is online which enables creating minions without souls. I'm maybe gonna update this like a let's play thread or whatever or maybe not. Here is what's happened so far:

Necromancers have one of the best defensive abilites in the game: The Sacrifice shield. This let's you literally tank Linaniil on madness difficulty for several turns at level 18. Not that I'd suggest it . But you can if you insist.

Higher's are great necromancers: Free regen to help you stay at full health while hiding behind the sacrifice shield. Highborn's bloom ensures that you can make new minions/bone giants whenever it's not on cooldown for free and can start every new level with a full party. However, I would still choose shalore if I'd start a new game. They are just the best race period. The Draconic Will + timeless combo alone...

The early game has been really difficult because necros seem constantly starved for class points and some very common early game monsters have 100 % cold resistance. Also they have poor early game defences compared to archmage. But at least it's ranged so you are don't get permastunned when trying to kill something!

Random observations: 1) Chill of the Tomb rocks. Abuse it. 2) Controlled teleport rocks. I don't know how I've missed this until recently. But early on it's not about teleporting yourself -it's about teleporting away the nasty buggers that ambush you on Old Forest:1 entrance. Even on madness the early game monster spellsaves are just weak. Go to town with this. 3) Madness is very, very slow to play. 4) Damage shield + sacrifice shield interaction is weak: the damage that hit's your damage shield isn't mitigated by the sacrifice shield .

I guess that is all for now.

[Mex]

On shields: I guess x2 Heroism, Movement would be best then? Barrier is useless in that case, best to move those points into a 5/5 teleport! Healing Light is still useful as a massive hp regen + shield tool. A particularly strong regen infusion may be worth considering, but I don't know how good they get.

Chill of the Tomb is literally an ice version of fireflash, so of course it's awesome.

Good luck, once you get past Old Forest you have Dreadfell/Reknor to look forward to as your next bump!

[cctobias]

Conveyance is an amazing tree for harder difficulties, really. I'd say its in the list top 5 skill lines. Don't ask me what the other 4 are, I have no idea.

[Mankeli]

(No updates on the character just some general mumbling.)

It seems if I got 100 % damage shield penetration then the damage shield + sacrifice shield would work, my staff gives 47 currently %. But since getting dam shield pen is otherwise not a priority this seems an unlikely solution. Hopefully I find a heroism infusion soon.

When gift of the highborn is active I have life regen for over 50 per turn for 10 turns. After like two more points in sacrifice I will be able to take one hit per turn and still stay at full hp. BiL will help even more when I get it online and will probably be amazing on itself and in conjunction with GoH and a regen infusion. Until now, most of the murdering has been done out-of-los but now this guy will be able to actually take a few hits if absolutely necessary.

I've cleared the maze, heart of the gloom and 3/4 of old forest.

I re-arranged my equipment and sustains heavily after getting to level 24: Took away max life items for over 100 HP and prioritized max mana, spellpower, spell crit and crit multiplier. Also activated will'o wisps, keen senses and uttercold. I've never had a problem with mana on this character at all but now my mana pool is something like 60-80 smaller than before because of the sustains. I will do some murdering with this new settings and see how it turns out. I'd like to get rid of my mana rune(like you suggested doing at some point, Mex) right now to get a six turn stun/pin immunity and another escape method but we'll see.

cctobias: Yeah, Conveyance for president!

[Mankeli]

So, my necro just hit level 30. The character vault didn't update yet, but level 30 it is and now I'm faced with a prodigy choice of which more below.

I've cleared T1 and T2 dungeons. Urkis had double the HP compared to T2 bosses (more than 11 K) so have to come back at some point. Currently clearing the Old Halfling Ruins which are much more manageable than Tempest Peak. I'm not gonna do the final boss yet, most likely. Should probably go save the merchant next.

Randon observations so far:

1)Ice shard damage isn't that hot. It also doesn't go trough allies which sucks (farther than the damage radius, which is one).
2) Will'O Wisps seem to sometimes get stuck with meleeing enemies which is horrible because they suck at it. On paper their damage output is pretty amazing, we'll see how this goes once this skill is leveled up more.
3) With an ice build your minions will mostly die to your own spells. This doesn't produce will'o wisps. There isn't an option not to hurt your minions like in the Nightfall tree. I don't really understand why.
4) DoT magical effetcs are murder with this build: Almost lost this character while trying to wait Urkis's continuum destabilation to wear out. 70 temporal damage + 56-84 (capped at 84 because of sacrifice) lighting damage per turn is bad. Luckily I noticed getting the temporal effect right away so managed to escape and eventually survive on the previous floor but had to really think about when to use consume soul to heal and also switched up some equipment.


Prodigy choices (in no particular order):

1) Cauterize. For surprise hits. Terrible interaction with sacrifice is the thing that has kept me from picking it.
2) Through The Crowd. Lets you not kill your minions with Chill of the Tomb so that they would actually sometimes turn to will'o wisps and kill things. They sure don't kill much now. But this happens to be in the dex prodigies and I have 15 dex so even with items I won't necessarily be able to take it now. Luckily gold is not an issue anymore so maybe just buy every dex item in all the shops. BTW, why an earth is this in dex prodigies? So that marauders can pick it lol?
3) Blighted Summoning. I've heard this sucks but supposedly it gives something to summmons.
4) Spine of The World: More effect protection. Then again, I'm going to pick Draconic Will second.
5) Fungal Blood. It is very possible that in the end my char will end up with a regeneration infusion + heroism infusion + a movement infusion. So this would help there. Also, as explained above, magical DoTs can actually be dangerous with this build -at least until I get Vampiric Gift and better healing online. Healing is good with this build so I guess more healing would be even better.

I'm leaning towards TTC. Now that I wrote this I kind of like FB too -probably not enough to pick it though. Draconic Will will be picked second.

[Mankeli]

Also on other news: Summons like those from the Eggsack give souls when you kill them. And yes, my necro has found the Eggsack. That is all.

[Doctornull]

Also on other news: Summons like those from the Eggsack give souls when you kill them. And yes, my necro has found the Eggsack. That is all.

Nice find.

[supermini]

I've started a run on insane with a similar build and my conclusion so far (level 23 or so) is that ice and minions really don't mix well. It looked good on paper but it plays rather clunky.

[donkatsu]

One thing to note is that Vampiric Gift procs when you hit allies, so taking Through the Crowd means you're trading VG healing for Will-O-Wisp damage. You could always turn it off but that takes a turn and you might not want to spend 2 turns turning it off for VG then turning it back on later. I always thought efficient healing with VG meant that you would be hitting your own minions on purpose; if you're facing a single boss, then hitting 5 minions in addition to the boss is multiplying your VG healing by 6. Then again that might be overkill on the healing; I'm not sure how it'll work out in practice under Madness conditions.

[Mankeli]

Yeah, it's clunky alright. But now I noticed that Essence of The Dead makes Ice Shards a beam. So with TTC you could shoot Ice Shards as a beam once and then start hammering with CoTT and Cold Flames/Frozen Ground which don't require LOF.

Most of the time the game has just been about abusing CoTT's out-of-los properties though, so direct confrontations have been in the minority with the most difficult enemies. With TTC, maxed sacrifice (which my char already has), Will'O Wisps and Vampiric Gift I believe this character can become really tanky soon enough while also being able to use minions effectively.

But boy oh boy is building this necro a slow process.

Donkatsu: Okay, wasn't aware of that either. Seems like there are twists and turns at every corner with this necro. So basically the question is whether I want more healing or minions that will actually do something. I'd be inclined to pick efficient minions since Will'O Wisps damage is (potentially) brutal and I want to try that.

Currently the minions can die from one CoTT and usually hostile monsters finish them up if they didn't fast. So that's only one sure "healing shot" via VG per a stack of minions.

Alhough if Fungal Blood would be picked instead of TTC, then FB combined with minion murder + Bathe in Ligh + Higher regeneration + infusions would give *a lot of* healing.

[Red]

Don't go overkill on healing. Even if you can heal for an amount best expressed in scientific notation, you can only have so much HP. It'd be a waste to spend valuable skill points, prodigies, etc. on healing that won't be useful.

[Mankeli]

Well, "only so much HP" isn't really apt way to put things for this build since I'm investing zero points in con (as usual) and max life items are priority 0, possible even actively hurtful.

[Red]

Have you considered investing in EHP? Admittedly, the neighborhood is mostly Archmages and they tend to be a bit discriminatory towards Necromancers, but the realtors are willing to sell and the property is good.

[Mex]

Great progress Mankeli, I'm rooting for you! Don't get overconfident as one mistake will mess up the entire run.

It seems in practice the wisps are "meh", but the alternative (investing in darkness) is much worse imo. As donkatsu points out you can get further healing by damaging the minions. It may be worth modifying the build in some manner to avoid the damage on minions...

As for glaring weaknesses, managing statuses is going to be one. The cooldown on the stone wall ego won't match up with the 15 turn draconic will. Providence is also not going to cover you completely. Hence if I were absolutely forced to pick a prodigy in this circumstance fungal blood seems like the best one. It's messy, imperfect, and it could cost you the run, but it's the best bet you have I think.

[Mankeli]

Great progress Mankeli, I'm rooting for you! Don't get overconfident as one mistake will mess up the entire run.

Thanks, Mex! I've actually been playing another character too, a shalore archmage on madness/roguelike so the process hasn't been as fast as I've hoped. My archmage guy just managed to get to level 30 too, using your build as an example. Compared to this necro, it's a cakewalk so far, but the gear I found from Last Hope was just amazing so the comparison is not fully fair.

It seems in practice the wisps are "meh", but the alternative (investing in darkness) is much worse imo. As donkatsu points out you can get further healing by damaging the minions. It may be worth modifying the build in some manner to avoid the damage on minions...

Yeah, it looks both darkness and ice are not very good...but darkness doesn't have Chill of The Tomb. (Maybe it would be possible to invest in darkness and just use CoTT mainly when you need to kite things. This would save a cat point and would leave the option open to hurt your minions if you want with CoTT or just blast away with darkness spells which do not kill your minions, CoTT damage would be hampered, of course).

As for glaring weaknesses, managing statuses is going to be one. The cooldown on the stone wall ego won't match up with the 15 turn draconic will. Providence is also not going to cover you completely. Hence if I were absolutely forced to pick a prodigy in this circumstance fungal blood seems like the best one. It's messy, imperfect, and it could cost you the run, but it's the best bet you have I think.

Statuses will be problematic for sure. My best way of dealing with them right now is being being out-of-LOS and minions help too since they block the horrible stun-fest that is madness melee monsters for at least some turns. Even if one minion dies in one hit (and usually they can take 2-3), it means that with 4 minions ATM it's 4 turns of not getting melee effects landed upon your characters. But I can't grind between levels using stairs for ever and some places like Vor I won't be able to skip and do (much) later if they prove problematic.