1.7 B5 Necromancer Guide: Undying

[Uniporpoise]

Edit: This still works for 1.7.2, less powerful but still very strong

The new necromancer has many, many, powerful tools for surviving any randboss, and has an enormous damage output both single target and AOE. The idea of this build is to leverage rigor mortis to deal absurd damage numbers, easily getting over 6k damage, and to utilize grim shadow, lich form, and golden age of necromancy to drastically reduce the damage you take. After recently winning my first insane game in this beta patch I thought I would make a guide, which hopefully stays up to date for the stable release.


What Race to Pick?
1. Highborn
2. Shalore
3. Skeleton
Race for lich seems pretty easy, higher has everything you could want out of a class. Damage mod, all res, and highborn bloom allow you to use your soul hungry ability without care. Other possible options are shalore for reasons everyone knows, and skeleton for that sweet sweet bone shield, extra life, and effect reduction. Although do keep in mind skeleton will LOCK you out of lich form, one of your strongest abilities, so not particularly advised.

How do you itemize?

Start of Game:
One of the key aspects of this build is always having a torque of clear mind on hand, you will die to silence otherwise and until you hit 100% silence immunity this will probably be your biggest killer inside and outside of t2.

1. Health Items, negative health preferred
2. Darkness +damage mod
3. Torque of clear mind *IMPORTANT*

Pre Lich Form:

1. Stun/Freeze immunity
2. Health
3. Darkness +damage mod/ respen
4. Spellpower
5. Spell crit/crit mod
6. Mana regen

Post Lich Form:
1. Silence immunity
2. Darkness +damage mod / respen
3. Spellpower / spellcrit / crit mod
4. Spell CD reduction
5. Confusion Immunity
6. On Spell hit effects


Stats:
In order of priority/maxing - Mag, Cun, Con, Dex


Gameplay Loop

The basic murder loop is pretty simple, as there is no big brain rotations here. What you want to do is highborn's bloom, dire plague, either crepuscule, river of souls, or night sphere, repeat previous until all on cd, then rigor mortis whatever is left. If it's still alive teleport around it, casting invoke darkness and invoke souls until its dead

Soul management is probably the most difficult aspect of gameplay, making sure that you have enough souls for reaping to be active and making sure that you are close to max souls at the end of the fight can be very hard to do. A very useful tip is the training dummy WILL give you souls if you use torture souls on it, so if you find yourself in need of souls, port out and feed on the dummy.


Prodigies

Your first prodigy should always be Lich Form, which I will elaborate on how to get later, however you get lich form for a couple of reasons. You lose out on movement infusion, which is sad, however you gain immunity to stuns, cuts, poison, disease, gain 60% crit shrug, and get 7!!! mana regen. However, this isn't all, as you get what is probably one of the best abilities in the game, Frightening Presence. This is almost always a flat -25% damage reduction and a 30% ms reduction for anything in range 9. Doesn't get much better than that, oh wait you also get a SELF RESURRECTION SKILL. Not as good as it seems, as its a blood of lifestyle resurrection, but still pretty good.

Next prodigy you have a choice of several, my recommendation being Armour of Shadows. Gives you armor, evasion, and unlights tiles. Combined with grim shadows I was having over 100 armor late game and didn't give a shit about any melee boss.

Other choices would be, in order of my personal recommendation, would be Eye of the Tiger, Ethereal form, Cauterize, and Adept.

Runes/Infusions

I took this with a fairly nontraditional early game. I decided to rune double shatter afflictions with a shielding rune as my initial rune set. This saved my life so many times it is hard to count, until you get your lich form online you are likely to be swimming in statuses, so the second shatter will often clear enough for you to either keep killing whatever is attacking you, or to GTFO using ghost walk.
I even kept my 2nd shatter rune right until the fight with master in dreadfall, as I thought it was too important to lose.

Late game your set up should look something like this
Dissipation, Shielding, Blink, Shatter Afflictions, and either a 2nd shield or lightning.

Cat Points

Age of Dusk, inscription, Eradication, inscription

Darkness Undying Buld

Class Points

Master of Bones - 0/0/0/0
Not a minion based build, you could splash a 4/0/0/0 or something similar if wanted

Master of Flesh - 0/0/0/0
Same as above

Nightfall - Immediate 4/1/1/4 - Late game 5/x/1/5
Invoke darkness is your bread and butter, something that you are spamming more or less off CD and is the first thing you want to shove points into, and possibly max as you as necro don't have many repeatable damage options. River of Souls is incredible, makes so many fights trival and deals some enmourus damage output. River is what makes necromancer what it is so maxing it should be a pretty quick of a priority, although be careful of soul consumption.

Dreadmaster - 0/0/0/0
Seems pretty shit

Grave - 0/0/0/0
More for minion based builds, which we aren't

Glacial Waste Immediate 5/0/0/0 - Late game 5/1/1/5
Another staple of necro, Lategame this is a permanent 500ish damage shield that takes 25% less damage. This keeps you alive and you will feel it when its down. If Hiemal shield is down against a dangerous enemy don't be afraid to GTFO.

Animus - Immediate 2/1/1/3 - Late game X/1/X/X
One thing to note is that you can dump points into almost any skill and see a good benefit, points to taste in anything if you want too
Soul Leach - Soul leach is necessary to dump some points into to keep reaping all res active as you get more soul hungry sustains, do so gradually, and in general I liked to stay ~11 max souls.
Consume Soul - The other MVPs of necro are also featured here, one point of consume soul does absolute wonders, lategame I would be healing from -200 to positive 1100+ with consume soul and other passive healing. Plus the mana it gives you can be very useful after being mana clashed by a AM.
Torture Souls - Great skill, does high damage, gives souls, super useful although often fights when end before the rotation reached it.
Reaping - Reaping is another skill that allows for necromancer to be unkillable. I find 3 points is a nice breakpoint as it gives 8% all res and a fair amount of spellpower/ mana regen.

Death Immediate 2/0/0/0 - Late game 4+/1/3/0
Rigor Mortis - This is truly what powers this build. Rigor mortis can absolutely cripple bosses and dangerous rares. It deals huge damage, it slows, and it only costs 10 mana and a soul. Put points into this for increased damage and try abusing the training the dummy for some DUMMY thiqq damage.
Drawn to Death - Ok, rarely used but is an ok emergency teleport.
Grim Shadow - Gives armor, knockback, dark res, and defense. What more can you want? points to taste, I found 3 as a nice breakpoint in range
Utterly Destroyed - Never had mana issues although the speed might have been nice. Try putting a point into to it if you have some to spare.

Master Necromancer 0/0/0/0
Not for us

Age of Dusk Immediate 3/1/1/4 - Late Game 4/4/1/4
A powerhouse of a tree, you come in flor Golden Age and you stay for plague and capsules. Very good
Plague - Another bread and butter skill, I found that I would use this more often then invoke darkness in the late game, just plauge, and torture souls to wipe the screen. The main reason you get this is to have both some large passive heals, a heavy damage dot, get some souls, but mainly set up for a huge rigor mortis
Crepuscule -A sleeper of a skill, I would say wait until you have at least 2 points into highborn's bloom before using this regularly. It can deal with some really high damage and acts as a way to keep the damage up in between CDs of more damaging skills
The End of All Hope - Not sure if this works, I put 3 points into this for my winning build and didn't notice plauge spreading once. So pretty sure it doesn't work 1 point tax
Golden Age of Necromancy - Amazing skill, gives you a huge bonus to saves oh and makes you - invincible for a turn. Get it, never die

Rim Wraith 0/0/0/0
lmao

Eradication 1/1/1/5
Boneyard - point tax
To The Grave - point tax
Impending Doom - pretty good skill, use against a rand that's a heavy healer, useful to rigor mortis people for more damage
Eternal Night - what we come here for. My god is this incredible. Extra damage mod, extra res pen, AND healing. Late game I would be healing for anywhere between 300-1500 a turn. Makes you neigh unkillable with Golden Age giving you a turn to heal back to full.


Generic Points

Higher - 1//5/2
Easy rational, more damage, and 2 points in bloom is a good breakpoint. Put points into born into magic over time, prioritize other things first

Combat training 5/1-3/0/0/0
Max thick skin, like in every build, and armor training to taste

Survival - 1/1/1/0
If you get track by escort ignore this tree, just get track

Necrosis - Immediate X/1/X/1
Blurred Mortality and Runeskin are the only things worth investing more the one point in this tree. Blurred mortality is going to give you ~500-600 negative life late game, so keep that in mind.. You get runeskin to increase spell crit

Specter - Immediate 3/0/0/0 - Late Game 3/1/X/0
Ghost walk - I find 8 tiles is a good breakpoint, not much value in getting 1 or two more tiles.
Spectral Sight - Tracks better
Intangibility - dump extra generic points in here if you have, pretty good
Path to the beyond - didn't seem useful, a point in here might be pretty good

LICHFORM - 3/5/1/X OR X/5/0/0
Neverending Unlife - Pretty good, but not great. Your sustains are turned off on restriction, and anything that killed you through your sustains can almost certainly kill you without them. I had 3 points in here as I had some generics to spare and 100 turns seemed okish. Never used it in the main campaign.
Frightening Presence - One of the best skills in the game, -25% damage and -35% ms aura. So good, max ASAP.
Doomed for Enternity - Ok, seemed more harmful than good. Possibly just turn off
Commander of Death - I maxed this in my win, as +50 saves, and spell power seemed pretty good. This is an all or nothing type deal, so 0 or 5 points.



BIG ISSUES

Weirdling Beast:
One thing I like to do is try to stair dance wierdly beast. If he claps me in the first couple rounds I just dip out on the stairs and come back in a level or two. You should try to take him out early then most guides recommend, on my win, I first tried immediately after OF and then succeeded after daik.

Melinda:
She is a TOTAL bitch. On my win she killed me and I only kept going due to blood of life. Possibly do Urkis first to get dissipation as that makes the fight much easier. Use River of Souls and Rigor Mortis to try and clap her.


First guide so feedback welcome!

[Just a dood]

Cool guide. Some other races to consider are dwarf, drem, and ghoul. Dwarf because the insane amount of saves a litch necro can allready have will put you at a level where most debuffs won't land. Drem lets you do your high dmg skills more often, and it should work with river of souls if it deactivates under frenzy.(I know the beta doesn't have the dlc, but it's how frenzy interacts with other sustains.). Finally, ghoul lets you have oneshot protection with ghoul resiliance, and lets you lower max hp and get neg life to synergize with it. Plus, I think summoned ghouls will retch which will negate your global speed penelty.

As for prodigies, armor of shadows has 100% uptime which is nice, but new adept is bonkers. If you invest right, you can get loads more class and generic points worth of investment, but that only comes at 42. Even if you still invest a lot, the boost to each skill is sizeable. Cauterize is neat too for higher difficulties.

[Uniporpoise]

Cool guide. Some other races to consider are dwarf, drem, and ghoul. Dwarf because the insane amount of saves a litch necro can allready have will put you at a level where most debuffs won't land. Drem lets you do your high dmg skills more often, and it should work with river of souls if it deactivates under frenzy.(I know the beta doesn't have the dlc, but it's how frenzy interacts with other sustains.). Finally, ghoul lets you have oneshot protection with ghoul resiliance, and lets you lower max hp and get neg life to synergize with it. Plus, I think summoned ghouls will retch which will negate your global speed penelty.

As for prodigies, armor of shadows has 100% uptime which is nice, but new adept is bonkers. If you invest right, you can get loads more class and generic points worth of investment, but that only comes at 42. Even if you still invest a lot, the boost to each skill is sizeable. Cauterize is neat too for higher difficulties.

Ya I think everything you mentioned is a pretty good idea. Not too sure about a dwarf though, I think there are just better options but drem and ghoul are interesting ideas. Another fun thought would be a cornac necro who gets adept as the first prodigy and is able to leverage lots of 1 or two point wonders throughout lots of trees, making them very point efficient.

[Resuna]

Did you find that Reaping actually worked for you? It didn't seem to give any of the bonuses listed on the skill description if you check your character sheet while its on.

[Uniporpoise]

Did you find that Reaping actually worked for you? It didn't seem to give any of the bonuses listed on the skill description if you check your character sheet while its on.

Can't remember off the top of my head if all res was working, never really bother to check, but I know for a fact that the mana regen and spell power bonuses worked.

[Delmuir]

Even 1 point in ghouls will help you here because every time you enter combat, you get a free additional target for enemies. Given that they use status effects as openers quite often, this cuts your status effects essentially in half.

Any build with the Necro (other than a Skeleton focused one) can justify 1 point into Call of the Mausoleum. Worth it.

[Uniporpoise]

Even 1 point in ghouls will help you here because every time you enter combat, you get a free additional target for enemies. Given that they use status effects as openers quite often, this cuts your status effects essentially in half.

Any build with the Necro (other than a Skeleton focused one) can justify 1 point into Call of the Mausoleum. Worth it.

Not sure I agree, at that point your loosing two souls whenever you enter combat, one for hiemal shield and now one for ghoul. That is going to make soul management a lit harder. Once the patch comes out of beta I’ll try it, but I am not particularly convinced.

[Delmuir]

Uniporpoise, you misunderstand the beauty of the ghoul category. Once you put one point into Call of the Mausoleum, you get 1 FREE ghoul anytime you enter combat. It has no soul cost. The only soul cost is if you activate the skill and summon the max.

On a side note, the real killer with this category is pairing it with Eradication and To the Grave. Basically, you enter combat and get your free ghoul. Then you summon a bunch, cast Putrescent Liquefaction (you can invest the order of summoning an PL if you want) and Undead Explosion, then Bone Yard and To the Grave (which adds more ghouls). Then just walk around and the Putrescence will follow you and kill everything in a hurry. More so, the ghouls vomit everywhere (makes it hard to see admittedly) and so they do damage, strip positive effects from enemies, and heal you. Finally, tack on Surge of Undeath and it's murder mayhem. It is an extremely potent combination.

[GlassGo]

Dwarf with Corrupted Shell for ultimate saves. Joking, overkill as is.

Cornac with Chronomancy for defence as main defence method vs melee.
Goes well with maxing Dex for 100% crit shrug off, as side bonus - Contingency for stormshield rune.

[Uniporpoise]

Dwarf with Corrupted Shell for ultimate saves. Joking, overkill as is.

Cornac with Chronomancy for defence as main defence method vs melee.
Goes well with maxing Dex for 100% crit shrug off, as side bonus - Contingency for stormshield rune.

Seems like a good idea, but I never really had trouble with melee as when you hit level 42, you get amour of darkness. With that plus your sustain that gives amour, I was rocking about 60 armor with a robe and never really had much melee trouble. I think that Highborn's Bloom is just too important for soul management and if you play something other then higher, you are changing the build pretty significantly. Keeping souls at 8+ for reaper and making sure you can always have enough souls to vomit out damage with rigor mortis is how you survive and kill rand bosses.

[Just a dood]

Dwarf with Corrupted Shell for ultimate saves. Joking, overkill as is.

Cornac with Chronomancy for defence as main defence method vs melee.
Goes well with maxing Dex for 100% crit shrug off, as side bonus - Contingency for stormshield rune.

Seems like a good idea, but I never really had trouble with melee as when you hit level 42, you get amour of darkness. With that plus your sustain that gives amour, I was rocking about 60 armor with a robe and never really had much melee trouble. I think that Highborn's Bloom is just too important for soul management and if you play something other then higher, you are changing the build pretty significantly. Keeping souls at 8+ for reaper and making sure you can always have enough souls to vomit out damage with rigor mortis is how you survive and kill rand bosses.

I'll be honest, I think soul management isn't that hard and highborn's bloom isn't that needed. especially once you reach litch, you can cast impending doom on your shades in between battles to always with full souls before a fight. Plus the recent changes to make soul capacity be on the soul leach skill, you will have 1 soul every 4 turns against rand bosses at 5/5.

[Affi]

So how would you go about grabbing lichtform asap?


Also I'm having loads of trouble with big hp chunk random bosses. Dudes that regenerate.

[Uniporpoise]

So how would you go about grabbing lichtform asap?


Also I'm having loads of trouble with big hp chunk random bosses. Dudes that regenerate.

If you can't kill something, do the classic roguelike strategy and GTFO. Especially anti-magic rand-bosses. Use plauge to keep them regenerating and rigor mortis to burst them down to try and prevent them from regenerating. If you can't kill something after using all your abilities, go to the next zone in the tier and come back later.

[joaopcl]

Preface: I have less than 200 hours in this game and have never beaten it before//I play on adventure mode cause still learning.

Followed this guide closely, reached high peak with only having died once post-lich form. Found a ring that gave me an extra prodigy, went ethereal form, ended up taking it off cause of the spawns (and almost softlocked my game cause i put it on in the fortress and the spawn and the cat were bodyblocking me and I couldn't TP or move anywhere, luckyly i had a dodge ring).
Aeryin was alive in high peak, taunted the bosses, they did 0 damage to me and it was over in less than 15 turns. I saw some tier lists putting this class at a C tier but clearly something's amiss, or I'm just really bad with everything else.

Early game was a breeze with the 3-wide beam of death. Around t2-t3/transition to lich form I noticed a slight loss of steam but it was a short stay, I felt that nothing could touch me even before reaching lvl 42. After that (and thanks to a very lucky chestpiece drop) I was unkilable, facetanking melees, the only danger was mages (died in the ogre mages place), but it was due to hubris, and not to a specific flaw in the design.

Future notes (to myself mostly) would be to put one more point in the healing/mana heal, late game there were a lot of mana drain mobs for some reason; use river of death more freely, I was always scared of soul management since i had previously played a minion necro, but clearly I did something wrong before cause i felt like souls were a non issue after lich form; had a talent from a corrupted escort (deal darkness damage over 10 turns, stop healing, vim spending), which was also pretty useful to stack extra debuffs for rigor mortis, have a feeling any and all debuffs are probably a good priority in escort missions).

Thanks for the guide, really useful!

[Caliginosus]

I saw some tier lists putting this class at a C tier but clearly something's amiss

The class got a complete overhaul with 1.7. Those tier lists are surely from before that time.