Necromancer Guide
Dwoch's Guide to Necros v3.0
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Alright. Lets begin shall we:
Index
I) Intro
1) Welcome
2) What is a Necro?
3) Basics
II) General Information
1) What Stats Pass From Me To My Pet?
2) What RAs Affect my Pet?
3) What Buffs affect Me And My Pet?
4) How To Use Necro's Quickcast
5) Necro Class Bugs
6) Random Info About your Pet
7) Related Links
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|--------Introduction-----------------|
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1) Welcome
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So you've decided to endure the hell that is the Necro? Poor, poor person. Ah well. I guess I should at least help you out a little...
2) What is a Necro?
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(Taken from Camelot Herald)
General Class Description
The Necromancer is a new type of class in Dark Age of Camelot – a pet caster who does all of his actions through his pet. Unlike other traditional pet casters such as Enchanters and Cabalists, who wield a mix of magic with pet assistance, the Necromancer is powerless without his pet.
Necromancers are a cloth robe wearing/staff wielding spellcasting class that are the priest class of Arawn, lord of the underworld, and can summon dead bodies and command them to do their bidding. Given their power by Arawn, Necromancers are not necessarily the most popular people in the realm, but their spellcasting and pet prowess are definitely welcomed by the rest of Albion.
The first thing a Necromancer must do when they plan on adventuring is to summon a pet. All their spells are cast through their pet, once one is summoned. They may heal the pet, command it to cast spells on enemies, command it to attack enemies, etc. When controlling a pet, Necromancers enter “shade mode” and are referred to as “shades”. A shade cannot be targeted or damaged by melee or spells. In order to kill a Necromancer, you must first kill his pet, which forces the Necromancer to become visible, where he can then be targeted and killed. While a shade, the Necro is displayed as a translucent shadowy floating ghost.
When the pet is killed or released, the Necromancer has his health reduced to a percentage of the pet’s health. So, if the pet is at full health and is released, the Necro comes back from shade mode at full health. If the pet is damaged and released, or killed, the Necro comes back from shade mode at a percentage of the pet’s health when it was released (obviously zero if killed). This cannot kill the caster, but reduces him to a minimum of 1 hp. The intent of this is to make it so as long as the pet is alive, the Necro is at full health, but when his pet dies, the Necro is extremely damaged, weak and vulnerable.
Via their pets, Necromancers have damage spells, pet healing/buffing spells, powertaps and power transfers (NOTE: these are new to the game for this class). Necromancers have the ability to do damage, and the pain it inflicts brings them a surge of power. They don't drain power directly from their target, but they receive a portion of damage back into their power pools.
Disciples become Necromancers by joining a new guild, the Temple of Arawn. Britons, Inconnu, and Saracens can become Disciples.
Specialization Points per Level: - (What are these?) 1.0
Available Races
Briton
Inconnu
Saracen
Important Attributes - (What are attributes?)
Intelligence (Primary)
Dexterity (Secondary)
Quickness (Tertiary)
Class Abilities - (What are abilities?)
Weapons: Staves
Armor: Cloth
Magic: Deathsight, Painworking, Death Servant
Miscellaneous: Sprint, Quickcast ("Facilitate Painworking")
Realm Abilities
Class Spells - (What are spells?)
Deathsight
Deathsight Spec.
Painworking
Painworking Spec.
Death Servant
Death Servant Spec.
Team Lead
Andry(Follow the Bouncing Tomato :P )
3) Basics
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The first thing to understand when making the decision to be a necromancer is that you are going to be playing one of the buggiest classes the game has to offer. Your pet will spontaneously die. You will lose mana without successfully casting a spells, and you will die alot until you get the hang of it.
As a necromancer. Your life belongs to your pet. You can't do anything without it, and if it dies, your almost always screwed. If your pet dies within 10 seconds of being in combat, your HP will drop to 10%. In otherwords, you'll be in a crippled state, slow moving, and unable to defend yourself. You have to use your tools to make sure this doesn't happen.
As you progress in levels your pet will become stronger, cooler looking, and more suicidal.
1 Call Minor Zombie Servant (Zombie)
4 Call Lesser Zombie Servant (Zombie)
7 Call Zombie Servant (Zombie)
12 Call Reanimated Servant (Undead Retainer)
20 Call Necroservant (Legionnaire)
32 Call Greater Necroservant (Barrow Wight)
45 Call Abomination (Cthonic Knight)
Note: Your Pet take 20 seconds to cast. Try not to lose it any more than you have to.
Now lets discuss spell lines. Deathsight, DeathServant, and Painworking.
***Death Sight***
Deathsight is the most popular spec among necromancers, and rightfully so. It's the absolute fastest class to solo to 50. Your array of spells include a Specline Powertap which returns an amount of mana equal to the level of the creature you are killing(Except in RvR, in RvR you will pull full value of your nuke). Not to mention that once the creature is in melee combat with your pet, you have a shade cast Lifetap that acts as a proc on your pet's next attack. This essentially allows you to pull endlessly almost any con monster from green to red(Not suggested at early levels though) using a combination of Powertaps until the Mob is in range, then lifetaping the monster to death.
Then, as a final utility, you have the ability to transfer a portion of your power to a friendly player of your choice.
***Painworking***
The DoT(Damage-Over-Time) Spec. This Specline's primary spell is it's PBaoe DoT. Unlike normal AOE DoTs, this special one interrupts enemy casters EVERY tick(interval in which the spell does damage). Unfortunately, the lack of any real ranged nuking damage or reliable healing ability make this spec hard for PvEing solo.
***Death Servant***
The PBaoe DD(Direct Damage) Spec. You get a PBaoe spell and an in-combat nuke, and a very reliable Heal-over-Time. If you can get good with the Necro Quickcast(See II.4), this can be a viable solo or group spec.
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|----General-Information--------------|
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1) What Stats Pass From Me To My Pet?
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* Int
* Magic Resists
Only 2 things. Wonderful!
2) What RAs Affect my Pet?
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* Lifter
* Veil Recovery
* Wild Power
* Wild Arcana
* Wild Minion
* Mastery of Magery
* MCL
All the others are broken.
3) What Buffs affect Me And My Pet?
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*Shade
- Dex: Improves 'insta-cast' spells like the in-combat lifetap.
*Pet
- Dex: Increases Pet 'Nuke' cast time. (Powertap and such)
- Con and AF: Reduces the amount of damage your pet takes. (Does not modify how few HP it has)
- Acuity: Increases Nuke damage.
[Note: Unlike a PC character, Buffs do not cap or hit a curve on your pet. This means A necro with a level 50 Buffbot Cleric can be unbelievably hard to kill. Thus the reason why some people think our classes are godlike.]
4) How To Use Necro's Quickcast
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* Your pet must be in defensive mode for this to work.
[Note: Some have alledgedly gotten QC to work is Passive but I don't believe them :P ]
* Wait until your pet swings, then quick queue up quickcast and one nuke. Pressing any additional buttons past this point will cause you to lose your QC. BUT, Once you here the QC go off, quickly queue up another nuke and you'll be able to sqeeze two nukes from one QC. Also, after the QC fires you can queue up another nuke, and then queue up 1-2 Insta-lifetaps for and effect 4 spells at once.
5) Necro Class Bugs
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Keeps and Doorways
-Try to attack a keep on a steep hill (los)
-Attack someone on the battlements (los)
-Walk inside a keep tower and Try and walk around the battlements and not get stuck
-Run up the Hib tower and fall threw the outer walls
-Fall through the upper wall at the top of the Lords room in Hibby land to your death
-Walk up the stairs at Mile Gates and stop while your pet stays below
-Just try to walk from one set of stairs on a Mile Gate threw tower to the other set of Stairs!! (Pet either self-destructs(60%), Falls into the ground and can't move(30%), or makes it through safely(10%).)
-You are now a Power Battery till they come to the second door where you can still PBAoE threw the gate ( apparently this has not been an exploit or bug or a problem till Albion gets more ice wizards than the hibs/mids can take and start to post there displeasure that is when there will be a fix )
-PBAoE threw gate but don’t que with spells while on Defensive mode and your pet will take off on you through the wall/gate if it takes damage.
-Fallen through steps many times as a shade and even fell underneath a house in Fort Gwyntell(Vault keeper house).
-The bridges over the river in Caldey seem virtually impossible to cross without losing your pet, forcing you to swim across the river.
Pet
-Facilitate Pain working does not work in passive mode.
-Tell your pet to "go target" and watch it take 300 years (same with the 'here' command).
-HERE command is the only way to pull pet through keep doors...and even then, the pet WALKS.
-Watch your pet on PASSIVE attack someone and break mez if the pet is within melee range.
-Watch your pet on STAY walk forward and move around
-Step over a rock and watch your pet run up the side of a hill with nothing you do stopping it or making it come back
-Some places in SI and the frontier you only have to cross a certain area and the pet will run away and not a damn thing will retrieve him
-Watch your pet on "here" finish off a mob then run a random direction till it gets out of tether
-Watch your pet randomly take off in a dungen and attack a mob
-Have a cleric or friar tell you "ok, you realize I can't heal you 99.9% of the time b/c it's almost impossible to target the pet, right?
-Do not see the damage pet is taking or if it’s being attacked at all unless it’s visible
-Can not see damage pet is giving in melee
-Last pet melee is very very slow for our final pet.
-Try running through the frontier and pop out of shade-mode b/c your pet was stunned behind you (way outside of any visual range you can attain)
-Please let me tell which Pet is mine.. Need some way to tell Pets Apart.
-Need more info from the pet. When is he stunned/mezzed/rooted? How the heck are we supposed to know if we are not told?
-Debuffs Will interrupt Pets casting there by cuasing us to loose more power.
-Battery of Life does not heal Pet when active
-Paladin Heal Chant does not seem to heal Pet.
-Paladin Resist Chants do not work on Pet.
-Pet stays CC'ed for FULL duration despite resists
-(Rare)If you buff your Pet, or someone else and have a mob targeted your Pet attack mob
-In Avalon and other Dungens Pet takes off for no reason and attacks Mob’s.
-Friar, Cleric Buff Resists not working at all. They do not stack, they do not transfer over they are just a waist of Power. They do not add to the Shade even.
-Pet and operator count as 2. Even though the Pet and Shade are sopose to Be ONE. So if you group with another person it seems to count as 3 people in a group even though there are only 2.
LOS
-Try to cast on something and spend power for no cast...
-Nightmare for most dungens
-LOS on shade cast spells because you are in front of you pet but your target behind you but in front of your pet.
Spells
-Most other casters I have found can cast much faster than us in RvR add in the pet delay time + cast speed = Necro’s cast take longer to do. Cleric, Friar Dex / Quickness buffs do not seem to increase our casting speed. All other casters seem to benefit from these buff spells but us.
-(This one is my personal pet peeve) why is our Dot a PBAoE?? Should be a range even if it’s only 1000. I just can’t see this spell being very effective other than last door keep defense.
-Power consumed even though your spell was interrupted
-Certain spell lines Power consumption is way higher compared to other lines that have similar spells.
-PBAoE spells require you to FACE the PET.
-If your pet is mezzed, you can still spam spells into the queue and blow all your mana. If you get mezzed in caster mode it will say "you can't cast while mezzed" (which is correct). They need to do the same mezz check for when the pet is mezzed.
-Pet/Spell Bug: Switching targets in battle while in passive mode causes about a 4-5 second delay before the pet starts casting. You can easily overwrite spells in the queue and waste mana.
-Resist Rates for our spells as well as double resist on spells
-Facilitate painworking does not work in Pet Pasive Mode
-Instants need to be you know INSTANT, not up to 5 seconds later when pet has finished his swing. That is NOT instant and that is a proc not an instant cast spell.
RA’s
-Some are still broken Even though the game went live. Its cast your dice and see if it works and you must use one of your /realm respects or wait it out till they fix it.
-AoM not work at all, neither does our natural racial resists.
Augmented STR: doesn't transfer to pet
Augmented DEX: (Too much dex and you get your casting time below 2.5 seconds. This is BAD since you will then lose alot of spells in queue.)
Augmented CON: doesn't transfer to pet
Augmented QUICK: doesn't transfer to pet
Regeneration: Doesn't transfer to pet
Toughness: Doesn't transfer to pet
Mastery of Art: Doesn't transfer to pet, also see Augmented Dex
Mastery of Arcane: buffs are for the pet, and are uneffected by this RA
Concentration: We don't have a "quickcast" persay. Broken
Mastery of Concentration: see Concentration.
Purge: Doesn't work on pet. Has really NO use atm except to rid the necromacner of Rez effects.
Avodiance of Magic: Doesn't transfer to pet.
Empty Mind: Same as AoM.
Strike the Soul (our unique RA): VERY BROKEN. Cannot be used in shade mode, cast Negative Maelstom (DD, ~120 damage) instead.
Alchemy & Charged Items & Quests
-Can't use potions while in shade mode.
-Cant use charged Proc wepons or Reactive armor
6) Random Info About your Pet
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* Your pet at lvl 50 has roughly 1500hp
* Your typical Nuke damage at 50 Deathsight on other players will be 200-300 (on a target with no resists)
* Abomination
- 5.1 spd, 15.5 dps, Thrust damage sword
- Weak to Crush
7) Related Links
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Necromancer Boards (DF): www.cryptofalbion.com
Necromancer Boards (VN): http://vnboards.ign.com/board.asp?brd=22324
Necromancer Spelllines: http://www.camelotherald.com/spells/
Necromancer Solo Hunting Guide: http://vnboards.ign.com/message.asp?topic=47857483
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Thus ends: "Dwoch's Guide to Necros v3.0"
Extra copies availiable in the Lobby for $5.50. All information contained within was determined from self testing and is original work, except for the bug list which was stolen from the cryptofalbion.com Boards because I didn't feel like typing all 200 of them.
-----signature-----
Melith - R5 Channeler of Chaos *deleted*
Dwoch - Necromancer of Nimue *Retired*
Celvyn Deathbane - Cleric of Nimue, Pope of Albion *Retired*
Sevired - Infiltrator of Nimue *Retired*
Retired to Pendragon. Land of 'Anything Goes'.