Necromancy question

Hello guys, I was playing around with some necromancer character, and I noticed, that Astrology can't alwaysprotect you from the self damage of the necro hex. If I'm right, than the more wizard skills you choose, the higher the hex damage will be (becouse your sage stat will be higher), and if I have too many mage skills, than the astrology skill won't protect me from the hex. So my question is, do you guys know any fun and balanced necro build, where the astrology skill still protects me?

 

1. Get Mark of Cthon.
2. Look at resistances from this buff.
3. Look at Death Curse.
4. ???
5. PROFIT!!!

 

What skill trees are Mark of Cthon and Death Curse from? I've not played a Necro before so I'm kinda coming into this conversation ignorant.

 

Death curse is one of the side effects you get from casting necromancy. Mark of Cthon is a buff from the third spell in Necromancy.

 

Currently it is more like...

1. Get Mark of Cthon.
2. Look at Resistances from this Buff.
3. Look at Death Curse.
4. Reduce your maximum HP to almost nothing and run away like a little girl.
5. Run out of mana, too.
6. Use Something Else until you get Mana Regen 6+
7. ???
8. Resign yourself to spending your points elsewhere next time.

 

You only need like 2 necro resist. Reroll some artifacts

 

It's a terrible skill tree, don't go into it. You can get the same damage from Promethean and Mathmagic trees.

 

You need more than 2 necro resist. The damage increases. But, that's not the problem. The problem is that your maximum health is reduced by two points each time you cast the spell, which means in the early game you can quickly almost kill yourself dealing with even moderate sized crowds.

 

Use more Nightmare Curse, it doesn't impact your health. Also keep Zodiac Wands and Potions of Purity if you need to run up a high debuff stack to get out of a situation so you can just clear the entire debuff pile.

It's not bad. I'm on floor 6 of GR+P with Fleshsmithing and Necronomiconomics and they make a good pairing. Not quite as brainless as Promethean, sure. It is basically mana-free damage, though; Nightmare Curse still one-shot kills everything on floor 6 and costs like 2 mana.

 

Nightmare Curse penalizes your maximum mana and your Magic Power upon each use, which means it is great for killing single enemies and worthless of killing large groups of enemies early in the game. You will run dry of mana so fast your head will spin.

Sure you can use Zodiac Wands and Potions of Purity to help, but none of the other Spell Trees require you to jump through so many hoops to get the same amount of functionality in the early game.

 

Early on, sure. It's definitely the hardest tree to use early game (especially on GR), and I used a combination of Fleshsmithing and melee (supported with Vampirism) to get around that.

Later on though, the debuffs really just aren't that meaningful. Even without Mark of Chthon (which I literally just got on floor 6), it's easy to lay out 6-8 Nightmare Curses without feeling it much. The larger debuff doesn't seem to stack, only the lesser one, which at that point I don't even need to pay attention to it. Just wait a few turns (I want to say it's like 6 turns) to slough off the bigger debuff and move on.

The upside is that the actual mana per cast is so low that it literally gives back more mana than I spend with Blood Mage, because even 8 casts deep it is one-shot killing any target except named bosses (which require two).

Personally the only other tree that I think has comparable damage per cast is Promethean, which is still quite overpowered after the Obvious Fireball nerf. Aside from that I wouldn't take any of the other trees over Necro in terms of killing power and certainly not from a mana management standpoint.

 

The early game is what we are most concerned about. Nobody is arguing that Necronomiconomics is hard to use late game, but it is absolutely brutal early game. Trying to use it as your primary offensive is just asking to die.

The major debuff on Nightmare Curses does stack. I can reduce myself from 60ish Spell Power to 1 Spell Power if I chug mana potions like a fiend, but I run out of mana far faster than that.

If you already have Necrotic Resistance then Mark of Chthon barely does anything at all unless you're a hybrid melee character.

Early game the mana cost on Nightmare Curses is in the double digits. The damage per cast is very equivalent in many other spell trees! Just take a look at Golden Ratio and Thaumites for spells that do just as much damage without the drawbacks.

 

Is that not the case for most early game spells? The few spells that are cheaper than Nightmare Curse usually take two or three hits to kill a target, greatly amplifying their actual mana cost. *Assuming Nightmare Curse is capable of one-shotting early monsters*

 

Most early game spells do not notably increase your risk of death, or noticeably nerf your ability to deal subsequent damage, or drain your mana like a sieve just to be able to use some of your spells in safety.

Let's take a look at some comparable skills. Radiant Aura can possibly kill multiple enemies with a single cast, for 8 mana. Solar Inscription takes two casts to kill a single enemy so 14 Mana. Dragon's Breath can possibly kill multiple enemies with two casts so 16/X where X is the number of enemies you kill. Rune of Exploding can kill multiple enemies with a single cast. Summon Blade Being takes two casts to kill a single enemy so 12 mana. Animate Mustache can and will kill dozens of enemies in the early game so 28/A Lot. Fleshbore can kill a single enemy with one cast, and is very similar to Nightmare Curses, for 13 mana.

Just looking at these numbers and observations you can see that other early spells really are doing just about the same amount of damage without ANY OTHER NOTABLE DRAWBACKS.

 

Curse of the Golden Ratio starts at 18 mana where Nightmare Curse starts at 12, and Nightmare Curse will bottom out lower as well. They scale with magic power similarly (CotGR is .30, NC is .31) but NM CCs the target while CotGR spits out zorkmids.

Thaumites start at 14 MP though it can certainly do decent damage per cast once (if) it jumps. It doesn't deal damage as fast as NC though. It also is hostile to the player once it consumes the first target so it's not exactly harmless.

 

Curse of the Golden Ratio gives you zorkmids you can use to buy another consumable mana item or health item, so as long as you survive you come out ahead. Meanwhile NM may CC but you still have to back off because of lower Magic Power just like you would have had to back off because of Curse of the Golden Ratio.

You can kill entire rooms full of enemies with a single Thaumite cast if you are clever and patient. It definitely does not deal damage as fast as NC, but it can do way more over time and doesn't require you to be weakned against other attackers.

 

Yes, there is inherent risk in using Necro spells. Certainly if being the safest regardless of your turn counter is your goal it isn't the best line to choose in every situation. That's not even really what I've ever been arguing.

I'm saying Necro spells do very good damage per turn and damage per cast AND at low mana costs, which generally make them pretty decent spells even considering the debuffs. Barring Promethean Magic which is still quite overpowered, it's probably the best line for dealing raw damage, especially since the debuffs can be very easily managed with debuff clearing items.

I'm playing Fleshsmithing along with Necro and I can tell you Fleshbore does not deal comparable damage to Nightmare Curse at all. Even on floor 1 of GR+P it isn't generally going to one-shot a target, where Nightmare Curse will. That is more important than it sounds because it means you either need to make a second cast or risk moving up and just hitting in melee to finish it off. I still used Fleshbore a lot early because I do a fair bit of melee on floor 1 and even a bit on floor 2 just to conserve mana, but beyond floor 2 I didn't have much reason to use it over Nightmare Curse.

As for some of your other examples, I very much disagree with some of them. Solar Inscription is pretty bad and on GR+P generally takes more than 2 casts to even kill 1 target. Dragon's Breath is limited to 3 squares in front of you in a straight line compared to NC hitting anything within your LOS with direct targeting, and certainly requires more than 1 target to be hit per cast to get anything resembling decent mana efficiency out of it (which means at least 1 target is 1 square from being in melee range of you). Radiant Aura is nice, but literally requires you to be getting hit in melee in order to activate at all, which is not a great look for a mage to begin with.

 

There is inherent risk in using Necro spells /without/ significant benefits to back up those risks. Necro spells do roughly equivalent damage for lower mana costs in exchange for negative effects that more than outweight their benefits in the early game.

Necronomiconomics cannot be the best line for dealing damage in the early game because the damage is very comparable between spell trees that boast damaging spells, except you have to stop dealing damage due to the downsides! Mana Potions are a heck of a lot easier to get than Purity Potions so you cannot say they even out by popping a single potion.

I've played a Pure Fleshmancer and a Pure Necromancer, and I observe similar damage performances between Fleshbore and Nightmare Curses. Fleshbore does not have the CC element, but also does not have the drawnbacks, and is a far less resisted damage type than Nightmare Curses. Nightmare Curses is definitely good against a single enemy, but Fleshbore is almost as good and can be spammed against a crowd without restrictions.

I don't have any problems killing enemies with two shots of Solar Inscription, and have no idea why you do. Dragon's Breath causes a burning AOE effect at the end of its line which can damage a wide number of enemies that do not have to be in melee range. A favorite trick of mine at level 2 is to Dragons Breath + Throwing Buffalo or Psychokinetic Shove them back into the damage aura. I will concede that Radiant Aura requires you to be hit, but without Necrotic Resistance, an early game deathly hex is just like being hit and can only kill one enemy at best and once again runs into the Necrotic Resistance issue.

 

Perhaps the reason Solar Inscription is a two-shot kill for you is because you're not playing Going Rogue?

Dragon's Breath is nice, but I find its AoE burn damage somewhat low: most of the power is concentrated in the breath itself, which is rather limited in range, versatility and damage. As for Radiant Aura, I don't think the damage and stun always triggers, so it's not a reliable form of (counter) attack.

 

I didn't say Necronomiconomics was the best line for dealing damage in the early game at all. I don't even know where you got the idea, considering I actually wrote "It's definitely the hardest tree to use early game (especially on GR)". I've not been talking specifically about early game, because it isn't my only concern when choosing a skill. You seem a bit stuck on the point for some reason.

As for roughly equivalent damage, that's just false. Fleshbore does less base damage and scales at just under half the rate Nightmare Curse scales at with magic power (.15 versus .31) for an additional point of mana per cast. Even on floor 1 there's a discrepancy and it only grows as you continue on. That isn't to say it's a bad spell, I used it quite often on the first floor because the health penalty of Deathly Hex is quite a bit to handle at low level. But it is not roughly equivalent when the difference between them is one cast or two casts, or one cast and melee versus just one cast. Especially on GR+P when "one melee" early on has the potential for a counter + swing; if that happens and one of those crits it's definitely possible to die in one turn.

As for Solar Inscription, I took it for kicks on floor 5 of my Promethean Magic based run and four of them didn't kill one Swarmy. It's cheap mana-wise I guess but the damage is pretty awful. Dragon's Breath is okay for a rank 1 spell but again the damage is quite low for the mana unless you hit more than one target, and the burn AoE field is very weak.

Deathly Hex is really not a great spell, but the tree beyond that is quite good. They just need to lower the penalty of Deathly Hex significantly since it's the rank 1 spell. Nightmare Curse's penalty is quite a bit easier to manage even early game on floor 1/2 and becomes trivial by the time you hit floor 5.

One other thing to bear in mind - now that enemy ranged attacks are back to working again with the new patch, Nightmare Curse applying a CC and heavy damage targetable anywhere within LoS is quite a bit more powerful. In particular floor 3 will be a significantly different experience early on. Of course you can still play Promethean Magic and derp your way through the dungeon, but for any other build just waiting out enemies at range is not going to be as viable as it was if you aren't completely out of LoS.