Necro Mage help
I want to PVM only with this character.
skip to the bottom if you don't want a wall of text
my character is 90ish in Resist, Necro, SS, Eval, and Magery. It has focus and med at 100. 70s all resists and 100% lrc with +20 INT.
I can't seem to get this character going. The best I can do is put out 2 EV's, animate a few corpses, and just stay alive while my pets do everything. This is fairly effective, I don't run out of mana and can take down just about anything that doesn't auto dispel. But it doesn't feel at all like I'm getting the most out of this template.
I have a mage wep on and jewelry to boost my magery back up to 95, but I fizzle 90% of the time unless protection is on. So I end up running protection, wraith form, and just withering medium level spawns with my pets out. This is very good against medium level stuff, but I can't see myself doing anything more difficult than that. Painted caves is the hardest spawn I can camp.
When I try to solo something like a dragon that auto dispels, so it's all up to me to do damage, I use corpse skin, strangle, and spam poison strike/flamestrike while healing up. The damage is incredibly slow and requires a lot of running away to heal/cure poison. It takes so long like this that I find myself going back to camp medium spawns with EV's and getting no gains.
So I'm in a position where either I'm in town equpping a mage wep-29 skill and FC/FR 2/6 and spamming reveal on the ground, or I'm throwing out EV's with a 40% success chance and just standing there to loot weak enemies.
Is there something I can add to make this character more effective? Or a better playstyle I should adapt?
Poison skill? a weapon skill? anatomy/eval combo so I can equip a spellbook? a whole other discipline of casting?
I have only 300k gold to play with, but I'm willing to resell items from the shop to get more gold for gear if that's what it takes.
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TLDR; I want to be able to solo difficult monsters as a necro mage. What does it take to get this template to be at it's peak for PVM?
skip to the bottom if you don't want a wall of text
my character is 90ish in Resist, Necro, SS, Eval, and Magery. It has focus and med at 100. 70s all resists and 100% lrc with +20 INT.
I can't seem to get this character going. The best I can do is put out 2 EV's, animate a few corpses, and just stay alive while my pets do everything. This is fairly effective, I don't run out of mana and can take down just about anything that doesn't auto dispel. But it doesn't feel at all like I'm getting the most out of this template.
I have a mage wep on and jewelry to boost my magery back up to 95, but I fizzle 90% of the time unless protection is on. So I end up running protection, wraith form, and just withering medium level spawns with my pets out. This is very good against medium level stuff, but I can't see myself doing anything more difficult than that. Painted caves is the hardest spawn I can camp.
When I try to solo something like a dragon that auto dispels, so it's all up to me to do damage, I use corpse skin, strangle, and spam poison strike/flamestrike while healing up. The damage is incredibly slow and requires a lot of running away to heal/cure poison. It takes so long like this that I find myself going back to camp medium spawns with EV's and getting no gains.
So I'm in a position where either I'm in town equpping a mage wep-29 skill and FC/FR 2/6 and spamming reveal on the ground, or I'm throwing out EV's with a 40% success chance and just standing there to loot weak enemies.
Is there something I can add to make this character more effective? Or a better playstyle I should adapt?
Poison skill? a weapon skill? anatomy/eval combo so I can equip a spellbook? a whole other discipline of casting?
I have only 300k gold to play with, but I'm willing to resell items from the shop to get more gold for gear if that's what it takes.
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TLDR; I want to be able to solo difficult monsters as a necro mage. What does it take to get this template to be at it's peak for PVM?
Comments
First off, you are on the right track. Mages take some patience if you are training with them "the right way"
Suggestions:
1. Slayer books are your friend. Super slayers should be your priority. Scrapper's Compendium is good for basic hunting. A good super slayer book to get is from the newbie Inscription quest in New Haven. Start a character with 49 Inscription and 40+ Magery to get one quickly (Delete the character after you hand your book over if you need the toon spots...I think you still need to wait a week or so to do this)
2. SDI, SDI, SDI. and when you think you have enough, add more SDI. Against monsters, your spell damage increase stat has no cap. Use it. Cheap Artifacts like the Kelp Leggings, Kasa of Raj-In and Scrapper's Compendium are good starting points. Protector of the Battle-Mage is good too. Imbued 1/3 ring/bracelets with 10+ SDI will be somewhat expensive, but obtainable. It shouldn't be too much to get a 70s suit 100 lrc and 40 lmc using these artifacts. If you can Imbue these yourself, even better.
3. Movement is important. Learn to maneuver and know when you are going to fizzle and anticipate that. This will let you know when you use In Mani vs. In Vas Mani, and when you need to use Protection vs. when not to use it. AoE spells like Wither can indeed progress a spawn, just be mindful when you hit a lot of spellcasters or banana-throwing monkeys.
4. Certain spawns will be easier for you as a mage. EVs can mop up things, and let you summon undead...and certain spawns you can't. A good spot for you is in the Tomb of Kings, once you get your Undead Slayer book, you can go to the Undead Guardian room and Fireball/Explosion/Flamestrike those guys all day and get a decent amount of gold/items to unravel/etc. Corpse skin to make their fire resist lower, and a couple of Fireballs will end them.
5. Your mage weapon +Magery combo is a good place to be, however, it isn't needed a lot of the time. Slayer books will be more helpful in some places, but definitely have that option available. Protection helps with this because you can't be interrupted while it is on. Make sure your suit over caps Physical resist to compensate if you can.
I'm probably forgetting things, but hope this helps get the ball rolling for you.
120 mage
120 eval
120 weaving
120 spirit speak
120 necro
100 scribe
20 med
I run a 115+ SDI suit and I keep 120 taming/lore on soul stones.
Corpse/flamestrike and wither (or essence of wind) are great.