Which skills to choose for a necro?

[buffysboy]

Which skills to choose for a necro?

I like playing necro and right now im confused about which skills are better than the rest, my main unit is going to be skellies, with vamps, dragons and liches as main support; ghosts, wraith, zombies as tanks. The hero is probably going to be mostly magic based since I'd love to cast puppet master, frenzy, raise undead and the mass curses, I think they are most powerful.

My strategy in the final battle is first to cast mindcontrol or frenzy of enemy's main unit, then throw as many curses at them to make them ineffective and then outlast them by keep raising undead. With spirit link you probably wont run out of mana ever.

I don't expect my main hero to be above lvl 25 because a normal game doesnt last that long.

So these are probably the must have skills:

Skill: Lvl:
Ultimate necromancy 3
Skeleton archer 4
Eternal Servitude 5
Expert Dark Magic 8
Master of Curse 9
Master of Mind 10
Spirit Link 11
Expert Summoning Magic 14
Master of Life 15

Note: If you choose vladermia you can get there by lvl 13. Banshee Howl might not be needed because you can cast mass curses with dark magic specialty by only spending half of your initiative and some of them are more powerful.

Question: And here is my delima, which skills should i choose now?
I'm thinking of 4 main skills here of which I can maximum choose 3 and realistically only 2 to perfect since I only have (25-15=) 10 skills points to spare.
Logistics, Defense, Attack, Sorcery.

Since Im using skellies as my main unit, it would probably be wise to choose Defense and Attack, since vitality and battle frenzy are probably a must have:

Skill: Lvl:
Basic Defense 16
Vitality 17
Protection 18
Evasion 19
Basic Attack 20
Archery 21
Battle Frenzy 22
(Tactics) 23 (Note: so i can block liches)

Question: Is chilling bones, cold steel a waste of skill points?
I heard they are severely nerfed and the points could be spent more effectively elsewhere.

Question: Is this hero the best way to go for BIG, 5-6 hours long map?

I like sorcery because with that you can cast spells like no tomorrow, together with mastery of dark magic you are probably unstoppable, like only spending 20% of your initiative cast a mass curse spell. And you get boneward, too.

Logisics makes you travel really fast so you can catch enemy heroes and destroy them, you get death march, too.

Personally I think luck is not that good for undead because there are other skills that are a lot better, as mentioned above.

So what do you guys think?

Dark Magic, Summon Magic, Attack, Defense and some Sorcery? or
Dark, summon, attack, defense and some logistic?

[Alamar]

Which skills to choose for a necro?

I like playing necro and right now im confused about which skills are better than the rest, my main unit is going to be skellies, with vamps, dragons and liches as main support; ghosts, wraith, zombies as tanks. The hero is probably going to be mostly magic based since I'd love to cast puppet master, frenzy, raise undead and the mass curses, I think they are most powerful.

In general the best SKILLS are Necromancy, Summoning Magic, Dark Magic and Offense.

My strategy in the final battle is first to cast mindcontrol or frenzy of enemy's main unit, then throw as many curses at them to make them ineffective and then outlast them by keep raising undead. With spirit link you probably wont run out of mana ever.

Puppet Master and Frenzy [to me] don't seem as powerful as I expected. The intiative of controlled units is low and the damage seems to be a lot lower than expected. IMHO you might be better off just casting Mass Slow, Mass Confusion, Mass Weakness, etc.

I don't expect my main hero to be above lvl 25 because a normal game doesnt last that long.

If it's you against the AI on an XL map you can get your hero into the 20s. If you play against humans then getting the Necro past 20 will be hard.

So these are probably the must have skills:

Skill: Lvl:
Ultimate necromancy 3
Skeleton archer 4
Eternal Servitude 5
Expert Dark Magic 8
Master of Curse 9
Master of Mind 10
Spirit Link 11
Expert Summoning Magic 14
Master of Life 15

You can't get "ultimate" Necromancy per se. You'll have to settle for Expert unless you find an artifact to boost Necromancy. If you get all of those skills by L15 or so you'll be OK ... just don't fall in love with the exact order that you get your skills!!!! Take Dark Magic, Summoning, and Offense the first chance you get!!!

Question: And here is my delima, which skills should i choose now?
I'm thinking of 4 main skills here of which I can maximum choose 3 and realistically only 2 to perfect since I only have (25-15=) 10 skills points to spare.
Logistics, Defense, Attack, Sorcery.

CHOOSE OFFENSE!!!!! The bonus that you get from Archery and Frenzy will be plenty. Tactics might be nice also.

Logistics is nice on an XL map if you get it early enough to matter. IMHO it's not really worth taking it very late in the game.

Since Im using skellies as my main unit, it would probably be wise to choose Defense and Attack, since vitality and battle frenzy are probably a must have:

Skill: Lvl:
Basic Defense 16
Vitality 17
Protection 18
Evasion 19
Basic Attack 20
Archery 21
Battle Frenzy 22
(Tactics) 23 (Note: so i can block liches)

Please note that if you want Vitality, Protection, and Evasion [3 Defense skills] then you also need to raise your Defense skill to expert!!!!

Question: Is chilling bones, cold steel a waste of skill points?
I heard they are severely nerfed and the points could be spent more effectively elsewhere.

I'm not sure about Chilling Bones but Cold Steel got nerfed hard. Basically instead of doing 1 pt per skeleton unmodified [too strong] Now it works like this .... for roughly every 11 points of damage that you inflict upon a troop 1 point of cold damage is added as bonus damage. You're better off taking something else.

Question: Is this hero the best way to go for BIG, 5-6 hours long map?

Maybe??? .... If you're playing against the AI and can survive the first month or so then you're probably OK. Against a human you have to take into consideration that they will try to rush you simply to avoid you getting the unbeatable stack of skeles and uber skills.

If you target L25 then against the AI I recommend:

1. Start with a Hero that doesn't come with wasted skills. Preferable something like Necromancy, Dark Magic, and/or Summoning as the starting skill set. Other skills are probably wasted for you.

2. Get to Expert Necromancy ASAP. If you are offered an improvement on Necromancy take it UNLESS you are offered Basic Offense, Basic Logistics, or Raise Skeletal Archer.

3. In general max out your magic skills and take the good abilities also.

4. For most XL games go for what's below:

Expert Necromancy -- 4 skill points
Raise Skeletal Archer
Eternal Servitude
Expert Summoning -- 5 skill points
Master of Life
Master of Conjuration
Expert Dark Magic -- 6 skill points
Master of Curses
Master of Mind
Spirit Link
Advanced Offense --- 4 skill points
Archery
Battle Frenzy
Expert Logistics [if offered early] 3 points

The above total of 22 or so skill points. Depending on your choice of hero and luck with Witch skill bonuses you'll be L20 or so when you get this.

As for your last few levels just whatever is fine. Defense has some nice looking abilities so if you're not offered Logistics early this it would be reasonable to look here. Other skills like Luck would be fine and even something like Enlightenment offered very late might not be bad if you only have 1 or 2 levels ups left [an extra hand full of atrribute points may not be too bad].

[Wolfshanze]

Well, if it's in the campaign with Markal, you can only choose 4 skills, since Markal comes with Necromancy and Leadership (grrrr ) right off the bat.

When I went through the campaign, I hand-picked the 4 skills I wanted to go with Markal... I ended up with the following extra 4 skills:

Summoning Magic - for raise dead bonuses and that nice phoenix
Dark Magic - mass slow, curse of the netherworld, etc
Sorcery - a must for a spellcaster
Logistics - do more with your hero every turn... a must

If I could trade-in the worthless "Leadership" that Markal starts with, I'd trade it in for "Attack".

If you really like Attack (which is good for a necro), you might consider dropping Dark Magic or maybe Logistics (but I have a hard time ever turning away logistics).

[Alamar]

Well, if it's in the campaign with Markal, you can only choose 4 skills, since Markal comes with Necromancy and Leadership (grrrr ) right off the bat.

When I went through the campaign, I hand-picked the 4 skills I wanted to go with Markal... I ended up with the following extra 4 skills:

Summoning Magic - for raise dead bonuses and that nice phoenix
Dark Magic - mass slow, curse of the netherworld, etc
Sorcery - a must for a spellcaster
Logistics - do more with your hero every turn... a must

If I could trade-in the worthless "Leadership" that Markal starts with, I'd trade it in for "Attack".

If you really like Attack (which is good for a necro), you might consider dropping Dark Magic or maybe Logistics (but I have a hard time ever turning away logistics).

I can't argue with this logic.

I would advise if you want to fling spells like mad to take Sorcery. If you only use spells for a curse or two and the rest for Raise Dead I would suggest something else.

[cromulantkeith]

Always take basic offense or basic logistics as early as possible. They are both rarely offered, and are both essential to a good necro.

Basic offense: battle frenzy literally doubles the power of your archers. Your archers is 90% of a necro's power. Sure later liches can do equivalent damage, but boosting your archers power early means that you can start farming the map a week early, and will have 200+ archers than a worse necro.

Battle frenzy doubles your archer stack. It's probably the single best thing a necro can get (IMO).

Basic logistics: Besides it's exceptional use for most heros, necros get the additional use form logistics in that most of our fighting army actually comes from farming the map. Since we get most of our early power from raised skeletons, logistics is paramount for building a massive archer army early, and reaching critical mass.

Necromancy of course is the single best thing to level in terms of effectiveness, but since you can get that almost every level-up, if one of the above skills are offered, snap them up. If they aren't, grab necromancy.


You can get raise skeletal archers later. For the first week or two, you can hire a hero in town to upgrade your skeletons in town. Also, make sure you build that necromancy building ASAP.


The key to playing a necro is getting EARLY power so that you can start that snowball effect as soon as humanly (or undeadly) possible.

Necromancy accomplishes that goal the most effective at early levels, and the next most effective is battle frenzy.

[Raspyn]

Buffysboy, I pretty much have the same thoughts when it comes to building a necro hero.

Max out necromancy, dark magic and summoning magic - including all of the subskills you listed.

To pick the next 3 is a difficult choice.

At the top, I would probably list attack. Battle frenzy and archery are too good to pass up. If you can get this plus that artifact that also adds another +1 damage to your armies... oh man.

The next 2 to pick are a bit tricker, since logistics defense and sorcery are all so good.

Out of these 3, I probably would favor logistics and defense the most, as sorcery doesn't seem terribly needed when you are casting mass-effect half-initiative spells. Sorcery comes in handy when you have to cast raise-dead several times... but with expert defense your troops should be taking 30% less damage anyways, making it that much easier to keep your troops up.