Skyforge Necromancer Basic Guide

Skyforge Necromancer Basic Guide by PiXtain

1. Introduction

I love to call my Necromancer the “Beastly Undead” and it was the first class I maxed. He has a very high survivability and is fun to play. If you are looking for a burst class, you need to keep looking, but it will help you with constant damage and a low death rate. This can help you in PvE and PvP as you can see. Instead of dying the Necro transforms into a Lich and can recover his HP.

It is a class where you pay with your life for some abilities and earn Lich Charge for it. The more Lich Charge the longer you can use the Lich form. The Beastly Undead tears his low life enemies apart with his finishing move Claws of Death.

2. Main Stats

You have a good boost of critical chance and critical damage:

• +24% critical chance for Hellfire from a blue Offhand [Picture]
• +70% critical chance and critical damage on plaque “Funeral Lament” [Picture]
• 100% critical chance from Rift of Horror + Torments of Hell [Picture]

Luck delivers additional critical damage and Strength an overall damage boost. Both of them are essential for the highest damage. Try to get 4 rings with both stats to assure a perfect boost of your ring slot rank. You will lose a big portion of your stats if you even have one ring with another stat. [Picture] Valor would help your damage with full life enemies, but is not that strong.

Luck > Strength > Valor > Spirit

3. Secondary Stats

The “Beastly Undead” <3 is a Luck dependent class and as such you need your critical chance as high as possible. In addition will Accuracy increase the influence of strength on your base damage and bring the minimum base damage closer to the maximum. The only thing better than those two is Crushing Blow. It will double your base damage with a certain percentage. In a nutshell: Your crits can crit :-)

Crushing Blow > Critical Chance > Accuracy

4. Chapels

The chapels follow out of the points above:

1. Critical Chance
2. Accuracy
3. Crushing Blow
4. Range Damage
5. Accuracy
6. Critical Chance
7. Crushing Blow
8. Solidity (Might increase depended on Stamina)

5. Symbols

The symbols for this class should improve the Main and Secondary Stats as well as the use of the many DoTs and crits. I would recommend the following for sure (PvP & PvE):

• Paladin Symbol: incoming DMG over 10% of your life makes you immune for 4 seconds with a 70 sec CD and will reset each fight! We LIKE!
• Lacerated Wounds: Extra DoT proportional to your Luck – we should have enough
• Warlock Symbol: Extra DoT ticking for 6 seconds
• Maximum Recoil: 10% extra critical damage for each symbol – Whoohooo
• Ultimate Strength: Effect on base damage increased by 10% for each symbol
• Under Cover of Darkness: 7% if char has not been targeted for 5 seconds

6. Abilities

• LMB: 1. Ghostly Strike -> 2. Plague Strike -> 3. Ritual Strike
• Hellfire: LMB > RMB
• Plague: LMB > LMB > RMB
• Cursed Land: Slows your enemies down by 5% and dying enemies turn into a maximum of 3 Carrions and fight for 10 seconds
• Wall of Pain: A wall moving from the Necro in direction of the target and doing dmg to enemies in its way – 125% more damage if multi hit
• Wall of Souls: Same as WoP but with less dmg but puts a debuff on the enemy reducing the DMG to the Necro by 28%
• Skull Throw: Does DMG to a target and has a 20% chance to be used instantly again
• Lich: Switches you into the Lich form.
• Shadow of the Past: Returns you to the position and the HP you had while casting in case you stay alive or are in Lich form
• Summoning Stance: Ghostly Vipers (tanky), Ghostly Mantide (AoE), Ghostly Carrion (single target)
• Shield of the Banished: Absorbs all summons and giving a 32% HP shield (life costing spells get subtracted of the shield first)
• Possession: Increasing damage of summons by 66%
• Rift of Horror: 4 second fear + dmg every 0.5 seconds for 15 sec
• Grave: Pulls selected and close by enemies 20 yards (1 yard = 0.9m) away from the Necro
• Ghostly Flow (Ulti): Reduces cooldown of Lich form by 6 seconds for every enemy hit

7. Lich Form

The Lich form is so important it got its own topic in my guide. If one uses the ability “Lich” the Necromancer will instantly switch into an immortal Lich form. Instead of dying the Necromancer also transforms into the Lich Form for a time depending on the Lich Charge (blue bar) you accumulated.

•    0 Lich Charge =>  5 sec Lich form
•  50 Lich Charge => 7.5 sec Lich form
• 100 Lich Charge => 10 sec Lich form

This form has a 30 seconds cooldown in which you can not use it. When you die during the cooldown is active you really die. The cooldown starts at the same time the Necro turns into a Lich in which you can not die. If you survive a period of max 25 seconds you can turn into a Lich again, which gives you a very high survivability.

During the Lich form the Necro is able to recover his health with different attacks:

• Sickening Nightmare: Fly dot on enemy stealing life for 10 sec
• Volley of Darkness: DMG + Life recovery proportional to released flies on target of SN
• Reaper’s Sweep: Recovers life proportional to hit targets and 10% for each kill

8. Talents

PvE

• Accelerated Decomposition
• Cyclone
• Funeral Lament (Vampirism if Boss without Adds)
• Fast Recovery
• Torments of Hell
• Veil of Death / Hungry Skulls (depending on which you use)
• Ritual Fire
• Beyond / Vampirism

PvP

• Accelerated Decomposition
• Ancient Sorcery
• Barrier
• Cyclone
• Torments of hell
• Hungry Skulls
• Cursed Viper
• Vampirism

9. Equip

Ideally one only equips blue/epic items for higher and more bonuses.
PvE

In PvE you normally use Ghostly Carrion, so you need the scythe with additional dmg for Carrion (65% in blue).

The bonus on the Offhand should be Hellfire (24% on blue).

The amulets should have Skull Throw and Plague on them.

The rings should be chosen by the criteria given by the Topics “Main Stats” and “Secondary Stats”.

Do not forget to switch the trophies appropriate to the mob you are fighting.

PvP

I would recommend a scythe with extra damage in Lich form (22% on blue). The Offhand can be played with the Shield of the Banished bonus (66% more and 40% longer on blue) or the Shadow of the past bonus (8 yard 3 sec stun on blue).

The amulets and Rings will be the same as in PvE for obvious damage reasons.

10. Gameplay

PvE

Single Target (Boss):

Open with Cursed Land -> Shadow of the Past -> Summon Carrion -> Skull Throws -> Rift of Horror -> Plague -> Hellfire

Keep Hellfire and Plague up and use Skull Throw as often as possible and fill with Ritual Strike.

When you enter Lich form use Sickening Nightmare two times followed by Volley of Darkness. After that do three times SN followed by VoD and repeat.

Use Ghostly Flow to reduce CD of Lich and get Lich charges if you really need it, because the CD is very long and there is no high dmg in it.

One gets the feeling for using the Lich form after playing it a while.

PvP

With Accelerated Decomposition the “Beastly Undead” is very strong against low life enemies. A paladin with less than 20% life and a full shield will still get 400% more dmg by Plague. Use this to your advantage to help your Team finishing off the low lifes.

Cursed land with the Talent Cyclone not only slows the enemies down, it also pulls them back to the center once every 12 to 20 seconds.

Torments of Hell will give you 100% critical chance on the targets influenced by Rift of Horror.

If you want to play Necro from the 2. or 3. row of Defence/Attack, then you should use Volley of Darkness otherwise Reaper’s Sweep will rip their rows apart if you get between a few enemies.

Hellfire is a nice skill in combination with Rift of Horror and a group of enemies.

Use Shadow of the Past when you know you will get dmg and play cat and mouse with your foes. Shadow of the Past will only port you on a place, not over a gap and neither up nor down to another position. You will get your life back and be trapped in the animation for a short time.

There are many ways to trick enemies and use the manyfold abilities of the Necromancer but because this class is very complicated one can only explain a few of them. I will try to improve this guide, pimp and complete it. If you have Questions, write me a message and I will research and add it.