Necro Mystic Template

[Lord Taliesin]

I've got an old mage I'm planning to revamp with the intention of doing champ spawns and wanted to see what folks thought. The plan is:
120 Mage
120 Necro
120 Spirit Speak
120 Mystic
120 Focus
120 Weaving
I figure drop an RC or Reaper, get in wraith form and cast area spells. With necro masteries I could use conduit to corpse skin a group and cast wild fire and also use wither/thunderstorm/cyclone. Word of death for the champ.
Suit-wise since I have no med I'd shoot for 55 lmc and 25+ MR as well as packing on sdi. I plan to use the new -0 mage weapon and 45 dci.
Thoughts on build or tactics? Is it worth trying to get skills on jewels and squeeze 50 or so meditation? I've never really gotten good with necro so ideas on how to best use it would be great too.

 

[EliteEmpire]

I dunno, mastery wise its a tough decision, Reaper is super good, with a level 6 focus? Imo its better for champs because the reaper can word of death too, which is phenominal. On the flip side, your necro mastery is good for spreading debuffs as you said. I think the real decision here is do you play on a shard that has people doing champs - or - do you have a party to group with? If yes, id go the spellweaving route and get more damage with the reaper and register more damage to the boss. If no? Then Id probably go with the route that focuses on killing the monsters that lead to the boss, such as AOE abilities.

Template wise youre solid, your suit ideas sound solid. The only thing Id worry about is SDI. Youll have to switch between the staff and a book via macro to get the defense you need and your SDI to a respectable level at the same time. Balakai is super good, but since you dont run med i might actually suggest Staff of Magi if you dont plan on using potions. FC1 and 0 mage weapon is comparable to Balakai weight wise, and makes a little more sense if you dont use potions. If you dont use potions (whether it be because of a offhand or whatever) then actually Balakai makes no sense and all the mods are a little wasted. Balakai is actually more of a PVP weapon for supernova alch mages.

Hope I helped!

 

[EliteEmpire]

I actually just did some thinking about my own post. LOL. The Balakai staff actually allows use of hepheastus since its a 1 hander, what was i even thinking lol! excellet idea to use the staff, nevermind about the magi idea. Otherwise youre set man, good work.

 

[Merlin]

I'm not the biggest fan of Necro... especially if you going to be doing spawns that are heavier with casters (undead, arachnid, demon, etc.)... you're going to want atleast some resist on there. Also, with all those spell casting skills, probably going to want as high mana pool as possible and might want to consider adding meditation.

SW Masteries are very good. I would suggest going after those first and foremost.

 

[Lord Taliesin]

I plan to use the shaman staff so that I can use healing stone, possibly pots as well. With regards to mana I figure 150 int plus 20 mana from elf plus another 30ish from armor should be a big enough pool and I'll be using wraith form. I hadn't considered resist, I'll have cleansing wind to remove debuffs. I have a dexxer that's great for spawning already but figured I'd try a caster for something different. Thanks for the feedback so far.

 

[Lord GOD(GOD)]

It lacks synergy to me.

For a start, what are you actually going to hit a Champ with to get it low enough to WOD? The direct damage of Myst and Necro are really weak and poor damage type choices. Necro works best with Mage/Eval because you can debuff fire resist then hit it with Flame Strike/Omen combos, or Chain Lightning/Omen. Between the Mage and Necro spells you cover all the damage types that a monster will be weakest against.

Mysticism is kind of a two trick pony if you put aside the Healing. Stone Form and Colossus. If you're in Wraith leeching mana you aren't in Stone Form so that's out, and without Resist you'll be Parra/Mana Vamp/Poisoned a lot. Colossus and Reaper are both 5 slots so you can only have one or the other, Reaper is easily Dispelled though the WOD is good at the end but you need to get to the end first.

Conduit is 'ok' but the real powerhouse in Mastery's is Command Undead, you can 'Tame' two Skeletal Dragons that heal themselves by attacking, and they do very high damage. The only downside to them is they attack each other when they do area spells, if you're guilded they'll damage each other and start fighting, if you're not guilded they'll start fighting (as they're usually standing on the same tile) but wont damage each other. This isn't a problem if you're good with your commands, have a Stop/Follow macro to break them up and start again. You don't really need 120 Necro/SS for this, 100 is fine. (There's also Revenant Lions, Rotting Corpses etc...)

I think you would do infinitely better with a Necro/Mage, which can easily be built with 120 Resist and another skill such as Inscription/Anatomy/Poisoning or Weaving.

 

[railshot]

This is the exact template I am running on my caster. The suit is built for SDI and MR. I did plenty of turtle spawns with it. I don't miss the meditation. I agree that Magery is in many ways superior to both Necro and Myst, and I can switch the skills around with soulstones if needed. But in my experience, what you have is the most optimal template. Yes, Corpse skin plus FS is nice, but either the wraith form or RC alone outweigh the benefits of Magery's direct damage in my book.
I usually fly around (on my Garg) or use wraith when low on mana. I rarely use Stone forms and rely on orange petals and enchanted apples. I am not sure how relatively uber this template is but it can do a lot of area damage (with proper herding) to the low level mobs, and no slouch with the boss. Your RC with Arcane Empowerment will out damage any GD out there. You can spam Spell Plague to help the process along. And ofc it's game over once it's time for WoD.