so, how about a spampire ?

[imperterritus]

Is anyone playing a spampire? I'm thinking something like:

120: Macing
100: Tactics, Spellweaving
100: Necromancy, Spirit Speak
100: Resist, Meditate

I know Spellweaving is very mana-intensive, but perhaps with the mana-regen available to a necro, plus 40% LMC armor, it wouldn't be a problem. I'd hope that the health-regen offered by Gift of Renewal would be a counter to the lack of parrying skill. Plus the extra AoE attacks and summoned pets, as well as Arcane Empowerment -- gosh!

Oh, does Arcane Empowerment buff necro spells and pets, or just Spellweaving ones?

Suggestions and info would be appreciated. Like, would an elf be the best race for this, due to their extra mana? OTOH, a human gets 20 points of JoaT Focus. I'm primarily PvM, but it would be useful to get some PvP feedback as well.

 

[TheLetterQ]

Where is the "sam" of sampire in that template?

Q?

 

[imperterritus]

Q, look again.

SPellweaving
 vAMPIRE

spampire !

 

[Thobius]

Wouldn't you be better with:

120: Mace
110: Bushido, Parry
100: Necro, Spellweaving, Tactics
80: Resist (+ Imbued Jewellery or Resilient Bracer) or Med

You'll increase your survivability with the additional parry and bushido and still have the perks of spell-weaving, though admittedly you'd need high Mana Regen. on your suit. Swap Resist for Med if you are willing to use trapped boxes to break para etc.

 

[northwoodschopper]

spampirai

 

[imperterritus]

Thobius, he'd definitely be a better tank with the bushido and parry. I already have something close to that, though, and would like to try something different. Having full strength necro (i.e., boosted by Spirit Speak) has got to be worth something.

So I made Weaver, an elf on Atlantic. He's done the various skill gain quests in New Haven, and will probably finish off there in the next day or so getting his Resisting Spells to 100. He's also done all but the last part of the Spellweaving quest. (250 logs on a new elf is tough. Had to get strength up to be able to even hold them.) I started him with 49 Spellweaving skill, so once he gets some help with the Exodus overseers and minions, he'll be able to cast a lot of the Spellweaving stuff right away. Well, once he gets scrolls.

 

[imperterritus]

spampirai

Schopper, I just got your joke, referring to Thobius' suggested build.

 

[northwoodschopper]

My experiences with Spellweaving, it's a mixed bag for warriors -- the high mana costs and the limited situational use makes most of these spells better for tamer or mage type characters. It does however give some interesting options to play with.

Gift of Renewal offers a way to heal animated dead followers, and is a good way to heal allured creatures. Not too useful as a permanent way to heal yourself due to the cooldown. Attunement isn't as signifigant in PvM as it is in PvP. It's better for ranged characters.

Nature's Fury is a decent summon for most PvM encounters as a distraction, as a necromancer, you'll have low karma so you'll want to summon imps over the fey, and the imps aren't as effective, though they have pack instinct I think. Dryad Allure can net an artic orge lord, who functions great as a tank for a 3-slot follower. Either of these pair well with animated dead too (especially an arctic ogre lord, a nature's fury or 2, and 3 animates)

Immolate weapon is mostly useless and a novelty which costs too much mana. I only found use for it very rarely in to stack more damage in conjunction to corpseskin.

Ethereal Voyage is a good replacement for honor to get back to your corpse or to sneak places unnoticed to creatures. definately useful.

Arcane Empowerment will boost necro animates, but it's kinda costly for little gain.

Most of the other spells won't be too useful for a warrior in PvM. the hardest part is getting a reliable high focus. a focus less than 3 is underwhelming, 4-5 gives the most bang for your buck so to speak. a level 6 focus is very hard to come by, and is outright obscene in power.

An elf will greatly benefit from the extra mana since these spells are all high mana compared to the other spell skills.

 

[Stupid Miner]

Is anyone playing a spampire? I'm thinking something like:

120: Macing
100: Tactics, Spellweaving
100: Necromancy, Spirit Speak
100: Resist, Meditate

Hm, well if I was using this template, I'd trash resist and probably meditation too. Use wraith form and items for mana, and toss chivalry or bushido or parry back on.
If you can afford a really nice suit with HCI, DCI and Mana Regen/LMC, +health, bushido would be significantly less useful.
Oh, and remember, if you're using a wraith, you want a really nice AI weapon. Against Peerless and other bosses, you can chain AI indefinitely.

Currently, to me, that template looks mostly like a mage with a supplemental melee ability.

 

[imperterritus]

Schopper and Miner,

Thanks for your insight. I can see why Miner says, "that template looks mostly like a mage with a supplemental melee ability." Until I get a feel for his mana needs, I won't be dropping Meditate; at least one of the Spellweaving spells costs 70 mana to use. Maybe in wraith form, with a shadow wisp to "heal" mana, it could be possible to drop the Med. So I'll consider stoning it later.

I'm also hesitant to have him drop Resisting Spells. Seems like as a necro, one glories in the ability to curse. Without taking Resist yourself, it's almost like being schizophrenic. One reason I like Resist is its poison mitigation, lacking in Necro unless in Vampire form. But Spellweaving's Gift of Renewal might be able to handle the poisoning problem. Another thing to think about ...

Heh, he hasn't even completed the Spellweaving quest yet, but it's nice to have some ideas going forward.

On Atlantic I'll have two Spellweavers, one on each of my two accounts. If I keep them within 20 Spellweaving points of each other, that's a built-in +1 on the Arcane Focus. I wonder if the guys with several accounts (for houses and BoD-gathering) self-boost their Spellweaving to the max (which I see as being a max of 5 in the circle, not 6).

 

[northwoodschopper]

gift of renewal can cure poison, but once it does, the effect is over, and you'll have to wait a seemingly long time to cast it again.

spirit speak can heal through poison, curse weapon can supply you with enough health to ignore poison, and even a moderate ammount of health regen can nullify some of the weaker poisons. i don't think any creature casts deadly/lethal poison, most casters can only cast the weakest poison. so if poisoning is your biggest concern for resisting spells, necros have a lot of options for dealing with the poison.

to replace meditation, you can use wraith form to leech mana in combat, and you can also use lich form to regenerate mana quickly too. the shadow wisp will help in odd intervals with mana.

i would at least add parry to the template if not both parry and bushido.

 

[imperterritus]

Weaver has done the initial Spellweaving quest, and he seems fairly robust, albeit his warrior skills are still in the 50s. I like the Immolating Weapon / Corpse Skin combo, and Nature's Fury (NF) seems to be a great distraction. It might not save me as much damage as Parry, but NF certainly cuts down on how much Weaver gets hit.

Once I build him up a little bit, I'll do both the Summon Fey and Summon Fiend quests. (I'll lock karma after the Summon Fey.) It will be interesting to see how the triple-summon of Fiend, NF, and Animate Dead work together.