Necromancer Class Guide (Classic - Prophecy of Ro)
This guide covers the Necromancer Class from Classic EQ all the way until the end of Prophecy of Ro. I consider PoR to be the end of the classic era of EQ, things start to change a lot around then with the game as the devs balance the classes and the content. One thing that stays consistent though, is Necromancers are amazing at soloing.
Before boxing became big in EQ the only way for you to reliably solo would be to play a class that was good at it. Necromancers are the class that everyone would always point to when people asked about the class best at soloing. As a Necromancer you'll typically solo mobs by kiting, this involves you snaring mob(s) and DoTing it up.
Once you have some mobs chasing you and they're all DoT'd up you can send your pet after one and start running. The best zones to do this in are fields where you have a lot of room, but you can make smaller spaces work if you're skilled or if you clear them out first. While we're on the topic of smaller spaces, Necromancers are even able to solo in maps like Chardok if they don't mind Charming.
Since Necromancers are a class known for controlling the dead, it's no surprise they get Charms that work on Undead. In Luclin you'll even get an Undead Dire Charm AA! Of course this will only be useful for one or two expansions before it gets phased out, but it's fun while it lasts - as they say.
My experience on a Necromancer during this era is moderate to high. When I was boxing on Ragefire/Lockjaw I played with a large army of Necros and Mages, I eventually downsized to 6 and kept the pet class until I quit around OoW.
Important Stats & Focus Effects
Attribute Points are the best way for you to increase the strength of your character until you start to cap them out at 255. This starts to happen for most players in Luclin with buffs and good gear. Necromancers will want to focus on Intelligence and Stamina at first. You may want a little bit of Strength too until you get 100% Weight Reduction bags. Your gear doesn't weigh a lot but if you want to loot anything, that weighs a lot.
Once you've maxed out your Int the only way for you to keep getting stronger (in a raid context) is to get Mana and Mana Regen. If you're someone who enjoys soloing I would recommend you get some AC and HP as well, this will allow you to take more hits.
Intelligence: Increases how much Mana you have; the amount of Mana you get per 1 Int scales as you level up.
Stamina: Gives you HP.
Agility: Increases AC.
Strength: Increases your weight and will let you carry more. Only matters until you get Weight Reduction Bags.
Once PoP is released you'll start to notice Heroic Stats on some pieces of gear. Hstats will provide you similar benefits as the regular stat but without you having to worry about the original stat caps. During this era of the game you'll want to focus primarily on Heroic Intelligence since that will give you more Mana and Mana Regen.
In this era of the game I don't think you can reach the soft cap for Heroic Int. Just incase I am wrong, you'll want your secondary Heroic Stats to be Heroic Stamina and Heroic Agility, both of these will give you a nice survivability boost. The only way you can increase your raid potential is with HInt, but as I said before, that is limited.
Heroic Stamina (HP/Mitigation): Increases HP, HP Regen, and HP Regen Cap. It also gives you some Mod2s which help with damage and stun mitigation.
Heroic Intelligence (MP/Regen): This increases your MP, Mana Regen and Max MP Regen Cap for Int Casters. You'll want to focus on this until you reach the soft cap then switch to survivability HStats.
Heroic Agility (AC/Mitigation): HAgility increases your mitigation mod2s, your AC, Dodge, Block, Parry and many other important mitigation skills. It also increases your Endurance, Endurance Regen and the potential Endurance Regen cap that you can reach. Not as important for a Cleric though.
Want more information about Heroic Stats and what they do/how they're beneficial? Curious what Mod2s are? Take a look at my Heroic Stats Guide for more information about what each stat does and why we're getting the ones that we're focusing on.
Important Focus Effects
You can start using Focus Effects in Luclin, there are a few important ones for you and they're the best while leveling up. At level 60 you should keep in mind that you'll have to sacrifice using Tower Gear to use many of these Focus items. This is a pretty big trade off and may not be worth it for some foci. Ultimately, it's your choice. Once Omens of War is released it becomes much easier to get the Foci you want on the gear that's best.
***Mana Preservation: Reduces the amount of Mana consumed with each cast.
***Pet Focus: Using this focus will buff the level of your pet, improving all of their stats. This focus is typically found on earrings but it can be on other pieces during these early eras too.
***Burning Affliction: Increases the damage of your DoT spells. Necros that plan to solo a lot by Kiting and Quadding will want this focus.
***Increased Detrimental Spell Duration: As the name suggests, this increases the duration of your detrimental spells. For a complete list of items that do this check out the Allakhazam Focus Page. I think most players will probably use the Jagged Gravestone of Affliction or a similar Aug from OoW to acheive this.
**Extended Range: Increases the range of your spells.
**Spell Haste: Reduces the cast time of your spells (makes your spells cast faster)
**Improved Damage: Increases the damage your DD spells do. This is very important if you plan to deal direct damage (with nukes).
*Extended Enhancement: Increases the duration of your buffs.
*Improved Dodge: Chance to Dodge is increased by a moderate amount. Pretty much gives you a bit more survivability.
*Improved Parry/Block: Chance to Parry and Block is increased by a moderate amount. More survivability.
Reagent Conservation: Decreases the chance of a reagent being consumed. It saves a minor amount of money and/or time.
Important Spells, Skills & AAs
Necromancers are very similar to a Mage in the sorts of spells you get. The main difference is that your pet(s) are undead and you deal damage by using DoTs instead of direct damage. You will get a few spells that deal direct damage like your life taps and a line of poison nukes one example being (Ancient Lifebane). Most of your DoT spells use Conjuration or Alteration, so I would recommend either of those for specialization.
Despite getting some DDs it's typically much more mana efficient for you to use your DoTs instead. The DoT line up you use will vary a bit depending on your gear and what you're doing. Sometimes you'll want to use 3 or 4 DoTs and other times you'll be using more. Let's look at your various DoT lines and explain a bit about them.
Snare: Devouring Darkness, Embracing Darkness, Desecrating Darkness. Probably your most important line of DoTs for soloing. It will slow movement speed & do a little damage.
Fire: Funeral Pyre of Kelador, Pyrocruor, Night Fire, Ignite Blood. This is your highest damage line of DoTs.
Disease: Asystole, Plague, Defoliation, Chaos Plague. Deals the least damage of all your DoTs but typically comes with STR/AC debuffs; also typically lasts the longest of your DoTs.
Poison: Blood of Thule, Corath Venom, Chaos Venom. Kind of a normal DoT, does good damage and has good length.
Health: Zevfeer's Theft of Vitae, Saryrn's Kiss, Bond of Death. Very weak DoT that steals health and gives it back to you.
Your snare DoT is mostly what makes soloing possible, it works just as good as a Druid or Ranger snare and it also deals damage. Aside from snare you also have Fear spells such as Unholy Voice and Dread of Night; these can be used to do something called Fear Kiting. This works much the same way as kiting normal targets except you'll also fear them to make them run or stand in place. If you're interested in learning more about how to solo check out the next section below.
Aside from your large pool of damage spells, you will get a few utility spells too! Dead Men Floating is one of the utility spells you're best known for since it's levitate, enduring breath and see invis all in one. You will also get a few random off the wall utility spells like Quivering Veil of Xarn which gives 18sec invuln. Manaskin which gives you a Rune and some Mana Regen.
One of my favorite esoteric early game Necro spell lines though is their Essence Emerald Spells. To create an EE you'll need to use Sacrifice on a character 45+; they will lose EXP as if they had died and you'll earn an EE. As you can imagine these are going to be hard to get as a result. They're however used in some of your better utility spells of this era.
To give you a few examples, Convergence is a 93 - 96% rez that consumes one EE. Infusion will instantly give your target 1000 Mana. You also have Trucidation which will give you a 1500 DD Lifetap. For the most part, I only ever used Convergence since EEs cost money... and time is money.
While we are speaking of rez, you also get spells that will allow you to summon any corpse to you. One such example is Conjure Corpse. You also get a self only succor called Levant, a normal invis and an IVU. There is more that I am missing, I am sure. Below you will find a list of your important spell lines that I didn't mention above.
Pet & Pet Buffs: You will always get a strong pet along with a line of buffs that will buff your pets AC, STR and Attack Speed.
Self Buffs: All Int Casters will get a set of shielding buffs like Arch Shielding, Shield of Maelin and Shield of the Arcane. Necros will get a new spell called Shadow Guard in OoW. They also get a powerful line of self only buffs which turn you into a Lich and gives you mana regen. One such example is Arch Lich.
Feign Death: Necromancers get a line of feign death spells which will let them afk anywhere for a long period of time and avoid death during wipes.
Death Rune: Starting in PoR almost every class gets an aura, you will get the Death Rune spell. It's not that great, but it stacks with everything else.
AAs
Necromancers get a ton of different clicky AAs, all of which I will be covering in this section. Starting in Luclin you will unlock Dead Mesmerization which is basically an AoE Undead Mez. You also get Dire Charm which will let you perma charm an Undead monster. Fear Storm is next, this is basically an AoE fear with an insanely long cooldown.
The next one is Flesh to Bone which will convert meat into Bone Chips. Honestly not that useful since you probably won't have an issue getting Bone Chips anyway. Our last Class AA in Luclin is Life Burn which is a massive DD. You probably want to be careful when using this because it will drop you to 25% health which puts you at top of agro for mobs you're fighting.
Under Archetype you will get Innate Invis to Undead which is basically an IVU AA clicky. Mass Group Buff will let you do an AoE group spell, like Dead Men Floating. You also get Mend Companion which will give you a very solid pet heal, our last two are Spell Casting Subtlety and Summon Corpse. Subtlety is important since our spells do a ton of threat, you may want to turn it off when you solo though otherwise your pet may out agro you. Summon Corpse is pretty self evident.
In PoP you'll get Wake the Dead which is a swarm pet cooldown, you'll want to use this during our burns. You also get Companion's Suspension which is more or less useless during this era. Added in Gates of Discord is Swarm of Decay which is another swarm pet AA, use it with the other one during burns.
Finally, when Omens of War unlocks you will get Death Peace which gives you an AA feign death. This will free up a spell slot. Once DoDh is added you will get Blood Magic which will consume health instead of mana. You also get Cloak of Shadows which is an AA invis as well as Silent Casting which becomes a core spell in your burn rotation.
How to Play: Necromancer Basics
Playing a Necromancer varies a lot depending on what you're doing. If you're soloing you'll be using slightly different spells than when you're grouping and the same is true if you're raiding. Actually, in the early eras of EQ Necros typically don't even DPS on raids. On raids you will be pumping mana into healers using spells like Sedulous Subversion or Mind Wrack.
When you're soloing you will want to use as many DoTs per target as needed (and whatever your mana will allow for). Snare is normally the first DoT you use since that slows them, after that it's a Fire DoT, Poison and then Disease. Alternatively, you could also use your two best Fire DoTs instead of using a Disease one since the Disease ones normally do less damage.
My best advice to you is try to get a measure of how much fire power is needed for what you're fighting. Some mobs will need 3 DoTs to fully take out and others will need 5. If you find yourself refreshing your DoTs too many times while fighting it may mean that you need to use more at the start.
In groups you're going to want to balance mana efficiency and doing damage. DoTs also are a bit inferior in groups because mobs may die while you have a lot of time left on your DoTs. Normally what I would advise is to use your two best DoTs then use your nukes. If there is no snare in the group you should use yours.
Just like when you solo, you'll have to figure out what works best for each group. Sometimes you may be able to combine your solo prowess in a group by kiting around extra adds as a form of CC too! My advice would be to download a parser for Eq like Gamparse or Kizant's Eq Log Parser and check your own DPS to learn what's best.
When it comes to raids you will outgrow the mana pump phase pretty quickly. Eventually you will become one of the best raid dps classes in the game, but to achieve this you will need to cycle through something like two dozen DoTs on the raid boss. This means constantly memming spells during a fight so that you can continue to cast new DoTs.
This is the reason that debuff slots are important, because Necromancers need to use a lot of them to do good damage. With multiple Necromancers on a raid, you'll start to use up all 72 debuff slots pretty quick.
Necromancer BiS Lists
I have BiS gear lists for this class which include both Tower and Pre-Tower BiS items. For those of you who care less about a BiS list and just want a list of good gear options, I have included that at the bottom of each page too.
Classic Necromancer BiS Gear List
Kunark Necromancer BiS Gear List
Velious Necromancer BiS Gear List
Luclin Necromancer BiS Gear List
PoP Necromancer BiS Gear List