Anyone have suggestions for a Battery Necro?

Shoe On Fire

New Member
I just started a necro ( Il Demon Hunter Il) and I'll be making him a battery later in game. My question is whether I should go secondary Monk so I can heal myself from the sacrifices and heal others a bit or if the party would benefit more from a N/E for wards...
 
I don't think Wards are gonna really be that important. Your battery Nec's job will be to provide power and energy, nothing else. So whatever secondary helps that, choose it. Halonic and DZWart both have Necs so maybe they can give you some better advice.
 
If you're gonna be a battery, hopefully you'd be far enough away from the action most of the time to avoid having to worry about healing yourself. Use Blood Offering and Well of Power. That's loads of energy regen, as well as HP regen for the warriors. I have a N/Mo and it works for me. I have healing breeze just in case I need to use it on myself, as well as the rez spell.
 
I just changed my Necro's secondary from Ranger to Monk. I will post my thoughts more extensively when I have a little more time. The hardest part about being a battery is the wait to acquire Well of Power and Blood is Power. Many thoughts I will type in later...........
 
I have no idea where you get the battery skills you need, but I can run you up to Sanctum Cay if you wanna buy the skills and then go back and beat the game with your necro. I might be able to pull of a run to droknar's if you need that...it got harder =/
 
Okay, just my thoughts on Battery Necro. Here are my attributes: 14 Blood magic. 9 Soul Reaping, 10 Healing Prayers. You can get 14 Blood magic without having to buy a major or superior rune and take the health hit (+1 blood magic scar pattern and minor rune of blood magic on a different piece of armor). If you are not going to put points in Soul Reaping then you ought to be something besides a Necro.

My Necro is at Thunderhead Keep. I played most of the game with Ranger secondary. I recently switched to Monk because I wanted to dabble with a minion master build and wanted Heal Area to heal my minions. IMO it is much easier and more beneficial to your party to be a blood necro than a minion master.......but thats just my opinion.

Well of Power is the best thing going if you are with a henchie group. Get a quick kill, use the corpse to get Well of Power going......stand in it to fight. Repeat when well expires. Blood is Power seems better to me when you go with real people.

At first Well of Power and Blood is Power seem to help your team equally. I believe the further in the game you go the better Blood is Power is in relation to Well of Power (both are elite skills so you can only have one of them equipped at a time).

Quantum recommends Blood Offering, but I have never had energy deficiency problems with my Necro even though I don't use Blood Offering. I get 9 energy every time a creature near me dies because of Soul Reaping and it is a rare occurence where I click to engage a skill and not have enough energy to do so.

Get a good staff. Mine has +14 energy and +29 health. My health total is 559 and my energy is 44. I refuse to use skills that require a -1 energy regen.

The Necro has +70 armor (second only to the Warrior). I am amazed at the damage my Necro can deal. My skill bar right now has Vampiric Gaze, Life Siphon (I never start a fight without casting this first), Shadow Strike (I cast this second while the enemies health is still high), Dark Pact, Well of Blood, Blood is Power, Heal Other (Monks are grateful for the help), Orision of Healing (better bang for ur energy buck than Healing Breeze IMO), and Rebirth.

Get Well of Blood going for yourself, If other party members use it that is just gravy. Well of Blood will restore health lost using Blood is Power.

Generally speaking, Monks have 4 arrows of energy regen. The max allowed is 10 arrows. Blood is Power gives 6 arrows (w/14 points in blood magic). This gives the Monks a full 10 arrow energy regen. ANTICIPATE the Monks energy need. If the fight is light and your party's health stays high u might not even need to cast it. If the fight is hot and heavy I try to stay away from the heaviest fighting, hit one Monk with BIP, hit other Monk with BIP and regen. When health is full I do it again. DO NOT wait until the fight is over to use BIP.

If you are taking damage from arrows or whatever........hit one Monk with BIP and dont do the other till u regen ur health. Any Monk worth his salt will heal you after you give him energy. DON'T COUNT ON IT. Always plan to heal yourself. If Monks heal you then you can recast BIP that much quicker.

If you use Healing Breeze or Troll Unguent, cast it on yourself BEFORE using BIP. Bang...Bang......Healing Breeze and BIP (in that order).

My staff is constantly dealing damage becaue it has no energy cost. By the way, I only regen eles energy when they ask for it and I usually tell them that at the start of the mission. I am glad to do this for eles but I do not try to anticipate like I do for Monks.

The Necro/Monk brings three things to the table that will help your party......Damage dealing, healing, and energy regeneration. Like a point guard reading the court the Necro must read the battlefield to determine which of the three will help his party the most.

Oh, by the way, when I want to find a skill I just type the name of the skill in my search engine online. I guarantee there will be a site on the first page of the search results that will tell you where to find that particular skill.

Hope this was some help.
 
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Wow Halonic. I will have to read through it again to see what else I can pick up. Lotta good advice especially the BiP advice. I will try to BiP sooner on our next run, I think I tend to focus on my hexes too much instead of watching the healers. Life Siphon is my first hit in most fights too. Vampiric Gaze is nice for a quick boost to health that also damages. I have been taking rez signet. The other 4 slots are for my secondary.

My secondary (I have completed the other profession's quests, but haven't changed) is a domination Mesmer. With our powderkeg tank, I would sometimes hit the warrior or ranger enemies with empathy before life siphon since I was taking no damage to regen. I also use Chaos storm, energy drain and power spike as an anti-caster set.

I have also used illusion mesmer as my secondary. I don't remember all the skills I used, but Illusion of Weakness was nice for the heal in reserve if you cast it before going into the fight. Conjure phantasm with the life siphon would give something like -8 health regen on your target.

I'll have to check out the inspiration line too, that could be good with a true battery. I know when I played with mostly battery/enchantment skills, fights tend to start out a little slow and only about 2 skills to use for attacks.
 
Did I say Blood Offering? I meant Blood Ritual. :) But then again BiP is probably the better choice anyhow. I also used to use Life Siphon as the 1st spell always, but I have since moved to using Faintheartedness as my 1st spell cast and don't even use Life Siphon anymore. Faintheartedness lasts for 29 seconds for me and enemies have -3 HP drain as well as only being able to attack at half-speed.
 
The only reason I don't use faintheartedness is that I don't have any points in Curses. If I used Curses I would sure use it.

I have been rethinking Well of Power vs. Blood is Power when I group with real people. When I go with henchies its a no-brainer that I take Well of Power. My question is to those of you that have been the recipients of Well of Power or Blood is Power........which do you like best? If you have other characters don't think with your Necro brain. Which skill had you rather the battery Necro in your party carry?

Right now I am site specific as far as which I carry. For example, I don't like to take Well of Power to Sorrow's Furnace because the bad guys make so many bad wells (well of suffering) that its hard to tell one from the other.

I don't like to take Well of Power to the Underworld because by the time you get a corpse the fighting is usually over. I hate using Well of Power AFTER the fighting is over. To me it needs to be used DURING the fighting to maximize its effectiveness.

I DO like to take Well of Power to the Fissure and the Thunderhead Keep mission.

Thoughts on Well of Power vs. Blood is Power?
 
Blood is Power.

Now, Well of Power is a fine elite, and warriors tend to eat it up because they're usually hovering in the vicinity of the corpse where the spell was struck. Warriors, however, can get along adequately without huge energy infusions - adrenaline skills help with that. Moreover, monks (like me) and other casters should be nowhere near the melee if they have any horse sense, so we are less likely to reap the benefits of WoP. I am aware enough to crowd into a well of power during a desperate fight, but that sometimes ends up drawing a crowd of monsters in on me.

Instead, I like knowing that BiP is out there, and because I favor the more economical 5-energy-cost healing spells - Word of Healing, Dwayna's Kiss, and Orison of Healing are all mainstays for me - I can easily turn around and heal the necro in a jif. Blood Ritual is a decent enough substitute, but WiP gives up to 13 more energy than BR, and for this monk that means 2 extra healing spells (with high healing and divine favor, a spell like Word of Healing can heal for as much as 200 hp, so we're talking up to a 500 hp difference).

In short, I tend to favor necros who carry Blood is Power and then carry Well of Blood to support the warriors.
 
No problem. I'll be looking forward to hearing how some of your "test drives" with different skill sets works out.
 
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