necro primarry atribute good enough? (details inside)

[sadrobot]

i have a lvl 14 R/N up untill now he has been all marksman with a little winderness survival and blood magic for healing. well i went and changed around all of that just for fun and went to do some quests. I must say i liked it alot. i went all 10 deathmagic and then the rest into blook magic . it was so much fun. anyway i was wondering if the necro primary abbility good enough for me to remake a character as a necro main instead of secondary. also i think the answer is no but does experties effect any of my necro skills?

[Studio Ghibli]

No.

It's not.

[sadrobot]

so stick with my ranger?

[Xymbiant]

I love my Necro/Warrior. I am building it in Blood/Soul/Sword and I do a decent amount of damage for my level (11) and my Vampiric Touch/Gaze spells rape. This is how my attributes will be:

12 Blood Magic
12 Swordsmanship
2 Soul Reaping

This doesn't include Runes or whatever so...so far so good and I am loving it.

[Studio Ghibli]

Howdy,

I've a N/W as well, and I've found very little use in using Soul-Reaping besides as a temporary holding area for attribute points. I suppose it depends more on your play-style, but my build is..

.. I don't even use the Blood domain. Sword aside, my damage comes through mark of pain and necrotic transversal. I heal myself using soul feast and parasitic bond.

It's not that I think these are the best uses.

Just what I have available at the time.

Eventually, I -think- I'll be dropping curse down far enough where Mark of Pain does about 20, and turning those points into Death Domain to use Deathly Swarm, minions, and.. that.. heal where you eat your minion. :p

- edit -

Actually, I think mark of pain kicks ass. ;D

[Skyro]

I think it is only worth serious points if you are exploiting the bone minions + death nova + taste of death combo. I use it and rarely run out of mana with proper control.

[Tozen]

Soul reaping shouldn't be thought of as an attribute. Unlike the other primaries in the game, Soul Reaping has absolutely ZERO spells attached to it. (Even fast casting gets one!!!)

There have been many builds I've used where I've hit myself repeatedly on the head for choosing a necromancer because of the uselessness of Soul Reaping, and then there were others where I was praising myself because Soul Reaping was my character's savior.

It really is situational and comes down to how well you can use it. Treat Soul Reaping as what it really is, your ninth spell, and you'll be just fine. It is essentially a good way to recover energy without wasting one of your 8 skill slots on an energy regen move.

One last thing: Soul Reaping is about 4x more useful in PvE than in PvP. How effective it is in Player vs Player comes down to the maturity of play and the number of players. (Maturity meaning group playing skill... things in GvG are going to be dieing a lot faster than those 1v1 fights you encounter in the random team arenas.)

Then again, I've found a necromancer to mostly be a PvE class anyways... thus far I think all of my PvP builds could have been better with a necro as a secondary. But, because I like doing things the hard way, I'm sure that I'll eventually find a good combo! ^^

[kermitbuns]

Sad.... you can't see the beauty of the necro. The necro's soul reaping is worth it because the higher you train it the more energy you get back anytime something even remotely close to you dies. Energy is the lifeblood of a caster. It all depends on your playing style though. Thats why nobody can give you a definative answer, because it's all subjective. I recommend trying out a nec primary and see how you like it.

[Studio Ghibli]

Well, yes.

On the other hand, I have to sacrifice ability to get such a return in energy--and, so far, I really haven't had a time in my build where I'm, "O SNAP NO ENERGY."

- edit -

Oh.

"It all depends on your playing style."

What he said. ;)

[Grimdar]

Its tricky to be primary necro. People that say Necro's suck, are usually the ones who are too n00bie to understand how to put a good necro build together.
I picked Necro/Elem to dish out a LOT of damage in a short amount of time, concentrating on Fire skills and Blood Magic, getting nice health back while the enemies health drops fast.
Reached Lions Arch at lvl 10 using henchman.. no problems

[Epinephrine]

Soul reaping can be great. I brought mine up to 8 and we got aggroed by a few mobs and was sure we were going to go down, but it makes a big difference - as soon as they started dropping I had all the energy I needed to finish dropping them. An elementalist gets to start a fight off with a big burst; a necromancer can get that second wind thing which really helps. You net more energy as well than the elementalist does - he may start with 20-30 more than you do, but if you are in a prolonged fight with 6-8+ badguys even you are getting quite the pile of energy back. Neither is "better", each has uses. I wouldn't mind seeing some linked skills, but even as it is I wouldn't sneer at Soul Reaping, though as an N/E or E/N it's a tough call and it depends entirely on how you plan to play it. I know I like it, in PvE at least. For PvP I suspect it takes the right build (possibly team build) to make it work.