How to necro?!

[Taiku]

Level 8 currently on my Iksar necro, I've got no idea how to play still, I can take stuff by just kind of bashing it with my pet and trying to tank when I can but my pet can easily out DPS me, and seemingly out tank and out regen me, so leveling solo is very slow.

In groups all I really do is send pet, lifetap/dark empathy, I feel like a weird off-healer.

Im sure this changes once I get certain spells and such but I couldn't find anywhere that was actually informative on what spells to use, how to use them, what I should be doing as a necro, the only guides I see are WHERE to farm.

I just hope these early levels are supposed to be difficult because I'm not really enjoying the feeling of this class so far, my snare is too short of duration and doesn't slow enough to get much of a gap between me and the mob, and if it resists then I'm taking a few big hits to the face while I try to recast, fear costs a big chunk of my mana pool, my DoTs aren't terribly effective, and the aggro from the DoTs is just insane (I know it's bugged on this server). So the only way I can see to level properly solo is to just have my pet do all the work and take the 50% xp cut.

Any help would be very appreciated! Also what are some cheap robes that are black or at least some other color than pink, this pink newbie robe is hurting my eyes already [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Taiku]

There is a necro how to post in this forum section but it's for 20+ with spells I don't have yet, was more wondering about 8-20 ^^

[Taiku]

Seems just after posting this I found a good rhythm for pulling blues to my pet with lvl 1 lifetap, letting him take the 50% xp, and saving mana to nuke the hell out of undead for full XP between easy blue pulls, any advice would still be beneficial but I think I have a good pace going finally

[kaos057]

Darkness, poison, fear, send pet. When mob is feared dots do more damage. As far as a cheap robe, flowing black robe is a good starter robe for necro since it has stamina.

[kaos057]

Also make sure you train a point in meditate if you haven't already...

[Estu]

At that level I found that it was fastest to just have the pet take 50% of the EXP. Summon a max-level pet, send it at a monster, keep the pet healed, throw in DoTs later in the fight if you have extra mana, and keep Dark Pact up at all times. That plows through monsters pretty quickly, enough so that it's faster than trying to do 50% of the damage to the monster (i.e. you can get more than two kills using this method for each kill that you get spending a lot of mana to get full EXP and then medding up).

[filthyphil]

Fear, Darkness, Dots, sit down & wait for about 20% damage to be done, refresh fear & darkness if needed, send pet.

[Taiku]

How do you summon a "max level" pet? Is it just based on what level you are when you cast it? Or do I have to recast it over and over hoping to get a higher level one?

[Splorf22]

Necros have three really strong abilities:

1) Undead charm (from 24)
2) Heal with dispell (from 44)
3) DoTs for efficient damage (when solo)
3b) Undead nukes for reasonable efficiency

The more of these you are doing, the more effective you'll be.

[Estu]

Originally Posted by Taiku [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

How do you summon a "max level" pet? Is it just based on what level you are when you cast it? Or do I have to recast it over and over hoping to get a higher level one?

The latter. You can check what level it is by conning it and by checking its max hit. A higher level pet will be much more effective. The wiki has info on their level ranges.