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It's unlikely you will choose traditional Barbarian weaponry for your Necromancer - you'll find the Necromancer's wands, with their bonuses to Necromancer skills, much more rewarding. Without these powerful weapons, the Necromancer must rely on his summoned minions and bone and poison spells to fend off dangerous enemy monsters. TIP: Often a skill's biggest boost comes from its initial skill point. After that, the increase in potency becomes less and, in most cases, starts plateauing at its higher levels. Although you're definitely going to want to place additional points in particular skills to increase its power (whether its offensive, defensive or another power), consider placing at least one point into certain other skills that could prove useful to your character. Use a combination of bone armor (for defense) and teeth (for offense) early in the game. Combine your attacks with the amplify damage curse to increase the Necromancer's damage potential. Once you reach bone spear, though, use it exclusively as your primary attack; bone spear can pierce through enemy monsters, causing damage to multiple creatures. Bump bone spear up with any extra skill points and combine your offense with constant bone armor defense, amplify damage, and weaken. Place some skill points into corpse explosion to blow apart monster groups, especially useful when you aren't looking to use those corpses to raise additional minions. Applying Necromancer Skill Points You receive a skill point each time you advance a level (plus, you'll receive more from completing particular quests, such as the Den of Evil quest in Act I). It's important to plan your skill choices ahead. Some high-level skills have multiple prerequisites, meaning you must follow two paths down the tree to reach that particularly skill. Further, it can be a tough decision whether or not to add multiple points into a particular skill - and how many should you add? NOTE: Blizzard employees affectionately referred to the Necromancer as "The General" for his ability to command legions of skeletons, skeleton magi, golems, and revived monsters. There's no right or wrong choice in skill selection. What works for one player might seem foreign to someone else. A player might have success simply pouring points into raise skeleton and summoning more than a dozen skeletons to fight alongside him. Others may concentrate on poison and bone spells to improve the Necromancer's ability in combat. Still others may find curses the most useful area of the Necromancer's skill tree. Take time to analyze the Necromancer's skill tree and study its branches and prerequisites. Realize early that revive, a level 30 favorite, requires a dedication to the summoning branch of the skill tree - you must follow both the skeleton and golem path to reach revive. Planning ahead can keep you from wasting points in skills you might not use. These points are precious; wasting a point will gnaw at you like a wasted opportunity! Following is an example (with an emphasis on single-player) for an offensive character with 30 skill points, advancing up to and past level 30 (keep in mind, you will receive more from solving quests and, potentially, from magical items). NOTE: The plan presented below is one of thousands and thousands of potential combinations. For the most part, the plan is presented to illustrate the reasoning behind skill choices and isn't meant to be the only, the best, or even one of the best ways to spend your points. Everyone will have their personal preference - which was certainly the case around Blizzard's development offices where virtually every member of the QA team had their own personal style! Skeleton mastery - 3 points Raise skeleton - 3 points Teeth - 1 point Bone armor - 1 point Amplify damage - 1 point Poison dagger - 1 point Corpse explosion - 2 points Raise skeleton mage - 3 points Golem mastery - 1 point Clay golem - 1 point Blood golem - 1 point Bone spear - 3 points Weaken - 1 point Iron maiden - 3 points Iron golem - 3 points Summon resist - 1 point Revive - 1 point This Necromancer is concentrating on the summoning skills, selecting nearly every one. Skeleton mastery is important, especially if you put multiple points into raise skeleton and raise skeleton mage and if you plan on using revive upon reaching level 30. Skeleton mastery raises not only the health and damage of your skeletons, but also improves your revived monsters as well. Upon acquiring the revive skill, you'll reap the rewards of the improved skeleton mastery.
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