Spell-based Summoner-Necromancer Guide

[Mustang]

Preface​

Hi, I've noticed that many players are asking for summoner template. I've been playing with this build since the beginning of my journey on Outlands, so decided to write down my experiences. My build was okay even before buffs to spell damage, but after recent changes it's probably one of the most powerful builds out there - especially for players without 20+ links unlocked. If you notice any errors or typos please let me know, I'm not a native English speaker but I'll do my best!

Pros & Cons​

+ High burst damage, guaranteed looting rights almost every time
+ High damage on bosses due to damage over time effects
+ Decent party utility - healing, ressurecting, buffing
+ Decent survivability with Void armor
+ Very good in pvp scenarios without compromising pve damage
+ Flexible skill options - you can easily fit tracking, forensic eval, camping, wrestling and resisit etc.
- Mana refund is random, sometimes you can cast 10 flamestrikes in a row, sometimes only two and you run out of mana
- Requires lot of micromanagement to squeeze most of your DPS

Skill Choice​

New player template​

100 Magery
100 Meditation
100 Eval Int
100 Necromancy
100 Spirit Speak
100 Tracking
100 Forensic Eval

This is a great template for new players. If you need some money for training magery, you can just make a lumberjack and sell boards to other players. If you are new I recommend to spend first few hours gathering resources anyways. You have to buy Summoner's Tome, Wizard's Grimoire and activate your aspects - otherwise you will struggle even with very easy monsters.
Your summons are very tanky so you can start farming more powerful monsters from the very beginning. Tracking will help you avoid PK's and Forensic Eval will make you farm faster. You can sell hides or save them to make a tailor - so you generate gold mastery links by doing Society quests.

General farming template​

100 Magery
100 Meditation
100 Eval Int
120 Necromancy
80-120 Spirit Speak
You can spend the remaining 180-220 points between Tracking, Camping and Forensic Eval

This is basically the same build as the previous one, Getting scrolls for 120 Necromancy will be quite expensive but it's pretty much mandatory as it will increase your spells damage substantially. 80 Spirit Speak should be enough if you are already an established player, but if you feel that your summons are dying too often feel free to increase this skill up to 120. The choice of the last two skills is up to you. I do not recommend Inscription though. Don't get me wrong, it's an amazing skill for party play because you can buff your entire team and your summons - but all of these three skills will give you more gold per hour. Forensic will give you hides. You won't need to restock with Camping that often. You can avoid getting PK'ed with Tracking - your GPH is zero when you are dead

PvP/PvM Hybrid template
100 Magery
100 Mediatation
100 Eval int
120 Necromancy
100 Wrestling
100 Resisting Spells
100 Spirit Speak/Taste ID
It's possible to make a viable PvP template without sacrificing PvE damage potential. While it's not a perfectly optimized build for pvp, it's good enough to cast offensive spells and not to die too soon. Necromancy does not work in pvp but it grants extra 10% damage bonus. Spirit Speak variant is more suited for pve/pvp scenarios in regular dungeons. Taste ID variant will shine in upcoming faction dungeons as mounts will be enabled there. It will most likely be the most powerful template for farming and killing players from other factions. Accidentally it's also one of the most powerful templates for bossfights out there. Wrestling and resist will prevent your spells from being disrupted, while also increasing your damage and defense stats. With the recent eldtrich armor changes my guildmate can deal the same amount of damage as dexxers, while playing on a PvP ready template. One tip: you should consider picking a materal spellbook over magic one if you run wrestling

Optimized template for bossfights​

100 Magery
100 Meditation
100 Eval Int
120 Necromancy
120 Inscription
100 Taste Id
80 Spirit Speak

I recommend to put this template on the echo, as it won't be as effective for general farming. It will be expensive to get Inscription to 120 and both Echo cooldown upgrades, so you can treat this build as an end-game goal. You will need two bronze inscription links in order to not burn flamestrike scrolls. A scribe in your party is a force multiplier as they can buff other players and place runes. Taste Id is an amazing skill for killing bosses - it will boost your mana regen and give you a chance to resist bleeds/diseases which are very common during bossfights

Aspects​

Eldtrich Armor is the best aspect for pure damage after recent changes to maximum refund chance. Eldtrich book has always been the best book for spellcasting mages, so I recommend to go full eldtrich aspect route right now. You can also run void armor and eldtrich book combo, damage will be lower, experience gain will be slower as it will split over two aspect, but you gain a insane amount of survability that way. I like to run this combo while farming in the dungeons or on a boat. For orginized guild boss runs I prefer to run full eldritch in order to maximize dps.
Death aspect is the worse version of eldtrich aspect to be honest. It's not bad, but eldtrich is better and not that much more expensive

Links​

It's usually recommended to go full Spell Aspect Chance/Spell Aspect Modifier - I did the math and it's the best choice if you have 20 Gold links in your chain. However, before you can reach that level there are cheaper and viable alternatives
Meditation rate - this link is very underrated - increasing your mana regen does not only boost your damage, but also improve your ability to heal or ressurrect other players/re-summon your creatures
Necromancy - while the bonus might seem very small, any boost to necromancy will increase your damage substantially - for example, a bronze link will grant extra 1.315% spell damage as damage over time with Corpse Skin + Mind Rot combo (I'll explain it later). It'll also boost other necromancy skills and symbol capacity.
Spell damage - it's way worse than it seems as it scales additively - I will explain what does it mean in the next paragraph
Damage to Poisoned creatures - you would have to poison creatures by yourself or party with poisoners in order to benefit from this link - however I've included it as it grants multiplicative bonus, so it's couple times better than spell damage

Additive vs Multiplicative damage scaling​

It's very important to know how do the damage bonuses work. Most damage bonuses scale additively
For example - let's say that you have:
100 eval int - 50% increased spell damage
100 tracking - 25% increased spell damage
100 camping - 25% increased spell damage
Enemy is cursed - 25% increased spell damage
Evil omen with 120 necromancy - 24% increased spell damage
T14 aspect book - 21% increased spell damage

For example, you cast a spell which deal 100 damage if you don't have any bonuses
If you combine all of these bonuses you will deal:
100 * (1 + 0.5 + 0.25 + 0.25 + 0.25 + 0.24 + 0.21) = 100 * 2.7 = 270 damage

For example you want to upgrade your chain with 10 golden spell damage links. You will get another 22.5% increased spell damage, but with the all bonuses combined you will deal
100 * (1 + 0.5 + 0.25 + 0.25 + 0.25 + 0.24 + 0.21 + 0.225) = 100 * 2.925 = 292.5 damage
The difference between 292.5 and 270 damage is only 8.3%.
It means that if you have a lot of damage bonuses from different skills it's usually better to invest more on another sources of damage, such as mana regen or aspect effect chance

There are few bonuses which does stack multiplicatively though. The list includes server bonuses, bard buffs, Damage to X Creatures links, and Slayer Magic items (i'm not sure 100% here)
For example you want to upgrade your chain with 10 golden damage to poisoned creatures links. You will get 30% more damage against poisoned creatures
100 * (1 + 0.5 + 0.25 + 0.25 + 0.25 + 0.24 + 0.21) * 1.3 = 100 * 2.7 * 1.3 = 351 damage

Wizard's Grimoire Upgrades​

Most important upgrades:
Create Food - extra 25 mana every 60 seconds
Mana drain/vampire - you don't have to max this skill if your mana refund already exceeds 50% cap
Flamestrike - extra 35% damage as damage over time is way better than flat damage bonuses, even if some damage will be wasted while farming
Curse - spell damage bonus is always nice
Lightning - hinder is helpful, especially against these spectral marksmans which can one shot you
The rest is up to your personal preference:
Magic arrow/harm will help you finish monsters, Mind Blast upgrade is quite substantial, Greater Heal upgrade will keep your summons / friends / ship crewmates alive

Summoner's Tome Upgrades​

For farming I use an Earth Elemental and
a Lich (Necromancy Fire Elemental). For bossfights I use two Liches

Recommended Earth elemental upgrades:
Spirit Pact, Corporeal Tether, Grounded, Earthpull, Stonewall
It takes 2 minutes to reach full bonus from Stonewall buff, so you should make sure that your elemental is not dying so often. If the elemental HP goes lower than 66%, you should heal your summon so the Grounded bonus will start healing your elemental again

Recommended Fire elemental/Lich upgrades:
Spirit Pact, Corporeal Tether, Scorched Earth, Controlled Burn, Wildfire, Fanning the Flames
I prefer that my liches are more tanky so I don't have to resummon them that often on bosses, but you can take Glass Cannon or Unstable Sorcery upgrades if you want

Necromancy skills​

The most important thing - DO NOT use Auto-Renew checkbox - it will burn all your symbols very quickly. You have to control these abilities manually, so you can use spell damage bonuses while you are spellcasting, and regenerate your symbols while meditating. You can replace your Flamestrike keybind with a script which will cast Flamestrike and then try to trigger abilities - I recommend setting Corpse Skin and Mind Rot as these two are the most important.

Vengeful Spirit - use this skill to summon your Lich
Poison Strike - good skill as a finisher, you can resolve up to 8 disease ticks - use this skill while the mob is on low health and has couple of disease stacks on it
Evil Omen - this ability is cheap and Void Aspect will help with mitigating the drawback - feel free to use it when you are not expecting heavy aoe damage from monsters
Corpse Skin - your bread and butter, extra 30% as damage over time. Which is way better than other necromancy spell damage bonuses which stack additively
Vampiric Embrace - I don't use it anymore as liches lose maximum hp over time, so you have to resummon them eventually
Mind Rot - surprisingly, disease damage bonus adds up with Corpse Skin, so with 120 necromancy you will deal extra 54% damage as damage over time. Combined
with the Flamestrike upgrade you will deal extra 89% damage, which will melt bosses. That's why it's worth to use these abilities all the time, even on regular dungeon monsters
Blood Oath - I use it sometimes on bosses when I'm out of mana and I have a lot of symbols
Strangle - I do not recommend using this skill unless you go with necro armor - the damage bonus is tiny compared to Corpse Skin + Mind Rot
Wither - good for resummoning your elementals and liches/ when you are out of mana
Pain Spike - if you have a lot of symbols feel free to use this skill to finish the creatures in dungeons

I think that's all, if you do have some questions or ideas feel free to post it in this thread

 

[Azural]

This was a really helpful write-up as a first-time Necro, thanks for putting this together!