Necro/? Advice and Build Request -- Help Please! :)

[Deadshot7]

I am a relatively newish player looking for some help on choosing a secondary for a Necro. And then I'd also like to request a build (one created more recently under the current meta) that has some survivability. No real restrictions except I'm not super rich yet, and I am a little bit averse to /Time, because I have many /Time toons already. Can a noob get some advice (even if just advice on secondary)!? Thanks! 😀

Edited May 10, 2020 by Deadshot7

[Seigmoraig]

Try with /Electric Affinity it's really an amazing set. Damage buff, resist, status prot, end recovery, 2 heals.
Or you can try with /Dark. It's really strong and fits thematically.  It gets lots of debuffs, a bit of def buff a great heal and an extra pet

[Coyote]

/Dark is very strong and fits thematically.

/Kin works well with melee-oriented pets.

/Rad colored dark is similar to /Dark... not as strong defensively, though.

/Thermal (color the flames dark or dark red) is pretty good

[Nightmarer 2]

For what is worth, I have a Dark/Nature in the late 30s and so far I am loving him to bits. Needs a bit of micro-management but it is worth the effort

 

 

[Deadshot7]

Thanks for the suggestions. I don't see how any of these don't lead to a lot of resummoning of dead pets. These all assume Tankerminding, right? Because I don't see any Defense. I couldn't find a guide, but I found a pretty thorough post. Other than Time, i don't see how any power set can Def cap its pets.

[Coyote]

2 hours ago, Deadshot7 said:

Thanks for the suggestions. I don't see how any of these don't lead to a lot of resummoning of dead pets. These all assume Tankerminding, right? Because I don't see any Defense. I couldn't find a guide, but I found a pretty thorough post. Other than Time, i don't see how any power set can Def cap its pets.

 

Dark and Rad don't add to Defense, they put out -ToHit on the enemies. Up to extreme levels in the case of Dark.

Thermal doesn't add to Defense, it adds to Resistance. The pets get hit, but for half damage.

Kinetics leads to a lot of resummoning of dead pets :p. But it's also very high damage at the later levels. You do have to make a Tankermind build in order to pull the attacks to you since it's easier to build for set defenses for yourself than to try to keep pets alive.

 

[Deadshot7]

4 minutes ago, Coyote said:

 

Dark and Rad don't add to Defense, they put out -ToHit on the enemies. Up to extreme levels in the case of Dark.

Thermal doesn't add to Defense, it adds to Resistance. The pets get hit, but for half damage.

Kinetics leads to a lot of resummoning of dead pets :p. But it's also very high damage at the later levels. You do have to make a Tankermind build in order to pull the attacks to you since it's easier to build for set defenses for yourself than to try to keep pets alive.

 

Right -- I have read up on the powersets. Please indulge me in some napkin math here.

 

Dark (which I think is superior to Rad because of it's larger Radius) gives roughly 22.5% Def. Maneuvers is about 6%. Shadowfall is another 8.5%. Call to Arms Enhancement is 5% roughly 42%. This is almost capped.

 

Cold -- Powerboosted Shields 25%, Arctic Fog 6%, Maneuvers 6%, Call to Arms 5% = 42% (and I presume people take Medicine with this)

 

Radiation -- Rad Infection 30% (small radius), Maneuvers 6%, Call to Arms 5% = 41%

 

So in short---about 10% of the time they take 100% S/L damage.

 

Thermal - Shields 24%, Expedient Reinforcement 10% = 34%

 

Nature - Sport Cloud 25%, Manuevers 6%, Call to Arms 5% = 36% Def and Wild Growth 18% (some down time) + Exp Reinf 10% = 28%; so get hit 15% of the time for 70% of the damage.

 

 

The Def based powers seem far better to me. The resist values seem too low to compared when comparing to how much less dmg gets through when Def capped (and why I thought tankerminding would be used with those). I suspect I am missing some key powers or synergies or set bonuses here. I used the non set IOs. 

[Coyote]

For MMs, it is certainly a truism that Defense mitigates more damage. BTW, it also mitigates more mezzing and debuffing.

However, what's forgotten is that incoming damage is NOT a problem. What is a problem, is pet health going to 0. So, if the henchmen take 50% of their health once in a while, you have a chance to heal them. If they take 100% of their health 1/4 as often... even though they take less damage overall, you have to resummon them more often.

So, a set with healing that depends on Resists like Thermal CAN do well because while your henchmen end up taking more damage, they don't necessarily die.

 

Lastly, the Resist-based sets have 3 IOs available (2x10% and 10/15% for normal/superior) while the Defense sets have 2 IOs available at 5% each. So with 3 IOs added to the Resist sets, they end up looking better than an example with just 1 IO for each. Your example has them at 34%, but adding 25% to that makes them look far more capable of surviving the hit so they can get healed.

 

The real weakness of Resist sets is actually mezzing and debuffing, not so much getting hammered by a lot more damage.

The real weakness of Defense sets is enemies with +ToHit. Most mobs don't have that, but Awakened, Resistance, sometimes Nemesis, can all stack +ToHit and start clobbering the Defense sets.

[Deadshot7]

Interesting. Now I kind of want to try Ninjas with Cold (anyone have any experience with this?--and how good/bad is medicine) and Thugs with Elec (throwing resist on top of pretty good Def pets--and having the resist set with Mez protection).

 

@Coyote Thanks for the education! And I'll look for those other IOs--they must be in a different category.

[Coyote]

3 hours ago, Deadshot7 said:

I'll look for those other IOs--they must be in a different category.

 

They are MM-specific, also called ATO (ArcheType Origin) Enhancements.

There is also one that gives AoE Defense which helps a lot against AoE-happy mobs.

 

Thugs/Electric should be a solid combination, with Thugs being very strong offensively, Electric strong defensively and its defensive abilities being added behind the Defenses from Thugs. I am running Robots/EA and it's pretty solid, but it should clearly be behind Thugs since Robots do far lower damage.

 

/Cold should be solid for Ninjas, but while I've never played them, rumors are that they're paper Tiger Ninjas. High damage until someone glares at them, then they die. /Cold may help enough, but be ready to resummon. A lot.

[Riverdusk]

4 hours ago, Deadshot7 said:

 

 

Cold -- Powerboosted Shields 25%, Arctic Fog 6%, Maneuvers 6%, Call to Arms 5% = 42% (and I presume people take Medicine with this)

 

 

By the way, you can't powerboost cold shields.  They have resistance to them so they can't be boosted.  

 

Don't forget about necro/sonic which is the way to go if you really want to go all in on resistance.   You can come JUST shy of capping resistances with it, especially so depending on your incarnate choices. 

 

Also, necro is chock full of tohit debuffs in their attacks, so they can be hard to hit just from their natural attacks.  It is a huge part of the whole purpose of the Lich, it is like having a pocket dark defender.  As for healing, with the 2nd upgrade your pets can all heal themselves, take life drain and you can heal yourself.  I haven't seen the need for medicine.  Also don't need to tankermind with it, my pets are tougher than I am really.

 

Can see it talked about here: 

 

 

Edited May 12, 2020 by Riverdusk

[War_L0ck]

1 hour ago, Riverdusk said:

By the way, you can't powerboost cold shields.  They have resistance to them so they can't be boosted.  

Maybe Mids is wrong--or I don't have a current version, but it raises Cold shields defense from 17.73 (3 Def IOs) to 25.2 with Power Boost activated.

 

As for Sonic, 24% Shields +18% Toggle + 35% Enhancements = 76% is sounds pretty good, but they're still taking 25% damage to heal up from their attacks--and pre-32 is probably rough.

Necro/Elec would have only have 18% Faraday + 35% Enhancements = 53% resist + Absorb Shield (Mids says 214.2%?) on short recharge and a heal on a short recharge.

 

My guess is Elec might be better (depending on how good absorbs are). But then again, Demons (have 26% Lethal Resist) and Thugs (T2/T3 Lethal and 2xManeuvers) would probably even fair better and do more damage.

Edited May 12, 2020 by War_L0ck

[Riverdusk]

4 minutes ago, War_L0ck said:

As for Sonic, 24% Shields +18% Toggle + 35% Enhancements = 76% is sounds pretty good, but they're still taking 25% damage to heal up from their attacks--and pre-32 is probably rough.

Necro/Elec would have only have 18% Faraday + 35% Enhancements = 53% resist + Absorb Shield (Mids says 214.2%?) on short recharge and a heal on a short recharge.

 

My guess is Elec might be better (depending hot good absorbs are). But then again, Demons (have 26% Lethal Resist) and Thugs (T2/T3 Lethal and 2xManeuvers) would probably even fair better and do more damage.

Up to level 35 with my necro/sonic and it has been pretty easy going, but I don't tend to get too crazy with the difficulty settings solo, yet anyway.  When I've teamed they've stayed alive a lot better than most other necro combo's I've tried.  Some of that probably because most teams have extra +def buffs and healing, not usually so much in the way of +res, which is a plus in this case.

 

Also have to consider what you can do incarnated out.  Take cardiac (which I'll probably take as endurance is the one thing that has been somewhat of an issue) which also gives resistance and you're up to about 81%.  Take barrier and you are at a minimum of all times of 86% and half the time you are at 88.5%.  Now we're talking the JUST shy I was thinking of.  Also tempted by rebirth too though, will have to see which works out better.   

 

Demons would be great as well no doubt, but for them sonic is actually overkill in some areas.  I still think thermal (or even nature) probably works out better with them.  I do particularly like this combo on necro because for both sonic and thermal secondaries there is a huge psi hole.  Zombies and grave knights just happen to have built in psi resistance (demons have none).  Psi resist won't be quite as high as the rest, but still respectable. 

[War_L0ck]

@RiverduskGood points. I think the bottom line for me--just on Necro for Sonic vs Elec--can someone (paging @Bopper or one of the Elec testers) tell me is the absorb shields you get better/worse/comparable to the 24% Thermal's Sonic's Shields (Faraday is roughly a wash to Thermal's Sonic's Toggle Resist). If they are comparable, I'd prefer the active playstyle of Elec, because I don't much like the primaries on most MMs. Elec gives you stuff to do (and has a heala and some other good stuff).

Edit -- Corrected where I put Thermal and meant Sonic.

Also, the absorb is a flat 200 health according to hero creation on the power info scaled to 50. So by my math, they are equal when 24% of damage = 200; so 200/ 0.24 = 833. If you take more than 833 damage per 10 to 14 seconds (depending on recharge), then Sonic is better.  It's probably a wash (give or take).

Edited May 12, 2020 by War_L0ck
Correction and added info

[Bopper]

49 minutes ago, War_L0ck said:

@RiverduskGood points. I think the bottom line for me--just on Necro for Sonic vs Elec--can someone (paging @Bopper or one of the Elec testers) tell me is the absorb shields you get better/worse/comparable to the 24% Thermal's Shields (Faraday is roughly a wash to Thermal's Toggle Resist). If they are comparable, I'd prefer the active playstyle of Elec, because I don't much like the primaries on most MMs. Elec gives you stuff to do (and has a heala and some other good stuff).

I don't have experience with MMs, but folks (like Monos King) express great appreciation for EA during Beta testing. It's like an MM-friendly kin, which is one description I heard. I personally don't know the numbers between Thermal and EA, but I could look it up. Sounds to me though, you would like to play it and for that reason I think you should play it.

[tjknight]

I'm personally a fan of Necro/Thermal, with the three pet resistance IOs slotted. The mix of buffs, debuffs, and strong healing works really well with Zombies. Especially, since thermal shields help with Zombies weakness to fire. I've also tried Necro/Nature and its similar in performance. 

 

That being said Necro/Dark is very good and is capable of soloing out of the box. Especially, when taking advantage of the to hit debuffs that get dished out. You basically end up with two dark mini-defenders in the Lich and Dark Servant. I played this on live before Incarnates, I can only imagine how powerful Necro/Dark is now. 

Edited May 12, 2020 by tjknight

[Riverdusk]

2 hours ago, War_L0ck said:

@RiverduskGood points. I think the bottom line for me--just on Necro for Sonic vs Elec--can someone (paging @Bopper or one of the Elec testers) tell me is the absorb shields you get better/worse/comparable to the 24% Thermal's Sonic's Shields (Faraday is roughly a wash to Thermal's Sonic's Toggle Resist). If they are comparable, I'd prefer the active playstyle of Elec, because I don't much like the primaries on most MMs. Elec gives you stuff to do (and has a heala and some other good stuff).

Edit -- Corrected where I put Thermal and meant Sonic.

Also, the absorb is a flat 200 health according to hero creation on the power info scaled to 50. So by my math, they are equal when 24% of damage = 200; so 200/ 0.24 = 833. If you take more than 833 damage per 10 to 14 seconds (depending on recharge), then Sonic is better.  It's probably a wash (give or take).

Yep, they are probably close enough I'd definitely go with which ever one you prefer from a feel standpoint (which is generally the most important thing anyway).  Sounds like elec for you.

[Carnifax]

I have a Necro / Nature and it's a fun combo. It is recharge intensive (since the 3 big buffs need recharge to head towards getting them perma) but there's room there for things like procs. Mostly I went for Nature originally for concept but it worked out well. Build in my sig. 

 

Whatever route you go try and stick the Overwhelming Force Chance for knockdown into your zombies. Slippery Zombie Puke never gets old. 

[Riverdusk]

10 hours ago, Carnifax said:

 

 

Whatever route you go try and stick the Overwhelming Force Chance for knockdown into your zombies. Slippery Zombie Puke never gets old. 

So true, that is such a great tip and I think what helped my lower level necro more than anything.  

[Force Redux]

Definitely going to recommend Necro/Dark. Oodles of control and debuffs. They generally behave well as far as AI. Compared to Demons, more single target focused, but they have more control for a trade-off in damage. The Knights take some good procs. Plus thematic as hell.  

[Deadshot7]

Thanks for all the replies. While mulling all of this over, I made a Thugs/EA--and it feels really good once I got those enhancements in it. As for Necro, I am going to make one tonight--and I'm leaning /Dark. I feel like /Sonic is the only resist set that offers enough--but I want a more interactive secondary. Therefore, I'm leaning /Dark and possibly /Nature (a little weaker defensively but interactive and solid healing and has Overgrowth). Can someone check my math? Also, Overwhelming Force in the Zombies sounds good (got to run some more Summer Blockbuster for it).

Dark

Defense: Darkest Night (25' radius) + 18%, Fearsome Stare + 18% + Shadow Fall 6%, + Maneuvers 4% = 46% -- Effectively Def Cap (before enhancements or pet)

Resist: Enhancements 35% (61% Smashing/Cold/Negative/Toxic/Psionic) **and then - 23% damage from Darkest Night --> 58% (84% S/C/N/T/P) effective reduction?

As for Fearsome Stare, does the enhancement that increases duration apply to the duration of the To Hit debuff? Does the effect stack if you cast it again before it expires (with some recharge)? And is -DMG essentially the same as resist (like -To Hit is like Defense)?

 

Nature

Defense: Spore Cloud (15' radius) 18% + Enhancements 10% + Maneuvers 4% = 32%

Resist: Wild Growth 18% + Enhancements 35% = 53% (79% to Smashing/Cold/Negative/Toxic/Psionic)

 

Final question -- What mob types do Smashing/Cold/Negative/Toxic/Psionic 🙂 -- seems like useful information ? In closing---Be excellent to each other...AND Party On!

Edited May 14, 2020 by Deadshot7

[Coyote]

-DMG is NOT the same thing as Resist, for several reasons:

1) They act separately. 50% -Damage and 50% Resist means that you take 25% damage, not 0%. Also, the cap on Resist is based on your Archetype (75% for MMs), while I believe that the floor on damage is 10% of base.

2) Debuffs like -Dmg are resisted by level differences. A +2 mob will only suffer 80% of the debuff's effects (thus, recheck your values for adding -ToHit and Defense together, if you're fighting higher level mobs).

3) It is due to a strange coding quirk in CoH, but Damage RESISTANCE resists Damage Debuffs. So a mob that has 50% Smashing Resistance will resist 50% of -Damage debuffs to its Smashing damage (but not to its Fire damage). So a mob that is both resistant to Fire and does mostly Fire damage is going to be hard to debuff its damage. Note, however, that this also means that debuffing a mob with -Resist... will then boost your -Damage debuffs upon it. So, recalculate your -Damage assuming that you put Tar Pit upon the target first.

 

Fearsome Stare: Fear enhancements will increase the duration of the Fear effect, and will have no effect upon the -ToHit portion. -ToHit enhancements will increase the strength of the -ToHit debuff, not its duration. It is generally considered most useful to slot it for -ToHit. I don't recall for sure, but I believe that it stacks.

[Kommon]

15 hours ago, Deadshot7 said:

Nature

Defense: Spore Cloud (15' radius) 18% + Enhancements 10% + Maneuvers 4% = 32%

Resist: Wild Growth 18% + Enhancements 35% = 53% (79% to Smashing/Cold/Negative/Toxic/Psionic)

/Nature is a solid power set.  Never forget about the 25% absorb shield from Wild Bastion, which can be enhanced to 50%, that lasts for 60 seconds and recharges in 240, effectively having the ability to make the permanent with enough recharge.

 

Other than knockback effects on pets and maybe mez effects on the player if they have no break frees or Clarion isn't available, /Nature can make a mastermind into a power house.  My Demons/Nature MM has pets with above 83% resistance to S/L/F/C/T and 53% to E/N/P while also giving the pets constant trickle healing, high regeneration, 14% defense to all but AoE and 29% to AoE defense (Pet IOs + maneuvers) plus the 18% debuff from Spore Cloud (which also debuffs damage...), and then capping it off with a 600 point absorb shield to the my MM and their pets.  With Zombies, the mastermind should be even more survivable with the Lich further debuffing and controlling everything.

 

On note about Wild Bastion:

I noticed that on my Demons/Nature MM the Absorb shields cast by players is directly related to the amount of hit points the casting player has.  Before my MM had all its IOs and accolades, I would cast a ~400 point absorb shield on everything.  After all my hit point bonuses were added and I had my accolades,  at around 152% hit points, I was then able to cast an absorb shield of 608 points.  I did some limited arena testing with power boosting Wild Bastion using Clarion.  While the absorb shield value displayed above affected allies' heads were higher, the actual shield still only absorbed around ~608 hit points.  This is might due to power boost only boosting the absorb shield value without boosting the 'Max Absorb' attribute on characters at the same time, like enhancing the power with heal enhancements does, but more testing is needed to confirm that hypothesis.

[Deadshot7]

@komman Interesting. I do think now I'd really like to play a /Nature -- I like the support aspect and the aesthetics.  How do you pump up the shield to 50%? Power Boost? I imagine getting the recharge down for everything isn't easy to do.

 

My worry is Necro only have no Lethal resist. That and bad Defense makes me worry they'll die a lot. Has anyone been able to make it work without Tankerminding? Or should I be looking at Beasts and Thugs could work. Fortify Pack and Enforcers Defense + Spore Cloud and enhancements get then near cap--and they have some Lethal Resist. I really don't want Demons, because they're big and suck on teams.

 

[Force Redux]

With IO slotting you can add +35% to all resistances. Factor in Nature's resist buff and then absorb, plus Defense IOs, then the -ToHit from Spore Cloud...

... And more debuffs from pets... You're quite safe.