Lineage 2/The Player Character (PC) Classes & Character Guides/Necromancer

Necromancer are offensive spellcasters specializing into dark magic. They can use all weapons and wear robes.

Necromancers have a broad palette of curses, especially Curse Gloom to lower the magic resistance of the victim, Curse Discord to make one enemy attack another, Curse Fear to make them flee, Curse Poison for damage over time, and the powerful Anchor spell which paralyzes the victim, as well as Forget to make victims unaware of previous attacks, plus quite a number of Debuffs. Against other spellcasters, they have the special spell Silence. In PvP, the standard nuker spell Sleep is of course always of importance.

As nukers, they get the spells Vampiric Claw, which does as much damage as most other nuker spells (except the Spellhowlers Shadow Flare and the Spellsingers Solar Flare) and heals the caster from it, but has a high mana cost, and Death Spike, which costs very little mana, but consumes a cursed bone which one can't buy in the shop and is only dropped sometimes by certain undead opponents, and later Curse Death Link, which has again a low mp cost, but most importantly gets stronger the lower the hp of the caster drops. They can also use Corpse Burst to let fallen victims explode and damage bystanders. Their other mass spells are Mass Slow and Poisonous Cloud.

They can also do some summoning (Summon Corrupted Man for 90% xp loss, Summon Reanimated Man for 30% xp loss), but they lack all the spells to support their summons any further, like healing and buffing, so they will have to rely on their lowlevel spells alone to strengthen the summon (which means only a bit of healing, a totally useless recharge, and Windwalk 1), and directly help their summon with their debuff magic. They can however use Transfer Pain to move damage made on them into their summon.

Skills
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Development
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Equipment
If one wants to optimize the Necromancer for PvP, which is an important issue for many people playing the necromancer, equipment that gives attack speed is to be prefered over equipment that gives M.Atk. M.Atk would however make your spells, especially your curses, harder to resist, which is also very desireable.

On c-grade the Homunculus Sword with Acumen and the Sword of Whispering Death with Magic Power are the main options. Another choice would be a Ghoul Staff with Mana Up for everyday adventuring. The robes are either Karmian with a good boost of castspeed, or Demon Robe Set, which both lowers your hitpoints and slows your spellcasting, but also gives you a big bonus on damage dealt.

On b-grade the Sword of Valhalla with Acumen as well as the Staff of Evil Spirit, no good SA, are the main options. Avadon Robe would be not at all stylish but very functional, alternatively the Zubei Robe gives you more M.Atk with for the small price of a little slower MP Regeneration (just unequip one armor part of it while resting). An uber stylish, unfortunately not functional choice would be the Hell Knife, the knife with the highest M.Atk of all of them (except s-grade and the Hero Weapon) and since C4 also magical SAs (but not great ones).

On a-grade the Sword of Miracles with Acumen beats all concurrence. Alternatively the same weapon with Magic Power is considerable. The robes are much harder to choose. As Stun is a weak point of all nukers, Majestic Robe would be a good choice. Much more stylish would be the DC Robe, which gives a higher spellcasting bonus and also comes with an own shield for the sword. For everyday adventuring, a nightmare robe to maximize damage output would be good, especially if you have a +4 Wit/-4 Men Symbol and have enough spellcasting speed anyway.

As for all nukers, a +4 Con, -4 Str Symbol is an obvious choice. For PvP a +4 Wit, -4 Men Symbol is recommentable; the malus to spell disruption is countered by the large bonus to spellcasting speed, while the malus to M.Def has to be compensated through better jewelry.

Adventuring
Like all nukers, Necromancers are loners. This is even more the case because Necromancers deal so much damage, so tanks have a hard time to keep the mobs from attacking the necromancer.

Necromancers are played a lot differently than other nukers. As their best damage spell requires their hitpoints to be low, they constantly keep them at that level and rebalance this for every mob they meet again - some hit not very hard and allow lower levels, others hit a lot.

The summon and Transfer Pain can make the hitpoint game easier, but of course that costs crystals.

Player vs Player
The Necromancer class has received a lot of notoriety for being one of the strongest classes when it comes to PVP. Many Lineage II players have been clamoring for the class to weakened. However, changes have yet to be seen. There are rumors that, in C5, the Transfer Pain skill will only move 35% of the damage on the Necromancer into the summon, instead of 70% like for the other summoners.

In PVP the Necromancer will always first prioritize disabling his or her opponent with either a slow, or sleep spell. Sleep being the prefered spell because most of the Necro's essential anti - player debuffs will not cause the target to wake up. Once the Necromancer is in a presumably good distance, out of range if possible, the aforementioned debuffs will be put into place. The first priority debuff is Curse: Gloom which greatly lowers the opponent's magical defense. And more importantly, hardly ever misses. (More likely, given a small level difference between opponents - never misses at all.) The next is Silence to prevent the target from casting spells or using skills. And then for against archers Curse: Weakness, against melee fighters Anchor. And after that it's just an elementary succession of damage spells like death spike or vampiric claw.

In high speed PVP battles, normally against other nukers, (especially the fast casting spellsinger) some Necromancers prefer just using Curse: Gloom and bombarding the enemy for a quick victory. However, Necromancers rarely do this as they will not risk their spells being canceled.

The opponent that Necromancers really should beware of are Spellhowlers. Being slower casters, but dealing more damage, they get the Silence skill just like Necromancers.

Previous Comment
The necromancer is a very diverse class. Not only are they capable of high level sumon magic like their Warlock counterparts, but have the hardest hitting spell available for human caster classes. Many consider the class a middle ground between a Spellhowler and the previously stated Warlock for their use of dark magic and summon skills.

As well as the types of magic already included, the necro has access to more curses of any other class, including the ability to push hate between mobs, paralyzing enemy PC's and a variaty of DOTs (Damage over Time). Not a specialized class but rather one with options.