Necro mage help

Corwyn

Good evening everyone.  I have made a necro mage and need help figuring out a 7th skill:

Magery 110 (natural)
Inscription 100 (natural)
Evaluate Intelligence 110 (100 natural/10 wizard's curio)
Meditation 100 (natural)
Spirit Speak 110 (100 natural/10 ring)
Necromancy 109.6 (natural)

I was thinking three routes:

1) Pick up GM alchemy for potions (I like this idea the least)
2) Pick up Spellweaving
3) Pick up Mysticism and Focus while dropping Meditation (I have GM Mysticism and Focus on another character I can stone over to the necromage

I just do PVE for casual fun.  Thank you in advance for any advice you provide.

Pawain

Weaving works great.  Thunderstorm can kill crowds of weak things.  Inscription is not that powerful for 100 points.  Resist may work better for you.

Arnold7

Alchemy is nice to have but does not provide any benefit to spell casters.  Would put that on a crafter.  Would add resisting spells because you will be fighting a lot of spell casters or spell weaving.   Might consider dropping inscription and adding both skills. 

Some players like mystic mages but I found most of Mysticism damage spells duplicated what I already had and if you don’t have a 100% lrc suit the reagents can be hard to find.
I playa necro mage with spellweaving,  Wraith form and the death ray mastery spell are very effective when used together against enemy’s you can leech mana from.

Also, recommend raising majery and eval intel to 120 as soon as you can.  I use jewelry to raise both to 120 on my necro mage.
Good luck in the game.

Yoshi

"100 anat. 
Combined with your 110 eval this would give you equivalent to around 110 wrestling

this helps you evade melee attacks from monsters if you're holding a spell damage increase spell book" 

Norry

The formulae is (anat+eval+20)/2. So it would be 115

Yoshi

"formula"

AtomicBetty

if you dont want resist spells then I would drop both inscription and meditation for the spellweaving and mystic and focus

Merus

I have that template with Spellweaving and really enjoy it… I also keep taming/lore and mystic/focus on stones and can easily swap them for necro/ss depending on the encounter.  Along with my sampire this is probably one of my most played characters.

Seth

hmm, now I get ideas for mage hybrids

Magery 120
Eval Int 120
Meditation 120
Spellweaving 120

Remaining 2 can be either
1) Mystic/Focus
2) Necro/Spirit Speak
3) Taming/Lore
4) Music/Discord

Yoshi

“If you have mystic/focus, you don’t really require meditation, you then can go for 55lower mana cost
i have a PvM red char
120 magery
120 eval
107.5 mystic
120 focus
120 resisting spells
96.5 spellweaving
60 necro
24 spirit speak 

the 60 necro let’s me go into wraith form (the 24 spirit speak is for advanced PvP reasons not relevant for this thread)
I would like Anat/wrestling but can’t have everything.
I have killed players with this char too”

Corwyn

I'd like to ask a couple of serious questions. 

1) Is 120 magery really worth it?  With 110 I cast 7th circle spells 100% of the time and 8th circle spells 75% of the time.  I rarely cast 8th circle spells.

2) I have inscription because it gives a 10% bonus to spell damage.  Do mages really not use it to beef up their damage?  I have other mages that don't have inscription and I can see a difference in spell power.  (I have a bard mage, tamer mage and am also working on a separate mystic mage on a different account - of these only the mystic mage has inscription).

3) Right now I'm leaning towards spellweaving simply because that is one skill I have yet to play.  Is the quest to pick up the skill difficult?  Will I have to have help or could I solo it?  

Generally I play solo and just to relax.  For example, these last 2 weeks are the first time I've logged into the game in about 3 months - Broadsword/EA must love me for that .  The only group thing I do is the Wednesday net toss on Catskills.

*edit*  Also thank you all for your suggestions and comments.  They are greatly appreciated.

McDougle

With all the sdi gear i find the 100 inscription points best spent elsewhere 
I favor mystic/weaver/mage over necro/weaver/mage 
But both very effective 
Keep in mind some of the points raised in my sdi vs sampire damage thread and plan accordingly 

Arnold7

The hardest part of the spellweaving quest as I remember was finding the place.  If you take on the inhabitants one at a time it just takes a little while.  Others can tell you how to get there.  I don’t remember anymore.  You can buy most of the spells for the book.  Spellweaving is a good choice but if you play mostly solo remember that you need other spellweavers in the arcane circle with you to power up when you first log on. Sometime you will have to go on chat to find other spellweavers that will stand in the circle with you.
As for inscription recommend trying you template with inscription and then again with resist spells and see which setup you like best.  By the way you can train spellweaving the same way you trained your other casting skills.  Effort required is about the same.

Arnold7

Oh, as you become more skilled at fighting you will start using the eighth circle spells more and more.  At that point you will want the 120 Magery.  I have one mage at 120 and the other at 110 with jewelry that takes him to 120.  They both do pretty well.  Monitor vendor search when you get on.  Some players offer pretty good deals on th scrolls but they go fast.  I felt the same way about it when I started but am glad now that I took my mages to 120.  Also, consider the best magery mastery you can afford.  The death ray is very effective on stationary targets and the mana refill can make a huge difference when you really need it.

Yoshi

“Sorry I perhaps have muddied the water there too, I have 120 Margery for PvP reasons as my default weapon is a mage weapon so Margery is also weapon skill, you do not require 120 Margery for PvM at all

I agree with McDougle, 100 skill points is better spent elsewhere rather than inscription 

i recommend running the spellweaving mastery that way you only need to circle with one other player at Britain bank, and most decent guilds will give you access to a shared EJ account with a weaver that sits on the circle at Brit so you can always get a level 6 when you log on, also the mana shield mastery is nice”

Balin_Wingnut

Just real quick, not having resist spells on a mage means you are going to be super annoyed with any spellcasting creature as you will be poisoned and mana vamped / mana drained constantly.