Don't get me wrong, I've tried all nukers, and I love my necro when it comes to the long haul grind, but, the OP said it would be his 1st toon in L2. That in and of itself may not be the wisest choice for a newcomer to have.
Even in VoS, I'm having a hard time breaking Even on adena/mat drops vs adena consumed to xp.
SH for a pve centric, more diverse playstyle. Mind you, although being the most powerful, they have naturally low con, low def, and lower cast speed (lowest of all the mages).
I say they're about 50/50. Go Necromancer if you want transfer pain (aka 100% more hp)... or go Spellhowler if you want to exp faster and cheaper.
I'm not talking about the times you've had all those full item drops. That was some major luck on your part. I'm talking about regular Adena and Mats(Stem, Thread, etc) drops. :p
I'm not talking about the times you've had all those full item drops. That was some major luck on your part. I'm talking about regular Adena and Mats(Stem, Thread, etc) drops.
well as most ppl know my necro went 40-75 in under 6 weeks
the total profit earned (and its total profit because when i started i had 1 million adena and 1 day worth of shots) was a little over 360 million of that almost 250 mil was from full drops
it does not include quest items which at the time would have been valued at 200+ million (more like 50ish now :( )
90% of my necros playstyle was just useing death spike to 2 hit mobs and it did involve the occasional dorf or dagger in party being a PUB
i CDLed from 52-56 and then again at 74-75, i never really seen the need to CDL more than that but if that isnt enough cash for you CDL from 52-80 is more than feasible
Thanks for your replies. I think i will go for the SH because i do not care so much about PvP. As you said its cheaper to xp the SH and as its my first char i will choose him.
Thanks Again
I chose SpellHowler on my second sub and started with 10 mil cash. Sold my +7homu/Acu for 35 and bought +3 Spirit Eye/Acu (=+0Som/Acu) for 80 mil, and now at 64 I have 100 mil cash. Therefore I made about 125mil already from 40 to 64.
Spellhowler have more nuking skills than Necro and 2 of them are over-hit, consequently each and every mob I kill is an over-hit...which gives-you about 25% more XP and this is why you level faster.
Spellhowler basically gets the same nukes & skills the Necro has, Death Spike, Curse Death Link, Corpse Life Drain, Vampiric Claws, but you get 2 more and one that is much more powerful.
Casting speed is slower than other races it's true, but I solo VoS only using regular magic haste pots that you can buy in the shops. I have a cheap +4Wit -5Men tat and an Acu weapon to help with the casting speed. I also get a lot of potion for casting speed which help....with Acu buffs casting speed is 602.
Necros also have Gloom, a grind servitor (15%), a PvP servitor (90%) and cursed man. They have transfer pain, they have nukes, they have debuffs/curses, they have life drains, body to mind, silence, etc.
It depends on what your playstyle is.
What the Necro loses in MAtk to the sh, he gains in cast speed (which matters until high levels). Then again, the SH runs alot faster :(
i chose SH - cheaper, faster leveling, more nukes. slow casting can by solved by right choice of equip. i can solo (lvl62, VoS) with selfbufs and potions from regular shop and make money from adena drops.
although i am aware i will probably suck at pvp.. once :)
This can be solved later when you grow up and get rich ;)
It's a question of equipment, casting speed robes + acumen weapon, and in group pvp there will be at least one buffer (boxed or not).
But necros are little bit on top, with summon + transfer pain + para + faster casting.
OP: Do you plan to level fastest, or level fast and pwn in pvp?
how did i do what CDL? or what is CDL?
CDL is a skill that increases your damage the lower your hp is
if i remeber right CDLing at FP required me to have some ungodly amount of hp something like 100
all i know was if i got hit once 90% of the time i was dead
I have yet to reach a level where I didn't have 300K+ SP more than I needed to get every skill at that level (just dinged 56, had 2mil 336k SP, and all skills were just 2mil). I have every skill up to this level - now I'm sure I won't since skills will come every 2 levels. But leveling fast with overhit will significantly degrade your SP gain.
As far as not caring about PvP, good luck. PvP is kinda part of the game, and sooner or later you will get to the point where you just have to do it to survive/keep your hunting area/etc. Good luck finding a clan that wants someone who refuses/doesn't care about PvP. All those people are playing EQ1/WoW/EQ2/etc.
The SH is considerably cheaper to level, but I doubt that you would have trouble leveling a necro (i.e. running out of cash) if you stick to good hunting areas and do all the good money quests - esp since u made 125 mil in B Grade with the SH. My roomate just started a necro, he's been playing for 3 weeks, and has not run out of cash since he got-and has been using-Death Spike. At B Grade you can stop using death spike and goto Cemetary (or other places) and use Curse Death Link, if you choose, on mobs that will give you more expeirence than you would get using 2x DS on mobs you can drop in average equipment. At that time, the cost of leveling a Necro drops considerably.
Please consider Necros don't get Death Spike until 44, and at 52, you can [if you choose] stop using it. You can actually use Blaze up to 47/48 on good XP mobs without failures. 4 levels of Death Spike isn't even one set of supplies (1 DS/1 CB). That's about 800k adena to get through those levels, if even that.
Also, learn to use the grind servitors, and you can level just as fast as an SH, plus save some cash, if you use him correctly. I was soloing a room in Apostate with Cursed Man and SE buffs last night, no downtime and the XP owned even VoS.
I don't like mage classes with little to no melee class defense. Mages get killed too fast and Melee/archers hit way too hard to stand there trying to channel nukes their probably buffed against with slow cast speed. I can almost get anchor off before an SH gets off 1 nuke in Avadon + Acumen Weapon + Magic Haste Potion. I can get Gloom + Silence off before their silence even finishes casting in that setup. And, that's if Cursed man doesn't have them stunned by then. And when they're hitting me, their damage is nerfed 30% cause of TP (more at higher levels).
I also see more SH's running around than Necros - and more SH subs. Having a hard time deciding which one is the FoTM class.
The only reason to NOT go Necro is fear of nerfs in later chronicles, but that's just my opinion.
A common misconception: Overhitting gets you less SP.
Correct: Overhitting gets you extra exp, but not extra SP. The same thing happens when you group, by the way. :)
What does this mean? It means that someone who doesn't overhit will be level 56 with all skills, someone who does might be 57 with all 56 skills and little SP to spare. Which is better? Durh!
There is also, of course, absolutely no need to learn all the skills, especially nukers have a lot of junk that simply does not need upgrading to save valueable SP. Just as an example - buying all 56 skills on a SpS costs 1992k SP. Buying only what's useful for PvE (Mastery Passives, Sleep, Clear Mind, Curse Fear, Fast Spell Casting, Sleep Cloud, Solar Flare, Surrender, Hydroblast, Higher Mana Gain, Frostwall, Aura Flare) costs only 1266k. If you then strip it down to a barebones version (Weapon Mastery, Clear Mind, Curse Fear, Fast Spell Casting, Solar Flare, Surrender, Hydroblast, Higher Mana Gain, Frost Wall) you come all the way down to 815k.
Not wasting SP on junk clearly saves more SP than not overhitting - if only because not overhitting really doesn't save you any SP at all.
Good luck finding a clan that wants someone who refuses/doesn't care about PvP.
There are no neutral clan. It's just a rumour! Close your eyes and you can't see them.
Buying only what's useful for PvE (Mastery Passives, Sleep, Clear Mind, Curse Fear, Fast Spell Casting, Sleep Cloud, Solar Flare, Surrender, Hydroblast, Higher Mana Gain, Frostwall, Aura Flare)
Sleep and sleeping cloud are not worth SP and neither is Aura Flare. If you really need a faster nuke, then buy Aura Bolt and give Aura flare a pass. (Aura bolt is useful for finishing a fight when they have a tiny amount of HP left and it stays mana efficient and isn't nerfed in case you end up in PvP.
If you then strip it down to a barebones version (Weapon Mastery, Clear Mind, Curse Fear, Fast Spell Casting, Solar Flare, Surrender, Hydroblast, Higher Mana Gain, Frost Wall) you come all the way down to 815k.
If you are getting Frost wall, then buy Aqua splash as well.
Both AoEs are on a timer and standing around picking your fine elven nose while your party dies isn't fun.
MalineII you don't make any sense. Overhit nets you less SP per XP becuase you gain XP/SP at an unproportional rate with OverHit. You basically disagreed and agreed with me in the same statement.
I never said not overhitting saved SP. The common sense of the situation is that if you use overhit to level faster, your SP increases at a rate not proportional to your XP gain, and thus when you get into higher levels when skills cost somewhat insane amounts you will get into a situation where you will have to eat some SP scrolls because of it. Save your SP by being another cookie-cutter nuker who does things 100% the way every other cookie-cutter nuker does (I like to get my skills cause they all have uses and I like to see how I can use certain skills in certain situations - i.e. my own experiences) but when you get past 40 levels of overhitting you will not be able to get all your "needed skills after leveling" because your XP and SP ratio for your leveling up to that point will be extremely unproportional.
Maybe you died more than some other nukers who leveled fast that way and had some to spare by the time you go to mid-high 60s, but considering how cheap those useless skills are and how often they come up in the skill list, I don't see how I would be have been able to level this far and get even my usefull skills with an overhit spell, considering how much XP the mobs I grind on give.
It's not a misconception, it's a fact. If you level 40 - 80 overhitting, you will "lose" (in a matter of speaking) SP because your XP:SP gain ratio will not be proportional. Semantics doesn't change that.
As far as saving XP when NOT overhitting; that's just more semantics.
Who wants to level riskily with CDL when you can overhit and make up for it with regular spells and high HP...?
Level > All remember? And half those skills are useless anyways :P
Do both. I used CDL and Shadow Flare in Hot Springs for awesome XP. XP > SP and you will be better off getting levels as fast as possible. SP is no prob. I don't know where ppl get the issue with SP. If you PvP you have no SP issues unless you always use brez. I use Shadow Flare almost always for final hit and at 76 I got my vortex and at 77 I'll have enough SP for Wind Vortex. There are many useless skills. If you don't waste your SP on them you'll be just fine.
If you are getting Frost wall, then buy Aqua splash as well.
No aqua splash at 56 I think? That's why it's not on the list.
And yes, the first list contained "remotely possibly kind of usually not" useful spells since the stripped list seemed so low. :p
ETA: As I said, all overhitting does is get you a higher level with slightly more skills. If you want to buy all your skills, that's your own loss - but really, not all of them are needed (especially not for PvE). You migh save yourself a few million skipping the ones you don't need.
The mobs in Hot Springs are 72+ and are 2X HP mobs that stun. At level 74 you can CDL in Hot Springs, maybe even earlier with good gear. You need to be able to 3-shot the mobs. With DC robes, Acumen3 potion, acumen SA, WIT+4/5, and Hot Springs Malaria level 4 your cast speed is plenty fast to use CDL. This area is awesome XP and great income. You'll easily net > 1m / hr in just adena. I shoot mobs with 2 CDL and 1 Shadow Flare and get about 20-22k xp per mob.
Excuse my ignorance, but what is 'CDL'? I just started playing last week and am working towards a Spellhowler.
CDL is Curse Death Link.
It is an attack skill that is fairly weak when you are at full health. But, the lower your health bat the more powerful it is.
Many people like to level this way because it means you use less shots as well as less mana per kill.
It also has its obvious downsides. A mob gets too close to you and hits you once, you are down. To complicate matters, players used to have a chance to drop items on death. This is no longer an issue because this has been removed from the game (except for Red players with a lot of Karma).
Well, I'm 56, so CDL in Hot Springs is out of the question, and Cemetary sucks even with an SE buffing/recharging me compared to VoS. I've tried forsaken plains but CDL is out of the question due to random far away agroes of tigers when u kill orc shamen, two shotting there with DS is extremely slow - i think it would suffice for someone in average gear for their level (i.e. no highly OE'd weapon).
I made all my cash from quests, and VoS breaks me near even when I level there. Just need a change for a level or two before I go back and grind hard. I need to activate my SE with game code I cannot buy right now and I cannot level again until I group her up and get more XP or she will not be in recharge range any longer, which will suck.
This is no longer an issue because this has been removed from the game (except for Red players with a lot of Karma).
Really? You can't drop items anymore when you die unless you're red?
I played in beta for a couple of weeks and just came back. Still have a ton to learn.
That is true.
I think the only caveat when you are Red is that if you have just one pk up to 5 (?) then you also won't drop. Thereafter there is an increased chance.
Someone with more first hand experience being a red with only a few pk's might be able to give better insight.
I certainly know that if you have a bot killing character that you WILL drop with 6,000 karma.
6+ PK and you can drop, and even then it really isn't a high enough rate to actually hunt someone over. Red players usually don't carry expensive items on them (like boss jewels) unless they're stupid (if they go red they BSOE/trade it to buffbot/etc. is my experience) and with weapon augmentations, they can't even drop those high OE weapons anymore.