Necro or Demo ?

Hi all,

I have a BS and a CONQ and would like for once, play a caster.
As considering the actual problems of the company, I do not know what will be the future of FC and of this game, I plan to use my online points (45) to get quickly to the highest level.

I am looking for a fun, and quite different from what I am used to, class in order to mainly PVE.

I do not care about the toon being technical or roxxing. I just want to enjoy myself, avoid the bunny jumping syndroma, ...
I am not a specially really reactive player and cannot: jump/start casting/turn the camera/target/cast in 1 or 2 seconds, so maybe this will help a bit .

Both are great classes.

Demo - 1 pet, less complicated, little downtime while leveling. Flashy spells with fire, lightning and explosions. Go for the Havoc tree for levelling.

Necro - 4 to 8 pets, more complicated, great versatility. More subtle spells with corruption and frost effects. Go for the Reanimation tree for levelling.

As a Demonologist until level 30 it really doesnt matter much if you choose conflag or havoc as a demo. But then you get Detonation in conflag tree which is an aoe knockback spell. Impossible to leave that one out when talking about levelling. At level 40 you'll have it "instant" with feating Combustion, and three instant spells in Shock, Hellfire Stream and Detonation. Demonologist has more tempo and in general quicker casting spells. Down the line with feats you can also cc lock mobs with 2 stuns, 1 root, 2 knockbacks and 1 slow. You can also get an additional slow and knockback but those are channeling spells and kinda suck (Agonizing Jolts and Thunderclap). You have three tools to refill your mana, in Archfiends Pact, Circle of Mana and Consume Flames. The pet for Demos aren't much worth until you got points in both Demonic Power and Pact of Earthwalking. All Demonologist pets are worth four points and at any given time you can have one of them up. All of them do different type of damage. Some has direct damage, some has a dot, some has a small aoe. Suggested solo play build: http://is.gd/qFIBhM prioritize filling down the Conflagration tree first but while waiting for level caps on feats put points towards Demonic Power. Havoc more or less only empowers the pet, adds a debuff to Shock, and some more aoe to Shockblast. Of the two classes you ask about, Demonologist is my favourite. It is a real machinegun and at level 80 you have five instant casting damage spells!

Necromancer is a tedious class but more versatile as you can choose by what pets you spawn what suits best for the encounter. For magic voulnerable mobs, use pets that has elemental or spiritual attacks. For mobs with high protection use physical attacking pets. The biggest downside on this class is longer casts and relying on pets for damage source. You have 8 pet points where there are three different valued pets. One pointers, two pointers and at level 80 you get the four point pets. You can mix and match all the pets but no more than total of 8 points unless you take the suicide feat One With Death that gets you 3 extra pet points. It takes around 20 seconds to take up all buffs and spawn pets after you die, unless you take No Rest for the Dead feat. Suggested starting build is http://is.gd/Nkpfji where I would take 10 points in Reanimation first, taking Unholy Power, and then filling down Nightfall, and after that completing the Reanimation tree. After level 50 when you get Spellweaving it is instrumental to get Cannibalism, and I would move points into that from Flash Freeze. Without pressing Cannibalism every time after you use Ice Strike you end up empty of mana in a few seconds. The class is a bit peculiar with some spells and pets that are worthless and I could recommend you to never ever even have on hotbar the following: Siphon Unlife, Gelid Bones, Life Leech and Parasitic Soul Swarm. Khaletohep has a good guide on Necromancer subforum for spell rotations and pet explanations. :-)

One thing that is relevant to keep in mind is that as a level 80 demo you need quite some gear to do very good damage and in my opinion you need to 'work' harder for it. It also has some feats that you pretty much need to compete (or at least make a big difference) and they take quite some time to get. (ring of fire cacodemon for example) After I hit 80 it took me quite a while before I started topping parses.

As a level 80 necro you are not relying on your gear and AA's much at all(except for survivibility ofc). The amount of damage you can put out by just putting your pets on a target and keeping your dots up is amazing. You can improve a bit by other spells in between but generally nobody will say you have low dps even if you go afk half the fight ;) After you hit 80 you can top parsers right away.

Personally I think necro is far easier to play (might be a easy to play, hard to master class) and demo requires a bit more effort. If I had to chose I would go for a demo since it feels a bit more rewarding to do stuff yourself instead of letting your pets and dots do most of the work. If you just want to have fun with a glass cannon without caring too much I would go for necro, if you are up for really learning a class and have enough time to collect the gear and AA's I would go for a demo.

Thanks all for those nice and really complete explanations.
I have to apologize because when I wrote my question this morning, I did not expect such answers.

I was thinking about the "DOT Necro" as something fun and really exasperating for the others if I go in BG but I am not sure that this is really fun and as evocated, self rewarding. Lettig the others do the job for you is not my way of playing and that's why I am playing a (bad)BS and CONQ. I really need to be active.

So it seems that the way to go for me is Demo.
With the guild , i'll be able to explore and farm the HM instances in order to get some stuff.

Thanks again you all.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SHAKALL

Hi all,

As considering the actual problems of the company, I do not know what will be the future of FC and of this game, I plan to use my online points (45) to get quickly to the highest level.

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You really don't have to worry about the immediate future of AoC. The recent news about Funcom being raided is really just a continuation of the trouble from TSW's launch, and is just the Norwegian police being massive dicks.

We're pretty much guaranteed to get Palace of Cetriss/Crawling Chaos/more unchaineds/PvP changes/tradeskill rewamp relatively (!) soon, though updates will probably continue to be infrequent and we might not get something the scale of Khitai again.

And even if Funcom was really in deep water (which I doubt - TSW and AOC are both terrific and unique games, that, while underwhelming in success, still have devoted fanbases), you won't see the games cancelled any time soon - look at AO, still running 13 years after launch.

Even assuming that Funcom became bankrupt, the games would almost certainly be sold to other companies that would maintain them.

... Just wanted to get something of my chest for all the doomsayers and trolls.