Best Necromancer Ladder Spec: Bonemancer
The Necromancer is another class that could not get into the end-game meta of Ladder Season 2. While the Necromancer was the third most played class at the start of the ladder, it has lost its position and dropped to rank 5. Also, the Necromancer is the very last class that reached 99 on the ladder. All other classes have reached 99 before the Necromancer. The first level 99 Necromancer appeared on the ladder at 4th of June 2022, almost a month after Season 2 launch.
The Necromancer itself currently plays a support role in early ladder team compositions. The class itself truly shines at day 1 ladder and Baal Runs; however, it starts to fall off as teams/players gear up and reach the end-game levels.
The only dominant Necromancer spec that can barely keep up with the intense pace at the highest level ladder games is the Bone Necromancer spec.
The Summon Necromancer suffers from not having targeting control or focused damage. The Summon Necromancer also takes too long to assemble a powerful army in high pace games. The Poison Nova Necromancer is very weak in general. Poison Nova damage can easily get cancelled by the Mercenary or minion damage, and Poison Nova damage is nearly non-existent on bosses anyway. All these problems forces Necromancers to play the Bonemancer spec.
The strengths of the Bone Necromancer are as follows:
The potential weaknesses of the Bone Necromancer are as follows:
The Necromancer is almost like a substitute for the meta. It is a good alternative class for supporting Chaos Sanctuary and killing immune seal bosses. The class can also take the role of a throne teleporter (aka Teler), however, 125 FCR builds that can maintain a level 51-52 Bone Spear for damage require really rare and expensive gear, and Sorceresses as well as Barbarians have better FCR frames anyway. The Necromancer may help greatly with clearing Baal throne and even skipping waves through using Dim Vision/Confuse/Decrepify. However, as the ladder progresses, the enormous power of the meta classes makes them require little to no support.
The overwhelming damage of the meta classes simply outshine the advantages offered by the Necromancer. For example, my Necromancer which played a customized CSer oriented Bone Necro spec has 8 Poison and Bone life Skillers, Torch, Annihilus and gg gear. All that gear can upgrade the Bone Necromancer’s Bone Spear damage up to 6,482-6,800 Magic damage at level 98/99, whereas a Hammerdin can easily reach 10,000 Hammer Magic damage at early level 70’s, without investing all skill points into synergies.
The fact that the Necromancer lacks P8 boss damage becomes even more visible when classes reach level 98, because boss damage in P8 becomes very crucial for efficient farming. The Necromancer fails to deliver the boss damage at P8 and remains as a support class. Therefore, the Necromancer gets placed into B tier.
Final Verdict for Bone Necromancer: B tier