Stamina Necromancer Solo PVE Build

Gundug

Hello all! I wanted to share my work in progress stamina necromancer setup I have been using for soloing group dungeons, world bosses and most recently, vMA. This is not intended so much as a guide for people to copy directly, but to give some ideas for your own solo setups. I especially feel that newer players who are having some difficulty coming to grips with the game, and who want to challenge more difficult enemies might find some use here. I feel that the stamina necromancer may be one of the better solo classes available, as they have a number of unique and useful skills.

Race:
I chose orc because I like their speed and racial bonuses, but for solo builds, I don't feel race is that important, since every race brings aspects that can help with the keys of soloing: survival, sustain and damage output. If you wanted something a bit tankier, nord or imperial are great. If you might want to transition to magicka some day, dunmer or khajiit can flex between both types. You could run this with a breton if you wanted. Your stamina sustain and damage output would be lower, but you would have an easier time with the magicka portions of the build.

Gear:
I am using Vicious Ophidian body pieces, with Briarheart jewelry and weapons. Vicious Ophidian helps stamina sustain while providing decent boosts to damage output. Briarheart also boosts damage, and adds a small heal over time. For my monster helm, I'm currently running Slimecraw, since I had it available, but would rather switch to Valkyn Skoria, since it does reasonable damage, and adds health to improve survivability. To improve survival even more, Blood Spawn would help, while also improving ultimate generation, or just go all out damage mitigation with Mighty Chudan. I am using a two handed weapon on the front bar, since it provides excellent survival tools with decent damage, and a bow on the back bar, which features great damage over time skills.

Gear is definitely useful in getting the most out of a build, but not 100% critical to success. I worry much more about skill choices and their use. While leveling, I used a couple crafted training sets: Hunding's Rage and Kvatch Gladiator, all medium weight. There are plenty of other sets you could use and do fine with. If you go crafted, I would keep away from Night Mother's Gaze, another common DPS oriented set, as it provides the same Major Fracture debuff as our Unnerving Boneyard skill, so ends up being not that useful.

The traits on my gear are mostly garbage at the moment, but I would transmute everything to divines, with either robust or infused jewelry. I could see converting the weapons to infused as well, although they are all right in precise for now.

Skills:
Front bar:

Brawler - from the two handed skill line. This does good upfront damage in a cone in front of you. The greatest point in the skill for me is the very large damage shield it creates. The more enemies around you, the larger the shield. Mobs are trivial with this skill running.

Venom Skull - from the Grave Lord skill line. I use this as my single target spammable skill, since it's relatively cheap and does decent damage.

Reverse Slice - from the two handed skill line. This is my execute skill. When a target is down to around 25% health, I switch to this to kill them quicker. I chose this over the Executioner morph, which does better single target damage, since Reverse Slice also transmits some of the damage to your target to surrounding enemies. I like it for clearing mobs.

Rally - from the two handed skill line. I keep this buff up 100% of the time in every fight. It gives Major Brutality, which increases weapon damage by 20%, and is another heal over time. It can also be activated again for an emergency heal. Not a great skill for coordinated group play, since you would be using potions that give Major Brutality, but when soloing, this skill is very helpful.

Beckoning Armor - from the Bone Tyrant skill line. I keep this buff up 100% of the time in every fight as well. This gives Major Resolve and Major Ward, which increase your physical and spell resistances considerably, but also has an amazing automatic chain in function. Whenever a ranged mob attacks you while you have this active, they will be chained to you. The way this build is played, you want everything you are fighting to be clustered as close to you as possible, so a fantastic skill. Great in vMA too, especially on the ice stage, where ranged mobs will attack from out in the freezing water. This pulls them right in.

Ultimate:
Flawless Dawnbreaker - from the Fighters Guild skill line. I have not yet unlocked this skill, as it requires rank 10 in Fighters Guild. This will mostly be here for the passive damage boost it provides, but can be used to knock down an enemy close to death quicker when the main ultimate is not charged. It fires in a cone, so is decent against groups too.

Back Bar:

Unnerving Boneyard - from the Grave Lord skill line. This is a fantastic skill that provides a ranged 6 meter area of effect damage zone, that also provides Major Breach and Major Fracture to enemies in it. I keep this up throughout a fight with large groups, or tough single targets. It does OK damage, but the debuffs are the main benefit to using it. Also, since it's magicka based, it helps stamina sustain a little bit by being one less stamina skill in the rotation.

Endless Hail - from the bow skill line. This is the standard AOE damage over time skill used by pretty much every stamina DPS build. Great damage over a good sized area. This should be kept up throughout a fight against large mobs or strong single targets.

Poison Injection - from the bow skill line. This is another standard stamina DPS skill. It does good damage over time to a single target, with the damage increasing as the target gets below 50% health. A good skill to keep up throughout a fight with a tough single target.

Expunge and Modify - from the Living Death skill line. This is a purge skill that removes negative status effects from you, while returning a bit of magicka and stamina. Useful in cases where you are slowed, held in place, or have some form of damage over time effect on you. Not recommended to be used if your health is low, since it costs health to cast. Otherwise, a great skill for adventuring, since so many mobs have snares and other annoying skills they use frequently on you.

Necrotic Potency - from the Bone Tyrant skill line. This is another great necromancer skill that harvests corpses to generate ultimate and provide a bit of self-healing. It also passively reduces incoming damage by 3%. Use this when you see fresh bodies on the ground.

Ultimate:
Pestilent Colossus - from the Grave Lord skill line. This is my ultimate of choice against tougher single target mobs. The other morph, Glacial Colossus adds a stun on the last hit, but since I only use my ultimate on tough boss types and not trash mobs, the stun will have no effect, since probably 99% of boss characters in the game are completely immune. The Pestilent morph does greater damage with each hit, and seems to do considerable damage overall, compared to other ultimates. It is an AOE attack, so it will also help clear away anything near the big boss.

Food:
I have been using regular blue health/stamina food and found stamina sustain to be fine. If you find maintaining your stamina pool difficult, first be sure you are not over-casting damage over time skills that still have some time left to run. These skills can eat through your resources quickly if you have a tendency to refresh them too soon. You can use Dubious Camoran Throne or Arteum Takeaway Broth for more stamina sustain. You will probably want to increase your health, either through armor enchantments, or changing your attribute points though, since they don't provide nearly as much health as the blue food. The funky crown chicken tri-food is also useful for your leveling character.

Potions:
I like Immovability Potions that provide health, stamina and knockback immunity for solo play, but you could also chose potions that restore all three attributes, if you run out of magicka frequently, or more conventional weapon damage / weapon critical / stamina potions. In that case, I would get rid of Rally, since the potion does that for you, and replace it with either Rearming Trap from the Fighters Guild line, or Race Against Time / Channeled Acceleration from the Psijic skill line. It might be difficult to sustain the Psijic skill with the other magicka skills in the build though. Either of these skills will boost your damage a bit, with Minor Force, improving your critical damage by 10%.

While leveling, the various crown tri-potions and stamina restoring potions are also useful. If you are in a coordinated group that you can trust, you will likely find the weapon damage / rearming trap setup is better, since your damage output will be increased, while you will hopefully have to think less about survival. Having said that, this is not necessarily the build you want for group play, since the Unnerving Boneyard skill provides the same Major Fracture / Major Breach debuff your tank should already be applying to enemies.

Passives:
Be sure to apply points to every passive you can from your various skill lines as they unlock during leveling. I have filled the majority of the passives from the necromancer skills, as well as weapon, armor, and racial passives. Many of the Fighters Guild passives are useful, as well as Undaunted. If you can master your alchemy skill line, be sure to get the Medicinal Use passive filled as soon as possible, as it greatly increases the duration of your potion effects. There are a couple provisioning passives that also increase food and drink duration, which is helpful.

CP:
I'm not providing a guide for this, since I'm not a CP master. If you want to reference my choices in the screen capture, that's cool, but you may want to make choices that work better for you. If you have lower CP, I suggest putting points into the things that will help the most first, like damage mitigation and resource sustain.

Rotation:
I keep things as simple as possible. Always buff up before fighting whenever possible with Rally and Beckoning Armor. When facing groups, or tough single targets, I lay down the Unnerving Boneyard and Endless Hail. If fighting a group, I switch to my front bar and close to the area with the most of them. Melee enemies will close in on me, while ranged ones will be chained in by Beckoning Armor. I use Brawler for the shield, and to inflict damage. If the mob is large enough, I will generally spam Brawler a few times until I see some low health enemies, and then finish them off with Reverse Slice. After I see bodies on the ground, I switch to my bow bar and use Necrotic Potency to scoop up their souls for ultimate and healing. If the fight continues for enough time, I refresh my buffs and make sure Unnerving Boneyard and Endless Hail are still running.

If fighting a boss, after Unnerving Boneyard and Endless Hail are down, I use Poison Injection on them, and my Pestilent Colossus ultimate on them. I always switch immediately to my front bar after casting my ultimate, since it has higher weapon damage than the bow bar. I then hit them with Brawler for the shield as needed, and spam Venom Skull on them. I generally like to be right in the face of my enemies, but if you need to, the Venom Skull skill can also be used at range - you won't be able to weave light attacks with it, however. Since boss fights tend to go on for some time, I keep an eye on my buffs, making sure they are up constantly, and watch to ensure Unnerving Boneyard, Endless Hail and Poison Injection are running.

If you get a bit flustered in a battle and start casting your magicka skills too frequently, you may be unable to cast them when you need them the most, so be as efficient as possible with them. If you are too low on magicka to maintain both of them during a battle, prioritize the skill you need the most. If incoming damage is low, keep up Unnerving Boneyard for increased damage. If incoming damage is threatening, focus on maintaining Beckoning Armor. Most emergency situations can be made less threatening if you can fire off Brawler for the shield, and Rally for an emergency self heal. When soloing difficult fights, it will be better to pace yourself and stay calm, using timed skills only when they fall off, rather than frantically firing off skills and burning through your resources in the hopes of killing something before it kills you.

Anyway, I hope this is useful to someone, and if anyone comes up with their own cool build working from this, I would love to see it. Have fun!

deathlikebean

This is really neat and looks like a solid build! I’ll definitely give it a try. Thanks for sharing!

JulLeBarge

I tried your build on my new necromancer and really love it for solo play and questing. Great survivability and DPS, thanks !

Asardes

Pretty much what I use for solo builds:
Always VO, preferably Slimercraw since Minor Berserk usually beats damage from any monster set
If the class has access to Major Fracture - Hunding's Rage or Briarheart, if it doesn't - Night Mother's Gaze
If the class has access to Major Brutality & self heals - 2W, if it doesn't - 2H

Gundug

JulLeBarge wrote: »

I tried your build on my new necromancer and really love it for solo play and questing. Great survivability and DPS, thanks !

I’m glad you like it! Getting started in the game can be challenging, since a lot of what makes a successful character is not well described in the game itself.