Ok so everyone is doing it and I've actually really enjoyed just hearing why people like or hate certain spells. I know we are the new kids on the block so a lot of our spells come from a different design than some of the other guilds with their more historic natures, but what spells make it into your top 5 and which are your bottom?

Vod is my bottom. Period.

My favorites are vivi, ivm, php, obf, and HP. I've been using qe a bunch lately to great effect in moving up the ladder. Really though, other than vod, I like all our spells a great deal. Oh necromancers, I can't quit you!

Honestly, I think the Necro book is pretty awesome so it's hard to pick only five tops. So I'm not. Nyah. Fight the power, defy the gods, break rules, etc.

Top Whatever Amount I Pick
CH: Oh yeah. Even have slots saved for the barrier review/update so I can max it out. Seriously. CH. A+, out of the park. Five out of five horrific scales.
CFB: It's CFB. It's a cornerstone of the guild. At its best, it's a three hour hunting buddy that can kick butt better than I can, unless I'm going all out with USOL.
CF: Was great, now even greater.
CRE: I can get out of Dodge and keep my stuff? A+
EOTB: Nothing wrong with invisibility.
IVM: TM boost = more killing with USOL and other TM spells? Sold.
OBF: Love it, need it, got to have it. Helps make sure I can use VIV as a snipe attack on at-level PvE mobs.
PV: Spooky Halt. Can't go wrong. Wish it could get a tingle-like effect for held items, or knock someone prone, or something. But I'm happy enough with it that I consider it a must-have.
PHP: A+ all around. Vit loss on removal isn't a big deal.
QE: Mudmen are neat. The immobilization part is great, too. Would be nice if my zombie wouldn't sometimes taunt it into a fight when using the zombie defense special, and wish I could tell the mudman what to do, but I get that it's baby's first summoned mob. Definitely wish I'd stop forgetting to hold dirt or cut my hand, though!
RPU: Zombie booster is gold. Wish it was just a meta that outright boosted the zombie from the get-go, because I never make a zombie and NOT put this up.
RoC: I love it. It's a cornerstone of my RP in Plat. I used to hold mana at all times to keep it going in 2.0, and I felt like raw channeling was made for me when 3.0 rolled around. I could see it having less value in a Prime environment, though.
SV: TM spell that restores health? Sold. If it cost less ACS would have a tough time continuing to justify its existence, so I can't fault the entry cost.
SRE: A cornerstone of the guild.
USOL: It's an AoE cyclic TM that has a decent pulse rate and I'm at the point where I can cast low preps of VS while this keeps pulsing and that makes me feel tough.
VS: Great eject button spell.
VIV: Magic snipe is lovely.

Okay With These
ACS: It's fine. It's a straightforward single shot TM spell that has a fun bit of randomization in it. But at the end of the day it's not like my socks are blown off over it.
Alkahest Edge: I've just never learned it yet because I wanted to save slots for other stuff. I wouldn't kick it out of bed for eating crackers, though.
Devour: Good if I'm feeling lazy, but since I never have just scars somewhere it was essentially just an untargeted cast of CF that went for the biggest issue. Was kinda/sorta surprised to see Empaths in their thread say similar stuff about Heal. The material use is nice, but I still feel this needs to find its place in the world.
HP: I feel like regular PvE critters die fast enough to really bother using this, and boss mobs on quests still just get light/good hits despite having it up. I think it's thematically neat and I'm certain that it does what it's meant to do, but eh. Maybe it's better in PvP?
Liturgy (and RoG): Bundling both together because I view them as a good set. I like them as a concept, but didn't want to invest in them just yet. I wonder how much people in Prime can get out of something like this, since it's more a thematic RP tool than something that could give "real" results. (Same for RoC, I suppose)
NR: I've never really had to heal a zombie outside of the initial healing needed to make it a zombie, but it's not like I hate the spell or anything.
REI: Nice for Alchemy when I want to train it, and the Arcana might be good once Arcana does more. But not something I'd label as a must-have.


Not A Fan
Blood Burst: I want to love this spell. I think it's written incredibly well, I'm okay enough with the vit loss (keeping a bleeder in 3.0 for it is too risky of an annoying stun, IMO), and I could always cast SV between casts to keep at 100%. I'm just not really sold on it. The splash damage doesn't seem to be notable, at least in PvE. It might be unfair to compare it to Fireball, which is essentially a TM spell with a bunch of bonus fire shards attached (which comes off as more splash-damage-y). I didn't try the heavy TM version yet.
BUE: Just never really need it. I don't think I've ever been in a real situation where I could kill something but not use thanatology on it. I guess if I really wanted perfect arranges on an at-level thing, the skinning bonus would be nice, but I don't tailor enough to care.
CHIR: Eh. Good if you really want a SE boost, but I don't.
KS: Similar to BUE, eh. Maybe if I needed to find things in a PvP situation I could appreciate a perception boost. I also feel that after a certain point you outgrow Attunement skill boosters. If I'm in a flaring room and cast it, it's still a flaring room. This might have more to do with attunement as a skill having diminishing returns after a certain point, or at least the skill feeling that way to me.
VOD: If I can't hide on something with OBF going, I'm just going to not bother. If it was a PvE situation, things would be even worse because I would probably have to figure out which of the two+ mobs on me did or didn't have this up and there's no way to tell. Falls too fast to even bother trying to juggle it on multiple critters. I'd probably move it up to "I'm okay with these" if it was an AoE.
WORM: I think it's a great magic barrier but it also shuts me down, so I don't really like the tradeoff. It's not like I have a harder time using weapons when CH is up.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

I think gaf is my favorite spell... lol.

I would actually love if vod was a cyclic aoe spell... that would be awesome and make it useful. As it is now... it is something i dont bother taking for the reasons mentioned above.

Top:

Eyes of the Blind: Easily my most cast spell, especially when I'm in town playing the part of Fashion Ghost.

Consume Flesh: The changes to CF make it my fav and I now use it more than Devour. I can clean myself up during and after hunting so fast and it's so convenient as hell.

Call From Beyond: Zombies are so good I'm afraid to talk about how good they are because I'm afraid they'll get nerfed. :x

Universal Solvent: I cackled like a maniac IRL when I got this spell and I still kind of giggle a little when I use it. I never get tired of watching my toon level a room of mobs and/or people.

Rite of Grace+Liturgy: Not useful to everyone, I know, but it has enabled some pretty fun scenes for me. It will be even better when the attunement changes roll in and it becomes much more sustainable in low mana areas without nuking attunement. I will agree that this suffers from the problem of taking a lot of skill to use effectively, at which point it's unlikely you'll still be hiding yourself.

Honorable mention goes to Heighten Pain. This spell is quite powerful. I love it in PvP and I used it on every mob in Duskruin as well because it increased my DPS by a not small amount. I don't use it while hunting, though, because I don't really find that DPS matters all that much there.

(I also love pretty much all of our combat buffs+obfuscation, they're just not what I'd call super interesting. They do what they say on the tin.)

Bottom:

Necrotic Reconstruction: This spell would be fine if it had any targeting logic and the mana efficiency was dramatically increased. As-is, it's a time sink, a mana sink, and frequently frustrating if you accidentally type "cast" by itself or cast at the wrong # mob or whatever.

Worm's Mist: Duration is way too short to make this really useful to me on top of the drawbacks, honestly. I get I'm supposed to be cowering behind my zombie if I'm using this spell but I just ain't feelin' it. A zombie is not fast enough to justify me shutting down my own debilitation and such when a smart player knows to retreat and move.

PV: 99% of the time if I want to immobilize something I want to immobilize all the things, so why wouldn't I just use VS? It also has the same problems all other debilitators have. The only exception is if I have pets out, which isn't often. If this made people go prone or something I'd be much happier with it.

Butcher's Eye + Chirurgia: Thanatology buffs are largely pointless IMO unless you're really pushing your hunting and need it to do rituals, especially since they don't stick around when you're dead which is the only time I'd care about having more Thanatology. This will probably change when Igors come out and Thanatology has another purpose. Chirurgia I don't like because as a tert past a certain point all the buffs in the world aren't gonna close the gap between SE and the rest of my combats, and it leaves my other weapons in the dust which means I'm training in even more hunting grounds anyway. On top of all that, the messaging is honestly super boring.

Kura-Silma: I want to love this spell because the messaging is deliciously gross, but attunement just doesn't scale well enough to make it worth throwing up most of the time and chances are due to how perception learning works that it's unlikely to help me against someone that's already hiding on me if WATCH doesn't do the trick. If this was changed to an actual attunement regen modifier, I'd probably bump it up to top 5. As-is, I rarely cast it.

Dishonorable mention: Blood Burst. Another spell I want to love, but even with the Heavy TM stuff in test it's still lackluster. I'm optimistic about future tweaks to Heavy TM though.

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Thayet
@thayelf // http://thayette.tumblr.com

"But you must know that if corruption is powerful enough, it's not corruption at all — it's law. Unspoken, unwritten, but law." — Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

<Universal Solvent: I cackled like a maniac IRL when I got this spell and I still kind of giggle a little when I use it. I never get tired of watching my toon level a room of mobs and/or people.

Reminds me of when I killed around 10+ people at the empaths guild after getting irritated from a thief going inviso. Its just to bad when the moment was killed by losing my exp drain for 6 months.

It does not presently do that. The spell just fizzles out.

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Thayet
@thayelf // http://thayette.tumblr.com

"But you must know that if corruption is powerful enough, it's not corruption at all — it's law. Unspoken, unwritten, but law." — Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

Not sure what your issue with nr is either - mine targets last corpse I performed arise on.

Consume/devo have some weirdness - if I consume a corpse and cast my max times, and perform consume on another corpse, the next cast of cf will not target the new corpse. This has mucked me up a few times.

>>All that aside, the mana cost is still absolutely absurd. It's the least fun part of creating a Risen.

I feel like prepping, cutting, and casting ASAP is a lot more mana-efficient (and faster) than actually bothering to do a capped cast.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

Yeah, just using "cast" works fine for me. And actually checked my zombie making script that I wrote 2 years ago or so and it just uses "cast".

> cast

>
You gesture.
Your bloodied hand dries up within moments of lacing the reconstructive pattern, leaving behind a refined black dust.
The nearly destroyed parts of the XXXXX body collectively secrete maggoty ribbons of slime, pulsating a little. This prompts the dead skin, flesh and bone that make up the creature to pull apart, be displaced, then knit back together beneath the atrous catalyst.

I think having a look at the total mana required might be a good check in. I usually just zone out a bit while the routine runs. On the one hand in understand that zombies require preparation, on the other maybe it's too cumbersome for most. I think I spend about 6 to 8m making one, ish? That doesn't seem that bad, it's not convenient, but then, it's not the deciding factor as to whether I use a zombie regularly.

I'll just chime in I can definitely not just "cast" NR. I have to specify zombie as the target. "cast zombie" otherwise I will fail lacking a target for the spell.

>I'll just chime in I can definitely not just "cast" NR. I have to specify zombie as the target. "cast zombie" otherwise I will fail lacking a target for the spell.

This is as intended, however, if I understand THAYET correctly, they're having a problem with NR not targeting the last prepared corpse, which is how it seems to be functioning for everyone else.

I don't yet have any of the guild-defining spells, so with that in mind..

Yeah!:
- CF: Self-healing is one of the best aspects of the guild to me. I really hate simpering to an Empath for help, and prefer self sufficiency.
- EotB: As someone said earlier, it's fun to be a creeper. I do wish you could refresh it without "revealing" yourself. It seems nonsensical that the initial cast does no room messaging, but the refresh does. Still, core spell for being a creepy corpsesniffer.
- RoG/RoC/Liturgy: I went the stealth route (not Forsaken yet at 50ish) and got these early. I think they add some great flavor to the guild and I love the concept of walking around town cloaked in corrupt magic to mask my dubious aura. 3 slots is a bit heavy just to mitigate some "hard mode" contrivances but I can live with it. I imagine I'll probably drop them at a higher circle once I am Forsaken.
- IvM+PhP+CH: I am at a level where I don't notice much benefit from these spells, but I like their flavor and it seems like they'll be much more useful as I grow.

Okay.
- AcS: Does what an intro TM spell should do.
- HP: I think the spell is awesome but its visibility keeps me from using it while I'm trying to be stealth, unless I'm 90+% sure I'm going to be alone in a hunting area.

Meh.
- Devour: I unlearned this a couple weeks after I chose it (which was following the recent upgrade). Feels like a redundant slot sink in addition to CF. I really *love love love* the idea of the recent upgrade using fetish material, but in practice I found it to be a little tedious (and I can't carry that much fetish material around due to weight concerns). For the 2 slots I think it should really do more body parts per-cast than CF with enough skill, however IMO it would be better as a 3-4 slot cyclic healer (that will consume corpses or fetish material), or a 1 slot meta to CF (to enable current Devour effects).
- BuE/KS: Buff spells to skills I don't really need buffs to. Once Thana does more maybe I'll find BuE useful?

Oh hell naw:
- PV/VS: Immobilization just feels like an inferior mechanic to me. Stun/imbalance/knockdown are simply better. I think these spells could be rescued if the immobilization mechanic were buffed to either have a more significant defense debuff, or a significantly higher duration cap than stun. The only reason I cast PV at all is to learn Debil (in case we someday get a better option). Note: I don't have VS yet. Nitpicky, but I don't like VS's messaging: I'd rather it thematically branch from PV, unless we get a straight up AoE Fear spell/ability (fetishes!) someday.
- VoD: Don't have this; don't intend to ever have this. I think this could be reconceived as a meta for PV that transforms it into a curse that adds a Perc debuff and causes the immobilization effect to trigger intermittently over a longer duration (think shadowy visions occasionally assaulting the target with gaps in between when the immob effect wears off, but the Perc debuff is active for the full duration).

Wishes: Richer Debil, such as a fear mechanic, curses, better immob (as above), scarier transformation spells that aren't just skill buffs, and more spells that interact with pets (even though I don't have them yet!), and DISEASE! Seriously, let's spread some pestilence up in here.

I would rather have more stuns and disables than direct damage... which would allow the pets to do more to the target. (both pve and pvp)

Like HP seems to be a really good fit.

And I agree it would seem to fit the guild more.

VoD could be great... if it was AoE and possibly cyclic.

I would not mind having to choose between the two. If I am using USOL, I am probably not in dire need of something that debuffs something's perception and wisdom. But then I don't use USOL in PvP.

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Thayet
@thayelf // http://thayette.tumblr.com

"But you must know that if corruption is powerful enough, it's not corruption at all — it's law. Unspoken, unwritten, but law." — Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

>>>> If I am using USOL, I am probably not in dire need of something that debuffs something's perception and wisdom.

When you think about it USOL doesn't exactly play nice with stealth anyway so making it a cyclic makes some sense (it is the sort of ability you want present all the time on every opponent if you need it) and would probably allow the GMs to keep the spell slot cost the same.

Huh, I wonder if it is a circle thing then. USOL is heaven for me and it is rare if I'm in combat (PvP excluded since I don't want to hit anyone accidentally and get in trouble) I try to have it up. VoD is great but honestly if I can't hide on something I probably shouldn't be hunting it since my stealth is so high above everything else. I cap out on stealth and evasion on a mob when hunting before any other skill.

>>Training Thanatology would be a nightmare without it.

Use more pets. I dissect for FA every 3rd kill and skin the rest. Thanatology and TM are completely ignored (and consistently at higher mindstates). In fact one of the things I rather enjoy about the Necromancer is a non-reliance on gimpy cyclics for magical experience. Between CFB, VS, and symbiotic casting of the others - magics are rather simple for us.

Condran

>>After giving it a bit more thought, VoD as a cyclic AoE perception debuff would probably not be all that useful, since the period of time we spend hunting critters that we can just barely hide on is probably pretty minimal. If I can't hide on 4 melee range critters, I'm not hunting them, because I probably can't survive them and I most certainly couldn't hit them.

IMO, the gap between "can I hide on this" and "can I snipe this and stay hidden" is pretty large.

While I was initially going "if I have a cyclic going, it would most likely be USOL," now that people are [correctly] pointing out that if I'm using stealth, I'm probably not using USOL, I could see using VoD as a cyclic debil at the time (as long as it's not also pulling me out of hiding).

Having VoD running as a cyclic while VIVing mobs would be pretty neat.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.