Help With Necro/Poison

Does anyone have a good PvE Necromancy/Poison build they might suggest? Thanks in advance for any help that anyone could give.

I have a necro poison MM. It was the first toon I made on Virtue, and I basically solo'd it to 50. I had heard poison was a really good set, especially vs hard targets.

I found..it was not that great. The biggest failing I think is only having a ST heal, on an AT that is going to have a lot of pets about. This combines with the fact necros only get Life Drain for defence..a small st heal based on a to hit check..AND the retarded AI. This usually means they try to heal when they have full hp, and never use it near death.

Poison also suffers from a lack of aoe debuffs. This WAS semi fixed in a recent patch, and I suggest you check out the specific changes to be sure. However, the general feeling seems to be the poison trap still bites, and Noxious Gas, the tier 9, suffers hugely from having to be applied to a pet..who will then usually get ganked by an entire spawn.

Pretty sure I never once got to use NG for its full duration, for that reason.

Regarding the debuffs..yeah, they aren't bad. But, they really aren't great. There was a thread recently with some guy comparing the debuffing of various sets vs hard targets, and Poison, which is 'meant' to shine there, fell very short. I think even storm did better. The -to hit doesnt feel high enough to matter in my opinion, especially not with pets at least -1 to whatever you are fighting. I could be wrong, but I think the -acc portion is aoe now, but at an even smaller value.

The zombies are also sooo squishy. They don't have any inherent -resist to fire..but in my experience, as soon as an enemy with fire attacks come near, they explode. Then there is the grave knights who decide it is a great idea to stand back and spam dark blast (oddly enough, this is the same behaviour I saw from a scrapper during a BAF league..I am pretty sure its cause he is brain dead too) instead of using their swords. And the lich..who is meant to be controllery..but I find my Demon Prince (from the demon set obviously) to do way better, with just one hold.

Another thing I didn't like with the recentish MM 'upgrades' is the aoe pet buffing. With my bots MM, this is great..because they DONT die ever damn 5 seconds. But when you have just lost a few zombies, and want to upgrade them...you have to pay the huge end cost, based on buffing ALL the pets.

All this negative stuff aside..it IS fun. And pretty tough once you get the pet uniques in. Even so, I still would not solo it set for more than 2-3 people. And on a team of 8, aoes will wipe your zombies nearly every mob.

Sorry if all this is putting you off. I did enjoy getting the toon to 50. But it was more..a chore than flat out look at me gooo whooo this is awesome fun type stuff. I have two other MMs, a demons dark and bots storm, both of which were more fun and far and away BETTER to level up. And now they can do some crazy stuff.

Try the combo, give it a shot. I would just recommend something else, for the reasons above.

I have a +3 Tier 4 incarnated nec/poi mm that I like. Sure, he's not going to be AE Debuff king, but when fighting A/V's it's nice to have the (however minor) debuff effects land on them to help things die a little faster/mitigate a little more of their attacks. I don't have the build on hand, but when I get home I'll post the build I'm using.

He doesn't have capped defense, but is like 15% away or so from resist cap. I find the MM I have to be most useful clearing terminals in Keyes or charging into the occasional spawns that litter BAF. When fighting A/V's, concentrating all your pets on the A/V is a pretty good thing. All the -to hit debuffs from your pets, the -res procs from reactive interface and from achilles on the undead knights, the -res and -def from envenom, as well as slotting damage procs into envenom, weaken, soul tentacles, poison gas trap, undead knights, lich, the single target hold... he's no slouch. Sure, he wont output Blaster or scrapper damage - but if that's what you want then you'll have an easier time doing that as a blaster or scrapper and not an MM.

What I find helps the pets survival is to throw out a taunt while your pets are in bodyguard mode. Your single target heal should be enough to mitigate the damage your pets receive as long as you're not letting them tank solely for you. Bodyguard mode lowers the amount of healing you have to do for your pets, and life drain should be enough to keep you alive if you're taunting bosses in bodyguard mode.

I think a build I posted down below is good. Assuming you understand the game mechanics then do a search for my name in these forums.