necromancy dip

[texianviking]

arguments about soul economy notwithstanding, is it me or are the necromancy line of tomes basically worthless as dips? most tomes are pretty easy if you want to grab an enchantment, unit, siege project, &c., but the necromancy tomes have such a lack of synergy with anything. so it feels that that whole line is basically all or nothing.

 

[evilcat]

If you want any shadow afinity, then
cryomancy - weapon enchantment, also build yourself research post has some value. summon is always good. repeating blasting enemy army with blizard could also be a thing.
doomhearald - doomtrench is strong building, and you have transformation, enchantment is win more type, so less good.

as for necro line
transformation - desacrate is useful, fetig if you are dark culture, it could be hard to collect souls for wightborn and they are ugly as death itself, but maybe you are going heavy materium, so dont have other major transformation.
Transformation if you realy want some undead tome, or cryo/doom if you want some shadow.

 

[MaitreBouh]

Necromancy is exceptionally good as a dip.

T1 tome of souls : you can spam skeletons for free (because the souls come on top everything else). Soul overflow is one of the best buff in the game. Future soulfire will be awesome too.

T2 tome of necromancy is the most questionable one. It still have rotting explosion and raise zombies. Necrotic magic is also good, although projectiles of decay is better but come later.

T3 tome of the great transformation is absolutely exceptional. Life steal on all melee units and immunity to morale with wightborn. Fetid legion is also exceptional. Desecrate structure and domain of death will give a use to your remaining souls (stability in cities is underrated).

T4 tome of the reaper is stupidly good. Mark for death is absolutely ridiculous. And then, with harvest souls you have 2 reapers for 5 pop. Greater reanimation can be used on enemy units, which have invaluable advantages.

T5 tome also works alone. Raise undead army is as good as it seems. Withering mist is ridiculously good. Battlefield reanimation will seal a large battle that's halfway through.

In fact, I would argue that necromancy is *far better* when you only dip into it. Because then you have a confined space to use your souls for, so you maximize their use without thinking about their economy balance. Only the T2 tome of necromancy is a bit lacking by itself. Necromancy is mostly melee oriented, which is why people are disdainful of it.

 

[Gyrvendal]

You need 2 tomes to play necromancy, which is Tome of Souls at T1 and tome of the great transformation at T3. You can pick up doomherald for banshees as an option. 2 tomes might not be considered a "dip" but it can still be combined with a variety of builds.

Honestly I find the T2, T4 and T5 necromancy tomes really underwhelming compared to alternatives in other affinities. Sure marked for death spell is good, but there are plenty of good combat spells, especially at T4 and you can only cast 1 or max 2 per combat turn so there is little value in having a ton of them. Reaper is way overpriced for what it does, and the rest of the abilities in the T4 and T5 tome don't really augment your undead playstyle all that much. As the previous poster pointed out, your soul income doesn't increase with number of tomes, so there is not much value in having lots of soul-costing abilities as they will outpace your ability to generate souls.

 

[Ferrus Animus]

The soul mechanic makes it hard to dip into them, as you need to generate the souls to pay the costs before many of the techs are useful.

Generally you can dip into any of them, and use what souls you accumulate. This feels bad, because your dip into necromancy is not as present as any other dip, where you can spam what you got, but it can be useful, as souls are functionally a free resource, so you get a little extra.

For particular dipping I consider the Tomes of the Great Transformation and of the Reaper. The first provides its two strongest elements for mana or a one-time soul payment, putting not too mcuh strain on the soul economy. And the latter provides good sources of soul income meaning you can get some of the stuff out wiihtou having to farm souls in small increments.