Necro DPS Burn Guide

[azrael]

As suggested by Kindoz, I thought I'd write up a burn guide for a raiding necro, covering some of the essential AAs/items as well as spell casting orders.

First, the items you absolutely need to maximize your DPS: epic 2.0/2.5 (+8/10% passive dot crit), CoA robe (+40% crit for 48ish sec, every 5 min)

If you are not raid geared on focus slots, try to get RoF T4 group gear, at least for sleeves (fire), helm (magic), and bracer (poison) which are our highest DPS DoTs. I'm personally still using group gear here in some of those, so you can certainly burn heavily without raid gear, but at the very least get RoF T1 group, if not RoF T4 group. Earlier than RoF T1 and you are leaving lots of DPS on the table from focus decay.

RoF T4 group gear is extremely easy to obtain from the mission Menace, Doom, Horror in Rebirth. This requires HoF partisan to request, which can also be soloed in about 2-3 hours. Once you have partisan, the mission can be done every 6 hours, and a visible piece drops every time, along with 3 non-vis pieces (all w/ type3 slots). I got full RoF T4 group gear in like a week running this mission 1-2x a day. If you have 1 or 2 box chars to bring along with you as well, it's even easier, as 2 wizzie mercs will do the mission by themselves in about 25 minutes. You can also very easily get to the quest mob, using single invis to zone from threshold > rebirth, and then use levant to get to the center of rebirth where the quest npc is. If you are bringing boxes, use the necro to double invis them, and then run them there while your necro levants.

For AAs, this is mostly obvious: max DoT crit, DoT damage, 3rd spire. Also, for raids, you will want Gift of Deathly Resolve. This is a pretty essential burn AA, and I'll outline how it's used on a burn. Both ranks of Embalmer's Carapace, and all ranks of Hand of Death are also minor burn increases. I'd get EC before Hand as it helps you survive, particularly on raids with harsh AEs/Rampage. Another useful one is Mercurial Torment, though it's got a long cooldown even when fully hastened. It's somewhat useful, but not essential.

And just a couple notes regarding rk1/rk2/rk3 spells - two DoTs, Ignite Potenial and Pernicious Wounds will not stack if you are using a lower rank than another necro. That means if another necro has rk3 and you only have rk2, you won't be able to use these DoTs and you'll need to swap them out of your rotation. The necros I know who have rk3s.. Lakren has both, I have both, Surothe, Sendeen, and Gosteelers have rk3 Ignite. Ask the other necros in the raid if they have it to see if you can use it or not - they are some of our best DPS dots, but if they won't stick, then don't waste the cast. Your first greater terrormote should be used on Ignite, and your first glowing terrormote on pernicious, so that you can use these DoTs on a burn. The rest of the rk3s you can fill out at your convenience, but those two are essential.

Finally, if you have rk1 chaotic corruption, DON'T UPGRADE IT. If you have rk2 already, DONT GET RK3. Leave Chaotic at 1 rank lower than Forsaken and Dissolution. If you have rk2 Forsaken and Dissolution, and rk1 Chaotic, or rk3 Forsaken/Dissolution and rk2 Chaotic, then you can actually use Chaotic Corruption on burns and it will stack. You'll see Dissolution Rk III has worn off, and Dissoluttion Rk II has worn off, so it's a nice extra dot. I have not figured out a way to downgrade the rk, so just never update this to Rk3, and if you have it at Rk1 still, just leave it at that rank.

You'll want to have a couple spell sets set up - I run anywhere from 15 to 17 DoTs - I have 4 extra spell sets in addition to my main one, with each spell set changing out 2 DoTs. If the additional spell sets are too much to manage at first, then just stick with the initial 11. These are the highest damage DoTs anyway, and you'll still do good DPS until you feel comfortable extending your rotations.

Spell set 1:

Volnatschs (sp) Orb
Marnek
Hazark
Ignite Potential (Doom if no rk3)
Termination
Binesa Venom
Dissolution
Halstor's Pallid Haze
Chaotic Corruption (Ivrikidal's if Chaotic is not different rk from Diss/Forsaken)
Pyre of the Forsaken
Corruscating Shadow
Pernicious Wounds (wuran's decay if no rk3)

All the additional spell sets swap out the last 2 dots (corruscating and pernicious)
Spell set 2:
Pyre of Piqa
Blistering Shadow (the 95 one..don't remember if Blazing or Blistering)

Spell set 3:
Pyre of Nos
Naeya Venom

Spell set 4:
Wuran's (mortification if wuran's replacing Pernicious)
Blazing shadow (90 one)

Spell set 5: (don't really get to this spell set often)
Ivrikidal's
Agandev

When you burn, this is what you should click on engage/burn call:

Silent Casting
Focus of Arcanum
Mercurial Torment (if up)
Gift of Deathly Resolve

GODR lets you twincast every dot if you cast a DD before it, and lasts for one minute. This is why we use Vol Orb, as it's the fastest casting and fastest recast, so it lets us twincast our initial DoTs. You can easily get 10 twincasted everytime, 11 or 12 with MT if you do it smoothly, but 10 should be easy

So after those 4 clicks, work your way from the bottom of spells (longest Dots - Pernicious first) up to Marnek. Skip Chaotic Corruption on your initial twincast

Vol Orb
Pernicious
Vol Orb
Corruscating
Vol Orb
Forsaken
Vol Orb
Halstors
Vol Orb
Dissolution
Vol Orb
Binesa
Vol Orb
Termination
Vol Orb
Ignite
Vol Orb
Hazark
Vol Orb
Marnek

Then if you have glyph, click glyph FIRST, then click 3rd spire / CoA robe / RoF robe. This will start your serious burn.

At this point, click Hand of Death, dump the 10 lifestones on cursor into your bag, and then immediately trigger Hand of Death with a mod rod or by using lifeburn followed by dying grasp

At this time, you can also click EC for more overcrit - however, on raids like Aary or Miri where theres a painful AE, I prefer to save EC for later in the fight, to keep myself alive as it gives you like 25s of invulnerability you can cast through.

Once you click your burns, immediately swap Vol Orb for Impel for Blood, and then swap for spell set 2, and start casting your additional dots.

I've set up my spell sets so that similar durations are on the additional ones - ie Spell set 2 with piqa/blistering is longer, then 3 with nos/naeya is quick, 4 with wurans/blazing is long, and 5 with agandev/ivrikidal is quick. This just makes it easier to recast dots.

Usually, by the time you cast 4 more Dots (spell sets 2 and 3) your initial burn will start wearing off. You want to start recasting these DoTs FIRST, before moving on to your additional DoTs, as the initial DoTs are the high DPS ones. However, don't recast them too early, as they are twincasted, and if you overwrite before they wear off, you'll lose some twincast tics.

Usually by the time I finish Nos/Naeya, my initial Forsaken, Halstors, Dissolution has started to fade, and I'll work my way back up the initial dots, from Forsaken to Marnek, then do spell sets 4 and 5, and then recast corruscating and pernicious. In between I'll toss in Impel for Blood nukes to try and get a blood proc, and keep FDing every few DoTs, especially if tanks are dropping, to keep your aggro in check

Again since spell sets 3 and 5 are faster fading, as well as marnek / hazarak / ignite / term / binesa, these dots will get recasted more frequently. As you practice you'll get a better feel for what DoTs are ready to be recasted and you can just try to keep them all up. Again, always prioritize the initial ones, ie if marnek fades, recast that immediately, then work your way down to binesa, before doing any of the additional ones.

That pretty much covers the basics of the burn. There are some raids that without a doubt the top DPS slots should be all necro - EW, Evantil, and a lot of ToV; if you are a necro, you should easily be in the top spots on these. Wizzies can compete in ToV, but you should be up there. Those raids are designed for our burns.

CC, Shards not much of a burn for us, and kael is so quick I don't even get a full burn going, so I don't use glyph on any of these.

Some other random notes regarding ADPS, not a huge deal since AH ADPS classes are quite good, but just fyi- make sure your druid casts skin to seedlings ASAP on the mob, and keeps fire aura up for some random additional DPS. Your ench should have twincast and amp auras running, and bard should be playing fire/magic dot song as well as aria. Ench should not click IoG until about 45s into the fight, as that's when necro burn starts to kick in due to the twincast ramp up.

Also, if during your initial twincast burn, you get AE'd or interrupted or knockbacked or otherwise lose precious seconds from GODR, skip the middle dots, and make sure the high DPS ones get twincasted. IE, I'll start with pernicious, corruscating, forsaken, maybe get KB'd or interrupted, lose 10-12s of time, so I'll skip halstors, dissolution, and maybe even binesa. Sometimes I'll even reverse the order of my twincast after my interrupt, and do marnek, then hazarak, then ignite, then term, and try to get as many of the high DPS ones as I can before GoDR runs out. Sucks when this happens, but it does occasionally, and when it does you want to make sure to get the high DPS ones twincasted.

One other random note - if you don't have rk3 ignite, and you replace it with doom, note that doom and termination share a recast timer. In this case, instead of doing term / doom / hazarak / marnek, swap hazarak and doom, so that you do term / hazarak / doom / marnek. This will ensure that you don't need to deal with the recast.

Okay, well this totally turned out to be an essay instead of a short post, but oh well, lots of information there. I'm sure some of the other necs can chime in with more advice, but this is just what I've learned and what works for me.

Happy Raiding.

Azrael