So the game comes out on Friday here in the UK and im wondering which tree people are favoring, i like the look of the harbinger tree myself with the teleport strike and focus on melee combat but the necro tree looks good too, without playing i can only wonder on how usefull the ghouls will be.

I'd love to hear peoples experience with the trees but please avoid story spoilers

I've been going more Necromancer because I like summoning Ghouls. I like to imagine that they sound like Jeff's Ghoul voice from the Persona 4 ER.

I normally go for a melee based character, so for a change I went down the Necromancer path. I've only plugged a few hours into the game but the ghouls are pretty good at grabbing the attention of bosses and such. Later on, you can upgrade their health, and damage so I bet they come in really handy in the later game.

I think (if I am not mistaken) that the harbinger tree has some health regen talents (or maybe that was the gear itself) and I think those would be pretty damn useful even if it was just a small amount of hp per hit because I have found that I tend to take a lot of damage sometimes and rely a little too much on the health potions.

I'm melee focused atm and tbh the teleport Strike is super underwhelming, it's dammage gets quickly outpaced by your standard melee, it's only real use being health steal. But a sigle stat (health % steal) on a weapon takes care of that, so whatever.

The other 2 abilities are where it's at for melee, Unstopable is great for extra str/crit/crit_dmg making you do way more overall damage especially if you already have decent crit stats. Harvest is a nice AoE clearer that can pump up your reaper energy too.

Have not experimented with Necromancer tree yet. You need to gear for it completely differently with focus on arcane stats and wrath(mana) regen for full potential. Respecs are cheap, but gear isn't.

Necromancer is my jam. I love summoning pets or a equivalent of that in games like this because they are great at pulling threat and letting you get in free hits.

At the moment, I'm favouring Necromancer.

Maybe this should have been a poll? It would have been interesting to see what the split in preference is between each tree.

At the moment, I'm favouring Necromancer.

Maybe this should have been a poll? It would have been interesting to see what the split in preference is between each tree.

Eh, I tried Necromancer, and it seemed pretty weak, honestly. The Ghouls weren't that strong, the Crows didn't attack at all, and the shield didn't even block damage. It was really disappointing. I was looking forward to attacking with a murder of crows, while Ghouls devoured my enemies. But enemies gang up on you so fast, the ghouls were useless. I switched to Harbinger and I'm now much happier. The Teleport Slash is great for getting behind enemies before they attack, knocking away other enemies, and dealing damage, all in one move, while the Reaper Slash thing is great for taking out a bunch of enemies at once. Not to mention that it increases my damage afterwards to finish off survivors. I'm gearing mostly towards increasing Wrath, so I can use those moves more often, and boosting my Reaper Form energy as much as possible, so I can access as soon as possible.

But if anyone on here has any tips, suggestions, or even can tell me how powerful a fully powered Necromancer (and what gear), would be, I might switch back.

Can you do a hybrid character or is the gear (as someone hinted at upthread) tailored toward one path or the other? I love of summoning beasties in these types of games but i don't want an underpowered fighter in game with so much up-close combat.

Well duh!

@buft said:

@BeachThunder said:

At the moment, I'm favouring Necromancer.

Maybe this should have been a poll? It would have been interesting to see what the split in preference is between each tree.

I couldn't remember how to add one sorry

When you hit the create topic button there will be another button that appears on the right hand side that says "Create poll instead?" click that and there ya go.

@stryker1121 said:

Can you do a hybrid character or is the gear (as someone hinted at upthread) tailored toward one path or the other? I love of summoning beasties in these types of games but i don't want an underpowered fighter in game with so much up-close combat.

Yea you can do it. There are random stats and also Nomand gear that is an all rounder type.

But honestly it seems like it's better to focus on one thing.

I only have points in teleport strike and crows... mostly for the life leech.

@Patman99 said:

I think (if I am not mistaken) that the harbinger tree has some health regen talents (or maybe that was the gear itself) and I think those would be pretty damn useful even if it was just a small amount of hp per hit because I have found that I tend to take a lot of damage sometimes and rely a little too much on the health potions.

Same here, some encounters really destroy Death. I think I am instinctively using the evade button as a block button because War had that and I am mis-timing a lot of the evades. Ghouls to aggro and HP regen items are a life saver.

I am at a point with Harbinger where i don't need potions or health regen skills or items, all that is needed is some % health leech and Death is pretty much invulnurable. Even if i get hit the next couple of hits of my own will just refill health to full. Using second weapon purely as a stat stick and main weapon is possessed scythes with life leech on hit, crit, crit dmg, str; rips everything apart. Even using Unstopable is just overkill for most situations.

I've played both, and so far if you are going to comlete Cruicible, Necromancer seems like the only option. Armblades chargestrike+gun+ghouls+ravens allow you to stay relatevly safe while dealing good amounts of damage with health and mana regen. My only problem are enemies which immune to bullets, i can't kite them with ghouls and going in melee range costs a few potions.

Necromancer all the way. Summoning the ghouls to fight with you is pretty great. Especially when you upgrade them to the point that they explode and damage any close by enemies when they are killed.

@Olu: I'm up to lvl 50 arena so far, highest it will allow me to progress atm and Harbinger is ripping everything apart like knife through butter, there is no need to kite anything. Overwhelmng dmg with loads of crit and health steal plus Unstopable makes everything die in seconds even bosses, initial waves finish before the Unstopable even runs out (13 seconds) and health steal ensures i never get below 80-90% hp just by itself.

This last post confirms that Harbinger is the way to go. Overall I think the spells are just too expensive, and you will be hacking and slashing for most of your kills anyway, just to increase the fun factor. I would min-max and put a few points in the ghouls, as they def can save your ass.

@Tennmuerti: Im playing on Apocalyptic, but even on normal big golem dudes wreck half of me health bar if i miss a single hit. Maybe i need a better gear for my Harbringer.

Is there a level cap? Can you just do both if you keep grinding? Also...is there really anywhere to grind?

@morrelloman: There is no point in grinding. Two reasons: most of the XP comes from bosses and quests, normal enemies give very little, secondly there seems to me the standard XP rubber banding in place in that you get less XP from enemies the higher lvl you are and visa versa. So you'd be wasting your time.

The only real grindable part I have run into are those plant things that keep spawning enemies. But as stated above, won't help much.

I really like my choice of harbinger so far although I have not tried necromancer. I think the best skill is harvest once you put a lot of points into it. It does massive damage all around you and knocks back most enemies. It can have a high crit chance and the best part is the skill that debuffs the enemies making your follow up attacks do more damage. If you combine that with even rank one unstoppable you can increase your dps by a ton for a brief period. I also use teleport slash mostly as an escape type skill.

I was planning to use the shield type skill from the necromancer tree but it only lasts 8 seconds and I find myself forgetting to use it.

I only have points in teleport strike and crows... mostly for the life leech.

@D_W said:

@Marz said:

I only have points in teleport strike and crows... mostly for the life leech.

This is what I've been doing as well.

Try and find a health % per hit weapon to feed to your posessed one. That stat will single handedly handle all healing needs much better then any skill/ability.

I respeced myself, now I'm only using crows and ghouls.

@BeachThunder said:

I respeced myself, now I'm only using crows and ghouls.

Is that from the necromancer tree? game didnt come out here yet and still havent had a chance to play, if you played both i would love to hear how they compare

@buft said:

@BeachThunder said:

I respeced myself, now I'm only using crows and ghouls.

Is that from the necromancer tree? game didnt come out here yet and still havent had a chance to play, if you played both i would love to hear how they compare

Both are necromancer.

The other tree really doesn't feel useful to me; it's basically additional melee attacks, which seems kind of redundant to me. The necromancer gives you summons, which really come in handy when you're in battles with lots of enemies - especially in the wave-based arena mode.

Wait, are you referring to having played both games, not having played using both skill tress >_< Um, in that case, I'm liking the second a lot better (despite a lot of weird issues on PC). I like Death more as a protagonist, he seems to have more personality and I prefer how he moves; I think Darksiders is more enjoyable as an RPG than an action-adventure, even though it doesn't feel like there's nearly enough loot to collect; generally, I'd say it just feels like a better designed game - better NPCs, dungeons are more interesting, the world seems more coherent.

I played exclusively necromancer and am level 22.

So I've maxed out three skills. Ghouls, the great thing about ghouls is that they can take aggro away from you and also do massive amounts of damage when their skill tree is maxed out, I also love the fact that when summoned in the right position the coffins damage enemies and uppercuts the normal creeps, so there is a slight advantage in casting it correctly. Crows are awesome as well because they can steal hp and the ICE damage also helps a lot in slowing down enemies or just freezing them outright. And the final skill on the necromancer tree, Frenzy, is amazing but also risky. The great thing about frenzy is that it staggers enemies, does a ton of damage and is very fast, the risk is that you use up a majority of your wrath which can be dangerous when low on health i.e. when you need a ghoul to distract or crows for HP steal.

The necromancer is a tree that has little to do with timing and its more of a "cast and forget" tree with wrath management.

I haven't played Harbinger, but I wager that its just as fun and if not more involved than the necromancer tree.

All the Necromancer talk of crowd control summons agro healing etc ... seems so reduntant to me :D

When a well built harbinger just kills everything in seconds and can heal to full in a few weapon swings. Arena mode included.

Tho I am starting to invest points into the Shield skill or whatever it is called in Necro tree now that i'm in newgame+ and have skill points to spare anyway, just in case.

@D_W said:

@Marz said:

I only have points in teleport strike and crows... mostly for the life leech.

This is what I've been doing as well.

Try and find a health % per hit weapon to feed to your posessed one. That stat will single handedly handle all healing needs much better then any skill/ability.

@D_W: When you feed loot to possessed weapons make sure to feed the stats you want last or close to last. You only get a limited number of buffs to chose from, so if you feed an item early that property can get pushed off.

@Tennmuerti: How long did it take you to finish the game?

@BeachThunder: Hard to say the save was about 24-28 hours? something around that, but it might be only counting the time in the world not spent in menus or dialogue, because it definately felt longer, and i was also methodical in finding most stuff.

@Tennmuerti said:

@BeachThunder: Hard to say the save was about 24-28 hours? something around that, but it might be only counting the time in the world not spent in menus or dialogue, because it definately felt longer, and i was also methodical in finding most stuff.

Hm, Steam says I've been playing for 30 hours and I just got up to the part they were in during the Quick Look. I'm slow D:

@BeachThunder: Nah, like I said the save doesn't seem to count everything. I would say my playthrough was more then 30 hours easily if not closer to 40 hours actual time (steam is not showing my time properly because it's not out yet in my region, i unlicked it early).

Also where you are is about 2/3rds of the way through the game. The last 2 worlds are much smaller compared to the first 2. I was a bit bummed out actually :P