L2 Necromancer guide Part II
TweetCATACOMBS & NECROPOLISES
You might have been reading this thinking : I heard Catacombs are extremely strong in this patch, and yes you're right. Unfortunately however, Necros can't farm these spots reasonably unless doing it with an AOE party, so you're out of luck.
GROUP LEVELING GUIDE
There are many group setups that will work perfectly fine for AOE so I won't go into them specifically. So long as you have a tank, a healer, some nukers, and 3-4 rechargers, your group should be able to EXP in most good AOE zones just fine. The only note is that as you get into LOA, you definitely want a warlord to stun the mobs as well.
In the sake of conserving paper (save the trees!) I'm not going to include a lot of "extra" leveling spots in the AOE section as I did in the solo section as you will be moving through these spots much more quickly, and in general you'll find that EXP and adena go hand in hand with AOE.
Side note: I'm assuming here you're in a mage party not a random mix party. Mage parties really should only be AOEing so single targetting isn't something I'll talk about.
20-30
30-40
40-46
A ton of mobs, highly social (so won't fall off the train easily), good adena, and good EXP. Alligator Island is really everything you want from a leveling zone during these levels. I wouldn't recommend any other spot than Alligator Island until you have Corpse Burst.
Note : Corpse Burst is the reason you want your skeleton to say level 1. If you level it up, you won't be able to do this
46-52
52-57
57-62
62-66
66-77
77+
GENERAL PVP GUIDE
Just to get a general idea of what a Necro’s role in PvP is, I’ll include each style of PvP and some general tactics that are important to be included. Important to note here is that the strength of Necro is its versatility. Necro has situations where it finds itself as one of the strongest classes in the game and some where it is not, however Necro doesn’t have any situation in PvP where it is truly weak.
You’ll note that in these guides, I don’t mention fear. Fear is a relevant skill in many situations, however it’s important to recognize that against targets that have Chant of Spirit and Mental Shield, it isn’t worth casting unless you have some sort of boost – specifically, 
Refined Ring of Core and/or 
Refined Orfen's Earring to give you some higher land rate. Without these, you will mostly be wasting time spamming this skill. With them, you can use it often.
Silence - Necromancer while DPSing other targets that are out of position – especially getting gloom off on assisted targets. You can also use your Curse Doom to prevent tanks from UDing and thereby make them easy to blow up quickly. 
Transfer Pain - Necromancer allows it to be a bit more aggressive than other nukers and get into position to use debuffs, but doesn’t make it invincible. The trick here is to find the balance between nuking and debuffing.
Olympiad Guide
Olympiad is another area where Necro shines. Olympiad is a debuff first, ask questions later field when it comes to L2 classic, and with the plethora of debuffs Necro has, it can farm more points than almost any other class.
NECESSARY & IMPORTANT ITEMS
+12 WIT : Absolutely critical in order to get your debuffs off as fast as physically possible.
Wynn Weapon : Again for the casting speed, it is quite important to have a weapon with casting speed on it, especially for matchups like Necro vs Necro where you will just be debuffing each other as fast as possible.
Pet Shots : Apart from debuffs, Necro’s summon is one of its main advantages, so it’s important to keep it with shots in order to do as much work as possible.
Talismans :
Grey Talisman Box - Guard and 
Yellow Talisman Box - Guard as there are with every talisman, and you’ll want to get both of those any time you register if you’re trying to farm against other farmers.
GAMEPLAY STYLE
One of the things most people don’t realize about Necro is that its debuffs actually aren’t what make it as strong as it is. Of course, Necro’s debuffs certainly help, but one of the main reasons Necros can beat certain classes is that necro can get off 5 debuffs before almost any other class. This means that if Necro sits beside an opponent and they both cast guard, the Necro will break that talisman in 3 seconds, and win the fight instantly.
The strength of Necro being in breaking talismans, means you will have interesting games against classes like Dark Avenger who have a faster casted fear if both of your talismans are off. You can have some fun games in trying to outplay such opponents. You also have many classes like Warcryer, Overlord, and Warlord who can get off a debuff in roughly the same time as you, so you run the risk of losing if you don’t put yourself in an advantage from the start. Of course your summon gives you an advantage over these classes, but they aren’t free wins.
You have 3 skill necessary to break a talisman :
Curse Chaos - Necromancer, 
Curse Weakness - Necromancer, and 
Curse Gloom - Necromancer. The sequence is Chaos -> Weakness -> Gloom -> Chaos -> Weakness. Weakness/Chaos being interchangeable, however there is a cool down so you can’t do something like chaos/weakness/gloom/weakness/chaos. You can also add in a skill like 
Anchor - Necromancer after gloom for a very slight increase in your speed to break the talisman.You can see an example in the Necro vs Necro portion under "Matchups"
BUFFS
I will try to include anything special in a specific matchup, but for the most part you will get Haste, Acumen, and Windwalk in every matchup and the others vary from there. Usually, it should be fairly obvious what to take, for example if you’re playing against a Spellsinger you want magic barrier and BTB, and in matchups where the cast speed counts, you want Berserker Spirit.
MATCHUPS
I won’t sit here and explain every matchup, however there are some unique aspects to certain matchups that require some explanation.
Your main goal here is to break his talisman. There are some strategies you can attempt in order to get there, but in reality the main goal here is to not let him out-juke you around pillars and waste your time.
An interesting mirror matchup. For the most part you end up going beside each other, popping a guard talisman, and trying to break your opponent’s talisman faster than he can break yours. There is a question here in whether you want to fear or silence after you break your opponent’s talisman… While fear if it lands and your opponent doesn’t get his off is a surefire win, fear also has a lower land rate than silence. If you’re playing an opponent who you know has no Core Ring, Denial talisman or Liberate talisman, Silence will give you a debuff that lasts 22 seconds while fear will wear off in 7, however more often than not you can’t know your opponent doesn’t have these things, meaning Fear is your best bet.
It’s important to recognize as well here, the land rate of silence vs fear with level advantages. Silence will land semi-consistently on someone up to 5-6 levels ahead of you, while at those larger gaps, fear will almost never land. Take into account this knowledge when deciding which skill to use as well.
Your goal here is to wait out their
Guts - Destroyer and then kill them without letting them get into Zealot and Frenzy. This means you don’t want to be nuking them or attacking with your summon, but rather trying to delay them until a time when you’ll be able to consistently debuff them into death. Alternatively, if you land fear in the correct direction (into a wall), you can also 100-0 them if you have a good weapon in your hands. Pick and choose which strategy fits the game you’re in.There are many other interesting matchups, however these 3 are played somewhat uniquely and so deserved to have specific mention. Outside of this, you should be able to intuitively recognize what to do in any given matchup.
CONCLUSION
Necro is a fairly nuanced class with plenty of different options for leveling, adena making, and potential playstyles for both PvE and PvP. In olympiad it can be one of the strongest classes if played correctly, and outside if can be as well. I would recommend Necro to anyone that enjoys playing a challenging nuker and doesn't mind having people get mad at them for playing what they believe to be an imbalanced class. In my opinion, Necro is correctly balanced in that it allows for a skilled player to do absolute wonders with it, while still punishing less skilled players for missteps and bad gameplay. Thanks for reading, and here are a few videos to end it off.
