Necromancer

"Mastery over life and death was chief among my early pursuits. I began in humility, but my ambition was limitless. Who could have divined the prophetic import of something as unremarkable... as a twitch in the leg of a dead rat?

I entertained a delegation of experts from overseas, eager to plumb the depths of their knowledge and share with them certain techniques and alchemical processes I had found to yield wondrous and terrifying results. Having learned all I could from my visiting guests, I murdered them as they slept.

I brought my colleagues back with much of their intellect intact - a remarkable triumph for even the most experienced necromancer. Freed from the trappings of their humanity, they plied their terrible trade anew: the dead reviving the dead, on and on, down the years. Forever.

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- The Ancestor

The Necromancer is an Unholy/Eldritch boss that appears in the Ruins. He is one of the reanimated scholars that collaborated with the Ancestor, murdered and then brought back with much of his intellect intact, but with little to no humanity remaining. After the Ancestor's death, the Necromancer and his Apprentices took over the Ruins, using their magic to bring the corpses buried there back to life as their servants, continuing their unholy experiments with necromancy.

Behavior
The Necromancer will always start in position 1. Each time he uses an attack, he creates a Skeleton enemy in rank 1, steadily pushing himself back until he is in position 4, where his attacks no longer spawn anything. His attacks do not have to hit a hero in order to trigger this ability - therefore the only way to stop him summoning a minion in a turn is either to stun him, or for there to be 3 of them existing already. Corpses do not block this ability either, they will simply be replaced by newly summoned Skeletons.

The Necromancer notably has no weighted skill selection or targeting, making his series of attacks effectively random.

On higher difficulties, the Bone Soldiers summoned by the Necromancer have Stealth for 2 rounds. As of The Color of Madness patch, all of the Necromancer's summoned minions are life-linked to him and will expire when he does.

Strategy
Necromancer's resists are all relatively low, aside from his decently high Stun resist. This makes Necromancer very vulnerable to both forms of DoT, but since he only has one action and no Prot, DoT's aren't necessary or a very effective way to deal with him. Because of him only having one action, marks, debuffs, and stuns are more effective since the former two last longer and the latter stops the Necromancer in his tracks. His low move resist also makes him vulnerable to being pulled forward while he is retreating. He will continue to move back while summoning Skeletons, but when all 4 enemy slots are filled up, a Pull can permanently move him into the range of attacks. Pulling him is usually highly effective since it's usually easy to bring attacks that can hit him while moving back, especially since he starts in Rank 1, so you have plenty of time to kill him before he gets into the backline. Focusing on killing the Necromancer is also especially effective since all of his skeletons will die after the Necromancer dies.

The most consistent strategy is to Stun the Necromancer. Especially Occultist and Houndmaster can Stun the Necromancer fairly well, but other chars can also Stun him with Stun chance Trinkets. Since the Necromancer starts in the front ranks, a Stun can often enable large amounts of Burst damage from chars like Hellion with Bleed Out or Leper with Chop without running the risk of Necromancer moving back since he's Stunned.

If the Necromancer doesn't get Stunned and manages to summon a Skeleton, there are two important things to remember:

1. If the Skeleton gets killed before the Necromancer's next Turn, the Necromancer will remove the corpse to summon another Skeleton, making him not move back.

2. His Skeletons are usually fairly weak and can sometimes be completely ignored if you manage to Stun the Necromancer after he summoned. Focusing on the Skeletons instead of the Necromancer can lead to a snowball effect and cause Necromancer to move out of range of your big hitters, if you don't manage to kill the Skeleton.

This is why you need a backup strategy on your Necromancer team to handle him if he manages to move back. This strategy can change depending on the lvl of the Necromancer, but here are some general strategies that work on every lvl:

1. Pulls. Due to his low move resist, you can move him forward with pretty much any pull, so you can keep hitting him.

2. Backline reach. Having backline reach is usually a given in most parties anyways, so even if he moves back, it's pretty easy to just keep hitting him. Someone like Leper doesn't have any big backline damaging attacks, so it's usually a good idea to not bring him if you don't have another backup plan.

3. Moving Skeletons. If the Necromancer has Skeletons behind him, he can't move backwards if all spaces are occupied. Having someone like Leper use Purge to move a Skeleton back can bring the Necromancer back into reach and keep him there.

4. Hitting the Skeletons. This is the plan you go for when you have no other plan prepared. Results may vary, but it gets the job done.

On Apprentice, both Soldier and Defender are very easy to take care of since Soldier usually gets oneshot by most frontliners and Rabble just does nothing. Low offensive power and HP make it a nonfactor in almost every fight. Here you don't need to prepare a specific backup plan since most Skeletons are very easy to take care of.

On veteran difficulty, the skeletons demand more attention. While Rabble stays about the same, Soldier changes drastically. Since Soldier now has Stealth, he's more difficult to target. Dealing with Soldier is easier with de-stealth attacks and area-of-affect attacks such as the Highwayman's grapeshot. If Necromancer summons two or more Soldiers, it's very likely that he'll be out of reach for most Frontliners, so on Veteran you need to prepare a backup strategy if Necromancer manages to move back. The addition of Defender is also noteworthy. Defender has very low offensive power and is pretty easy to Stun, but Defender can get annoying because of his ability to Stun and Guard. His Guard doesn't usually matter since Defender is easily stunnable to break his Guard.

On Champion, the mentioned skeletons stay about the same with a few changes to stats but not much else. The addition of Captain is a big change to the fight. A single summon can force you to use your backup plan, since Captain takes up two spaces. Captain himself is also relatively dangerous, since he's hard to kill because of his high Prot and HP and his dangerous attacks. Crushing Blow can deal massive single-target damage and Ground Pound has the potential to Stun multiple heroes at once. Having a way to consistently prevent Necromancer from summoning/deal with his skeletons becomes extremely important at Champion.

Good choices

 * Crusader - His Bonus damage is effective against both the Necromancer and his Skeletons. A frontline Crusader doesn't have a solid backup plan for Necromancer moving back, so having a way to enable his Holy Lance in case of an emergency is suggested.
 * Abomination - After he gets his good Stun Trinkets in Broken Key and Padlock of Transference, Abomination can Stun Necromancer with a pretty good chance. Aside from that, he can Transform to deal massive damage to Necromancer. Rage can hit Ranks 1-3 and Slam can move Skeletons back.
 * Bounty Hunter - He provides good damage against Marked targets, stuns and ways to get Necromancer out of the backline.
 * Grave Robber - Lunge can deal large amounts of Burst damage against Necromancer when he's in Ranks 1-3. If the rest of your party can handle the skeletons, Graverobber can burst Necromancer down in around 3-4 Turns, especially if you manage to stick a Blight onto the Necromancer
 * Hellion - Bleed Out can deal massive damage against Necromancer on Turn 1. She also has reach into every Rank if she stays in Rank 1.
 * Highwayman - Deals good damage against any Rank from anywhere.
 * Houndmaster - Blackjack has a good chance of Stunning Necromancer. He can also hit every Rank using Hounds Rush. The loss of his Bleeds doesn't hurt him that much, since they make up a fraction of Houndmasters damage.
 * Leper - Hits Necromancer really hard while he's in the first few ranks and can use Purge to move Skeletons back.
 * Occultist - Has the best singletarget Stun in Hands from the Abyss and gives you a way to pull Necromancer.
 * Shieldbreaker - Adder's Kiss can deal massive damage against a Necromancer in the frontline and she can use Pierce to hit any Rank or use Puncture to pull Necromancer back into the front.

Need a suboptimal plan/Slightly outclassed

 * Arbalest/Musketeer - Incredible damage against Marked targets and good backline reach make her a good pick for a damage option. She can't, however, hit Rank 1, so you have to wait until Necromancer summons a Skeleton before she can deal damage.
 * Jester - Having Battle Ballad is nice and using Finale to kill Necromancer regardless of his position make him a decent choice if your team is built towards a strategy such as that. Nonetheless the jester is not usually needed, since Necro often sits in striking range of your heroes anyways. He also can't really deal with Skeletons very well, making him a decent pick, but he's usually outclassed by other chars.
 * Man-at-Arms - Bellow can be used to slow down both Necro and his Skeletons, but Rampart is outclassed by other Stuns and his Damage is fairly low. A decent pick but you can usually do better.
 * Plague Doctor - She doesn't deal a lot of damage since her DoT's aren't very effective and her Stuns can't hit the front. However she still has reach into the backline and can use her Stuns to slow down a fight that went wrong to give you Time to manage the Skeletons. Disorienting Blast also gives you a way to move Necromancer out of the backline.
 * Vestal - Her Stun is decent, but doesn't have good Trinket support, which makes her slightly outclassed by Occultist specifically, who has the best Singletarget Stun in the game. Still a decent choice since she does have a Stun and good Healing.

Outclassed/Don't do anything

 * Antiquarian - Due to low offense and her support focusing on not getting hit, she provides little towards Stunning Necromancer or dealing with his Skeletons. Though it is worth mentioning that she can buff the parties dodge in a Team focusing on not getting hit at all. Festering Vapors can deal Omnireach dmg, but is usually outclassed by other options.
 * Flagellant - While the Bleed resist of Necromancer is low, DoT's aren't very effective against him, making the Flagellant's offense a lot weaker than usual. Furthermore, he provides little help with Stunning the Necromancer or killing the Skeletons.

Trophy
After completing the Necromancer's champion quest, he will drop his collar as a Trophy.

Abilities
Apprentice =

Veteran =

Champion =

The Necromancer's summoning will occur regardless of if the attack hits a hero or not. The exact enemies summoned vary and depend on the boss's difficulty:

Barks
Every base game hero (and Musketeer) has a unique bark as a reaction on each of Necromancer's attacks. The two DLC heroes—Flagellant and Shieldbreaker—don't have unique reactions and can use only generic barks. Some heroes share their unique and generic barks.

The Flesh Is Willing = The Crawling Dead = Six Feet Under =