Necromancer

## Description

**Necromancer** – The **Necromancer** is one of the Tier 4 upgrades from the Overseer. The most unique attribute that separates the **Necromancer** from the other drone classes and every other class is its inability to shoot drones; instead, it gets its drones by killing squares, by ramming them with either its hull or its drones. To compensate for the **Necromancer**'s inability to shoot drones, the maximum amount of drones it can have is a staggering 20+.

The power of the **Necromancer** lies in the immense power of its drones in numbers. The **Necromancer** overpowers every other drone class in both damage output and area control. Its main weakness is its dependence on the environment for power. Without any source of drones around, its only means of attack and defense will collapse under constant pressure every other class has.

## Controls

* **No buttons pressed:** Each drone will automatically attack the nearest shape/tank to them. Aggro range is short.
* **Left mouse button (or Space) pressed:** Drones will move towards you.
* **Right mouse button (or Shift) pressed:** Drones will move away from you.

For convenience, from now on we will categorize drone control in two:

1. **Attract:** Your drones will move towards your cursor.
2. **Repel:** Your drones will move away from your cursor.

## Statistics

 Max Health
 Body Damage
 Drone Speed
 Drone Health
 Drone Damage
 Drone count
 Movement Speed

 Gun recoil
 Max. no. of Drones
22 (1 pt. in Drone Count)
24 (2 pts. in Drone Count)
26 (3 pts. in Drone Count)
28 (4 pts. in Drone Count)
30 (5 pts. in Drone Count)
32 (6 pts. in Drone Count)
34 (7 pts. in Drone Count)

## Strategy and Tactics

Because the Necromancer is a very advanced class, it is harder to classify the Necromancer tutorial in Do's and Don'ts. Remember this law:

* **Offense = Defense.** This applies to every tank in the game but affects the **Necromancer** the most simply because it is the only tank in the game that can run out of a means of attacking and defending *permanently*. So the less drones you have, the less damage you will deal, the less area you can deny of tanks/shapes and the less your ability to power up (restock on drones). Technically, *your drones are your attack and defense.* First learn the techniques before reading about various matchups.

### Special/In-depth Technique

##### Basic maneuvering techniques

* **Ball:** Attract all your drones into a tough ball. This concentrated drone position is also used in ambushing spreadfire spammers, and is called a nuke when used for blitzkrieg.
* **Repel:** With a maximum power of 36\* drones, the Necromancer's main advantage is its immense burst power. Therefore, you can better utilize your drones by repelling them (right-click) to cover a larger area and power up faster. There are two types of repelling, each with its own benefits.
	+ **Close repel:** Spread your drones out by repelling close to them. Not only is this is a fast way of covering an area, but it also spreads your drones in a more varied set of angles, allowing you to surround opponents, which is helpful in matchups as you'll see later on.
	+ **Far repel:** Move your drone formation with you while minimizing change in shape by repelling far away from them. This is best used when pursuing a target, as the majority of your drones contribute to the attack. This is also helpful while moving with a necessary drone formation.

##### Advanced maneuvering techniques

By combining attract and repel, you can control the chip formation more effectively. Example, if you want to go left, repel yours to the left and move under your drones' protection. If yours are too spread out, condense the chip formation as much as needed. All listed techniques start from a ball. Note that switching from attract to repel and vice versa will preserve momentum, and thus, cause yours to freeze for a fraction of a second.

* **Freeze:** Attract and Repel alternately and quickly (left-click -> right-click -> left-click -> ...); they will seemingly stay frozen in place. A variant called *Semi-Freeze* freezes your drone formation relative to your tank by attracting in your direction of movement and repelling opposite your direction of movement *alternately*. Freeze is often used in multi claws.
* **Sun:** Form a ball and repel in the middle. It is less effective than simply repelling, but it covers an even larger area than the repels.
* **Spire:** Condense your drones into a ball and repel in a circular motion with your tank moving along. Spire is a good area-of-effect attack that strikes opponents from multiple angles and is an effective at deterring rammers. Note that if there are squares around you when you create a spire, the spire will become stronger as it powers you up from all directions while surrounding your opponents.
* **Claw:** Condense your drones into a ball. Then, close repel in the direction you want to claw, cut through your drones (with repel) and keep repelling your drones towards the direction you want to claw. Once the target is in the claw, attract toward the target. The claw is a **very strong** offensive drone maneuver against focus-fire/slow targets, as it moves your drones out of the line of fire and flanks the target, attacking it in two opposite angles. However, when the claw is set up, you're vulnerable, so you have to either seek cover under one of your two drone walls, or dodge the bullets.
	+ **Multi Claw:** A multiclaw arises from a claw made from one side of a larger claw. This is very situation-dependent and relies on intimidation to force opponents into the larger claw.
	+ **Border Claw:** An anti-rammer claw performed against the borders of the map. To set it up, close repel your drones at a border. When the target comes close, attract your drones toward it.
	+ Parabolic Claw

* **Wall:** Close repel to spread out, then Spin Repel on one side of the convex. Then attract on the other side to form the wall. Often can be paired with "The Claw" to form a less noticeable attack. The Wall can be either use for offense or gather more drones, very effective at farming.
	+ **Wave:** It's a wall with the middle far repelled at the target. A reason why you'd like to use this is when you can afford to attack with less power or when you need to claw faster. */u/HS547* often uses this in ambushes.
		- **Crescent:** A more curved, smaller wave variant, done by short repelling the surface of the ball at the target and used against rammers. The idea behind this difficult-to-master technique is that the iconic claw-ish appearance and the initial damage from entering the crescent intimidates the rammer into falling back, but since it is a C-shaped claw (and likely a small-sized claw), turning around and thus staying in the crescent for a split-second will cause their death. In a test performed by */u/Treyy4* and */u/HS547*, the Crescent ended the fight faster but backfired heavily if it fails, while the Spire didn't but dealt significant damage to the rammer. */u/Corrupt-X* created this technique.
* **The Booby Trap:** Very good at cut someone that pursue you:
	1. Repel into two groups (front and back).
	2. Scatter both groups.
	3. Attract the front group and go about on your way by using the "Advance drones movement technique".
	4. If no enemy appear after, retrieve the back group with just attracting the front group, use the stockpiled chips to attack. This by using this, pursuer won't know there's still another group to deal with. When they thought they will kill you after outmaneuvering you, the second group will start to attack them.

* **The Jaw:**
	1. Open a half circle by repelling at the side of a tight group.
	2. Repel until drones exit your FOV (or at the edge, most tanks have narrower FOV). Now you have an open jaw with you in the middle as a bait and freeze it to wait for the victims
	3. Tanks will think that you have lost all your drones so they will advance in. Make sure the open end is facing the enemy, so the enemy does not suspect anything.
	4. When the enemy gets in, collapse the jaw. Drones will come from every direction, making it almost impossible to survive.

* **Feigned Retreat:** It's exactly what it says on the tin: *fake a retreat.* If your opponent advances, they will walk into unknown territory and you can catch them off guard. It's recommended to feint retreats north or south in most cases because the FOV is shorter along the y-axis. This tactic is most often used on Pentashots and bullet Fighters, as their increased speed (that helps them take down a Necromancer's drones from a distance) ironically makes them easier to ambush.

### Matchups

Every class has a differing range of strengths and weaknesses. First, let's know the Necromancer's:

#### Strengths

* **Massive burst damage output.** The Necromancer has the highest burst damage output (maximum damage output over the span of a second) of any class that wields drones. A full-power Necromancer with no points in Drone Count deals more burst damage than an Overlord.
* **Drone control.** Being a pure drone class is equivalent to having bullets whose trajectory you can control. With drones, you can attack targets from multiple directions.

#### Weaknesses

**Highly variable power.** The Necromancer is the class with the most variable power level even among pure drone classes. In other words, a shortage of power (in the form of drones) affects it the greatest, to the point where having no drones not only makes it defenseless, but also makes it difficult to power up.

Now, on towards matchups:

* **vs rammer**

### Against Necromancer

#### **Do's**

* **Killing a Necromancer that has Max Damage and Penetration** It can be hard, because it can use its drones as an armadillo shield what provides him cover (Plus giving him an advantage of killing you when the optional buffs are active).
* **Cut down the supply line:** Very effective as **Necromancer** needs a constant amount of Squares to re-arm itself. By transforming the fighting area into a desert (no or very few Squares), you can easily kill the **Necromancer** by taking down its drones one by one.
* **Run away:** But if your view range is high, try to keep them at the edge of your screen. Tanks that have high FOV like Ranger, Predator, can use that to kill the **Necromancer** off-screen
* **Overwhelm:** Always try to overwhelm them with anything you got. Overlord can prove quite useful when facing a **Necromancer** with less than the max number of drones. Other options include high reload and bullet spam tanks, such as the Gunner and Penta Shot with max bullet stats (Reload, Penetration, Speed, Damage). Another viable option is the Triplet, also with max bullet stats. Sprayer might stand a chance, just don't get too close to the drones.

#### Don'ts

* **Run into the minions:** Despite the minions being weak against bullets, they can deal serious damage when attacking your hull directly. It is a better idea to outrun them, leaving the **Necromancer** exposed to nature (read: your bullets).
* **Catch off-guard:** The **Necromancer** can turn from nothing to a killing machine within seconds if you let yourself distract or not careful at your flank.

## Trivia

* **Necromancer** drones used to have many names:

1. **Minions**, to make clear the difference between triangular drones.
2. **Cheese**, since they have the shape of drones which look like a normal pieces of cheese.
3. **Sun-chips**, the chips' color are similar to the popular snack Sun-Chip, and when repelling them, they spread out similar to sun rays.

* The **Necromancer** has what appears to be 2 drone spawners on either side of it, similar to the Overseer's and Hybrid's. However, they can not spawn any.
* **Necromancer** are a type of wizard/mage that summon the undead. In this game, **Necromancer** drone act as the dead square that **Necromancer** killed before.
* **Necromancer** are one of the few tanks in game that have the different hull shape.
* Currently, the **Necromancer** is bugged in Sandbox mode, once all the Minions have been taken away, no more mobs will spawn in. (Unless you change classes, then all the mobs spawn in)