@Vezrabuto

Some tips (about the gameplay) from a fellow necromancer :

- Unless you've patched it the Dark Souls Perk is bugged, Ahzidals Ring of Necromancy (another artifact for your collection ?) won't work and the enchantements on the gear of your undeads won't work either. Truth to be told you could probably stop at the Necromancy Perk (Aetherial Crown + Ritual Stone...). This bug could be worth mentioning, if you decide to patch it and still use Enchanting.

- Alteration seems redundant (imho), if your minions act as "meat shields"/decoys you don't need flesh spells; detect spells can be casted as a quick burst to save Magicka even if you're not investing Perks in the Alteration tree and for Paralyze i've always preferred a staff.

- If you go unarmored putting a single point into Stealth (1/5) is recommended (even more if you also have the boost from Vampirism), taking the Quiet Casting is also a good idea if you decide to be a bit more sneaky.

- Have you tried Destruction/Illusion/Vampirism yet ?

- Since you're using staves you should give Miraak's Staff a try, in case you dind't know there's a free Staff of Revenants in the Black Arts Burial Ground near Morthal (it's useful early on to save magicka and due to a bug undeads reanimated using staves don't turn to ash). The staff of Paralysis in found inside Snapleg Cave and you can find a Staff of Fireballs near the Thalmor Embassy, the court wizard in Riften sells a random Adept level destruction staff in case you want to try those instead of the Skull of Corruption.

i would have to disagree about Alteration. 1 stry Arrow and youre done, what if theres 1 bandit who doesnt want to fight a corpse and goes after you if he gets near you youre toast my dude. and im not going for a perfect min max build that works perfectly. im building a person, he's a traditional Necromancer as in D&D style Necromancer. Necromancers hav Curses and debilitating spells like blindness and deafness or just straight up poison. so HE should cast the curses not a staff im using staffs to have a damage output without wasting magicka on destruction spells.I dont like the Aetherial crown exploit since well it looks cool because you as a player just become irrelevant. what do a few fireballs matter if you have 50 forsworn zombies. i dont use Illusion it makes the game way too easy and sneak not really since i dont stalk i fire of a curse and then fight what can still fight. And no Vampirism he wont become Harkons puppet. 

i know about the fireball and paralysis staff but not the revenant one thank you.

Ok Status after Playtesting: I Love this Build but i need to change some things. 

Poison Rune is fun and all but it is to weak, to get a good result from it you need to stack it like 6 times and that doesnt flow so good with the gameplay. 

I considered the Elemental Runes but these Runes god damn obliterated my Follower and Undead if the enemy draged them through the Runes.

Im a very Strategy and tactic focused fighter which is why prefer to play Support Builds alot. Do you guys have any attacks for me that arent just plain Fireballs or that annihilate my team?  

That is the strength and weakness of the Poison Rune.  It's really not a trap like the other runes.  It's best use is during combat where you drop it at the enemies feet as you are fighting them instead of shooting fireballs you shoot poison runes.  A powerful tactic with the rune is to let your poison immune zombies tank the fight while you sneak about dropping runes the whole time, add in muffle and quiet casting to make sure the zombies never lose aggro and your golden. 

As far as Destruction spells unfortunatly Skyrim is pretty unimaginative with the destruction school, most of the spells are just different colored lights that you shoot at the enemy until they stop moving.  There are some minor tactical uses for some spells like chain lightning can bounce off of walls and hit enemies around corners and icestorm can be fired right through walls and still do damage.  But those are rather risky for necromancers since deep freeze and distingrate will render corpses useless (unless you have a patch or mod) this makes fire magic your best damage option.  If your having issues killing your zombies with fireballs then you should change to a single target spell like incinerate or fire bolt, you just need to know the spell then you can craft your own staff for use in combat.

All that said your a necromancer go ahead and annihlate your team then just raise them back up ;P

As Vagr mentioned, if I'm rolling with a companion, I tend to stick with Firebolt.

A question though: doesn't Companion's Insight from the Black Books in Dragonborn nullify any friendly fire? As a collector of artifacts, I would imagine the Black Books would be something your collector would seek to obtain anyhow. Theoretically, you should be able to rain area of effect spells on an entire room without harming any of your followers... I've never used it though, so I can't speak from experience.

About the black books. I would get it but i hate going into a DLC a run through everything while i get my ass kicked by every enemy just to get the black book, it doesnt feel natural is what i mean i planned on going into Solstheim last exept for the poison Rune. ^^ 

 And i hate they dropped spellcrafting from Oblivion, i miss my room filling ice storm or my concentrated super lightning bolt Skyrims destruction magic is really just different lights :/ I'll try using Poison Runes with the Fireball Mindset and the Elemental Runes as a kind of way to stop running enemys,

 Silent casting would be to much of an Investment ^^ 

Thanks you two ^^

Is it viable to use the Vampire Lord drain spell in a support build, or will I just end up killing my summons?

[blockquote][b][url=/profile/mitchblatt]mitch blatt[/url] said:[/b]

Is it viable to use the Vampire Lord drain spell in a support build, or will I just end up killing my summons?

[/blockquote] Using AOE damage spells in a support build is not usually a good idea be it VL Drain or Fireball your just going to kill your summons/followers.  Companions Insight can mitigate this somewhat but I find it's finicky and doesn't always seem to work properly for me and it doesn't work on summons IIRC.  For support builds i recommend you stick with single target spells or spells with very limited AOE like a spray.  Leave the large AOE spells like Fireball to openers if you use them at all, blasting a group of enemies before your summons enter combat with them.

Hey guys, does Ward Absorb stack with Spellbreaker?