User:XT-8147/N/Mo PvE Blood Spike

Armor
Full 1.5k or 15k Scars for the extra energy and a Major Vigor rune.

Weapon
I use a collector staff with some mods on it, looks like this:
 * Hale Cruel Staff of Enchanting
 * Energy +10
 * Dark Damage: 11-22 (Requires 9 Blood Magic)
 * Halves casting time of spells (Chance: 20%)
 * Halves skill recharge of spells (Chance: 20%)
 * Health +28
 * Enchantments last 14% longer

The Hale mod isn't max simply because I haven't found a max one yet ;)

The Enchanting mod isn't near max at all, but in reality the minimum Enchanting mod (10%) will allow you to recast Awaken the Blood before it ends, so salvage the first Enchanting wrap you find and chuck it on there.

I'd personally love it if they'd disambiguate the recharge time boost description a bit. A suitable replacement would be:
 * Halves recharge time of spells (Chance: 20%)

For the optional slots
One of these slots will (likely) be an elite, the other won't.

Elite slot

 * Life Transfer - Adds a good amount of degen to the mix, useful for when all your spikes are recharging, also can heal you if your spikes aren't doing it well enough
 * Well of Power - Healing/Energy regen for anyone who can feasibly stand in the well. Idiot wammos will love you; character gender allowing, expect marriage proposals.
 * Blood is Power - Extra energy regen on call for anyone who needs it. Be careful using it while Awaken the Blood is active as the sacrifice will be around 50%!
 * Aura of the Lich - Decreases your sacrifices, and damage you take in general. Might want to reconsider Demonic Flesh in this case.
 * Tainted Flesh - One of few elites that's good with no investment in its linked attribute.

Non-elite slot

 * Life Siphon - degen for them/regen for yourself, plus it's spammable so you can hit it, tab to the next enemy, and repeat.
 * Well of Blood - regen for the tanks/minions, plus the occasional back-line corpse. Ask an MM if it's ok before bringing it.
 * Blood Ritual - Extra energy regen on call for others who need it.
 * Dark Pact - More damage is always good.
 * Lifebane Strike - With Factions' duplication of some skills, we can double up on Shadow Strike ;)
 * Death Nova - Fairly decent without any investment in Death Magic, due to its duration and the poison duration being constant. Adds an extra punch to the death of an ally/minion/yourself if the death can be predicted.

Before putting either of the wells in your bar, ask any other necros if they're MMing or not, and if they are, ask if it's ok to bring the well before equipping it. With the changes to MM, they won't need every last corpse like they used to, so it should be less of a big deal.

My usual variations
With full hench party:

Partied with real people:

Fissure of Woe:

Fort Aspenwood: (the only PvP I do)

PvE
Once outside town, start up Awaken the Blood and any other beneficial enchantments you've brought. Try to remember to recast them as necessary.

For most foes, Life Transfer can sit on the back burner as your main skills coupled with the damage output from the rest of the party will usually down a foe. Use Life Transfer mainly when the party is having problems staying alive, or when that Ranger boss is using Troll Unguent, or generally to keep yourself alive.

In areas where the combined might of your party will still take a while to kill an enemy (i.e. The Fissure of Woe), you'll want to throw Life Transfer on the called target and then proceed with your main skills as normal.

If using a well, be ready to put one up as quickly as you can after something (or someone) dies. With Awaken the Blood putting your Blood Magic at 18, your Well of Blood/Well of Power will each give any ally standing within it +7 health regen, which greatly eases the strain on your partied monks.

While using Awaken the Blood and Demonic Flesh together does indeed work well, I no longer use this combination and don't recommend it any longer. Reason being, at 0 dp, without Demonic Flesh your Barbed Signet will heal you. With it you take damage.

PvP (Fort Aspenwood)
The main use for combining Life Transfer and Life Siphon is simply a cover hex. However, in case of Hex Breaker, it will still allow you to get some degen on the foe if they aren't paying attention to their Hex Breaker. I got a particularly annoying E/Me with this in Fort Aspenwood. *assume previous damage dealing, low health on the E/Me* Casted Life Transfer, Hex Breaker killed it. Followed up with Life Siphon, after a couple seconds, dead.

During one match, an Assassin decided he was going to use Aura of Displacement to teleport to me and beat me up (meanie). I saw AoD in his skill activation, smiled, and used Strip Enchantment. Bye bye Assassin. Such a shame that he ran up to me right afterwards and beat me up anyway.

Also, if you aren't being attacked, you can solo the guards on the Amber points easily with this build. This usually happens when the enemy is busy assaulting the other side of the base.

In the metagame (at least in Factions PvP), Minion Masters are fairly common. Take Putrid Explosion and make them cry.

Strengths

 * Shadow damage and life stealing ignore armor, great against end-game foes with lots of armor.
 * Life stealing further goes through Protective Spirit and other damage-reducing spells.
 * You can kill a single target fairly quickly, especially when paired with a similarly-built necromancer.
 * Incredible self-healing power means partied monks won't have to heal you as much.
 * With as little as a 10% Enchanting mod on your staff you can keep Awaken the Blood active indefinitely as long as it isn't stripped.

Weaknesses

 * This build lacks much in the way of energy management. It uses Soul Reaping to get energy back, and if things aren't going well (or are just taking forever), it's easy to run yourself dry.
 * Spellbreaker, Spell Shield, Shadow Form. All reduce you to one slow-recharging skill: Barbed Signet.
 * Interrupts, shutdown, energy denial, etc.
 * Fissure of Woe: Abyssals seem to really love to beat me around when I start stealing their life :(