A-TIER | BUILD NECROMANCER ANIMATION (@ascensionsidekick) | ASCENSION CoA

Build Necromancer Animation Ascension CoA
Animation
undead army 15 summon effects summoner

Animation turns the Necromancer into a one-person army: 15 Raise/Animate effects summon a retinue of undead that shield their master and do the killing in their place. The gameplay is army management — position, sacrifice, resummon — since most of your damage walks on its own legs, far from your own spell bar.

Rate this build
Share your opinion on this spec: rate it across 4 game situations. Once enough votes come in, the community score influences the tier shown in the build rankings.
📊 Build
🏰 Dungeon
4.5
S
🐉 Raid
4.5
S
🥊 Arena
4.6
S
🌍 BG & Open World
4.6
S
WEIGHTED TIER A
25 votes
The community's weight grows with each new vote.
Dungeon
Raid
Arena
BG & Open World
Signature Spell
Summoning Adept

Increases your maximum Life Force by 1.

Retail Feel

The closest analogue is Unholy Death Knight for the mechanical shell — a Runic Power economy, a plague layer (the Zombie Plague its zombies, Plaguefather, and Abominations emit), and a rotating army of pets — but it isn't a retail healer analog: there's no targeted ally-heal cast, and the real healing (Raise: Ghoul's leech, the Sacrifice Undead heal, the class kit's Vampiric Aura) only benefits you and your own undead. Allies instead get a utility fringe — the Corpse Wagon damage aura, a once-a-minute clickable heal item (Create Frozen Reliquary), gear repairs, and Call of The Scourge, a genuine in-combat battle res. Mechanically it's Unholy DK's pet/plague/Runic Power engine wearing a buff-and-utility layer instead of throughput healing.

Role, tiers & resource
B
Dungeon
MeasuredAcross 484 fights (Mythic dungeons — no Mythic+ difficulty yet, phase 2) · index 1.25
B
Raid
MeasuredAcross 258 fights (Zul'Gurub, all difficulties, phase 2) · index 1.32
S
Arena
Expert opinionEvaluated by the Kami Labs team — August 5, 2026 (watch the video)
S
World Battlegrounds
Community voteAverage of 25 player ratings
RoleRanged DPS
Primary statIntellect
ResourceRUNIC_POWER

How is this number calculated?

Measured scope: Zul'Gurub, all difficulties — High Priest Venoxis, High Priestess Jeklik, High Priestess Mar'li, Bloodlord Mandokir, High Priest Thekal, High Priestess Arlokk, Jin'do the Hexxer, Hakkar, Gri'lek, Gahz'ranka.

These numbers come from Ascension Logs’ public combat logs, not an in-house guess.

The index compares each spec to the median player — the one sitting exactly in the middle of the ranking — on the same boss and the same group format: 1.00 matches that median player, 1.40 means 40% more damage than them. Only each player’s best fight counts, never their average — otherwise a player posting fifty fights would count as much as fifty different players, and averaging would mostly reward beginners still learning the spec rather than those who’ve mastered it. The comparison always happens on the same boss and the same format: a two-minute fight and a seven-minute one aren’t comparable, and a flex raid doesn’t give the same support as a 25-man.

Tiers (S, A, B…) aren’t picked by hand: the cutoffs are calculated from the real spread of every measured spec. A spec under 15 distinct players or 30 fights isn't ranked at all, rather than given a made-up grade.

View the source rankings ↗

How is this number calculated?

Mythic dungeons only — Ascension CoA has no Mythic+ tier yet (229 tracked encounters).

These numbers come from Ascension Logs’ public combat logs, not an in-house guess.

The index compares each spec to the median player — the one sitting exactly in the middle of the ranking — on the same boss: 1.00 matches that median player, 1.40 means 40% more damage than them. Only each player’s best fight counts, never their average — otherwise a player posting fifty fights would count as much as fifty different players, and averaging would mostly reward beginners still learning the spec rather than those who’ve mastered it. The comparison always happens on the same boss: 92.4% of dungeon fights are played in 5-player groups, and splitting by group size as well would discard more usable damage rows (4.5% lost against 1.4% when comparing by boss alone) for zero additional publishable spec — group size is therefore not part of the comparison.

Tiers (S, A, B…) aren’t picked by hand: the cutoffs are calculated from the real spread of every measured Dungeon spec — this column has its own distribution, it doesn’t reuse Raid’s cutoffs. A spec under 15 distinct players or 30 fights isn't ranked at all, rather than given a made-up grade.

Each performance above links to its own real combat report. Ascension Logs, however, doesn’t offer a rankings page covering every Mythic dungeon — unlike Raid, there’s no « View the source rankings » button here.

Ranking updated on August 17, 2026

These talents are a PvE configuration. The Arena and Battleground grades shown above rate the specialisation’s PvP potential — not this tree.

Stat Priority
PvE
Spell Hit (until your spells stop missing a +3-level target, for self-cast Crypt Swarm/Ghoulify) Spell Power Haste Rating Intellect Critical Strike
PvP
Resilience Stamina Spell Hit (cap) Spell Power Haste Rating Intellect Critical Strike

Nearly every minion tooltip (Bone Wraith, Abomination, Ghoul, Rotling) is written as SP*X (often plus Int*X), so Spell Power is the master damage multiplier for the whole army, while Haste shortens Animate/Raise cast times and speeds up Crypt Swarm ticks to keep the summon rotation and army uptime high — Crit, with comparatively little kit support, sits last.

Build Abilities
Class Tree
Command: Hook Lich Commander Vampiric Aura Cobalt-Plated Armor Hulking Hordes Putrid Summoner Overwhelming Force Life For Power Raise: Decaying Colossus Phylactery Lich Essence Fetid Ward Raise: Abomination Game of Bones Bone Tithe Glacial Tap Reclaimed Life Ner'zhul's Blessing Deadly Defense Dead Man Walking Mass Grave Disciple of Kel'thuzad Create Frozen Reliquary Study of Death
Specialization
Plague Horde Flesh Symbiosis Depravity Unrelenting Army Ghoul Mastery Bone King Runic Animation Skeletal Artillery Animate: Skeletal Archer Plague Protection Scourge Disciple Animate: Bone Wraith Sepulchral Might March of the Dead Graverobber Anti-Magic Shell Forbidden Technique Animate: Plaguefather Lich's Prodigy Unstoppable Frenzy Summoning Prodigy Raise: Ghoul

See also: all Ascension builds · the talent tree builder

Talent data: ascension.gg · Spec tiers & analysis: ascensionsidekick.com
Editorial rewrite, interactive talent tree, tooltips and fact-checking: KAMI LABS