Necromancer

The Necromancer is one of the five Upgrade choices from the Overseer and can be selected at Level 45. It can not upgrade further.

Design
The Necromancer features a square with two trapezoid Spawners. One Spawner in the left side and the another on the other side. However, these Spawners are inactive, the Necromancer generates Drones only by bumping into Squares and by hitting Squares with its previously "captured" Square Drones.

Ability
Initially starting out with no Drones, the Necromancer must destroy Squares by bumping them with it's body in order to gain Drones. This “infects” them, darkening their color to an orange / peach (or to your team color if you are playing in a team game mode). These Drones may then be controlled by the player. These "infected" Square Drones can be used to hit into other Squares, which also turns them into Drones. Note that you must destroy the Square to capture it. Also note that Green Squares can also be captured by this tank.

Without any upgrade points, the Necromancer can control a maximum of 22 Square Drones at any time. However, the player can control an extra 2 Drones for every upgrade point they spend on Drone Count (replaces Reload), which can be applied up to 7 times for a maximum of 36 controllable Drones.

The Square Drones of the Necromancer with max Drone Health and Drone Damage Stats have 21 HP and are able to restore health if untouched for some time.

Controls
In terms of controls, Necromancer is very similar to the Overseer and Overlord. Pressing E for Auto Fire causes Square Drones to follow the cursor without holding left click or space, and holding right click or shift repels them from the cursor. Leaving the mouse unpressed causes them to congregate around you in a dense cloud.

Strategies

 * Strong Against: Sniper branch, Smasher / melee tanks, slow tanks, and the very Boss based on this
 * Weak Against: Bullet spammers, High DPS Tanks, Trappers, Destroyer branches.

As the Necromancer

 * This is a somewhat temperamental tank, requiring a high degree of practice or raw skill to be used effectively. However, if played properly, it can be used to easily bag hundreds of thousands of points and hours of nonstop domination. Besides that, it is still fairly powerful Class even for moderately skilled players when played conservatively or against the right enemies, such as snipers, as it can amass a massive army of Drones as long as there are yellow Squares around you. However, without the proper build and knowledge, this tank will fail you utterly. You’d be better off staying as an Overseer.
 * The simplest strategy for beginners is to gather as many Square Drones as you can, then have them attack a single tank, especially Overseers, Managers, and Sniper Classes, since they cannot defeat your drones before you kill them.
 * Don’t go to the Pentagon Nest or near a Penta Shot (or other high RoF tanks unless you are unskilled), because if they defeat your Squares, you won’t be able to get more of them quickly.
 * A very effective defensive strategy is to hold your cursor right in front of your tank in the direction you are moving. This moves all your Drones into an armor-like formation that completely covers your tank, protecting you from enemy attacks and Body Damage tanks like the Booster.
 * Because of this, using this strategy will make you almost immune to attacks from Invisible enemies.
 * Should you be moving directly toward an invisible Landmine, (if you have invested enough perks in Drone Damage and Drone Health) you will be perfectly fine. The Landmine will either have to jump out of your way or just stay still, meaning that when you collide with it your Drones will hit it first and push it away from you, grievously damaging and surrounding it. At this point you need only keep your Drones on it a little longer to dispatch it with ease.
 * Stalkers will have to shoot and retreat, but due to their low speed you will be able to quickly overwhelm them. However, a Ranger or Predator may snipe you when you have not enough Drones, severely damaging or killing you.
 * Managers will almost always turn their Drones on you, which may force you to defeat them with your own. However, so long as you have the maximum amount of Drones with you, you will quickly eliminate the Manager’s Drones, and due to their painfully slow Reload speed you will be able to overwhelm them with ease as well.
 * In Team Deathmatch they make great support tanks as they can use their large amount of Drones to cover teammates while healing or under fire, making them very useful in those game modes.
 * A way to quickly gain Squares is to first infect a few, then go to a relatively undisturbed area with lots of Polygons and send your Drones spreading through it. Wait around ten seconds, then call your Squares back. You can usually gain almost a maximum number of Drones that way. However, make sure there are no hostile tanks around when you do this, as you will be undefended.
 * In Team Deathmatch, an effective (albeit slow and conservative) strategy is to stay within the Team Base and send out all your Drones along the borders of the base with left click. Because of the sheer amount of Drones and the ability to infect (and thereby resurrect) other Squares, your Drones can continue indefinitely through all but the heaviest enemy fire and destroy every Polygon in their path.
 * Be wary of holding shift for too long, as your Drones will hit the enemy Base and be destroyed.
 * Despite the annoyance of gathering more Drones from within your Base if they are destroyed, it allows you to effectively grow even if the entirety of the server is controlled by the enemy team. So long as you never leave the Base you can never die, although it becomes boring after a time.
 * It is not advised to use this Class in maze mode because of its lack of natural Drone production, and there being few resources. Even if you happen to find the little pockets of Polygons scattered around the map, they usually are dominated by high RoF tanks that can easily obliterate you.

Against the Necromancer

 * Necromancers can defeat a wide variety of tanks, but it's not so dangerous against high rate of fire tanks, such as the Triplet, they can mow through its Drones, leaving the enemy Necromancer defenseless.
 * Necromancers cannot target fast moving tanks such as Boosters and Smashers. Unless the Necromancer is skilled, you can just keep on running around it while killing its Drones (this works especially well with a Fighter).
 * Be wary of Necromancers that do not engage you when you apply this tactic. Skilled Necromancers will simply keep themselves shrouded in their drones and retreat, never actually attacking you, therefore forcing you to get close if you want to engage. Do NOT do this, because though their drones are relatively slow, you will be amazed at how quickly they can turn on, surround, and dispatch you should you get too close.
 * Using long-ranged Sniper Classes like Predator or Ranger, you can try to catch the Necromancer off guard, as your FoV is much larger than the Necromancer’s.
 * Another strategy, if luck is on your side, is to catch inexpert players who are attempting to learn how to use this tank. Because of its fame and difficultly to master, generally a full third of Necromancer players you encounter will not be able to properly utilize this tank, and are easy prey.
 * If you watch a Necromancer and see that its drones are dying at a fast rate, or that they have only twenty drones maximum, chances are good that the player is using the wrong build for this tank, most likely a speed or body damage tank. If you are a sprayer, then don’t even bother with the drones; focus only on the tank itself. It will quickly die.
 * If you see that a Necromancer has many drones that do not die quickly, then it likely has the right build. However, builds alone is not just a Necromancer make. Watch them, and if you notice that they spend a large portion of time away from their drones, then chances are good that this is only a moderately skilled player. If you are a rammer, then simply wait for the Necromancer to send its drones at an enemy before closing in to ram it. Be wary though, that a Necromancer has a larger field of view than most rammers, so be wary of tricks.
 * Also a good way is to team up and stalk against the necromancer.

History

 * In the past, each of the Necromancer’s Square Drones had visible HP bars. As of previous changes, they no longer show their health bars.
 * In earlier versions of the game, Very slowly Drones could spawn from the Necromancer's spawners, and 'Reload' stat can slightly decrease the reload time. This feature was removed because it is somewhat pointless as it would take hours to amass an army using this feature.
 * As of June 13th, the Reload was changed to Drone Count. The Drone cap with zero Done Count is then 20 and the full Drone count is then 34.
 * As of October 23, the Necromancers' Drone Count was buffed, from 20 minimum to 22, and 34 maximum to 36 as a secret update.
 * On July 30th, the Necromancer was balanced, decreasing its Drone Health but increasing its Drone Speed.

Trivia

 * The Necromancer is based (named) after Necromancers, a type of wizard known for raising and controlling the dead. This references the Necromancer’s ability to control Squares when they're killed by the Necromancer.
 * This is the very first tank added to the game after the game was released. The Necromancer was added in the May 18th update in the same patch the Changelog itself was added.
 * It is the only playable tank with a square shaped body, the only other square-shaped entity being the Summoner.
 * It's also the only tank with inactive Spawners. They are just for a decoration design of the tank.
 * Necromancer Drones sometimes do a little spin when attacking tanks or Polygons, as if they were shredding the target.