Bonedancer Guide

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Overview

Bonedancer is Midgard’s pet-based attrition caster built around overwhelming enemies with layered pressure. The Bonedancer’s defining mechanic is its Commander pet mechanic. You summon one main pet (the Commander), and then additional sub-pets that are attached to that commander. If the commander dies, everything dies. This creates a very different playstyle than something like a Spiritmaster. Bonedancers can field up to four total pets. Players will enjoy playing Bonedancer if they prefer unique pet mechanics and like to juggle instant interrupts with casted spells.

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Group Playstyle

In group play, BD fills more of a disruption / anti-backline pressure role than a primary carry. At a high level, Bonedancer is there to situationally jump on the assist train or unload dps on a target, and also make the enemy backline miserable.

Fight Awareness: Dps vs. Rupts

At a high level, a Bonedancers job is deciding *is now the time for me to interrupt and be a pest *versus *should I dump casted dps into this target and try to kill it? *

In the early-to-mid fight, BDs want to keep high priority targets interrupted. A Bonedancer can keep enemy healers under constant stress by using their pets.

Pets can:

  • interrupt casts

  • force movement

  • split healer attention

In DAoC, forcing a healer to kite for 5–10 seconds can decide the fight. Bonedancers are excellent at creating that.

Bonedancers have multiple tools at their disposal to be aggressive and disruptive:

  • Instant body debuff - not only does this make your lifetap damage better, but its one of the only insta-debuffs in the game that also interrupts

  • Instant spec lifetap - you can use the high level version of this spell if your goal is damage, or just use the low level version to interrupt but save on power

  • Pets

  • Traditional casting

Between all the above tools, BD can rupt while moving and situationally decide when its appropriate to stop.

Becoming the Hammer

Once a kill window has revealed itself, Bonedancers are surprisingly good at finishing. Many people consider Runemasters the “hammer” caster of Midgard, but it is actually Bonedancers who deal the most dps on a per-second basis. The combination of their darkness base nuke plus their lifetap spec nuke, which is usually debuffed by their own instant-body debuff, creates very strong spike dps that are unpredictable since lifetap only lands every few seconds. This leaves enemy healers scrambling to react.

Don’t Sacrifice Your Pets

One of the biggest mistakes Bonedancers make in 8v8 is treating their pets as disposable. A Bonedancer should not blindly send the commander and subpets deep into enemy lines just because there’s a target available. That often gets them cleaved down by tanks, killed by nukes, or focus-targeted by attentive enemy players.

Your pets are your sustained interrupts. Every pet alive means:

  • more cast interruptions

  • more forced movement

  • more healer attention spent reacting

The longer they live, the more pressure they generate. It’s persistent disruption over time and this is only possible if your pets are alive.

How Many Pets Can I Run?

Subpets will be the lesser of: [BD level * 0.75] or Subpet Summoned Level in the following chart.

Total Subpet Levels must be less than or equal to 75.

Level of Subpet Spell Subpet Summoned Level
15 15
18 18
21 20
24 22
27 24
30 27
33 29
36 31
39 33
42 36
45 37
48 37

Group Spec Options:

Bonedancer character builder:
https://blackthorn-daoc.com/class/Bonedancer

38 Darkness, 38 Suppression

  • Most common spec; commonly referred to as “Split Spec” BD

  • Gives you all the yellow spells across Darkness and Suppression spec: yellow lifetap, yellow body debuff, yellow AOE snare, good (minimal) variance in your baseline Darkness nuke, yellow snare nuke, and respectable pets in both Suppression and Darkness.

  • Having yellow body debuff allows you to debuff root things (since your root is Body type). This is huge on a server with Purge on a 20 min RUT.

  • Minimized variance + yellow body debuff lifetap usually creates the best possible damage across specs

48 Suppression, 24 Darkness

  • Commonly referred to as “Supp Spec” BD

  • Good cheesey spec for solo, where you lifetap your enemy repeatedly while your subpets heal you

  • Provides best subpet healers, best instant lifetap, but significantly worse Darkness baseline nuke variance, worse insta body debuff, and overall less utility

46 Darkness, 27 Suppression

  • Commonly referred to as “Dark Spec” BD

  • Solid spec for assisting in Mid cold trains (typically where a Runecarving RM is the main assist debuffer, debuffing cold)

  • Has the best possible instant body debuff which makes your debuff+roots devastating

  • Has the best (lowest) variance on your baseline Darkness nuke

  • Trade off is worse instant lifetap which is made up for slightly by the higher body debuff, but the resist rate will be noticeably worse due to a lower spell level.

Group Realm Ability Builds:

  • First priority:*** Long Wind, Purge***

  • Second priority: Mastery of Concentration, Power Actives (MCL, Raging Power)
    Mastery of Concentration (MoC) is one of the most impactful Realm Abilities for casters and support casters in DAoC because it temporarily breaks one of the most fundamental rules of combat: interrupt pressure. It effectively turns you into a stationary, uninterruptible damage or utility turret for a short window. This often turns what would otherwise be shutdown moments into decisive swings in group momentum.

Note: other options here include Allure of Death which visually turns you into one of your subpets, helping you to hide on the battlefield for 90 seconds.

  • Third priority: Passives (e.g., Augmented Dexterity, Wild Power) and other Actives

Solo Playstyle

In 1v1, Bonedancers, especially Suppression Bonedancers, are among the strongest duelers on classic DAoC rulesets. On 1.65-style servers, they’re often considered borderline oppressive because their entire kit is built for attrition and sustain.

The fight usually feels like this:

You hit them.

They heal it back.

You hit them again.

Their pets heal it back even more.

Then you die. That’s the fighting-a-Bonedancer experience.

Suppression is the king solo spec because it gives the Bonedancer everything they want:

  • Instant lifetap

  • Healer subpets

  • Strong sustain

  • Reliable pressure

  • Good anti-melee and anti-caster tools

The instant lifetap is what makes the spec absurd. It hits hard, cannot be interrupted conventionally, and heals the Bonedancer for a huge portion of the damage dealt. So every offensive action is also defensive.

Their weakness in 1v1 is pet loss. If you kill the commander their entire advantage falls apart. Without pets: healing drops, pressure drops, interrupts drop. And then they become much more manageable. But killing that commander before the lifetap train kills you is the hard part.

PvE/Leveling

Bonedancer is one of Midgard’s most versatile PvE classes, blending pet utility, sustained caster damage, and strong solo potential into one package. In leveling groups, the Bonedancer usually fills a damage support role, bringing reliable pressure through nukes, lifetaps, and AoE DoTs.

Some Bonedancers prefer to level as Bone Army spec, which shifts the class into a pet-focused AoE grinder with strong melee pet trains. Your PvE role depends on spec, but the goal stays the same: Add consistent damage while letting the main tank control the fight.

Core Role: Sustained Hybrid Damage

In a standard leveling group, your job is:

  • add caster DPS

  • assist with lifetaps for sustain

  • spread AoE DoTs on grouped mobs

  • use pets to supplement pressure

Bone Army spec emphasizes:

  • strong melee pet trains

  • AoE DoT kiting

This creates a very different PvE style.

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