Pure Summoner vs PNova+Summoner ???

[ZounceHC]

Hi, I play on West HCL and am currently deciding what to make as a second character (first is a trap sin who is 76 in Act1 Hell). I've decided to make a summoner but am not sure if i should make a pure summoner or a hybrid using poison nova and using remaining skills on skellies. I want this character to be capable of doing most parts of hell solo so base your suggestions on this. Has anyone made a Poison Summon hybrid like this?? I'm more than prepared to make a pure summoner but want to increase killing speed without effecting survivability much and wanted to know if this build was a good way of doing it. This character will be mildly twinked but not much as everything i've found so far has gone straight to my Asn. Thanks for any help/criticism.

[_OrpheusPrime_]

I'm playing an untwinked poision summoner hybrid in my team right now. Unfortunatly we've been getting slow as of late so, i have yet to see just how effective the poision is yet. Might try the necro forum.

[ZounceHC]

What lvl are you and what stage of the game are you at?

[slick4hire]

Poison/Summon hyrids are very, very powerful. Much more so than a pure summoner. My hybrid from last season was far more powerful than my pure summoner.

There is only one problem with them is they are very item dependent. In order to make them truly effective, you must have a Deaths Web and Trangs Gloves. From there its pretty obvious: shako, soj (s), homonc or boneflame, etc.

IMHO, poison/summon necros are the most powerful build in the game for running all areas. If you lower resist is high enough, you will only run into 1 or 2 areas that you can't break a poison immunity (such as the death lord boss pack in Worldstone Keep Level 3).

Bottom line, if you have the equipment, build the poisoner. Otherwise, stick with the summoner.

Or you could just say phuckit and build the poisoner and count on him to find the items! :flip:

[ZounceHC]

Thx for the input Slick. Looks like i'll have to begin with a pure summoner as Deaths web is unattainable for me atm. I found a pair of Trangs gloves the other night but traded them for a Jade talon for my Sin (regretting that trade a lot now). The only thing i'm worried about is lagging a lot being a pure summoner. I have a relatively new computer but still seem to lag a lot when playing with summoners that have a number of skellies.

[slick4hire]

I run on dial up and don't lag with a summoner. At the most, what will you have? Maybe 10-12 skellies? That shouldn't lag u at all.

As far as the deaths web is concerned, you can do it without them, but I wouldn't recommend going past act 1 hell without it. Keep in mind that you can find a lot of stuff between now and then. By that time, you may find it or something else juicy to trade for it...

[ZounceHC]

Sounds viable to make the hybrid, i've never made a PNova Nec before and it's always fun making a build for the first time.

I guess i'll head over to the Necro forum and check out the guides over there. Did you make yout last guy have max block or a Vitamancer? Should I use Clay Golem for bosses and fire golem the rest of the time?

[slick4hire]

I went vita. The only threats you ever really run into are dolls (if they make it through the skellies and revives), snakes with the bone spears and gloams. Note that blocking would not help in any of these situations so I figure I did it right. Dim vision, however, works wonders with these.

I used clay golem always. Points are thin enough without using the 1 extra for fire golem when he really isn't necessary. The only reason I had any points in any other golems is because they were prereq for revive, which I put 1 point into and let the +skills help from there.

For skellies, you can either go the mastery or skellie route. There are pros and cons for either (which you can find a ton of posts in regards to in the necro forums). I prefer to strike a balance, with taking skeleton to the most number of them I can with endgame equipment then pumping mastery from there.

As far as curses, i put 1 into all except attract and confuse. A lot of people like attract. My poblem with this spell in the build is that most of the creatures you cast attract on are immune to their own attacks, thus effectively making it the same as dim vision but spending extra skill pts. But as said before, points are THIN in this build. At level 89, I had skellie mastery, poison nova, and poison explosion maxed. I was working on poison dagger, but wouldh't have it maxed until level 93 or 94. I had level 12 or 13 skellie, 1 into bone armor (just in case) and the rest prerequesites.

My hotkeys were lower resist, dim vision, amp, decrep, poison nova, corpse explosion, skellie, revive, bone armor.

Basically the order of things is to lower resist, poison nova every 2 seconds or so (remember it doesn't stack, it resets) until there is a body or five, then amp or decrep (depending on how fast the enemy is) and corpse explosion. Also a might merc speeds up the killing the skellies are capable of doing.

Wow, this is a damn mini guide. I hope this helps... :lol:

[Kretschmer]

I'm playing an untwinked venomancer (no trading, etc) and I can solo fine in ActIV hell (haven't had a chance to try ActV). You just have to remember to play by yourself or with another person if you want to do the killing. Most people shoot for boss runs or some such. With poison, you want large groups of smaller enemies, like the Pit/CS/etc.

Item's are pretty easy. I'll outline what I'm using:

-OrtSol helm; +1 all skills, ene, and LR
-+68hp ammy; I need life, bad
-+2 necro magic wand; bought for ~250k with one extra skill
-Spirit shroud (found in hell).-PD Lidless found WSK NM
-Magefist (somewhere in NM)
-Crafted belt (+hp/LR)
-crafted boots: lots of res, life, life regen
-+40hp ring
-+10 all res ring

With these items I can kill with ease. In hell. Solo. PN damage: ~2.65k/2sec

20PN/PD/PE
1 SM/RS/RSM/revive/iron/blood
4GM
5CG
2(?)SR
1teeth
1CE
1 all curses (attract is very useful in hell. Safer than DV and more effective with few +skills.)

Usual attack order:
1)confuse an enemy or two
2)LR the rest
3)PN; wait for corpses
4)confuse/LR/revive as needed
5)CE until it's all dead
6)???
7)Profit!


Feel free to take anything useful from there! Good luck!

[ZounceHC]

Thanks for all the suggestions/mini guides :)

[xeyloderixed]

the point is, you can solo everything in the game using any char you want, it just depends on how patient you are.

that said, i dont think a psn hybrid is what you want to start ladder with. last season i quested one through with basically mostly good items: shako, 3 piece trangs, wiz, skullders, maras, marrows. and i was still disappointed in my killing abilities, especially in a2 and a3 hell.

then again, if you really plan on using it long term, psn hybrids are probably the single most powerful build out there, in terms of killing capabilities:survivability ratio. a huge bone armor coupled with a skill that affects a radius centered around your character kills crowds pretty quickly. then again psn hybrids are notoriously slow boss killers (but thats another story).

also, any necro with the usual 43 point skill distribution (20/20 skeletons+summon res+prereqs) will be able to do hell solo; any second damage source is ok (either by bone or by psn). this season i started with bone because they are slightly cheaper, yet are about as effective as psners in the 70-80s range. after that psners are much much faster than bone.