poison or summon?

[Speed]

I really need some advice. I want to make a necro. I think summoning is fun, so either way, I'll be summoning. Is it worth making a poison necro, since there are so many immunes and resistants out there. And are "all-summoners" any good? Im planning on making a necro to mass summon skels and revives. So I just need an opinion on which to make, a poisonmancer or a summoner?

[EuroJamie]

If you're poor, go summoner, if not, poison is an option. Read the stickies, there are plenty of good guides in there.

Oh, and don't max revives - they smell of poo. 1 point in there is plenty.

[Speed]

thanks, more people's suggestions can help.

[insane_knights]

All summoners are good unless you dont put much into either raise skels or skele man. Like Euro said dont need to max revives. I find revives hard to control and at high lvls you probably wont have enough mana to summon then all. SOme will probably die before u finish summoning them.

From you title it ask poison or summon, but apperantly you already decide summon. Is posion a good back up spell? It is if you have enough +skills.

Check out the guides!
If you dont want posion there are various choices, such as corpse explosion (which i must say is a fun spell to spam).

[Pier]

20 RS
20 SM
1 pt: CE, Amp, Decrep, DV, SumRes, Clay Golem.

Get a might merc (act 2 offensive Nightmare).

This is a very simple, very safe build and can handle Hell.

Get as many + summon tree as you can.

What you want to add after that, is your own choice.
As said before, read some guides.


For a decent poisoner you need expensive gear and max more skills.

Grr pIER

[Baboon]

You could try 20 RS, 1 SM, 1 clay and then as much points as you can miss in poison (dont forget the curses ofcourse). Poison can get practicly maxed so the damage is good. Skeletons are not very fast in killing but with the help of a good merc it's possible.

If you manage to get about three pieces of Trang Oul, you can add firewall if dealing with poison immunes.

[Myrakh-2]

Skellies might not be the fastest killer, but a pure Skelemancer (no poison or bonecrap) can max corpse explosion... and slvl 20+ corpse explosion just boom-boom-bangs everything out of existence before the palas or barbs even get a chance to swing a hit :-) Sorcs might be happy to see that monsters are stalled by the skellies and start to rain their meteors, but heck... meteor needs 3 seconds to hit, so there is a good chance they will only hit piles of corpses :-)

Btw, I prefer the term "Skelemancer" instead of "Summoner", as I consider "summoning" to be a skill that creates something out of "thin air", which is not what the necro does (except for gumby).

Meanwhile, your 20+ minions provide a virtually impenetrable bonewall, dishing out damage on their own, pursuing targets, protecting everyone else from most things except a few (black soul lightning bolts come to mind) and not blocking players like the bonewall-skill does. I can pickup and ID loot while my skellies are still busy.

Most dangers to other players are non-existent for a Skelemancer --- lightning enchanted multiple shot is a joke, since your skellies just suck up the bolts as if they weren't there. Doll explosions don't seem to affect minions at all. With a Skelemancer in your party, everyone can just hide behind the skellies, doing whatever they do best and not doing it if "dangerous" bosses or immunity issues show up.

And yes, I'm talking hell here. And no, I'm not talking enigma and other highend runewords.

Besides that, ever seen how long a cold sorc needs to kill a cold immune? :-) And those pitiful LF-zons... Hammerdins are a real problem, though, as they seem to be able to kill everything. Unless they are currently dead and need help to retrieve their corpse with all their ubergear, of course.

Skelemancers don't really have a lot of immunity issues, besides the occasional hard PI. And I never had problems with them either, it just took a little longer for my magi and firewalls to take them down. I never had to park monsters. When I'm through with an area, nothing moves there except for my minions and rats :-)

Essentially, Skelemancers can move at a rather steady pace ANYWHERE in the game: CE damage depends on monster hitpoints, so it simply deals more damage in A5 than it does in A1. Immunity issues are virtually nonexistent, so you are not slowing down if the "wrong" immunity shows up.

And, let's not forget act bosses --- they are all jokes. Andy, Duriel, Mephisto, Diablo, Baal --- throw decrep on them, let Gumby and your cold magi hit them, and enjoy the sight of your minions beating them to death while they essentially do nothing. Sure, taking down an 8-player hell-Baal or Diablo might take a while, but don't tell me that noone in your party appreciates it if hell diablo is setting duck for target practice on his little pedestal.

With corpse explosion I see a Skelemancer as a pretty fast killer, esp. when you compare it to the extremely expensive stuff you need for other classes. He is very sturdy, virtually untouchable, can handle everything in the game, and is probably one of the very builds who can kill every act boss doing essentially nothing but hitting a mouse button every now and then to refresh the curse. I always found that very neat, as it allowed me to take a coffeebreak *while* killing baal or diablo :-)

I must admit, though, that my Skelemancer on the old ladder (TO set, Arm and +3 summoning amu; on the new ladder I'm still missing three mandatory pieces) considered soloing hell ancients in larger games to be difficult. Usually you don't exactly need to solo them in larger games, though, as even people in "ancients plz" games will usually be able to do SOMETHING to contribute.

Ehm... yes, I'm aware that I deliberately ignored the few issues that show up every now and then:
- in areas with a lot of "baby monsters", corpse explosion tends to explode the babies... making it less effective
- in areas with Oblivion Knights you need to watch out for iron maiden; one generally needs to re-raise skellies quite a bit
- Maggots Lair and Arcane Sanctuary are doable, but it's pretty much a drag

Hm... and just in case it didn't get through: I'm trying to recommend making a Skelemancer :-) That's the "max SM, RS, Magi and CE" build.

[gvandale]

and your cold magi hit them.

I laughed off your entire post based solely on that one statement.

[Speed]

OK, now I am making a skelemancer after reading that. :)

[Vakarrona]

My necro is hybrid summon/poison and he does quite well. He uses a might merc and the following skills:

- Summons
20 SM
20 RS
1 Clay
1 Summon resist
1 golem mastery

- Curses
1 in each one, except for the 3 ones at left (I know many love DM, it's usefull but you can learn to survive without it)

- Poison/bone
1 bone armor
1 bone wall
1 bone prison
1 CE
20 Poison nova
20 poison explosion
rest is to poison dagger

First max SM and RS and put 1 point in every skill you will use in game or pre-requisite. Summons are your main killing power, focus on maxing it first. Almost every curses are used, at least for me yes (amp, low res, life tap, decrep and sometimes terror).
Poison nova is used to suport any kind of hard sittuation for skellys, ie, extreme physical resistant bosses, some game areas like maggot and arcane sanctuary and to kill mass groups faster than skellys (flayers, itches, normal and nm areas when high lvl).
In normal use defiance merc because he will make your skellys better tanks till you get to act2 nm and get migh merc.
This build works fine for me and you don't even need ubber equipment. I'm ladder HC and I'm currently lvl 75 at act2 hell doing fine.

[Kuzo]

i use a lvl 73 nerco, i use 15 revives and lvl 22 posion nova, as long as i decrpify the enemies first, they have no chance.

[Catwoman]

I had a summoner in 1st season, was lvl 92 and completely owned everything.
This season I am building a poison/summoner. We will see how it goes.
So far he is lvl 40, max skelleton warrior, 10 pts in mastery, everything else is going in poison and curses.