summon necro skills

[Marcanthi]

Guys, im new to the necro character and ive been reading some things about MF and good skills. Now i wonder tho: im making a summoner/ reviver and what can i get best for fast killing curses/skills? ive been reading that corpse explosion is good and poison nova too. What shud i aim for? and what about the curses to slow/ weaken my enemies?
Im on lvl 15 now and got some skills in skele mastery and summon skellies. dont really know what would be best from there tbh.... all the info isnt making sense atm lol. plz help

[haTe™]

[QUOTE=Marcanthi]Guys, im new to the necro character and ive been reading some things about MF and good skills. Now i wonder tho: im making a summoner/ reviver and what can i get best for fast killing curses/skills? ive been reading that corpse explosion is good and poison nova too. What shud i aim for? and what about the curses to slow/ weaken my enemies?

Max Raise skeleton,and skeleton mastery and from then U have 3 ways..

pure sumoner
poison/sumon
bone/sumon

I would recomend to go for pure sumoner so amp,dec,and CE...

[Boqu]

don't know if it is true, but I always thought that use CE to kill it doesn't drop much.

[Marcanthi]

[QUOTE=Marcanthi]Guys, im new to the necro character and ive been reading some things about MF and good skills. Now i wonder tho: im making a summoner/ reviver and what can i get best for fast killing curses/skills? ive been reading that corpse explosion is good and poison nova too. What shud i aim for? and what about the curses to slow/ weaken my enemies?

Max Raise skeleton,and skeleton mastery and from then U have 3 ways..

pure sumoner
poison/sumon
bone/sumon

I would recomend to go for pure sumoner so amp,dec,and CE...

does that provide enuff strenght to go thru hell mode without that much problems?? i mean, do i have enought killing power that way?

[Kyo]

Hi - If you new the necro class then i highly recommend this build "The infamous Skellimancer" (http://strategy.diabloii.net/news.php?id=509) for playing PvM.

This build shouldn't be too much trouble to finish the game as long as you stick to the guidelines. There no speicalist equipment required (but does help). It should also help you familarise yourself with common necro skills. Any more queries regarding this build, feel free to post it back here once you have a look at the guide.

Good Luck

Kyo

[Sculpin]

Id go pure summoner. Max raise skeleton, skeleton mastery, corpse explosion and one point in all curses. I added a couple of points to amp to make the radius bigger and to make it last longer. you can play with skill points after that, maybe a couple in revive and a couple in the golems and golem mastery. With this you will be strong enough to go through hell without much difficulty. Get yourself a might merc too. Summoner isnt the quickets killer but it is very effective.

[Pherdnut]

All of the curses can be useful and only Weaken is regarded as useless since Decrepify effectively reduces the damage of enemy attacks to 25% whereas weaken only reduces damage by a third. For your first Necro, you might just want to put one point in each and see which you find most useful. Here's a brief take on all of them. For the most part you only need one point in the curses for them to be effective since they all recast very quickly.

Amp Damage - Reduces physical damage resistance. This will double damage against enemies with no resistance and more than double damage against enemies with it. It also breaks physical immunities. This is a Skelliemancers most frequently used curse and greatly enhances the effectiveness of your skeletons.

Dim Vision - I haven't experimented with this one much, but people swear by it for making ranged attackers useless. I find that Confusion works equally well for that purpose, so I don't typically use this one as much. I've also heard of people putting a full 20 points into it for the purpose of cranking up the radius so they can simply ignore most enemies for doing quick rune runes on the countess etc. Just keep in mind that enemies aren't totally helpless unless you have ranged attacks. If you get close enough they can attack you so don't rely on it for getting rid of pursuers who are already nipping at your heals.

Weaken - It's lame, but it does have a rather large radius for only one point. Not bad if your skeletons are taking too much damage from a tough patch of enemies, but I wouldn't bother hotkeying it since Decrepify completely voids it as a useful skill and it's not long until you get that.

Iron Maiden - Not worth it for the most part, although some people have found it works well when combined with runeword items that grant the Thorns aura and other damage return abilities. Since enemies have such an insane amount of hitpoints but do relatively minor damage compared to what you can do, it just doesn't work that fast. It should work okay throughout Normal difficulty but after that its usefulness greatly diminishes in Nightmare and enemies in Hell will have to hit close to a dozen times before they die in some cases. If you are going to try it, this is one of few curses you'll want to put 20 points into in order to increase its effectiveness.

Terror - I tend to leave this one out to save points but it is useful both for getting enemies away from you in a desperate situation and also making unique monsters (who are immune to this curse) a lot easier to handle by depriving them of their meat shield peons. Probably also handy for doing runs to bosses/countess, etc. but I haven't tried it.

Confuse - This one doesn't get used enough. It's a phenomenal curse for caster Necros and I think even more effective than decrepify for helping to keep your minions alive against tough enemies. Since they will typically attack whatever is closest to them, Confusion makes it a lot less likely that they will gang up on one of your minions at a time. I'm also of the opinion that it effectively replaces Dim Vision for the purpose of dealing with archers and other ranged units. Few other skills in the game reduce large mobs of monsters to completely useless as fast as this one does.

Life Tap - Another great curse for keeping minions and mercenaries alive. This is another one I skimp on in most builds even though it is incredibly effective. Just putting it out briefly will fill your minion's life bars in no time. No melee oriented Necro should be without it.

Attract - People swear by it, but I've had problems getting this one to work well for me. Monsters still seem to stay engaged with minions they were attacking sometimes. Also, it doesn't work on bosses or unique monsters, which greatly reduces its palatibility as a point investment for me when confusion already does crowd control so well. Try it on your first character though. Enough people disagree with me on this one that I suspect I just haven't given it a fair shake.

Decrepify - This one tends to be the favored default skill of nooby necromancers who will use it and nothing else since it greatly weakens enemies and also works like half an amplify damage. Don't fall prey to this thinking. In many cases your minions will be better off killing enemies quickly rather than continuing to get hit by elemental damage which isn't reduced by decrepify. I tend to save it for use on particularly powerful enemies like bosses and unique monsters, casting it first and then whatever curse I want the surrounding enemies to suffer from. Since most uniques are immune to nearly all the curses except for this and Lower Resistance, the second curse won't negate it.
Combined with the slow effect of your clay golem and cold attacks, Decrepify will pretty much paralyze any boss in normal and seriously slow down nightmare bosses. Slow effects are capped at 50% on bosses in Hell, however, so Decrepify alone is all that's going to be worth using on them for this purpose.
Decrepify halves attack speed AND physical damage. This is why we say it effectively reduces damage by 75%. This also makes it a great curse for for use on monsters that do heavy physical damage.

Lower Resist - For soloing purposes the only Necros that really have a use for this curse are ones that use poison attacks or rely heavily on Skeleton Mages. It does nothing for the bone spells which are pure magic rather than elemental. As a member of a team, however, it will be a huge help to any character class that uses elemental attacks. Like the paladin's conviction aura (which it will stack with if you can afford the infinity polearm rune word), it can break immunities but not by much and even if you have it around -60% you will only be able break immunites that on monsters with around 111-112% resists and lower. For an idea of how useful this is going to be, have a look at the monsters guide on Arreat. In Hell, most immunes have higher resists than this. Depending on plus skills from items, it's not worth it to put more than 1-10 points in this skill due to the serious diminishing returns it runs into around lvl 15.

[Marcanthi]

guys, ive been reading and thinking and lvl-ing my necro a bit and i have the following things which 'worry' me: loads of peeps say that corpse-explosion is good but as im a summoner, where do i get my skellies from if i blow bodies up...
Poison nova seems nice but doesnt do that much damage?!? isnt it better to invest in skelleton mastery, summon skellies, revive and summon resist to make them harder? combined with a few curses (at low lvl) will that be enuff to make it thru hell??

[Mad Mantis]

guys, ive been reading and thinking and lvl-ing my necro a bit and i have the following things which 'worry' me: loads of peeps say that corpse-explosion is good but as im a summoner, where do i get my skellies from if i blow bodies up...

CE itself is fantastic for creating bodies. Blowing up 1 body generally creates more than 1 corpse. Just let your Merc kill something, gather the enemies in a tight bundle, cast Amp and blow up the body with CE. This should net you about 3 corpses. The following cast of CE will probably kill the entire monster pack. You create more corpses then you have a need for.

Alternatively your Skellies can be easily raised from the graveyard near Pindleskin. Just run through the portal and keep raising. Or you can walk out the gate in Harrogath and raise the dead bodies there.




Poison nova seems nice but doesnt do that much damage?!? isnt it better to invest in skelleton mastery, summon skellies, revive and summon resist to make them harder? combined with a few curses (at low lvl) will that be enuff to make it thru hell??

Poison Nova can do enormous amounts of damage with a bit of gear. Things like Three Part Trang, Bramble, Death's, Facets and LR give you an enormous amount of damage.
Also keep in mind that Nova effects everything in your cast radius. You are not doing this damage to one monsters, but to the entire screen at once.

If you max SM, RS and put a point in Amp and Summon Resist. You can solo Hell. All you need then is a Might Merc and a few +skills. It can even be done without +skills if you play it smart and invest in a few more skills.

[yuqing]

For some reason, i hate playing hybrids, so i play a pure summoner.
I dont find maxing CE to be that nessasary if you have good +skill equip
lvl 10+ CE can easily be as useful as a maxed one, but i do find mages fun to have around.

[newerest]

What realm are you in? If you're in US-East and Non-ladder I could show you my necro and maybe give you a Gravespine(Unique wand, gives +2 to all necro skills) or one of my many frostburns...


EDIT- O ya it looks like no one bothered to mention that CE does 50% Fire Damage and 50% Physical Damage so watch out for the rare Physical and Fire immune....

[Mad Mantis]

EDIT- O ya it looks like no one bothered to mention that CE does 50% Fire Damage and 50% Physical Damage so watch out for the rare Physical and Fire immune....

Do keep in mind that there are not a lot of monsters that stay immune to both types of damage after applying either Amp or LR.

[Myrakh-2]

Do keep in mind that there are not a lot of monsters that stay immune to both types of damage after applying either Amp or LR.

However, while you are in the process of keeping things in mind, do keep in mind that bosses have more hitpoints than their minions, and that immunity-breaking skills only work at 1/5th their normal value, thus leaving the monster with a high resistance even if a the immunity is broken.

For example, amp damage when applied to an immune leaves the monster at 80% physical resist in the best case. A 50% Lower Resist doesn't go below 90%.

That's why I always recommend to NOT *rely* on corpse explosion. You might need a lot more corpses than what's there...

[Mad Mantis]

However, while you are in the process of keeping things in mind, do keep in mind that bosses have more hitpoints than their minions, and that immunity-breaking skills only work at 1/5th their normal value, thus leaving the monster with a high resistance even if a the immunity is broken.

That is true, but high resistances is better than an immunity. After CE-ing your Merc will still be around dealing damage. As you say it might not be wise to solely rely upon CE to deal with immunities, but it shouldn't be dismissed as an option, or at the very least a complement to, your way of dealing with immunities.

[Marcanthi]

well, im lvl 53 now and have some nice summon skills with revives and CE... seems to go very easy in Nightmare mode. I am curious what hell will be like as my other lvl 80 char. has a hard time in hell.

@ newerest: im in europe realm, so i dont think its gonna work :(