need advice on crap-gear summoner.

[rikstaker]

My first char for new ladder-summoner,basically to make a spirit atleast for my planned sorc.

I plan to max RS,SM,I have placed a few in amp & I'll place a few in confuse.

I need to ask-do I invest heavily in revive or get a bone attack spell ...:scratch:

Any other necro advice would be good.

Rik

[aman]

I would put a point in corpse explosion

Here is a good guide (http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=349093)

Hope this helps

Aman

[chubbypuppy]

This is the core of a summoner build.

20 RS
20 SM
1 Clay Golem
1 Golem Mastery
1 Summon Resist

1 Teeth
1 Corpse Explosion <- absolute must. With Amp dmg, you can drop rest of the pack after the first monster goes down.

1 Amp Dmg <- -100% phys resist, adds 50% to CE.

-------------

So this takes 46 points. So if you are going to level 85, you have 50 more points to play with. The following are possible options:

20 points into skeletal mage (fragile, helps some but not strong like warriors, fun to watch)

3 points to get revives (1 revive is enough with even like +5 skills. They just die too fast and too stupid to invest more than 1 point into).

1 in bone armor

3 more to get decrepify. This is a worthwhile skill for bosses.

19 more to max corpse explosion. With Amp Dmg, it's really a great skill, and this skill maxxed covers a lot of area. 1 point is enough though since most monsters clump together.

50 points to get some poison or bone. The problem here is without marrow walk, but add-ons are pretty weak, but better than nothing and probably do more damage than mages. I would probably go this route. I tried bone-summon but without marrowwalk it was just slow. Maybe poison can do more group damage overall.

[Mad Mantis]

I need to ask-do I invest heavily in revive or get a bone attack spell ...:scratch:

Any other necro advice would be good.

Chubbypuppy explained most of the things. What I wanted to add was that the Poison route can be very viable. even without good gear and not totally synergised you can use it to really help out your Skellies. It won't kill things as fast as a pure Poisonmancer, but the damage isn't pathetic.

[chubbypuppy]

What I wanted to add was that the Poison route can be very viable.

I agree. With 50 points and +5 necro skills (modest I think), you have Poison Damage of 2075-2212 over 2 seconds. That's 1k per sec over a large group. Im sure trang gloves will become cheap sooner than other pieces, so that's another 25% damage.

BTW 50 points into bone (1 into bone armor, 9 in to wall, 20 spear, 20 skull) gives you 869 spear, 1279 skull.

Basically, bone is just too narrow even with the spear. Poison nova u can infect the whole room in 1 shot, and reapply ever 2 secs and this will help ur skellies to drop those sick monsters faster. As soon as 1 drop, CE away.

Darn, now I want to do this build :D

[Pherdnut]

If this is your first summoner, you may find yourself putting that sorc off for a while. :D Sorcs are nice for boss runs, of course, but summoners can go anywhere and get by just fine with the majority of their gear devoted to MF. When you have a build that can kill monsters this safely and as fast as it does, the road towards bosses becomes a lot more worthwile for accumulating, gems, jewels, and the occasional decent rune or socketable.

Don't bother with more than one point in Confuse until you've gotten some high end gear. Confuse has a nice starting radius as it is and just a few skiller items will be more than you need for it.

46 points is right. It's actually a very good build with that investment alone. Mages aren't as powerful as skeletons but they're nice to have, especially for killing the regen rate on the new bosses with poison attacks that do almost no damage but last up to and over ten minutes depending on resists. They're also cool for helping out with physical immunes although corpse explode is typically sufficient for that.

Nightfish's guide in the strategy compendium is the best read on the matter although I think the choice to put a full 20 into corpse explode is debatable. But then there are so many extra points that this isn't a bad place to put some of them.

[rikstaker]

Thanx for the help guys. :clap:

I am not so keen on poison-I had a poisono/summoner on last ladder & with top end gear like webs/trangs/trangs shield.He killed okish but he was boring >.< I am leaning towards corpse explosives. :D

Rik