Making a CE necro for CS runs - help needed

[MarkN]

Hi, I'd like to make a corpse explosion necro to speed up cs runs. Ce is pretty underrated, since Diablo is a game where mobs don't hit particularly hard, but do have insane hp. A spammed 12 yard corpse explosion really outdamages a hammerdin or any other character when you think about it.

The skills:
-20 ce
-20 amplify damage
-20 lower resist

the rest could be spent in bone armor or skeletons, or maybe a 20k hp clay golem to keep mobs entertained ;) It doesn't really matter since this necromancer is meant for party play, not solo play.

I really need help on the gear though. I'm really poor, I basically have 0 uniques at the moment, since I just moved from Europe to USEast. I won't need fcr, because although I'll spam ce, I won't spam it all day like a sorc spams frozen orb. Ce is pretty much the biggest mana hog in the game, I think going base mana will be a nightmare.

stats:
strength en dex enough for gear
200ish energy?
rest in vitality

gear: focused mainly on mana and resist
- frostburn
- 3 pdiamond great shield
- +2 ce +resist wand
- 30 frw (so I can keep up with the insane pace, :P) +resist boots
- +mana belt
- +resist + mana rings
- prismatic ammy (cube recipe)
- 3 Psapphire great helm (for the looks, I love the look of a great helm)

Yes, I'm missing fhr here.

What do you think? feedback would be appreciated.

[hiroshimana]

i may not help you here, but in gear ill say look for +mana +skills +life and +fhr all i can say, even though it doesnt looks like ill disagree with you saying that a CE kills better than a hammerdin because with all those curses i dont think you´ll get to 11k damage as as din may, and if you do even though a CE necro seems a lot of work to do and may take time killin other monsters and reason for CS is to level quickly but that is just IMO

Edit: just tested one, not bad actually but, you dont need eny other curse unless amplify damage works, i just tested and lower resist didnt affected at all and weaken didnt work so good...so this nec could be finish in level 40 if you want any ocurse because after CE you dont need eny other skil.IMHO you may just do a CEComandancer and just use your skelies as a big meat shield so they kill while you wait for being able to CE, but as I said, i tried most curses and they wont be that much of a help. now for gear ill say go pure +life +mana and +fhr, (+skills to help skellies) but you dont need energy at all since at lvl 20 it costs 34 if am not mistaking and with frosties and other items you may get 300+mana with base energy so putting points into energy is useless...

[MarkN]

Thanks Hiroshimana, I'll try base mana. The reason I don't use skeletons is that people will complain that skellies lag (they don't realise this has been fixed long ago and spells like meteor lag more than an army of skeletons every could), they also quickly die to Iron Maiden.

Corpse explosion is 50% fire damage and 50% physical damage. Generally the physical resistance is lower than the fire resistance in the CS, so amp would be the better choice. Thing is there are always a lot of sorcs so lower resist is more party friendly.

Now a quick "on a napkin" calculation of the damage of ce: a Venom Lord has 9555-15167hp on /players 1. The average hp is 12361. Ce does 60-100% of a corpse life, I'll use the average of 80%. 80% of 12361 is 9888 damage. The physical half of this gets doubled by Amplify damage for a total of 14832 damage. This is before resistance.
Since I don't know how resistance works, let's say this does 8k damage after resistance. This 8k damage then gets applied to everyone within 9 yards. Especially at the crowded seal areas this will do huge damage.

[tdlofcc]

I had been thinking of this aswall ... At least since I've been having to much fun with my Poison Necro ... CE is a nice killer. One I also still remember from the good old 1.09 Cow games.

I also just tried it ... and getting the first kill on a this char is kinda hard.

I invested 20 in Bonespear, took some time to kill even one monster. But one CS killed the rest of the pack.

So you might consider making a CE / Bone necro.
Besides that, you can shop most of the +skills items I would not got to a full 20CE and Amp. But go for 15CE and Amp. Since +5 skills is rather easily obtained. With a bit of luck you can even shop a +2 / +3CE / +3Amp. Saving more points for Bonespear/Spirit.

I just re-tested with the 20Bspear/spirit ... it works :)
At lvl 81 you can have one in all cursus and 15 Amp, 1 in all summonspells and 15CE and 20Bspear/spirit. All you'll be missing is the poisonskills. Which are no big deal :)

Getting the first kill was easy enough. Just cast a golem and kill one baddy. Boom does the rest. After that get some revives and start exploding.

As for gear, well, can't disagree on you there.

I will go for a wormskull, +2ammy, +2 wand (+2amp/CE would be nice)
Not sure of the rest of the gear. 3D shield is enough for res. I think I have a +15str / 35mana armor. And frosties for more mana.

[Akukami]

Insert post here.

Put 1 into Fire Golem so you can use it as a distraction in CS.

- Akukami

[HardkoreHarry]

Now a quick "on a napkin" calculation of the damage of ce: a Venom Lord has 9555-15167hp on /players 1. The average hp is 12361. Ce does 60-100% of a corpse life, I'll use the average of 80%. 80% of 12361 is 9888 damage. The physical half of this gets doubled by Amplify damage for a total of 14832 damage. This is before resistance.
Since I don't know how resistance works, let's say this does 8k damage after resistance. This 8k damage then gets applied to everyone within 9 yards. Especially at the crowded seal areas this will do huge damage.

Amp dmg doesn't work like that. What amp does is lower the monster's physical resistance by 100%. In the specific case of the monster having exactly 0 physical resist, then your calculations are correct. However, according to AS, in LOD venom lords have 50% physical resist, whether or not it is the same in classic, I have no idea. But if they also have 50% physical resist in classic, then amp would lower their physical resist to -50%, effectively tripling the damage that you would do without amp.

Also, venom lords (atleast in LOD, according to AS) have 130 fire resist in hell. What does that mean? That means that lower resist will never break that immunity by itself. So if you are only concerned with increasing the damage your corpse explosion does, then amp is the only thing that will help. However, if there is a pally with a high lvl conviction in the game, then using lower could be of atleast some use, but amp would still be better due to the venom lords still having like 90% fire resist.

Also, you must take into consideration the chance for the venom lords to block the ce to find the average dmg dealt per ce.

[MarkN]

Thank you HardcoreHarry. I knew the Venom lords have 130 fire resistance and so the fire half of ce would barely do any damage. I thought because ce is a spell it bypasses block, I guess I was wrong. Can the Venom Lords block the complete ce or only the physical half of it?

[HardkoreHarry]

Well as far as I know, if an attack (ce) has a physical component it can be completely blocked. But in the case of venom lords it is a moot point since they are immune to the fire component anyway. But for the other monsters I am pretty sure that they can block the entire attack.

You could pm Orphan or RTB and I am sure they would be able to tell you for certain.

[Noite Escura]

I think only the physical part can be blocked. At least I read it works this way for Diablo's LBOD

[Akukami]

The gear you posted for a CE Nec is not bad, but here's what I would use:

Helmet: 3-Socket PRuby Mask
Weapon: Ume's Lament OR +2 Nec + 20 FCR + CE + FR, LR Wand
Shield: 3-Socket PDiamond Large Shield
Armor: Goldskin OR Twitchthroe OR 24 FHR + Life/Mana + FR, LR Armor
Gloves: Magefist
Boots: 30 FRW + 10 FHR + FR, LR Boots
Belt: Nightsmoke OR 24 FHR + Life/Mana + FR, LR Belt
Rings: 10 FCR + Life/Mana + Str + FR, LR Rings x 2 (can have only 1 ring w/ FCR)
Amulet: +1 or 2 Nec + Priz + Life/Mana + Str Amulet

The gear is basically the same as yours, with a few modifications to it. First off, I'd pick Magefist over Frostburn since Magefist gives +1 to All Fire Skills. CE is a Fire Skill, so it would benefit from the bonus. Also, if you notice, I arranged the gear so that you have 50 FCR, the acceptable breakpoint for Necs. You'll get 20 from your Wand, 20 from Magefist, and 10 from your jewelry. Also, I don't like the idea of using a Mana Helmet on your Nec, but if your really want to go with the blue theme, wear Heavenly Garb. Have Fun!

- Akukami

[fredsta54]

Heres what my bspirit/Ce nec used to solo hell cs in ~4-5 mins (3 mins record time)

Shard
Magefist
soj
+nec pris fcr ammy
Stat res ring
twitch
3 pdiamond large shield
r/w res boots
fhr res belt
Wormskull

20 bspirit
20 bone prison
20 CE

1 cgolem/golem mastery

Forget how many to amp, lvl ~10 after + skills, with 1 pnt to lower res to deal with PI monsters who are still very resistant to phys dmg after amp

+ skills really dont matter, the way to do it is to get down 1-2 bodies really quickly, fcr really speeds up the whole thing, and i dont think id rather use a gg rare wand/WOE for 80 fcr neither





Fred

[MarkN]

Thank you all for the replies.

I'll go with the Bone Prison/Spirit/CE build, because I'm forseeing troubles with leveling. I can always make a new necro.

I bought a +2skills +2 bone prison +2 bone spear +3 ce wand, which I'll use. I am 95% sure magefist doesn't work with ce, I know usually works with fire spells but ce is an exception.

[Akukami]

Thank you all for the replies.

I'll go with the Bone Prison/Spirit/CE build, because I'm forseeing troubles with leveling. I can always make a new necro.

I bought a +2skills +2 bone prison +2 bone spear +3 ce wand, which I'll use. I am 95% sure magefist doesn't work with ce, I know usually works with fire spells but ce is an exception.

Equip Magefist on your Nec, and check you skill tree. CE will go up by 1. And if by some chance it doesn't work w/ CE, the 20 FCR is what you should be after. Remember, try and hit 50 FCR at the very least, and don't just toss this idea away casually because it really does help.

- Akukami

[Fearlessone]

Yeah, my current necro uses magefist instead of frosties for the extra CE and esp for the fcr. I haven't really tested either, so not sure if I'm really gaining anything. He does most of his damage with CE. Like the other guys said, u definitely will need either bone or pois skill to get the first few corpses.

LowRes is prob the best curse to use since very few zealots and not that many fighting barbs in cs anymore to take advantage of amp. Any lightning zons, foh'ers, all sorc and pois necros can benefit from it. Yeah, LR is wimpy around venom lords, who have high hitpoints and that danged high fire res. The knights in the cs also are fire immune, but they will fall fast to CE even with the LR curse.

Base energy, my necro uses mana intensive pnova, revives, and ce, prob uses more mana than any necro ever has in this game. I use a +40 mana armor, sometimes +mana boots, definitely some good mana on rings. I used to use the psapphire or pskull helms, but like the +1 skills on wormskull now. After all, we can scoop up mana pots or go to town. And dont forget battle orders for doubling the mana pool. So there u are....

[MarkN]

Equip Magefist on your Nec, and check you skill tree. CE will go up by 1. And if by some chance it doesn't work w/ CE, the 20 FCR is what you should be after. Remember, try and hit 50 FCR at the very least, and don't just toss this idea away casually because it really does help.

- Akukami

You're right, I confused the magefist with +% fire skill damage, both from Facets and from fire mastery, which really have no effect at all on CE.
50 fcr might be pretty hard to get with the weapon I wrote about, the rings are easy, but wall of the eyeless or a good ammy with 10% fcr is hard to obtain when you're poor.