skellimage/pnova hybrid -- will this work?

[veganNecro]

I just started building a new necro, and was wondering if anyone had built something like this and could tell me how effective it was (if at all). I haven't gotten very far into it, but here's my planned skills:

20 RSM
20 SM
20 P.nova
20 P.explosion (for synergy)

1 in RS, SR, revive, clay golem, GM, CE, lower resist, and any other pre-reqs. Any leftover points will go into bone armor (I'm playing hardcore), summon resist, or poison dagger (for synergy).

I'm planning on using a full trang's set with either Death's Web or AoKL (depending on whether my skellis or poison nova need a bigger boost), Marrowalks, and whatever rings/ammy I can get my hands on. For a merc I'm thinking an act2 Defiance guy to help my skellis live a bit longer.

For gameplay I'll cast lower resist on monsters which will help my poison nova, and help my skelli mages with their damage as well. I won't boost regular skellis or revives at all, but I'll have a bunch of +skills so can summon at least a few as tanks while my mages do their thing from a distance.

My question is pretty simple: will this work?! Will maxed skelli mages w/ max SM do enough damage in hell to kill things, and w/o completely synergized poison nova (since I won't have enough points to max poison dagger), will my poison nova do enough damage to be effective in hell (remember I'll be using lower resist, and have -p.resists from trang gloves and wand)?

Thanks in advance!

[blockcipher]

One quick thought: You could get a healing merc and equip him with a Doom polearm. Skellies get healed and you get some crowd control.

[Demon2k3]

I have one myself the same build. It works pretty nice, but you'll need som +skills for the skeletons to survive and to get up psn nova damage to. it's a fun build tho.

I don't think this build is hard core proof yet tho. I still need to test out mine abit more.This is just my few cents tho.

[zenithsmith]

I'm not sure the defiance would be that useful, Is your merc going to be wacking with an infinity?, because it might be interesting to use a act 1 merc, give her a Faith bow, it increase the attack speed of those mages, more rounds a minute means more death!!

edit : Also get all curses confuse and attarct will be super, really so in HC because if they focus on each other and your your army as they all die, well thats good right? also don't add to bone armor, you get more if you add it to bone wall and then let your +skills raise up bone armror itself


P.S. just a thougth, i have not crunched any numbers on this, but it might be better to max both Synergies and let +skills add to nova, but it would depend on the number of plus skills and sitting down and figuring out the optimal dam output really

[kaervek]

Make sure you get Dim vision, its a life saver in some cases such as burning souls and useful for other things like stopping shamans from reviving stuff.

Without points in RS the normal skeletons will fall quickly even in NM difficulty so make sure you have a couple revives with you incase you run into a fanatism boss pack, as it'll tear up the normal skeles in a few seconds. Revives will generally last their 3 minutes even tanking the whole mob.

You'll want holy freeze either from a weapon or the NM act 2 merc. Defiance merc + doom would be a good addition, that brings skele mages Def up to par with the normal skeletons. holy freeze + decrep + clay golem will slow any mob to a crawl, although you could also grab a ranged weapon with slow target as well to help out on extra fast ones.

For your weapon, keep AoKL on switch to summon with, then switch to death. It means you get stronger skeletons and the -ve poison resist. If you keep a tele weapon on switch keep you cube handy to store AoKL for prebuff then put it away. I normally only do this at the start of the game and then summon normally from that point on unless i hit a skill shrine.

If you still need to boost skeles more use Hoto. The defiance merc will help keep that little spirit alive when it gets into trouble.