Pubby Bone Necs: Request for Help/Advice

[TheRisingX]

Hi, I've been thinking of making a Bone Nec, they seem versatile and pretty all around, but am not very familiar with them yet. First of all, what are the Strengths/Weaknesses of Bone Necs against other PvP Classes? (Which characters pose the greatest threat).

On a Pub dueling scheme, what would be an ideal gear setup?

[MysticDragon]

Hi, I've been thinking of making a Bone Nec, they seem versatile and pretty all around, but am not very familiar with them yet. First of all, what are the Strengths/Weaknesses of Bone Necs against other PvP Classes? (Which characters pose the greatest threat).

On a Pub dueling scheme, what would be an ideal gear setup?

Erm, biggest weakness would be ES sorcs, I think. Windies may give you a hard time if you haven't practiced Boner Vs Windy. You shouldn't have much problem with Melee. Erm, don't know about ideal pub gear. I would guess 75 all resist with 125 Fcr and 86 Fhr or 142 if double Spirit. Max block or no?

[Ce Olba]

For public games, you really want to have maximum block and PDR% because of all the BvCs and Bowazons and Smiters.

[TheRisingX]

Yea, I was thinking Max Block / 125 / 86 Build...

What would the gear look like for this build?

[StillGreen]

Soulesschild has a great bonemancer guide. It's stickied in the Necromancer forum.

For their strengths, bonemancers can have max block, max pdr, bone armor and bone wall to protect them from physical damage. That tends them to give them advantages against classes that deal physical damage requiring AR.

Also, they have a variety of attacks (teeth for area damage, spirit for tracking, spear for speed/control) that are long range. You can stand outside the range of sorc spells and your spirit will be able to hit them from that distance. This is a big advantage against classes that focus on melee or have trouble closing in the distance.

Other advantages are the golem (minion stack, slow, guinea pig), the irresistible (practically unabsorbable) damage, and curses (amp/lower resist in team games, decrep/IM if that's not in your definition of BM).

Bonemancers are frail though, so high damaging spells are a problem (unless you absorb but lets assume you don't). ES Sorcs will be your biggest enemy. They can tank your hits, hit harder, and cast faster. In order to beat one you have to make up for their advantage through the things they don't have (teeth, spirit, bone wall). Extremely difficult.

FoHers are also tough. The auto-hit and high damage leaves you very very little room for error. And since they're charging away from you (between FoH's), hitting them is difficult. The defensive charging also makes Auradins tough to beat (assuming no sorb and bone prison).

The last disadvantage is that your fhr is not the greatest. 86 fhr is still nice but against stunners, it's still not enough. It is possible to escape from a BvC's (since they need to teleport after leap) but mindblasts and traps from an assassin are very difficult to get away from once you're caught.

For public duels, you'll want max block. This makes SS and Homunculus your primary choice of shield. Use SS if the majority of the room is physical and Homunculus if the majority is caster. Or adjust to whichever you feel is the most threat to you.

To hit 86 fhr, you can shael your helm (twice if you get a 2-socket circlet) and get 20 from sandstorm treks. The rest of it can be made up in your charms.

For 125 fcr, you're not going to rely on fcr from a shield because you want to be this fast with SS/Homunculus on. With a circlet (20), arachnid's mesh (20) and trang gloves (20) you have 60. If you use Hoto (40), then you'll need 25 fcr from your jewelry (either 20 amulet/10 ring, 15 amulet/10 ring, or 10 amulet/10 ring/10 ring). If you use wizardspike (50), then you'll just need 15 fcr (15+ amulet, 10 amulet/10 ring). Jewelry are great slots to play around with so I recommend trying for a 20 fcr amulet.

So to list it out:

Circlet (Necro/PnB skills, 20 FCR) + shael
Enigma
Arachnid's Mesh
Trang Gloves
Sandstorm Trek
Hoto or Wizardspike
SS or Homunculus
FCR jewelry depending on what you need
Free ring slot if possible (I often end up using ravenfrost).
CtA on switch (with spirit monarch or splendor)

This is for pubs. You may consider having gear such as spirit, white, and stacked resistance items if you choose to do 1v1's.

[Gimmershred]

The above advice looks great. Only thing i did different is not using homonculus at all. For casters i mostly switched to spirit for high fhr breakpoint and 35% fcr, wich lets me swap out my fcr circ for a kira's and 1 ring for either raven, dwarf or whisp.

if needed it even let's me swap ohoto for wiz, arach for tgods and fcr circ for kira's for some better light absorb while still maintaining the 125fcr break.

Vs some fohers i have a 160lr monarch in stash and i go with some absorb gear and use the 75% fcr breakpoint. You can also play pretty defensively vs them by putting a ****load of walls around you, since they don't namelock often from what i see. I use walls also a lot vs desynch charge and some lame ww-barbs.

You don't need the 146fhr breakpoint, just absorb those trapsins if they are mb spammers, i consider mb spam equally lame anyways, and who cares we are talking pubs. For the rest 86fhr is enough in my opinion.

How good the ss build will be allround depends a bit on how many stats/life/mana/res you can get on the rares. Mostly i use triple 109res boots as main boots with the main ss setup, with some res from amu and circ (shaeled) and ummed ss i reach 75% all in hell with a little stack. And as mentioned before you can change around a lot in stash.

[Moritz]

You don't need the 146fhr breakpoint, just absorb those trapsins if they are mb spammers, i consider mb spam equally lame anyways, and who cares we are talking pubs. For the rest 86fhr is enough in my opinion.


I don't think that massiv MB use should be considered as lame. I play assassins a lot and my opinion on Mbing is that there aren't many sins out there who really mastered the MB techniques.
A good assa is my eyes is an assa that keeps pressure on her opponent, stunning him massively. The key to that is (imo) excessive trap and MB spamming via namelock.
If you only MB sometimes you don't make the best out of your character.

[Darksteel]

Copy and paste from another post I made:

My all around necro set-up =)

3/20/2 helm w/ shael shael
2/16fcr ammy w/various other stats
mp nigma
Wizzy w/15 res and str jewel (is swapped for either spirit or white wand for certain duels)
SS (is swapped for spirit when dr not needed)
Arach
etreks (gonna get some good rares)
Magefist (better than trangs IMO, bone necs burn mana sooooooo fast)
SoJ x2

GCs were enough FHR to hit 86 bp, rest lifers. 5 res all scs some with life.

With this set-up I can VERY easily switch from a DR type build to a stacking resist type build, even switch around to get much higher fhr for trappers with spirits or more bone damage for other necs/hammerdins. VERY usefull all-around.

And IMO don't go max block unless you got some very heavy lifer gcs.

[Moritz]

what life can i expect if i use ~35life average lifers? on max block SS build

[Gimmershred]

what life can i expect if i use ~35life average lifers? on max block SS build

I would say you get around 2.5k life or something after bo.

I counted out some time ago how much life max block with homonc would save me. It was not a very big life difference if i remember.

For pubs i would go max block anyways.
More then half of the people in the duelgames are charging pala's, bvc's and bowazons, from wich you have little chance without max block. Vs casters it comes more down to how skillfull you are, so you could possibly survive with a bit less life vs them.

[TheRisingX]

Awesome advice guys, thanks a bunch. I will definitely go for Max Block / DR route via SS then. The problem will be reaching 125 FCR and 86 FHR, PnB FHR's are quite expensive I would think =[ , not to mention more Life is needed from GCs. I aint that rich right now :P

[krajoz]

id say theyre one the stronger casters vs melee but one the weakest casters vs casters

[TheRisingX]

id say theyre one the stronger casters vs melee but one the weakest casters vs casters
Kraj is this assuming no moderate-heavy sorb is used? I mean, not that its really GM but unresistable moderate dmg > sorbed heavy dmg ?

I have a trapper myself and I worry because Nec's seem to have quite slow FHR. Desynch hammerdins / smiters might also pose a threat?

[Darksteel]

id say theyre one the stronger casters vs melee but one the weakest casters vs casters

That's exactly why I suggest my set-up. With a Vex'd/Lo'd/or P saph'd monarch I can easily raise my max resists to 95. I can even switch out a SoJ for a Raven/Dwarf/Wisp if I really felt like being a BM bastard.

Kraj is this assuming no moderate-heavy sorb is used? I mean, not that its really GM but unresistable moderate dmg > sorbed heavy dmg ?

I have a trapper myself and I worry because Nec's seem to have quite slow FHR. Desynch hammerdins / smiters might also pose a threat?

That's I recommend having a spirit Crystal sword/monarch in my guide as a switch option for those GM sins. Otherwise just sorb the heck outa them like I posted before.

[TheRisingX]

Darkkk where is your guide >_<

[Darksteel]

Never wrote a guide, don't have time to yet. I might consider it though if I get enough free time, I don't want to write any old half-assed guide. But for now if you got any questions feel free to post them or just pm them to me.

[DarkMousy]

Prebuffing, 95% es, 6k+ mana blizz sorcs will forever be your bane unless you get a kiras/160 cold monarch and a full row of 20/11s + fade in stash. Even with an all damage spear setup (8bs white, 5 bs nec head, 3/20/2 etc) the damage is negligible (and you're not hitting bps with this either). It's almost laughable how little damage you do with stack gear. Other than that, most htings are quite easily beatable except very good windies who know how to counter run/walk spear and very good hdins. Very good bvcs might pose a problem as well. In bm duels, smiters/hdins/windies/bvcs have an advantage.

[Darksteel]

Darkmousy unfortuantly speaks truth on es sorcs and good windys/BvCs.

Gonna disagree on the bm duel part though, if I really felt like a bastard against melee I'll iron maiden them, summon my golem, and throw up walls/prisons all over the place.

Also I can still hit over a 4k spear at 125 fcr with stack gear on but again es sorcs are just gonna suck fighting in general.

A good BvC is gonna take a while to chip down too if they play semi-defensively. If they are too agressive though they will end up porting right into a spirit swarm and lose chunks of health fast.

[StillGreen]

For ES sorcs, do you think that 1 pt in poison nova and lower resist would be effective?

Since the poison nova is in the same tree, it'll get boosted by the same +skills as your bone spells. It'll still be tremendously weak but considering their low life, will it make enough of a difference?

I'm just throwing an idea out there.