Fishymancer Help

[ReticulatingSplines]

I've just started my first necro, and I'm using the Fishymancer build as a guide to get me used to the class. Things have generally been going well, although this whole switching skills thing was never something I did nearly this much as a zealot :P

So I've run into a snag. I'm at lvl50, and I've just hit Act4 in Nightmare, and I'm having a very hard time with the mobs, as they get much bigger in act4.

As I said, I've been going with the Fishymancer build, so my Summon Skeleton is at about 23, and my skeleton mastery is 22. CE is just about 20. So far, my tactic has been to amp damage the group until one of them dies, and sit back and let CE make a nice big chain. But with the large mobs, my 10 skeles and merc get too swamped to get even that first monster down. (my merc is NM act2 offensive - might aura). So I'm trying to re-think how I'm going about this, as I'm not used to having a character that's so fragile.

Should I get attract up a few levels to draw the monsters away from my troops, and amp damage the group? This would give me my first corpse it seems, and with the group cursed with amp damage, my chain should be easy to get going, but I'm having a hard time coordinating all of my skills, and I'm sure there's another way to look at this problem.

It seems the fishymancer build is relatively well known on here, and I was wondering if anyone else had a suggestion as to how I can approach this.

Thanks.

[PlayWithHonor]

You are on the right track. Attract is your best friend. When approaching a mob of monsters your first cast should be Attract and it should be cast on the closest monster to your army. When the other monsters converge on your army they'll actually start wacking away at the Attracted monster.

Then you cast amp on the rest of the monsters. By the time your done casting this 1 of the monsters will be dead... most likely the one cursed with Attract. Then you simply proceed to spam CE until all is dead.

I often cast Attract on multiple monsters in a very large pack. I'll cast it on 1 in the middle and 1 on both sides. This really keeps the "mob" occupied with itself and lets my army whack away without interference.

You only need 1 pt in Attract by the way. It's just to get that first couple bodies until CE can clear the area.

[Arkardo]

A good way to improve your character now is simply to get more +skills. Even one or two extra levels for you skellies makes a huge difference. I don't know about your equipment now, but an Arm of King Leoric is a huge step in the right direction and is cheap to come by as well. Same for a +3 to Summoning skills amulet. Try to get a Homonculus for possibly even more +skills and +40 to all resist as well. It's just a bit more expensive than Arm of King Leoric.

Of course, good equipment cannot solve all problems, but it helps.

[bogie]

No need to mess with silly Ai Curses, amp and decriptify are all you need. As for what to do, increasing your lvl of skeles is the only thing that you can really do, your going to need at least 10+ summon skills to solo hell comfortably, and im afraid that lvl 23 and 22 just wont cut it....your problem isnt the build, its your gear.

[GotFriana]

AI curses can help you a lot, I think lvl 50 is not high enough for act4, your skellies use your lvl to calculate chances to hit also your merc will be stronger at higher lvls. Appart from adding AI curses and +skills (which is always good) maybe you should go back a few steps and try to lvl a bit more. Dim Vision is extremely usefull against gloams attract is also very good to use on unique boss packs and ranged attack packs, dont use it on the bosses though always on the minions and amp the rest.

[PlayWithHonor]

No need to mess with silly Ai Curses, amp and decriptify are all you need. As for what to do, increasing your lvl of skeles is the only thing that you can really do, your going to need at least 10+ summon skills to solo hell comfortably, and im afraid that lvl 23 and 22 just wont cut it....your problem isnt the build, its your gear.


I'll disagree with that.

:soapbox:

No offense but uber gear is not the only answer here. It seems to be a knee jerk reaction around her to just say that you need Nigma, AOKL, Homo, etc. to be successfull. If your good at playing your character you shouldn't NEED any of that. Sure it'll help and I'd say definately try to get better equipment but I think the poster was looking for strategy suggestions as opposed to equipment suggestions. Max'd Skellies with maxed mastery and a decent level of summon resist is all you need to survive hell with proper usage of curses.

Those silly AI curses are very powerful in the hands of a skilled Necromancer. Take a close look at Attract/Confuse/Dim Vision and try them out. Incorprate them into your plan of attack and you'll do fine without all the Uber Gear.... even in Hell.

[Viktri]

I agree with bogie that gear is important, but it's not necessary as long as you sell items you pick up and buy some wands


even untweaked, my Necro went through part of nm without trouble
Decripfy + SM will get you through Diablo (if you put yourself behind a north or east wall in the sanctuary

go to act1 and resummon if you have to
gumpy + skeletons = dead D
oh yeah, get a might merc or BA merc if you don't have infinity
you can always replace the merc later

edit:
Why do most novices everyone call the CE/summoner a fishymancer? I realize that it was revived by him, but this build is a classic.