what is the best equipment for a summonmancer?

[howdidigethere]

hey guys! right now i have a lvl 17 summonmancer which i started yesterday. Ive got all the skills and attribute points planed out:

100 Str for silks.
Dex- base
Vit- base
...and all the rest on energy.

and for the skills:

20 - summon skeleton
20 - skeleton mastery
20 - iron golem
20 - golem mastery
20 - summon resist
20 - lower resist

and of course all the prereqisites for these skills.

But the problem is, im having a hard time trying to figure out what equipment (besisdes body armour) i shound use. Any suggestions?
<<<>>>
"It's only a flesh wound!"

[Feared]

You're joking, right?

[PhatTrumpet]

He's either trolling or needs to go read a guide. That's what the stickies are for.

Btw, if you were to hit lvl 90 you'd only have 101 skill points available. You're way above that just with what you listed there, never mind all the prerequisite skills.

[Arkardo]

First of all, I think you've mixed up the Vitality/Energy stat placement; place everything you've left in Vitality and leave Energy at base.

Now onto the skills. You can only get up to 110 skill points, of which most people will only get to spend about 90, reached at level 79, of. So you'll never be able to spend those 120 you had in mind.

There is absolutely no point in maxing Iron Golem, Summon Resist or Lower Resist. I'm not a Classic expert, but I'd invest like this (some of the listed skills are prerequists, but I'm listing them to show what the useful skills are):

- 20 Raise Skeleton
- 20 Skeleton Mastery
- 20 Corpse Explosion
- 1 Clay Golem
- 1 Golem Mastery
- 1 Summon Resist (more if desired)
- 1 Revive
- 1 Amplify Damage
- 1 Decripify
- 5 prerequists

71 skill points used at this point. The rest should go in Raise Skeletal Mage, Amplify Damage. Optional skills are the rest of the Curses. You could spend a point in Attract for example, when you find that you're having trouble getting your army going.

Note that the Curses of choice are Amplify Damage (regular monsters and easy bosses) and Decripify (difficult bosses). Lower Resist does absolutely nothing to help your army, unless you're using mages, but even then you're far better of using Amplify Damage and/or Decripify.

I think other people will be able to help you with your equipment choices.

Good luck! :thumbsup:

[DevilSlaya]

Equipment:

Helmet: Tarn/Wormskull
Armour: Silks/Gs (as your planning on going high str)
Weapon: +2 +3 Raise Skelli +other mods
Shield: Sigs / 30/20 priz shield / 3D Tower
Belt: Rare FHR/life/mana/2x dual res
Boots: Tearhaunch or rare with life/mana/2x dualres/Mf
Gloves: Rare life/mana/dual res
Rings: 2x SoJ, or res/mana/life
Amu: +1/+2, Priz res, stacked res, life/mana

As a summoner, you should not get hit. So skills are priority over resistances.
Use a full skill setup to raise your skellies, then switch to fighting gear /drop s for more resistances, and life/mana, if you need to. You could use frostburns to raise your mana for raising.

If your having trouble killing that first monster, you could use angelics triple combo to get that +1 skill and tons of AR, equip a fast and powerful 1-Hand weap., and aid your merc/golem for the first kill. Switch back to wand, skill set up for completing your army.

Skill gear only:
skills: +8/+9
res in norm: 55% fire/cold/light 30% Poison (assuming Wormskull, 20 dual res from gloves/Boots/Belt, 15% priz amu)

Fighting/Res gear:
skills: +5/+6 (Gs, 1 Soj, Worms, Wand, +1/+2 Ammy)
res in norm: 147% (35% priz gs, 15%priz amu, 40% cold/light/fire, 57% 3D shield)

Have fun

[sickobanza]

equipments are more likely to be

Helmet- Undead Crown Crown
Armor- Silks of the Victor
Shield- Siggon Shield
Wand- Ume is a good choice
Ammy- +2 if possible for u, +1 is enough anyways
Rings- SoJ's(but too much?) so just get resist rings
Glove- aim for Resist
Boots- Fast r/w, resist
Belt- Life, and resist

[Akukami]

Here's my build that's located in the stickies:

http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=554694

From your gear, the only thing I would honestly stick with is Ume's Lament. Also, for your Helmet, Wormskull is much better because it adds +1 to ALL Necromancer skills, not just Raise Skeleton. I'm not too crazy about using Silks and Sigs, but you can definitely wear them if you have extremely good other resist gear. Other than that, you might want to consider getting The Ward or a 3-Sock PDia Tower Shield instead.

Arkardo - You're missing Amplify Damage in that build.

- Akukami

[howdidigethere]

He's either trolling or needs to go read a guide. That's what the stickies are for.

Btw, if you were to hit lvl 90 you'd only have 101 skill points available. You're way above that just with what you listed there, never mind all the prerequisite skills.

oops:embarassed: . Kinda made a mistake with the skill points there!

D'oh. I did forget amplify damage in there!

I dont like skeletal mages all that much, they die to quickly.

Im still going with 20 to iron golem, just to try something different.

[Taft12]

The best equipment for you would be a LoD CD. Summonmancers are viable there, not in classic.

[Akukami]

Summonmancers are viable [on LoD], not in classic.

Only in the hands of someone who doesn't know how to build an effective one on Classic. :rolleyes:

- Akukami

[Corn]

Stop telling him to use Ume's, he's going to have points in curses anyways, Ume's in this case is the poor man's choice. It offers so little compared to what a good rare can offer.

Tearhaunch...delete your character now. Get some rares with frw, high resists, fhr.

Wormskull, yes.

Silk's for armor....are we playing the same game here? Walk over to Charsi, and vendor your Silks now.

I always opt for max block on any char, but if you don't have a twitch or need the resists, the summoner can get away with no max block. If not twitch, wear a rare with +life, +2 resists in the 2x's, some fhr, and whatever other goodies.

Frosties make good gloves if you need the mana, otherwise good pair of rares with the resists ya need.

Shield, depending on what other gears you got going on at this point. If you need the resists, get a diamond shield, otherwise I highly highly recommend a 30/20 prismatic. Try especially hard to get such a shield before you start Hell difficulty.

Belt, godly rares with +life, high resists, and fhr, anything else is a bonus.

[goomba]

Stop telling him to use Ume's, he's going to have points in curses anyways, Ume's in this case is the poor man's choice. It offers so little compared to what a good rare can offer.

Tearhaunch...delete your character now. Get some rares with frw, high resists, fhr.

Wormskull, yes.

Silk's for armor....are we playing the same game here? Walk over to Charsi, and vendor your Silks now.

I always opt for max block on any char, but if you don't have a twitch or need the resists, the summoner can get away with no max block. If not twitch, wear a rare with +life, +2 resists in the 2x's, some fhr, and whatever other goodies.

Frosties make good gloves if you need the mana, otherwise good pair of rares with the resists ya need.

Shield, depending on what other gears you got going on at this point. If you need the resists, get a diamond shield, otherwise I highly highly recommend a 30/20 prismatic. Try especially hard to get such a shield before you start Hell difficulty.

Belt, godly rares with +life, high resists, and fhr, anything else is a bonus.

in my humble opinion, the summonmancer is a starting out on realm/mode character - or solo play mode.

one wouldn't waste "godly" items on such a character. So, while the question posed, was "what's the best" - factor in that best in this case probably also means, what's lying around muled, cheap to obtain, etc.

and selling silks to charsi is a bit, well like remaking a level 94 character cause one accidentally misapplied a stat point to dex... sort of snobbish/elitist if ya' ask me.

while I am far from "rich" as some of the folks here, (dozen sojs worth of gear perhaps at most) I have 5 silks used/muled, and would in fact mule another before I'd sell it to charsi.

[DevilSlaya]

The best equipment for you would be a LoD CD. Summonmancers are viable there, not in classic.

Thats not true. Summonmancers are still effective in Classic. Akukamis CE Summonmancer is definately hell worthy. It can kill very fast once the first monster is down. Skellies provide excellent block and have good damage aswell. Cursed monsters fall like flies most of the time.

Another reason why Summonmancers are cool, coz u can drink your beer and smoke your cigarette and not worry about dying :afro: Best build to have fun with in hell drunk :tongue:

[Palm]

PvE necros are very good in groups but the skill they own with is CE. You can get skellies too, and curses, or poison or just pump bone armor or whatever.

[Corn]

Yea Goomba. It's because, well, Silks sucks, simply put lol. Most uniques are not that great in Classic, but some have their good points and usefulness, like Goldskins, hotspurs, biggins, twitch, just to name a few.

But Silks...man. I don't ever plan to use silks except on my FoHer, and Chanter and Bo'er if I had one. Yea you can argue better to mule it but what's the point if I don't ever ever plan to use it? It's trash.

[Locke07]

Because I traded 2 silks that I MULED last night to a guy for a soj... it has yet to poof if you're wondering.

[goomba]

Yea Goomba. It's because, well, Silks sucks, simply put lol. Most uniques are not that great in Classic, but some have their good points and usefulness, like Goldskins, hotspurs, biggins, twitch, just to name a few.

But Silks...man. I don't ever plan to use silks except on my FoHer, and Chanter and Bo'er if I had one. Yea you can argue better to mule it but what's the point if I don't ever ever plan to use it? It's trash.

there are plenty of items that I don't plan to use, that others may hold in high regard. Yes, I typically try to trade them for smaller items to stow like gulls when I get this many, but I also have 4 barb's right now - all of which have bo sticks/tarns and silks stowed for bo-duty...

*shrug* some people prefer to xfer crap around.

and yes, there are periods where things suddenly go WAY up in value. for example, when act5 went super public, gskins, tarns, and pwards went WAY up in value... I'll leave it to you to figure out why/how...

[Corn]

Oh god. I don't think I'll have much trouble figuring that out lol.

Man, here's a scene that disgusts me happened just the other day. These two guys were just muling all their items in a public game, I guess since no one was online at the time. When they saw me enter the game, they panicked, and I immediately became the enemy because they were afraid I would steal their items. Too bad all their items are worthless in my eyes. Not one item didn't have a socket in it....

[goomba]

Oh god. I don't think I'll have much trouble figuring that out lol.

Man, here's a scene that disgusts me happened just the other day. These two guys were just muling all their items in a public game, I guess since no one was online at the time. When they saw me enter the game, they panicked, and I immediately became the enemy because they were afraid I would steal their items. Too bad all their items are worthless in my eyes. Not one item didn't have a socket in it....

whether they held any value to you was unknown to them at that point. also, some folks are so mean spirited that they'd move/hide the items, or sell them for gold to gamble with.

tis the breaks when dealing with a game, who's typical demographic includes a large percentage of prepubescent kids that haven't even taken driver's training...

[howdidigethere]

Hey, hey! The only reason i didnt take my drivers training is because... well, never mind. More to the point though. Im saying goodbye to D2 for now because i found my old Starsiege CD. But I'll be back!

[Hawkreborn]

whether they held any value to you was unknown to them at that point. also, some folks are so mean spirited that they'd move/hide the items, or sell them for gold to gamble with.


:grin: i have hidden some folks items around the camp, they leave then rj, and then panic tryin to find them all its so funny because they never xfer anything worth keepin(SOJs GSkins)