summon mancer

[bonewallx]

Hi, I'm lvl 76 summon mancer
I have lvl 28 raise skel and 27 skel mastery
1 in revive, mage, golem, resist

In hell mode my skeletons completely suck. They do 230-250 damage I think, and can hardly handle act 5,

How much plus skills is actually needed to make skeletons worthwhile.
Granted this is my first and only char. My gear is not great, though i do have 2 plain plus 1 summoning skill charms, in terms of anything reasonably valuable.

How many I make skels better?, I have a might merc too.

USeast.

[ahuitzotl]

40 or over are good. are you using amp damage and corpse explosion? if not, do so. get these items in this order: enigma (for teleporting), arm of king leoric (To summon with), low cta, beast (to wear after you summon), eth infinity (for merc).

[bonewallx]

Then I guess the problem is lack of plus skills.
I'm too poor for anything more heh

[ahuitzotl]

try to snarf items while you get leveled in baal/chaos runs, attend free giveaway games (NOT "look for free" games), look for flawless in act 1

[yuqing]

40 + skills are absolute BS. Anyone with a clue will do fine with 30+, even less sometimes. You have to use your curses carefully. Use tap to keep skeletons and merc alive. Use clay golem to slow and attract enemies. Amp as a general curse and decrep when facing bosses. Use attract on a few enemies in a mob to help spread the damage. It's easy to get +10 skills. Summonmancers are renown for their survivability even without godly gear.

[ahuitzotl]

...

i did not say +40 skills. i said 40. (no +). that means +20, which is even less than +30.

[Skelious]

If you could plz state your gear it might help a little. "2 plain plus 1 summ skill charms" what are the plains? I have gone tweaked and un-tweaked with a summoner so i hope i can help.

[UnholyDuality]

i have a lvl 77 summon necro
his skeles do 500 dmg and mages do even more my skills are at 33
the items i have are nigma,boneflame,arm of leoric,
just with that gear my skeles own
all of the items i have just listed are easy to find
the toughest to get is the arm of leoric summon wand
if you have trang belt and helm you can definantly get nigma because i sold those two items for 1 hr and d and h key which i then bought nigma with
that is the expert necro summon guide



and if you need a +1 to summon skills gc msg me *kill-switch*:thumbsup:

[bonewallx]

Well i did a ton of trading, ended up with a necro torch shako etc,
Summoning skills are now 32 raise skelwarrior and 31 mastery
in Hell mode that equates to according to the tab, 354-357, and 899 hp warrior
and i have a might merc to boost that damage.
I'm lvl 77 now

How is getting enigma cheap lol? ^^

USeast nonladder,
maybe we can chat in game.

Also, should i max corpse explosion or let plus skills do the work

[UnholyDuality]

dude if your summon necro dont put ne skills in bone spells they are a waste of time unless you are pnb necro
so dont do corpse explosion
tell me the skills you have maxed now

[bonewallx]

20 RS
20 SM

1pt in clay golem, iron, golem mast, summon resist, revive
1pt in curses to decrep

corpse explosion right is a +skill on my shield and skills enhancing it, so no points actually spent in bone tree yet

Unsure how good maxed mages are and 1 point in revives is more than enough.

Now that my raise skeleton is lvl 32 they are quite better and more plus skills just makes em better and better.

Where should my points go now? spear and spirit is a waste without massive sinergies, but what about wall and prison for a lil more crowd control
1 pt in curses is enough i find too.
If i do put a hard point into CE, how many?

[sequoia]

CE is the necro's BEST SKILL!!! (amp is arguable)

wow, at least one, if not max it

[Kirah]

Depends on your playing style. I actually like maxxed skelly mages, but I'm a bit odd. I typically do the maxxed skelly warrior, skelly mastery, skelly mages, then CE (typically in that order, although many would argue to max CE before mages). I'll add the one point wonders like the preferred golem(s), favored curses, summon resistance, golem mastery, and revive fairly early in the game.

Having the skelly mages seems to make the build more effective even doing the untwinked hardcore. You'll have to put up with the fact that the summoner build only speeds up in kill speed with the presence of a high level CE. Basically, get your warriors up and running then BOOM! with the next corpse and if your CE is high enough you'll clear a significant portion of the screen. Even if everything doesn't die, you'll weaken them enough with the explosion for your warriors to trounce them (along with that wonderful amp damage curse).

If your still having problems play with the AI curses. Say you're being charged by a pack of monsters. Slap a 1 point terror on half of them then amp the remaining and you'll find your warriors will be quite happy to slice them to pieces. Then kill the remaining at your leisure. Getting blasted by them nasty gloams? Slap a Dim on them and watch them become helpless. Need a distraction? Pump out that attract and then slap a amp damage to get that first corpse (and by the way cluster the enemy) for the resulting CE. That should speed things up.

good luck and good hunting!
Kirah

[Ric Magnum]

I have a summonmancer with pretty high plus to skills (raise skele is at 38). I haven't played him in a while because my skeles and other summons were just getting smoked doing chaos runs. Plus, it seems every game I go into everybody cries and tells me to unsummon my creatures. So, these are reasons I have stopped using him. But recently I got an Enigma for him and a might merc and my interests in the Necro field have been piqued. I also noticed a lot of necros teleport right on top of enemies in an attempt to hit a single enemy all at once with all your summoned creatures. Is this a good tactic and does it kill the enemy faster?

[Eilo Rytyj]

Yo, anything above slvl 25 Skellys is enough to solo Hell, and any Summoner can get to that point easily with shopped and self-found items. You'll probably need max Mages too, they are a great asset for an el-cheapo summoner, just as they are for a fully decked out one.

Slvl 30 is where it starts to get easy. Slvl 35 and you'll have no dramas killing anything. Slvl 40+ and you're pretty much god of all PvM.

Your character level has a lot to do with Skeleton survival too. A higher level means Skellys have more AR and thus better chance to hit, and it also means they have higher defense, which of course means a less chance to be hit by enemies. Level 77 is what I'd expect you'd be at in Act 1 Hell, by Act 3 you should be well over 80 and by Act 4 you should be at least 85, to keep up with the level 85 areas in the game.

Skill points are entirely up to you, but it's a great thing to have a huge radius CE, your killing power with it can be awesome when you can hit a whole group of 10+ monsters with a single corpse. It's one of the best Cow killers in the game too, a big radius CE makes cows dead fast.

After 20 in Raise Skelly, Skelly Mastery, Mages and CE, I usually throw the rest of the skill points into Golem Mastery. That opens the option for making a sturdier Iron Golem if you wish, and makes your Clay Golem pretty much unkillable. I feel that 1 point into Amp is enough, since it's only 4 mana and you can spam it over a group, and there's always Trang's Gloves and more +skills for increasing it's radius.

[Arkardo]

dude if your summon necro dont put ne skills in bone spells they are a waste of time unless you are pnb necro
so dont do corpse explosion
tell me the skills you have maxed now

Not quite; Corpse Explosion does most of the killing for a summoner. For most summoners, maxing CE is a must.

[Sindus]

For me I tend to favour having mages. I just feel naked if i don't have more than 18 skellies/mages running around. I use CE as backup. I'm plainning on boosting it to lvl 10 and then letting +skills do the rest.

That and i find the 1pt bone armour 1 pt bone wall handy for surviving the odd attack i get while teleblobbing. I don't have enigma yet so i use a stick (with charges of teleport)

[Skelious]

Bone if you can catch me online whisper me.
warcoven
tangmantis

[Zarniwoop]

Your problems are easily fixed.

Arm of king leoric - 1-10 pgems.
skin of the vipermagi or even trangoul's armor (1-10 pgems)
spirit - Free... you get the bloody runes all over the place. Grab the first pile of crap 4 socket shield you see. Obviously a monarch is better, but for a necro, who cares?


Right there you've bumped yourself 8-10 in every skill in the summoning tree and you will see a GIGANTIC difference.

Add a shako from some meph runs (or about 40 pgems) and you're cooking with gas.

buy a minimum necro torch (if you watch, you can usually pick one up for pgems), and BLAM... you have yourself a necro that can laugh his way to baal while doing his nails if you understand the class.

Here's a link to my thread from long ago on skill distribution:
http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=512783

[Arkardo]

Why make a Spirit when you can trade for a Homunculus for about 15-25 pgems? Sure, it's a bit more expensive, but it's superior and has far less requirements (a Monarch is the shield with the least requirements that can have four sockets).

[tuvard]

Why make a Spirit when you can trade for a Homunculus for about 15-25 pgems? Sure, it's a bit more expensive, but it's superior and has far less requirements (a Monarch is the shield with the least requirements that can have four sockets).

Just to be a smartass, any NON pala shields :azn:


but you would fare better with a homunculus shield :thumbsup:

[Zarniwoop]

Yes, I would certainly use homunculous over spirit.

However, when I left D2, bobos were trying to get hrs for them. Maybe reality has kicked back in. I dunno.

[Tymbark]

However, when I left D2, bobos were trying to get hrs for them.
I traded mine (crap def - but who cares on summonmancer? - socketed with perf diamond) for about 10 pgms and druid +3 summon amu, so it's not that expensive. It was like month ago, Europe NL

[tuvard]

its really not expensive,just buy it :azn:

[bonewallx]

I just for the first time solod hell baal,
From lvl 2 wp all the way to baal.
Ifinally got an enigma, so I teleported straight to him, and trapped him in a corner casted decrep, and he stopped casting spells.
From then on, it was like a 5 minute fight of slowly wearing his hp down lol.

[LozHinge the Unhinged]

Well done! It's always satisfying taking down Baal for the first time (in any difficulty).

[Zarniwoop]

Good job.

Now buy your merc a guillaime's face for about 5 pgems and that fight will take about 60 seconds.

[stymie]

I play a hybrid poison/summoner and i have a blast with him--no bone skills except wall. I use defiance merc and my skellies almost never go down in hell lvl. I prefer defiance for survivability bot my merc also uses a pride pole. I hope you guys aren't on us east ladder because the items u are mentioning sure cant be had for pgems. I have never seen a homonculous go 4 less than a pul. I get puls all the time 4 them.

[Zarniwoop]

If you're patient, you can get a hom for pgems. You just have to find the trader that has everything and just wants to move the dumb thing instead of wait for a pul. I'd pay pul at the start of a ladder, but no other time.

Ko or Lem max.

[bonewallx]

HOw much HP do you have summon necros have?
I have 1880 with my cta's battle orders
and max block

lvl 38 skeletons

Throughout this thread of mine i have went from having no gear, to having enigma, cta, hand of leoric, shako, Ntorch,

lol

useast, nonleader
hit me up
necromantica-x

[Jebus Christ Jr]

How many pgems exactly for a low torch?

[Zarniwoop]

You're totally set then.

I dont even bother with a CTA on my summoner. He has like 1200hp and never dies. You're stacked. Add 2 +1 skill rings for buffing if you want. But all you really need to do is add high war travellers, 2 nagels, and some MF charms and you're a MF fool!

[bonewallx]

2118 hp with my cta
Skeletons get over 1000 hp

Question though, Do items with plus skills on my merc add to my mercs lv l of might? thus boosting skel damage even more

[Bjorgin]

2118 hp with my cta
Skeletons get over 1000 hp

Question though, Do items with plus skills on my merc add to my mercs lv l of might? thus boosting skel damage even more

Yes +all skills will add to mercs might

[Skelious]

Looks like things are looking good for you bone!!!!
Good hunting

[Mikk0]

summoners arent generaly too hard to build. and there are lots of threads posted and answered :rolleyes:

also the guides are quite great and up to date.. :thumbsup:

[kykle]

i made a truly godly summoner for about 15 hrs.. that was about a year ago, right now it would cost about 25 on east ladder to make the same mancer.. he had 42 skele mastery and 40 skeles and mages and could solo any area in the game... all you need is more + to skills and you will own