Poison necro guide (hc ladder)

[Fulllive]

Hi all,

This is my first post on this forum, I use diabloii.net mainly for item or runeword check but since I wanted to see different setups for pnecro's I decided to take a look on the forum.

My poison necro (FatalSubstance) is lvl 87 on Europe Hardcore Ladder.

SKILLS:(explanation below)

poison&bone tab

teeth
1 point bone armor
max poison dagger
max poison explosion
max poison nova
1-rest point(s) corpse explosion (mine is now lvl 24)

Just one point in bone armor is enough. what some may not know is that if your bone armor gets hit by like a zillion damage, your armor dissapears but you won't get hit. Besides, when maxing any skill that makes bonearmor stronger you'll have to nerf the summon tab which leaves you a weak meat shield and makes you revive or re-raise constantly when facing stronger monsters in hell.

curses tab

1 point in all required skills for lower resist. with +to skills from gear your lower resist you don't need more than 1 point since it only lowers the res by 1% every 2 lvls.

summoning tab

1 point skeleton mastery
max raise skeleton
1 point skeleton magi
1 point clay golem
1 point golem mastery
1 point summon resist

I prefer skeletons over revives since they dont dissapear after an amount of time and deal nice physical damage with amp or decripify when you face poison immunes. Revives dissapear after a while and my experience with them is that they dont target the enemy but mostly run around doing nothing. You want to have a meatshield that doesn't require much attention and instantly attack the enemy to keep them busy while you cast poison nova or corpse explosion.

STAT POINTS


Strength: just enough to wear your gear (mine is base+15 or so)
Dexterity: just enough to get max block
Vitality:All remaining points go here
Energy:base

MERC


Act 2 defiance aura merc. I've tried might aura early on but without defiance your skeletons die pretty fast so the time you win by killing a monster faster is wasted if you fequently have to re-raise your skeletons. Besides, the defiance aura makes your character a lot more durable since your defense is going trough the roof.

GEAR

My gear


Helm: Shako (2 skills, life, mana, 10% damage reduced)
Armor: Bramble (obvious)
Belt: Arach (obvious)
Rings: Ravenfrost // Bul Kathos
Amu: Mara's
Gloves: Trang (obvious)
Boots: Waterwalk (whatever you prefer, I like the dex and life on these boots)
Charms: P&B skilers, perf torch, almost perf anni, res sc to get 80, 80, 75, 75 res)

I let the 3 trang combo (-25 enemy poison res) out because even in the best scenario I loose 3 to all skills for only a little more damage with weaker summons, curses and corpse explosion. The wasted 3 to skills will effect your summons drasticly because it lowers their numbers, life, def, damage and resist. You'll be alot quicker when you only have to focus on 2 or 3 skills (pnova, low res, corpse expl) without constantly having to keep an eye on your armies' numbers.

Lower gear


Helm: Sazabi's Mental Sheath (1 to skills, fire and light res)
Armor:Trang armor (2 to summoning)
Shield: Homunculus (with low %ed this shield is affordable and gives 2 al skills and 2 to curses to get lower res at a nice lvl, 40 all res and mana boost is nice aswell)
Weapon: low % Death's Web, Cairn Shard, Arm of King Leoric
Belt:Trang belt
Rings:crappy raven (cannot be frozen) + res ring
Amu:3 p&b skills (since you covered summons with armor and resists with rings)
Gloves:Trang (with 3 trang items you get -25% to enemy poison res)
Boots: Waterwalk
Charms: torch (low torch is not expensive and gives nice +3 to skills) rest of charms can be used to increase your resists, life and mana.

Even with this lower gear set you'll be able to kill quickly and save on hell since you have a decent meat shield and corpse explosion. I've played with a lot of low lvl gear necro's on hc before with much worse gear, even my mf necro kicked *** in act5 hell because of high lvl corpse explosion. The 3 trang items that give -25% to enemy poison resist makes your pnova more than good enough. It's important to have +to skills on your gear to do sufficient damage with nova and having a decent meatshield. You can, as stated before, use your charms to buff your res, life and mana.


My poison nova does 11k to 11k damage (I can do more with better bramble) so even without lower resist I basically kill every monster with just one poison nova attack even champions and minion bosses like 'Shenk the Overseer'. I can just focus on pnova and lower res because with def aura and max skel raise and + to skills my meatshield rarely needs a buff.

With the lower gear set you can be almost as quick if your corpse explosion reaches the higher lvls (like 15+).

[elmek]

3 piece trang > arach+spirit just for the -25% poison resists. It not only increase your poison damage but also duration making pnowa way more powerful.
enigma > bramble. You do not really need the extra +% poison damage and mobility is much more valuable, especially with skellies wandering around.
Personally I also prefer might merc over def as your summons are durable enough and extra damage helps against unbreakable poison immunes.

What weapon are you using? DWeb? Also for HC I'd go max block with trang shield or at least 50% block.

[Fulllive]

Forgot to mention that I use a near perfect Death's Web as weapon.

3 piece trang > arach+spirit just for the -25% poison resists. It not only increase your poison damage but also duration making pnowa way more powerful.

I don't use a spirit, I don't know were you read that but it's not the case. The Homunculus is way better than trang shield because of the +2 curses, +2 all skills and 40 all res. In combination with bramble you can stack up sc with fire, light and cold res to get max resist while you still have room for max skillers to increase your damage even more. Another plus is that I can socket my helm, shield and weapon with poison facets increasing my damage even more while i still have max res due to Homunculus.

enigma > bramble. You do not really need the extra +% poison damage and mobility is much more valuable, especially with skellies wandering around.

You don't need the possibility of 50% increased damage ? ...

Teleport is nice but you lack the faster cast rate to quickly teleport out of lethal groups of moonlord or stigian dolls. It has happened to me and a friend of mine before, our summon necro's died because champion and boss moonlords with faster run speed just sliced our necro's apart because we lacked the fcr to teleport away quickly enough. Even with 2k life it's just a matter of a seconds to death when you're surounded by a group moonlords, especially taking into consideration that half the time on hell you get amped.

Goodluck with Mephi or Baal running on hell with low fcr, low def (because of mightmerc) and low life.

I'd rather travel a little longer and kill faster instead of a quick journey and a longer fight. You may be a little faster but it's a lot more dangerous.


Personally I also prefer might merc over def as your summons are durable enough and extra damage helps against unbreakable poison immunes.

With might aura your skeletons do more damage but what's the point ? Any decent merc does way more damage any skeleton can do and all unbreakable poison immunes happen to be monsters with low hitpoints anyway. So it's just a matter of getting that first corpse (which is a single hit from your merc) to blow all poison immunes away with your high lvl corpse explosion.

My defiance aura makes sure my merc and minions don't need any attention which let's me focus on pnova and so now and then lower res and corpse explosion. I'm also A LOT more durable since my defense increases from like 1.4k to over 5k.

[elmek]

I dont understand why you're so obsessed about damage. Even withot Bramble 1 pnova kills everything (with dweb and 3piece trang).
Still, 3 piece trang > homo+arach. CBF, -25 psnres, resists, str.
As I mentioned, bramble is not necessary. In the main setup you should have block. For tele you can have a fcr switch if u want (wizzy+spirit for example). Remember that you'll tele with minion stack.

U can use def merc. I still prefer might, as extra damage is better that def which is still crap as hell on the nec.