question about summoner excess skill points

[wrayth]

so lets say i have maxed raise skeleton, summon mastery and corpse explosion.
would it be wise to spend 10 points in revive and summon resist?

also if any of you have any other ideas as where to put excess points for a summoner, please tell me.

[omgwtfbbqpwned]

If you can get +15 to +20 Summon/Necro Skills, then you don't need all those points in Summon Resistance: 1 is enough. This goes for Revives too, unless you want lots and lots of Revives humming about your Mancer.

With the rest of your points, you can:

1. Invest into Skeleton Mages for more damage and higher numbers.
2. Invest into Bone Armor and its Synergies for more protection.
3. Invest into Revives for higher numbers (IMO only useful when running Baal, and even then, people tend to complain).
4. Invest into Poison Nova and its Synergies for support.

[skabb]

I dont see any point in putting any more points in revives or summon resist. Im currently rebuilding my necro (for a nonrelated reason). My old necro used the excess points in golem mastery, but i belive this was a waste so the new necro will put the points in mages. Where you want to put your points is up to you and it doesnt rly matter that much where you put it since RS SM CE + curses will do the job. To me it seems like mages makes most sense since you alrdy maxed SM, whatever u may decide, gl with it :)

[Cius]

I don't agree with the mages. They become a major pain unless you have access to teleport. Especialy in places that have doorways they get in the way of your other skellitons. If you have plenty of +skills then put one point in revive, summon resist, etc. I also put one in every curse for versatility. The problem is that its hard to get decent damage through poison or bone spells with so few points so personally I would put my remaining points in clay golem for extra slow (heavy diminishing returns though) or I would put one point in bone armour and pump the synergies. If you are playing untwinked and don't have many +skills think about pumping the curse a bit to expand the range. Its nice to be able to cast once and the whole screen gets cursed. lvl 1 amp and decrep have very small radius.

[BlargX]

I've maxed RS and SM and am going to max CE and mages. Both address different situations where the other is of little use. Mages are of little use in a jammed doorway and can even make things worse by jamming everything up there, maybe dying uselessly in the process -- go CE! CE is of no use at all when there are no corpses anymore(which CE itself can make happen). And also when you need to save some corpses to use as new skellies when your old ones die. A full complement of mages and of CE, on top of standard RS and SM, will take you to 80 points not even counting pre-req's. This makes a build constructed on those lines somewhat tighter than other fishy-based builds.

Additional skills are greatly boosted by +skills mods, so things you have no interest in putting tons of points into are still very attractive to put one point into, just so you can have them boosted to 3 or 7 or 10 or whatever. One-point-wonders suddenly start to seem fairly attractive. For instance, I have no points in vitality, and putting just one point in bone armor and one in bone wall, due to +skills activating when I chose those points, pops me up to the equivalent of an extra 75 health when I use bone armor. Not a bad supplement to my terribly low and vulnerable life points so far.

Right now, I'm finding mages and CE so useful that I would love both of them maxed with hard points AND added to with +skills items. Not putting full hard points in them would seem wasted, to my thinking. But this means that the other possibilities are more limited. Luckily, +skills items get around that quite nicely. I'd recommend thinking about how much you really need to max things to make them useful. Just putting a point here and there in prerequisites to good skills, and the skills themselves, could get you sitting on pretty powerful spells without investing much in them. I'm even thinking about how much you really need to max CE and mages for my particular build choice. Would I rather have one or two more in a skill or two of choice, or grab 5 or 10 in an entirely new skill by putting just one point in it? It's kind of hard to justify minor improvements when you could have completely new abilities, and not at a raw beginning level either.

[Teknical]

I have a related query with my necro and spare points.

At lvl 82 I have maxed RS/SM/GM/Mages and 16 points in revives. I spent a few pre req's in Amp dmg and decript and that was really a huge step up for my character. However I have around 9 more skill points and no clue what to put them in to. Summon skill tree is fine right now, I dont think I could do more with it, Curses have made my character do a ton more dmg and to date I have not one point in poison.

Any idea's?

[MedctnStn]

I have a related query with my necro and spare points.

At lvl 82 I have maxed RS/SM/GM/Mages and 16 points in revives. I spent a few pre req's in Amp dmg and decript and that was really a huge step up for my character. However I have around 9 more skill points and no clue what to put them in to. Summon skill tree is fine right now, I dont think I could do more with it, Curses have made my character do a ton more dmg and to date I have not one point in poison.

Any idea's?

16 points in revives is way too much IMO, as only one point should be ok. i would put the rest in corpse explosion.

[Teknical]

16 points in revives is way too much IMO, as only one point should be ok. i would put the rest in corpse explosion.

I rarely have a situation (appart from Baal runs I suppose) where there are plenty of corpses to explode.

Would you recommend CE for Baal/Baal xp runs?

I reaaly want to be able to solo baal on hell with this character.

[MasterMynd]

Any idea's?

I haven't seen any mention of Dim Vision:

1. I find it very useful when going up against summoner type monsters because they can't see their minions dying and thus don't revive them.

2. I find it makes "the run from the WP to the Boss" much faster and less stressful, when doing MF runs.

3. I find it critical in some ares, such as the Pit where a melee wave comes at you at the bottleneck, and two other ranged packs stand back and pincusion your front line.

And finally, I consider anything less than maxed to be sub-par for Hell, since ranged attacks almost always start from several yards off-screen.

[boodah]

I haven't seen any mention of Dim Vision:

1. I find it very useful when going up against summoner type monsters because they can't see their minions dying and thus don't revive them.

2. I find it makes "the run from the WP to the Boss" much faster and less stressful, when doing MF runs.

3. I find it critical in some ares, such as the Pit where a melee wave comes at you at the bottleneck, and two other ranged packs stand back and pincusion your front line.

And finally, I consider anything less than maxed to be sub-par for Hell, since ranged attacks almost always start from several yards off-screen.

Excellent advice

[tigercan]

Another vote for DV

[Senshiki]

I have made probably 20 necros in my five years playing, and 18 of them were variations of summoners, summoner hybrids, and any build in between. I find with a Fishymancer that spare points are very unnecessary. However, they are there, so you may as well use them. From what I have seen in the past, there are three best ways to go about it:

1. Super Protection Necromancer
In this case, with your three skills maxed, and assuming one point in amp, weak, maiden, decrep, and tap, you should be able to max about two skills by around level 85.(I'm to messed up to do math now.)

Having said that, you can take the typical path of the bone mancer when it comes to his Armor, Wall, and Prison bone skills. Put one in Bone Armor and then pump Wall and Prison. Aside from the added use of Bone Wall (which monsters attack, remember) you get an even-with-a-bone-mancers protection from physical damage. Between this, your meat shields, and max block, you should virtually never die. Even withut max block, you'll have high life, the armor, and all your minions.

2. The Poison Assister
Since you pretty much do nothing more than cast a curse once and stand there till bodies fall for you Corpse Explosion, this offers you another use for fighting. Simply max out Poison Explosion and Poison Nova. You could max poison dagger instead of explosion, but I find more use to explode one corpse with poison then do regular CE on the rest. Aside form that, it makes it simple to get your first skeletons out rather than hoping your merc and golem can take something out first.

Don't forget, since you don't have the luxury of Open Wounds or Crushing Blow like fighter characters, the poison will give you the added benefit of negating monster heal.

3. The Part-Time golemancer
This one was my favorite, for reasons I'll explain later. Max out golem mastery, then put the rest of your points into Clay Golem. This gives you a faster, and much heartier meat shield, as well as slowing down bosses. Between a source of cold damage, holy freeze, decrepify and clay golem, you can render any character, creature, or boss harmless.

However, I personally didn't use the clay golem for it's slowing effect. Back before ladder reset, I had become extremely rich. I mean, I was tossing away enigma's left and right to all my friends. So I maxed the mastery for more life, and then maxed clay golem to give my IRON GOLEM more attack rating! This way, if I made him out of something with say, Crushing Blow, I now had a way to deliver CB to bosses :)

My crowning glory was when I hit the peak of my wealth, and I made my IG out of a Last Wish. It was incredible! He prevented monster heal, gave all of my party a Might aura, casted life tap, and had 70% crushing blow! But the best thing was his resist! I had full GC's, and lots of plus skills, so my level one summon resist was high. Since Last Wish has a chance to cast fade when stuck, he got SR resist, and 50% resist from a level 11 fade! He was virtually incinvible, and immune to every element and poison in nightmare. He was great. He lasted me almost three weeks worth of baaling and a few uberings before he died. I cried myself to sleep that night X(

So there are you're best options, or at least what I think are. Go for what works best my friend.