Does my bonemancer suck?

[anilrobo]

Hi everyone! I think my bonemancer sucks! Why? - because he's level 88 and is able to do a paltry 2.2k damage with bone spear. I've heard some necros saying their damage was 12k bone spear. Why is that so? I need two advices from the seasoned bonemancers here:

1. Skill tree: I can't make any changes to the skill tree, I would still like my skill tree to be "reviewed" for any errors I might have made.

2. I have some really crappy equipment, so am using mostly magic find things. I need some of you to give me an idea of what kind of equipment should I be looking for.

My skill setup: (I have +10 skills by items, so max skill level will be 30 for any given skill)

PNB skills:
Teeth: 18 (still maxing)
Bone spear: 30
Bone spirit: 30
Bone wall: 30
Bone prison: 30
Bone armor & Corpse explosion: 11 each (gave only one point)

Summoning skills:
Raise skeleton: 1
Raise skeleton mage: 1
Clay golem: 1
Golem mastery: 1
Summon resist: 1

Curses:
Amp damage: 1
Weaken: 1
Terror: 1
Decrepify: 1
(Basically I wanted decrepify, so had to give 1 point in each prerequisite).

Equipment:
Hoto (+3 skills, 40%faster cast rate, all resistances +38)
Gloves: Chance guards
Helm: Gemmed winged helm (3 perfect topazes)
Armor: Gemmed full plate mail (3 perfect topazes)
Ring 1: Nagelring
Ring 2: Stone of Jordan
Amulet: Rare amulet (+1 necro skills, 14 energy, 33 life, all resistances +17)
Belt: Credendum (10strength, 10 dexterity, all resistances +15)
Shield: Gemmed homunculus (inserted perfect diamond for resistances)
Boots: Rare boots (30% faster run/walk, 10% faster hit recovery, fire resist 5%, 22% better chance to find magic items)
Charm1: 21 life, lightning resist 11%
Charm2: 25 life
Charm 3: 19 life
Charm 4: 19 life
Charm 5: Gheed's fortune
Charm 6: 12 life, lightning resist 6%
Charm 7: Hellfire torch

Now my first concern is: How do I increase my damage? And is it possible for any necro to get bone spear do damage as high as 12k? How?

I desperately need improvements in my helm, armor, gloves, belt and boots. However, I am not able to trade for them or find them myself despite having high mf. Can someone guide me there as well? Thanks!

[Ed from Russia]

Skills are not so bad. I would get a point in Revive but that's it.

Equipment: I think it's best if you read one of the Bonemancer guides in the stickies, but here's my thought on ideal setup:

Weapon: HOTO is fine but you should consider Boneshade, Death's Web or the White runeword in the right wand.
Shield: Homunculus is fine.
Gloves: Frostburns for extra mana, or Magefist for FCR
Belt: Arachs for +1 to skills. Alternatives: Gloom's Trap for extra mana, or Verdungos for Damage reduction / Vita / regen
Helm: Harlequin's Crest for +2 to skills. Alternative: Circlet with +2 Necro or +3 P&B
Armor: Enigma for Teleport. Alternatives: COH, any with high resists (Smoke, Vipermagi with Um)
Boots: Silkweave for extra mana.
Rings: 2 SOJs or BKs. Alternative: rare with resists.
Amulet: Mara's, or magic ring with +3 B&P skills, or rare ring with +2 Necro skills and other useful mods
Charms: Necro Torch, and as many P&B skillers as you can get.

Some of these items are a bit expensive, but the alternatives I suggest are easily obtainable for some pgems or by gambling. Once you have him dressed up you can start saving for the more expensive stuff.

Anyway, a Bonemancer is not the best MF-er. I would suggest you make a Sorc (Cold or Lightning) or Skellymancer for MF-ing to start with. The Bonemancer is a PvP character really.

MF-ing takes time but you should be able to get the items you need quickly. Enigma will be the hardest but with some patience you'll get it eventually. Just keep trading up your items and gems for runes (Pul-Um-Ist) until you have enough to trade for an Enigma MP.

[iomanip]

(to everyone: i know this isnt the trade forum, but its not trading, so...)

i have some +3 boneskills amu, ill give you one (for free of course) to start you off.

just whisper me, should be online tonight
*iomanip1

[anilrobo]

(to everyone: i know this isnt the trade forum, but its not trading, so...)

i have some +3 boneskills amu, ill give you one (for free of course) to start you off.

just whisper me, should be online tonight
*iomanip1

Thanks, I have one already. Still I'm using another ammy for resists. I've gambled for hundreds of not thousands of rings and amulets, and also transformed all using horadric cube (3rings => 1 amulet, 3 amulets => 1 ring) still no good luck so far. Will keep trying! That's the whole point of gambling! :wink3:

[iomanip]

allright then!
rock on!

[Master Zap]

One should be dubious of rediculous damage output. 12K for a single spear seems absurdly high for something that is as spammable as spear.. I'll double check the numbers, but a per spear output at 12K seems nearly twice what the damage should be.

[BlargX]

Ed, I hear lightning is a tough sorceress build unless you are rich/twinked. I'm thinking of making a meteorb myself, to do some MF.

[Ed from Russia]

Ed, I hear lightning is a tough sorceress build unless you are rich/twinked. I'm thinking of making a meteorb myself, to do some MF.

Lightning sorcs need some stuff that a cold sorc can do without. But even an untwinked / MF Lightning Sorc does fine. You will focus your MF mainly on Mephisto, teleporting away from any other monsters. So if you just have a decent-damage Lightning you will do fine.

A Meteorb is more versatile because it has 2 types of damage, and it's better if you want to finish the game. For MF I recommend a pure Cold Sorc; with Blizzard as your main skill, you will have no problems whatsoever killing Mephisto over and over again.

[anilrobo]

Sorry for redirecting the thread towards necromancer again, but I would like people to post what damage does their bone spear do. If the damage is in excess of 3k, I would also like to know what's their gear.

[Mad Mantis]

Plug in some numbers and see how high you can get the damage on Spear/Spirit. (http://diablo2.ingame.de/spiel/skills/calc/index.php?lang=en&char=nec)

[mozza]

Is it me or has nobody suggested trang ouls gloves since that would be quite an obvious choice for a bonemancer with fcr and +skills.

[Uncle_Mike]

Sorry for redirecting the thread towards necromancer again, but I would like people to post what damage does their bone spear do. If the damage is in excess of 3k, I would also like to know what's their gear.

My necro's dmg is either 4 or 4.5k spear and bone spirit is in the similar range (depending on which setup I use, hoto provides more dmg than wizzy) can't post exact numbers from work.

Breaking 4k dmg isn't difficult, just requires plenty of +skill items and would probably be an overkill for pvm.

My current setup
2 nec fcr circ
2 nec crafted amulet
Enigma
Spirit shield
aranichd's mesh
Wizzardspike/Hoto
torch, anni, 9 pnb skillers.

cta/spirit on switch

12k spear is impossible to achieve by the way :wink3:

[anilrobo]

12k spear is impossible to achieve by the way :wink3:

Well I raised the question about damage primarily because I find my necro quite "ineffective" in damaging the monsters in hell runs. There is always a hammerdin who leads the attack. All I can do is curse them from behind, because firing bone spear at the monsters doesn't seem to make much of a difference.

I realize that I don't have good equipment as yet, primarily because I didn't find good items or runes, and am ignorant of the trade values of whatever crap I find.

Given that, I think my next char may well be hammerdin instead. At least I'll be able to "lead" the attack! :cool:

Here, I want to raise another question. The arreat summit lists a nice table of values for damage of bone spear and blessed hammer. However the list goes on only till level 20, and it's messy to calculate the synergies. Can someone point me to a good calculator to find out the damage of spells like bone spear? Thanks!

[RealmOftheWolf]

http://diablo2.ingame.de/spiel/skills/calc/index.php?lang=en

[anilrobo]

http://diablo2.ingame.de/spiel/skills/calc/index.php?lang=en
Thank you so much! Using this calculator, I figure that the maximum damage a bone spear could ever do is just below 6k. In the process, he has to spend 100 skill points (20 for bone spear, and 20x4 for synergies). Theoretically possible 30 extra skills from other items are also assumed for this calculation. (Just for the facts, bone spirit is doing 5.7k average damage at the same configuration)

On the other hand, consider a hammerdin for the same configuration. Maximum possible theoretical damage for a hammerdin is 4k without concentration, and 20k with concentration. To achieve this, he has to spend 80 skill points (20 for blessed hammer, 20x3 for synergies).

Also there are some "immune to magic" creatures on which the bone spear has no effect. The same creatures however receive full damage from blessed hammer, which is another advantage of hammerdin.

My verdict: The hammerdin is clearly superior to a bonemancer if damage is the only judgment criteria. He also matures early, thereby finishing his most important skills earlier in the game. I'll start a hammerdin soon! :rolleyes:

[Throttle]

Bone Spear does not reach 12k damage. The damage depends a bit on build, with an average of around 5k. A build focusing more on such things as fcr, fhr and block might have 4k, while a damage build can have 6k. Much more than that is either impossible or not worth the sacrifice you make. 12k is unheard of.

My bone spear is at around 4k, which is a bit low, but it's a sacrifice I made. It's a PvP character so I needed a lot of things. Here's what I wear:

Rare circlet (+2 necro, +20%fcr, +18str, +15@res, socketed with Shael)
Mara's amulet
Enigma breastplate
Stormshield (socketed with Hel)
Waterwalks
Arachnid's Mesh
Rare ring (+10%fcr, +27 life, +48 mana, +11@res)
Rare ring (+10%fcr, +31 life, +34 mana, +15 dex)
Magefist
Wizardspike

Necromancer torch
Annihilus
4x +5@res small charm
6x +20 life small charm
3x +12%fhr PnB skiller
6x +23-34 life PnB skiller

[Throttle]

As for the hammerdin discussion, while off-topic, here's my take on it:

- Hammerdins do much more damage, but they can't properly aim their spell. They also lack in range, and the terrain can be an obstacle. I'm not arguing that they're not better than bone necromancers (or any other build in the game) for PvM, because they are, but the necromancer does have some advantages.

- Everybody and their god damn dog plays a hammerdin. I estimate that at least 30% of the characters you'll find in any given non-duel game is a hammerdin, often closer to 50%. Do you want to be the same as everybody else?

- Hammerdins can only do one thing, and that's damage. They're a one trick pony, and while they're good at what they do, it's all they do. Necromancers at least have the ability to - if they've chosen to include it in their build - apply curses, use summons, and can do quite a lot of area damage with corpse explosion.

- Necromancers are cheaper to equip.

[anilrobo]

As for the hammerdin discussion, while off-topic, here's my take on it:

- Hammerdins do much more damage, but they can't properly aim their spell. They also lack in range, and the terrain can be an obstacle. I'm not arguing that they're not better than bone necromancers (or any other build in the game) for PvM, because they are, but the necromancer does have some advantages.

- Everybody and their god damn dog plays a hammerdin. I estimate that at least 30% of the characters you'll find in any given non-duel game is a hammerdin, often closer to 50%. Do you want to be the same as everybody else?

- Hammerdins can only do one thing, and that's damage. They're a one trick pony, and while they're good at what they do, it's all they do. Necromancers at least have the ability to - if they've chosen to include it in their build - apply curses, use summons, and can do quite a lot of area damage with corpse explosion.

- Necromancers are cheaper to equip.

The manner in which you have presented your logic reminds me of a highly respected friend. It's true that everyone plays hammerdin these days because they're easy to build and manage. I've always played a necromancer (three of them so far, all have been bonemancers). The first two expired as I was writing some important exams. I'll keep this one alive as long as it's on ladder.

After all this discussion, I concluce that my bonemancer does not suck. He's okay, just needs some runewords like enigma and heart of the oak, which will come with time. I have enough patience (as evidenced by playing necromancer) for growth :rolleyes: