Any experiences with Skelliemancer or Poison/Skelliemancer?

[agp]

Well, just coming back to D2 after taking 3 years off :smiley:

Anyone built a skelliemancer or poison/skelliemancer? How do they work? With summon skeletons and skeleton mastery maxed out, how hard is nightmare and hell? Any personal comments or experiences you can share with me?

(Somewhat off topic: hows skelliemancer compared to Druid summoner?)

[Nimbostratus]

I did a summoner a while ago, and it was pretty much a cakewalk the whole time. The most difficult things a summoner faces are Normal Andariel and Normal Diablo, simply because his summons just aren't up to strength yet.

Some helpful skills:
-Attract/Confuse for very powerful groups
-Decrepify for bosses/strong monsters
-Dim Vision for ranged monsters your skeletons can't get to yet.
-Bone wall: Helpful to keep things close/away, but it lures things in from a couple screens away. I had Meph charge in when I was still on the side areas .__.

[braincrasher]

Summoner necro is one of the best characters in-game. Just max corpse explosion in addition to raise skeleton and skeleton mastery for mass-killing in hell.

[Pasky]

Ya just get prepared to defend yourself in pub games of kids telling you they are being lagged by your summons. I usually tell them to get a job and buy a better PC if they are getting lagged by a 9 year old game.

[agp]

Would beating the game one all three difficulties be easier with a necro summoner or a druid summoner?

[NumtyDoo]

necro summoner by a mile.

[agp]

I'll take your word for it =) I'm at level 12 now...

[Zodiacz]

This has it all:

http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=349093

[MasterMynd]

With summon skeletons and skeleton mastery maxed out, how hard is nightmare and hell? Any personal comments or experiences you can share with me?

I've been running nothing but skellymncers for the last 6 months. (Maybe a dozen or so individual characters in that time.)

To state the obvious, the single most important factor for a skellymancer is the strength of his army, with "strength" being determined by the combined skill levels for RS and SM. (Although SR is an absolute must, it only needs 5-6 points total - which usually means only 1 hard point.) So essentially, how easy/difficult NM and/or Hell are depends mostly on how much +skills you have.

With that in mind, my SOP when starting a new skellymancer is to shop a good wand. Clearing everything prior to Blood Raven and selling anything worth a decent amount of cash (wands, sceptres and staves being the best candidates, but some other things, like potions and throwing knives, also give good return for the "space") should allow you to amass something in the neighborhood of 15K gold, which is enough to buy a truly godly (for the level req) wand.

Although it may take some time (a couple minutes to half an hour, depending on your luck), I would shoot for at least +3RS/+3SM, which can be purchased for <11K. And if you've got even more time, a +3RS/+3SM/+2BA\CE\Amp\DV wand goes for <14K. But if you just can't wait, a +3RS/+2SM is ok and is really cheap at <7K. (Note: Wand shopping should be done at clvl6 or lower as that will give the best chances of spawning the skills you want. See the "Item Generation Tutorial" for the reason behind this. Or just take my word for it.)

The second thing I do is run the early/mid areas of A1 (Blood Moor through Black Marsh) 2 or 3 times to "farm" for shrunken heads. It's never taken me more than 3 runs to get a decent head. (By "decent" I mean something with a total of +2 to RS and SM combined. A "good" one would be +3 combined RS and SM.) (Note: Unlike shopping, drops are based on monster level, not character level. So it makes no difference what level character is doing the "farming".)

So I usually enter late A1 Norm with around +8 to RS and SM combined. And with that kind of "head start", it's a cakewalk all the way through Nightmare.

After that, Hell gets a little more difficult, but really, nothing to worry about. Amp+CE will be your main killer, with your army being relegated more to "defense" (as meat shields) and getting the first body to drop for the CE chain.

There's lots more detailed data in the "Fishmancer" and Dark Lord build guides. Check them out.

Good luck! :thumbsup:

[agp]

I know that Black Marsh has some zombie/unrav heads, how about running Duriel or Mephisto? How about running Diablo later on? Which is the best boss/area to run for good items (or good necro items)?

[MasterMynd]

I know that Black Marsh has some zombie/unrav heads, how about running Duriel or Mephisto? How about running Diablo later on? Which is the best boss/area to run for good items (or good necro items)?

The key is the level requirements for the skills you want.

The summoner Necro is quite unique in that nearly all its "core" skills are level 6 or less. So to maximize your odds of getting those skills, you want to farm areas where the monsters can only drop items with level 1 and level 6 skills. Which means monsters at level 11 or less. Which in turn means, early/mid A1 Norm.

Of course if you're looking for +SkillTab or +AllSkills, then you'll have to wait until somewhere around late Norm, early NM before they start dropping.

But keep in mind that it is almost impossible to get level 1 or 6 (RS/SM/BA/CG/DV) and level 30+ (+2Summon/+2All/+3Summon) skills on the same item. Add to that the built-in rarity of class specific item drops, and you can see why "Boss" running is not really a very remunerative activity for "farming" heads. Yes, if one does drop, it has the potential for some awesome mods. But on a strictly mathematical basis, more monsters killed = more heads drop, and more heads dropped = more chances to get the mods you want.

So I reiterate: The best area to farm for Summoner Necro Shrunken Heads is early-mid A1 Norm.

Note that "farming" wands is a totally futile endeavor since you can shop wands that are (with the single exception of Arm of King Leoric) as good as, or better than, anything else in the game for summoning.

[agp]

Early/Mid norm as in anywhere from Blood Raven to Mephisto?

[MasterMynd]

Early/Mid norm as in anywhere from Blood Raven to Mephisto?

So I reiterate: The best area to farm for Summoner Necro Shrunken Heads is early-mid A1 Norm.

Read the above again and notice the orange highlight. :wink3:

Blood Moor to Tamoe Highland.

[agp]

Oooh... I missed the A1 part. Thanks!

[agp]

Can't edit the last post anymore... I just beat the game (took me about 6 hours, go to level 30, and then beat the cow level). Now I'm on Nightmare A1. Are there any particular good boss or minibosses to run on NM?

[okiimatsu]

I'll speak up for the poison/skellie hybrid. I pretty much followed
'Gvandale's' guide on a necro build i started one month ago.
I'm level 84 now and solo'd through single player completing hell difficulty without any major problem a week ago. The only semi-good peice of
equipment I have is Skin of the Vipermagi, thats it. I did find a decent
peice of armour for my merc. Great build, try it out.

[kreality]

Hmmm...about Fishymancer....How are you going to do against Diablo and Andriel? Somehow, they really can wipe all your minion way too easy...

[NumtyDoo]

Only in Normal, after you get the 20rs/20sm, a few +skills, and some decent merc gear bosses are almost laughably easy. Clay golem+decrep makes bosses a breeze.