Thinking of making a HC summon necro

[Koolraap]

Hello,

Ive recently started playing diablo 2 again, and im thinking about making a hardcore character. From what i remember a summoning necro is relatively easy and fun to play, also he has quite a meat wall so he shouldnt die fast on HC :).

Im looking for some guides on how to play an untwinked summon necro and tips for HC summon necro's. Also what hybrid builds are best for HC, poison/summon or bonespirit/summon. Or simply max summon skills and some curses.

Any help/tips would be greatly appreciated.

Greetings

[Lynxxmania]

I am not an expert, but with summons just get put points into skellies, then the sm and put some points in curses and corpse explosion on the way. What curses you take (apart from Amplify, which is a must) is up to you. I am going for decreptify for easier bosses, but I might end up putting one point in all curses. What golem you choose is mostly dependent on how rich you are. Rich=iron golem, poor like me= clay golem or gumby as everyone calls him.
Hope that helped, a link to a guide will surely be posted by someone that knows where to find it:nod:...

[Koolraap]

Yes i was thinking about ofc maxing Raise Skeleton and Skeletal Mastery. But im not really sure what to pump after this.

Is it wise to pump Bone Armor? Just for the extra survivability on Hardcore.

[Toreaver]

After skeles and mastery id go CE. One monster goes down, then you blow it up, then you blow up the corpses you just created for yourself. It snowballs and is a lot of fun. Curses such as dim vision and confuse, much overlooked in softcore, are very useful in HC vs. say a pack of archers. I generally have 1 pt in every curse.

After CE pick either bone wall or bone prison, as either of them will actually give you more dmg absorb from bone armor than maxing bone armor itself will.

I'm by no means an expert, but I've had some success with that setup. GL in HC and don't get discouraged. We all lose characters sometimes.

[sequoia]

Multiplayer or singleplayer?

If you are playing less than players 4 or so, corpse explosion will clear rooms like you would not believe. It's pretty much overpowered in single player.

Since you are hardcore you want to have more and more summons, so clay golem and a point in mastery would be great, and some say mages are viable. At the least, they would be more fodder to tank the occasional out of place monster.

Either way, it's a great HC character and should be lots of fun.

[Koolraap]

I started my fishy necro yday, i got to level 26 and killed diablo :). Took me about 5 runs to act 1 to refresh my army tho :D.

So far ive been playing singleplayer in private games, i dont really feel like getting tppked ;(

Until now ive been having a blast, i got scared twice where i accidentally pressed a fire shrine and my hp dropped to like 30% :P. Damn those fire shrines.

Anyway so far so good, i guess ill go full skeletal mage after RS and SM just for more fodder/ PI immunes when i hit hell.

Using an act 2 defensive merc for defiance aura, figured it was the best choice between prayer/blessed aim. My skeletons generally dont have problems hitting stuff yet.

Greetz :)

[sequoia]

If you're single player, you will definitely want to employ corpse explosion. Crazily imbalanced at players 1.

[Toreaver]

i would really suggest against mages. though they may be cannon fodder, they cannot kill a thing. you would be much better off using revives or a golem for a tank, or pumping a few curses up.

[Doormat]

I made a fishy this ladder season. He's about lvl 75 now. After maxing SM and RS I would look to get a few points into CE as well as getting a point into the golems, golem mastery, revive, and I suggest one to all the curses. I find that all the curses find a time and place for their use. I don't suggest more than say 10-15 hard points to CE because it is already very powerful and I feel that more are a waste.

As for what to do after you max sm, rs and get all your others:

I went with mages because perhaps at some point I will receive an infinity and use that on my merc (I strongly suggest a might merc once you get to nm) and then the mages will be serious contributers to my army. Other than that you can dump a few points here and there to curses. But I find 1 to all works out just fine. You may also dump points into golem mastery to make a pretty high hp golem if you wanted to use a nice iron golem but 1 point for all other purposes is fine.

[Trikko]

Is block a must for a necro in HC?

Notice it wasn't brought up, just wondering if it's implied.

[Archon_Wing]

I don't think so, since normally you aren't going to be very close to the enemy and 1 point bone armor with +skills (and bone wall synergy if you feel like it) kept me fairly safe from any accidents. I even think that you could go without bone armor, though it does help. Also, if you do go block, you must have a homoculus as necro heads have horrid blocking.

As a necro you're usually worried about elemental damage such as gloams which could bypass your minions as well as the occasional cold enchanted boss explosion and difficult to avoid attacks like bolts from lightning enchanted damage or Diablo's fire . The only true physical damage threats are from those javelin cats that can go through minions but that's best dealt with dim vision anyways.


Anyway so far so good, i guess ill go full skeletal mage after RS and SM just for more fodder/ PI immunes when i hit hell.Remember that you can deal with most PIs with amplify damage. Amp breaks the immunities of most physical immune monsters with a few rare exceptions and those have never bothered me enough. So don't get mages for this reason. However, having extra targets for the enemies to attack is never a bad thing especially if it starts lagging.

[Xeteh]

I don't think so, since normally you aren't going to be very close to the enemy and 1 point bone armor with +skills (and bone wall synergy if you feel like it) kept me fairly safe from any accidents. I even think that you could go without bone armor, though it does help. Also, if you do go block, you must have a homoculus as necro heads have horrid blocking.

As a necro you're usually worried about elemental damage such as gloams which could bypass your minions as well as the occasional cold enchanted boss explosion and difficult to avoid attacks like bolts from lightning enchanted damage or Diablo's attacks. The only true physical damage threats are from those javelin cats that can go through minions but that's best dealt with dim vision anyways.

I disagree. If you're going to make the argument that "you shouldn't be getting hit" so you don't need block, then by the same logic why pump Vitality? My Necro is at L80 and my Dex is up at 168 giving me 57% chance to block with a Rhyme Bone Shield. I wish I had higher block because you will be getting hit. Your minions won't lead the way for you to follow behind when there's nothing for them to aggro on. You have to take the lead at times and there are points where you will take hits. Necros also only get 2 HP per Vitality so the returns from Dex are worth it.

As far as skills go if you follow Fishy's guide you should max Raise Skeleton then Skeleton Mastery and lastly Corpse Explosion. Revives are pretty helpful even if the AI on them is horrid (half the time they will wander around like they can't see whats going on), keep Decrepify up with a Clay Golem on Act bosses and they'll move as if you put the game on slow-motion. Dim Vision on mobs that can res like Fallen Shaman and they won't be able to resurrect what they cannot see.

[Archon_Wing]

I disagree. If you're going to make the argument that "you shouldn't be getting hit" so you don't need block, then by the same logic why pump Vitality?

I already brought that up in the last post. Because it's harder to avoid elemental attacks that can still hit you even if you're hiding behind your minions. If I fight melee monsters I can take my hands off the mouse and keyboard and not fear a thing as long as I place my necro correctly. This is not true for gloams.

You can get decent block from a shield as opposed to a head but it's not worth the skills that you sacrfice. You could rhyme a necro head with skills I guess.