Some questions regarding a PvM BoneNec

[Zhul]

I'm trying to raise a particular Bonenecro which would be specialized on cursing for party support and have as much bone synergies as possible so he can actually kill some stuff on his own. One important point is he would have no hard points invested in the summon tree. At all.

Now, he's about lvl32, 1pt on every curse and deffensive bone spells, and the rest on teeth, spear and spirit, doing act5 normal and begining nighmare, and I have some questions, as I'm having some trouble making him successful:

I can barely kill anything yet with bone spells. I have to spam spear like crazy to bring anything down. Will he be stronger later on, or is my plan just not viable?
I always follow the rule of "no points into energy". The thing is, I run out of mana too quickly. Should I wait till he has better stats and equip and stick to mana pots, or would it be good to invest some points on energy (planning on max block, btw)?
Merc recommendations? On long term I probably want him to have Meditation aura, but, what else?
I have a trangs armour lying around. Is it nice for this build or should I give it to my fishymancer?
Crowd control: bonewall + attract (+ IM)? Buff dim vision or terror? Suggestions?
Initially he was going to be some sort of meleemancer, and although I changed plans, I noticed he still has some big sword on the 2nd weapon slot. I'm thinking on giving him a 2nd weapon, like a melee one or a bow, of course, just for a situational (and maybe fun) alternative. Would it be too uncompatible equipment-wise?


Oh, and please don't tell me about über equipment I do not have access to. I'm working on several characters simultaneously and don't spend enough time on the game to even see some of the stuff you people mention.

Thanks in advance for sharing your knowledge.

[XCodes]

From what I've heard and seen, Spellcasters really subscribe to the school of "there's nothing I can't kill so long as I keep throwing Mana at it."

In other words, get a Prayer A2 Merc and stick Insight on him. Aside from the mana regen you'll also eventually get ~10 HP per second regeneration (depending on how often Prayer pulses, I'm not sure myself). In all seriousness, the hardest part of this is getting a 4os Polearm that your merc can equip at your level; 3 of the runes you should have at least 1 of before even reaching Normal Baal and AFAIK Sol can sometimes drop off the Hellforge (and even if it doesn't it's dirt cheap at 1-2pgems).

[sequoia]

Bone necros are not a very good PvM class... even fully synergized you will have to sit there and chug potions like a maniac to drop that first corpse.

Like most builds, you don't need to invest in energy, but considering how mana intensive a bone necro is, it isn't the WORST thing you could do (better to go for insight, though). For your merc, you could try Prayer to synergize with Meditation for double the HP healing, or Defiance to help you survive, or Might for him to drop the first corpse for you (recommended).

Trangs is better suited for a Fishy, consider a simple +1 like Vipermagi or Spirit Shroud.

For crowd control, nothing beats Dim Vision, the nicest curse in the game. Terror is nice, but DV beats all handily, in terms of crowd control. Confuse is pretty chaotic fun too.

[Respect My Authority]

If you put on insight on your merc you really won't have much mana problems. I just made my first bone nec and he's doing pretty good. I have 3.6k spear and can clear solo chaos pretty easily with about 200 mf, only takes like 3-4 spears to kill anything and D goes down in 5-10 secs. I've found that putting 1 point in revives is really helping for survivability. They don't really do much damage since i'm not using a might merc but they are good shields.

[Magnusblitz]

RMA, out of curiousity, what do you do for magic immunes? Just run past 'em, or let your merc (and revives I guess) kill 'em?

[Respect My Authority]

I've only really done chaos runs with him and there are no magic immunes there. I might try baal runs or pits (which i don't think pits has any) with him which i would have to rely on merc and revives for the one wave along with ce. There's not that many magic immunes in the game so it shouldn't be too big of a problem. I've considered getting a might merc instead of the holy freeze i'm using now, which would make him and my revives better but the slowing is nice and helps for bone spear to hit.

[XCodes]

Aside from Greater Mummies, I don't think there *are* any Magic Immune monsters.

[Blood_And_Iron]

The bone synergies require 102 points to max. Without severe restrictions on skill you won't have enough points to do any significant damage in end game situations, especially in a multi-player game.

So I'd recommend choosing Bone or party support.

Bone is not party friendly. The best setup for Bone is maxed synergies, 3 points for Clay Golem + Golem Mastery + Summon Resist, and Decrepify, which hopefully comes on a wand or the shrunken skull.

For party support it's best to choose summoner build. You can max Summon Skeleton, Skeleton Mastery, one other skill of your choice, and still focus on a curse you want to use for your party.

Meleemancer would be cool if you max DV, and it's a great party curse.

Trang is rarely good for anything unless it's the whole set, and then only for summoners. Gloves are marginally useful.

At lvl 32 with your points spread out all over the place, you will not be able to kill anything. Where's your party? If you had put everything into bone synergies, you'd be cranking through the game. So choose :)