Necro build idea help. Thorns, bone/psn, CE

[Karky]

I read the corrupted televangelist guide and found it to be interesting. Using revive and an edge bow to get thorns and then CE when the first corpses fall to the ground. Though it is finished pretty early on, and I don't think I will need a lot of points into curses (just some to get amp radius up) and CE (maybe a couple to increase the radius) So I thought I could do either poison with all synergies maxed, or bone with 2 synergies maxed.

I will be doing PvM with this char, hoping maybe to do some baalruns solo in hell, cows solo in hell, mostly stuff like that. But I want it to be able to hold its own other places too. Being leet in 8 player games is beyond my budged no matter what char, so ..

I will use + skill weapon and shield on weapon switch for when I use the psn/bone skills

If I go for bone spirit I will probably chose bone spirit, and then max 2 synergies.
If I max bone prison and bone wall I will get 620 absorb on bone shield. So I figured it would be smart going that way, since you get 2 useful things out of the synergies (increased BS dmg and better bone shield) however, is 620 absorb enough to be noticable? I can't really think of any advantage of going with other synergies.. will other bone attacking spells be useful along side of (or instead)bone spirit? Too bad the morrowalk bug was fixed, otherwise I could get 4 synergies here.. :p

thoughts on this?

For the other option, which is poison nova:
I can get more dmg (1953 psn vs 1254 bone max dmg, without + skills from items)
With psn I can get items that give - enemy psn resistance quite easily, which could be an advantage, but then again, there is no bone resistance (is there?) so that point might be void.
PSN nova also has the advantage of hitting many enemies at once.

The dmg on either doesn't seem to impressive, but I guess that can be fixed with + skill items.
Anyways, which one of going psn or bone do you think would be most effective?

[Mad Mantis]

So I figured it would be smart going that way, since you get 2 useful things out of the synergies (increased BS dmg and better bone shield) however, is 620 absorb enough to be noticable?

The 620 absorb is pretty noticeable. It'll get you out of a few scrapes. As a plus you can some good crowd control abilities for free.




For the other option, which is poison nova:
I can get more dmg (1953 psn vs 1254 bone max dmg, without + skills from items)
With psn I can get items that give - enemy psn resistance quite easily, which could be an advantage, but then again, there is no bone resistance (is there?) so that point might be void.
PSN nova also has the advantage of hitting many enemies at once.

There is magic resistance, but very few monsters have it and only one type is resistant IIRC. The down side is that apart from +skills you can't boost the damage on Bone skills.

Don't underestimate the advantage of being able to hit an entire group worth of monsters. With the BS you are doing that damage against a single enemy. It'll take a very very long time to clear groups of monsters compared to Nova. Although Poison has more immunes you can either break them or already have a different way of dealing with them. The damage on Nova is much easier to enhance, vastly increasing your kill speed.

[Karky]

So poison would probably be quicker then? And as for immunes, I will have an army of revives with thorns aura and might aura from merc (merc will also carry insight).

Right now I'm kind of at a crossroad, I really want to get dim vision up in radius to be able to easily stroll places like WSK. I will probably only get my character to lvl 85 (that's where most of the chars I really like are, after that baalrunning becomes boring and I start just playing around in pits, etc) and at lvl 85 I can have 97 skills. If I pull off dim vision, I won't need the crowd control bone skills all that much.

I've got (+ pre reqs of course) lvl 10 CE and lvl 10 revive right now, + 1 in dim vision, amp, golem mastery and resist. Getting poison skills up would leave me at 91 skill points used. that's 6 left for adding dim vision radius, + I will use trangs gloves, and probably get some more + to skills..

I really hope I can pull this off.. having an army to fight for me with thorns and might + using ce and curses AND being able to use magic attack skills myself means the game won't get boring as I can vary a lot.
I will at least be able to get 2 + all skills from hat and armour (I carry edge bow, but I might be able to just do a weapon switch when casting the curse, however that would make my minions lose thorns for a little while, but I'll test it out), I might be able to get a shako so I'll have 3. with 2 + all skills and 2 + curses I'll have a 9.3 radius dim vision.

Thanks a lot for your input :)

[Mad Mantis]

So poison would probably be quicker then?

Yes. Poison will be quicker.


that's 6 left for adding dim vision radius, + I will use trangs gloves, and probably get some more + to skills..

With some +skills that should be good.

[Karky]

awesome! thanks for the help :)

[lumpor]

I suggest bramble and edge runeword, for stacked thorns aura. Then use the spirit of barbs charges for even more thorns. You could get an act 1 merc and put the items on her, and then wear a bramble yourself too, for the charges. You basically sacrifice the mercs weapon and armor spot for your weapon spot. You could also equip a wisp projector too, but that spirit will only be lvl 7

i would be a summon hybrid instead. Skeletons are affected by thorns, and can tank, and aren't so skill-intensive.

[Karky]

yeah, I really want a bramble armour, but it's very expencive, isn't it?

I already went with poison. I thought about skellies, but I just wanted something else than summoning, more varied gameplay and I don't get bored so fast.

what does a bramble go for now a days anyway? It could be a bad one with just lvl 15 aura..
If I do equip it on my merc, i can't get an act2 might merc.. but I don't think might will help my revives much anyways, as they do crap dmg. And with the items on my merc I could get some serious + to skills. Edge is pretty good against demons and undeads, and there are a lot of those in the game. However, then I couldn't use insight.. CE is pretty mana intensive, but I've got a lot of mana intensive chars without it and they do just fine.. I'm used to drinking blues..

Will thorns aura from an act2 merc stack with bramble if he is wearing it? then he could have insight and I could have + skill items..

[Mad Mantis]

Will thorns aura from an act2 merc stack with bramble if he is wearing it?

No. Only the skills from items stack in this way.