3 characters hardcore /players 8 build questions

[Arrinao]

Hi guys
I'm new to this community just recently registered but I play D2 for a long time so I'm not a complete noob (altough i don't play on battle.net only tcp/ip with friends)
I need some advice with my build
We want to play with summoning Necro, Avenger Paladin and Enchantress Sorc.
Necro will be using Skeletons, Revives, Mages and Golem and will be cursing enemies with Lower Resist; paladin will have Vengeance and Conviction aura, Enchantress of course maxed Enchant and high level Static Field
Maybe it will better to write down their skills:
Necro
20 Raise Skeleton
20 Skeleton Mastery
20 Raise Skeletal Mage
1 Revive (boosted up with + skills gear) + 4 preqs we'll be using Clay Golem
1 Clay Golem (boosted up with + skills gear along with Mastery)
1 Golem Mastery and Summon Resist
14 Corpse Explosion + 1 prereq
1 point in all of the curses to get to Lower Resist which will be too with 1 hard point boosted up with + gear (I think it isn't worth maxing)
20 Dim Vision (this is where I like some advice. I heard many people discussing about it some praise it, some hates it just pls tell me how much is it worth in our group if you can imagine it in the battles... This skill was my personal choice because I couldn't find anything else that would prevent us from those pesky Burning Souls and another archers and from Stygian Dolls). I didnt want necro to just stand still i wanted him to be a more difficult character to master with all those curses because he will never be attacking enemies directly...
1 Confuse
1 Attract
____________

110 points

Paladin
20 Vengeance +
5 Conviction (as a primary skill i know it may sound too low but i have learned that monster resistance cannot be lower than 100% and if a pally will have a decent + 10 all skills the conviction will be on level 15 which menas -100% enemy resistance + Lower resist = -156% enemy resistance. That should be enough for non-immunes - there aren't many monsters with resistance above 50 but below 100... And 100 and more resistance are immunes where LR and Conviction will work at 1/5 effectivnes cause we'll be breaking immunities. Maxed out conviction and LR in that case mean 15% more or so, which i think is not worth that points spent in them. But I'm open for your criticism
20 Concentration - when we meet Fire Immunes this should deal with them
1 Holy shield boosted up with + skills gear + 4 prereq
- synergires to Vengeance
20 resist fire
11 resist cold
20 resist lightning

__________________
110 points

Sorceress
20 warmth
20 enchant + 2 prereq
20 fire mastery
20 Firewall + 3 prereq
1 Shiver Armor + 3 prereq
20 Static Field
1 Frost Nova
_____________________
110 points

Well be doing high elemental damage to non Fire immunes, and if we reach some of them we'll switch to concentration and Skellies should deal with them quickly with it Might aura from merc. and Amplify Damage.
Elemental is our primary aim because of Enchant and Firewall. FW will be killer with conviction and LR.
Resist auras will be handy in hell for all characters so they will not serve just as a synergies, Decrepify will be on bosses and in cases paladin get into trouble. Frost Nova will be useful in the case when we would need more attack rating - we'll just switch a mercenary with holy freeze with a blessed aim one and frost nova will take care about chilling monsters. Static Field will quickly lower the life of enemies.
Note we want to play hell on /players 8

Feel free to comment. Pls pay extra attention to Dim Vision. Attract and Conviction; their worth here is what i need to know in the first place.

PS. for moderators: you may find this topic also in another forum D2 community I think.... should I delete it? Since I created it just when I registered to diablo II net I accidentaly posted it into wrong forum. The replies wasn't exactly what I wanted to know either:) just tell me and I'll delete it

[MoUsE_WiZ]

Feel free to comment. Pls pay extra attention to Dim Vision. Attract and Conviction
I've never really been sure on exactly how vengence works, so I won't comment TOO much on the pally's build, but I think if you can work max conviction (or 25 after skills to be more exact) into the build it'd be worth it. It allows for more defensive cursing from the necro that way, keeping your party safer. Specifically melee can always be decreped and ranged can always be dim visioned... the elemental damage you'll put out with this set up is absurd, lower resist is overkill, I think the only reason to cast lower resist in this set up is if conviction isn't breaking an immunity but conviction+lr is. I can't comment on how you'd go about working the extra points into the build though, not without just switching to Zeal, Hammer, or FoH, anyways. I am curious as to why you're running conc over fanat though.

I am one of the people who loves dim vision, I'm all for maxing it, just make sure nobody's running any chance to cast curse gear. Nothing's worse than staring some blind gloams in the face then all of a sudden it's overridden by something else ><

For the sorcie:
I'd probably go orb over FW. Once she gets her hands on ravenclaw or something she'll be doing plenty of fire damage without an extra fire based skill, and between skels mowing non-FIs down and her staticing anyways, she won't be having THAT much time to worry about FW anyways. Also, I like shiver over frozen as well *IF* I need the prereqs anyways. However, considering 4 points in frozen nets the same def bonus as 1 point in shiver (and freezes instead of chills), I think doing the prereqs just for that is kind of a giant waste... in other words, if she decides to go FW, she should stick to frozen. If she decides to switch to orb, then shiver makes sense.

Also:
I see those are level 99 builds.
What are your plans on last skill to pump?
For necro I'd probably do mages last, sorcie I'd probably do 5-10 static > orb or fw > finish static, and for the pally one of the synergies (or all 3 of them rotating or something, so long as the offensive auras are the first priorities).

[Arrinao]

Vengeance is simple:) it not adds elemental damage of one kind (only one at the time) and it choses from Fire Cold and Lightning damage. It has also an attack bonus.
Now about Lower resist and Conviction.
As I wrote, I learned that resistances of enemies works the same way as resistances of players - they can't be lower than 100%. This is the reason why I'm against maxing Concentration. My friend who plays that pally also complained about 5 level being too week ... well I must say I hate wasting and I like to be safe. This build was thus wrote for an ending gear. I think we will be twinking this characters somewhat when we got into nightmare so this should be not an issue. But back to conv. and LR.
Maybe you forgot that we play single player..... We'll be relying on each other - especially necromancer and paladin.That's why conviction is left on low level. The plan is that necro will curse with lr all the monsters that'll be convictioned. If we would max it it would look like this:
maxed out conviction
-150% resist all
maxed out Lower resist
- 62% resist all
together -150-62=-212%
where the maximum amount we could need to lower resistances would be 199% in case we would meet monster with 99% resistance which I believe isnt in the game
on the other hand we can meet immunes.
-150:5=-30
-62:5=-12
together -42%
Even if we brake an immunity of monsters - they usually have about 120 or so, they would still have resistances around 80% so physical damage would give more punch. That's why I'm against maxing conviction. Like I said in previous text, we plan to use it in combination with lr and that way it would not be as much difference when breaking immunities. Which is frankly not exactly I want to do when the resistances on the mosters will be still around 80%... Not to mention that even if we max it, 20 is too much when it doesnt provide more -resist all after level 25

Once we reach fire immunes, paladin will switch to concentration and necro will immediately react with recasting all LR with Amplify.
Now for the Concentration.
:) Many people were arguing with me about this skill calling me a noob and so on.
They may be right I didn't try Fanaticism nor Concentration with skeletons yet so I got to go with the statistics from the Arreat Summit.
And It says clear - Fanaticism has a half damage bonus for party members. The attack rating bonus and attack speed are not cut. On the other hand Concentration which has a lower damage bonus for paladin, but it's not cut in half for party members.
When I thought about it I realized that all we need for the skeletons from the auras is damage. The only useful thing that Fanaticism can offer is attack speed. Attack rating bonus isn't necessary, we got enchant:)
Maybe I should take a look at skeletons with fanaticism but from what i can remember when i see them fighting, they wait a long time (maybe 15 frames? don't know exactly) between each attack. So i chose concentration - from what i saw when i put it into Necromancer Pet Calculator, skeletons will be doing around 1050 damage with concentration, and about 800 damage with Fanaticism (Might aura from merc involved). It might not look as much of a difference but if you put on amplify, it would be 2100 and 1600 - thats 500 more damage.
We're still open though conc have 1 point in it as I wait what you'll say to it.
So feel free to comment I would like to hear more opinions:)

[MoUsE_WiZ]

This build was thus wrote for an ending gear. I think we will be twinking this characters somewhat when we got into nightmare so this should be not an issue.
Yeah, when I said max, I meant get it to whatever it needs to be with +skills to hit 25.

The plan is that necro will curse with lr all the monsters that'll be convictioned.
Yes, I understand that.
However, I think that your party gains MUCH more safety if the necro curses everything with either decrepify (which also helps the skellies physical damage) or dim vision instead of LR. You gain the same extra speed killing non-immunes this way, but it's a LOT safer.

Fanaticism has a half damage bonus for party members.
Ok, I figured I must have been missing something about fanat, just wasn't sure what =)

[Arrinao]

Yeah, when I said max, I meant get it to whatever it needs to be with +skills to hit 25.


Yes, I understand that.
However, I think that your party gains MUCH more safety if the necro curses everything with either decrepify (which also helps the skellies physical damage) or dim vision instead of LR. You gain the same extra speed killing non-immunes this way, but it's a LOT safer.


Ok, I figured I must have been missing something about fanat, just wasn't sure what =)

hmm now I'm in doubts...
maybe we have to redefine the build again (4 time):)
altough I was sure that this time it would work perfectly and even the paladin wouldn't be week because the synergies wouldn't be cut down as much I have to admit that I can just see how it will work with your scheme...
paladin won't be as strong, but he'll be attacking either Dimed or Decrepified monsters. which will be much safer that's true. I have to discuss it with teammates but i think that it'll be applied
As for Sorcie
Shiver armor is a good notice I can see now that i wrote it bad cause i forgot about Teleport which will be on 1000% in her arsenal. So yeah she'll go with Frozen armor as we wouldn't even have enough points for Shiver...
Firewall stays. Since the Mastery is maxed, it'll be shame to use just for Enchant. and i see it as a little waste to max Frozen Orb when we don't have any synergies, nor masteries for it.

One question at the end
should necro put a point into LR or should he forget about it completely? My guess is yes, one point wonder is good since in case of curses each one has a value even with one skill point (except Dim vision)

[olbaid]

I think a fully synergized holy shock + level 4 zeal build for the paladin might be more effective. Vengence requires a high damage weapon and it might not be fast enough to deal large amounts of elemental damage over time. A zeal build would only require a fast weapon since you are getting the elemental damage from holy shock and enchant. Look in the paladin forums for the Tesladin build.

[Arrinao]

for a single paladin maybe but look at the title:)
The problem is that you can't have conviction and holy shock active at the same time:(
Skeletons will be doing ****ty damage without conviction. (/players 8). We have to risk it with Vengeance (but I plan to convince my friend to at least try Zealing with both options Conviction and Concentration.