Poisonmancer & Merc?

[oggwert]

hey guys
im currently working on a poisonmancer and im at lvl 20 in act3

wich merc should i go with? (im new to necro and merc playing) what would benefit me the best in survivability?
and how much points should go in to clay golem and golem master and summon resist?
dont know if i kinda messed up the skill order

this is how it looks like atm

poison/bone
15 PD
2 PE
1 teeth (prereq)
1 CE (prereq)

curses

amp 1
iron maiden 1

dunno if i was to much of a happy finger trigger on PD or not?

would appriciate any help or suggestion

thx

[braincrasher]

At that point I´d suggest getting act 3 ice mercenary. He´ll freeze monsters and you´ll have easier time killing them. When you reach nightmare act 2 switch off to desert warrior with holy freeze aura.

About your skills, they look fine (typical poisonmancer build is 20 points in all poison skills and a few in lower resists curse.) I´d leave clay golem, mastery and summon resists to one point each and let your gear improve them.

[Jednowlosy]

No holy freeze please. You don't want the bodies to shatter. You really don't.

[oggwert]

No i wouldnt want them to shatter :)

Im trying a act 2 DEF merc atm with 2h spear. Dont know if theres a DEF merc in act 2 with 1h weapon and shield? if so would that benefit me more?

Also, should i max PD before starting putting skills in PE and PN? then max PE before putting skills in PN? or should i max PD ( if so ill be lvl 26 with PD max) that put the 4 remaining skills to lvl 30 into PE ( at lvl 30 i would have, PD max, PE 6) then go all out on PN before maxing PE ?

[Damric]

I prefer the holy freezer merc with obedience weapon when you get to high levels. totally owns diablo and baal, and the 4th wave of poison immune baal minions. The corpses don't shatter that often from his aura. Try it.

PE is so hard to target routine monsters, almost worthless (except in some situations if you are very patient), so max that synergy last.

[Jednowlosy]

Instead of going the aura which is pretty useless, you can also try might merc with full might setup: in case of Poison immunes, he gets a quick first kill with amp damage and CE follows obliterating the screen.

[Damric]

ugh, I guess I'll have to demonstrate mine. Anyone on us west ladder that wants to see poison ownage with holy freeze merc?

[oggwert]

if they dont shatter way to often it might be worth a try..
either way they both are act 3 mercs right? holy freezer and the might merc

and yea i think ill try saving the points from now > 30, for LR and PN as soon as i hit the big 3 ...and go with PE last

bad idea?

[Damric]

sounds like a good idea, but don't dump more than one point in LR at first. Wait until you have most of your +skill gear and see what -resist breakpoints you can hit, as there is severe diminshing returns other than improved range.

ahh one more comment about corpse explode, because I don't want you to get mislead.

the whole merc gets one kill then corpse explode obliterating the whole screen is works pretty well if there's only one player in the game. When you want to get serious and solo 8 player games, you will want the survivability of holy freeze aura, and also be sure to use a couple revives and a golem when you need a couple extra tanks too. Eventually you can finish off the monsters with CE, but when you get more players in game, your merc will have to actually have to survive long enough to bring down multiple corpses, since CE does not scale with #players. This is mosly important during baal minions wave 4, but also wave 5 is very poison resistant and merc helps much. And of course vs diablo and baal, the slowing effect of holy freeze stacked with decrepify is petrification.