Corpse Explosion Build question

[tyrowen]

Today I met a guy that told me about a very weird build. He claimed that he was able to plow throught hell difficulty and MF any area he wanted to with ease.

The build goes as follows:

10-15 corpse explosion
MAX bone armor
1 fire golem
1 golem mastery
10-15 bone wall
max bone spirit
1 pt amp dmg

The guy uses an Act 1 merc with his fire golem. His strategy is to blow everything up with CE and get initial kills with the merc and B spirit. He told me he could kill any boss with his merc shooting arrows, bone spirit and his fire golem tanking.

I am very skeptical about this build. What you guys think?

[Marahumm]

There's a few problems with this build.

Rather than max bone armor, points would be better invested in bone prison (1 point in armor gives +10, prison synergy gives +15).

His fire golem won't be able to take too much damage. While immune to fire damage, the clay golem would be able to take much more punishment in general.

No skill point in summon resist?

The way I see things going down with bosses:
lolpwn golem
shrug off spirits
maybe get chilled with merc's cold arrows, but won't do much since you don't have decrep

unless he's going after andy, with the potential for bodies littering the floor, I seriously doubt he'd get very far.

While the build is different, there's plenty of room for improvement. The only thing that gets improved upon with CE is the range. Those points can be better spent somewhere else.

EDIT: Welcome to the forums :D

[tyrowen]

There's a few problems with this build.

Rather than max bone armor, points would be better invested in bone prison (1 point in armor gives +10, prison synergy gives +15).

His fire golem won't be able to take too much damage. While immune to fire damage, the clay golem would be able to take much more punishment in general.

No skill point in summon resist?

The way I see things going down with bosses:
lolpwn golem
shrug off spirits
maybe get chilled with merc's cold arrows, but won't do much since you don't have decrep

unless he's going after andy, with the potential for bodies littering the floor, I seriously doubt he'd get very far.

While the build is different, there's plenty of room for improvement. The only thing that gets improved upon with CE is the range. Those points can be better spent somewhere else.

EDIT: Welcome to the forums :D

Hehe thank you :)

Thats pretty much what I thought. Do you think I would be better off with a summonmancer or a meteorb sorc for mfing ? (Just started after a 2 years break). I have no gear.

[DECOYBOY]

yea that build seems crappy...wouldn't buy into it.

starting with zero gear, it's probably safer to do with a necro. that being said, starting out with a sorc (particularly a blizz sorc) has it's bonuses, which is why i start with sorcs when beginning anew:
1. teleport (no nigma required :P)
2. high dmg with minimal gear
3. farms meph really easily to get you started

after you get yourself settled in with some better gear, you can make a more refined MF char down the line if you want.

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

A dual element sorceress build is the easiest to get started on. Teleport lets you do meph runs fast.

But if you want to start with a bone necro you can and I love bone necros. :)

Spirit is more of a PvP skill than a PvM skill. Only 1 point in Bone Armor.

When I build a bone necro I first max spirit, then wall, prison, spirit, any leftovers in teeth. Spear pierces the monster and keeps going so it is your main PvM killer. One hard point in Corpse Explosion is sufficient.

Get one point in clay golem (for boss slowing), golem mastery, and summon resist. Learn to ue your walls/prisons effectively. You can put Diablo in a prison and he will have to spend quite some time destroying it to get out once you get lots of points in it.

I would recommend that you get most of your curses from wands.

You can shop for a 2os wand in normal Act 2 at Drogan. Look for a +3 spear wand that has a useful curse on it and use a wand on switch or you can invest a few points in curses to get decrepify for use against bosses. Dim vision is a great curse. One point only. Your walls/prisons will have the attention of a lot of monsters so use them wisely.

Edit: Oh, you'll want to go with an Act 2 merc so he can use an Insight polearm. A defiance merc is the best tank. Holy Freeze would shatter some corpses so you probably don't want him.

Keep your resists up and recast your bone armor as necessary. Use your walls and prisons and you are safe. :)

Oh, you can shop for a teleport staff in Act 3 normal that will let you teleport out of your walls if you get trapped inside with a monster. Later as you gamble you'll come up with a teleport amulet and eventually you'll get enigma if you are playing online.

Oh, Chaos Sanctuary should be one of your main magic find places. use your walls/prisons to control the battlefield.

[MarShenk]

Better off tanking with clay rather than the fire golem. 1pt fire golem isnt really going to do much in hell even after lots of +skills. It has the possibility of working but its going to take a while to to get the first skill. Summoners succeed because of good skellie dmg and also minions for protection - then ce-ing as a finish.

Summoners are good for mf-ing in areas where amp can get rid of phy immunity + you have protection of the many minions. However for running bosses you may consider the sorc because as someone said you have free tele.

[Vitrael]

Other people pretty much already nailed this, but my $.02:

Amp + CE can easily plow through anything in Hell without any difficulty, ever, provided the gear is good. I have about +20 on mine. My merc can kill any boss very quick due to 90% CB and 33% OW, but I don't think he could do it without the help of my lvl 36 raise skeleton + skeleton mastery + 10k life clay golem. Baal spends all his time beating them up instead of my merc. I would have to constantly feed him potions if it weren't for the army.

9/10 times my merc gets the first kill that starts the amp damage + CE train rolling and clears the whole screen, but I suppose you could do it with Bone Spirit if you wanted to. It would not be as fast. I also don't think that a ton of points into bone armor or its synergies is as good a tank as having 10+ skeletons, a lot of revives, and 75% block- this offers a ton of stuff for monsters to beat up that isn't you, and it's the biggest part of your defense.

My summon nec has very low vit (under 1k hp at level 88) but has max block, a few hundred damage tank from bone armor, and a ton of summons. Most of the time I use Enigma to teleport dead center into a crowd of baddies, amp, and start CEing like crazy. This is never a problem with melee/bow monsters because most of the damage is blocked or goes to something other than me.

Summoner vs. Sorceress

Summoner is easier to get started and level than Sorceress
Sorceress can run bosses better and faster without Enigma
Summoner can do any act of hell with just moderate gear, is not troubled by immunes