The Corrupted Televangelist

[exobyte]

This guide might need an update. Nothing major, but with the 1.11 patch, Act 1 mercenaries can be bought at your own level, so it doesn't take forever to level them up anymore, making them pretty useful. Here's a little PRO/CON list I've cooked up.

Act 1
PRO
Ranged attack
Fast attack
Prevent Monster Heal
Since she can't die to IM, you can do Chaos Sanctuary MFing
Early on, you can go the Meleemancer route because of Insight's AR and damage bonuses
the FCR helps you spam CE
the scythe looks BADASS on you!
If you have a 'Bramble', the Thorns aura gets bigger and better
CON
Low damage to non-Demons and Non-Undead (Not a lot of these..)
Cannot get an Ethereal Bow
If you walk too far away from her, your minions lose their Thorns Aura
bad horribly stupid AI
Act 2
PRO
Extra aura from mercenary
Decent damage, since polearms can be ethereal
you are the center of the Thorns Aura, it's easy to control
the Critical Strike on Insight means he can do crazy damage when he jabs
CON
IM = death :(
bad horribly stupid AI

AS you can see, I'm a tad biased to the Act 1 Rogue.. can someone think of more reasons to use the Act 2 Merc?

[rickcarson]

This guide might need an update. Nothing major, but with the 1.11 patch, Act 1 mercenaries can be bought at your own level, so it doesn't take forever to level them up anymore, making them pretty useful. Here's a little PRO/CON list I've cooked up.
...
AS you can see, I'm a tad biased to the Act 1 Rogue.. can someone think of more reasons to use the Act 2 Merc?

The thing about it being easier to work with the Act 1 merc under 1.11 is well spotted. It does make life a lot easier, because otherwise levelling the merc to be high enough to use Edge was a real pain in the butt. Also in 1.11 mercs level a lot faster through normal gameplay, which i another great help. However, I think they still level slowly when you are joining in on party run games (eg Tristram runs), since your team mates will be getting most of the kills. So it helps that you can just rehire them when the level difference gets too great.

The Act 1 merc is better in general, because she hangs back. Her AI is similar to the AI of the Skeleton Mages, so if you know how to use them she does allright. At the high end, she has a natural gear development (Edge + Bramble) which gives you something to aim for.

The problem with the Act 2 merc is that even with a screen full of Revives he will sometimes get picked on and die, which means that you lose Meditation.

Losing Meditation is much worse for this build than losing Thorns. If you lose Meditation your mana engine turns off, so you stop chain casting Corpse Explosion, and start having to worry about things like Revive quality, so that you will get better mileage out of them. Whereas if you lose Thorns then you simply downgrade to a much more powerful version of the Fishymancer ('more powerful' because Revives are better than Skellies, and 'much' more powerful because even though the Fishymancer also uses Corpse Explosion, they don't chain cast it at quite the same insane rate that the Necrovangelist does).

[Maniphesto]

Don't forget that using a Rogue can also net your army a lvl 15 fanatacism aura from a Faith bow.

[rickcarson]

Don't forget that using a Rogue can also net your army a lvl 15 fanatacism aura from a Faith bow.

That would be quite good for finishing off the prime evils. Or any other battle where you vastly outnumber the enemy. Thorns gets better the more enemies you face.

[jdmoney]

I'm just starting into ladder fresh and new.. Is this something that is feasible untwinked or is having these runewords ready necessary for effectiveness? i was contemplating between this or a summoner like fishy's guide.

[rickcarson]

I'm just starting into ladder fresh and new.. Is this something that is feasible untwinked or is having these runewords ready necessary for effectiveness? i was contemplating between this or a summoner like fishy's guide.

Short answer: if you go with Nightfish's build I won't be offended

For ladder the first thing I do is to get my Durimule's sorted out.

This time round I used Ravens for normal, Wake of Fire for Nightmare, and I haven't really got the hell one going yet.

If you cruise through Normal and early Nightmare with something like Wake of Fire which is underpowered for Hell but massively overpowered for everything else, then you can easily run Nightmare Countess for Sol runes (the hardest part). The second hardest part is finding a 4 socket polearm. I think they do drop in late Normal, just not very often.

Because I tend to have a number of characters 'on the go' at any one time I don't tend to have problems with the runes or gear to put them in. As it turns out I usually find Sols before the 4 socket polearm though.

So you can twink them, or you can self find. Self finding isn't particularly difficult, as these are extremely cheap runewords.

Running Normal Countess to get an Amn is quite slow. Her top drop is Ral, so you have to upgrade through Ort and Thul before getting to Amn. So it will take 27 Rals to get 1 Amn (read as: a couple of hundred countess runs). I don't have the patience required for that.

So with twinking I tend to get the runewords about 2-5 levels earlier than I would by 'hand assembling' them. That assumes your characters pool their gems and runes.

Out of the 8 characters in my hardcore ladder account, 1 is too low a level to use these (and pretty much always will be), the others have them if they need/want them, as I have a couple of spares floating around.

[Svampus]

Short answer: if you go with Nightfish's build I won't be offended

For ladder the first thing I do is to get my Durimule's sorted out.

This time round I used Ravens for normal, Wake of Fire for Nightmare, and I haven't really got the hell one going yet.

Just a quick question, What is a Durimule??? Oh and i love your guide, currently lvl 18 and I'm having loads of fun I highly recommend it and I think it will be way funnier than fishy.
Thumbs up!

[Kretschmer]

This build is my current favorite for the 1.13 ladder (April 2010 here I come!) due to its use of shiny revives, party-boosting auras/curses, and novelty! 1.13 is an exceptional boost to the build as you can level to 40 as a skellimancer cutting out the painful pre-murder-train period of play. Oh, and the massive CE boost...wow.

How does this build perform in a public game? If TPPK is fixed and I find myself in hardcore the meat shields will obviously be useful, and amp will be a boon to windy druids, TS/DT assys, etc. But is the pace and timing of the CorrTele frustrating or unintuitive for other players? I've noticed that summon based builds seem to end up leeching XP from your meteorb/blizzard/hammerdin players in large groups. Will I feel like I'm contributing more than CE if I hold my nose and do baal runs?

Edit: Also, it would seem like some PIs (i.e. ghosts, stone skin, etc) would die very slowly to this build. How do you all effectively traverse areas with a heavy PI presence?

And last but not least, how useful is skeleton mastery, really?

I was thinking:
20 Revive
20 CE
10 Amp
9 Dim Vision
20 Skeleton Mastery

95 skill points finishes this build out in the mid-80s with marginalish returns on the last 20 points in mastery. Yay or nay?

[handorman]

is the thorns ebough to kil hell monsters????

[MYK]

is the thorns ebough to kil hell monsters????

Yes, it kills fine.

But is the pace and timing of the CorrTele frustrating or unintuitive for other players? I've noticed that summon based builds seem to end up leeching XP from your meteorb/blizzard/hammerdin players in large groups. Will I feel like I'm contributing more than CE if I hold my nose and do baal runs?

Treat other characters like your puppets, or your summons and help them kill faster. Amplify Damage, Attract, Lower Resist, Decrepify, etc. Contrary to self-loathing Necromancers I've read about, you're not a "curse henchman" in a party, rather, everyone else is your dumb minion, even if their "AI" sucks.

CE is a powerful skill; use it.