New to HC as well :)

[oOmpie]

Hi all,

two days ago I decided to switch from SC to HC. I am in no way a D2 veteran, but have played some chars into their 80's on SC Ladder.

One of the chars I enjoyed the most was a support-style sploder necro, but seeing the overwhelming amount of paranoia found in the average HC thread I'll wait with another character like that for a bit since I am not very likely to play in parties for some time to come, haha

My starting char on SC Ladder was a Fishymancer and I was planning on doing the same for HC. I'm just a patient guy I guess rop:

I was just wondering if there are some people that have played summoners on both SC and HC as well and can point out some of the little differences for me.

Cheers!

[RoXoR]

hc i pump all i can into vita, max block only if u got a good shield for it (homo/SS comes to mind) also i look for more resists cause one bad hit can really hurt. Ive lost a few necs to bad resist/enchanted monster combos
edit: high end gear is also harder to come by for the most part.

[oOmpie]

hc i pump all i can into vita, max block only if u got a good shield for it (homo/SS comes to mind) also i look for more resists cause one bad hit can really hurt.

That's basically what I did on SC as well, so that should not be a probby
Thanx.


By the way: I'm just guessing here, but I imagine Titan Barbs are not very common on HC Ladder, are they?
That's just one of the builds I REALLY wanna give a try sometime... Just for the (imho) coolness factor

[STINGER]

Core Build:

Summoning:
20 Raise Skeleton (RS)
20 Skeleton Mastery (SM)
1 Raise Mage
1 Clay Golem
1 Blood Golem
1 Iron Golem
1 Fire Golem
1+ Revive
1+ Golem Mastery
1+ Summon Resist (SR)

Poison & Bone:
1 Teeth
20 Corpse Explosion (CE)

Curses:
1+ Amplify Damage (Amp)
1 Dim Vison (DV)
1 Attract
1 Decrepify (Decrep)


The Fishymance IMO is a SC build. 20 CE isnt needed and is complete overkill. I always ran 1-5 points invested and let +skills cover it. I went wiht 5 in Classic and +skills are less there and 1 in LoD.

I personally like having Bone Spear and Bone wall. I max Spear......all of these points invested give you a boost to your Bone Armor.

Bone Armor is equvilant to extra life. It is a buffer (vs many attacks, not all) before your life is touched that is recastable. If its 300 Bone Armor it is basically 300 more life.

Most of the rest of the skill allocation is fine.......


I didnt reread all of the Fishymancer for strnght/mana...etc so here is my suggestion.

Str 35 and stop until you need more
Mana Base
Life ALLLLLL
Dex Base unless you need it for items


With it being the first character you dont have any items to build to so you have no idea if investing in strenght or dex will serve you well and it sure as hell wont early.

Tuffest part of any necromancers life is the early part as late the minions are so strong it gets much easier so maxing out life is really a good way to go.

Having a Maxed out Bonespear helps you kill the dangerous foes. Skellys are stupid like dudes that never attack what you want them to. So if there is a boss you want to die faster you can BS him.......OR you can BS the targets your skellys are on to get bodies faster. IMO it pays off well.

I never lost a Skellymancer in LoD the build works well and IMO is stronger at living. The Fishy will blow things up fast.

[Zarban]

i think adding to bone spear is a waist imo. Having point ins golem mastery is very helpful when you wana summan an insight golem. maxing mages is also helpful for tanks that stand back next to you also i hear they're good when doing ubers because of poison. bonespear doesnt really give that much damage if you dont got the other senergies maxed so the only real benenfit you get from it is bone armor.
edit: fishy is a sc build? are you crazy?

[Full_Circle]

For an untwinked summoner, a large investment of skill points in Dim Vision is incredible. What I do is get to this point, then start alternating between Dim Vision and Corpse Explosion. You don't really need to max either, though, so after both are around 10, you can start dumping points in Bone Wall as well (for the Bone Armor synergy).

20 Raise Skeleton
20 Skeleton Mastery
1 Raise Mage
1 Clay Golem
1 Blood Golem
1 Iron Golem
1 Fire Golem
1 Revive
1 Golem Mastery
1 Summon Resist

Poison & Bone:
1 Teeth
1+ Corpse Explosion
1 Bone Armor
1+ Bone Wall

Curses:
1 Amplify Damage
1+ Dim Vison
1 Attract
1 Decrepify

[Zarban]

dim vision is a total waste of points... only monster its helpful for really are monsters with peircing attack. No curse really needs anymore than 1 in it even with the lowest of gear its really easy to start getting high +skills for necro.

[oOmpie]

Thx for the tips so far, I started two new chars. One of 'em a Titan Barb (well, if you don't tickle yourself, you'll never laugh, innit? ) and a Fishy.

I'll take the tips into account, but I will put 20 points into CE. My SC support sploder toted 20 hard points in Amp and 20 hard ones in CE and was able to rip through most of Hell without any problems at all. Only problem was the Hell Ancients and the slow Boss-killing...

[oOmpie]

Gheh,
the Titan deeded already... Wasn't paying attention for 2 seconds because someone started talking to me... lol

Rebuilding...

[PhatTrumpet]

dim vision is a total waste of points... only monster its helpful for really are monsters with peircing attack. No curse really needs anymore than 1 in it even with the lowest of gear its really easy to start getting high +skills for necro.

How many times has your Necro died again?