Staticmancer

[XCodes]

Thinking about making a meleemancer that uses Static Field procs (Crescent Moon, Stormlash, Schaefer's Hammer) to make his CEing easier on high player games (SP). Here's the basic rundown:

Skills:
20 Dim Vision
20 CE
20 Bone Prison
10 Attract
1 in other curses
1 Poison Dagger
4 points in the Summoning tree (CG, BG, GM, SR)
Remainder in Bone Wall, then Poison Dagger

Schtick: Use Dim Vision's wide radius to control the field, then select a few monsters to fight and hit them with Decrepify. After killing them, the rest of the nearby pack should be significantly weakened from a number of Static Field discharges. Start blanketing the area in Amp Damage curses, capture a group in a Bone Prison, and then while more come in to whack the bone prison, blow them all up.

Against troublesome Physical-Immune monsters, use LR and Attract to get them all attacking one of their own while I wail away with Static Field and lightning damage on my weapon, then I CE them all down after a few corpses.

Against serious bosses, use a Fleshripper and Guillames with Life Tap. Poison Dagger gives me the desired AR.

Quandry: I don't really have an alternative shtick to use against LI monsters, even though I really think I should have one. I know most of them will break with LR, although high resistance still really hurts Static Field's damage output.

[Mad Mantis]

Quandry: I don't really have an alternative shtick to use against LI monsters, even though I really think I should have one. I know most of them will break with LR, although high resistance still really hurts Static Field's damage output.

You have physical damage from you and the Merc and Fire/Phys from CE. If you are in the unfortunate position of LI and Physical Immune (both unbreakable) and with no corpses for CE, you might consider running away and parking them.

Also with just 1 point Decrep needs to be applied irritatingly often.

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

I agree with Mad Mantis in that between your merc, golem and CE that you do have a means to deal with Lightning immunity.

A couple of general other quesitons: Why 10 in Attract? You're bound to have +skill gear, and it seems like 10 hard points is excessive. (Also, while one point in Decrepify is insufficient, that likewise will be boosted by +skills to an acceptable level.)

Otherwise it looks solid. You also will have a very good bone armor, owing to the points spent in the synergy.

[XCodes]

Maybe I'll split them 5/5 each. I want more duration on Attract because if it wears off then I'm going to be in the middle of a pack of physical immunes getting beat on. 1 point with +skills will likely be sufficient, but I have quite a few leftovers and I don't want to die on account of having sufficient skills. I wanted to add a little buffer. Of course, with the level of skills I'm talking about, Decrepify is actually turning out to be slightly shorter in duration. I suppose if I really wanted to I could employ a couple curse skillers. It's not like I'd really need any other type for this build.

[Gillsing]

Couldn't you just cast Attract twice as often, thus always keeping 1-2 monsters as distractions? Then again, wraiths are physical immune and tend to stack into a single multiwraith, and once you start hitting one of them with the intention of killing it to make a corpse to explode, I guess stopping to recast a curse would make it quite difficult to target that same wraith again.

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

Maybe I'll split them 5/5 each.

Looking at the total skill outlay, by the time you get to hell difficulty, you're going to have to do something with those skill points, and it's not like you're sacrificing that much in spending the points on decrepify and attract at that point. I guess the real question is if you kept both curses at a single point, what are you gaining in return?

I'd say not too much. I suppose you could work on Bone Wall for a better Bone Armor synergy boost, or you could work on LR for help against physical immunes, but neither are absolutely essential...

[Gillsing]

After reading about the Axemancer CtC build using the 15% chance to cast Bone Armor from the Bone runeword armor with full synergies, that's what I'd do with 41 points. Then again, I guess that with maxed Dim Vision you don't really need Bone Armor that much, and you might be better off with recasting it manually while wearing some other body armor. Particularly since Life Tap will be used against serious bosses. (And I don't even like Bone Armor, since it looks kind of ugly. But becoming nigh invulnerable to physical damage from steadily recast Bone Armor while standing in a 25-hit/second fire seems like something I should at least try. Just need a second Um now. I even sent my lousy furywolf to the Hellforge, but all he got was a Lum.)

[TurtleBay]

Are you going to be using 200 dex for max block? Ravenfrost? Angelics? I don't know if a one point poison dagger is going to solve the AR issue. Also Schaffer's, Stormlash and the crecent moon base items are not daggers, so I believe that no AR bonus would be applied. I could see this build getting boring if it ends up being waiting for the merc to get the first kill then using CE, so make sure that the AR issue is solved. You will need at least 4-5k AR for hell where pretty much all the monsters will have 2k defense.

[shazbot]

If you want to drop some corpses faster, doing 20 in nova and 20 dagger wouldn't hurt. I tried that for one of my summoners and found that pretty satisfactory.

[XCodes]

Poison Dagger is for using a Fleshripper on Act Bosses. I'm debating whether or not I want to bother, though.

Also, yes. I'll have around 200 dex for Max block. I also intend to have another 450ish from using a Ravenfrost and, ideally, the Gloves, Belt, and Boots from the IK set. Schaefer's also gives a substantial AR boost (probably the big reason I'm leaning towards using it instead of Stormlash). So, if I look at where I'm at around level 80, I would have about 2k AR. If I use a Blessed Aim merc, that should go up to about 8k AR.

That said, my physical damage is terrible. There are no sources of off-weapon ED that I can use. I'd probably have to use a Griffin Eye to help deal with Lightning Immunes.

If you want to drop some corpses faster, doing 20 in nova and 20 dagger wouldn't hurt. I tried that for one of my summoners and found that pretty satisfactory.

I could drop 20 in Explosion, too, and just make a PN necro. >_<