Necromancer questions

[hobbes]

First off, does lower resist increase the damage for bone spirit?
And, after maxing all the synergies for bone spirit, where and what else to add? Clay golem and mastery? Decrepify?

[adeyke]

Lower resist doesn't affect magic resistance, so it'll do nothing for bone spirit.

[Little Faith]

There are several options...



The Clay Golem is not a bad option. For 21 points (one in Clay Golem, the rest in Golem Mastery) you get a very sturdy golem with the excellent slowing ability. One thing you should know, however, is that the Clay Golem is useless as a damage dealer. It's sole purpose is to tank.
In my humble opinion you don't get the best out of the Clay Golem unless you have some sort of melee capacity. Since you don't really have points to invest heavily in summons this will either be your merc or yourself.
If you don't plan on having a melee merc or melee gear on yourself the points are better invested elsewhere as Bone Wall and Bone Prison will suit your tanking and crowd control needs much better if you plan on being a pure caster.


Curses is perhaps and even better place to sink points into. Most of them will do wonders even with but one point in them. There are, of course, some of them that are pretty worthless for a boneslinger, such as Amplify Damage, Iron Maiden and Lower Resist.

The curses that should interest you are:

Dim Vision:
Feel free to max this one. This curse will allow you to shut down screenfuls of monsters allowing you to engage monsters at your leisure instead of being swarmed. This one is POWERFUL, though it doesn't work on bosses and champions. Remember to cast at the edge of screen before venturing forth.

Decrepify:
Use this one to slow down boss monsters to give yourself some breathing room and make your spirits hit better. If you plan on getting a Clay Golem, try to get this one too and a Holy Freeze desert warrior.

Attract:
Why bother about tanking when you can get the monsters to do this for you? Don't put more than one point into this curse.



Finally you could also just forget about anything else and use all your points in the bone tree. Max Bone Spear, Bone Spirit, Bone Wall, Bone Prison and Teeth. Finally put the excess points into Corpse Explosion in order to deal with magic immunes.

[Caaroid]

since spirit has 4 synergies... meaning that if you max all 4, you already spent 102 points of your 110 (bone armor and corpse explosion are unavoidable prerequisites).

From your question I deduct that you plan on building a PvP necromancer. A 1 pt clay + 1 pt mastery is sufficient. Then get decreptify. (I'd do this before maxing teeth though, but who knows, maybe you're more dedicated than I am; leveling to 99 is out of the question for me).

If I misunderstood you, for PvM you don't need to max all synergies, just go for max golem mastery and iron/fire golem, and heavier investment in curses (dim vision comes to mind)

[Little Faith]

Just my personal opinion:

The pure boner is a pure 0wner! (ok, that was cruddy).

[Kevin]

Teeth is a good crowd killer when maxed along with synergy help (which you have). You will kill faster with teath than just spear or spirit due to it hitting multiple targets. I've seen several dentists that do quite well. Yeah, it doesn't kill as fast as other spells, but don't forget you have it since you have points in it for synergies anyway. Use all three of your bone spells situationally. Teeth in open areas, high monster density. Spear with "lined up" monsters (or single targets if it has higher damage than spirit), spirit on the single targets, or for limited (it tracks rather poorly now) tracking use.

Bone prison is hugely effective as a tank, you just need to learn to use it. It can pretty much keep everything away from you. Since it is a synergy, use it.

Decrepify is a very nice curse, as it helps your merc deal out some more damage and helps keep them alive longer (though with prison that isn't as helpful). It does help buy time though as boss packs and LE's can take down a prison pretty fast.

Depending on how you are dealing with magic/fire or magic/physical immunues (usually with merc gear), lower resist can help a fair bit to get your merc dealing enough damage, or to help the fire component of CE. Most physical immunes can have the immunity knocked off with decrepify or Amp (if you have to since it is a prereq) though so you can deal with it that way to.

A one point fire golem is very helpful for grouping the monsters as well. Sure it takes 6 to get him but you should have at least one or 2 plus all necro skills I would imagine. He stays up pretty well for a low investment.

Most of this is taken from watching my wifes HC dentist have an easy time getting to L75.

[hobbes]

Ok, i got the skill point distribution now.
Thanks.
But which weapon would be most suitable for PvP? Wizardspike? Boneshade? Or heart of oak?

Also, will iron maiden work in PvP? When u cast bone prison around a barb and he WWs it will he receive damage? or are bone prisons free leech for the barb?

[Caaroid]

If you got the resists, go heart of the Oak. Fire sorceresses are a pain though, so watch out (90%+ is advisable here). Against FoHadins you also might need effective 300+ light resist in hell. If you can do that with Heart, go for it :)

In most normal situations, heart is superior to wizspike in every respect.

And yes, IM works against barbs, you might be able to stop them from leeching with that (or at least reduce the amount they leech back).

[Animation]

Hobbes,

Apparently you are making a PvP build. I can't say I can help with that. Therefore my response may not be as useful to you but I've been having so much fun with my Dentist that I just had to respond.

Personally, I dont think the Dentist needs a golem at all, unless you just want the company. 1 point in Fire Golem sucks up a minimum of 4 points, presuming you don't place a point in mastery or summon resist. Its not really worth it. If you have to have a golem, put 1 point in clay and nothing else. Without an army and general +skills, 1 point in a fire golem is wasted unless you just like recasting him constantly. The mana cost on a 1 point clay golem is reasonable however and if you want a castable distraction, I'd recommend 1 in clay and no other points.

For curses, I'd say no points, except 1 in Amp Damage. Decrepify is the only real curse you might pine for otherwise, but it is just 1 curse. You could easily pick that up on a weapon swap or on a head if you just had to have it. In fact, the only reason for 1 in amp is that if you pump your poison and bone tree, you'll have a respectable CE with just 1 point. You may as well throw around a little amp to help, and parties are going to assume you have at least Amp (though they may wish you had decrepify also).

The reason I'm skimping on points is that I want to max all 5 synergies, or get as close as I can. Right now I've maxed Bone Spear just recently (I'm like level 45 now or so) and I've got 9 in Teeth, 7 in Bone Wall or so, 3 or so in Prison, 1 in Spirit. I wear a +2 P&B amulet with 10% resist all, I use a 3-perfect-diamond shield, and I use a white wand made in a +3 BS wand. That gives me +8 to bone spear total (+2 from runeword, +3 p&b from runeword, +3 from the base wand). All said, I do 990 damage on the top end with Bone Spear. It will go up a lot more, believe me, and when I gamble a +3 P&B circlet, it will go up even more.

Maxed Teeth is very cool looking and I can't wait to see what it can do. It is still useful to me now in act 2 nightmare, very useful. If I play to level 85, try to max all synergies, and put just 1 in amp, I can max 4 of the 5 bone spells, and have 13 in another one.

I just don't know which one I should let be my "low" skill. I like the idea of maxing Teeth and Spear. I don't know that I'd need to max Spirit because with as many synergies and +skills as I'd have I might approach what some bone specialists approach with less synergy action. Then again, my white wand will give me a huge Bone Armor bonus, so perhaps I could get by with a few less in Prison or in Wall. With 20 in one, 13 in the other, and 7 or more levels in Bone Armor itself (with equipment), I could still approach 600 points of Bone Armor.

If you were to max 4 of them and only have 13-15 or so endgame in one of them, which one would you leave on the low side?

Lewis

[Assur]

Hi

My approach is that I'm trying to max out the boneskills for synergies. I've got one point in claygolem, as a distraction for monsters, and am using an Act 2 merc with the prayer aura. I've got one point in amp dam as a pre-req for iron maiden which works very well with bonewall/prison :)

If you really want to go down the PvP route <_< I would suggest getting the runeword "Enigma".

good hunting

[Animation]

All,

As an aside, whats the highest you've gotten your Bone Necromancers in level on the ladder? And after beating Hell, what did you do to level up? I'm really eager to max all the Bone Synergies but I'd have to be level 91 to do it, 92 if I picked up Amp (which I plan to). It seems tedious to impossible.

Lewis

[Assur]

Hi

My Bonelord was in his twenties with the synergies kicking in when he got stairkilled, so my new necro usually plays alone, making leveling up rather more difficult. I've heard rumours about highlevel bonenecros (with teleport ability) being some of the most effective PvP/PK chars :(

Leveling up would probably be done best in 8 player hell Baal runs.

One way of avoiding having to reach insane levels to max all the bone skills is to get the elite unique boots "Marrowwalk"! Marrowwalk has level 33 boneprison charges!! These charges will have a synergistic effect, but only if you do NOT put any points in boneprison.

Hope this was helpful.

good hunting

[moget?]

Hi,

Neat bug there, assur, especially since I have marrowwalk! (my only good item...) I can't wait to try that out, especially since it will afford me extra skill points for curses or golems and the like...

--moget?

[D2Player69]

Using Marrowwalk boots and not putting any points in Bone Prison is bug exploitation. If you were OK with using the "lightning hose" on Rogue mercs prior to 1.10, then you'll probably be OK with this, too.

If I knew a key combination to hit that would make all the monsters on the screen die instantly, I wouldn't use that either. (Huh, that example reminds me of the Armageddon spell from Diablo 1, especially those ridiculous duped Archangel Staves of Armageddon with 255 charges or whatever...) What's the point of playing a game if you're going to cheat?

I remember playing Age of Empires with anonymous folks on line. Very often, when I'd be marching my army into their town and moments away from victory I'd see the chat screen pop up with "lumberjack" and whatever single-player cheat codes they were trying to use. Fortunately, the single-player cheat codes didn't work in mult-player games. Still, each time I saw this, I had to ask the other player attempting this, "Why bother to play if you're going to cheat? What have you learned? What have you actually accomplished? Where's the fun in doing that?" The reply was usually a curt, "***k **u, ****ot" followed by a disconnect.

Is the Marrowwalk exploit or any other bug exploitation cheating? That's open to interpretation. I wouldn't exploit this particular bug, myself.

John H

[Archon_Wing]

I didn't really care about the lightning hose, but this is a bit too much. :blink:

[Draconis]

Apocalypse, not Armageddon. :P

[Assur]

Using Marrowwalk boots and not putting any points in Bone Prison is bug exploitation.

Is the Marrowwalk exploit or any other bug exploitation cheating? That's open to interpretation. I wouldn't exploit this particular bug, myself.

John H

Hi

The LL rules, as far as I know are: no hacks, no dupes!

In v 1.10 the rules (according to Blizz) seem to be, if you get a cross-char skill/aura you don't get added skillpoints if you are trying to add the extra skill points to a skill your char has by nature and which you have enabled. Using the skill you get from charges to an unique item, or from the effects of one of the new runewords seems to me be legit, escpecially since Blizz has been testing that patch for quite some time :P

good hunting

[adeyke]

There is no doubt in my mind that the charges thing is either a very nasty bug or an even nastier design flaw.

For one thing, that's the only way to get synergy points from items. Blizzard made sure that no other sort of equipment +skills bonus gave synergies. However, items with charges of a skill you don't have have do give synergies.

For another, it's the only way to get a synergy above level 20. Since only base points are supposed to work, there's a natural limit of 20 on synergies. Marrowwalk's charges are level 33, though.

For yet another, the bug only works when you don't have any points in bone prison. That means you're actually penalized (really, really heavily) for putting a point there while wearing the boots.

Then there's the balance issue. Boots are probably the least valuable slot for necros. However, in this case, a single item will give +495 damage absorption synergy to bone armour, +495% damage synergy to teeth, +231% damage synergy to bone spear,+198% damage synergy to bone spirit and +330% life synergy to bone wall. In order to get this much without bug exploitation, you'd have to spend 33 levels of skill points on that, and then you'd run into the 20 cap for base slvls. This cap also means that the three bone attack spells would normally have a theoretical maximum of 80 points in synergies, but with the bug, you only invest 60 synergy points and get the benefit of 93.

Really, it is a bug and it is a nasty one.

[Caaroid]

Hello

I got a friend, who is pretty much into dueling. Since he (just like me) is relatively poor, his necro is not an enigmaed-marrowalk necro, rather the usual, skillpoint based character.

While it is true, that marrowalk grants you a huge bonus, it also takes away one of the most powerful skill any non-teleporting necro has: bone prison. 13 is just not enough. I watch my friend duel on a regular basis, and I'm telling you: skillful application of bone prison is a sure killer.

Then again, apparently everyone has an enigma these days.

BTW: I, on the other hand, have a Marrowalk. It is on my Trang summoner, I was using it for the +2 skellie mastery months before I learned about the bug. I always wondered how come my nat.lev.1 bone armor kept up for so long ;)