Necromancers

[Yrrek]

Hello,

Anyone here play a necromancer that is based around the poison tree? I am looking at the viability of a Poison Nova most necromancer. I am also thinking a fire golem, with good level mastery, and bone wall/bone spear for crowd control.

Is this viable? What are other solid skills to augment this set up?

Thanks!

Yrrek

[MMAgCh]

I had a venomancer on Europe HCL early this year, but the accounts are gone now. He got up to Act 3 Hell before I stopped playing, not because things got too hard but because my interest in the game generally had dropped dramatically.

A PN necro is very much viable. Properly synergized, the damage is pretty good (especially once you take into account Lower Resist and item boni to poison damage, e.g. from Trang Oul's gloves) and crowds are not a problem.
To me, only a Clay Golem (affectionately known as Mr Gumby) is a good golem, and he served me well enough. His slowing monsters and low-cost "recastability" came in handy.
As for crowd control, I might have used Bone Wall/Prison; I don't remember. I'm more of a fan of the various curses anyway, especially Dim Vision. However, Attract and Confuse have their places as well: in order to get the most out of PN or PE you will want big clusters of monsters, and these two curses produce these in a most excellent way.
At any rate, you won't have enough skill points to get the damage of Bone Spear to a decent level. I wouldn't bother; you can always rely on your merc as well as CE if you need non-poison damage.

In usual gameplay, Dim Vision, Lower Resist and Poison Nova are your friends. I generally used to blind everything first, then get closer and curse parts of the horde with LR, followed up by PN. Do keep in mind that the amount of poison damage a monster will actually take is determined when it's hit by the poison attack, i.e. cursing an already-poisoned monster with LR won't increase the damage it takes. This is not much of a problem with PN as its duration is very short, but if you feel like using PE or PD now and then it is worth remembering. As soon as you have produced some corpses, you can switch to CE and AD to blow the rest of the critters up.

Equipment-wise I remember he used TO gloves, shield and belt (to unlock the -25% enemy poison resistance bonus on the shield). His weapon was Blackbog's Sharp (he went for max block, so the Dex requirement was not an issue) and wore Naj's Light Plate. The rest of his equipment I can't quite remember, but I think there was a +3 P&B circlet involved and potentially a similar amulet. By no means was it an expensive set of items.

At any rate, I had a blast playing him. It's a little slow going until you assign a few points to both PN and LR, but from there on the killing speed steadily increases.

[Yrrek]

Thanks a bunch! I will take all that into consideration. I had not even thought about Dim Vision, Lower Resist, Attract, or Confuse. Thanks again!

Yrrek

[Baajikiil]

Thanks a bunch! I will take all that into consideration. I had not even thought about Dim Vision, Lower Resist, Attract, or Confuse. Thanks again!

Yrrek
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Yes, as I understand it, unless you are abusing the synergy bug, you will not have enough points to make bone spells or skeletons worthwhile in hell diff. On the other hand, dim vision is nearly ideal for a venomancer.

For the power build, max all poison skills, and get dim vision and lower resist to comfortable levels. Rely on merc or revives+amp/decrep to kill poison immunes, use dim vision and corpse explosion liberally, and you have an easily end game viable build. In fact with the right gear (although most of said gear is out of reach), poison necros can easily stand among the most powerful builds in the game.

[FearlessOne]

Most good pnova necromancers get 5-7K damage after about a month or so of playing, assuming u start one at the beginning of the next ladder. You can get much much higher, I have read, but that requires many p/b gc's and one or more super high runes.

A partial Trang set can bequeth to u the ability to use fireball and firewall, and these can be used to kill poison immunes, without having to get some sort of bone spirit. This assumes there arent any corpses around to blow up! It's easy to trade or find some trangs, so dont worry.

And u are right BaajKiil, a good pnova necro can be quite versatile and powerful. With a gumby golem and a good merc and some minions he should be safe. I never used the dim vision curse since I was strong enough not to have to use it, but that is a good curse to help ur party near stairs and other crazy fast bad aura mobs now and then. I used to use a low lvl fire golem, but decided the gumby golem was better. You will want lower resist to get to about -50% resists on the monsters, this will kill monsters (many of whom have some pois res) quite a bit faster.

My pnova necro was constantly reviving, tossing LR curse on newly arriving monsters, blowing up stuff, recasting gumby, and tossing out pnova's about once every 1.5-2 sec. This costs alot of mana! Early on its a big pain, u will need lots of mana pots or +mana items/charms.

[Sir_Die_alot]

Yes, as I understand it, unless you are abusing the synergy bug, you will not have enough points to make bone spells or skeletons worthwhile in hell diff.  On the other hand, dim vision is nearly ideal for a venomancer.
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I tried this awhile ago and while my skeletons were useless for damage (though they helped a lot before PN in normal diff) they were able to tank well enough in most areas. You just have to re-cast them a little more often than a pure summoner.

Personally though I was underwhelmed by the damage on PN and the fun factor of just spamming a single spell. The damage on poison dagger was interesting but the way poison has stacked since 1.09 it's just not fun anymore. :(

[Guest]

Hello,

Anyone here play a necromancer that is based around the poison tree? I am looking at the viability of a Poison Nova most necromancer. I am also thinking a fire golem, with good level mastery, and bone wall/bone spear for crowd control.

Is this viable? What are other solid skills to augment this set up?

Thanks!

Yrrek
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dont do summons,
and dont use bone spear if ur not a straight boner with teeth and spirit.

[gimlisam]

Another idea is to go with PDagger and Bone Armor until you get PNova available to you, and then use Dagger to finish off single tough monsters that aren't too scary in Melee. With Wall and Prison (which I'm assuming you'll use) raising the power of Armor higher than points in Armor itself, you will have a pretty decent shield against physical attacks (also the physical half of Diablo's RLBoD damage, iirc), and since you'll have a 1-handed weapon, you can probably get decent resists from a shield. PDagger gets great synergies from PNova and PExplosion, giving it some seriously scary damage. The only downside to Dagger is that it takes a looong time for the poison to work at higher levels (almost 10 seconds at level 20). You will still want Lower Resist, and probably a Clay Golem (not much investment in it, though, just enough to have a distraction that can slow the enemies). I hope that this isn't too late to be of help!



GimliSam

[Yrrek]

Not at all, I am only level 24, I haven't had much time for Diablo II lately, I went to California for a week and since I leave for college on Wednesday I need to get everything ready and buy last minute essentials, so I am a little crunched for time. =) Thank you all!

[FearlessOne]

[My pnova necro was lvl 95, i only played him for 3 months during the first 9 month ladder. He ended up in the top 50 necros of USwest sc realm in that ladder. So I know what I'm talking about as do the people who have posted here.

You must max the pnova synergies. So there goes 60 skill points. You will need to get down to LR on the curse tree, and then just one pt there may not be enough. Amp is a good skill for parties, so is decrep, like I said I never got dimvision, never needed it with my revives + merc + gumby golem + decrep. That is one way to do crowd control and assure u will survive even if ur connection drops. So u are looking at about 10 skill pts spent on curses

If there are any corpses around, it cannot be overemphasized how powerful CE is good to reduce their numbers and stun them. More CE=greater range and more damage. Its the fastest way in the game to do big damage to monsters. One pt in bonearmor and maybe a few more in bonewall will give u decent melee damage protection. Skellies or revives and some pts in skelmast and summonresist and such all add up! You are looking at maybe another 10+ skill pts spent on the summons tree. To get good BA synergy and CE and the skelmast/sumres and some minions u will be spending around 16 skill pts on this tree.

Add it all up! You have spent around 80-86 skills already and there really isnt alot left over for you to start building up a 'backup attack' with bone skills. You dont need it. You can get firewall off the Trangs, u can use a barb or act2 merc with decrep weapon or might or holy freeze or with an elemental damage weapon. I would follow the other guys advice and not bother with a fire golem, use gumby, the clay golem for slowdown and get the firewall instead... It will save u 2 skill points in NOT getting the not-very-good fire golem.

[Yrrek]

Well I just reached level 30 earlier this evening. My Poison Nova is level 3, and isn't really doing much do the undead, is this usual? Poison Explosion at level 9 is doing far better, but the downside to this is that I need a corpse first. Aside from partying up, what are some strategies to get that first body when Poison Nova isn't killing very fast?

Thanks!

Yrrek

[Assur]

Your Merc should help you there. Which one are you using?

[Yrrek]

Your Merc should help you there. Which one are you using?
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I am in Act1 NM, and the Rogue dies after about 3 seconds. I am playing classic, so my merc does not stay with me between acts. My poison explosion is I think a level 10 with my +2 to necro skills, whereas my poison nova is only a level 8. I noticed that explosion has far better damage output than nova, although it is over a greater period of time.

I am having trouble with undead, since my main damage is poison, I don't have the extra skill points to pump bone spear or spirit for magic damage. My fire golem is only level 3 (because of bonuses), and I don't want to put any more points into him. Any ideas?

[Assur]

Uh-Oh.

I play LoD, so all of my builds use an optimized merc. My suggestion would be to use Poisondagger for the first kill, hitting the monsters with Dim Vision beforehand, if you have it. I play HC and usually rampage around in NM after hitting L 50, perhaps a few more Diabloruns would be in order?

Sorry I can't be of more assistance. :(

P.S.Undead are usually poisonresistant, do you have any points in Lower Resistance?

[FearlessOne]

P.S.Undead are usually poisonresistant, do you have any points in Lower Resistance?
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Well, I play classic and LoD, and made pnova necros in both realms. Best way to deal with this is to party! Toss curses out depending on the need, and use ur pnova to keep the monsters from rehealing, since in a large party it wont be killing very fast. Obviously, when u hit lvl 30, ur pnova will not be a high lvl, but u should and apparently do have already lots of synergy skills already invested. So asking whether u have LR curse is a good question. One thing tho, as I remember, the poisonresists of skellies and other undead didnt seem to be very high in Nm. It's hard in classic Nm to find some help getting thru the quests, lvling up in slow there and peeps often puke out of the games when the going gets rough. Thats why a pnova necro is so good: everything on the screen is dying, and u should have some minions to keep the other players from getting ganged up on.

One way to get around this is to just amp the monsters, and whack them with a Civerbs cudgel, till u start having corpses. Then u can raise and blow up. This works in early Nm esp if u have one of those concentration pallys around, so u wont need a useless merc (as they are in classic, just good for Duriel meatshields, or early in the act, never later).

Pnova WILL be good when maxed synergized: around 2700 damage in classic per 2 second cast. LR can increase that or at least deal away with presists for all but pimmunes. Some monsters in hell are immune and cant have that immunity removed with even a lvl 8 LR. Cadavers, Maggots(but not their young, which can then be blown up!), CorpseSpitters, undead dolls...lots of annoying monsters. To kill them, lure easy to kill monsters to them and then just blow them all up! Or party.

So... in LoD u can use the merc + Trangs firewall, but in classic u STILL have techniques and a skill to deal out fire damage: CE. Use it.