Poison Necro in Players 8 Hell: Uh oh.

[Ignatz]

I spent the last few days tinkering with the Necro. I built 12 of them and one sort of stood out. By sort of, I mean he killed things so fast that Act 5 Players 8 Hell felt like, oh, I'd say Act 1 Players 1 NM.

I hesitated to post this topic, since the poor, malnourished Necromancer has been the D2 stable boy since 1.03 killed off CE. I've wanted to be able to play the Necro and not feel like a second-class citizen for years now. And in 1.10, it appears that not only can he sit at the adults' table now, but he poisons the feast, imprisons the guests, and blows up the dining room. Just for good measure.

That said, meet Skullballs:

Skills (with +skills items):
20(35) in Poison Dagger
20(35) in Poison Explosion
20(35) in Poison Nova
15(30) in CE
16(28) in Golem Mastery
1(16) in Lower Resist + all prereq skills
1(16) pt in all other P&B spells
1(13) pt in each golem
1(13) pt in Summon Resist

Stats:
106 Str
Base Dex
400 Vit
Base Energy

Outfit: (total skills increase: +12/+15/+15)
Bramble Armor
Boneflame Succubus Skull
Harlequin Crest
Arachnid Mesh belt
Trang-Oul's Claws
Mara's Kaleidoscope
SoJ x2
Death's Web Unearthed Wand
2 X Socketed unique poison jewel
1 Grand Charm +1 to each tree

A typical clear of a group of baddies goes like this:
1. Bone Prison most of the screen (enough to lock 'em all up)
2. Cast Lower Resist, de-immunizing 90% of poison immune enemy types
3. Cast Poison Nova
4. Cast CE

It doesn't sound all that impressive, right? Except that but Bone Prison at lvl 16 pretty much won't get knocked down before its timer runs out, making you just about invulnerable. Enemies, even ranged ones, seem to auto-target the bones now as soon as they go up. And of course, my Poison Nova does 38-39k damage. Yeah, that's just about 40,000 damage, (on the lying character screen, anyway). Regardless of the actual duration and actual damage per second, my PN does enough damage to kill just about anything in less than ten seconds in any mode in LoD. In Players 8 Hell I killed Shenk in 3 castings, which took about 8-10 seconds. I killed all of his minions, all of those really, really, really annoying Slingers and Quill Rats that spawn there now, and every other straggler on screen in that same ten seconds. Then I trotted down the rest of the foothills, full cleaning it in about 8 minutes.

After a while I stopped casting Bone Armor and stopped casting Fire Golem, even. Didn't need 'em. And in some areas, I found that casting CE after the poison was just a waste, since everything died nearly as fast anyway. Keep in mind that I only bothered with Players 8 Hell, since PN kills everything in one casting in any players 1 mode.

A couple other points of note:
- I still die pretty often, since it seems like every ranged attacker in the game now can knock off about 300-400 hps per hit. For instance, I have yet to be able to kill a Quill Rat pack in Act 5 without dying about ten times. And that's with great defense and 430 vitality.

- Playing with those four skills requires FAST fingers. I've never played a character that made D2 feel so much like an action game. Everything hurts so much now that missing the Bone Prison hotkey just once often gets me killed.

- This character is really, really fun. And I tell you it feels downright weird to play a Necro and kill at a good clip.

Anyway. What my testing boils down to is this: I killed fast enough soloing players 8 that I could have matched several 1.09 cookie cutter builds in terms of speed. Skullballs doesn't kill as fast as the MS or FA Zon, but faster than the WW Barb and any non-Nova Sorc builds. But that's comparing it to 1.09. And I hear those cookie cutter builds don't work so hot in 1.10.

As a last note, Skullballs' listed damage for Poison Explosion is 266k - 287k (but of course, that spell's radius renders it utterly useless).

Ignatz

Edit: Incidentally, I know his equipment is neigh-perfect. However, even with only +12 or so to Bone Skills, easily arranged with White runeword or a million other ways, he still kills quickly. The Bramble armor is a big, big benefit, but even with Trang's set and a couple SoJs he was doing quite well.