03-03-2003, 06:23 PM
Get a thorns merc, or better yet, play all the time with a pally with maxed thorns and you both get prayer mercs. Amp damage and thorns is your best friend. Thorns makes skeletons viable in Hell, having prayer under them makes them even more so (if they surive the single hit, and with maxed skel mastery they will), because they will heal between fights from prayer because the sheer number of them means that the same one will almost never get hit by 2 different monsters in a short amount of time. Of course when you are playing without a permanent pally team mate that doesn't work as well. Since the throns merc isn't around until Act II NM, you will need at least a point in iron maiden. IM is pointless once you can get thorns though. Of course without prayer you will need to bring up skellies a lot.
Minions can't walk through each other, so they get stuck a lot. Skellies will teleport to you fairly frequently, revives will not. Trying to keep up more than 20 revives at time is hard (you pretty much have to revive everything). Getting +10 to summon skills isn't that hard (I did it without trading), so 5-10 points in revive is enough, I think. Skellies don't time out, and like I said will sometime teleport back to you (or in front of you, etc) if they get seperated. Mages, even in hordes don't really hurt anything after Act III normal, even with lower resist, they are just more walking shields that have fewer HP than a regular skellie.
You will need a direct fire spell (bone spirit is my choice so you can hide and fire) for several monsters and the act bosses (since your army won't last long against them). Corpse Explosion is good for any necro build (and you need it to get your direct fire spell). Lower Resists will be needed to help this out as well (of course depeding on the patch LR may or may not help with magic damage, currently it does). Amp damage is more effective with CE then lower resist, unless the moster is PI and you are using CE for the fire damage it does.
Just somethoughts. I have played 2 zookeepers, one in classic (so lots of IM) and one with my wife who played the thorns pally. The necro-pally team didn't have problems with anything really and even in Hell with the global resists it didn't matter, when thorns returns over 1000% damage and you are amp damaging and taking evertying to negative physical resists, it stills dies quickly.
Minions can't walk through each other, so they get stuck a lot. Skellies will teleport to you fairly frequently, revives will not. Trying to keep up more than 20 revives at time is hard (you pretty much have to revive everything). Getting +10 to summon skills isn't that hard (I did it without trading), so 5-10 points in revive is enough, I think. Skellies don't time out, and like I said will sometime teleport back to you (or in front of you, etc) if they get seperated. Mages, even in hordes don't really hurt anything after Act III normal, even with lower resist, they are just more walking shields that have fewer HP than a regular skellie.
You will need a direct fire spell (bone spirit is my choice so you can hide and fire) for several monsters and the act bosses (since your army won't last long against them). Corpse Explosion is good for any necro build (and you need it to get your direct fire spell). Lower Resists will be needed to help this out as well (of course depeding on the patch LR may or may not help with magic damage, currently it does). Amp damage is more effective with CE then lower resist, unless the moster is PI and you are using CE for the fire damage it does.
Just somethoughts. I have played 2 zookeepers, one in classic (so lots of IM) and one with my wife who played the thorns pally. The necro-pally team didn't have problems with anything really and even in Hell with the global resists it didn't matter, when thorns returns over 1000% damage and you are amp damaging and taking evertying to negative physical resists, it stills dies quickly.
---
It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.
It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.