11-28-2003, 05:16 PM
The single main decision is whether to use skeletons or not
Skeletons are now uber, and are certainly over-powered in relation to other classes' abilities. They are certainly over-powered compared to other item-poor builds - all you really need to finish the game is an occasional wand bought from the vendor
Having said that, they're great fun and very interesting to play. I've always been a big fan and they're very enjoyable now
The key issue is that the life bonus from the Raise Skeleton and the Skeleton Mastery skills are multiplicative. Most such bonuses are additive. This makes the skeletons exponentially powerful. One of the Basin players, Koalachan, tells me that 30/30 Skeletons can kill Hell Baal
I played one in the first week of the Ladder and had a fairly easy trek through the game as far as Hell Arreat Summit.
Basic Necromancer tactical considerations are:
1) How do I deal damage? Main choices are Raise Skeleton + Mastery, Poison Nova, Corpse Explosion
2) Two of those need a corpse to get going. So the second issue is How do I get the first kill? Good choices are Attract, a well-developed Bone Spirit or a well-equipped merc, especially an Offensive Act 2 merc
3) Can I multiply my damage? Amplify Damage, Lower Resist and Decrepify all help
4) How do I control the battlefield? Bone prison, Bone wall, Terror, Decrepify, and Dim Vision are good choices. More subtle players often have a range of these options available and skillfully select between them. Some players have great skill in casting Golems in the function of the Amazon Decoy skill - to scout and draw fire. A simpler solution is just to have a huge army - you can often get away with not having anything elegant at all
5) How do I not die? Put some points in life, try to find gear that improves your resists. I had 300 or so Vitality on my Ladder Necromancer and 1200 life and I still got killed. Even in Softcore dying is very tedious - you have to re-summon all your minions which can be time-consuming and not always easy
6) How do I kill Act bosses? Often the minions are not especially effective, although the new skeletons can cope when supported with skills items, revives and Decrepify. Lurking around the corner and spamming Bone Spirit works, I have resorted to lurking around the corner and using Iron Maiden plus a golem until the boss beats himself to death. This can take a long time - I had a 45 minute fight with Diablo doing this in 1.09
7) How do I deal with immunes? Usually the problem is physical immunes and due to an idiosyncracy of the monstats.txt file pretty much every physical immune monster has 100% immunity and so their resistance can be broken by Amplify Damage or Decrepify while creatures with elemental resist have values like 190% which won't be broken by Lower Resist. (These curses subtract one-fifth of their usual value from immune monsters). In addition to breaking immunities you can also add a range of damage types to your character: Bone Spear and Bone Spirit are magic damage, Corpse Explosion is 50% fire and 50% physical, Poison Nova is poison of course, Skeletons are physical, Skeleton Mages are a controllable mix of Fire, Cold, Lightning and Poison and Revives depend on the monsters available although you can go collecting especially horrible creatures when you're anticipating a tough fight
8) What merc do I use? Almost certainly you want an Act 2 Merc because that gives you an aura that benefits the whole army. There is an Act 3 Merc called Jarulf but (cough) I'm afraid he's really not very good. My personal favourite is Thorns but any of the auras should work
9) Which skills suck? Teeth, Weaken. Poison Explosion looks like high damage but you can't aim - it has to be centred on a corpse and it is a small radius and the cloud expands fairly slowly.
Poison Nova, Poison Dagger, Bone Spear and Bone spirit need very heavy investment to become good spells later on. They will most certainly suck if you put just 5 points in.
Iron Maiden is a good curse but it is overshadowed now by the availability of Thorns mercs which reflect significantly more damage without taking up that valuable spot over the monsters' heads.
I'm going to be very contentious and say that basically golems suck. If you put 20 in skeleton and 20 in mastery you get 9 minions any one of which beats a similarly maxxed golem. A point of golem works well, but I wouldn't advise investing more than one in each type
I would recommend that you don't diversify too much. I'm a big fan of maxxing out skills - almost an extremist in fact. Traditionally Necromancers have quite often been made with a point in each curse, a point in each summons and several different poison and bone skills. I've heard Necro players complain about only having 16 hotkeys. I can't stand this approach, I think it can be a surefire way to build a character that sucks, especially if you're not an expert
One last point is to consider who you want to play with. Public BNet is fast, very much so. If you make a game called Act 1 Start, Andariel will probably be dead in less than 20 minutes, possibly in under 10 minutes
Alternating between soloing and partying can work quite well, you might choose to solo and explore a bit and then party for a lively change of pace as well as the chance to see what everyone else is doing
Another alternative is the Amazon Basin. They have a board called Weaseltech listing passwords which allow you to play private games with the other players in the community. I started playing in their games about 18 months ago, friendly bunch of people and generally considerate. You might still end up playing alone if everyone is in Act 5 and you're in Act 1 but you can usually meet someone. Hardcore has more people in the lower difficulties, generally speaking, than softcore so I would recommend hardcore over softcore if you expect to spend most of your time in Normal because there's more people around. Similarly Ladder has much more people than non-Ladder. Besides I'm hardcore ladder on Europe too :)
I would also point you and other readers to the AB Necro Forum as well as the Armoury here at the Lounge:
http://www.theamazonbasin.com/d2/forums/in...hp?showforum=53
I'm working on a guide to playing Skeleton Necromancers so it should be in the Armoury soon, various distractions permitting
Skeletons are now uber, and are certainly over-powered in relation to other classes' abilities. They are certainly over-powered compared to other item-poor builds - all you really need to finish the game is an occasional wand bought from the vendor
Having said that, they're great fun and very interesting to play. I've always been a big fan and they're very enjoyable now
The key issue is that the life bonus from the Raise Skeleton and the Skeleton Mastery skills are multiplicative. Most such bonuses are additive. This makes the skeletons exponentially powerful. One of the Basin players, Koalachan, tells me that 30/30 Skeletons can kill Hell Baal
I played one in the first week of the Ladder and had a fairly easy trek through the game as far as Hell Arreat Summit.
Basic Necromancer tactical considerations are:
1) How do I deal damage? Main choices are Raise Skeleton + Mastery, Poison Nova, Corpse Explosion
2) Two of those need a corpse to get going. So the second issue is How do I get the first kill? Good choices are Attract, a well-developed Bone Spirit or a well-equipped merc, especially an Offensive Act 2 merc
3) Can I multiply my damage? Amplify Damage, Lower Resist and Decrepify all help
4) How do I control the battlefield? Bone prison, Bone wall, Terror, Decrepify, and Dim Vision are good choices. More subtle players often have a range of these options available and skillfully select between them. Some players have great skill in casting Golems in the function of the Amazon Decoy skill - to scout and draw fire. A simpler solution is just to have a huge army - you can often get away with not having anything elegant at all
5) How do I not die? Put some points in life, try to find gear that improves your resists. I had 300 or so Vitality on my Ladder Necromancer and 1200 life and I still got killed. Even in Softcore dying is very tedious - you have to re-summon all your minions which can be time-consuming and not always easy
6) How do I kill Act bosses? Often the minions are not especially effective, although the new skeletons can cope when supported with skills items, revives and Decrepify. Lurking around the corner and spamming Bone Spirit works, I have resorted to lurking around the corner and using Iron Maiden plus a golem until the boss beats himself to death. This can take a long time - I had a 45 minute fight with Diablo doing this in 1.09
7) How do I deal with immunes? Usually the problem is physical immunes and due to an idiosyncracy of the monstats.txt file pretty much every physical immune monster has 100% immunity and so their resistance can be broken by Amplify Damage or Decrepify while creatures with elemental resist have values like 190% which won't be broken by Lower Resist. (These curses subtract one-fifth of their usual value from immune monsters). In addition to breaking immunities you can also add a range of damage types to your character: Bone Spear and Bone Spirit are magic damage, Corpse Explosion is 50% fire and 50% physical, Poison Nova is poison of course, Skeletons are physical, Skeleton Mages are a controllable mix of Fire, Cold, Lightning and Poison and Revives depend on the monsters available although you can go collecting especially horrible creatures when you're anticipating a tough fight
8) What merc do I use? Almost certainly you want an Act 2 Merc because that gives you an aura that benefits the whole army. There is an Act 3 Merc called Jarulf but (cough) I'm afraid he's really not very good. My personal favourite is Thorns but any of the auras should work
9) Which skills suck? Teeth, Weaken. Poison Explosion looks like high damage but you can't aim - it has to be centred on a corpse and it is a small radius and the cloud expands fairly slowly.
Poison Nova, Poison Dagger, Bone Spear and Bone spirit need very heavy investment to become good spells later on. They will most certainly suck if you put just 5 points in.
Iron Maiden is a good curse but it is overshadowed now by the availability of Thorns mercs which reflect significantly more damage without taking up that valuable spot over the monsters' heads.
I'm going to be very contentious and say that basically golems suck. If you put 20 in skeleton and 20 in mastery you get 9 minions any one of which beats a similarly maxxed golem. A point of golem works well, but I wouldn't advise investing more than one in each type
I would recommend that you don't diversify too much. I'm a big fan of maxxing out skills - almost an extremist in fact. Traditionally Necromancers have quite often been made with a point in each curse, a point in each summons and several different poison and bone skills. I've heard Necro players complain about only having 16 hotkeys. I can't stand this approach, I think it can be a surefire way to build a character that sucks, especially if you're not an expert
One last point is to consider who you want to play with. Public BNet is fast, very much so. If you make a game called Act 1 Start, Andariel will probably be dead in less than 20 minutes, possibly in under 10 minutes
Alternating between soloing and partying can work quite well, you might choose to solo and explore a bit and then party for a lively change of pace as well as the chance to see what everyone else is doing
Another alternative is the Amazon Basin. They have a board called Weaseltech listing passwords which allow you to play private games with the other players in the community. I started playing in their games about 18 months ago, friendly bunch of people and generally considerate. You might still end up playing alone if everyone is in Act 5 and you're in Act 1 but you can usually meet someone. Hardcore has more people in the lower difficulties, generally speaking, than softcore so I would recommend hardcore over softcore if you expect to spend most of your time in Normal because there's more people around. Similarly Ladder has much more people than non-Ladder. Besides I'm hardcore ladder on Europe too :)
I would also point you and other readers to the AB Necro Forum as well as the Armoury here at the Lounge:
http://www.theamazonbasin.com/d2/forums/in...hp?showforum=53
I'm working on a guide to playing Skeleton Necromancers so it should be in the Armoury soon, various distractions permitting