1.10 Necro level 62, where to go now?

[Dyntheos]

Level 62, in Act4 NM. I have played 8 players since normal, except for bosses in NM :P and have maxed Raise Skeleton, CE, and Skel Mastery. Here's his breakdown.


Skeleton Mastery 20
Raise Skeleton 20
Corpse Explosion 20
Teeth 1
Amp Damage 1
Clay Golem 1
Blood Golem 1
Golem Mastery 1
Summon Resists 1

I have +5 to all skills through gear.

Now my issue here is that I have rasied skills that are pretty much stand alone, with no synergies that rely on 500 skills. So what direction to take now?

I was considering throwing one point in all the curses to get them but basically I don't think I would use them as I use the skellies to get a corpse and then CE the rest, so CE and Amp are my main death dealing skills. I have no mages as they are weak in 1.10 so lower resists isn't worth the investment to get it.

I am not bothering with revives as they die to quickly and my 200 damage skellies that hardly ever die far out distance any revive I could ever raise, in terms of killing power.

So Iam starting to look at poison nova, yet I won't be able to max the synergies, maybe just the nova skill itself. Will this be viable / useful to me in hell as a non regen skill to help the skellies kill?

any thought's on which direction I should take this?

[jms]

Since you're fairly summoning heavy and you probably have the points to do it, you could complete that theme by pumping up a golem a choice. However, I'm not sure how much life-not-scaling-with-# of players has hurt golems in 1.10 since I haven't tried a necro yet.

You could also pump nova, but you'd obviously never be as strong as a pure poison build. Then again, what's this beta 1.10 for but testing things out--am I right?

Whatever you decide, I'd definitely recommend a might merc if you haven't got one already. Worked great in 1.09, and those skels could always stand to smash a little more face :)

[diegoforlan]

One small question....

Why not a few mages?

[Architect]

You are not alone and I feel the same way about mages and revives.

Your skill point allocation is pretty close to my plan except I've only put 1 point into CE and 3 points in Mages (mistake). I'm level 52 in Act 2 NM.

I've been able to mow down groups pretty fast with that 1 point CE (+2 from items) and my merc helps with a Grim Reaper. 100% deadly strike makes for significant damage.

Right now I've got six points saved and I'm trying to figure out what to do too. I've been thinking that 30 points (level 72) into the poison tree might be powerful enough to help in hell. I just haven't looked at what is the best combination of synergies. Probably 20 points into nova and then the rest spread around would do the trick. I also might do just 20 into nova and the rest into the curse tree.

Right now I get decrepify and attract from items. I'm wondering if lifetap might be essential for parts of Hell to keep my minions alive. I also think that decrepify and dim vision usage in Hell will be much more important. I've been using decrepify exclusively because I want to be sure I can kill effectively with it. I been practicing with attract too but the duration penatly in Hell is going to be a killer I bet.

[Dyntheos]

I saved up 9 skill points and then saved my character into another folder and tried some skill point distribution.

with max SM which gives the max damage for a mage I dumped all my points into mage to raise 4 of them.

I then went out to the moor in NM and had 4 mages attacking a lone fallen, with lower resist from wand it took about 20 seconds to kill it.

Now I raised a normal skel, that does 200 points damage. cast amp, and had my might merc.

3 hits.

dead.

4 mages with max damage take 20 seconds to kill 1 fallen
1 Skelly with max damage take 2 seconds to 1 fallen

IT JUST DON'T ADD UP.

Mages need bonus to damage for every point into the mage skill, not just from mastery, atm they are useless, even with LR.

Revives are USELESS.

Iam sorry but when 1 Skeleton can go toe to toe with diablo and a revived minion from the CS dies in one hit you KNOW something aint right here, this is with maxed SM don't forget giving the max bonus to both revies and skellies.

It's like they said "right skellies suck so we'll fix them in 1.10" and then forgot about mages and revives. When my level 1 skill keeps 1 skeleton alive for over an hour and any revive from a level 30 skill only manages 3 hits, you know they missed something.

So I have begun to think that mages or revives is not the way to go.

So I dump a few points into PN.

WOW, isn't that pretty.

That's about all the effect my skill points into PN will have. without maxing all the synergies and PN, Iam not even bothering to try it out some more. The damage from say 18 points into PN and having 6 points in its synergies due to + skill items will be negligable.

This is where synergies REALLY suck. You max 3 skills at around level 65. NOW what??? I am thinking this will be for ALOT of builds across characters in 1.10, you'll have alot of builds that need to max 3 skills just for 1 killing skill, and forget the rest.

I seriously have no idea what iam going to do with my 9 points I have saved up so far or any other I get at a later date.

I don't need any other curses, as they defeat the purpose of the build. I'd only take some curses to get LR for a party game but I have that on a wand atm. Golems don't kill, and don't tank any better with more skills, so it's useless spending points there, and as I've tested, mages and revives are worthless compared to skeletons, and the bone and poison tree is too full of sysnergies to even look at.

I find that at level 60 or so my summoner build is at his best he'll ever get and any further investment in any other skill won't enable him to survive longer or kill faster.

I'll probably throw a point into the curses and bone armour and wall for the hell of it. I'll never use them because I'll never cast another curse over amp, and I don't need bone wall because my summons serve that purpose.

It'd be nice if you could say use 2 points per 1 skill level past 20, to allow specialiation at later levels and have builds follow a definite path.

I never thought I'd find myself in a position of having too many skill points in 1.10, but hey this patch is full of surprises... <_<

[diegoforlan]

Apologies. I forgot that Amp can now remove Physical Immunity, so mages are not neccesary

Reason for first post was that i was wondering how you were dealing with PI packs.

Oops

[whereagles]

Actually, why do immunities get broken now? I remember it was like that in 1.08, but then Sirian indoctrinated Blizzo into permanent immunities, and now they're back into breakable immunities.

It seems Blizzo works in fashions. First, elite uniques of 1.09 had some "+max dam, based on char level", then in 1.10 they got into the "level xx aura when equipped".

This lack of consistency doesn't help at all..

[whyBish]

I remember it was like that in 1.08, but then Sirian indoctrinated Blizzo into permanent immunities, and now they're back into breakable immunities.

Sounds like their source control is poor, the conspiracy theory is that they built 1.10 off 1.08(7?) instead of 1.09 :blink:

[jondifool]

A little note. Remember Dim vision. Skellies does an excelent job cathing Imps with that.

While skellies are though a working decripify should certainly give them more lasting power in some conditions.

Attrackt is one off the best skills in the game , not only wanting a corpse, but want it exsactly in a hot spot. (kaboomm)

Lifetap?

So even if you wants amp in 95 % off the time .These last 5% cases, some curses really does wonders.


Does revies dies to quicly if you heal them? (I have the understanding that they are raised with only a fraction off there life.

[Dyntheos]

Well Iam now 75 and doing 8 player hell act 1.

I went with 1 point in mages to give me 5 mages all up as I gambled a +3 summoner circlet and ammy for a massive boost to skills.

Skels now do 280 base damage, not counting amp or my might merc.

I through one point into bone armour and bone wall - it's only an extra 65 or so hit points worth of protection from the bone armour but I had the points to spare so i thought a few extra hit points effectively to my tota wouldn't hurt.

and the rest into attract. currently I have a level 14 attract that lasts about 15 seconds, a little less than my amp curse.

I have 11 skels, 5 mages, 1 blood golem, and my merc.

Things are moving along very nicely in hell. I genreally amp a crowd, then attract one of them to bunch the mob up waiting for the first corpse to appear then CE the lot.. rinse repeat.

Bone wall I use for self protection when mobs get a little rowdy and the mages serve not so much as killing power but body guards. As the hang back from the front line, anything coming up behind generally goes for the mages first.

I thought that after NM I'd have to drop the level from players 8 to players 1, but I find I am levelling at an astonishing rate, 70-75 from the moor to dark wood, and haven't slowed down my movement, if anything Iam killing faster in 8 player hell than 8 player NM.

It seems that the attract curse is a great compliment to a summoner as it keeps the mob off your skels and bunches them up for the finsihing CE move. What I love about this is that finally a necro can concentrate on curse placement and a little wall action here and there, without constantly casting summons. It's like he's playing the way he was meant to be played.


Current gear is,

+3 summoning coronet, with 2 pskulls - gambled
+3 summoning ammy - gambled
+2 necro wand - purchased at mala
4 socket Ancient Armour with pskulls - found
Sigons sheild with pdiamond - found
rare gloves with fhr, half freeze duration, and resists - found
rare belt with resists in the 20's for poison, fire and lightning - found
Tearhaunch greaves. - found
2 x resist all rings - 1 gambled - 15res all, 1 found - 12res all/5% life leech

1 grandcharm 15 resall
1 grand charm +29 life
1 grand charm +18 fire res
a few small and large either minor fire res charms or life charms.

SO far my resists have helped ALOT throughout norm and NM, particularly with bosses, I try to keep fire and light maxed, and I have max fire in hell, I think light is only around 40 or so in hell though.

Skel mastery and summon skeleton are at level 29, amp is only at 4, attract is 14, all other summon skills are at 10 apart from IG, FG and revive, as I have no points placed in them.

I'll report back on how he continues through hell, but iam pleased to see he can solo 8 player hell without a twink in sight, although I must say i getting sick of selling everything I come across so I can feed my gambling habit :lol:


[edit footnote] I forgot to say that I chose to go with attract because you can't curse over the top of it so it doesn't interfere with all the amped monsters around it, and you can have a few going at the same time to reproduce the same effect of confuse [/edit]

[ImpressiveOne]

I started a simliar necro as you except hardcore. Last night I went from normal a1 to beginning of a5 (players 8 all the way) in a little under 4 hours. I'm currently at level 28 with most of my points in skeleton mastery/summoning. 1 point in all the rest (amp, ce, bone wall). Bone wall is extremely useful in hardcore.

The only troubles I had where the end bosses, I had to tp out and get more skeletons ALOT. I'm sure it would've been easier with players 1.

I'm wondering if getting a golem would help in certain situations such as when you're trapped or being able to summon something anywhere w/o a corpse. I guess attract would handle those situations?

My items are pretty weak because I was going through everything so fast, no time to gamble. Most of the drops were useless to me, although I have a ton of charms. Greyform is my only significant drop so far.

[Animation]

All,

It sounds like the Skeleton-Summoner is fun and viable, even in Hell. This worries me because I've always wanted to try a Skeleton-Summoner and now it seems possible! However, I am almost a little worried it will be TOO good. But that's just my paranoia talking.

OK, so all you folks who have been trying Skeleton Summoners, what have the weak points of the build been? Do you think that the difficulty for you is as great as it is for some other classes? Do you worry they will Nerf them? What aspects do you feel balances out the Skeleton Necromancer?

I'm not trying to imply there is a problem, not at all. I'm just saying, can we get a little feedback on the down-sides you've experienced, just so that both sides of the build will be known?

I am currently playing a skeleton summoner myself in the beta but I started first with a Holy Fire Paladin and so I am a little behind on my Skeleton Needs. I just started and I'm in act 1 normal, so I'm looking to you guys for feedback.

Lewis

[ImpressiveOne]

it's a very powerful build, not much mana needed so all of your points go either to strength or vit.

The only problem is dealing with bosses (doing players 8), they take a while and your skeletons die quickly. I'm sure it'll be very hard in nightmare and hell to kill bosses players 8.

The fun factor is a 10! it reminds me of pre LoD days of revives and CE. CE is just plain FUN :)

*important to keep in mind that this is normal, not nm or hell* this strategy might go to hell (no pun) in hell mode.

[Dyntheos]

Drawbacks to the summoner build?

Well I guess one thing I haven't listed are my stat point distribution so I'll list that now.

Str: base - 100 / 108 with items
Dex: base - 25 / 30 with items
Vit: base - 115
Egy: base - 200 / 212 with items

I placed 100 into strength for future proofing, and to wear heavy armour and shields if they came up. Sigons luckily dropped yet only has 75 str req, and I wear ancient armour, mainly because it's classed as medium and looks badass all black with skulls in it :D

Dex base - no need for dex he doesn't block

Vit: I pumped last, after strength and energy, because he didn't need the health till late NM and Hell.

Energy: I chose 200 because a summoner is fairly trigger happy if you use CE ( I know i am :D ), and liberally throw around curses.

I augmented the mana and health with skulled armour. 4 pskulls gives 20 hp regen and 76% mana regen. My circlet which was scketed with the NM socket quest, got 2 sockets which has 2 p skulls, for an additional +10 and 38% regen for health and mana respectively. All told I gain +30 health regen and 114% mana regen with this settup which allows me 2 things. To spend less points in Energy and spend less time relying on pots. This means in hell I can save those potion slots just for full rejuvs, for when I really need them, and not have reds and blues filling up my belt slots.

Just a quick reminder here that I find resists to be a main issue here, you must keep them high, if you don't want to rebuild your army lots.

Now onto the down side of the build.

There isn't any :D

No just kidding, well there's not much. In actual play I haven't died much, maybe 8 times all up, if that. But when I have it's been due to being swamped, your necro here is the general and not even equiped to fight or last long, from hand to hand attacks, magic is ok if your resists are high, but get a balrog next to you and know hurt. So the only thing here is low defense so you may want to pump vit earlier though I found it wasn't needed.

I seriously haven't felt threatend with this build which I guess is what as summoner is all about, being behind the lines so to speak, where it's safe. I've never really been short of mana, and I can use most equipment I find, due to a high strength (this is also good for boots and belts you may find).

Bosses have been quite easy to kill as even ones like bloodraven are surrounded and can't run, this is particularly obvious with the ancients.

I would not at any time say this build is over powered. You just have to play smart and watch you skill allocation, build on it's strengths and don't diversify till SM, and RS are maxed, maxing RS first with about 5 points in SM till RS is at 20, then pump SM up to 20.

I feel that revives and magi have really been over looked here, golems seem ok but only as additional tanks, yet 1 skel is easily better than a golem. One thing I have noticed is that bosses ALWAYS go for the golem first in a fight, so if you spam summon your golem ( I use clay for bosses so my health doesn't drop ) then diablo or baal will just focus on the ever appearing golem and forget your skeletons. ( As a side not to this has anyone noticed summon COMPLETELY ignore izual? I had 10 skeletons hacking away at pillars right next to izzy, even my merc chose pillars over him, and I had to clear the area of pillars before they would even look at him..)

One thing I noticed is that summons get a huge boost past level 20. level 20 skels do about 80 damage with max SM. LEvel 29 do 280. I big difference. I guess bliz expect a few +skills items for hell and so scaled it this way, because 20 RS is possible with amp and CE and before level 25 clvl.

All up the only weakness here is you, being killed and losing the army, but with a moderate Run/Walk bonus ( I have 20% on tearhaunch ) and high resists, you should be able to either run out of the way or resist any missile attacks (though hell difficulty archers hurt alot, which is lucky I am pumping vit now).

[ImpressiveOne]

I've only pumped up str and vit right now since I'm playing hardcore. All my mana has come from items and since mana pots are buyable I don't plan on putting a lot into energy.

I almost feel asleep fighting izzy... you can't move because once more monsters come into the screen your skeletons go for them instead.

The hardest thing with this build is bosses, that's it.

[BOB2]

Hi,

I have played a new zookeeper, began before the last week end. Its name is skelettor, mind why...
He just reached lvl 74 and is in Act2 Hell (Duriel to be killed)

Summon:
RS and SM are at 20.
All the others spells in this tree deserved 1 point at least. I pumped earlier, in act4 NM, a couple (2) points in increasing the summon resists.

Curses:
I use amp, attrack on normal monsters and life tap/decrepify on bosses.

Bone/poison tree:
I only have one point in CE and teeth.
I have actually put the remaining points in BSpear.

It was a mature choice. I saved skill points for a time until I arrived to the act 2 NM. There I bumped into a wall. It was a kind of it in Norm and NM, but in hell it hurts damn hard. There are in this act places where skells are in line, and only one can fight at a time: so when you go for the staff or in arcane, you are in a bad shape.
Bspear is maxed, now I am working on synergies for it. It does not hace the impressive dmg shown on the arreat summit with max synergies, but it help a lot and its efficiency is multiplied because or thanks to the fact that monster are in line: drawback turns into an advantage now.

The experience to play it is quite nice.
The only drawback I see is to get the first corpse to raise your first skell, it takes for ever in players 8.
If Blizzard fixed the vanishing immunity, this build who be in trouble.

Side note: it is a very safe build (make me think to the Classic Zookeeper build), I have only died once early on at level 19 going down to Andariel.

For equipment, I have been much lucky and I have a mere +2 to all and +3 to summon (+3 amulet) plus the wand which is a black +3RS/+3SM/+1BoneArmor heading in a very nice wand: +3B/N +4SM +3BA and +2BSpear and the shrunken head that gives +1SM/+1RS
So I have a lvl 33 SM, a lvl 29 RS and a 27 BSpear with 2 synergies
Helm is lore, 4 socket pruby armor, 2 pdiamond in shield whith a non noticeable blocking hability :( Others resists are on boots/gloves. I have found a soj from Andariel and greyform (on the merc) and the centurion as others found unique that I kept.
Most of the runes where found either from countess/ hellforge except for Io on a normal guy.
It actually lack of fast/run, but it is just for convenience and of a more decent armor

PS: I trick a little bit when giving a lot of bucks (almost the time you move to act2) to a level 1 to shop in act1 normal to get my first wand :) with good + to RS/SM

For Characteristics, I have around 40 in strenght, base in dexterity, 300 in vitality and 60 in mana. Mana is not an issue through pot and because I am not chaining corpse explosion. As well when summoning I drink. But I will continue pumping mana because the use of bone spear is like a pain ofr my mana ball.

[Takas]

Lvl 80, played from scratch, purely solo, stuck on Hell Ancients. I have

20 PN, 20PD, 20 PE
4 Lower Res
16 Bone Wall
1 Clay Golem, Golem Mastery, Summon Resist

Prereqs I actually use include Amp, Bone Armor and CE
I have a Barbarian Merc who can't stay alive
Equipment gives me maxed Resists, and + 2 to all skills with another +3 to Poison and Bone Tree
(if I were on Bnet, i could have traded for runes for a White easily, but I'm not)

I survive fairly well all throughout Hell but I feel my build is still imperfect so I will list my 'problems' below and see if anyone has any suggestions.

I) I can't survive in /players 8. Without godly poison-enhancing items (Bramble, Death's Web etc) PN cannot kill boss packs fast enough to make /players 8 worthwhile, and boss packs are a dime a dozen in Hell level. My other option is to kill one monster and chain-CE the rest. The problem is that I have no means of doing massive damage to a single target, my CE radius isnt that big (1+5 skill points) and I'm afraid the CE-/players damage scaling is a bug that will be fixed before 1.10 goes live on Bnet anyway.

II) Poison Immune Monsters. Contrary to popular belief, Lower Resist does NOT help unless you have the aforementioned godly poison-enhancing items which make your damage so ludicrously high you can kill 80-90% poison-resistant monsters in less than an hour. I have 3 primary means of dealing with them, none of satisfy my dream requirements of being fast AND usable in all cases
i) Amp/CE them with the corpses of their non-immune fellow monsters (only works if there ARE corpses nearby)
ii) Resurrect my Barb Merc (yes hes mostly dead) and AMP + separate mobs with Bone Wall
iii) Bone wall them off and run away (like brave Sir Robin)

III) Monsters which I can't block with Bone Wall. An astonishing variety of monsters can either leap/fly/teleport over the wall or shoot/cast through it. Since my merc is almost always dead and my golem dies even faster than I do, this normally means I have to run around like a headless chicken while trying to poison the monsters to death with my thankfully far reaching PN.

IV) Lone Monsters (especially Bosses) who choose not to stand anywhere near corpses.
This is simple- no massive single target damage => I take forever to kill bosses. I WILL kill them eventually since they cant regenerate while poisoned, it just takes aggravatingly long.


Lastly, I have 2 questions for Dyntheos
i) How are you getting that first kill on /players 8 (Attract? or are those skeletons really doing THAT much damage)
ii) What will you do if Blizzard fixes the CE-/players scaling bug? (if it is a bug)

[kandrathe]

Maybe;

First see if you can find a ranged weapon that you can hit the ancients with (magic arrow or explosive would be best).

Buy tons of mana pots, put a bunch on the ground (at a safe spot where you will park), use bone wall to lock them down and curse them with Iron Maiden so they damage themselves. Spam poison nova at will, and add what you can with your ranged weapon. I'm afraid your barbarian won't be much help at all and this will take alot of mana and time. Use the mana from your belt first, and then replace with the pots on the ground (as they will disappear otherwise). I would focus on one ancient at a time and see if you can make a dent in his HP.

[Dyntheos]

My merc usually gets the first kill.

If my army dies I go back to cold plains and get some more. The merc can't kill by himself in later acts on players 8

if CE is nerfed this build will be useless, as it will be slow and boring.

[kandrathe]

Well, fighting the ancients there won't be corpses...except from those things that the ancients kill.