Pure Summoner

[diegoforlan]

Taking a bit of inspiration from Sirian i have a pure summonancer on the go (all skill points into summoning tree)

I'm currently lvl 16 and things are starting to get tricky

I have 1 point in skeleton
4 in Mages
1 in Clay Golem
2 in Golem Mastery
Rest in Skeleton Mastery

I have +5 total to Skeleton
+2 to skeleton Mastery


How much should i put into mastery? And what equipment should i be hoping for? (I'm playing single player)

Any general advice on skills would also be appreciated?


Thanx :)

[NuurAbSaal]

All I can say is that I tried to make a pure summoning Necro and failed miserably :(
Maybe I suck but halfway into Nightmare the only one that was killing anything was my Thorns Merc, I had +9 summoning skills and my summons still couldn't kill a thing...

Not really helpful, sorry ;)

For what it's worth, I would try to max Skelly Mastery, since it gives bonuses to all of your summons (even though only revives are mildly useful).

I bet that helped a lot
/sarcasm

Greetings
Nuur

[Brother Laz]

MAX mastery
MAX skeleton mage
MAX skeleton (after you max the other two, silly goose. Not strictly needed, it has pathetic AR, but if you want to stay in theme [& flood the screen with 100+ minions] they do make good tanks due to their number. Enemies spread out their attacks over them, and they have 200+ HP in Hell. Else just use only revives to tank)
Level 1 revive (and +skills items) to help protect the mages, more so if you don't use skeletons
Level 1 lower resist (+all skills from SoJs and hopefully a wand/totem/Claws bonus to boost it)
Or no lower resist at all, if you have it on a wand/totem. Saves you 7 skill points.
Level 1 terror to control the battle [unless variant rules prohibit it]
Level 1 fire golem + mastery (+skills)

If you want to be ONLY summoning, you can do so, but IMO lower resist is acceptable. It is basically a second mastery, and something that only adds to damage (and not much either) and doesn't change strategy but makes it actually POSSIBLE to get past Hell difficulty is OK in my view. They have 3000 HP... you do 40 damage per fire shot... some LR to boost it is mighty handy. :)

Terror OTOH is very handy, but it does change the strategy somewhat. Leave it out if you want to go Sirian. I personally don't adhere to the teachings of Lord Sirian, but whatever.

Rich man's equipment: As many +skills as possible (I have +21 to all summoning, +24 to skeleton mage, adding up to 109 minions if I can get all 22 revives up). Especially +to summoning (doh). +3 summoning wand/totem/ammy/circlet is already +12, more if you get +1-3 to skeleton mage on the wand/totem (I don't think you can get mastery anymore after level 24, since it is a level 1 skill), add Scales for another +2 summoning, Claws for +2 curses (helps with LR), 2 SoJs, and as many charms as possible. And when 1.10 comes out, find a Marrowwalk for +2 mastery on the boot slot. :)

Poor man's equipment: Lots and lots of +summoning; buy a wand with +3 summoning +3 skeleton mage, gamble on ammies and circlets and ID every totem, hoping to get +10-15 summoning from there. If you have any armor that adds +1 such as Shroud/SotV/Garb (!) use it. You'll need ALL the +skills you can get.

Teleportation ammy/circlet preferred, else consider a staff on weapon switch to telekill enemies with (you take all your skeletons with you when you teleport, and 80 minions teleporting on top of a boss usually ends its day). Else use town portal next to the mob to collect your forces.

Strategy: run in with skeleton army in tow, if skeletons start dropping faster than you can raise them see where the problem is and terror it away [if you can], or feed it a fire golem. If it's weak you may even be able to stunlock it with spammed fire golem death explosions, at low level, if you can pay the mana cost. If the skeletons are getting themselves killed three screens away, or you want to move them all to a specific spot (ie. on top of Nihlathak) town portal to town and back and all skeletons are gathered around you.

UNSUMMON all poison mages; they do like 600 damage over 600 seconds. (yay) HOTKEY unsummon (!). I prefer to keep only fire and cold (if you have the bodies); fire gets a double damage boost from mastery and does twice as much damage as all the others, while cold freezes them down and makes it harder for them to kill your forces. Lightning is pointless as it does about 3 points more damage than cold, and doesn't chill, and has a shorter range than the other two attacks. Unless they're fire/cold immune (don't even THINK of using poison).

Merc: either holy freeze, prayer or thorns. Prayer helps revitalize near dead skeletons, but IMO freeze is more useful. Problem is that he doesn't often get to attack anything himself due to the skeleton wall in the way, and enemies may end up out of the radius of holy freeze (if he even turns it on in the first place). Thorns is when you realize you suck badly and can't kill anything, then at least you can buy a thorns merc and mock people using revive/thorns because you don't get the 50% resist and kill twice as fast. :) But as I said, it's only a way to salvage a failed character. It defeats the purpose. ;) I use an act 3 lightning mage. He sucks. But I like it. If I wanted to powerplay, I'd use revives instead of mass warriors, or else stay in 1 area without any resists and bone spirit + CE [cow explosion]. ;)

Bane: The Ancients. They will pwn your skeletons, and golems can't kill all three - Sirian killed D with iron golem, but the thrower isn't affected. :angry: Only way to kill him at all is with a good +p&b +spirit wand (keep any totem you find along the way that gives a bonus to p&b or bone spirit, for this one fight). Level 3 spirit can do it in Normal and NM. Level 6-10 spirit in Hell. The other way to kill him is by fire golem nuke. FG blows up when killed or otherwise removed from the game, and does 50 fire 50 physical damage in a radius. Remove all +skill items (to keep mana costs low) and just spam FG on him. It may kill him.

(Edit: can it kill in Hell? Yes it can. It just takes a bit more time. But IMO, having 100+ minions of which 40+ do 30-60 damage per hit (cold-fire) or an average of 1.8K per second isn't weak. Heck, inferno sorcs do way less than that. CHAIN LIGHTNING does less than that with max mastery, if you only hit one target. Armageddon does way less. Bone spear? Tornado? Volcano? Bone spirit? Poison nova? Even Blizzard? Rotflmao. :) )

[Brista]

Sirian killed D with iron golem

If you mean Skeletorr then no he didn't, he used Confuse

[Brother Laz]

And how exactly does one kill Diablo with confuse? :lol:

......

I meant Subpoena ('P') who killed D with about 50 iron golems. ;)

[kier]

My nec hasn't maxed all his summons, as I have put some skill points in other skills so he's fun :lol: . I know what skills you need for summoners though.

Skelentons (the basic ones) are pathetic, but fun. my guy has 18 i think, but they are useless on hell. The mages are a bit better as they dont die as quickly due to their chicken AI. You should max skell mastery and revive, allthough this uses ALOT of mana. my nec has more mana than many sorc, i think hes around 1.6k mana.

Choose a golem to get pretty high/max. I chose fire, but iron is pretty good. look on The Areat Summit and see how the skill progresses. Don't put too many points in golem mastery, unless you are just a golem nec (my next guy will be, along with bone spirit and bone wall/prison :D ).

Curses, you should put points in amp damage and iron maiden (the 1 use of skelentons is they will reflect the damage with this curse :ph34r: ). Bone skills i wouldnt really bother with, a few points in corpse explosion.

The curses/bone spells put only spare points in, you don't need to many in them due to the following reasons. This is the aprox items you should use:-

*increase max mana with frostburns and soj as you need ALOT
of mana.
*Use skill items, as many as posible, and charms as well.
*Don't be too bothered by res/def/etc if you are in a party, but
if on your own you may need it to kill.

Hope I've been a help, my necs up to 80 summons I think. Good luck,

kier

[Archon_Wing]

Skeletons are weak, but they are not useless. They play the role of a tank. With mastery they can usually take a few hits, and the shear number of them prevents them from getting to you mages. In fact they are key to a pure summoner build. I don't recomond maxing revives because it's impossible to keep them all around plus most of them are too stupid to do anything anways. :)

[Kevin]

Since revives are blocked by other minions, if you have hordes of skeletons, the revives will get stuck, and just disappear, skeletons will get stuck on each other as well, but they will still teleport around you on occasion.

I really don't think you will be able to do it with just summons. I think a thorns merc will be pretty much required, and then all the damage will be done by the reflected damage (thorns is flat out better than IM as well, not that you are using any curses). If you can use charges on items, you'll need them, especially if you run into a physical immune so you can lower resist from charges. Killing one with just mages will take forever since mages really don't do much damage, teleport charges would be a big blessing as well so that you can regroup your minions, it will also make revives a lot more viable as they won't wander off. I would also think you would need fire golem to get some elemental damage, the holy fire aura he has can also keep the heat off your mages and skells. You will need to max mastery, but I don't think you need to get it there until NM, you will want to get more minions early I think. Having a point in revive will help, as popping one up in the middle of a monster pack keeps stuff clustered, some of the mage and ranged types will also still be effective among the skeletal hordes as well.

Of course bodies will be a problem. I don't remember exactly what the deal is but the game only tracks so many objects, and your minions and corpses basically affect the same counter, so the more minions you have the faster the game removes corpses, making it that much harded to get minions when you need them.

Either way, good luck with a pure summons only, I wouldn't have the patience to play one myself. My zookeeper with other support skills was tough enough.

Now, if you can have a pally with you at all times, then it is different, you can have the pally max thorns, and you can both get prayer mercs, and keep the minions up and running for a really long time. Amp damage (through charges if you are staying pure) will make pretty much everything, even on Hell, that isn't physical immune kill itself in one or 2 hits in most cases.

[Growler]

1.8K damage per second is a tad unrealistic

a) not all of the mages will be in a position to fire, some will be on the wrong side of the screen
B) the rate of fire is not 1/second but slower than that

Still, it is respectable damage.

Growler

[Animation]

Hi,

This is strictly an aside, but I wish there were a way to control your skeletal mages. Specifically, it would be nice if a necromancer could control what kinds of skeletons he summoned by what kind of gems he socketed his shield item with.

So, basically, gems in your shield/trophy would affect the summons. if your shield item can only have 1 gem (rare or unique or set) then that gem would determine the kinf of Skeletal mages. ruby = fire, emerald = poison, sapphire = cold, topaz = lightning, any other gem = random.

If you had multiple gems in your shield/trophy, then it would be proportional, but follow the same formula. For example, a 3 socket shield with a diamond, a ruby, and a sapphire would summon 1/3 fire, 1/3 cold, and 1/3 random. Personally, I'd have one shield with 3 diamonds and a switch shield with 2 rubies and a sapphire in it.

But you get the idea.

Wouldn't that be neato?

Lewis

[kandrathe]

Think "White", the rune word. I have 3 of them, which I make as I find 2 socketed wands with multiple and good + skills. Yes, only + 4 skeleton mastery, but...

There is "pure", and there is practical. "Pure" is fine if you want to stop at the end of nightmare difficulty, or slog it out for hours with the Hell Act bosses and avoid most of the Hell monsters. That is true for not just the necromancer.

My summoner "Don Perfecto" (he began life as my PGem mule) is lvl 42 and mid way into nightmare and is viable and fun so far. My strategy was to build him as a poison dagger melee-mancer, with maxed summons (not numbers, but power). Here is what I did in the summoning tree (w/+skills); skeleton 1(7), skeleton mastery 10(16) (will max eventually), clay golem 1(7), skel mage 10(16), golem mastery 16(25) (will max), blood golem 1(7), iron golem 1(10) (will max), fire golem 1(7), Summon Resist 4(10) (add as needed), he also has a point in amplify damage(4), teeth(4), corpse explosion(4), poison dagger(4), and poison nova(4). White gives you +3 P&B skills and +2 in Bone Spear (8), and Bone Armor(8) to boot. And, I went with Prayer merc, and I love that guy! His stats are Str is 67(+10,+5), Dex 34(+10,+10,+4), Vit 93 Nrg 96(+10). In my summoning stance, I have +3 to summoning and +3 all necro skills so I have a minimum of 7 in all summoning skills.

For equipment I was motivated into building him when I found a rare unraveller skull with +2 Necro skills and +2 iron golem, +3 golem mastery with dual resists are a bonus. Trangs set would be nice, but I only have the gloves which wouldn't help him. He wears the following; Undead Crown, Snakecord, (Spineripper, Swordback hold) for combat (+3 necro skills), (Gravenspine or 'White' wand, rare unraveller head) for summons (+6 summoning skills), +2 necro skills ammy, rare ring with FR, LR, AR, DR - rare ring with AR, LR, CR, rare gothic plate (+3 def/lvl, + mana, FR, DR, MDR), Sanders Taboo, Sanders Riprap. I also keep a "Pusspitter" in the Cube with bolts for those times when I need to stand off behind my tanks. Blackbogs Sharp is another common weapon alternative that I find frequently, but I just like the concept "Spineripper". :)

Most of the time you can just follow along behind, amp damage, and let your forces engage from the rear, while you send in a bone spear once in a while to influence the battle. Eventually a real nasty unique or superior will decimate your force and you will be left with your Merc, and Golem, or less. That will always be the case with the Act bosses, so you need to build with that and the ancients in mind. You can see by my strategy that I like to have options for multiple tactics. I can jump in and melee with poison dagger, or stand off and knock down the real bad ones (LEB) with the crossbow.

I made the mistake with my first summoner in single player to focus on numbers rather than power. I was level 32, when I faced Diablo in Classic with ~20 skeletons and 10 Skeleton mages. One or two fire rings from Diablo turned my forces into dust, including my golem and merc. Needless to say Diablo biatch slapped me, and christened that necro "A Little Girl Named Susan", as I ran screaming from the Chaos Sanctuary.

[kier]

Good news all, I am up to 86 summons (85 not including my golem), I can get a max of 106 if i manage to max my summon skills, more if i get more charms ( i could get another 8 charms, so that would mean a total of 130 summons)! I wouldn't play in the same game as my nec if i were you :P

[Taem]

Does the damage from Thorns and Iron Maiden stack? If it does, theres your combo! Or better yet, does the damage from Amplify Damage work with Thorns? If so, thats an even better combo!

[Kevin]

I'll give the simplistic answers.

Thorns and IM are additive. If you have a 500% damage thorns and a 100% damage IM, that would be 600% damage returned on a 0% physical resist..

Since Amp drops physical resist, Amd and thorns are basically multiplicative. If you have 500% thorns and amp something with 0 phsyical immunity, you get 1000% damage returned. If it is 50% phys resistant it would 750%.

Of course using Amp means he isn't a "pure" summoner as that is a curse. But thorns is by far better than IM (not only because it returns higher damage but it is also almost always on your minions due to its huge radius), and there is no point in using IM and thorns when you can amp with thorns.

[Taem]

Ahh, that was my next question. So amplify damage and thorns do work togeather? That really sounds like a great combo if you ask me. Do you think the benefit from Thorns + Amplify Damage would outweigh the benefit of Thorns and Iron Maiden?

[Archon_Wing]

In normal and nightmare, high level IM (29+) and thorns does more damage. However in hell, due to the 50% physical resist, amp+thorns is far superior. Amp cuts phys resist from 50 to -50 in hell. Even a lvl 50 IM plus thorns merc won't beat AD and thorns merc. So would you try to get an insanely high level of Im or just stick one point in amp? The answer is obvious. :)

I think the thorns merc was capped at level 17? If you can bring it above level 17, IM simply doesn't stand a chance against amp.

I personally don't think you should cast IM after normal unless you are desperate. In 90% of situations, the other curses are infintely better. Not to mention is not exactly party friendly at all. A lot of people don't like necros because the IM/golem cheese isn't godly anymore. Truth is, you can't depend on any one skill to survive. The necro is a perfect example of it. None of his skills alone are particularly effective, but when used together are much, much more powerful

Not saying that IM is useless, but the necros that spam it in public games cause certain feelings.