Necromancer Variant Idea

[gimlisam]

Hey, all. I was wondering about a variant that I may try playing. I want to try a confusion necromancer. I realise that this variant would do quite poorly versus single monsters, but that is why I would have a high level Golem and a merc. I would focus on trying to get high defence/bone armor and good resists so that I can take the few hits that would come my way. I'm also thinking about getting Bone spear/spirit to aid my golem and merc in taking out the few monsters that don't kill themselves from confusion. I would appreciate any and all comments that you have about changes to this build and also if you feel if this is viable at all. Thanks!

[Obi2Kenobi]

OK, first off, if you are going to say variant (some people are real sticklers about proper terminology), then you have to, by my definition, give it something other than just uses Confusion. Variant is more of the attitude. Like for D1, the Hamster had to play in zoomed mode, because Hamsters are small, and rodents don't have very good vision. What this is would be more of a just a build (at least I think that is the correct term).

Now, on to the actual build:
It won't work. Unfortunatly, you don't get exp for kills made by confused monsters (really ruined my Darth Vader necro...). That, and even high level golems will have trouble killing in Hell/Nightmare. And even if it were possible, you would get slaughtered by Act Bosses, due to the massive damage hirelings/minions take from them.

[Warleader]

LOL. In 1.09 i have a Necro, explode Cro Style. The guy have Max ALL golems and Mastery lvl 15 with items. Wand with corpse explosion, something like 19 in CE, i think.

The guy is incapable now for do ACT 3 Nightmare.. :(

[arrunique]

Heres question....if I made an iron golem out of a beast runeword weapon would he get a fanat aura? Because that would be pretty cool if a bit nuts.

[adeyke]

Yes.

[jhartelt]

Unfortunatly, you don't get exp for kills made by confused monsters

Don't you get xp from monsters death if you are near enough, regardless of who made the kill?

[gimlisam]

Don't you get xp from monsters death if you are near enough, regardless of who made the kill?

I think, and I could be wrong here, that you have to be allied with whoever makes the kill. And last I checked, your character is not allied with the monsters ;) .

[Caaroid]

The reason for the 1/6th PVP penalty is that players and monsters have different statistics. Monsters have 10, 20x as high a life as players do, players do 10, 20 (100)x as much damage as monsters do. Because of this, for PVP to work, they have to scale down the effectiveness of player attacks (in essence beefing up the player life 6 times versus PVP attacks), and most players still go down fast in PVP.

What does this have to do with a confuse necromancer? IF you rely on the monsters damage to kill each other, your kids will grow old by the time you complete the game. A hell Pit Lord can have 15k life, while it does 112 damage at most... you do the math. For confuse to be more than a skill to, well, confuse monsters with, you'd need it to beef up the confused monsters damage at least by the PVP penalty, but more in the range of 20 or so.

And yes, all this nice math and calculation came to me trying to find out why my build does not work ;)

[gimlisam]

Ah, well, it was a fun idea while it lasted. Thanks, all, for telling me this before I went mad trying to make it work!

Edit: P.S, I know that I should know this, but can Confuse stack with, say, Amp Dam, or any curse for that matter?

[adeyke]

No two curses can stack on the same monster.

[gimlisam]

I could've sworn that I heard that some mix of AI-affecting and non- could could. Ah well. My last, faint glimmer of hope just went 'poof!'
Again, thanks for all the help.

[Obi2Kenobi]

I think there was something similar to that pre1.10, but now Attract (not sure about confuse) cannot be overwritten at all.

[Wyrm]

I could've sworn that I heard that some mix of AI-affecting and non- could could.  Ah well.  My last, faint glimmer of hope just went 'poof!'
Again, thanks for all the help.

There was a bug where if you hit a monster with an AI curse and then got more than 2 screens away from them before it wore off, it would become a permanent curse, but I don't know what, if anything, has happened with that in 1.10.