Summoning necro on hell?

[eajoe]

Hi,

I resumed my long-forgotten reviving necro, and walking through NM now...
Few things are worrying me now :unsure:

1. How to kill the first monster on hell (if 'personally', with what weapon etc.)
2. Are skeletons and/or mages usable on hell?
3. How is summoning necro performing agains PI monsters?
4. What act 2 merc aura is the best?
5. What golem is most usable on hell?

thanks for any reply

eajoe

[Shade]

1. Simpliest way is summon golem of choice, find alone act1 monster in Blood Moor and make your merc kill it. If you have access to Pindle
Garden or Bloody Foothills - just go there and raise some army.
I recall some zoomancers killing monsters with ShaelShaelEthEthEthEth phase blade (and having crushing blow item), but it seems just wrong to me.
2. Skeleton warriors are ok as long you have 20 points in them, 20 points in skeleton mastery, some points in summon resist and at least +5 to summoning tree. Ah yes, and do not forget to curse your opponents with amplify damage or decrepify. Skeleton mages are worse - their hps and armor lower, damage isn't great and AI is horrible.
3. Either lower resist'em and let skel mages do their dirty job (slow,
but sure if you don't mind having at least one poison skeleton mage to stop monster regeneration), lower res'em and let your revives to
kill it (assuming your revives have some sort of elemental attack).
Or, curse it with amplify damage (in 1.10 it works on phys immunes lowering their phys resist by 20%). Of course, in most cases monster
still have 80% phys resist, but if you disable their regeneration - they will kill it. Do not forget about good old CE.
4. It depends. If you have strong skel warriors and melee revives - use Might (asuming you have clvl>mlvl). If you want your skeletons
only to tank, not kill - use Thorns or Defiance. Note that Might won't do anything good to your mages. If you are pretty sure that your skeletons miss too much - use Blessed Aim.
5. If you are rich and can get your hands on those new uber-runewords with built-in auras - use Iron Golem without question (and if you have revives - you have at least one point there). If you want to slow some nasty boss - summon Clay Golem (it has slow ability). Other golems are useless without heavy skill investment. Note that Blood Golem + Iron Maiden/Thorns bug was fixed.

[Warleader]

Hi, i like much playing as a necro, in 1.09 because the cashmaker tricks and in 1.10 for the same and the vaibility in hell.

I have current three summoners in europe Softcore Ladder:

1) CashMaker Lvl 64, very viable, 29 and 30 lvl mastery and skels, use tarnhelm, TO armour, +2 summon amu, and a simple clvl1 tophy and wand. The hireling is thorns. Good for money. My merc use skullder ire, and a mask and wapon 75% flee monster. Nice Nice. Actually can act 1 hell, but i am runingh baal nightmare. Secondary skill: Bone ( 20 spears aprox ) and go boine spirit. Curses amplify- sometimes explode corps.

2) Inotremebername level 85 with forgotaable items, and 26 revives. Defiance Merc, really leveled him in a evening, my friends and i kill 30-50 times baal. Bad char. As support, mages, down as flies.

3) SlowMancer a work in progress, lvl 21 in travincal. Have a wand with RS +3 and decrepify +2 and golemmastery +1. I go to max SM and RS, use a Undead crown ( +3 SM ) , max Clay golem , use a holy freeze merc and the decrepify as curse with dim vision. I not decide what second killing method. Possibly revives, or expode corps. I have a similar char in singke player as a patriarch, really a safe char. The evil guys are so slowwwwwwwwww. Only need a iceblink for my merc.

The firsts and the last are hell viable, the first is slow or mana intensive. Sometimes i put in my inventory 10-30 blues for one wp to other. I can go without, but ius slow. I think with more levels in my belt is quicker.

[arrunique]

1. How to kill the first monster on hell (if 'personally', with what weapon etc.)

Depends on if you are pure summon or summon hybrid but in either case your act 2 merc with a half decent poking stick will do just fine in act 1 hell bagging your first body. Support him with decrep and it is candy. A cheezy way to do it is just run outside in act 5 and there are a few bodies lying around to get you started. Also you can enter anya's portal and skeleton up the bodies there, they don't mind.

2. Are skeletons and/or mages usable on hell?

Yes but they need support from your curses and an occasional body pop, and a might merc. With maxed mastery mages do decent damage but if you skip mages you can put the points towards bone spear so it just depends on your play style. Spear is a bit mana intensive and not super effective without high synergies. Personally I would only use it on a summoner if I had marrowwalks and could take advantage of the charges>synergies bug.

3. How is summoning necro performing agains PI monsters?

Decrep or amp damage nullify physical immune. Off the top of my head I can't think of a single monster they dont.

4. What act 2 merc aura is the best?

Might (offensive) is the best aura. It doubles your killing power. For higher end poking sticks look for arioch's needle because the + skills helps his might aura. Or doom if you are fabulously wealthy.

5. What golem is most usable on hell?

Clay golem is the best in hell. By the time you get there you should have a few skillers and the scaling life of clay will be higher than the rest. I forgot what the breakpoint is but I think with 1 point in each golem and 1 point in mastery at around +6 skills clay golem will have more life than fire. If you bother with revives you might as well put a point in fire just to help in nightmare but other than that you should think about skipping revive, iron, blood and fire golem and directing those points to either clay or summon resist.

[Kevin]

It is not clear cut about might being the best.

All skeleton damage calcs done using this excel spreadsheet. This sheet does them all correctly and you can plug in the auras and skill levels, which I did.

For the to hit calcs, skells have the same level as you do at the time of summoning. If you are L50, they are L50 with. If you assume 20/20 on RS and SM, then they have an AR of 605. A NM balrog is L55 with 869 defense.

%ChanceToHit = 200 * AR / (AR + DR) * alvl / (alvl + dlvl)

AR = Attacker's AR
DR = Defender's DR
alvl = Attacker's level
dlvl = Defender's level

So with the above you have 200 * 605/(605+869) * 50/(50+55) = 39%

That is pretty horrible. A L12 blessed Aim gives you +240% to your AR. (I use L12 because an L50 Blessed Aim merc hired in Normal, and you always want to hire in normal, has an L12 aura, see This AB thread for details) That would put the AR of the skells up to 2057 and put the chance to hit at 67%. Which is a significant improvement.

That AR will become even more important if the level difference is even greater than that. So I think a skellmancer is better served by more AR tthan by more damage.

Let's look at some average damage calcs. Skellies do 124-127 damage at 20/20 (125.5 average). And you have 8 of them. So a rough calc, without any mercs will get you: 125.5 * 8 * 0.39 = 391.56 in a rough per swing averaged over all your skellies.

With the Blessed Aim merc you get this: 125.5 * 8 * 0.67 = 672.68

An L50 might merc has a L8 might aura. That adds +110% damage. Of course with the way auras and skeletons work (base damage) * (raise skel enhanced damage + other enhanced damage) that only takes the damage to 187-190 (188.5 average). So you get: 188.5 * 8 * 0.39 = 588.12

So you do much better with a blessed aim merc at L50. Nearly an average of 100 points of damage.

Of course that is for late NM. Lets look at Hell. You will probably be 70 at the start and around 85 when you kill Baal, though it can certainly be done earlier than that. I am just looking at where you will be if you just play through the game with an average of 3 other people in the game most of the time.

Hell Fallen are L67 with 933 defense, so you have them beat on the monster level curve if you enter Hell at L70 (and we will assume the merc is always the same level as you). Lets also kick the skeletons up to 30/30 for raise and mastery. That has your skeletons doing 309-312 damage (310.5 average) with an AR of 905.

Base to hit them becomes: 200 * 905/(905+933) * 70/(70+67) = 50.3%

A L70 Might merc has a L13 Might aura. That gives +160% damage. Which only takes your skeleton damage up to 480-484 (482 average). A L70 BA merc (hired in normal of course) has a L16 aura, which gives 300% to AR. That should kick the AR of the skeletons up to 905 + (905*3) = 3620.

The to hit percentage then kicks up to: 200 * 3620/(3620+933) * 70/(70+67) = 81.2%

Average damage per swing calcs (30/30 gives you 12 skeletons):
Might: 482 * 0.503 * 12 = 2910.3 (or for one skel take out the factor of 12 and it is a simple to calc 242.5)
BA: 310.5 * 0.812 * 12 = 3027.3 (or for one skel 252.2).

So things aren't quite as good for BA there, but that has you in front of the monster level curve.

Lets go to the start of Act 5. Put you at L80. Take an Enslaved (L79, 1546 DR). Blessed Aim aura to L18 (best a merc can do and 330% AR boost). Might is at L16 and +190% damage. Skipping the detail.

Might side: 514.4 * 0.371 * 12 = 2294 (191 single)
Blessed Aim side: 310.5 * 0.720 * 12 = 2683 (223 single)


Now Baal. You L85, Might L17 (+200%). Baal L99, 2847 DR.
Might side: 525.5 * 0.222 *12 = 1405 (117.1 single)
BA side: 310.5 * 0.533 * 12 = 1988 (165.6 single)

Most of the cases are going to look like this. Getting more AR for the skellies is usually going to be be better for you. Though I didn't take into account Amp Damage/Decrepify and that does start to make some differences as well.

Thorns is also a very viable aura to look at as well. Amp and Decrepify can knock physical immunity off most things and it also helps mages and revives deliver damage back. I haven't look at it all real closely but there is a strong case for it being the best choice as well.


EDIT: Dang it, I didn't consider area levels... That change the calcs I do believe, but I don't think the results will change that much. The skinny looks to be that the farther ahead of the mlvl curve you get, the better might looks to be. There are some other subtlities but I too tired to do any more right now.

[arrunique]

Pretty comprehensive. Though I still think a might merc is better in the end. The merc himself lays down piles of damage once you get a decent pokin stick. I agree through nightmare the aim merc will probably win out.

Your post makes me wonder if the aim merc would be better for a werewolf or a freezer though, mine had some AR issues. The freezer was down to about 55% in A4 nigthmare which is why he never made it past A4 nightmare.

[ynkesfan2003]

I have a lvl 82 summoning necro on USEast, and this is my answer to all of your questions.

1) When I started, I'd usually go to Cold Plains and have my merc kill a fallen or something just as weak (as weak as Hell can get) and revive that. Now, I just use the area right outside Anya's portal, the place is littered with boddies (I can get 12 skeletons before any of them awake).
2) I barely use revives, only when im doing Baal's Minions do I even bother. Other than that, my skeletons are fine. However, you'll soon find that vs. bosses mages don't really do anything, they die too fast and aren't the greatest at damage.
3) If you use the curse Amplify Damage, that gets rid of PI's on everything but unique monsters that have PI on the base monsters (ghosts, etc.) I have full Trang's equipped and just use firewall, usually they won't have much hp, so I just use my skeletons as tanks as i firewall them to death.
4) I say might, people can argue with Thorns, but the point of having a lot of skeletons is for them to kill, and them getting hit and taking damage in order to do so wouldn't help you quite as much. Another aura that could be useful is Defiance, but I'm going by the saying "The best defence is a good offence". Ultimately, its what you prefer.
5) Probably Iron Golem. I use Fire Golem only because i have more points in it (2) and it has more hp. I haven't ever bothered to level an Iron Golem, so I don't know haw their damage is, but the fire golem has more hp, deals more damage (given the enemy isn't immune), and to top it off, absorbs fire damage, a very commonly used element by the enemy.

[ynkesfan2003]

Being the stupid adolescence that I am, I didn't bother to finish reading the board before I posted, so I only just saw your post on the aim merc. Here's your mistake. you're saying +160% dmg, but your only adding 60% of the damage. theoretically, if a skeleton did 100 damage, you would put it up to 160 dmg. I'm not sure on how this works with a paladin, but judgin by what your sayng, it should be 260 as opposed to 160. I'm not sure if this is a mistake in the typing or calculating, but something in there is wrong.

[SIZE=x-small]knowing me it's probably the typing and my being stupid.

[ynkesfan2003]

dang, didn't go to small font.

[ynkesfan2003]

One final tidbit from me before I leave. while it's unsure whether or not might or BA is the better merc for skeles, i dont think any of us doubt that might is best for revives.

[Kevin]

No, the damage calculations are correct. That is how they work for skeletons because the might aura only adds to the other enhanced damage that they are already getting from skills to modify the base damage which is much lower than what the skill tab displays. That was one of the biggest points of the post is that things don't work obviously for skeletons, which is why BA could very well be a better aura for them.

[ynkesfan2003]

OK then, I'll try that on my necro. On the other four tips though, I think I'm pretty much correct.

[Yogi_Baar]

Blessed Aim aura to L18 (best a merc can do and 330% AR boost).

I assume you mean his aura level cap without any +skill adders? If you gave him a Lore hat, for instance, he WOULD get a level 19 aura, right? I'm just checking.

BTW, thanks for the spreadsheet link.

[gekko]

One final tidbit from me before I leave. while it's unsure whether or not might or BA is the better merc for skeles, i dont think any of us doubt that might is best for revives.

Also, might is far superior for the merc. If you have tons of +skills and are walking around with 15 skells powered up with lvl 40 or so mastery, the damage done by your merc may be insignificant. However, if you have only a half dozen to a dozen skells, a couple revives, and a good polearm on your merc, the might aura may be much more beneficial.

Might is also more beneficial (usually) to party members. Obviously doesn't help casters, but melee party members are more likely to enjoy the damage boost rather than the AR boost.

gekko