Skelmancer plan

[Wyrm]

Recently started a skelmancer (then he died via lag in the arcane and I restarted, then that one died stupidly against diablo and here I am starting again) and I have a general idea on what skills to max, and what not, so now I'm thinking about when and where to place skills until maxed. Right now, my plan is this:

2 - Raise Skeleton
3 - Skeleton Mastery
Den - Amplify Damage
4-12 - Raise Skeleton
Rad - Skeleton Mastery
13-23 - Skeleton Mastery
24 - Clay Golem
Izual - Golem Mastery, Summon Resist
25 - Weaken
26 - Terror
27 - Decrepify
28-35 - Skeleton Mastery
DenNM - Raise Skeleton
36-44 - Raise Skeleton
45 - Lower Resist
RadNM Teeth
46 - Corpse Explosion
47 - Dim Vision
48 - Confuse
49 - Attract
50-68 - Dim Vision

Right now I'm level 19, following that process. Should I alter it at all (maybe switch when I max mastery and raise)? I've got a +2 Raise Skel, +2 Skel Mastery, +1 Amp wand, and a +2 Raise Skel shield/head that I switch off for a +2 CE, +2 Bone Wall, +1 Dim Vision one once the army is summoned.

[rriggs]

Looks pretty good. Not sure at what point in there you were going to take big D, but I would say beef up the Skeleton Mastery before him, and then Weaken/Attract afterwards. You will want to Decrepify him. I think the reason most people say Normal Diablo is the hardest thing for a Summoner is because they haven't got enough points in SM by the time they first meet him.

[DukeTrout]

I agree with rriggs, that it is better to have 4 or 5 strong skellies against big D than oodles of weak ones. However, I would add my favorite approach with big D in Normal. Get a wand with +3 or so Bone Spear, and make sure you have Decrepify and Clay Golem before taking on the big dog. Your skellies are going to fall at some point, and your merc will probably also go down. Instead of leaving to rebuild your army, cast CG on his far side, Decrepify, and hit him with Bone Spear. Repeat many times. You will probably want some blue pots for this. It takes a few minutes, but it is safe and relatively fast compared to wandering the acts to scrounge up some corpses to rebuild your army.

[Jedi Knight]

It's a good plan, indeed. I'm building one right now, he's level 32 and just entered act5. It's my first skelemancer, he's really fun to play, and while he doesn't kill very fast, I prefer big battles to solo fighting.

Here's his bio :

General_Motus
Level 32 Skelemancer


Summoning Spells

Skeleton Mastery : 9
Raise Skeleton : 9
Raise Skeletal Mage : 3
Everything else : 1


Poison and bone spells

No points allocated


Curses

Decrepify : 2
Amp, Weaken, Life Tap, Terror, Iron Maiden : 1


He's using a wand with +3 Skeleton Mastery and a head with +1 to Necro Skills.
On weapon switch, a Steel-runeword Gladius and a (not yet assembled) RalOrtTal Gothic Shield.

At first, I thought Life Tap would be my main curse, but I found Decrepify to be much more useful. For Big D, I just Decrepified him all the time while whacking him with my sword. It was players1, but still, the fight was not as tough as I expected. I don't have a lot of resists, and a melee necro is not the most powerful thing in the world... and since my minions died instantly... :angry:

I should not have invested in Skeletal Mages - they always die and don't deal so much damage. Fire Golem is so much useful !

Just my two (hopefully useful) cents ;)

[rriggs]

Once you max out your Skeleton Mastery, your mages will last a lot longer and dish out more damage. Having a mix of them is great in Hell when everything gets all kinds of crazy immunities going on.

[Wyrm]

My skelmancer is lvl 72 now (he beat nm at 62 or so), and is currently doing pit/countess runs. Normally, I would continue on through the acts, but I found a Bloodmoon on one of the runs and have gotten a bit greedy since then.

Normal Diablo was actually a piece of cake, he died at level 25 (would have been 24, but I took some time to level my merc). All I did was Decrepify him and let the skels do the work, I had 7 skeletons at the time and mastery was getting close to being maxed, so they did alright by themselves. Didn't bother doing anything with Bone Spear/Spirit until recently when I ran into Posessed Wraiths in the Dark Tower that were immune to phys and immune to curses. When it took 5 min to kill one with a Fire Golem and a merc (the same Blessed Aim merc I've had since Act 2 normal) using a Wormskull for poison damage (I use a Lore skull cap), I decided I needed a bit more non-phys damage.

Thus far I've been soloing the whole way, the only place I ran into a bit of trouble was nm duriel since he was 1-hit killing my skeletons, even though both mastery and raise were maxed by that point.

I've kept true to the plan for the most part, except from levels 60-70 or so when I decided to ignore Dim for a while to build up to Revive, Fire Golem, and Bone Spirit. So far it's been a pretty successful build, I'm just realizing more and more that I'm going to need a lot more +skill eq and especially +summoning (hit a skill shrine and the skeleton damage went from ~220 up to nearly 300, so now I'm motivated to get the eq, though it might take a while since I don't trade).

One quick question though, I'm getting 2 different readouts on my skeleton life/damage. There's the one I see on the skill tree, and then when I set the skill as the right click skill, that shows different (and lower) numbers. Which one is correct?

[Wyrm]

Once you max out your Skeleton Mastery, your mages will last a lot longer and dish out more damage.  Having a mix of them is great in Hell when everything gets all kinds of crazy immunities going on.

Mages seem to be actually quite useless at this point. I don't know if it's only because I have the one base point in them or what, but they hardly deal any damage whatsoever. The only time I do find them useful is when I take the time to summon them until they're all poison, to negate the life regeneration in hell. Unfortunately, I don't always have the corpses needed to do that, since I've found a good friend in Corpse Explosion unless I need the corpses to keep up my skeleton army against a boss pack.