Summon and ??? - What's best?

[ZeroGTR]

Hi dudes.

I'm building a summoner and i would like some piece of advice.

So far, the basic cookie-cutter:

Stats:
Str - nuff
Dex - 0
Vit - rest
Nrg - 0

Skillz:
Skellies/Mastery - 20/20
Clay - 1
GM - 1
Amp - 1
Bone Armor - 1
Revive -1

From now on, what would be the more reasonable way (considering going solo):

- Mages (low dmg in hell, but cannon fodder)
- Bone (no more Marrow's, but still...)
- Poison (no invest in 3 skills for synergy = low dmg output, but there is bramble)
- Curses
- Armor/Wall/Prision
- More Golem
- More Cowbell

Plz, even just thoughts would help a lot.... smartass2

Tnx

[FrogMan]

I heard a Bone necro/Summon is quite usefull to solo hell, Skellies and then some to boost your bone arrow/spirit damage.

[pepereina1]

I myself put a few points into amp damage to get a decent radius, a few into corpse explosion and then the rest into revives. It is best to have a point in a few different curses like decrepify and iron maiden etc, you never know when they come in handy.

But having 10+ skeles and 20+ revives kicks ass imo.

[ZeroGTR]

Yeah, curses is the ultimate-1-point-wise tree ever....

Bone, im afraid that Spear/Spirit wont cut that good through hell w/o wall/prision synergies.

I've got trang gloves yesterday, i'm really tempted to go to poison branch now

[edithegodfather]

Who said you have to choose from something, i have a 90 level necromancer with skeletons, mages, fire golem, masteries and all curses learned and for about 7 level i haven't been putting any skill point and i'm doin' pretty well...i guess laugh: .

Just make sure you have a LOT of skillers.

[ZeroGTR]

Yeah, i just maxed my mages... i play only 1.5 hours a day, so im building this summ slowly....

After skellies, mages, 1pt on revive and golem branch, there is no really more worthy offensive power left (PnB, without syns, is not effective in hell)....

I'll go to 1 pt Bone Armor and spend the rest on synergies from here. I'm a coward.

[hellsing293]

I have this same exact problem. Let's brainstorm this out:

Foundation:

Skeleton Mastery: 20 Points (auto)
Raise Skeleton: 20 Points (auto)
Skeletal Mage: 1 Point (useful, prereq for revive)

Clay Golem: 1 Point (awesome versus boses, prereq for revive)
Blood Golem: 1 Point (prereq for revive)
Iron Golem: 1 Point (prereq for revive)
Revive: 1 Point (great minions, +skill gear makes it all the better)

Golem Mastery: 1 Point (powers up golem, prereq for summon resist)
Summon Resist: 1 Point (essential for keeping minions alive easier)

Now, for curse I don't add to all of them. Call me wrong, but I believe the only curses a summoner really uses is Amplify (for normal creatures) and Decrepify (for bosses). I believe that most other curses are too situational, and simply not as straight-forward and effective as Amplify and/or Decrepify. It may just be me, but minion damage > everything else.

Following these parameters:

Amplify: 1 Point (main curse)

Weaken: 1 Point (prereq for decrepify)
Terror: 1 Point (prereq for decrepify)
Decrepify: 1 Point (main curse)

I usually only add 1 point into curses because I feel that extra points are useless. With +skills, the curses are high enough. Casting a curse one more time isn't the end of the world.

Now that the basics are out of the way, there are 40 skill points (skeles) + 11 skill points (all else) being used. So, with 51 skill points used, 110total-51used=59left.

Poison Nova Approach:

Teeth: 1 point (prereq)
Corpse Explosion: 1 point (prereq and useful with +skills)

Poison Dagger: 17 points (Synergy)
Poison Explosion: 20 points (synergy)
Poison Nova: 20 points (main skill)

With this approach, only 3 skill points will be missing from a Poison Nova synergy (assuming your lvl99). This doesn't seem that damaging, especially with Bramble.

Bone Spirit/Spear Approach:

Teeth: 1 point (synergy, prereq for Bone Spirit/Spear)
Corpse Explosion: 1 (prereq for Bone Spirit/Spear, useful with +skills)
Bone Spear: 20 points (main)
Bone Spirit: 20 Points (main)

Bone Armor: 1 point (prereq, useful with +skills)
Bone Wall: 15 point (synergy, prereq for Bone Prison, useful with +skills)
Bone Prison: 1 Point (synergy)

This approach requires many more skill points. I think that this build is not optimal because of the lack thereof. I chose to add one into every synergy because the synergys add the same amount damage, so in this case having extra skills can be useful in certain situations and we don't lose any skill points. I noticed a choice between which synergy to dump the extra skill points (14) into. I chose to add to Bone Wall because:

1-It doesn't matter which skill was added to because they all improve the damage of Bone Spear/Spirit the same.
2-Teeth won't be used even if all of the extra points were dumped into it. It simply wouldn't be strong enough.
3-Bone Wall seemed like the most useful in comparison with: Teeth (an already inferior spell to Bone Spear/Spirit) and Bone Prision (a seldom, if at all, used spell).

Overall, I feel Bone Spear/Spirit would be a bad idea.

Max Summoner Approach:

Corpse Explosion: 20 points (main)

At this point, I know you must be saying "I though this was an approach to maxing summons". The answer to that is yes, however, Corpse Explosion is too good to be ignored. With just 20 point into one skills, as opposed to other approaches that require 20 points into multiple spells, Corpse Explosion will WRECK crowds of creatures. I can't stress enough how awesome Corpse Explosion is in PvM. With 20 hard points and +skills, it can hit every monster on the screen! The best part is, as the monsters get stronger, so does Corpse Explosion. Not to mention that Exploding your slain enemy's corpses into the faces of your live foes just adds to the badassness(omg lol, this didn't get spellchecked--it's actually a word!) of a summoner.

**All skills hereafter add onto the points added above, simply to keep within the same parameter of 59points remaining**

Revive: 19 points (gets stronger with harder monsters, sufficient damage, great meat shields)
Skeletal Mage: 19 points (lengthy explaination below)
Whatever you like: last point

For Skeletal Mage, I know they aren't THAT effective in Hell. However, the 20 points are ALREADY in Skeleton Mastery, so it would seem wasteful not to use Revive and Skeletal Mage. With +skills, the mages would actually be alright. Besides for doing, at the very least, mildly impactful damage, they are also great meat shields.

You may notice that I didn't add any extra skills into a golem/golem mastery.
Simple, straight-forward, and practicle is how I would describe this build--and I like it a lot! Both Revive and Corpse Explosion get better with tougher monsters, and both skills can be whipp ass in certain circumstances. The regular Skeletons, possibly with a might merc equipped with Pride, are the solid foundation of the build while the other minions are the extra umph. The Skeleton Mages really just extra, and a dump for otherwise useless skill points. The nice thing about this build is that it would function without the Skeletal Mage skill points, so you don't have to be lvl99 to effectively maximize the build (like you would if you were using Poison Nova/Bone Spirit and needed synergies).

In general, I seem many errors in the way people build necromaners. I am a non-nonsense sort of guy, and I don't like to add any skill points unnecessarily. Adding extra points into curses just seems lazy, CAST THE CURSE TWICE IF YOU NEED TOO! Likewise with golems; they can also be recast easily. With lots of +skills gear, a good CTA for powering up your minions, and auras for increasing your minions' damage (Fantacism, Concentrion, Might), your summoner should be rocking it.

These are just the three logical conclusions that I made about building a summoner. The split that I noticed was the difference between minions being the focus of the build or minions being a supplement to the build. If you have any different ideas or feel that something I said doesn't make sense/is wrong, don't be afraid to speak up and question it.

[ZeroGTR]

Wow, nice post...

Actually i have some comments on some points:

With just 20 point into one skills, as opposed to other approaches that require 20 points into multiple spells, Corpse Explosion will WRECK crowds of creatures

1 point in CE will give that result... i'm owning cows with just +skills.

For Skeletal Mage, I know they aren't THAT effective in Hell. However, the 20 points are ALREADY in Skeleton Mastery, so it would seem wasteful not to use Revive and Skeletal Mage. With +skills, the mages would actually be alright. Besides for doing, at the very least, mildly impactful damage, they are also great meat shields.

There's a cool point here. Mages have the mastery already maxed at this point, cold mages slow enemies and poison stop regeneration (Hell Baal is a lot easier w/o regen, i've tried and w/o mages is a lenghty kill).
Also, i dont have Pride nor Infinity to compare, but i have LR. Its funny watch LR'ed Meph life going down as fast as if he were amped (ok, not that fast, but quite fast). Mages are underrated, they just didn't had the luck to have a merc with a conv. aura ready to pop out from hire =), or a 1pt wise -100% resist curse.

Revive: 19 points (gets stronger with harder monsters, sufficient damage, great meat shields)

They get stronger with skellies masteries, the skill itself only add minions.

I'm just hunting Nigma runes now, to use in a Dusk Shroud... i'm using Trangs now... FCR is sickening, but the look is cool and bonuses are tnx.

Great info, tnx man... luv this forum!

[hellsing293]

To your first point, if you maximize your +summon skill gears will CE cover the screen? I just figured 20 points would make it as effective as possible.

And in regards to your last point, I said revive gets stronger because the minion's stats are based off of the slain monster's stats. So the tougher your enemy is, the stronger of a revive he makes.