Between a rock and a hard place?

[YoungDbl]

Between a rock and a hard place?

Hey guys and EU's,
I have come to a part in my necro's DII career where I need some opionons. I am in NM act1 just finished countess on players8 since blood moor normal. I have one point invested into all my curses except for the middle row. I have maxed raise skeleton and skeleton mastery. They are in there upper 20's after gear. I have one in clay golem and one into summon resist. I have one into teeth and one into corpse explosion. I plan to max ce and revive as my last skills. Now currently I need to decide what to max next. I was thinking ce but now I have found an item that makes me consider changing my mind. I am currently using a ancients pledge kite shield. I just found a demon head that has +3 to revive +1 to decrepify ( which is a major curse for boss's and revive would help if I decide to max that first ) Now you may be thinking go for the resist dumba$$! Here is the thing the necro head has 2 free sockets!!! I was thinking if I throw a couple pgems in there it would be worth switching out the ancients pledge. If indeed I should max CE instead first then I should just hold onto the ancients. So now I leave this parting of items and welcoming of others up to you SPF! Your vote is my command!

Thanks
-DBL :thumbsup:

 

[Hp_Sauce]

I personly would Max CE next.

I also would not max Revive at all, ever. I wouldn't put more then 8-10 hard points in it and even thats too many in my opinion. With 8 points in Revive and your +skills it will probably be at 11 or so. Which means you can summon 11 Revives which is great! but anything more then that and you simply wont be able to keep up with them. They will run out of their time and die, or you will just run ahead of them and they will 'poof'. You simply wont be able to keep an army of Revives that large, unless it's an army of useless Revives such as Carvers. Frenzytaurs, Urdars, and Spear cats are really the only usefull Revives, and 5-10 of them is plenty.

I would also toss that Necro head in favor of one that offers +all skills, or +summoning skills as soon as you find one.

The skill points you were going to put into Revive I would use in Amp, and Attract to make it viable in Hell, possibly Dim Vision as well. Which ever curses you use the most basicly.

-hps

 

[Sint Nikolaas]

Well, there are also a couple of things you didn't mention yet.

How are you planning to play the game trough. You said you're on p8 now, but will you continu this trough NM all the way? What about Hell?
The thing about CE is that it doesn't scale with the player settings, making it a lot more effective on p1 then on p8. Which means that if you're planning on playing trough NM on p8, you'll be maxxing a skill you won't use (much) during that time.
On the other hand, if you're using that head you already have a couple of points in revives, meaning you can easier choose to go with CE.
CE will rock in hell. However I'll have to suggest going with revives. On the other hand, you don't have to max it immediately. Getting 10 in and then 10 in CE might help a bunch too.
Do you have any +skills? I like a bigger radius on Amp too.. personal taste I guess :smiley:

 

[Dudzy1]

Max ce next for sure, it will help alot more in hell.

 

[Jaedhann]

Well, there are also a couple of things you didn't mention yet.

How are you planning to play the game trough. You said you're on p8 now, but will you continu this trough NM all the way? What about Hell?

I think sint got a point here. As long as you play on p8, CE is not as good as it can be (as in p1), since it doesn't scale as Sint says. So first i would get some revives and then max CE as you are close to hell.


Jae

 

[Llathias]

Speaking solely on information and not experience, it's quite hard to sustain max revives, as they die for the bazillionth time 180 seconds after you summon them. With 1 revive per slvl, you'll have to keep summoning continuously every few seconds.
My suggestion would be maxing CE (as conventional), and use the +3 revive head to get Revive to a decent slvl. As for the sockets, don't forget to consider the Rhyme RW (though it's not like you really need any equipment; you have excellent crowd control and a huge army doing all the work for you).


edit: way too slow

 

[YoungDbl]

All my plus skills are on summoning. I plan to finish NM on players8. I also want to attempt hell on players8 as far as I can. I am playing untwinked and really cant afford to wait for an item. Anything that is helpfull at all I have to make use of. I wanted to max revives since I have a bunch of leftover points and I dont want to throw them in curses. Curses may have small radius's at low levels but thats nothing a few clicks wont cover. I rather click a curse 3 times to get a group covered then spend skill points on a one click curse. I dont ever use c/e so I was thinking of making use of revive first. C/e doesnt come into a important role ( for me ) untill act4 or so in nm. Untill then everything drops pretty quick. The time limit on revives kind of does suck. I plan to use this necro to run WSK after I pat him. So revives just seemed cool. The point of them would be for clearing out areas where skeletons are just not getting the job done. I dont really have a problem tossing 20 hard points into them. So many extras. The thing I dont like is the mana cost. Right now my necro has like 50 str 30 dex 245 vit and base energy. My plan was to keep pumping vit for the rest of the game and maybe a few points into str/dex for equipment changes. If I get revives that cost 45 mana seems like I will either need a half inv of mana pots or more points into energy. Vanilla by the way so insight is no help here. I cant afford much belt room since my belt only has 2 rows. (Lenymo) Ive been using it since normal act1 and just dont see a reason to get rid of it. I am a pretty stubborn person :hide: so most likely I will use the 2 diamonds in the shield and go revives but I just want a few opionons first.

EDIT: By the time I posted this I had 3 more replies lmao. Ryhme .. Cant remember stats ill have to look it up later. Think about it while I finish up andy and grab rad's present from the sewers.

 

[Shagsbeard]

I always liked maxing Clay Golem and putting the rest in CE. Having a durable gumby is a big help.

 

[neumein]

I never really liked the summoner style of character much. I like to do the dirty work myself. I really liked the boner ( >.< that name makes me cringe). Select few enemies are immune to your primary attack, and you have an excellent spammable killing skill, as well as a solid 'boss' skill.

 

[Dornak]

Why don't you upgrade Leynmo to get the extra space?

Personally, I'd max CE before revives as you'll find it much more useful in Hell and for NM Baals Minions runs (even on players8 it still helps your kill speed).

 

[gotfocus]

I agree that extra hard points in revive probably isnt the best course and I also think that with +skills gear, putting extra points in summon resist wont help much later on. As said before, it just really depends on what you need and plan on doing.

You could ...
max clay golem for tougher gumby YA, but even better, higher slowing effect

max bone armor synergies for extra physical d and to have an extra toy to play with

increase durations and areas for curses

increase area for corpse explosion

max skely mages for prevent monster heal, slow, and a way to deal with physical immunes

those seem like the best options out there but its completely depenant on what you want and need. hope this helps

 

[bill_n_opus1]

In my opinion, there's no need to max CE ... unless you really want to.

You can save many points keeping your CE radius at ~ 7.5-9 yards instead of 11 or so at max. Keep revives at 1 hard point and let your +skills bring up the rest. At end game you should be able to muster 13-15 revives which is alot really. More than 1 hard point into revives is a waste.

Use your saved points into your Clay Golem or into bone armor/prison/wall for crowd control and as a bone armor synergy.

Once you've made a ton of summoner/exploders/fishymancers you'll realize that max CE isn't necessary ... the offensive output while amazing will rarely leave you at a deficit if you bring it down from 11 yards to 8 yards ... and yet will allow you to strengthen yourself more at the same time. Use a majority CE approach and you'll get 98% the effectiveness of full maxed CE.

 

[teddeeboy]

I agree maxing CE helps greatly increase the killing speed of your necro. Also I found a high slvl (20+ after + skills) Dim Vision to be nice curse is the WSK, shuts down most Gloams. I rebuilt my WSK, Meph runner Summoner specifically to add this for safety to get to the Throne Room using teleport staff charges on switch.

Then I put I just putting the rest of the pts in Mages as they can help with certain aspects, poison mage great from of pmh for non-poison immunes, essential to stop monster regeneration and I like to kill unbreakable PIs also well. I found 1pt revive and + skills give enough revives as HP_sauce mentioned. I found Revives tend to get in the way of each others summons and block your real killer, your merc. Your merc if properly equiped kills faster than all of your summons. Of course, teleport is essential with a lot of summons

Your necro head is nice one, but you may want at a few + skills to curse just to increase the radius and duration to a level where do not need to constantly recast them.

For mana save a lot + mana charms. If you get to 400+ you should have enough mana to require drinking a blue once in a while.

Getting a 4 row belt helps, upped Goldwrap is great summon Necro belt and maybe your heaviest item requiring str (depending if you use War Travellers, MarrowWalks or a set of rare boots) and is attainable

 

[neumein]

Having a team of 12 urdars to lay the smack into Baal is awesome. They're big, they're ugly, but they pack a wallop to boot. They soften up the baddies pretty well, and just use CE to mop up everything else. Not really efficient (compared to a well done sorceress) but solid, dependable, with some reasonable MF added in for good measure.

Good Luck!

-SoK

 

[Day]

I have a 91 level summoner who does most of my magic find – so is optimised for that rather than survival but is still incredibly safe.

On Revives - you don't have too have them but they are very helpful sometimes - e.g. Baal running (but I wouldn't bother for Mphisto as he dies too quick). 10 - 12 max is plenty so just place hard points with your skills for that. More than that is probably wasted.

I'd max CE but you could cut it back a bit to your taste. It definitely needs some extra points.

Although I don't think a summoner has a problem with skill points - once you have maxed the main skills - diminishing returns set in with no real uber skill to invest in - its more a question of filling in to your taste.

I'd also max mages - these are a love/hate thing. Again you don't absolutely need them and sometimes they are not even helpful (tight spaces) but occasionally they are very good - for the poison and cold effects and added meat shield - e.g. Great against hell ancients, Baal etc. I think they also fit the character.

I don't think you need bone armour or prison or wall (I think the later just get in the way and slow you down). The former is not really needed. The mages
would be better I think.

The dim vision idea is something I've never tried but it is supposedly very good.

Base mana is fine (there is nothing wrong with drinking one or two blue potions!). Once you have your army you just top it up as required.

Your curses look good. I use amp damage/decrepify and attract (the later is great for diverting gloams). I never really use dim vision but as I say I hear its good. Nothing else is really needed and I have been fine with 1 point plus skills.

 

[YoungDbl]

Ok I thought about this for a while. Giving some serious consideration to the problem and after playing through act1 and halfway through act2(NM) I think I might have a solution. After adding 2 points to revive and Pdiamonding the shield revive is ghey!!! So my thoughts were like this ( all hard points )
-5 revive
-5 amp dmg
-5 decrep
-5 attract
-5 c/e
-5 summon resist
-dump the rest of my points into dim vision untill its maxed. If I find myself needing more skills to spend after that they would be allocated evenly between the curses I use. What do you think? I really was liking the necro but it seems like as soon as I started to dump revive I dont like him as much. So 5 hard points and they will only be used to run WSK and thats about it. If you wondering why the 5 for everything I like the numbers to be clean

 

[zenithsmith]

i would go with splendor as the runeword , since it gets MF and +1 skills which gives you an extra revive and better everything else

 

[YoungDbl]

Also I forgot to add I would throw 5 into golem mastery and gumbi. I hate recasting gumby every 5 seconds.

@zenithsmith: The item portion doesnt effect me. I could do it naked. Its the skills I would like to prefect.


I plan to use this necro to run full clears of WSK and then kill baal.

 

[Hp_Sauce]

-5 revive
-5 amp dmg
-5 decrep
-5 attract
-5 c/e
-5 summon resist

Maybe a few less in Summon Resist, and a few more in CE. Or at least thats what I would do.

Once your Summon Resist is giving +40 to +50 resist the deminishing returns get terreble. With 1 or 2 hard points in SR it will be at that point after your plus skills.

-hps

 

[zenithsmith]

why add more to decrep? its not that useful to add points to it except for the duration and its not that hard to recast it, if its mainly for Baal, 1 point is more then enough
same with attract - level 1 attract lasts for 12 seconds that should be more then enough to get your army engaged even with trangs gloves on thats level three
Attract Duration: 19.2 seconds at level three

i'd add them to mages for more protection, unbreakable PI's, cold/poison, but Dim Vision is viable since the range expands for added protection from the gloams