Better for starting MF: Sorc or Necro?

GoldenBird

New member
Oct 23, 2008
598
0
0
Better for starting MF: Sorc or Necro?

I've recently come back to D2, and I've been trying to decide what to do. I've already worked up a level 80 fishymancer (somehow I tagged along on a few free rushes ^.^). But I don't have any access to teleport (since enigma costs an arm and a leg), and without teleport I'm dieing alot in hell and I'm having a hard time with my merc because it's draining my gold.

I'm starting to wonder if a sorc would be better because of their natural teleport? My doubts about having a sorc are the immunes around, and also that their gear needs a bit more input than a fishymancer's.

Tell me your opinions, please. Also, please tell me some good sorcy mf builds for beginners if you think it's better.
 
Re: Better for starting MF: Sorc or Necro?

Both are good characters and have their own advantages and disadvantages. For skeleton necros, your advantage is survivability, so you can use any equipment you find. Their disadvantage is killing speed and mobility. So if you try to play like a sorc and run bosses, you'll find you're not successful, because you'll be spending lots of time getting skeletons, and then you'll have trouble running through areas because you'll get mobbed by monsters. What you should be doing with your necro is to clear high lvl areas like the pits and river of flame.

A sorc is better for killing individual monsters, because of teleport and static field. But you have a higher start-up cost, since you'll need lots of fcr, fhr, and +mana to be fast enough to take advantage of teleport, and you'll need more life and resists that your necro does, or you will die a lot. All this in addition to the mf that you need for your runs to be worth it.

So what's better? In my opinion, a necro is good as a starting character, because he;s successful no matter equipment you get, so you can focus on mf with cheap equipment like 4 topaz gothic armor and 20% mf rings. You can use that to run areas until you get better stuff either for your necro, or to build a mf sorc to run bosses.
 
Re: Better for starting MF: Sorc or Necro?

Sorc wins hands down for faster wealth accumulation in my opinion and none of their basic gear is really that expensive.
Dual spirits or wiz & spirit + magefist + viper and you pretty much have your fcr/fhr/mana gear covered. All that gear shouldn't cost you more than a handful of pgems this late in the ladder too so wealth isn't much of a problem either.
 
Re: Better for starting MF: Sorc or Necro?

snip Oblique

^what he said.

The sorc as said before is the best character for bosses, the problem is getting there. You will need initial equipment, but they´re usually very cheap.

You will be able to find and gamble mf equipment, and wear all mf with the necro, while with the sorc you will need specific equips to reach certain FCR breakpoints and resists.
With the necro, you won´t need it, only res and even that is debatable. I run with my summon necro in the reds, just be careful and avoid gloams.
 
Re: Better for starting MF: Sorc or Necro?

In single player, with no time limits on the number of games you can join in X amount of time, the sorc wins. Getting to NM Meph is pretty easy, then you farm him for a bit to get some basic gear, then you farm Hell Meph to get "wealth". Although the Necro can survive better on less, he's simply not as fast at accumulating "good" stuff.

It might be different on BNet with game-timer limits & temp bans & such, meaning you can only get in ~15 Meph runs per hour (or whatever it is). However, as the others mentioned, some basic equipment should be quite cheap to trade for, so I think that cuts into whatever advantage the necro will have.


<--- In softcore. In hardcore, safety > all, and I'd pick the necro. :p
 
Re: Better for starting MF: Sorc or Necro?

Both are good characters and have their own advantages and disadvantages. For skeleton necros, your advantage is survivability, so you can use any equipment you find. Their disadvantage is killing speed and mobility. So if you try to play like a sorc and run bosses, you'll find you're not successful, because you'll be spending lots of time getting skeletons, and then you'll have trouble running through areas because you'll get mobbed by monsters. What you should be doing with your necro is to clear high lvl areas like the pits and river of flame.

A sorc is better for killing individual monsters, because of teleport and static field. But you have a higher start-up cost, since you'll need lots of fcr, fhr, and +mana to be fast enough to take advantage of teleport, and you'll need more life and resists that your necro does, or you will die a lot. All this in addition to the mf that you need for your runs to be worth it.

So what's better? In my opinion, a necro is good as a starting character, because he;s successful no matter equipment you get, so you can focus on mf with cheap equipment like 4 topaz gothic armor and 20% mf rings. You can use that to run areas until you get better stuff either for your necro, or to build a mf sorc to run bosses.


Strongly disagree

Necro may be safe because all of his minions, but you'll notice how slow he is to accumulate wealth. Time is money, and sorc is fastest thing next to to the hdin.

Hdin

PROS
-no resists on BH (i know about wailing beast, dont start)
-great damage, relatively fast cast rate (with spirit shield)
-solid defence and block with Holy shoeld

CONS
-well, ermm, gear is somewhat more expensive, but also one of the cheapest pala builds
-if you do not like the build because it's seen very often, and you like to make new, exciting builds
-no natural tele (but that isn't realyl the problem, I'm just covering all things)


Soso


PROS
-Fast caster
-Often huge damage with big AOE
-Natural tele

CONS
-resistable (biggest con)
-mostly fragile, and low hitpointed (use energy shield
(also some soso's have a lot of vita and a lot of life, this is only general)


These two are most effective MF chars, but you can choose any that you please, especially if you don't mind being slow


 
Re: Better for starting MF: Sorc or Necro?

Speed is only good if you don't die. And if OP has trouble surviving boss runs with a necro, sorc will probably not be much better. At least until he gets some fcr and fhr. Hammerdin won't be too much faster than necro, because without enigma, he still has to run everywhere, although he does have vigor and more hp. For the most straightforward approach, necro is still my recommended starting point for anyone unsure of what to do. This trick is to remember to not just run bosses but to do area clears. True you get less magic items, but you get a much better chance at runes and white items. I will concede that when comparing both approaches with full gear, boss runs will probably be better (which is why they're so popular) at getting good stuff.

But I think that both approaches are inferior for starting off, since it will take you awhile to find anything half-decent, and then you'll have to go through the trouble of trading it for something more useful to you. It's probably better to do runs for currency instead, so NM countess runs for ral runes, or NM arcane runs in full games for gems. In both cases, sorc is the best hands down- even without equipment, since you can use a single element attack and max teleport for unlimited casting. And you don't need mf either, so you can use your best equipment.
 
Last edited:
Re: Better for starting MF: Sorc or Necro?

Start with Sorc (any will do, though Blizz or Meteor might be best for boss running), level her to 80+ in hell with your best non-MF gear, then go back to Nightmare Meph and put on MF gear (topaz stuff and whatever else you can manage.) You can run him easily even with crap gear, and get a lot of great stuff to start building an item base. Since BNet does have the throttling / temp banning, you might want to add in Nightmare Andy to the runs (still some good basic items as well as SoJ, not to mention Nagels to boost your MFing.) I think running those two should be enough to avoid any temp bans. GL.
 
Re: Better for starting MF: Sorc or Necro?

Immunes don't matter for sorcs, since sorcs bossrun. Summonancers are better for area clears, while sorcs are the best at bossrunning
 
Re: Better for starting MF: Sorc or Necro?

Sorc with 30 FHR, 68(105 prefered) FCR.
Skills: FO:20, CM:5, CL:20, LI:20, LM:20

Try to get spirit weapon its very cheap and easy to make.
Try to trade for spirit shield if you can.
Build an Insight Polearm and use the Defense Merc. With this you can teleport so fast and never run out of mana. If you can't keep him alive then just go with drinking potions.
 
Re: Better for starting MF: Sorc or Necro?

Well, ofc the hdin without enigma is not nearly as efficient. Enigma is one of the essencial parts of the build. With enigma, he's the best PvM char in the game. Feel free to disagree.
Anyway the easiest char to start with is soso for obvious reasons (just read the post above)

Resistances DO matter, depends on what kind of bosses do you run. Meph doesn't have resists, so you can easily tele to him and kill him. His minions do. A lot of them, and if there ever happenes you get attacked by them, you're screwed. Nihla runs with soso are especially hard, almost impossible on full players. So, ermm, basicly, you can NP solo Andy, Meph, and Duriel with soso on hell, but no Diablo and Baal

And, yes, my hdin is very fast. I also carry full rejuvi pots just in case.
 
Re: Better for starting MF: Sorc or Necro?

Actually, spirits and insights can be harder to obtain than you think.

Sure, the runes are no problem but I have yet to encounter a trading game with someone selling socketables.

4 socket monarchs can only be obtained in hell. Same thing with elite socketed polearms. My merc has an insight in a partizan, and his damage is horrible. He can't take on more than 2 enemies at a time. He needs more damage to become independant, so no, you need an elite polearm for insight.
 
Re: Better for starting MF: Sorc or Necro?

Well try the trade forums :D


EDIT: Try hell cow runs, best place in the game for trash items. And don't look for socketables only, get elite white polearm, and socket it with Larzuk
 
Re: Better for starting MF: Sorc or Necro?

ofc sorc is better at mf. u get to wear tal set and with a larger amount of mf and good killing speed.

for summoner u need nigma and u need to have good equipment setup to be consider a good mfing necro.
 
Re: Better for starting MF: Sorc or Necro?

Kennoth: Yeah, but then you need to make a necromancer or javazon before that to be efficient, and if you're there anyway might as well create all your wanted characters before starting MFing for real

Trade forums are ok though, although how can you afford it before you start MFing? Sure, you most likely can scrape together some stuff before that, but you may have beem unlucky
 
Diablo 4 Interactive Map
PurePremium
Estimated market value
Low
High