Advanced Necromancer Strategies

[Mad Mantis]

Advanced Necromancer Strategies

Advanced Necromancer Strategies or the Finer Points of the Dead Side

In the past all of us had to rely on our intellect and familiarity with the skills in order to survive. Our skills were nowhere near as powerful as they are now. If you wanted to use Skellies, then you’d better have a detailed plan to beat things in NM or else you would be maggot food.
Although things were harder, they also gave us a lot of insight in the Necro class. We all had to developed personal strategies for dealing with the various monster and coping with weaknesses in builds. A lot of these strategies still hold true in this patch. Although they are sadly not as needed as before.

This threads hopes to become a place where all the Necro’s can share their strategies for various builds. If you have discovered a new way to employ DV, post it here. If you have found a solid strategy for beating Dclone, post it here. If you have found a way to use IG effectively, post it here. If anybody has finally figured out how we can use Weaken, post it here. This can be beneficial to new and old Necro players alike.


Before we begin let me issue a word of warning. This thread is not here to answer questions! It is here to discuss strategies. If you want to know how to find Dclone, do a search. If you want to know how the Marrowwalk bug works, check the [ Essential Necromancer Information ] and do a search. If you want to know if LR works with Bspirit, do a search. If you still fail to find an answer, make a new thread.
Keep this thread clean of questions and useless remarks. Spam and other such posts will be reported to our resident Mod Dark Knight, and hopefully deleted.

All sane contributions will be welcomed.
When posting a strategy, use proper spelling and punctuation. That makes sure everybody can read it and looks nicer.
If you want to discuss a strategy with another contributor, be respectful. Don’t let this thread escalate into a flame fest. This should be a place of learning, not fighting.

 

[GenXCub]

I've said this before, but some may not know:

If you are a summoner, and your weapon/shield slots consist of items that are either +all skills, +necromancer skills, +summoning skills, and do NOT consist of +raise skeleton or +raise skeleton mage, you can often perform a weapon switch for a few seconds and not lose any skeletons due to the change in skill level.

I say often because the game checks at a regular interval, so if you have bad timing, you can sometimes lose them... but the majority of times, if you keep the switch for just a second or two, you can switch back to your +skills gear with no harm done.

Why is this useful? Because if you have a HotO and a Homunculus on one weapon switch, and you summon up 2 more skellies and 2 more mages, you can keep a Blade of Ali baba and a Rhyme or Splendor shield on switch. Put your corpse explosion skill on the right-click of that MF weapon switch. In the heat of battle, do a weapon switch, fire off some CE's, then switch back. All kills will receive the higher MF level and you will have a larger army.

Hows that?

 

[Mad Mantis]

If you are in possession of a weapon with a range of three, or greater you can attack over your Bone Prison. Why is this useful? Because you can contain something like a LEB and attack it while it is in the Bone Prison. The lightning bolts will not hit you. This is particularly useful for a Meleemancer who will almost always be in possession of a strong BP.

I haven't tested it with different elemental attacks yet. So I don't yet know how universally useful this technique is.

Hows that?

Ingenious. I like it. :thumbsup:

 

[Beonarri]

This may seem like common sense but...
If you want to move through an area quickly, either teleing with Enigma or just running really fast, about every screen length or so throw a Dim Vision in all four corners of the screen. That way nothing will see you and you can move unchallenged.

That's a great tip on the Bone Prison Mantis. I'll have to try that.

 

[Necrochild313]

A poison mage has very little damage, but it's poison length is insanely long. Most people overlook them because of their low damage, but in hell mode they are invaluable for the prevent monster heal aspect of poison damage. In many occasions, when one takes into mind the high rate of regeneration monsters have, they could be making more of an impact than a single skeleton warrior is doing to a monster. And in this case a "long duration" for thier damage is a favorable thing.

With a lvl 20 skeleton mastery (most skellimancers bring it to this level) and a level 1 skeleton mage a poison mage will prevent the monster from healing for exactly 3 and a half minutes!

 

[Slipin]

NC...always standing by his prett little mages :uhhuh:. Great thingy-mah-bob-what-ya-ma-it's MM.

 

[-Ian-]

I just came here a few days ago, but thank you Mad Mantis for this thread. I too am missing the days when people would shun necros. I especially miss the 1337omfgwtf corpse explosion from Diablo2 classic

I hope you're successful in this thread, as it seems a few people already have posted ^^

As a response to necro builds, I kinda missed the boat as I quit 2 days before 1.10 came out and only found out that it had come out this February, lol. I didn't get into D2 much after 1.10, as a lot of noobs/newbs(?) have showed up on battle.net and just make a total joke of the game..
I really like the necro summons now, though! ^^ Before skeles used to be useful to maybe Norm Act3, what a lark now ;P

The necromancer, at least, is now widely loved (I hope) across battle.net, or people just use him to boast how 1337 they are ;\. Either way I'm happy my favourite character since Classic is now something to be wary of ^^

Cheers,
Ian

 

[rickcarson]

A poison mage has very little damage, but it's poison length is insanely long. Most people overlook them because of their low damage, but in hell mode they are invaluable for the prevent monster heal aspect of poison damage. In many occasions, when one takes into mind the high rate of regeneration monsters have, they could be making more of an impact than a single skeleton warrior is doing to a monster. And in this case a "long duration" for thier damage is a favorable thing.

With a lvl 20 skeleton mastery (most skellimancers bring it to this level) and a level 1 skeleton mage a poison mage will prevent the monster from healing for exactly 3 and a half minutes!

I believe that this is incorrect. In 1.10 Poison Mages *do not* prevent healing.

I've seen monsters in *normal* healing by regeneration while under the influence of a hit from a Poison Mage.

A far better use for a single mage (or three or four) is to get an ice mage, for the chilling effect.

 

[Pier]

A nice trick for isolating a nasty aura enchanted boss out of his pack, is to simple terror his minions.
The boss is not affected by this curse and stays, being swarmed by your undead army.

Grr pIER

 

[Dornak]

When using the Arm of King Leoric, avoid patches of fire on the floor (e.g on Countess runs) as the damage can set off bone prison/wall. If you don't have teleport it's possible to fry yourself to death

 

[Mad Mantis]

I believe that this is incorrect. In 1.10 Poison Mages *do not* prevent healing.

This is something that calls for a test under conditions that can be reproduced. Because I have heard several accounts of poison preventing and not preventing monster heal. It can be of great importance to all of us.

If both NC and rickcarson would state the experiment they have performed in as much detail as possible and the subsequent results, we can determine if further testing is necessary. This is a pretty important issue for us Necro's.

 

[JoJeck]

Mad Mantis, I have already conducted an experiment that proves beyond doubt that the poison from mages prevents regeneration. I expect rickardson is mixing up the healing of some monsters which can occur while poisoned with ordinary regeneration which can't.

My test was conducted in the Countesses tower in Hell. There I trapped a single Spectre type physical immune monster with my skellies. I had already killed my merc and unsummoned my golem. My 7 skellies were hacking away at the spectre and it was bashing them back ... all to no avail since it was physical immune and regenerating and they were regenerating faster than it could damage them. Hence a stalemate and ideal chance to test poison.

I summoned one poison mage from a nearby corpse and let it poison the spectre. I then unsummoned the mage.

For 250 odd seconds the spectre was green and its life bar crept down very slowly. Then when the poison wore off it regenerated back to full health in maybe 15 seconds.

From this it is possible to conclude that the poison damage of a single mage at about 0.5 hp per second stops the normal regeneration of the monster ... otherwise the life bar would not continue to fall while green, since the regeration rate is 10 to 20 times faster than the poison rate of damage.

I consider this conclusive proof that poison stops regeneration.

 

[Mad Mantis]

I consider this conclusive proof that poison stops regeneration.

It appears that poison damage doesn't quite give negative regeneration like OW does, but does stop healing. A most fortunate turn of events.

 

[rickcarson]

It appears that poison damage doesn't quite give negative regeneration like OW does, but does stop healing. A most fortunate turn of events.

After exhaustive testing against my evil arch nemisis: Fanatic Zombie in the Blood Moor of Hell...

I'm going to retract my original statement.

I'm going to replace it with the following statement:

Poison Mage damage *does* stop healing. HOWEVER *ANY* other source of damage *STARTS* the healing over again.

Other sources of damage which I tested that restarted regeneration included:
Clay Golem
Bone Spear
Poison Nova

The duration for which the healing is stopped appears to be for far longer than the poison lasts for. But it does eventually start back up again on its own.

For this reason, I am forced to conclude that Poison Mages do stop regeneration, but that this has no practical use. Poison Mages kill too slowly on their own, and any other minions or team mates are going to be doing damage of their own, thereby rendering the whole exercise pointless.

My basic method of testing was thus:

Get Merc killed off. This was surprisingly difficult. The Act 1 cold Mercs are surprisingly robust, and it is easy for them to run away from monsters they've just chilled. But never let it be said that I won't sacrifice someone else's all to get what I want. No sacrifice is too big for someone else to make for your entertainment.

Proceed to Act 1 Normal. Raise up some Poison Mages. Watch in awe and wonder as they were actually able to kill things (albeit at a much much much slower rate than other Mages). Squint at life bars. Results inconclusive.

Proceed to Act 2 Normal with Mages in tow. In chaos sanctuary, go looking for trouble. Find trouble. First 'evidence' of regeneration whilst poisoned. Second and third 'evidence' of regeneration while poisoned. Notice that life loss due to poison is highly erratic.

Ponder 'evidence'. Conclude that at least once the 'evidence' was due to the life leech of a Blood Lord (vampire type). Consider erratic nature of life drop off. Consider low levels of regen. Wonder whether erratic drop off in hit points is due to 'bursts' of healing in the middle of poison damage? Results inconclusive. Decide to continue testing (a) offline, and (b) with 'players 8' turned on. Log off.

Start offline game. Try to get Act 1 Merc killed off and raise army at same time. The biotch will not die! Unsummon army. Die biotch die! Eventually find a sufficiently large mob of monsters in one of the Act 5 plateaus. Biotch finally dies. Oh holy carp! Here comes the mob! (This is hardcore btw).

Run away! Run away!

Return to act 1. Set players 8. Raise army.

Proceed to Normal Act 2 Arcane Sanctuary. Go looking for trouble. Find trouble. Give trouble a piece of someone elses mind. Notice this time how much smoother the life loss is. This time round I was starting to think my earlier results might have just been the difference in life totals between what my computer is guessing, and what the server is actually tracking the monsters life as? - and the increases in life which I had observed on previous occassions being due to updates from the server. Certainly the difference between the 'choppy' or 'erratic' life loss of poisoned monsters online compared to the smoothness of the loss offline was a marked contrast. Results starting to look bad for the initial hypothesis.

Interestingly, the more testing I did, the more I was convinced that although Poison Mages weren't quite as pathetic as I'd thought, the more convinced I was that they were still a complete and utter waste of time compared to other Mages.

My second unrelated impression is that Mages can take an incredible amount of pounding. Some people on the forum talk like they're made of tissue paper. In normal (and to an obviously lesser extent in Hell), they were quite capable of tanking large groups of monsters without any sign of Golem, Merc, Revives or Skeletons.

Decide to up the ante, bring out the big guns, and do some testing with my PNova/LoM in Hell. Time to go back online.

Log on. Try to kill off Merc. This was a lot easier in Hell. :-/ I still had to work at it though. Try to raise an army. This was really really hard. Much harder than when I am doing it normally, which involves unsummoning Poison Mages asap. With a bunch of Poison Mages in tow, the damage from Poison Nova keeps getting overriden by their pathetic damage. :rant:

Anyway, the most I ever managed to get before running out of patience was 7 Poison Mages. Along the way I ran into various monster groupings and different bosses and champions. The most useful one for me was 'Fanatic Zombie'.

With him laying the smack down on my 7 Poison Mages, they were able to drop the red bar all the way down to the end of the word Zombie on his title bar. Which is... about 1/6th to 1/10th of his total hp. I was later able to duplicate that amount of damage with 4 Mages, and at one point 2 Mages. Using Lower Resist I was able to get them to get the damage down to approximately between the i and the e. (Or there abouts).

I then parked him near the entrance to the Rogues camp, and sat on my butt waiting to see if the Poison would kill him off. It didn't. I waited quite a while, made some snadwhiches. Ate the sandwhiches... etc. Came back. Went over to see what he'd dropped.

Although the Poison hadn't killed him, his bar still hadn't healed back up from the end of Zombie. I wondered if he was just really slowat regen, and of course he was trying to gnaw my leg off. So after dancing the Diablo shuffle with him for a while, I eventually got sick of it, and summoned my Clay golem to hold him off while I waited.

As soon as the Golem hit him, he started regenerating large chunks of life.

Hello! Conclusive proof! But with an Enigma as well.

So I decided to test various types of damage. Was it just Physical that triggered the healing? If Bone Spear wouldn't trigger the healing, you might get a viable build that way.

At this point, my testing changed method to this:
Raise squad of Poison Mages elsewhere.
Poison and park 'Fanatic Zombie' after feeding the Mages to him.
Wait for Poison to wear off.
Go whack him with some source of damage. Watch regen kick in.

Tragically, all of the different types of damage I tried on him restarted the regen immediately.

I did start thinking that the regen was permanently turned off, but at one point I parked him for so long (well, the garbage needed taking out anyway), that I left it too long and he'd rehealed again. I wonder if the length of time the regen is turned off for is set (and not effected by resists), whereas the duration of the poison is effected by resists?

Suffice it to say that this was an extremely long process, largely complicated by the difficulty of building the army of Poison Mages, when having them around made my primary army raising attack virtually useless. Grrr. Bad Magi. No biscuit! :rant:

As well as taking out the garbage and starting the washing up, I also ate a lot of toast and sandwiches... putting my very body on the line for the cause!

Conclusions:
(1) There is no use for Poison Magi
(2) There is no way to usefully combine the Poison Mage stop of regen with something that would actually kill things in Hell.
(3) Poison Magi do more damage than I thought they did, but the damage from the other Mages is still easily at least an order of Magnitude larger. Plus the damage they do does not scale up with their quantity (but then, we knew that already).

 

[OldSkoolGamer]

If you are in possession of a weapon with a range of three, or greater you can attack over your Bone Prison. Why is this useful? Because you can contain something like a LEB and attack it while it is in the Bone Prison. The lightning bolts will not hit you. This is particularly useful for a Meleemancer who will almost always be in possession of a strong BP.

It doesn't need to be a high range weapon anymore. You can do it with a Bone Knife (range one).

In 1.09 it had to be long so that way you wouldn't hit your own bone wall. Since you can't hit it anymore, any range weapon will work. The monsters will not be able to hit you, but you can Poison Dagger them.

Try it out in the Maggot Lair (best place to fully block an enemy easily).

 

[JoJeck]

I read all of that rickardson :cyclops: and at present I do not believe your revised statement for poison damage and regeneration. At present I can't think of a method that will prove conclusively that another source of damage will somehow cancel the stop-regeneration effect of poison.

I am not convinced that your method has led you to draw the correct conclusions. Did you know that when you move outside a certain distance (about 2 screens) a monsters state is saved by the game and effects such as poison, OW and PMH are suspended as is regeneration? The monsters hitpoints are frozen until a player comes back in range. If that time is very long (not sure how long that is ) the monster is fully healed.

That is why when you came back after emptying the garbage the Zombie had not died. I'm not sure if the Golem caused it to regenerate or whether you coming back withing range did that.

I think that the only valid test of poison stopping regeneration should be done with all participants being on screen for the whole duration to avoid the above effects of leaving the scene.

 

[Mad Mantis]

It doesn't need to be a high range weapon anymore. You can do it with a Bone Knife (range one).

Yeah, I tested it and it worked. But the monster does need to be in range of the weapon. So you can do it with a range 1 weapon, but increasing the range makes it easier to hit a monster from all sides. But usually the monster runs up to you anyway.

 

[Mad Mantis]

I think that the only valid test of poison stopping regeneration should be done with all participants being on screen for the whole duration to avoid the above effects of leaving the scene.

Agreed.

You will need to find a monster with a suitable high regeneration and hit points.
An army should be used to beat the monster down and after that unsummoned, it should be unsummoned.
Then let the Pmage do its thing and unsummon it.
If you have a high BP or BA, you can stay near the monster or imprison it.

We all thought of this test, as it is the most basic. If the regen is stopped by the mage, then you can use spear or so to target the monster and see if it does regain life. But what monster would have an acceptable regen rate?

 

[rickcarson]

I read all of that rickardson :cyclops: and at present I do not believe your revised statement for poison damage and regeneration. At present I can't think of a method that will prove conclusively that another source of damage will somehow cancel the stop-regeneration effect of poison.

I am not convinced that your method has led you to draw the correct conclusions. Did you know that when you move outside a certain distance (about 2 screens) a monsters state is saved by the game and effects such as poison, OW and PMH are suspended as is regeneration? The monsters hitpoints are frozen until a player comes back in range. If that time is very long (not sure how long that is ) the monster is fully healed.

That is why when you came back after emptying the garbage the Zombie had not died. I'm not sure if the Golem caused it to regenerate or whether you coming back withing range did that.

I think that the only valid test of poison stopping regeneration should be done with all participants being on screen for the whole duration to avoid the above effects of leaving the scene.

I did consider the monster state issue. It wasn't an issue for the first couple of times I tangoed with the Fanatic Zombie, because I didn't fully park it, just ran slightly off screen, then when it chased up to me, I'd run around it to the other side and wait for it to almost catch me again, etc.

If what you are saying is right then the monster would have healed or started healing as soon as I came back on screen. It didn't. It only started healing when I would damage it, or one of my minions would damage it. Except that one time when I came back and it had fully healed. I tried a variety of different things to try to find one that would not kick start the regen again but failed. All up, I probably spent over 30 minutes on that one monster.

If it wasn't for that one occurence, I'd have quite happily drawn the conclusion that regen was permanently turned off.

By all means, try it, and see what result you get.

If I repeat the experiment, I will look for a monster with 0 poison resists, to see whether that makes a difference for the timing of the regen kicking in.

The thing is, that your observation and my observation are not at all contradictory. Unfortunately, if I'm right about what I saw, then Poison Mages really are useless.

It also explains my earlier observation that PMs don't stop regen, based partly on my run in with the Diablo Clone with my summoner/overlord. Even though he was clearly poisoned, everytime one of my skellies or gumby would take a whack at him his regen would kick in.... Since they outnumbered my PMs, his regen was on 'most of the time'.

 

[rickcarson]

I've tried a variety of things. I was not able to reproduce the experiment with the Fanatic Zombie. I tried a variety of tactics on a variety of monsters and bosses.

Dim Vision worked best for separating out a boss. Unfortunately, every monster that got poisoned ultimately died. And it takes so long that I've run out of patience.

Given the following experiment:

(1) Use Dim Vision to separate boss from crowd.
(2) (somehow) get a Poison Mage to hit boss
(3) unsummon Poison Mage, or let boss kill it
(4) Wait for about a minute
(5) Summon gumby. Let Gumby get in a couple of hits. Unsummon gumby
(6) Boss is still poisoned, and still slowly losing life
(7) Boss dies after a couple more minutes

All I can say is bah humbug. :rant:

I've lost all patience with the stupid exercise, :yawn: and I'll happily admit to being wrong (maybe the DClone is a special case or something :scratch: ).

I *still* think anyone who uses *any* Poison Mages is fooling themselves about their effectiveness.

Note to mod: since this thread was intended to be for strategies, not argument, feel free to delete my posts in it. Oh and, slap JoJeck over the wrist with a wet bus ticket for getting my name wrong. :rant:

Sorry for being tired and grumpy.