Dual dream necro possibilities?

[Cyrax1]

Purpose of this thread: Having a discussion in the IFT. Still got a lot of questions, so to stop the IFT from derailing too much and to prevent angering the SPF gods (read: mods) that way.

Somehow i've ended up in a discussion about putting dual dreams on a necro that may or may not be able to give a serious shot at reaching lvl 99. There seem to be a few different opinions on what gear and skills would suit that purpose best. It also seems like people are thinking that running Baal would be the way to go, whereas i myself have a strong preference of picking Nihlathak.

Here's some things mentioned in the IFT combined with some thoughts of my own. I'm hoping to get some input on whether or not you can see it work, or maybe even a complete new idea. Just keep in mind that the intention would be to create a necro that would be able to go for 99. Melee and with dual dreams would be the intention but are not set in stone.

Poison dagger is one way to go. Advantage seems to be high AR combined with a nice poison damage. Don't know what the best weapon here would be. EasyG suggested a wizzy which seems like a good choice as it has nice mods and frees up the other slots a lot because of high resists it offers. Combined with a merc carrying infinity hitting things should not be much of a problem. Then we got a crossroad. EasyG offered advice on how to take on Baalruns, which means getting lower resist to speeds things up. And imho i would feel safer with something to take hits. Personally, i was thinking more of taking on Nihlathak. Doing that speed would be key. In that respect i think that i would be better off if i don't need the time to cast lower resist (or any curse) and just attack. As i haven't seen Nilly in a long time i'm not sure if that would be viable or if that the time it takes to kill him goes up by too much.

Another possibility would be a character similar to Kimppi's dual dreamer with mages. This character does not use a dagger, leaving poison dagger out of the question. Kimppi's dreamer uses kingslayer, but i think something like grief could also be a good choice. Not having poison dagger does raise a problem in which skills to use. Again there's the difference between running Baal vs Nihlathak. For the first some extra help, mages or regular skellies, seems like a good idea. For the latter i see potential for bone armor and synergies to keep myself safe and perhaps beef up an iron insight golem so he stays alive and i don't have manaproblems. Also again the question: curses or no curses?

This are just 2 ideas. Maybe you guys can come up with something better, or just critique the above in order to improve skillplacement, items, etc. :thumbsup:

 

[EasyG]

Running Nihlatak is something completely new to me. Nobody did this in 2006 I believe, it sounds bit boring to me. Reading that pat thread, it sounds like he wasnt killing very fast, so maybe it is not such viable idea to run Baal this way.

Though I have the feeling that the extreme lowered resists, combined with all the damage and corpse explosions should do pretty good. Even lightning immune bosses should die pretty easy, especially when you can CE the minions.

 

[Kimppi]

Yes, the Dreams don't really do that much damage on a Necro because you can't synergize it. I don't think you can make one kill fast enough to be comfortable running for 99. You would probably be better off building around something else.

I had the idea of running Nihlathak with a Necro using PD some time ago and respecced to try it out. Can't remember the exact gear but I was probably going for max damage with a Dragon shield for Venom. It wasn't really that fast even in the Pit where I did some test runs and IIRC trying for Nilly was a failure. The DoT isn't really the best thing and you'll end up standing around dodging and waiting for stuff to die.

Not a very informative post but well...

 

[frozzzen1]

I'd say DualDream necro cannot really be effective lvl 99 runner. Necromancers don't have naturally good IAS breakpoints for any weapons, even with zeal from passion. In fact, I don't know why would you go with Dreams at any rate, especially considering that 2 x Dream add average 834 lite damage. That's so low that it's not even worth mentioning - ptopaz values :badteeth: You don't have lite masteries or synergies to boost Dream dmg so I'd ditch it from your necro from the start.

For up to 98 I'd go with p8 pit running, and then make some kind of fishy alternative for Nihilatak. Go pindle, raise army, kill Nihilatak.

I do have some ideas how to go with lvl99 necro so I'll give some thoughts after shower..

 

[nulio]

Yes please, do shower first.

Why not MP runs with someone who also plans a 99er? Or self-MP? Leech XP for the necro since he's not as great a runner for 99 as some other classes.

OT: installing D2 again! Yay

 

[frozzzen1]

Jeez, you stalker
Best ideas come when you take shower or on toilet, just so that you know it !

But yeah, I'd go with pit poison necro up to 98 or 97. That shouldn't be too much of a problem I think. Also Pit is such great area to run on p8 - runes, TC 87 stuff, just fantastic source of motivation. With your luck you could make Tyrael's sept with each character having their own blue SA
Just make your cookie cutter pit necro with emphasis on safety and you should be able to do it.
For 98 - 99 Nihilatak. Summon nec that starts in town, resurrects zombies in pindle garden, teleport and kill nihilatak with minion stack. You could invest 20 points in Dim Vision to blind any sources of danger in his room (such as vipers, those blood tempests etc) and have RIP mod to prevent CE. You could still raise army in pindle garden cause you didn't kill any of those fellows I think. And iirc, the more minions you have the less viper dmg you receive due to the way how their poison clouds work, so that could bring extra safety. And you could probably still aim amp dmg on Nihilatak if your +curse skills are low enough level. Yeah, it would affect some monsters surrounding him, but those aren't main concern considering crap that can spawn in Nihilatak room.

Runs wouldn't be fastest considering whole process of raising army, but I don't think necro could go much faster then that. Just some ideas, but they might just work. Dunno if it would be good idea to do Nihilatak 97 - 99 instead doing pit runs all the way 97 - 98.

 

[zgpmf]

I agree about dual Dreams being weak on any class other than Sorc or Pally.

About Necro, my plan is to run Pits till 97 and than run Diablo all the way down till 99. I've done 10k+ Nihl runs with Sorc and I really don't think a Summoner would be good for that job, maybe a pure Bonemancer with casting Amp and CE after the first corpse is there might be better in terms of speed because Nihl tends to move or tele away from melee attackers (although he likes standing in Fire Wall ). On the other hand Summoner would probably be the best option for Diablo runs.

 

[Cyrax1]

A shame the dream idea seems to be a big fail. Would've been so cool to make it happen. Didn't know that it needed the synergies to be even remotely effective.

My original idea was to run a summoner. Intention was to run Baal, but a few days ago it occurred to me that running AT for most lvls (until 97/98ish) might be a better idea as you can get the entrance at one or two teleports from the wp. Whereas for pits you have to tele quite a distance and a necro doesn't have the cast speed a sorc or barb has.

For the last lvls maybe a combo of Nihlathak/Diablo/Baal could be a good idea? That way you run 2 or 3 targets that give some XP while only having to raise an army once. Problem may be getting a good map to run both. Especially as you can't take the wp in those halls (halls of vaught?) because that would cause the portal to Pindle's garden to disappear.

 

[zaphodbrx]

The numbers are not there. IMO if you really want a melee necro, do it with 'bone' armor and either bonehew or oath - and synergize the ctc bone spears/spirits. Not saying a melee necro is a bad idea ( I love them! ) but taking one to level 99 is a fool's errand.