Re: Meleemancer Guide - Preliminary version
I'm currently (with patch 1.12) experiencing the melee necro, namely the version with BA + DV + decrepify and no minions.
My aim in skills are 18 DV, 3 decrep (I can land around 7 hits without any incrised speed before the need of casting it again, so I can live with the low duration)
I'm currently in nightmare difficulty, deep in Act 3, hardcore mode.
I'm writing here as I started to find this character to be my liking not like any sorceress or paladin, even a summoner. This seems to be the character fitting me.
So on to topic: a lot of posts is about equpiment-recommendation. I put here
my experiences in brief. I tell you I'm playing in single, and I'm finding equipments entirely by myself, so this will reflect my suggestions.
- I found the worst nightmare of this build being Duriel on normal difficulty. The giant bug had so hugh cold damage I could barely stand - and I got maximum resists thanx to an ancient's pledge shield.
- I use an Act2 Blessed Aim merc to help on my AR, so I currently still have very little dexterity (around 50) but have adequate hit chance (80-90%). This also reflects my opinion as I've found the bone armor eliminates any hit recovery a character would suffer, so only block-animation stands in the way of casting (curses or bone armor), so I suggest against max.block (with this build I mostly face with single targets, no mobs). Use the dex stat only for AR purpose I'd say.
- For the equipped weapons I suggest a two-handed and a one-handed + shield combo. I just found this option a more reliable way towards survival then a secondary skill-giving equipment (like BO or +bone armor equipments). For this reason and because the relatively low life of this character I made a safety shield (I've run into some multishot/extrafast greater mummies).
- another useless attribute on any equipment is physical damage redcution. According to the Arreat Summit your bone armor comes first, so the dmg reduction just never comes into play. I checked this with an amulet giving "dmg reduced by 23" and my bone armor didn't lasted longer, so this info seems correct.
- on normal difficulty I soon found hawkmail. I found the cbf an awesome and must-have attribute as this character has only 1 weapon with "very fast" base speed (a dagger-class weapn). Chilling effect would be too hugh drawback against some champion archer horde. Ravenfrost (if you can aquire) or Duriel's shell seems better then any other solution for this problem.
- For normal difficulty "the Chieftain" unique 2-handed axe seems to be your best bet. It has good damage, eliminates the shield-need by giving resistances, and let's you curse for near unlimited time with the 6 mana after each kill (you curse and kill fetishes and imps with it while your merc disposes the hugh monsters).
- The cheap, but workable solution for normal is the "steel" runeword. If you like to take the risk you could go for "malice".
- This build IS equipment-dependant. So you really have to upgrade your staff (especially your weapons) regularly. No melee necro should consider making nightmare without exceptional weapons.
- On nightmare is the first place I started to encounter AR-problems. Currently I use +100 AR magic rings (I did not found any allresist+ rare ring yet, but for nightmare this seems to work) and with them I have no problem.
- Weapons:
I thought in runewords and self-finding, and mostly until nightmare difficulty. I mention this again to prevent too much criticising.
Black caught me first, but I didn't like the knockback on it. Insight seemed to be the two-handed way for nightmare (I use a .txt mod that has only 1 function: to activate ladder only runewords in single player), but I try to preserve my statpoints as long as I can and I didn't encountered too much difficulty in my current equipments, so I don't use a scythe yet.
What I mostly considered for 1-handed weaponry are two runewords (again for nightmare): holy thunder and honor. HT has a lot of elemental damage on it, honor has lifeleech. As on nightmare a lot of bosses started to have elemental damage-particle (from X-element enchant or spectral hit) a minor life-leech seems a good idea, so I went for honor currently. I put it into a naga (best damaging weapon with fast speed from the exceptionals).
About uniques:
Almost no adequate unique is for our disposal if you don't have a gul rune to put it into an itd weapon or you have a source to elite uniques. At the beggining of nightmare an upped Rakescar seems to work, but it'll start to be to little in Act3. Bloodrise is also an option (gives 50% AR). The Grimm's burning dead seems to be THE weapon until a heluva lot of time (this piece was what inspired me to try to go with this type of character).
But you'd change it for an obedience. It goes into scythes (the fast speeded polearms for a necro), and seems to be the older twin of the Grim's burning dead (with more resists, more damage and 40% Crushing blow. Also can be glitched up, so not that high will be the requirements too).
There is another alternative to get access to a good weapon: rares. A rare with a decent %ed, +AR, lifeleech, elemental damage can be as good as anything.
- other equipments (still not keeping in mind any elite equipment):
The guide at the beggining can be followed: go for rares. It's like in the old 1.08 times when rares ruled D2 with this character
But some I still mention:
- good resists can come from Nightsmoke belt, Rockstopper, Duskdeep, Kira's guardian helms, and as for runewords smoke armor (if you have something else then Duriel's for cbf), sanctuary shield (if you go for shields), safety shield (magic resist helps against greater mumies like Radament and oblivion knights like Lord de Seis)
- blood crafted gloves, Goblintoe/Gore rider/War traveller boots, Biggin's bonnet helm seems to be good source of damage
- eth or gul rune can help you out if you lack AR, but have a nice rare/set/unique weapon
What equipment I'd advise against:
I just don't like moving enemies (hance dim vision), so any knockback/makes target flee I avoid.
Lawbringer seems also be a nice runeword, but I experienced it once, and there are two reasons to stay away from it: a) too low enchanced damage modifier b) it pushes undeads away as a form of undead-controll - but with that it forms hugh mobs like a great missused attract.
Other things:
- I met with a PI insect boss (that thing what made from a cloud of flies or what) on nnoghtmare. Not even amplified damage took away the PI, so I just turned to my last-case bone spear (reuirement for bone prison)
- if you put at least 7 point into bone prison (bone armor synergie) it already worth more even counting in the prerequesits, so go for this instead of bone armor.
- Some resurrecting champion horde can go on your nerves. Against them you just _have to_ eliminate corpses. Wow, you have corpse explosion as a prerequesit! Sadly it costs too much mana and I got afraid of the noise 'cause of Nihlatak, so I instead put 1 point into rise skeleton. In normal Act5 it still lasted until 2-3 hits, so i don't mind this extra diversion.
- The joke is, Nihlatak doesn't much of a threat for this character (one thing this build finaly excells over others), thanks to bone armor, life and the resistances fire enchanted monsters seem to do almost no damage
- Immortal King's weapon: I'd bet it is already fast even for a necro, so into one of the sockets a Hel rune can go if you don't have the stats (18X str will be enough to wield it then). Even my singleplayer barbarian used that trick.
- For runs I suggest Thread of cthon (or Vidala's boots or Waterwalk). Necro has low stamina, so he needs everything he can aquire. Better then stamina potions.
If I'll have any experience specificely for Hel difficulty I'll mention that here, as that's the part I'm missing from M.Mantis' guide.
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