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Nearly flawless summoner guide
- Thread starter akstylish
- Start date
) Can anyone link me to it if there's one?Re: Nearly flawless summoner guide
Nightfish's Fishymancer guide probably has a good idea, but let's see what I can think of off the top of my head. In my opinion, the very best items might often be rare, in the case of circlets at least.
Are you gearing for MF, the strongest summons possible, the strongest necro possible, PvP, or what?
Nightfish's Fishymancer guide probably has a good idea, but let's see what I can think of off the top of my head. In my opinion, the very best items might often be rare, in the case of circlets at least.
Are you gearing for MF, the strongest summons possible, the strongest necro possible, PvP, or what?
Re: Nearly flawless summoner guide
Fastest killing, so MF doesn't matter... let's see here:
I’ll try to cover the simple choices first. I think a breast plate or splint mail base looks awesome on a necro, so let’s try to cover that. If you want to choose a Balrog Skin armor base you’re going to want a ton of +strength whenever we have the choice below. If you don’t care about looks, I’d go with a Dusk Shroud or Archon Plate, both of which are generally reachable with no points in strength.
The obvious stuff: Enigma in a +15% ED shell of your choice, with a +775 defense roll. Rare belts can get a ton of great mods, but we want the Arachnid Mesh for the +1 and 20% FCR. I’d prebuff with this belt and walk the game with it too (FCR is really nice for teleporting). The best gloves in my opinion are Magefists for their FCR and their buff to CE.
For a weapon, nothing beats Arm of King Leoric (AOKL). But once the army is summoned, we’ll use a Beast in any 5 socket axe/scepter/hammer of your choice. Go with a low requirement one, in my opinion.
Your rings can be a BK ring or an SOJ, doesn’t really matter. You probably won’t have any mana issues, but if you do, then go with an SOJ. One of each couldn’t hurt.
Your weapon switch should be a perfect 6/6/4 CTA in a low requirement base, eth for style. I haven’t calculated it, but if you do end up with enough strength, go with a spirit monarch for an additional bonus to BO over Lidless.
edited in: You don't even need to go for max block since you are a summoner, which makes choosing stats even easier. Chances are you won't need a single point in strength or dexterity, meaning every time you see +str or +dex mods on the below, you can check to see if you can exchange it for more hit recovery, integer damage reduce, or more mana from +energy instead.
Now, the fun stuff – choosing rares:
Helm: CoA or Shako, both give +skills and some DR. CoA is more stylish but will cost you a bunch of stats in str. There is one department this will beat a rare circlet, in that these will buff your CTA battle orders, while a rare circlet won’t. The same goes for any ammy.
Of course TECHNICALLY +3 summoning skills magic circlets will give you the highest level summons, I'd say that the best possible helm is gonna be a rare for sure, since it can get 6 mods (3 suffixes and 3 prefixes). Shamelessly using an editor means that I can pick the 6 mods that I want! One second! (I love this)
For prefixes let's choose:
20% All res
+2 Necromancer skills
2 Open sockets
Depending on your other item choices you can put rare jewels in here. Again, normally I'd recommend simple 20 life/15% Res all jewels, but since you're using an editor we can against choose amazing rares! (Will get to this later). The last 3 suffixes on our circlet will be...
+60 to life
30% faster run walk (just plain style, man),
+20 to dexterity (real powerful guys get max block)
One that I left out but is really quite nice is +30 to strength. This is a ton, and you can use it to replace 30% FRW or +60 to life if you need the strength to equip your Elite Enigma base or a Spirit Monarch for BO (I’d replace the run/walk before the life).
Now, let us choose the jewels for our 2 open socket circlet. I assume again that we can get 6 mods (I don't see anything on Arreat Summit saying otherwise), so let's pick good ones. The prefixes aren't anything special, so let's just pick:
+10% Res All
+20% Fire res
+20% light res (you can alternate these to cold/poison on the second jewel if you wish for balance).
For suffixes, lets try:
7% FHR
+9 Dex
+9 Strength
You can either use two of these jewels, or switch the second jewel with a +20 life/15% res all jewel (I would). You'll probably find you don't need the strength at all, so we can swap it for a better suffix, like +8 Life (rare jewel mod, the +20 life only spawns on magic.)
So what kind of circlet would that give us if we include the jewels (jewels can be adjusted for +60% all res)?
Sure looks better than anything a shako could give us, eh? We could also put two Ber/Shael runes if we are missing any breakpoints or want more DR. This is probably going to end up being preferable, since with perfect gear, you most likely will have no problems with resists. If so, we get this:
or my favorite, with 20 life/15 res jewels:
My advice would be to go into Arreat summit and pick and choose what prefixes you might need after play testing. Need more strength to equip that armor of yours? Need more mana to spam CE? Not enough life to make your jaw drop? Tweak however you want. Remember, this is a spawnable item (hard to believe), so it’s technically “possible.”
Amulet: The obvious choice we are looking at here is Mara’s Kaleidoscope. Stats to save points on dex and str requirements, huge resist bonus, and +2 all skills to buff your CTA. It’d be best to pre-buff with a plain +3 summon ammy, but that’s a waste of your time and inventory space so we’re going to ignore that.
Now, we can choose a “legit” rare amulet that will give us +2 Necro skills but won’t boost our CTA. It’s up to you to choose. Let’s pick:
Prefixes:
+2 Necromancer
+20% All resists (see a pattern?)
+90 to mana
Again, I’m assuming you won’t need strength. If you want to use something and you actually can’t meet it, then choose the +30 strength suffix (Maybe replace the life or FCR choice). I know that we’ll need a ton of dex to hit max block no matter what you use, so I have been putting it whenever possible.
Suffixes:
+20 dexterity
+60 life
+10% Faster Cast Rate
It isn’t going to be an easy choice to choose between an amulet that gives this:
And a perfect Mara’s.
Boots: We can choose one of two things again (since we’re not concerned with MF%). Perfect Ethereal Sandstorm Treks, or a rare (no bugged rares from Classic, let’s use a real one spawnable in 1.12). Waterwalks do give us a lot of life and Silkweaves do give us nice +mana per kill, but you’re going to have an astronomical life and mana pool as it is, so let’s use one with good useful mods we can’t get elsewhere. You may need the +20% FHR from the treks to meet a breakpoint, but I’m not sure as I haven’t crunched any numbers.
For a rare it’s pretty easy to choose what we want:
+30% FRW
+10% FHR
+40% Fire/Cold/Light resist
+9 dexterity (We could fit +25% MF here to make these beautiful, but Dex is our choice in terms of power)
Lastly, the shield(s) you’ll be using. Homunculus is an obvious easy choice, hitting max block easily and having great resists. But that really blows all our fun. We can look at great base shells but we can’t include any runewords, since the best of necro shells only get 2 sockets (Okay, we could consider Splendor, but come on). I’d make it out of a Bloodlord skull, as it has the highest base block % and highest defense and only 106 strength requirement.
Prefixes:
+2 sockets (going to need this to compete with Homunculus)
+2 Necromancer skills
+20% all resists (these are beginning to look very similar… this game needs more useful stats. You could swap 20% all resists for 200% enhanced defense, but I wouldn’t do it.)
Suffixes:
Deflecting suffix - +20% increased blocking, +30% increased block rate
+40 life
+17% Faster Hit Recovery (check your breakpoints if you will need this. If not, you can put +9 strength or anything I might have missed.)
It doesn’t look so good now, but remember that class-specific items spawn bonuses. For a necro, (someone correct me) shields can spawn +1-3 to up to three random skills.
Lets choose: +3 RS, +3 SM, and the third of your choosing. Consider Mages, CE, or LR/DV/decrep (saves you some points). Now we have a +5 to RS/SM/RSM without even choosing sockets, so now it’s looking like a competition! We can choose the same jewels as above, but we’re definitely loading on Dex here. Let’s look at something like this:
+10% Res All
+20% Fire res
+20% Light res
7% FHR
+9 Dex
+9 Strength/+8 life (again probably go with life – dusk shroud isn’t all that high in requirements)
So you can choose Homunculus which will save you points in dex, have higher defense, and give you these (assuming Um’d or Ber’d):
Or a personalized rare necro head which can give you this (jewels can be adjusted for +60% all res):
Or again, with 20 life/15 res all jewels:
Just like with the rare circlet, if you find that you prefer to get max DR or hit a really high FHR breakpoint (really unnecessary as a summoner, in my opinion) you can put two Ber runes in here. 16% here and 16% in your circlet and 8% from Enigma will give you 40%, which is a pretty hefty amount.
A true pre-buff shield (along with a +3 circlet and amulet) wouldn’t be battle-hardy but would be great for a perfectionist, as you could spawn this:
+3 Summoning Skills (magic prefix)
+3 RS
+3 RSM
+3 SM (all 3 being class-specific mods)
So if you really want the strongest minions, you’d have a pre-buff set of gear, a fighting set of gear, and the CTA weapon switch you’d have to carry somewhere.
The inventory choices are easy, just go with 9 Summon skillers with +45 life, 10x +20 life/5 resist charms (or +20 life/+17 mana if you find you want more mana, or +2 dex for that max block). A perfect 20/20 Necro torch and 20/20/10 Anni.
Mercenary is also easy, go with a Perfect Eth Andy's socketed with an Um or a +30% fire res, 20 life jewel. A perfect eth fortitude in the highest armor he can wear (I think it's possible to use a Sacred Armor if the merc is high enough level) and a perfect eth infinity in either a Giant Thresher or Cryptic Axe. Range doesn't matter, so you'll decide between a little extra damage on the cryptic axe or +20% IAS on the giant thresher. I'd choose the latter. I haven't checked if it can wear a GT - if not, a thresher has almost exactly the same average damage.
Be sure to put 20 into golem mastery so you can use a Pride runeword in an Iron golem, giving your army Concentration, Might, and Fanaticism. If you want power you'll have to sacrifice convenience: relatively low FCR using Beast and no Insight golem/merc.
Skillwise I'd play it like this:
+1 Amp
+0-1 Decrep and prereqs
+20 RS, SM, RSM - +1 in rest except fire golem
+20 CE, +1 pre-reqs
Hopefully others can correct anything I can incorrectly assumed, or can crunch the numbers for me to see how much strength and dexterity he will have before putting any points, and if it’ll be worth using the rare shield after all the dexterity bonuses.
Jesus this post is long.
Fastest killing, so MF doesn't matter... let's see here:
I’ll try to cover the simple choices first. I think a breast plate or splint mail base looks awesome on a necro, so let’s try to cover that. If you want to choose a Balrog Skin armor base you’re going to want a ton of +strength whenever we have the choice below. If you don’t care about looks, I’d go with a Dusk Shroud or Archon Plate, both of which are generally reachable with no points in strength.
The obvious stuff: Enigma in a +15% ED shell of your choice, with a +775 defense roll. Rare belts can get a ton of great mods, but we want the Arachnid Mesh for the +1 and 20% FCR. I’d prebuff with this belt and walk the game with it too (FCR is really nice for teleporting). The best gloves in my opinion are Magefists for their FCR and their buff to CE.
For a weapon, nothing beats Arm of King Leoric (AOKL). But once the army is summoned, we’ll use a Beast in any 5 socket axe/scepter/hammer of your choice. Go with a low requirement one, in my opinion.
Your rings can be a BK ring or an SOJ, doesn’t really matter. You probably won’t have any mana issues, but if you do, then go with an SOJ. One of each couldn’t hurt.
Your weapon switch should be a perfect 6/6/4 CTA in a low requirement base, eth for style. I haven’t calculated it, but if you do end up with enough strength, go with a spirit monarch for an additional bonus to BO over Lidless.
edited in: You don't even need to go for max block since you are a summoner, which makes choosing stats even easier. Chances are you won't need a single point in strength or dexterity, meaning every time you see +str or +dex mods on the below, you can check to see if you can exchange it for more hit recovery, integer damage reduce, or more mana from +energy instead.
Now, the fun stuff – choosing rares:
Helm: CoA or Shako, both give +skills and some DR. CoA is more stylish but will cost you a bunch of stats in str. There is one department this will beat a rare circlet, in that these will buff your CTA battle orders, while a rare circlet won’t. The same goes for any ammy.
Of course TECHNICALLY +3 summoning skills magic circlets will give you the highest level summons, I'd say that the best possible helm is gonna be a rare for sure, since it can get 6 mods (3 suffixes and 3 prefixes). Shamelessly using an editor means that I can pick the 6 mods that I want! One second! (I love this)
For prefixes let's choose:
20% All res
+2 Necromancer skills
2 Open sockets
Depending on your other item choices you can put rare jewels in here. Again, normally I'd recommend simple 20 life/15% Res all jewels, but since you're using an editor we can against choose amazing rares! (Will get to this later). The last 3 suffixes on our circlet will be...
+60 to life
30% faster run walk (just plain style, man),
+20 to dexterity (real powerful guys get max block)
One that I left out but is really quite nice is +30 to strength. This is a ton, and you can use it to replace 30% FRW or +60 to life if you need the strength to equip your Elite Enigma base or a Spirit Monarch for BO (I’d replace the run/walk before the life).
Now, let us choose the jewels for our 2 open socket circlet. I assume again that we can get 6 mods (I don't see anything on Arreat Summit saying otherwise), so let's pick good ones. The prefixes aren't anything special, so let's just pick:
+10% Res All
+20% Fire res
+20% light res (you can alternate these to cold/poison on the second jewel if you wish for balance).
For suffixes, lets try:
7% FHR
+9 Dex
+9 Strength
You can either use two of these jewels, or switch the second jewel with a +20 life/15% res all jewel (I would). You'll probably find you don't need the strength at all, so we can swap it for a better suffix, like +8 Life (rare jewel mod, the +20 life only spawns on magic.)
So what kind of circlet would that give us if we include the jewels (jewels can be adjusted for +60% all res)?
+2 Necromancer Skills,
20% Faster Cast Rate
30% Faster Run/Walk
+40% Cold/Poison res
+80% Fire/Light res
+14% Faster Hit Recovery
+76 Life
+38 dex
Sure looks better than anything a shako could give us, eh? We could also put two Ber/Shael runes if we are missing any breakpoints or want more DR. This is probably going to end up being preferable, since with perfect gear, you most likely will have no problems with resists. If so, we get this:
Or+2 Necromancer Skills,
20% Faster Cast Rate
30% Faster Run/Walk
+20% All res
+16% Damage reduced
+60 life
+20 dexterity
+2 Necromancer Skills,
20% Faster Cast Rate
30% Faster Run/Walk
+20% All res
+40% Faster Hit Recovery
+60 life
+20 dexterity
or my favorite, with 20 life/15 res jewels:
+2 Necromancer Skills,
20% Faster Cast Rate
30% Faster Run/Walk
+50% All res
+100 life
+20 dexterity
My advice would be to go into Arreat summit and pick and choose what prefixes you might need after play testing. Need more strength to equip that armor of yours? Need more mana to spam CE? Not enough life to make your jaw drop? Tweak however you want. Remember, this is a spawnable item (hard to believe), so it’s technically “possible.”
Amulet: The obvious choice we are looking at here is Mara’s Kaleidoscope. Stats to save points on dex and str requirements, huge resist bonus, and +2 all skills to buff your CTA. It’d be best to pre-buff with a plain +3 summon ammy, but that’s a waste of your time and inventory space so we’re going to ignore that.
Now, we can choose a “legit” rare amulet that will give us +2 Necro skills but won’t boost our CTA. It’s up to you to choose. Let’s pick:
Prefixes:
+2 Necromancer
+20% All resists (see a pattern?)
+90 to mana
Again, I’m assuming you won’t need strength. If you want to use something and you actually can’t meet it, then choose the +30 strength suffix (Maybe replace the life or FCR choice). I know that we’ll need a ton of dex to hit max block no matter what you use, so I have been putting it whenever possible.
Suffixes:
+20 dexterity
+60 life
+10% Faster Cast Rate
It isn’t going to be an easy choice to choose between an amulet that gives this:
+2 Necromancer
+10% Faster Cast Rate
+20 dexterity
+60 life
+90 to mana
+20% All resists
And a perfect Mara’s.
Boots: We can choose one of two things again (since we’re not concerned with MF%). Perfect Ethereal Sandstorm Treks, or a rare (no bugged rares from Classic, let’s use a real one spawnable in 1.12). Waterwalks do give us a lot of life and Silkweaves do give us nice +mana per kill, but you’re going to have an astronomical life and mana pool as it is, so let’s use one with good useful mods we can’t get elsewhere. You may need the +20% FHR from the treks to meet a breakpoint, but I’m not sure as I haven’t crunched any numbers.
For a rare it’s pretty easy to choose what we want:
+30% FRW
+10% FHR
+40% Fire/Cold/Light resist
+9 dexterity (We could fit +25% MF here to make these beautiful, but Dex is our choice in terms of power)
Lastly, the shield(s) you’ll be using. Homunculus is an obvious easy choice, hitting max block easily and having great resists. But that really blows all our fun. We can look at great base shells but we can’t include any runewords, since the best of necro shells only get 2 sockets (Okay, we could consider Splendor, but come on). I’d make it out of a Bloodlord skull, as it has the highest base block % and highest defense and only 106 strength requirement.
Prefixes:
+2 sockets (going to need this to compete with Homunculus)
+2 Necromancer skills
+20% all resists (these are beginning to look very similar… this game needs more useful stats. You could swap 20% all resists for 200% enhanced defense, but I wouldn’t do it.)
Suffixes:
Deflecting suffix - +20% increased blocking, +30% increased block rate
+40 life
+17% Faster Hit Recovery (check your breakpoints if you will need this. If not, you can put +9 strength or anything I might have missed.)
It doesn’t look so good now, but remember that class-specific items spawn bonuses. For a necro, (someone correct me) shields can spawn +1-3 to up to three random skills.
Lets choose: +3 RS, +3 SM, and the third of your choosing. Consider Mages, CE, or LR/DV/decrep (saves you some points). Now we have a +5 to RS/SM/RSM without even choosing sockets, so now it’s looking like a competition! We can choose the same jewels as above, but we’re definitely loading on Dex here. Let’s look at something like this:
+10% Res All
+20% Fire res
+20% Light res
7% FHR
+9 Dex
+9 Strength/+8 life (again probably go with life – dusk shroud isn’t all that high in requirements)
So you can choose Homunculus which will save you points in dex, have higher defense, and give you these (assuming Um’d or Ber’d):
Chance To Block: 72%
(Necromancer Only)
+150-200% Enhanced Defense (varies)
+5 To Mana After Each Kill
40% Increased Chance of Blocking
30% Faster Block Rate
+2 To Necromancer Skill Levels
+20 To Energy
Regenerate Mana 33%
All Resistances +40
+2 To Curses Skills (Necromancer Only)
Or a personalized rare necro head which can give you this (jewels can be adjusted for +60% all res):
Chance To Block: +52%
(Necromancer Only)
+2 Necromancer skills
+3 Raise Skeleton
+3 Skeleton Mastery
+3 Skeleton Mage
+40% Cold/Poison res
+80% Fire/Light res
+20% Increased blocking
+30% Faster block rate
+56 life
+31% Faster Hit Recovery
+18 Dex
Or again, with 20 life/15 res all jewels:
Chance To Block: +52%
(Necromancer Only)
+2 Necromancer skills
+3 Raise Skeleton
+3 Skeleton Mastery
+3 Skeleton Mage
+50% All res
+20% Increased blocking
+30% Faster block rate
+80 life
+17% Faster Hit Recovery
Just like with the rare circlet, if you find that you prefer to get max DR or hit a really high FHR breakpoint (really unnecessary as a summoner, in my opinion) you can put two Ber runes in here. 16% here and 16% in your circlet and 8% from Enigma will give you 40%, which is a pretty hefty amount.
A true pre-buff shield (along with a +3 circlet and amulet) wouldn’t be battle-hardy but would be great for a perfectionist, as you could spawn this:
+3 Summoning Skills (magic prefix)
+3 RS
+3 RSM
+3 SM (all 3 being class-specific mods)
So if you really want the strongest minions, you’d have a pre-buff set of gear, a fighting set of gear, and the CTA weapon switch you’d have to carry somewhere.
The inventory choices are easy, just go with 9 Summon skillers with +45 life, 10x +20 life/5 resist charms (or +20 life/+17 mana if you find you want more mana, or +2 dex for that max block). A perfect 20/20 Necro torch and 20/20/10 Anni.
Mercenary is also easy, go with a Perfect Eth Andy's socketed with an Um or a +30% fire res, 20 life jewel. A perfect eth fortitude in the highest armor he can wear (I think it's possible to use a Sacred Armor if the merc is high enough level) and a perfect eth infinity in either a Giant Thresher or Cryptic Axe. Range doesn't matter, so you'll decide between a little extra damage on the cryptic axe or +20% IAS on the giant thresher. I'd choose the latter. I haven't checked if it can wear a GT - if not, a thresher has almost exactly the same average damage.
Be sure to put 20 into golem mastery so you can use a Pride runeword in an Iron golem, giving your army Concentration, Might, and Fanaticism. If you want power you'll have to sacrifice convenience: relatively low FCR using Beast and no Insight golem/merc.
Skillwise I'd play it like this:
+1 Amp
+0-1 Decrep and prereqs
+20 RS, SM, RSM - +1 in rest except fire golem
+20 CE, +1 pre-reqs
Hopefully others can correct anything I can incorrectly assumed, or can crunch the numbers for me to see how much strength and dexterity he will have before putting any points, and if it’ll be worth using the rare shield after all the dexterity bonuses.
Jesus this post is long.
Last edited:
Re: Nearly flawless summoner guide
Since you are going to be making your gear yourself I think maxing corpse explosion might be overkill since your merc is going to be a 1 man army on his own, backed up with massively pre-buffed skellies you probably wont even need CE. With the points saved from CE you can max out RS, RSM, SM and GM, this allows you to have uber mages with Merc infinity AND have an uber iron golem made from Pride.
This will give you skellies with might aura, concentration aura AND fanaticism aura.
Since you are going to be making your gear yourself I think maxing corpse explosion might be overkill since your merc is going to be a 1 man army on his own, backed up with massively pre-buffed skellies you probably wont even need CE. With the points saved from CE you can max out RS, RSM, SM and GM, this allows you to have uber mages with Merc infinity AND have an uber iron golem made from Pride.
This will give you skellies with might aura, concentration aura AND fanaticism aura.
Re: Nearly flawless summoner guide
I think you have it backwards in my experience - with such a powerful merc you probably won't need skellies! CE does indeed clear rooms at high levels and the merc will drop corpses in one hit. With amplify damage and conviction boosting CE damage, which already tends to kill in one explosion, it will wipe out entire rooms in one explosion at times.
Whats good to realize though is that as a summon necro, who says he needs max block? That means everywhere above where we see + strength or + dex we can load on things like Damage Reduced by X (integer reduce), life, mana, and Hit recovery. Every single stat point he ever gets can be placed into vitality, too.
I'm not sure how Wands spawn bonuses, but if they are similar to heads we can do pretty much exactly what we did there:
+2 Necro,
+3 RS/RSM/SM,
20% FCR
The rest of the stats shouldn't really matter since it's just for prebuffing (Beast is better for fighting), and it only beats AOKL by +1 on mages and ties it everywhere else.
I think you have it backwards in my experience - with such a powerful merc you probably won't need skellies! CE does indeed clear rooms at high levels and the merc will drop corpses in one hit. With amplify damage and conviction boosting CE damage, which already tends to kill in one explosion, it will wipe out entire rooms in one explosion at times.
Whats good to realize though is that as a summon necro, who says he needs max block? That means everywhere above where we see + strength or + dex we can load on things like Damage Reduced by X (integer reduce), life, mana, and Hit recovery. Every single stat point he ever gets can be placed into vitality, too.
I'm not sure how Wands spawn bonuses, but if they are similar to heads we can do pretty much exactly what we did there:
+2 Necro,
+3 RS/RSM/SM,
20% FCR
The rest of the stats shouldn't really matter since it's just for prebuffing (Beast is better for fighting), and it only beats AOKL by +1 on mages and ties it everywhere else.
Re: Nearly flawless summoner guide
Pre-buffing gear:
Helm: +3 summon circlet
Amu: +3 summon amu
Armor: Enigma
Shield: Technically it's possible to get a shield with +2 to summoning skills and +3 to skeleton mastery and raise skeleton (and raise skeleton mage). There's a thread about it here: http://www.purediablo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=677168
Otherwise, a graverobbers necro head with +3 to raise skeleton, skeleton mastery. Maybe another with +3 to skeleton mastery and raise skeletal mage. Or else you could get a white one with desired pre-buffing staffmods (masteries are applied when summoning), and then make a "splendor" runeword. basically, a necro head with +4 to desired pre-buffing skills
If that's impossible, a darkforce spawn with +3 summoning or a succubus with +3 necromancer or a golemlords shield.
Weapon: Arm of king leoric for pre-buffing skeletons. Theoretically, a cubed wand like the one mentioned in the thread above could get +2 summoning and +3 skeleton mage and +3 skeleton mastery. It would have 1 more mage level than leoric but not really necessary
Gloves: Trang gloves. All necromancers who don't need ias use these
Boots: Marrowwalks with +2 skeleton mastery
Belt: Arachs
Rings: Double SoJ
Inventory: Anni, torch and 9 summon skillers.
Also have battle command from cta activated.
With a skill shrine, this gets you up to lvl 57 skeletons and mages with 59 skeleton mastery. Not too shabby
Fighting gear: This depends... Want a bigger army or more ce/amp? If you likece/amp, choose +2 necromancer skills when you get the option. I like +3 smmon more though, so I get more skeletons (although the skeleton quality will remain the same as long as you've pre-buffed)
I will only list the pieces of gear which have changed since you prebuffed
Helm: +2 necromancer/+3 summon circlet. Both 2 sockets preferably. one socket with a cham. Other with whatever you want
Amulet: +2 necro/+3 summon
Weapon: Many prefer beast + homunculus, but faith is a more offensive option. A 15 fanaticism +2 to all skills faith would be ideal. Gives you the same amount of skeletons (unless you use a shield with more +skills), and faith also gives a higher level aura, which makes them attack faster (13 frames compared to 14 frames that beast gives). Faith also gives them more ed. With good circlet and amulet and good stuff in your sockets, you'll be able to survive anyway
Boots: you can change them if you want to after you've prebuffed, but your revives will get stronger from the mastery so you might as well keep them
Perfect merc:
Helm: Andy's visage
Armor: Fortitude
Weapon: Infinity
Iron golem:
Made out of a 20 concentration "pride" runeword (preferably normal polearm for iron maiden protection)
Skill build:
20 rs
20 sm
20 mages (anyone who argues with this has no idea how effective they are with enigma and infinity)
20 ce
rest into golem mastery for a stronger iron golem
Remember to teleport so the iron golem doesn't lag behind. If he does he my dissapear into thin air.
This would be a perfect summoner setup imo, if you can get any item which theoretically can be obtained. I concentrated more on a strong army than CE, but CE will still have enough range. And the skeletons are actually the real skill of this build, but CE ruined that
Pre-buffing gear:
Helm: +3 summon circlet
Amu: +3 summon amu
Armor: Enigma
Shield: Technically it's possible to get a shield with +2 to summoning skills and +3 to skeleton mastery and raise skeleton (and raise skeleton mage). There's a thread about it here: http://www.purediablo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=677168
Otherwise, a graverobbers necro head with +3 to raise skeleton, skeleton mastery. Maybe another with +3 to skeleton mastery and raise skeletal mage. Or else you could get a white one with desired pre-buffing staffmods (masteries are applied when summoning), and then make a "splendor" runeword. basically, a necro head with +4 to desired pre-buffing skills
If that's impossible, a darkforce spawn with +3 summoning or a succubus with +3 necromancer or a golemlords shield.
Weapon: Arm of king leoric for pre-buffing skeletons. Theoretically, a cubed wand like the one mentioned in the thread above could get +2 summoning and +3 skeleton mage and +3 skeleton mastery. It would have 1 more mage level than leoric but not really necessary
Gloves: Trang gloves. All necromancers who don't need ias use these
Boots: Marrowwalks with +2 skeleton mastery
Belt: Arachs
Rings: Double SoJ
Inventory: Anni, torch and 9 summon skillers.
Also have battle command from cta activated.
With a skill shrine, this gets you up to lvl 57 skeletons and mages with 59 skeleton mastery. Not too shabby
Fighting gear: This depends... Want a bigger army or more ce/amp? If you likece/amp, choose +2 necromancer skills when you get the option. I like +3 smmon more though, so I get more skeletons (although the skeleton quality will remain the same as long as you've pre-buffed)
I will only list the pieces of gear which have changed since you prebuffed
Helm: +2 necromancer/+3 summon circlet. Both 2 sockets preferably. one socket with a cham. Other with whatever you want
Amulet: +2 necro/+3 summon
Weapon: Many prefer beast + homunculus, but faith is a more offensive option. A 15 fanaticism +2 to all skills faith would be ideal. Gives you the same amount of skeletons (unless you use a shield with more +skills), and faith also gives a higher level aura, which makes them attack faster (13 frames compared to 14 frames that beast gives). Faith also gives them more ed. With good circlet and amulet and good stuff in your sockets, you'll be able to survive anyway
Boots: you can change them if you want to after you've prebuffed, but your revives will get stronger from the mastery so you might as well keep them
Perfect merc:
Helm: Andy's visage
Armor: Fortitude
Weapon: Infinity
Iron golem:
Made out of a 20 concentration "pride" runeword (preferably normal polearm for iron maiden protection)
Skill build:
20 rs
20 sm
20 mages (anyone who argues with this has no idea how effective they are with enigma and infinity)
20 ce
rest into golem mastery for a stronger iron golem
Remember to teleport so the iron golem doesn't lag behind. If he does he my dissapear into thin air.
This would be a perfect summoner setup imo, if you can get any item which theoretically can be obtained. I concentrated more on a strong army than CE, but CE will still have enough range. And the skeletons are actually the real skill of this build, but CE ruined that
Re: Nearly flawless summoner guide
This is only possible on something like Necro head or wand, not on a circlet or amulet. The +1-3 random skill bonuses only apply to Wands and Heads and are not part of anything to do with the prefix/suffix bonuses re-rolled in the cube.
and +2 Necro and +3 Summon are both prefixes and cannot spawn on a rare or magic circlet/amulet together either.
edit: I figure the best build for this necro would try max str and dex whenever spawnable, to wear an enigma made out of something like a sacred armor and get max block with a +52% base block rare shield.
So, to the OP: what do you do with these single player characters? Do you just MF hard areas for fun when bored?
Not that I am aware of...I know, but +2 necro can spawn with +3 raise skeleton and +3 skeleton mastery using the cube
This is only possible on something like Necro head or wand, not on a circlet or amulet. The +1-3 random skill bonuses only apply to Wands and Heads and are not part of anything to do with the prefix/suffix bonuses re-rolled in the cube.
and +2 Necro and +3 Summon are both prefixes and cannot spawn on a rare or magic circlet/amulet together either.
edit: I figure the best build for this necro would try max str and dex whenever spawnable, to wear an enigma made out of something like a sacred armor and get max block with a +52% base block rare shield.
So, to the OP: what do you do with these single player characters? Do you just MF hard areas for fun when bored?
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Re: Nearly flawless summoner guide
I meant heads and wands of course. Circlet/amulet don't have any staffmods at all.
When I wrote +3 summon/+2 necro amulet or circlet, the / stands for or, not and. / is usually "or"
Heads and wands can spawn with that. Look at the link i provided in my post at page 1
I meant heads and wands of course. Circlet/amulet don't have any staffmods at all.
When I wrote +3 summon/+2 necro amulet or circlet, the / stands for or, not and. / is usually "or"
Heads and wands can spawn with that. Look at the link i provided in my post at page 1
Re: Nearly flawless summoner guide
I never MF in single player. I'm just trying to figure out the best necro build for pvm.
Can anyone summarize what everyone here said about the build?
So, to the OP: what do you do with these single player characters? Do you just MF hard areas for fun when bored?
I never MF in single player. I'm just trying to figure out the best necro build for pvm.
Can anyone summarize what everyone here said about the build?
