Patriarch Mannimarco—Bonemancer clvl 78

[Arparrabiosa]

I don't usually make Pat/Mat threads these days, but I was making a Bonemancer mostly at the same time as @BBS_Agonistes and his son were doing it, so I think it was a good idea in this case. Specially as I was taking a complete different direction with him that them. I love sorceress, so my Bonemancer has a sorc gameplay. And I also got the Corpse Explosion meme: every necromancer is a CE necro, the difference is just how you make your first corpse.

Stats
Strength: 65 (175)
Dexterity: 25 (56)
Vitality: 365 (448)
Energy: 25 (56)

Life: ~1.100 (~2.000+ with Battle Orders)
Resists: all 75 but lightning 85 with some stacking
Skills: 20 bone spear, 20 bone prison, 20 bone wall, 10 corpse explosion, 17 teeth, 1 amp. damage

Equipment
Weapon/Shield: White bone wand with +3 bone spear / Spirit Monarch 35% fcr
Switch: Call to Arms Double Axe +6 BO/+2 BC / Spirit Monarch
Helm: Harlequin's crest (P. Topaz)
Armor: Enigma Mage Plate
Belt: Thundergod's Vigor
Gloves: Trang Oul's Claws
Boots: Aldur's Advance +50% FR
Amulet: Mara +30%
Ring 1: rare 10% FCR, +1 Str, +14 Life, +30% CR, +7% PS, +8% all resist
Ring 2: rare 10% FCR, +111 AR, +10% all resist, +30% LR, Magic Damage Reduced by 1, Half Freeze Duration

Inventory: 8 poison & bone skillers, some resist SC, anni +11/15%/6%, torch +13/16%.

Merc
Holy Freeze with Insight eth GPA, Fortitude dusk shroud, Tal's mask.

Plans for retirement:
Respec him to a venomancer when I got DWeb lol.

 

[maxicek]

Congratulation on the Patriarch!

Level 78 is really low, are you playing on a non-PC platform?
Also venomancer is entirely viable without DWeb. I used to run the Pit with mine at P8 using HoTO. I had to as DWeb was my last grail item

 

[BBS_Agonistes]

Nice write-up! And congrats... fun that someone else was working on a similar project at the same time! I am actually curious to slap this gear / merc on our Bonemancer and see how he does. Bonemancer with Eniga can actually farm some areas nicely IIRC, Trav for instance.

 

[maxicek]

Also why did they make the necro look so damn old in D2R? Actually it is like they aged all the characters the 20+ years since the original release.

They should have made the necro look like the late Sir Christopher Lee.

Or even his old adversary from the Hammer films, Peter Cushing:

 

[Arparrabiosa]

@maxicek I play on PC. I did skip a lot on Hell, though, teleporting my way forward. I killed density and elites and that's that.

And yeah, I know poison could do good enough with HotO. I was trying to call the RNG blessings upon me!

@BBS_Agonistes be aware that my FCR is a mess. I was waiting to lvl 80 to equip arach and reach 125 FCR, but ended up pating before that.

I'm not sure if I'd run this guy for MF, but MrLlamaSC has a MF gear for bone Necro that you could check.

 

[DaveW]

Nice job there. The gear is pretty damn good I must say. CE is the Bonemancer's (actually the Necro's) goto killer and wish it would level up with player count. But you only put 10 points into it; I would max it for sure.
Maybe a hard point in revives as well. Those sturdy minions give a 3 minute meat shield. Only amp curse? No dim vision? Or Decrip? DV makes farming a breeze but then I play mainly HC and prioritize safety and survivability.
The Bonemancer can run Pits, CS, WSK (using DV, Decrip and Amp) for safety. Hope you keep on with him.

 

[Arparrabiosa]

Nice job there. The gear is pretty damn good I must say. CE is the Bonemancer's (actually the Necro's) goto killer and wish it would level up with player count. But you only put 10 points into it; I would max it for sure.

Maybe a hard point in revives as well. Those sturdy minions give a 3 minute meat shield. Only amp curse? No dim vision? Or Decrip? DV makes farming a breeze but then I play mainly HC and prioritize safety and survivability.

This build is a leveling / placeholder one. I wanted to play a bone spear necro (a build I have never played before), grabbed a leveling guide at Maxroll and just went with it (although I modify it a bit, like I didn't respec). It is not a well-though, end-game build. But, to be honest, I didn't need DV or Decrep. I only used Amplify Damage a couple of times, against bosses. I was killing really fast, and then again, I play SC. The corpse explosion radius felt adequate for all the +skills I had.

But, anyway, I have 3 respecs available. I can refine the end-game build or go to something completely different, I don't know yet. For now, it's 1 pat down to sept.

 

[ffs]

I haven't tried the build in D2R after they buffed bone skill damage. Could be suitable for some rune finding purposes such as Travincal. Like @BBS_Agonistes said in LoD that was a solid choice for Travincal, although slightly worse than Poison and of course significantly worse than Sorc or Barb. But thanks to horrible D2R loading times, Travincal is firmly Barb territory from a purely efficiency-oriented perspective.

In terms of MF there isn't really a niche for Bone IMO. Other P1 MFers like Barbs are much better obviously.

Where Necro truly shines is for "all purpose" runs on high player settings, still carrying relatively high MF, and getting many more goodies like runes etc. than P1 MF buildss (as well as XP). But this is with Poison rather than Bone. Despite the buffs, I'd strongly assume Poison > Bone for most of these PvM purposes still. PNova's radial damage simply translates to much more damage being applied in most situations, making for smoother CE chains and considerably faster runs.

In D2R, my go-to area runner is a PN/CE Necro for P5 or P7 Pit running as well as cows. Despite playing HC in D2R and having to use %DR gear resulting in a weaker build than in SC, I still use him for those kind of runs because that's where he's is really a top tier build.

 

[maxicek]

I think Poison Necro is even better for cows in D2R as you don't need to worry about killing The Cow King accidentally.

 

[Arparrabiosa]

Nevermind.

 

[DaveW]

In terms of MF there isn't really a niche for Bone IMO. Other P1 MFers like Barbs are much better obviously.

Actually the Bonemancer shines in CS and WSK 1, 2 and 3 (P1). That's with revives for meat shield and DV, Amp and Decrip for mobs. I used Iron Golem Insight and eth Thresher Obedience HF merc. (I have so many 4 OS Junk Polearms that replacing the IG Insight aint a problem) Around 270 MF and good resists. It's fun and safe, a must for HC.

 

[ffs]

Of course every build has some MF capability just saying it doesn't compares favourably to other MF builds. MF on P1 is basically:

Berserk (or Conc/Hybrid) Barb >>>>>>>Singer Barb>>>>>>>>>>>>Sorc >>>>>everything else.

For HC in particular Singer is the safest option with easily 5k+ life even in LoD, plus plenty of crowd control skills. Although in D2R my HC MF Berserker also has >5.2k life thanks to the ridiculous recent buffs, so IMO there's no reason to go for other builds except when looking for a more relaxed playstyle than Zerking.

Necro is a good all-round class that can do everything. If a player only has a Necro, he can MF on P1 just fine of course, just less efficient than other builds. The cool thing about D2 and these efficiency-related aspects is that no character/build is "top tier for everything". There are tasks/activities, and builds that excel at that particular type of activity.

At least that's my philosophy for building characters intended to farm stuff. First consider the intended task/activity, then make the ideal character for it and keep optimizing it. For Necro, the activity where he outclasses other builds happens to be area running on higher player settings with PN/CE.