Patriarch Viper - Bonemancer with A5 Frenzy Merc

[BBS_Agonistes]

Diablo 2: Resurrected
Patriarch Viper - Level 82 Bonemancer


Viper was the Necromancer in the Sept I'm working on with my two sons. My eleven-year-old picked the name and we quested him through the game together. He started out as a Summoner, but my son found the gameplay too passive, so we used the respect to go Bonemancer around early NM.

Stats
Strength: 87/135
Dexterity: 25/69
Vitality: 363/402
Energy: 25/79

Resists
Fire: 75%
Cold: 75%
Lightning: 75%
Poison: 56%
FCR: 75% breakpoint

Bone Spear Damage: 3739-3933

Full LCS:

Spoiler

Equipment
Helm: Harlequin Crest
Weapon: “White” in +3 Bone Spear Wand
Shield: Homunculus (MPK)
Armor: Skin of the Vipermagi (FCR)
Gloves: Trang-Oul’s Claws (FCR)
Belt: Nosferatu’s Coil (MPK)
Boots: Silkweave (MPK)
Ring 1: Rare MPK/Allres/FCR
Ring 2: Ravenfrost
Amulet: +2 Necro Skills / 10% FCR / Resists
Switch: “Call to Arms” / Lidless Wall
Charms: 1 Poison and Bone Skiller, Torch, Annihilus, FHR, Resists

Mercenary: Varaya, A5 Frenzy Merc
Helm: Arreat’s Face
Weapon 1: “Grief” Phaseblade
Weapon 2: “Lawbringer” Eth Cryptic Sword
Armor: “Fortitude” Great Hauberk

Equipment notes:
We wanted to try something a tad different, as I felt like slapping Enigma on the guy and just teleporting around with an A2 “Insight” wielding merc would make him feel too much like a sorceress.

Since we didn’t have “Enigma” to position the mercenary, the A2 guy didn’t really work as well with a caster who needs to hang back and not get mobbed, so we decided to try the A5 Frenzy merc. He does cancel out the Decrepify with his taunting, but Lawbringer helped to keep decrep on and the knockback to undead wasn’t bad either. He was very aggressive and in most areas we could just cast decrepify, let him go Frenzy wild on the mobs, and shoot bone spears and corpse explode from a distance quite safely.

The A5 merc was nice, but that means no “Insight,” so most of the build’s gear was to try to accumulate as much MPK as possible. The total of +13 MPK was actually quite comfortable to play without having to use potions much.

For whatever reason, it seems I have an inventories-worth of most skillers for my characters, but only 1 Poison and Bone skiller in my entire GoMule stash! I can really see this guy being quite strong in the damage department with leveling him up to pump synergies more and an inventory of skillers.

Skills (base)

Summoning
Clay Golem - 1
Golem Mastery - 1
Summon Resist - 1

Poison and Bone
Teeth - 1
Corpse Explosion - 1
Bone Spear - 20
Bone Spirit - 20
Bone Armor - 1
Bone Wall - 20
Bone Prison - 20

Curses
Amplify Damage - 2 (whoops!)
Iron Maiden - 1
Life Tap - 1
Weaken - 1
Terror - 1
Decrepify - 1


Skills Notes:
The Clay Golem survived OK with all the plus skills. For the curses, really all we used was Decrepify, so if I had to redo it, I would have put the points into more Bone Spear synergies.

Bone Prison and Bone Wall can certainly make things very safe, but I found them annoying since we were playing without Enigma and they could end up blocking your way. They were great for Act-end bosses: the A5 merc would run up and attack the boss and I’d lock him in with Bone Prison and just let him wail on the monster. He was such a tank it was very effective, and nice for Baal who like to knock the mercenary back constantly.

Deaths:
He was pretty safe to play, and I didn’t have any deaths, but my son died to some doll packs–a D2 rite of passage if there ever was one!

Drops:
Nothing of note here.

Overall, he was a pretty fun playthrough... we may respec him to a Poison necro and farm with him some.

 

[snickersnack]

Neato! Fun use of the act 5 merc!

 

[little birdy]

Nice Pat!

The Act V Frenzy merc is a madman. I love it. Great choice. I think a Rogue merc (with an ‘Insight’) is also a solid choice to pair with this build if you really want ‘Insight’ but don’t want the slow Act II guy. That is what I did when I quested my Bone Necro through the game. Freezing Arrow can provide a little extra crowd control (or go Fire if you want to preserve corpses), and she is quicker to attack than the Desert Dudes. Bone skills offer a lot of safety, and the Clay Golem is such a good distraction for monsters, you don’t really need a tanky merc IMO.

Also, this is perhaps an unpopular opinion and I don’t want to derail your thread, but I’d totally sacrifice some Vitality to pump points into Energy if I was playing a Bone Necro without ‘Insight’, to go along with that MPK gear. I am re-thinking the max Vitality approach in non-HC characters, as I think many of my characters have more Life than is needed for my purposes. I might start to get away from the “Just enough Strength and Dex, no Energy” stat point allocation.

 

[LouB]

Congrats to the two of you.

I really like Barb merc and Rogues. My wolfbarb went with a barb merc all though Hell with just a Lawbringer and he was fine. In 1.14 I didn't really have a problem with his warcrys, but once in D2R I found him casting Battle Cry to often which overwrote the decrepify. I really wish there was a way to shut off Battle Cry. I've finally switched back to an Act 2 merc with a Reaper's Toll. He is much slower and now I find myself having to adjust to his location, but at least just decrepify is being cast and it has speed up my runs.

Ah, dolls. I guess I'm going to have to pay attention to them again. When you have over 5,000 life, 13,000 defense and 20%+ life leach, you just shrug them off like they were a lady bug.