PvM 1.13 ExplosionMancer guide
Are you tired of making the same charaters all over again? How many times have you build your hammerdins, javazons and meteorb sorcs? However, most of us don't want to make different builds that are weak. Your search for a different, yet powerful, experience ends here.
ExplosionMancer could be described as an advanced bonemancer. After all, he is able to cast out 4k Bonespear reaching the highest faster cast rate breakpoint. The true devastation of his skills, however, lay on the almighty Corpse Explosion. With this skill the ExplosionMancer is able to damage every monster on the screen rapidly causing chain reaction like no other. ExplosionMancer is truly a character you can solo hell untwinked, magic find in the endgame and even kill Uberdiablo with.
This guide is based on my own experimentation and a level 91 character I completed. The numbers and experiences you read are therefore not just speculations. I did a similar guide about two years ago but this one is much thought-out and in-depth.
Contents:
1.0 Stat points
2.0 Skill points
3.0 Expensive Gear
3.1 Cheap Gear
3.2 Mercenary Gear
4.0 How to get there? Early game and respeccing
5.0 What to do when you get there? Playing the End Game
5.1 Minibosses: Pindle, Eldritch, Shenk, Travincal Council and the Cow level
5.2 Level 85 Areas: The Pit, Chaos Sanctuary
5.3 The Uberdiablo challenge
6.0 End notes
1.0 Stat points
Strenght - Nothing
Dexterity - Enough for max block
Vitality - Everything else
Energy - Nothing
Nothing revolutionary here. The item with the highest strenght requirement for this build is the homonculus shield with strenght requirement of 58. So you only need 43 strenght from your gear to be able to reach all of your strenght requirements (Necromancer base strenght is 15). That's pretty easy to do with a good annihilus and hellfire torch, so you really don't need to put any points into strenght.
With the homonculus shield I needed a little over 200 dexterity at lvl 91 to maintain maximum block rate of 75%. That leaves a lot points left for vitality since you don't need any for energy. Max block is great, especially against the archers you encounter.
Of course you can always put stat points to strenght and energy early in the game if you go untwinked. I'm describing the optimal stat point allocation with the optimal gear here. I'm going to discuss respeccing more later on.
2.0 Skill points
1 to Amplify Damage
1 to Clay Golem
1 to Golem Mastery
1 to Summon Resists
1 to Bone Armor
1+ to Teeth
20 to Bone Wall
20 to Bone Prison
20 to Bone Spear
20 to Corpse Explosion
Alright, this is where the magic happens and where many players go wrong.
I've seen many times how people insist that 1, 5 or 10 points to Corpse Explosion (CE) is enough. This leads me to believe that they don't use it as a main killing spell. CE radius increases steadily every level with no diminishing results. This means that the damage CE puts out will grow exponentially with each skill level as it covers more ground. So instead of diminishing result we get more damage with every point spent. It is always a good idea to max CE as you kill 95% of the monsters with it. To dumb it down, it's better to hit your whole screen with CE than just half of it AND you'll need less points to reach the second half of the screen that you did reaching the first half of the screen. Keep in mind you will hit monsters outside your screen and monsters behind obstacles, too.
So CE blows up a corpse and deals 70-120% of the monster's hp to every enemy with inside the radius of CE. It deals half fire and half physical damage. As monster hit points are really high, this makes CE the single most damaging spell in Diablo 2. Keep in mind that it will hit every monster every time. It is the ultimate skill, in my mind. What other skill makes you damage every monster on your screen instantly with damage high enough to potentially kill every monster in your screen with just one explosion?
CE has one big drawback, though. The damage it deals is always calculated from the monster's base hitpoints. So it will deal the same amount of damage when you play alone or with 7 other players. In short, CE will be weaker the more players enter your game. It will not be obsolete, by any means. Usually it just means you have to click 2-3 times to kill everything on your screen instead of 1 time. It's good to notice, though, that the above is true with any other skill with any other character.
The power of CE is boosted even more with the curse Amplify Damage. Amplify damage boosts physical damage by 100% (doubles it). And remember, CE did 50% fire damage and 50% physical damage. That's why Amplify Damage is your main curse as it helps you set up the chain reaction much easier even with other players in the game.
You need to get the first corpse, however, to start up the devastating chain reaction of CE. That's where Bone Spear comes into play. Bone Spear is a wonderful attack spell, because it's 100% piercing and 100% magic damage. There is very few monsters in D2 that are immune to magic damage. As you do three types of damage (magic, fire and physical) there's nothing immune to you. This is a real advantage that not many builds have - there's nothing immune to you, even if you go untwinked.
But why not put points into Bone Spirit? Well, first you need a reason to put points into it. After all, you don't really need two main attacks. Bone Spirit lacks the piercing of Bone Spear and that will result in much lower damage, even if you hit just two monsters at once with Bone Spear. The homing ability is nice, but usually just makes Bone Spirit slow.
There's another reason why I wouldn't put any points into Bone Spirit until very late in the game, if even then. Skill points in Bone Wall and Bone Prison boosts your Bone Spear, but they also boost your Bone Armor (even more than by putting points into Bone Armor itself). You will end up with ~600 point strong Bone Armor (which will absord all physical damage directed to you) with no +skills items. That resulted to some 860-strong Bone Armor with full gear for my character. That grants you unbelievable safety, which is especially suited for HC play. And more, Bone Prison is the ultimate safety spell of Diablo 2. It is very sturdy and easy to use. Just spam a couple of Bone Prisons and nothing in your screen moves. Then it's easy to make the initial kill, amplify damage the monsters and start the chain reaction.
After you've maxed your four core skills (Corpse Explosion, Bone Wall, Bone Prison and Bone Spear) you could still go with Bone Spirit, but you would max it in level 96. Better to go with teeth. It mainly boots your Bone Spear, but also grants you a nice second attack. I used it to boost normal difficulty or run normal cows. It resulted in some 800 damage teeth that killed everything in normal difficulty with one hit. That's great because your CE would be as effective in normal as it is in hell, so it's a bit embarrasing to not be able to clear normal fast with high level character
There's two other curses I used that are must-haves. They are decreptify and attraction. I got them as +skills from my white runeword wand (more on that later on), but if you go untweaked you need to take them as soon as you can. Attraction is the ultimate crowd control curse. It will mark one monster and most monsters will attack that monster instead of you or your hirelings. It's great versus a lot of things, but godly against archer packs. Decreptify is what you need against bosses. It will slow them down and make 'em take more physical damage and hit your mercenary with less.
The Clay Golem (CG) route is of course optional, but I highly recommend it. With just three skill points you get a lot bang for you buck. With some gear your CG will be very sturdy and it will slow monsters down that hit it. It goes very well with your mercenary, but more on that later on.
3.0 Expensive Gear
Helm: Shako socketed with perfect topaz
Armor: Skin of the Vipermagi socketed with Shael (35@ preferred)
Weapon: White runeword in a basewand +3 Bone Spear, +1 Attract, +1 Decreptify
Shield: Homunculus socketed with UM
Amulet: Crafted amulet with +2 necro skills and 15% faster cast rate
Rings: 2xFCR rings with +strenght, +dexterity and all resists
Belt: Arachnid Mesh
Boots: Waterwalk (+65 life preferred)
Gloves: Magefist
Switch: Call to Arms & Lidless Wall
Inventory: Hellfire torch, Annihilus, Gheeds, 5xPoison and Bone Skillers, faster hit recovery and faster run/walk small charms with possible all resists.
With the above gear I reached the following with my level 91 character with Battle Command from CtA:
Level 46 Bone Spear with 3,9k damage
125 FCR (highest breakpoint)
Level 43 Corpse Explosion with 16,6 yard radius
Level 16 Amplify Damage, Decreptify and Attraction
Level 14 Clay Golem
80/75/75/75 resists
860 point strong Bone Armor
1200 hitpoints without life charms (1600-2000 depending on the CtA)
Max Block
40 FHR (20 from shael rune, 20 from SCs)
~120 Magic Find
Basically I wanted to reach the highest FCR breakpoint without sacrificing too much. I wanted to have really low strenght requirements so spirit was out of the question (it would've cost 100 strenght to get). I also wanted the resists and max block from the Homonculus. The white runeword in +3 BS, +1 Decreptify and +1 Attraction basewand is the ultimate weapon, giving you +8 to Bone Spear and saving you six skill points on curses (that way you don't spend any skill points on prerequisites). I didn't want to loose bulk of my MF from Shako for a necro 20%FCR circlet. The answer was a crafted amulet with 15% FCR. It allowed me to reach the highest breakpoint with the gear I wanted.
The one thing you probably notice is that Enigma is missing. My theory is that people try to play a bonemancer like a sorceress and then complain that is sucks. They put on enigma and teleport around casting Bone Spear. Not everything works on every character. You have to find your own strenghts and play by them. As you can see in the endgame sections, this character does not need teleport. You would lose the 30% FCR in Vipermagi for Enigma and you would have to go the HOTO/Spirit runeword route, which would leave you dressed like a wannabe sorceress/hammerdin.
With high annihilus and hellfire torch it's easy to reach maximum resists, otherwise you'll need more +resists charms. Good thing with this build is that it doesn't need +stats that much, so +resists annihilus´/torches are much cheaper to buy.
Defense wasn't an issue for me. I don't know why people want to pay double price so their character will have 651 defense instead of 640 defense.. It will be obsolete anyway and this character relies on max block, Bone Armor and max resists.
There's only two very rare and valuable items in the selected gear. One is the crafted amulet and the other is the basewand for the white runeword. Luckily people still search mainly for +3 Bone Spear, +3 Bone Spirit wands for reasons I really don't understand, so you might be lucky like I was and buy yourself a +3 BS, +1 Decrep, +1 Attract wand cheap.
Why so little MF? Because MF has highly diminishing results (the first 100 is more important than the next 900) and it's fairly useless after ~250 especially if you sacrifice any killing speed to get it. Also this build is mainly interested in finding socketable and other non-unique valuable items. With MF you lower your possibility to find those items. A little bit (~150%) of MF, though, lowers the possibility just a little bit and doubles your possibility to find uniques. See the MF table in this link.
But the great thing about this build is that it's not relying on gear. Next we take a look about the cheap gear that'll still be very sufficient to take you through the game.
3.1 Cheap Gear
Helm: Shako
Armor: Que-Hegan's Wisdom
Weapon: White runeword in +2/+3 Bone Spirit basewand
Shield: Homunculus socketed with perfect diamond
Amulet: +3 Poison and Bone amulet (preferably other mod, too)
Rings: 2xFCR rings (preferably other mods, too)
Belt: Nightsmoke / Gloom's Trap
Boots: Tearhaunch / Silkweave
Gloves: Magefist
Switch: A +decreptify wand for bosses here is a good way to save 3 skill points.
Although this is a very cheap setup, it's very effective. You'll reach 80%FCR and the second highest breakpoint with that. You'll be hurting for resists so pick up some resist charms as you go on. Good thing about this setup is that it's mana-friendly - you won't run out of mana even without insight merc. You'll get good boost of mana from shako, but also with the above equipment you'll receive 25% increase in maximum mana, 73% faster mana regeneration and, most importantly, +13 mana after each kill. If you don't have mana problems, I'd advise using Nightsmoke&Tearhaunch for the resists over Gloom's Trap&Silkweave.
You can go untwinked, but trading these basic items make it easier. Most of them are considered free or worth of a couple of perfect gems. Use your hellforge drops to buy shako / homunculus.
5.2 Mercenary Gear
I used act2 normal prayer mercenary.
Weapon: Insight runeword in an ethereal colossus voulge
Armor: Duress runeword in an ebugged armor
Helm: (Ethereal) Vampire Gaze (preferably with 20% Damage reduction and 8% life leech) socketed with IAS jewel
What I've tried to accomplish here is overall survivability and versatility. The main thing for me is that my mercenary stays alive, tanks the monsters and gives me mana and life.
What a merc needs to stay alive? Some life leech, in which high damage weapon helps, max resists and damage reduction. Let's go over and see if we got everything.
Insight in an eth CV is a nice hurtstick with capability of some 800 damage on-weapon resulting in over 3k damage. With level 17 aura all of your mana problems are over. The great thing about prayer merc, though, is that the prayer effect activates two times with insight because meditation always activates prayers in itself. So you'll get 2xprayer aura with 1xmeditation aura. It's like you are drinking life and mana potions constantly. With the ability to cast attract, Bone Armor, max block and max resists you are rarely taking any significant damage (magic damage reduced from viper and white also help some against lower damage elemental attacks, like hydras and fire archers). And when you do take the occasional 10-20 hp damage, it heals up in an instant. I feel the 2xprayer/1xmeditation combination with this build is seriously overpowered.
So Insight is the weapon for obvious choices - it gives your merc very high damage and thus helps him stay alive from leech, it gives you insane amounts of mana and also it double-activates your mercenary's prayer aura.
It doesn't have life leech, though, so your merc will need that from his helm. Vampire Gaze is the obvious choice here. You'll get 15-20% Damage Reduction, which is great, with 6-8% life leech, which is enough to keep your merc alive. Socketing with IAS jewel grants your mercenary 1-frame faster attack speed and helps him leech even faster.
I did go with duress as my mercs armor because of the Crushing Blow and Open Wounds. Of course there are other nice options, like threachery and fortitude, but the main point is that your merc will stay alive with Duress, too, and you'll get more benefit from the added CB than a little higher killing speed merc (as it's quite high already and you'll do 99% killing yourself, anyway). So the CB will help you with bosses and you don't have to switch for Guillame's everytime you kill Baal in a game with a couple players in it. And duress has 40% FHR, which is fantastic.
The all resists from Duress will be enough at level 94 onward, so before that you could just find a 15IAS/5@ jewel to socket your vampire gaze with. While we're on it, your mercenary will need to be at level 91 to use the ethereal CV without +strenght equipment. You can go with IAS/+strn jewel, a different ethereal poleaxe or Duriel's Shell (which is great leveling armor for your merc) untill you reach level 91. I simply like CV because of the damage and the fact that it always gets 4 sockets from Larzuk.
There's certainly a thousand different routes to go with your merc. But I think people should realize that different builds want different type of mercenarys. The fortitude&andy face combo is not the best for every build. The insight, vampire gaze and duress combo worked very well for me just as I wanted it to work: my merc stayed alive easily, tanked the monsters, helped me take down bosses and gave me constant stream of life and mana in the process.
However, my Clay Golem of course helped my mercenary a great deal. Clay Golems attract monsters to hit it and slows them with every hit it receives. It's like a walking decreptify & attract curse combined. It's great. Together the Clay Golem and the merc are nearly invinsible (especially with CtA on switch) and once you get this combo running, you find out that you need Bone Prison very rarely. Just a couple of attact curses and any mob comes to a standstill for you to blow up. It's almost criminally easy.
Bosses are rendered useless, too. The cold damage from vampire gaze and duress, CG's slowing effect and decreptify makes the bosses just basically stand there, because the slowing effects all stack. That's the key of killing Uberdiablo, but more on that later on. All in all, your merc and CG go very well together and the above gear is great for the overall survivability and versatility you want with this build.
4.0 How to get there? Early game and respeccing
Pre-1.13 this builds weakness was levels 1-17, the levels before Bone Spear. Your manapool was too small for massive CE'ing and you basically had nothing to attack your enemies with. Well, these problems vanish with respecialization.
I recommend starting out as a summoner necromancer. Nothing is more easy than normal difficulty with summoner. Just pump Raise Skeleton and Skeleton Mastery and you'll all set for normal. A couple of points can go to CE to give you something to do while your minions kill the monsters. I had a hard time not to respec earlier, as I dislike raising the summoner army every game and being useless in the Baalruns. I respecced to this build after normal baalruns and nightmare was easy, too. And when I got to hell with the "cheap gear" I listed above, it was very easy, too.
I recommend also pumping your strenght and energy in the early game and maybe taking max block after you get homunculus. Basically just put points where you need 'em at the moment and respec later when you get better gear. It's a blast.
5.0 What to do when you get there? Playing the End Game
Every viable character has to have purpose in the end game. We don't make them just to finish the game with. Usually it all comes down to magic finding. In the current economy, though, it doesn't mean teleporting to act bosses to find unique items. As this is fairly easy to do with many builds, there are plenty of unique items easily tradeable and they are cheap. This leaves many players seeking alternative ways of becoming rich. My solution was to seek only the highest unique items, but mainly for the base items for runewords together with charms and jewels.
5.1 Minibosses: Pindle, Eldritch, Shenk, Travincal Council and the Cow level
There are a lot of bosses that are always on the same spot and don't need teleporting to reach fast. Pindle is probably the best example of these, because he can drop almost any item in the game and is easily reachable. It is in his minions, however, that ExplosionMancer is mainly interested. While you kill pindle, you see, his minions are all coming towards the narrow door in pindlegarden. A couple of attract curses and merc&CG at the door will hold 'em long enough to make a tight pack of undeads. One or two Corpse Explosions with Amplify Damage will kill them all, so very easy. It's a great source of items and especially XP. I leveled 80-89 quite fast killing pindle and his minions, finding skillers, base items for runewords worth ists, jewels and what not.
Eldritch and Shenk are added to the list because they are easy. Reachable through the frigid highlands waypoint they both have a following that is easy to blow up. Again you may find better drops from the minions than the bosses. Especially Shenk's place is always full with monsters, which is a great thing because it allows you to kill more monsters in less time - the only way to find those valuable base items for runewords people are so willing to pay fortunes for.
In Travincal you'll get high density of council members that are statistically more inclined to drop High Runes. They are, too, easy to blow up. Just remember to use attract of one of the "normal" council members and that'll keep hydras off of your merc. You'll probably have to recast your CG here, but most times you'll get the initial kill easy enough and after that they are all dead in a couple of clicks.
Cow level is very fun with this build. CE just rips through them. You can kill screen full of cows so fast it makes you feel guilty. Cow level is great place to find runes and socketables, too. And it doesn't require teleporting since you just take a portal from the town to get there. However, CE will kill the Cow King faster than you can say "moo", so it's a good idea to open the portal up with another character first. Perhaps one that can teleport to Wirt's leg fast?
5.2 Level 85 Areas: The Pit, Chaos Sanctuary
The rarest of items can be only found on certain areas in the game. Two of these areas are located near waypoints and are easily runnable by ExplosionMancer.
Pits are located south on Outer Cloister WP in Act 1. Just follow the road and you'll get there quite fast. Inside you'll find weak monsters that are able to drop good. I was able to run this area with 3-4 players as fast as going alone, so it's good idea to try to have more players in the game while running this area, as it is very easy. I didn't have any difficulty even with 7-8 players, though it was a little more Bone Spear and little less CE.
Chaos Sanctuary is also a good place to run with ExplosionMancer. The River of Flame, the area between the act 4 last WP and Chaos Sanctuary, can be a pain without teleport. I had a teleport charge amulet for this reason only. Insinde Chaos Santuary there is very little resistance for you and you can run this with more players in the game, too. With full game it can get a little bit slow, though. And you'll get Diablo at the end, so that can improve your loot.
Why not run Baal? Basically because every one of us has run him a million times. So it's not that this build can't run him, it's just that personally I didn't want to run him because I'm so bored with Baalruns in general. Throneroom wave 2 magic immunes go down quickly with CE, in case you are wondering. I just haven't run Baal so much I could give you recommendations. I also think that Pits are still faster to run with more people in the game, so faster means more drops and more wealth.
5.3 The Uberdiablo Challenge
I'm not sure if I'm the first BoneMancer to kill Uberdiablo, but I haven't heard of anyone else. He was actually quite easy to kill and the reason is that he has only 50% magic resistance as opposed to 95% elemental resistances. The means your Bone Spear is still highly effective against him.
But you'll still need your mercenary for his CB. I switched the Insight for Obedience for the added 40% CB and went for it. With 55% CB and 33% Open Wounds your merc can take Uberdiablo down to 1/8 life very quickly. How does he stay alive? Because of your Clay Golem. You just keep casting CG in front of Uberdiablo and UberD will keep hitting your CG instead of your merc. The result? Uberdiablo will be slowed and with decreptify he will be rendered next to useless.
You still need to finish him off, though. The Open Wounds from your merc isn't enough to keep his notorius regeneration from healing him. So you'll need a fast and high damagin Bone Spear to finish him off. 125FCR and 3.9k Bone Spear was more than enough.
So if you're into Uberdiablo hunting, you don't have to make a paladin just to kill him. I think it's pretty badass.
Just don't get too excited and go to UberTristram with your ExplosionMancer. Those guys have 75% magic resist, as do the miniubers, so you'll be at a serious disadvantage compared to your fight with Uberdiablo.
6.0 End Notes
Even if this is a very long guide, it still doesn't cover most of little the stuff, like how to use your curses, you need to find out yourselves when you play the build. The main thing is that you don't try to play this build like a sorceress to teleport and kill act bosses. This build is an area clearer with the stability to back it all up. I'll end by some points why you should try ExplosionMancer yourself:
- It is a highly versatile build. You are able to run variety of different areas. You won't be spamming just one skill, neither, but using a couple skills all the time depending on the situation. That makes playing to game interesting instead of feeling like you're grinding.
- It is a very safe build that never dies if you don't make a huge mistake. That makes it a very viable build for a (first) HC character.
- Great build for a control-freak. You can control everything on your screen with your curses and/or Bone Prison.
- It is a extremely stable build that never encounters something you can't deal with. It's not a glass-cannon that can kill 80% of the monsters fast and the rest maybe in 10 minutes.
- It is an independent build. You can solo the game and never have to ask for help.
- It clears popular MF areas fast, loves pindle's minions and cows. :jig:
- It's way better than the MeteOrb / Javazon (without infinity) I've made.
Keywords: different, powerful, steady.
Hope you liked the guide. Maybe we'll see necromancer gear prices rising in the near future. :whistling:
EDIT: I made a small video about this build. Hopefully you'll see things like how attract works, how sturdy bone armor is, how much he regenerates from prayer etc.
Youtube link
They will probably take away the music pretty fast so you can play the music from the video I uploaded for dailymotion
Are you tired of making the same charaters all over again? How many times have you build your hammerdins, javazons and meteorb sorcs? However, most of us don't want to make different builds that are weak. Your search for a different, yet powerful, experience ends here.
ExplosionMancer could be described as an advanced bonemancer. After all, he is able to cast out 4k Bonespear reaching the highest faster cast rate breakpoint. The true devastation of his skills, however, lay on the almighty Corpse Explosion. With this skill the ExplosionMancer is able to damage every monster on the screen rapidly causing chain reaction like no other. ExplosionMancer is truly a character you can solo hell untwinked, magic find in the endgame and even kill Uberdiablo with.
This guide is based on my own experimentation and a level 91 character I completed. The numbers and experiences you read are therefore not just speculations. I did a similar guide about two years ago but this one is much thought-out and in-depth.
Contents:
1.0 Stat points
2.0 Skill points
3.0 Expensive Gear
3.1 Cheap Gear
3.2 Mercenary Gear
4.0 How to get there? Early game and respeccing
5.0 What to do when you get there? Playing the End Game
5.1 Minibosses: Pindle, Eldritch, Shenk, Travincal Council and the Cow level
5.2 Level 85 Areas: The Pit, Chaos Sanctuary
5.3 The Uberdiablo challenge
6.0 End notes
1.0 Stat points
Strenght - Nothing
Dexterity - Enough for max block
Vitality - Everything else
Energy - Nothing
Nothing revolutionary here. The item with the highest strenght requirement for this build is the homonculus shield with strenght requirement of 58. So you only need 43 strenght from your gear to be able to reach all of your strenght requirements (Necromancer base strenght is 15). That's pretty easy to do with a good annihilus and hellfire torch, so you really don't need to put any points into strenght.
With the homonculus shield I needed a little over 200 dexterity at lvl 91 to maintain maximum block rate of 75%. That leaves a lot points left for vitality since you don't need any for energy. Max block is great, especially against the archers you encounter.
Of course you can always put stat points to strenght and energy early in the game if you go untwinked. I'm describing the optimal stat point allocation with the optimal gear here. I'm going to discuss respeccing more later on.
2.0 Skill points
1 to Amplify Damage
1 to Clay Golem
1 to Golem Mastery
1 to Summon Resists
1 to Bone Armor
1+ to Teeth
20 to Bone Wall
20 to Bone Prison
20 to Bone Spear
20 to Corpse Explosion
Alright, this is where the magic happens and where many players go wrong.
I've seen many times how people insist that 1, 5 or 10 points to Corpse Explosion (CE) is enough. This leads me to believe that they don't use it as a main killing spell. CE radius increases steadily every level with no diminishing results. This means that the damage CE puts out will grow exponentially with each skill level as it covers more ground. So instead of diminishing result we get more damage with every point spent. It is always a good idea to max CE as you kill 95% of the monsters with it. To dumb it down, it's better to hit your whole screen with CE than just half of it AND you'll need less points to reach the second half of the screen that you did reaching the first half of the screen. Keep in mind you will hit monsters outside your screen and monsters behind obstacles, too.
So CE blows up a corpse and deals 70-120% of the monster's hp to every enemy with inside the radius of CE. It deals half fire and half physical damage. As monster hit points are really high, this makes CE the single most damaging spell in Diablo 2. Keep in mind that it will hit every monster every time. It is the ultimate skill, in my mind. What other skill makes you damage every monster on your screen instantly with damage high enough to potentially kill every monster in your screen with just one explosion?
CE has one big drawback, though. The damage it deals is always calculated from the monster's base hitpoints. So it will deal the same amount of damage when you play alone or with 7 other players. In short, CE will be weaker the more players enter your game. It will not be obsolete, by any means. Usually it just means you have to click 2-3 times to kill everything on your screen instead of 1 time. It's good to notice, though, that the above is true with any other skill with any other character.
The power of CE is boosted even more with the curse Amplify Damage. Amplify damage boosts physical damage by 100% (doubles it). And remember, CE did 50% fire damage and 50% physical damage. That's why Amplify Damage is your main curse as it helps you set up the chain reaction much easier even with other players in the game.
You need to get the first corpse, however, to start up the devastating chain reaction of CE. That's where Bone Spear comes into play. Bone Spear is a wonderful attack spell, because it's 100% piercing and 100% magic damage. There is very few monsters in D2 that are immune to magic damage. As you do three types of damage (magic, fire and physical) there's nothing immune to you. This is a real advantage that not many builds have - there's nothing immune to you, even if you go untwinked.
But why not put points into Bone Spirit? Well, first you need a reason to put points into it. After all, you don't really need two main attacks. Bone Spirit lacks the piercing of Bone Spear and that will result in much lower damage, even if you hit just two monsters at once with Bone Spear. The homing ability is nice, but usually just makes Bone Spirit slow.
There's another reason why I wouldn't put any points into Bone Spirit until very late in the game, if even then. Skill points in Bone Wall and Bone Prison boosts your Bone Spear, but they also boost your Bone Armor (even more than by putting points into Bone Armor itself). You will end up with ~600 point strong Bone Armor (which will absord all physical damage directed to you) with no +skills items. That resulted to some 860-strong Bone Armor with full gear for my character. That grants you unbelievable safety, which is especially suited for HC play. And more, Bone Prison is the ultimate safety spell of Diablo 2. It is very sturdy and easy to use. Just spam a couple of Bone Prisons and nothing in your screen moves. Then it's easy to make the initial kill, amplify damage the monsters and start the chain reaction.
After you've maxed your four core skills (Corpse Explosion, Bone Wall, Bone Prison and Bone Spear) you could still go with Bone Spirit, but you would max it in level 96. Better to go with teeth. It mainly boots your Bone Spear, but also grants you a nice second attack. I used it to boost normal difficulty or run normal cows. It resulted in some 800 damage teeth that killed everything in normal difficulty with one hit. That's great because your CE would be as effective in normal as it is in hell, so it's a bit embarrasing to not be able to clear normal fast with high level character
There's two other curses I used that are must-haves. They are decreptify and attraction. I got them as +skills from my white runeword wand (more on that later on), but if you go untweaked you need to take them as soon as you can. Attraction is the ultimate crowd control curse. It will mark one monster and most monsters will attack that monster instead of you or your hirelings. It's great versus a lot of things, but godly against archer packs. Decreptify is what you need against bosses. It will slow them down and make 'em take more physical damage and hit your mercenary with less.
The Clay Golem (CG) route is of course optional, but I highly recommend it. With just three skill points you get a lot bang for you buck. With some gear your CG will be very sturdy and it will slow monsters down that hit it. It goes very well with your mercenary, but more on that later on.
3.0 Expensive Gear
Helm: Shako socketed with perfect topaz
Armor: Skin of the Vipermagi socketed with Shael (35@ preferred)
Weapon: White runeword in a basewand +3 Bone Spear, +1 Attract, +1 Decreptify
Shield: Homunculus socketed with UM
Amulet: Crafted amulet with +2 necro skills and 15% faster cast rate
Rings: 2xFCR rings with +strenght, +dexterity and all resists
Belt: Arachnid Mesh
Boots: Waterwalk (+65 life preferred)
Gloves: Magefist
Switch: Call to Arms & Lidless Wall
Inventory: Hellfire torch, Annihilus, Gheeds, 5xPoison and Bone Skillers, faster hit recovery and faster run/walk small charms with possible all resists.
With the above gear I reached the following with my level 91 character with Battle Command from CtA:
Level 46 Bone Spear with 3,9k damage
125 FCR (highest breakpoint)
Level 43 Corpse Explosion with 16,6 yard radius
Level 16 Amplify Damage, Decreptify and Attraction
Level 14 Clay Golem
80/75/75/75 resists
860 point strong Bone Armor
1200 hitpoints without life charms (1600-2000 depending on the CtA)
Max Block
40 FHR (20 from shael rune, 20 from SCs)
~120 Magic Find
Basically I wanted to reach the highest FCR breakpoint without sacrificing too much. I wanted to have really low strenght requirements so spirit was out of the question (it would've cost 100 strenght to get). I also wanted the resists and max block from the Homonculus. The white runeword in +3 BS, +1 Decreptify and +1 Attraction basewand is the ultimate weapon, giving you +8 to Bone Spear and saving you six skill points on curses (that way you don't spend any skill points on prerequisites). I didn't want to loose bulk of my MF from Shako for a necro 20%FCR circlet. The answer was a crafted amulet with 15% FCR. It allowed me to reach the highest breakpoint with the gear I wanted.
The one thing you probably notice is that Enigma is missing. My theory is that people try to play a bonemancer like a sorceress and then complain that is sucks. They put on enigma and teleport around casting Bone Spear. Not everything works on every character. You have to find your own strenghts and play by them. As you can see in the endgame sections, this character does not need teleport. You would lose the 30% FCR in Vipermagi for Enigma and you would have to go the HOTO/Spirit runeword route, which would leave you dressed like a wannabe sorceress/hammerdin.
With high annihilus and hellfire torch it's easy to reach maximum resists, otherwise you'll need more +resists charms. Good thing with this build is that it doesn't need +stats that much, so +resists annihilus´/torches are much cheaper to buy.
Defense wasn't an issue for me. I don't know why people want to pay double price so their character will have 651 defense instead of 640 defense.. It will be obsolete anyway and this character relies on max block, Bone Armor and max resists.
There's only two very rare and valuable items in the selected gear. One is the crafted amulet and the other is the basewand for the white runeword. Luckily people still search mainly for +3 Bone Spear, +3 Bone Spirit wands for reasons I really don't understand, so you might be lucky like I was and buy yourself a +3 BS, +1 Decrep, +1 Attract wand cheap.
Why so little MF? Because MF has highly diminishing results (the first 100 is more important than the next 900) and it's fairly useless after ~250 especially if you sacrifice any killing speed to get it. Also this build is mainly interested in finding socketable and other non-unique valuable items. With MF you lower your possibility to find those items. A little bit (~150%) of MF, though, lowers the possibility just a little bit and doubles your possibility to find uniques. See the MF table in this link.
But the great thing about this build is that it's not relying on gear. Next we take a look about the cheap gear that'll still be very sufficient to take you through the game.
3.1 Cheap Gear
Helm: Shako
Armor: Que-Hegan's Wisdom
Weapon: White runeword in +2/+3 Bone Spirit basewand
Shield: Homunculus socketed with perfect diamond
Amulet: +3 Poison and Bone amulet (preferably other mod, too)
Rings: 2xFCR rings (preferably other mods, too)
Belt: Nightsmoke / Gloom's Trap
Boots: Tearhaunch / Silkweave
Gloves: Magefist
Switch: A +decreptify wand for bosses here is a good way to save 3 skill points.
Although this is a very cheap setup, it's very effective. You'll reach 80%FCR and the second highest breakpoint with that. You'll be hurting for resists so pick up some resist charms as you go on. Good thing about this setup is that it's mana-friendly - you won't run out of mana even without insight merc. You'll get good boost of mana from shako, but also with the above equipment you'll receive 25% increase in maximum mana, 73% faster mana regeneration and, most importantly, +13 mana after each kill. If you don't have mana problems, I'd advise using Nightsmoke&Tearhaunch for the resists over Gloom's Trap&Silkweave.
You can go untwinked, but trading these basic items make it easier. Most of them are considered free or worth of a couple of perfect gems. Use your hellforge drops to buy shako / homunculus.
5.2 Mercenary Gear
I used act2 normal prayer mercenary.
Weapon: Insight runeword in an ethereal colossus voulge
Armor: Duress runeword in an ebugged armor
Helm: (Ethereal) Vampire Gaze (preferably with 20% Damage reduction and 8% life leech) socketed with IAS jewel
What I've tried to accomplish here is overall survivability and versatility. The main thing for me is that my mercenary stays alive, tanks the monsters and gives me mana and life.
What a merc needs to stay alive? Some life leech, in which high damage weapon helps, max resists and damage reduction. Let's go over and see if we got everything.
Insight in an eth CV is a nice hurtstick with capability of some 800 damage on-weapon resulting in over 3k damage. With level 17 aura all of your mana problems are over. The great thing about prayer merc, though, is that the prayer effect activates two times with insight because meditation always activates prayers in itself. So you'll get 2xprayer aura with 1xmeditation aura. It's like you are drinking life and mana potions constantly. With the ability to cast attract, Bone Armor, max block and max resists you are rarely taking any significant damage (magic damage reduced from viper and white also help some against lower damage elemental attacks, like hydras and fire archers). And when you do take the occasional 10-20 hp damage, it heals up in an instant. I feel the 2xprayer/1xmeditation combination with this build is seriously overpowered.
So Insight is the weapon for obvious choices - it gives your merc very high damage and thus helps him stay alive from leech, it gives you insane amounts of mana and also it double-activates your mercenary's prayer aura.
It doesn't have life leech, though, so your merc will need that from his helm. Vampire Gaze is the obvious choice here. You'll get 15-20% Damage Reduction, which is great, with 6-8% life leech, which is enough to keep your merc alive. Socketing with IAS jewel grants your mercenary 1-frame faster attack speed and helps him leech even faster.
I did go with duress as my mercs armor because of the Crushing Blow and Open Wounds. Of course there are other nice options, like threachery and fortitude, but the main point is that your merc will stay alive with Duress, too, and you'll get more benefit from the added CB than a little higher killing speed merc (as it's quite high already and you'll do 99% killing yourself, anyway). So the CB will help you with bosses and you don't have to switch for Guillame's everytime you kill Baal in a game with a couple players in it. And duress has 40% FHR, which is fantastic.
The all resists from Duress will be enough at level 94 onward, so before that you could just find a 15IAS/5@ jewel to socket your vampire gaze with. While we're on it, your mercenary will need to be at level 91 to use the ethereal CV without +strenght equipment. You can go with IAS/+strn jewel, a different ethereal poleaxe or Duriel's Shell (which is great leveling armor for your merc) untill you reach level 91. I simply like CV because of the damage and the fact that it always gets 4 sockets from Larzuk.
There's certainly a thousand different routes to go with your merc. But I think people should realize that different builds want different type of mercenarys. The fortitude&andy face combo is not the best for every build. The insight, vampire gaze and duress combo worked very well for me just as I wanted it to work: my merc stayed alive easily, tanked the monsters, helped me take down bosses and gave me constant stream of life and mana in the process.
However, my Clay Golem of course helped my mercenary a great deal. Clay Golems attract monsters to hit it and slows them with every hit it receives. It's like a walking decreptify & attract curse combined. It's great. Together the Clay Golem and the merc are nearly invinsible (especially with CtA on switch) and once you get this combo running, you find out that you need Bone Prison very rarely. Just a couple of attact curses and any mob comes to a standstill for you to blow up. It's almost criminally easy.
Bosses are rendered useless, too. The cold damage from vampire gaze and duress, CG's slowing effect and decreptify makes the bosses just basically stand there, because the slowing effects all stack. That's the key of killing Uberdiablo, but more on that later on. All in all, your merc and CG go very well together and the above gear is great for the overall survivability and versatility you want with this build.
4.0 How to get there? Early game and respeccing
Pre-1.13 this builds weakness was levels 1-17, the levels before Bone Spear. Your manapool was too small for massive CE'ing and you basically had nothing to attack your enemies with. Well, these problems vanish with respecialization.
I recommend starting out as a summoner necromancer. Nothing is more easy than normal difficulty with summoner. Just pump Raise Skeleton and Skeleton Mastery and you'll all set for normal. A couple of points can go to CE to give you something to do while your minions kill the monsters. I had a hard time not to respec earlier, as I dislike raising the summoner army every game and being useless in the Baalruns. I respecced to this build after normal baalruns and nightmare was easy, too. And when I got to hell with the "cheap gear" I listed above, it was very easy, too.
I recommend also pumping your strenght and energy in the early game and maybe taking max block after you get homunculus. Basically just put points where you need 'em at the moment and respec later when you get better gear. It's a blast.
5.0 What to do when you get there? Playing the End Game
Every viable character has to have purpose in the end game. We don't make them just to finish the game with. Usually it all comes down to magic finding. In the current economy, though, it doesn't mean teleporting to act bosses to find unique items. As this is fairly easy to do with many builds, there are plenty of unique items easily tradeable and they are cheap. This leaves many players seeking alternative ways of becoming rich. My solution was to seek only the highest unique items, but mainly for the base items for runewords together with charms and jewels.
5.1 Minibosses: Pindle, Eldritch, Shenk, Travincal Council and the Cow level
There are a lot of bosses that are always on the same spot and don't need teleporting to reach fast. Pindle is probably the best example of these, because he can drop almost any item in the game and is easily reachable. It is in his minions, however, that ExplosionMancer is mainly interested. While you kill pindle, you see, his minions are all coming towards the narrow door in pindlegarden. A couple of attract curses and merc&CG at the door will hold 'em long enough to make a tight pack of undeads. One or two Corpse Explosions with Amplify Damage will kill them all, so very easy. It's a great source of items and especially XP. I leveled 80-89 quite fast killing pindle and his minions, finding skillers, base items for runewords worth ists, jewels and what not.
Eldritch and Shenk are added to the list because they are easy. Reachable through the frigid highlands waypoint they both have a following that is easy to blow up. Again you may find better drops from the minions than the bosses. Especially Shenk's place is always full with monsters, which is a great thing because it allows you to kill more monsters in less time - the only way to find those valuable base items for runewords people are so willing to pay fortunes for.
In Travincal you'll get high density of council members that are statistically more inclined to drop High Runes. They are, too, easy to blow up. Just remember to use attract of one of the "normal" council members and that'll keep hydras off of your merc. You'll probably have to recast your CG here, but most times you'll get the initial kill easy enough and after that they are all dead in a couple of clicks.
Cow level is very fun with this build. CE just rips through them. You can kill screen full of cows so fast it makes you feel guilty. Cow level is great place to find runes and socketables, too. And it doesn't require teleporting since you just take a portal from the town to get there. However, CE will kill the Cow King faster than you can say "moo", so it's a good idea to open the portal up with another character first. Perhaps one that can teleport to Wirt's leg fast?
5.2 Level 85 Areas: The Pit, Chaos Sanctuary
The rarest of items can be only found on certain areas in the game. Two of these areas are located near waypoints and are easily runnable by ExplosionMancer.
Pits are located south on Outer Cloister WP in Act 1. Just follow the road and you'll get there quite fast. Inside you'll find weak monsters that are able to drop good. I was able to run this area with 3-4 players as fast as going alone, so it's good idea to try to have more players in the game while running this area, as it is very easy. I didn't have any difficulty even with 7-8 players, though it was a little more Bone Spear and little less CE.
Chaos Sanctuary is also a good place to run with ExplosionMancer. The River of Flame, the area between the act 4 last WP and Chaos Sanctuary, can be a pain without teleport. I had a teleport charge amulet for this reason only. Insinde Chaos Santuary there is very little resistance for you and you can run this with more players in the game, too. With full game it can get a little bit slow, though. And you'll get Diablo at the end, so that can improve your loot.
Why not run Baal? Basically because every one of us has run him a million times. So it's not that this build can't run him, it's just that personally I didn't want to run him because I'm so bored with Baalruns in general. Throneroom wave 2 magic immunes go down quickly with CE, in case you are wondering. I just haven't run Baal so much I could give you recommendations. I also think that Pits are still faster to run with more people in the game, so faster means more drops and more wealth.
5.3 The Uberdiablo Challenge
I'm not sure if I'm the first BoneMancer to kill Uberdiablo, but I haven't heard of anyone else. He was actually quite easy to kill and the reason is that he has only 50% magic resistance as opposed to 95% elemental resistances. The means your Bone Spear is still highly effective against him.
But you'll still need your mercenary for his CB. I switched the Insight for Obedience for the added 40% CB and went for it. With 55% CB and 33% Open Wounds your merc can take Uberdiablo down to 1/8 life very quickly. How does he stay alive? Because of your Clay Golem. You just keep casting CG in front of Uberdiablo and UberD will keep hitting your CG instead of your merc. The result? Uberdiablo will be slowed and with decreptify he will be rendered next to useless.
You still need to finish him off, though. The Open Wounds from your merc isn't enough to keep his notorius regeneration from healing him. So you'll need a fast and high damagin Bone Spear to finish him off. 125FCR and 3.9k Bone Spear was more than enough.
So if you're into Uberdiablo hunting, you don't have to make a paladin just to kill him. I think it's pretty badass.
Just don't get too excited and go to UberTristram with your ExplosionMancer. Those guys have 75% magic resist, as do the miniubers, so you'll be at a serious disadvantage compared to your fight with Uberdiablo.
6.0 End Notes
Even if this is a very long guide, it still doesn't cover most of little the stuff, like how to use your curses, you need to find out yourselves when you play the build. The main thing is that you don't try to play this build like a sorceress to teleport and kill act bosses. This build is an area clearer with the stability to back it all up. I'll end by some points why you should try ExplosionMancer yourself:
- It is a highly versatile build. You are able to run variety of different areas. You won't be spamming just one skill, neither, but using a couple skills all the time depending on the situation. That makes playing to game interesting instead of feeling like you're grinding.
- It is a very safe build that never dies if you don't make a huge mistake. That makes it a very viable build for a (first) HC character.
- Great build for a control-freak. You can control everything on your screen with your curses and/or Bone Prison.
- It is a extremely stable build that never encounters something you can't deal with. It's not a glass-cannon that can kill 80% of the monsters fast and the rest maybe in 10 minutes.
- It is an independent build. You can solo the game and never have to ask for help.
- It clears popular MF areas fast, loves pindle's minions and cows. :jig:
- It's way better than the MeteOrb / Javazon (without infinity) I've made.
Keywords: different, powerful, steady.
Hope you liked the guide. Maybe we'll see necromancer gear prices rising in the near future. :whistling:
EDIT: I made a small video about this build. Hopefully you'll see things like how attract works, how sturdy bone armor is, how much he regenerates from prayer etc.
Youtube link
They will probably take away the music pretty fast so you can play the music from the video I uploaded for dailymotion
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