Summoner's Doing Baal Runs Solo?

[MassiveErekchun]

A summoner can definitely do baal runs solo, and he can do them fairly easily if you have Enigma to help you get to throne room. In fact, my summoner doesn't even need to summon any skellies to beat minions/baal. He can tele straight to throne and merc and golem take care of minions with the assistance of amp damage and maxed corpse explosion. Very easily and quickly I might add.

Baal is also easy with a crushing blow merc and a clay golem or iron golem made from an item that slows enemies (my personal favorite, Kelpie Snare fuscina @75% slow). With no skeletons, mages, or revives summoned I still kill Baal in less than 1 minute. With all 15 of his skellies and 15 mages and venom lord revives he kills Baal in around 10-20 seconds. I do admit my necro has good gear now (Beast zerker and merc's Infinity cryptic axe and 6 BO Cta), but he used to kill reasonably quickly before he had these items as well.

8 player games slow down the killing power of a summoner slightly but they slow everyone down so no big surprise there. A good summoner should fear nothing but the most overpowered and stupid curse Blizzard ever thought up, Iron Maiden (honestly how can you justify a curse that can kill a lvl 99 character with godly gear in normal difficulty in 1 hit?) Have fun and I hope everything works out for your necro.

 

[ImNewb]

How many points did you put in clay golem and golem mastery for him to be so tough? Also are Skele Mages worth getting points in? or Max Block? So far my thoughts of skill tell me if currect, 20 skele, 20 skele mastery, 1 pt in all curse, 1+ golem and mastery, and possibly 20 skele mages, 1 in resist? Any thing else im missing or should change i am unsure about the skele mages and how much clay golem and mastery pts to put in those skills

thx,
DaNoob

 

[waytofailself]

and another note for a summoner:

if you've chosen to climb down the skill tree and get revives, bring in some revives that have crushing blow (such as the giants from the River of Flame). those can make lister & friends and Baal much quicker work.

as long as i have max block or something resembling it i never seem to have problems in the WSK with a summoner...the most important thing is to TAKE YOUR TIME.

edit: and for hell playing, clay golem only needs 1 point. he gets a ton of HP and the + skills will do the rest. as for golem mastery...it has pretty steep diminishing returns, so your hard earned skill points are better used elsewhere.

 

[jag]

Something that makes summoners different than other characters is dealing with the large group of minions. They seem to have a mind of thier own. They enjoy running off to fight everything they can find. Other characters can run by some things, but skellymancers are kind at the mercy of their own minions.

We cant run to far ahead of our army since we are usually not the hardiest characters, we have to kinda push and drag the army forward. I seem to have decent killing power with 32 rs 32 sm 28 rm + revives, merc and clay golem. I just seem to get stuck killing every single critter on the way.

Throne room itself is the easiest since all the monsters spawn in a clump. -- Baal is no biggie either. I have killed baal in hell loosing only 4 mages and 1 skel.

 

[MassiveErekchun]

As Waytofailself stated, 1 pt in golem and 1 pt in golem mastery is sufficient. I have lots of plus skills on my necro so IIRC the golem has about 12k life before BO. Makes quite a tank, especially with him slowing whoever he hits or hits him. Even at much lower lvls though the clay golem (Gumby) has a very high amount of life.

Also I chose to go the pure vita route, as I feel more danger from casters than any blockable attacks I went for the most life possible. I believe he has 1500 or so life pre-BO with 500+ pts in vita.

I feel the return you get from investing 20 pts in mages is worth it, especially since you already have mastery maxed. Another option would be to put 1 pt in mages and max psn nova and synergies. That way you can add to your killing power personally, but that isnt the cheapest build to make either as you need lots of -psn resist gear to be successful in hell.

 

[Doomazon]

Necros rule D2 unfairly. The only thing that seems to hurt my summoner is IM. If you say necros are slow or cant do a certain area then you are not playing correctly.

 

[AnimeCraze]

Necros rule D2 unfairly. The only thing that seems to hurt my summoner is IM. If you say necros are slow or cant do a certain area then you are not playing correctly.

There is maggot's lair. My sorc or pally can clean out that place faster than my necro by a large margin with similar equip. There is also arcane too.

 

[Jarath]

I also found a lot of the tombs in act 2 irritating for my summoner, too many damn doorways.

I also gave myself quite a shock today. I was dueling with some friends, just messing around since we are all using PVM characters and I died. I went to make a new game for a pit run, ran out into the blood moor to kill some fallen... My god. Even with amp damage it still took my golem FOREVER to kill just ONE fallen, so I just ran around until I found something that wasn't immune to fire and meteored it to death. ^^

But anyway my point is, once summoners have their full army up and running they may be powerful but I was surprised how reliant I'd become on my merc to get me started.

 

[AnimeCraze]

Perfectly normal. For my pure summonner, it probably would not be able to kill that fallen at all. I can try luring it to the Rogue in front of the Cold Plains WP. :lol: