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DISCLAIMER:
This is property of Sean D'Hoostelaere. This may be not be
reproduced under any circumstances except for personal, private use. It may
not
be placed on any web site or otherwise distributed publicly without advance
written permission. Use of this guide on any other web site or as a part of
any
public display is strictly prohibited, and a violation of copyright.
In plain English, this means that it is against the law for you to copy this
guide. If you want to print it out, that's fine, but I do not permit its use
anywhere on the web or for it to be used for anything profitable.
_________________
/ \
|*****************|
|Table of Contents|
|*****************|
\_________________/
V. Skill allocation
VI. Stats
VII. Equipment
a. Helmet
b. Armor
c. Gloves
d. Belt
e. Boots
f. Weapon
g. Armor
h. Jewelery
VIII. Mercenary
IX. How to Use/ Leveling up
a. Skeleton damage (just for show)
b. Skeleton mage damage (to make my point)
X. Contact Me
XI. Credits
I. OVERVIEW OF THE SUMMONER
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The Necromancer class is one that focuses on, as the name describes, using
and
manipulating the dead. His three skill trees focus on cursing the enemy,
creating bones that he uses to attack his foes, and in some cases he even
can raise the dead to fight for him. It's this last tree that we are going to
be looking at- the summoning tree.
If you haven't played Diablo 2 in a while, Summoners are not what they used
to
be. In the old days, people used to max blood golem and revive while using
bone spells from the back lines. The "synergy" idea that was introduced in
v1.10 of Diablo 2 totally reworked the necromancer (indeed, it changed almost
every character.)
What this means for the summoner is that it's no longer feasible to put
points
into bone spells and into summoning- a necromancer is best served to focus on
either one or the other. The good news is that where the skeletons were not
of much use in prior versions, raise skeleton is now a powerhouse skill and
the skeletons can do some very serious damage to anything that gets in their
way. For this reason, the summoner will put his primary focus into the skills
raise skeleton and skeleton mastery, and all other skills that he uses will
be a method of backing up the skeletons and enhancing their ability to kill.
Summoners are VERY skill dependent. What skills you choose have a large
effect on how powerful your summoner is in certain situations. HOWEVER, the
summoner is NOT item dependent. You don't need amazing equipment. A necro
that
knows what he's doing can actually solo hell with no equipment whatsoever-
they're that durable.
While fairly weak on its own, the raise skeleton ability is actually the
strongest of all summoning abilities. "United we stand, divided we fall."-
as
your levels increase, your number of skeletal warriors will increase. While
1
skeleton may not stand a chance, maybe 10 skeletons can get the job done.
When coupled with Skeleton Mastery, this is the core ability for any
summoner.
Your summoner will live and die by the proficiency of this skill and the one
below.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~Skeleton Mastery~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Required Level: 1
Effect: Increases the life and damage of your skeletons and revives.
This ability runs hand-in-hand with raise skeleton. While raise skeleton
raises
the number of skeletons you have, this ability makes your skeletons more
powerful. Used in conjunction with raise skeleton, you get 10 skeletons
dishing
out 200 damage apiece at a fairly rapid rate.
However, Skeleton Mastery goes even further- it also increases the damage
and
life of revives. While not initially useful, people who max this skill for
their skeletons will find a very solid revive spell waiting for them at the
end
of the road.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~Summon Clay Golem~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Required Level: 6
Effect: Summon a golem from the earth to fight for you
Summoners can also erect golems from nothingness to fight for them. Clay
golems
are the most basic of these creatures.
Despite being the most basic, clay golems are invaluable to a summoner. They
have a much higher maximum life than other golems, and they also cause any
target they hit to slow down. This means that your clay golem can sit there
and
take a vicious beating from anything that comes your way, while additionally
slowing them down. In conjunction with skeletons, this is a very effective
method to defeat bosses.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~Golem Mastery~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Required Level: 12
Effect: Increase the life, attack rating and speed of your golem
Attack rating can be somewhat useful, depending on your use of the golem.
However, I will not be discussing the in-depth purposes of an attack golem.
STILL, increased speed and life can be quite useful. If you're trying to
make
a tank, the more life is (obviously) better. The increased speed is also
very useful when dealing with archers. Golems can run up to ranged attackers
and quickly draw their fire while the skeletons amble along aimlessly.
For those of us who use golems, this ability is essential.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~Raise Skeletal Mage~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Required Level: 12
Effect: Raise a mage from the corpse of the fallen
Like raise skeleton, you take a corpse and create a skeletal warrior to
fight
for you. However, these skeletons cast spells- fire, ice, lightning and
poison.
Skeleton mages fill a great side role to your skeletons. They're nowhere
near
as powerful as the regular skeletons and are in the eyes of many people not
all that useful. However, they should not be ignored entirely. Having
minions
that can do elemental damage is very useful when the physical immunes come
around.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~Summon Blood Golem~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Required Level: 18
Effect: Summon a mass of blood and flesh to fight alongside you
Oddly, you don't need a corpse to make a blood golem, despite the name...
Anyhow, the blood golem is the second of the four types, and it is fairly
sturdy. While it doesn't do tremendous damage, it has the wonderful ability
of life leech, which means it is fairly competant at staying alive.
An old trick from the earlier Diablo days was to use a blood golem in
conjunction with iron maiden. Iron maiden causes the enemy to take more
damage
than it gives to the opponent. When the enemy attacks the blood golem, the
damage dealt back by iron maiden gets leeched off by the blood golem. In
this
way, the blood golem is nearly invincible.
Oh, and an added bonus- your life is linked to the life of your blood golem,
so
assuming that you use iron maiden correctly, your health will always remain
full.
However, it has some drawbacks; it gets nowhere near as much life as a clay
golem, and it cannot slow the enemy. Iron Maiden is also very limited- in
nightmare and hell, it is often nigh on useless, as returning 70 damage to a
monster with 4000 HP really isn't good compared to a horde of skeletons.
There's also the final drawback of linking HP- if he dies, you end up with
next to no HP, and quickly follow suit.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~Summon Resist~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Required Level: 24
Effect: Raises all resists on your summoned creatures
There's not much to say about this skill- it raises the resistances of all
of
your monsters. Every summoner needs this skill to keep their minions alive.
Of course, there's limits- past level 5, the points yield results far too
little to be worth your time. Instead, +skills will bring your summons up to
maximum resists.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~Summon Iron Golem~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Required Level: 24
Effect: Transform a weapon into a massive mechanical golem
Iron golems are, like all golems, good in their own way. However, bad news
first this time: To make an iron golem, you need a piece of equipment. You
must
throw the piece of equipment on the ground and summon the golem out of the
weapon/armor. When you summon your iron golem, that weapon/armor goes away.
Forever.
HOWEVER, that aside, the iron golem is quite powerful. Golems retain the
properties of the items used to create them, which means that you can take
a weapon with crushing blow, and your golem will have crushing blow. If you
have open wounds, your golem will cause open wounds. The iron golem also has
an automatic thorns aura to deal damage back to the enemy.
The thing is, the bonuses of an iron golem with crushing blow don't merit
ruining a weapon that has crushing blow, and as for thorns, it's as bad as a
blood golem, only this guy doesn't even get healed for it.
~~~~~~~~
~~Revive~~
~~~~~~~~
Required Level: 30
Effect: Raise specters of fallen foes to battle alongside you
This spell is very simple, yet very difficult to use properly. What it does
is
quite straightforward: you cast revive on a corpse, and a shade of the enemy
that just died comes to life and fights for you with their same attacks.
The difference is that their HP and damage is given significant boosts from
what the original monster had, which means you not only get what you killed,
but your version is even better!
However, revive has limitations- the revives are dumb as bricks. Once you're
done killing all nearby monsters, a revive becomes useless, and it is
utterly
incapable of walking behind you. It will get stuck in the most bizarre areas
and never unstick.
Revives last only three minutes, and if you walk too far away from them,
they
disappear outright. Again, this makes them fairly limited outside of intense
battles.
That being said, they are vital to summoning necros, as they are a great
support to your skeletons. Every summoner should use them. You simply need
to
bear in mind their limitations, which is why most people never spend more
than
one point into revive, as skeleton mastery is the skills that raises their
HP
and damage.
_ _ _
/ \/ \/ \
Well, it's a great skill for a bone necro, but you're not attempting to
damage
enemies with bone spells.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~Corpse Explosion~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Required Level: 6
Effect: Destroy enemy corpses to deal damage to everyone nearby
This is the single best necromancer ability in the game. Corpse explosion
does
60%-100% of the health of the monster, which means that no matter how far
you
are into the game, it will do massive damage. The problem lies in range- you
need lots of points to make it good.
No matter what your skill preference, corpse explosion can always be useful.
Some people prefer not to max it, but no good summoner goes without it.
_ _ _
/ \/ \/ \
IVc. Curses
###############
Curses are an essential part to any necro build. Each curse has a use, and
they
can be used for different situations to make necros more versatile than even
the paladin with his auras.
Curses generally are the same at level one as at level twenty. The radius of
the
curse may increase, or the length of time, but the MP cost never raises, and
the effects rarely change when you level up.
For this reason, it's ALWAYS one point into a curse- never more. +skills will
take care of the rest.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~Amplify Damage~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Required Level: 1
Effect: Lowers enemy defense
Such a simple definition for a curse that is actually much better than just
a
simple reduction of defense.
Curse actually lowers physical resistance by 100 percent. That means that an
enemy with zero physical resistance will take double the damage. However,
amp
is even more valuable with enemies who DON'T have 0 percent resistance.
Let's say they are 50% resistant. Amplify damage will lower their resistance
to
-50%, which will triple the damage that you would have normally done. Up it
a
notch to 75%, which changes to -25%, and your damage is five times as much
as
it would have been.
It gets better still, though. Amplify damage removes immunties. You see, an
immunity isn't simply a computer telling the game that the monster can't
take
damage. Immunity is where the monster has 100% or more resitance and
therefore
is effectively immune.
This means that unless the enemy is 200% resistant to physical damage, the
use
of amplify damage will ALWAYS remove their immunity.
For the most simple curse, this is by far the most useful, ESPECIALLY for
the summoner, who can double, triple, or quintuple his minion damage with
only
one point.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~Dim Vision~~
~~~~~~~~~~~
Required Level: 6
Effect: lowers the sight radius of all enemies affected
Dim Vision is, at first glance, not much of a spell. Vision range really
doesn't seem all that important. I mean really- how often do you worry about
your light radius on your character, right? For that reason, it's easy to
blow
off Dim Vision and ignore it.
However, the use of the spell can be summed up in one word: archers. Most D2
players will tell you that the most dangerous enemies in the game are the
ones who attack from a distance. Gloams are the infamous lightning casters
in
A5 who rip players in half on a regular basis. However, with dim vision you
can stop the gloams from even seeing you, which can give you an opportunity
to pick off the other enemies before focusing on them.
~~~~~~~~
~~Weaken~~
~~~~~~~~
Required Level: 6
Effect: Lower the damage that enemies do
This spell isn't very useful to you. It lowers damage that the enemy does by
a small amount, but 98.6% of the people who get weaken are going to
eventually
get decrepify, which is FAR better than weaken is.
(By the way, did you know that 56.4% of all statistics are made up?)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~Iron Maiden~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Required Level: 12
Effect: Send damage back to foes at multiples of the damage dealt to you
A very useful curse in parties of melee units. You can quickly deal back
some
fairly significant damage.
... At least, that's true in normal difficulty. In nightmare and hell, the
curse is nigh on useless. As I said when discussing blood golems, iron
maiden
simply doesn't dish out enough damage for the high HP amounts that the
monsters
have in Nightmare and Hell. Put a point into it for early on, but you're not
likely to ever use it past normal.
~~~~~~~~
~~Terror~~
~~~~~~~~
Required Level: 12
Effect: Send your enemies running in terror
Effective at removing your enemies from around you, this curse can be VERY
useful for those of us who are more defensive. Sending your foes running
away
in terror can be good if you need a break; just remember that it doesn't
last
forever.
~~~~~~~~~~
~~Life Tap~~
~~~~~~~~~~
Required Level: 18
Effect: Suck the life out of your foes
VERY useful skill. For every point of damage you inflict, you recieve 50%
back
to your own health. The reason for this invaluability is for the summoner;
a summoner can unleash a group of skeletons upon the foe and the skeletons
will
heal back the damage that they deal. It's very similar to the blood
golem/iron
maiden combo, only this one happens to be much more effective (it's used in
chaos tristram.)
If you have melee classes playing alongside you, using this curse will make
you
a very popular guy, indeed.
~~~~~~~~~~~
~~Decrepify~~
~~~~~~~~~~~
Required Level: 24
Effect: Make monsters weaker all around
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~Lower Resist~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Required Level: 30
Effect: Lower the resistance of your enemies
A definite crowd pleaser, this is conviction in curse form. While not quite
as powerful, this curse can be devastatingly useful in a group of
sorceresses.
Seeing as it seems like 85% of the players these days are using a sorc, this
curse makes a lot of sense.
_ _ _
/ \/ \/ \
\_/\_/\_/
V. SKILL ALLOCATION
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First, let's get the list of skills out of the way. From there, we can dig
into what to choose, and why.
There are a total of 110 points that can be spent in the course of the game.
However, giving the realistic expectation that you will never reach level 99,
most players assume 95 skill points instead, which gets you all the way to
level 84. Your distribution, with that assumption, should look like this:
Raise Skeleton 20
Skeleton Mastery 20
Corpse Explosion 20
Skeleton Mage 1-16
Clay Golem 1-16
Golem Mastery 1
Blood Golem 1
Iron Golem 1
Revive 1
Summon Resist 5
Amplify Damage 1
Dim Vision 1
Weaken 1
Iron Maiden 1
Terror 1
Life Tap 1
Decrepify 1
Lower Resist 1
Teeth 1
TOTAL: 95
Raise Skeleton and Skeleton Mastery are a given- without those two you aren't
going to be much of a summoner! Points into each of the summoning skills is
also a given- we need a golem, we need some mages, and we need revives.
Revives are a one-point wonder; you'll be wearing lots of +Skills with this
build and you'll receive plenty of bonuses from that. Summon Resist, as was
mentioned before, is a skill that has diminishing returns with more and more
points, and so five is generally the recommended amount. And finally, we take
the curses that we want (generally every curse but confuse and attract) and
place one point into each of them. And since we'll use Corpse Explosion, you
need a point in teeth. So far we've used only 60 points. That means
we have 35 more to use. How to best use them?
First, I recommend 20 points into Corpse Explosion. This spell really does a
lot of damage when you use it, and once you've killed one monster, it starts
a sort of chain reaction where each new corpse explosion kills another
monster,
which in turn leads to another corpse explosion, and before you know it the
entire group of monsters is gone.
Now, it's easy to write off putting points into CE as irrelevant when you
look at the numbers. The difference in the explosion's radius between level
10
and 20 is only 3.4 yards. When you've already got 5.6 yards, that doesn't
seem
like much of a change.
However, there are two points against this argument. First of all, 5.6 yards
isn't all that large, and the more range you can get out of this spell, the
more it can take advantage of the riduculous damage it does. Secondly, you
have
to look at it in terms of total area, not radius. For those of you who
are not math oriented, let's dust off our geometry textbook and look at Area.
The area of a circle is calculated as Pi (3.14) * radius squared. So with
a level 10 CE, your total area is 3.14 * 5.6^2, or about 99 square yards.
With a level 20 CE, the total area increases to 254 square yards, over twice
as big. Suddenly we see that the increase is much better than we had
originally
thought, and there's a good reason to put all 20 points there.
Skeleton Mages are the natural fit for a summoner. First, it's more
skeletons,
which only helps your horde look all the more impressive. Second, they
provide
non-physical damage to your team that can help with the physically immune
monsters that you run into. With fire, ice, poison AND lightning skeletons,
you
can really diversify your mages so that you face no enemy that's completely
immune to your attacks.
The problem with skeleton mages is in the damage they deal. While it's
*decent*
elemental damage, it doesn't hold a candle to the damage of your regular
skeletons. They'll be sitting in the back picking away at the enemies at a
VERY slow rate. Still, the best argument I've heard for using skeleton mages
is "Why not? What else are you going to invest your skills in?"
Enter the Clay Golem. With high HP and a chance to slow the target, clay
golems are a distraction, pure and simple. Take everything you know about
the Grizzly Bear for a wind druid and amplify it. The Clay golem is designed
to absorb damage and to keep the enemies focused on itself rather than on
something else. As an added bonus, it slows down your enemies, which makes it
tougher for the enemies to kill both you and your minions.
As you add points to Clay Golem, you increase both its HP and the chance that
it has to slow an enemy down. With one point, that chance is 11%, and with
the
extra 15 points, you increase that chance to 60%! It's life also rockets up
from ~350 in hell to over 2,000.
However, as with other skills the necro has, the returns of pumping clay
golem
diminish hugely as your skills increase, and a player with lots of +skills
equipment may actually do themselves a disservice by pumping this skill. The
mana costs jump in a huge way when you get past level 20 while the returns
are
minimal. Sure, the golem has a lot more HP, but to be honest it has enough as
it is. In addition, the chance to slow target at level 35 is only 68% vs. the
60% it was at level 16, so you're not improving on much with those extra 19
levels.
One thing I considered was golem mastery, but it's not worth putting more
than
a single point into this skill, because while it keeps mana costs down, it
provides less HP and the chance to slow target does not increase. So if you
decide to use the clay golem, your best bet is to stick with increasing the
clay golem skill, not golem mastery.
NOW, there is the matter of skill points after you hit level 84. Technically
there are 15 more skill points that you could spend, and I need to at least
explain how you would do that. There's also 4 potential points that you can
save once you have good equipment: only put one point in summon resist. With
good equipment, your +skills are incredibly high and that means that your
summon resist will be high. As we mentioned before, it's got diminishing
returns
and so the difference between having one and five in the skill is negligable.
So in reality, at the end of the game you can have 19 skills to allocate.
What
to do with them?
First, go ahead and max skeleton mages to get the most out of your mages.
After
that, it's really up to you. A point in bone armor and then pumping bone wall
will give you another obstacle to distract enemies, but more importantly you
can create a pretty useful bone armor that will absorb a few hundred damage.
The other option is to put points into golem mastery. I know, I said ignore
golem mastery earlier, but that was in a different situation, where you did
not
have good gear. If you do have good gear, your clay golem will already be a
high enough level that you'll be getting to that threshold where it's just
needless increasing the MP cost of the golem. Increasing golem mastery lets
you
pump the golem's HP while keeping the MP cost as low as possible.
So with good gear, your theoretical skill allocation at level 99 would be:
Raise Skeleton 20
Skeleton Mastery 20
Corpse Explosion 20
Skeleton Mage 20
Clay Golem 1
Blood Golem 1
Iron Golem 1
Revive 1
Summon Resist 1
Amplify Damage 1
Dim Vision 1
Weaken 1
Iron Maiden 1
Terror 1
Life Tap 1
Decrepify 1
Lower Resist 1
Teeth 1
Golem Mastery 1-16
Bone Armor 0-1
Bone Wall 0-15
TOTAL: 110
###########################
First of all, in version 1.13 you get the truly great ability to reset your
skills three times with each character, for free. Just complete the Den of
Evil
and ask Akara to do it for you. This means that if you want, you can pump
skills that may not be useful later and just reset your skills at a higher
level to negate it. Having said that, the summoner never needs to do this, as
the spells he wants are available from the very beginning and should be
utilized right away.
To start, put points into raise skeleton. You ultimately have to decide both
how
much mana you're willing to spend on each skeleton (raise skeleton increases
MP
cost; skeleton mastery does not) and how many skeletons you want (raise
skeleton increases the number of skeletons; skeleton mastery does not.)
Personally, I go for level 6 Raise Skeleton initially. That will bring you to
four skeletons, which is more than sufficient as your basic army. Next, get a
point into amplify damage, teeth and corpse explosion. From there, you can
dump all points into skeleton mastery. Get skeleton mastery to AT LEAST level
15
before touching raise skeleton again. Maxing it can't hurt, either. You see,
skeleton mastery adds a fixed amount of damage to your skeletons, while raise
skeletons adds percentage. Therefore, skeleton mastery is more beneficial
early
on, but when you have level 15 or greater into mastery, raise skeleton begins
to yield much better returns. While another 10 damage per level doesn't seem
like a lot, take into account that you have 8 or 9 skeletons, and that
amplify
damage doubles that.
Now, there's the matter of clay golem, golem mastery and decrepify. While
you're
busy maxing your skeletons, you also need to make sure to get these skills as
well. The most important thing is that you have these skills by the time you
get
to the end of Act 4. Diablo, the Act 4 boss, is the single toughest enemy for
a summoner and his spells wipe out your entire horde in virtually an instant.
To combat this, you need to slow him down using a combination of decrepify
and
the clay golem's slowing ability. You could also put a point into skeleton
mages if you want- get a cold mage and let the cold effect slow Diablo down.
However, you may prefer to wait; put that point into the regular skeletons
to beef them up. Hire an Act 1 Mercenary with cold arrows instead.
At this point you can finish leveling raise skeleton and skeleton mastery.
Once your skeletons are taken care of, quickly get revive, attract and lower
resist. That should put you into your 40s, which means you'll be midway
through
Nightmare. I recommend putting your points into summon resist at this point.
From there, max corpse explosion. As you're probably noticing, summoning is
both boring and is starting to get a little slower (that is, things are not
dying quite as fast as they used to.) Corpse Explosion's increased range will
help your necro to kill more enemies faster.
And then finally, as you finish maxing that you'll probably be entering hell
mode. As we said before, it's up to you what skill you choose to max next.
You
get plenty of time to do that as you work your way through hell. Then...
well,
that's all there is to it!
_ _ _
/ \/ \/ \
\_/\_/\_/
VI. STATS
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Your Necro has four stats to consider: Strength, Vitality, Energy and
Dexterity.
\ /\ /
Strength
/ \/ \
While is used to determine damage, that really doesn't matter for
a summoner. Instead, strength only serves one purpose- to allow yourself to
equip the items you want to equip.
Your strength is based on how good your equipment is. The highest strength
that
you will ever need is 156, for a monarch shield with the spirit runeword. And
if you don't have spirit, it's only 118 if you decide to wear Marrowalk
boots. And with neither one, the requirement is even lower! Base what
strength
you need on what you have- you may find you don't very much strength at all!
\ / \ /
Dexterity
/ \ / \
Dexterity is a matter of preference; the homunuculus shield for necros has a
block rate of 72%. Due to this detail, max block is quite obtainable. On the
other hand, why do you want it? You're not fighting and using your block: the
necro sits in the back and avoids combat whenever possible. That's the whole
point of a summoner.
Personally, I wouldn't bother, but if you want to, put in as much dexterity
as
you need for max block with the homunuculus (if you don't have homun, DON'T
BOTHER.) I'll leave you to look up the amount of dexterity for that yourself.
\ /\ /
Vitality
/ \/ \
The most important of the stats- place every extra point into vitality. Part
of
the reason is that there's no reason to place points elsewhere, but the other
reason is that when you consider that a summoner loses every summon he
creates
when he dies, dying becomes a pain in the ass; the less you die, the less you
have to rebuild your army.
\ /\ /
Energy
/ \/ \
NO POINTS IN ENERGY. Summoners don't use much mana once their minions are
created, so you have no good reason to get energy. Any mana you need will
come from equipment.
_ _ _
/ \/ \/ \
\_/\_/\_/
VII. EQUIPMENT
###############
Summoners have very few needs, really. Because they don't often get into the
battle, equipment to benefit your summoner isn't vital. The skills you may
want
to consider:
+Skills -Single most important stat; go for this before all else.
+Resist -Due to your distance from the battle, elemental damage is the most
dangerous enemy of the summoner. As a result, resists are your
savior.
+Life -In the same way, the more health you have, the more durable you'll
be.
+FHR -Faster Hit Recovery is important for when you're stupid and get
caught
in a mob. With no means to fight back, you need to get out ASAP, and
to that end, FHR is important. However, a good necro should never
run
into this problem, so I generally ignore this in my equips.
+Mana -In some ways, +mana isn't necessary because once your army is built
your mana demands should be small. However, liberal use of Corpse
Explosion can take a toll on your mana, and for people who don't
want
to chug mana potions, this can be useful.
+Stats -Not particularly important, but early on when you don't have many
options, look for items that provide +strength, vitality or energy.
The more +strength you have, the less strength you need to invest
in,
letting you invest in vitality. And of course, +vitality and +energy
provide more life and mana, respectively.
Because the demands are so simple, you really don't need to focus on nice
rares
with amazing mods; simple uniques will do. Runewords also provide some pretty
nice bonuses for your necromancer.
For each piece of weapon and/or armor, I'll list a few options, and you can
decide (based on your personal wealth) what's in your price range and what
will
work best for you. For every item that I recommend, I'll put a ** next to the
name. From there, I will list them from most to least useful.
*****************************************************************************
*
** VIIA. HELMET
**
*****************************************************************************
*
This helm is pretty easy to obtain online, and does wonders for your necro.
It
hits almost all of the things that we want- life, mana, +skills. The Damage
Reduction is also never a bad thing, and will only help to augment the
necro's
durability.
If you can afford it, socket the helmet and add and um to make it the
trifecta
of all helmets.
/Rare Circlet
\Various Stats
Delirium has a lot of pretty unique mods on it. The +2 skills obviously
stands
out immediately, but there are several "when struck" abilities that are kind
of nice for a necro to have. In particular, the chance to cast terror is very
useful for you- if an enemy hits you, there's a chance that they'll all
run away, providing you with some further protection. Extra vitality also
helps quite a bit.
One of the nice things about Delirium is that all three runes, while rare,
are
not hard for you to find. Even Ist can be obtained both from the hellforge in
the River of Flame and from the countess (the countess always drops at least
one rune, and that rune can be as high as an ist, at levels MUCH more common
than other monsters). So while I'd rather have a Shako myself (which is worth
less than an Ist, for whatever that's worth), the delirium helm provides an
alternative for those without the means to collect uniques, especially single
player.
A poor man's harlequin crest, the peasant crown has most of the same bonuses-
+Skills, life and mana. It's much easier to get one of these things, so aim
for this early on to give yourself some nice, well-rounded bonuses.
This is a helm that may be kind of hard to find, if only because I can't
imagine
many people keep these things. However, the +3 skeleton mastery is really
helpful for a summoner. It lacks any other good mods, but for a level 29
necromancer, you get what you can find, and +3 skeleton mastery is about as
good of a helmet as you can find, most times.
Lore is a very simple helmet to get, which is why it makes the list. If
you're
playing offline, it can be tough for a low-leveled summoner to get uniques,
but getting ort and sol should be VERY simple. +1 skills and +10 energy make
this helm a solid choice for a poor necromancer. It's not as good as the
other
helms on this list, but it's great for a necro on a budget, or one without
the
means to get ready access to uniques.
*****************************************************************************
*
** VIIB. ARMOR
**
*****************************************************************************
*
Armor has a tendency to be the most expensive part of the build, because many
runeword armors are incredibly useful for a summoning necromancer. However,
once I've listed the expensive runewords, I'll have some more affordable
armor.
The stats on Enigma are fine; +2 skills, damage reduction, strength... but
really, all we care about is teleport. With well over 20 minions running
around,
the necromancer's horde can be VERY chaotic, with skeletons all over the
place
going who knows where. This makes sending your mob after particular enemies
rather difficult. Enter enigma. With this equipped, you can teleport
somewhere,
which immediately brings ALL of your minions directly to your side. With
this,
you can teleport up to an enemy and your horde will all immediately lock on
and,
in all likelihood, slaughter the enemy.
Other armors have better stats for your necromancer, but the simple use of
teleport outweighs the rest.
+2 skills, +65 to all resists, 8% damage reduction... this armor has it all.
CoH is actually one of my favorite armors in general, regardless of the
class.
However, it doesn't have teleport. While it's not quite as expensive as
enigma,
it's pretty darn close, and you might as well go the extra step and get
enigma
for the ability to teleport.
And yet again we take a step down- resists are typically lower, and the
+skills
are not as high. While this armor is great on characters where Faster Cast
Rate
is important, it's not important to you, so it hardly matters. However, the
resist/skill combo is hard to pass up if you don't have one of the above
runewords.
Really we're only looking at this thing because of the +2 summoning skills.
However, that does count for something all on its own. It also provides 40%
run/walk, which makes you a lot faster than you would initially think. Other
than that, it's a pretty forgettable piece of armor.
For two very low runes, you get +50 resistances and 20% FHR, along with an
energy boost. Obviously this is not an end-game armor, but the value is HUGE
for a low-leveled necromancer that's just getting started; 50 resists can do
a lot for you when you're in normal and even into nightmare.
The requirements on this armor are higher than smoke which is why it's at the
bottom of my list. However, the bonuses to all of your attributes is very
welcome, as is the straight life boost and the +30 resists. This is better
than any random magic/rare armor you're going to find- that much is certain.
*****************************************************************************
*
** VIIC. GLOVES
**
*****************************************************************************
*
This pair of gloves does two things. First, the mana regeneration helps with
that mana problem mentioned earlier. Second, +1 fire skills will provide a
bonus
to corpse explosion, which is technically a fire attack. These gloves are
unique
from all other gloves the necro uses because they *almost* provide some
+skills
for him to use. Still, I find the mana/life bonus more important- Corpse
Explosion really doesn't benefit much from a +1 bonus, as it's deadly enough
already.
*****************************************************************************
*
** VIID. BELT
**
*****************************************************************************
*
As with gloves, you could try crafting a caster or blood belt for the
guaranteed
life/mana bonuses that they grant. Where gloves can provide pretty
significant
mana bonuses, belts can provide a huge life boost (up to 80 on a blood belt!)
The recipe for a caster belt is a MAGIC Light, Sharkskin or Vampirefang Belt,
one ith rune, one perfect amethyst, and any jewel.
For a blood belt, you need a MAGIC, Belt, Mesh Belt or Mithril Coil, along
with
a Tal Rune, a Perfect Ruby, and any jewel.
Make sure to use at least an exceptional belt so that get the maximum amount
of
belt boxes possible!
This belt is expensive and has a VERY high level requirement, but it's the
only belt in Diablo 2 to offer a +skill. The other skills are pretty
unimportant
to you, but as I said in the beginning, having some +skills is always your
top
priority.
This belt provides three great mods: Cannot be Frozen, +life, and +mana. I
would
actually recommend this belt over Arachnid's Mesh if you haven't got cannot
be frozen somewhere else on your person. Just a great belt all around.
*****************************************************************************
*
** VIIE. BOOTS
**
*****************************************************************************
*
Boots round out the secondary armor, and as with the belt and gloves, you
can't really expect too much from them, and so crafting a pair might be a
good
idea. As a matter of fact, crafted and/or rare boots are the best option for
you.
\**Rare/Crafted Boots
/Various Stats
Boots can come with 31-40% resist of all four elements, and so a lucky person
could conceivably craft a set of boots with 31-40% resist all, along with a
30%
faster run/walk bonus. Throw a mana/life boost into the mix, and these work
better than any of the unique/set boots you can find. Of course, it may take
MANY tries to successfully craft a set of boots with those stats. It's worth
the effort, though.
A pretty useful set of boots with nice all-around bonuses. The strength bonus
is always nice, and the mana regeneration is useful (see Magefists). However,
what makes marrowalk boots great is the boost to skeleton mastery. Like
Arachnid's Mesh, no other boots provide this bonus, so it's very useful if
only
for that.
+life, huge fire resist and one of the highest faster run/walk of any boots,
these are a solid choice for anyone. You don't think about Faster R/W until
you
get it, and believe me- it makes a noticeable difference.
(IK boots provide the same R/W and nearly the same life bonus, so they work
as
an inferior version of these- worth looking into)
About the only reason worth having these is the huge life boost. The rest of
the stats are negligable. The extra fire resist is cool too, if your resists
are high enough to take advantage of it.
Where Waterwalk boots give lots of life, these give a big mana boost. And
like
the Waterwalk, that's all they do, and it's probably not worth searching for
them just for that.
*****************************************************************************
*
** VIIF. WEAPON
**
*****************************************************************************
*
Your weapon can make a VERY significant difference in how you perform. Right
from the beginning, finding a strong wand is an important part of every
summoner's life. Grab a +Raise Skeleton and +Skeleton Mastery wand ASAP- you
should easily be able to find a wand with +2 in both if you just shop at
Akara
for a bit.
Past a wand like that, the weapon of choice for a summoner can vary wildly
depending on what your wealth is and what you're looking to achieve. As we'll
discuss, the best weapon doesn't provide many useful mods at all, but one mod
on its own outweighs every other weapon you could choose.
As with enigma, this weapon has pretty ordinary mods. Great modifiers for
a werebear sorceress, but for the most part, the summoning necromancer gets
very
little benefit from these things. However, as with enigma, there's only one
modifier that matters on this weapon: the level 9 Fanaticism Aura.
Fanaticism provides damage, attrack rating and attack speed for your
skeletons.
With these bonuses, your skeletons become noticeably more effective killing
machines, particularly since there's an AR boost to go with it.
This is a great wand to keep in your inventory to equip when you're building
your army. There's a very nice mana bonus (helpful for the high mana cost for
your skeletons), and of course the HUGE +skills of skeletons is just awesome.
However, there's nothing else to this wand, and so once your army is built,
equipping something else is highly recommended.
This is the classic "caster" weapon. The 40% faster cast rate and +3 skills
is
fantastic for classes that need to hit a FCR breakpoint. However, you don't
need
any FCR in this build, and so while the resists are nice and the +skills are
certainly great, Heart of the Oak is awfully expensive and really isn't worth
it sometimes.
Summoners who make liberal use of teleport swear by this, but you'll need
to consult another guide beyond this one if you intend to do that.
Generally speaking, if you don't have one of the above weapons, just get a
spirit sword instead. Lots of Faster Hit Recovery, +2 skills and a bunch of
life and mana. It's also incredibly easy to get one- just find a broad sword
with four sockets, which can be picked up as early as Nightmare mode. A +2
raise skeleton wand is more than enough to hold you over to that point, and
from here a spirit sword is really all you need until you can get one of the
best weapons.
*****************************************************************************
*
** VIIG. SHIELD
**
*****************************************************************************
*
Solid all-around shield. Mana regen, +20 energy, +2 to necro skills, and
resists
to all give a very nice set of skills for any necromancer.
Between this and the Spirit shield, it's ultimatley up to you what you
choose.
I personally prefer the Homunuculus because there's a nifty +2 curses, along
with better resists. However, Spirit offers more mana and a BUNCH of FHR, so
you really can pick based on your needs.
As with the Spirit sword, this is an awesome piece of equipment and I highly
recommend it for you as soon as you can get it. Of course, that may take a
while- it requires a 4-socket shield, which cannot be obtained until Hell
mode,
and then it's fairly difficult to find a monarch shield. However, with the
shield in hand, the runes are easy to obtain.
The strength requirement is pretty high, but good equipment will offset that.
This really is one of the best shields in Diablo 2- there's a reason that a
spirit with 35% FCR is worth as much as an Enigma: everyone wants one.
\Necromancer shield
/Various stats
Just look for a necromancer head that provides +raise skeleton or +skeleton
mastery. The more the better.
*****************************************************************************
*
** VIIH. JEWELRY
**
*****************************************************************************
*
\Rare Ring
/Various Stats
Not much to this one, because there are no rares with +skills and therefore
there's no ring better than the two listed above. However, as you are
building
wealth (SoJ and BK can be very expensive), find a ring with resist-all, as
well as possibly some life and mana. Resists are the best thing for you,
though- you can get some pretty good res-all on a rare ring.
#####################
\**Rare Amulet
/Various Stats
As with all previous rare items, you can get some pretty amazing mods on
an amulet that sweep the competition. You can get +2 necro skills, +2
summoning
skills, +20 resist all, +60 life and +20 energy all on one amulet! Clearly
this
would blow anything else out of the water. However... how the heck are you
going to find one of those? It's possible, sure- I don't think I've ever seen
one, though. In general, finding a +2 necro amulet with life/mana/resists is
pretty solid and worth keeping. Having said that, perhaps Mara's Kaleidoscope
is also worth a look- expensive, but easier to come by than a perfect amulet!
Mara's Kaleidoscope is by far the most popular amulet for pretty much
everyone.
The +2 skills are the most appealing aspect, but of course the 20-30 resists
are
also incredibly appealing. The attributes are just window dressing, at that
point. You may not get the max +skills, but you get two very important stats
in
one nice package.
\Golemlord's Amulet
/+3 Summoning Skills
VIII. MERCENARY
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Act 2 mercenaries give auras that will affect your entire party... Is there
really any question? Use an act 2 mercenary!
The only viable option is the might mercenary, which is found in Nightmare
and
is the offensive mercenary. Might will increase the damage of all of your
skeletons, which is a crucial thing. Of course, before you get to nightmare,
grab a normal offensive A2 mercenary for his Blessed Aim aura- while attack
rating isn't as important as damage, it is nevertheless a useful effect.
Instead, I went with the conventional wisdom of Diablo 2 and picked out a
much
nicer polearm for your mercenary- Infinity.
I realize this is a very expensive runeword; that's why it's the best,
though.
Infinity provides the mercenary with a bunch of good mods: faster run/walk,
Prevent Monster Heal (very useful against champions and bosses) crushing blow
(also good for bosses) and a life bonus. But as with any aura weapon, what
we really like is that it adds an automatic conviction aura. Conviction is
traditionally used with elemental characters such as a sorceress as it lowers
the resistance of all enemies to the elements, making them susceptible to
your
spells. However, Infinity has an oft-ignored secondary feature: it lowers
enemy defense. As a consequence, your skeletons will be much more capable of
hitting the enemies, which in turn means they will connect more often. People
pointed out to me that while pride may increase damage, this increase in
chance
to hit will typically lead to more overall damage because the skeletons miss
less.
Insight is the staple runeword of most mercenaries in Diablo 2. You can get
it
early on by finding a 4 open-socket Voulge, and the runes are not hard to
get,
with sol being an easy find late in normal and early in nightmare
(particularly
at the countess in nightmare). The damage bonus is great for an early
polearm,
and of course insight provides you with a great source of mana, which can be
a frustrating point for any character before they start collecting good
equipment with mana bonuses built in.
ARMOR
+++++++++
Another weird (somewhat stupid) choice on my part in prior editions: I always
went with Guardian Angel due to a mercenary's natural resists. Of course,
what
I failed to recognize was that while a mercenary does get natural resists,
they
never get to 90, which makes guardian angel totally worthless.
So instead, here are a few of the popular armors that people use.
Obviously the assassin skills are useless! However, treachery has a bunch of
mods that are nice for a mercenary. First there's the chance of casting fade,
which can provide a large resistance and damage reduction boost. Then there's
the chance ot cast venom, which will add a nice boost to your mercenary's
damage. And lastly there are the increased attack speed and faster hit
recovery,
which is never a bad thing for a mercenary!
I'd never heard of a mercenary using treachery until recently, but it has
taken
the community by storm, and is now the popular budget armor for all mercs.
With
Lem being a moderately high rune at best, everyone should be able to find the
necessary runes for this armor.
There is one drawback to treachery- the runeword provides no defense bonus to
your armor, so you will want to find a VERY high-defense armor if possible.
Of course, if you want a similar armor that has a defense bonus, look no
further
than gloom.
Another piece of equipment that never seems to get mentioned. It's a decent
bit of armor with solid resists, FHR and defense. The chance to cast dim
vision
is kind of cool as well, although you may find yourself just casting over it
with some other curse anyway.
It's not really worth using over treachery in most cases, but the defense
bonus
and dependable resist bonus may be worth the increased cost.
HELMET
+++++++++
One of the most important mods on equipment for a mercenary is the amount of
life stolen per hit, or life leech. You may have noticed that none of the
weapons or armor I mentioned have these on them. That leaves us with a helmet
to find with life leech. Fortunately, several helmets provide very good life
leech for us.
Despite the fact that this is technically meant for sorceresses, it's a
really
good mercenary helmet. Life leech, good life bonus and a nice resistance
boost.
One of the really nice things about it is the consistently good life leech-
many helmets provide varying degrees of life leech, and it's nice to get one
with some consistency.
This helmet serves one purpose, really- providing the strength bonus needed
for
a mercenary to equip a Colossus Voulge, which typically requires more
strength
than a mercenary gets. Of course, the catch to that is a very high level
requirement, which makes it an end-game helmet rather than one useful early
on.
I personally don't like it because I don't like the -30% fire resist, but I
can
understand why people with an infinity in a CV are anxious to get their merc
to that strength requirement.
Not the greatest life leech out there, but there's a huge damage reduction
bonus
that will do very nice things for your mercenary's survivability. Kind of an
average helm beyond that, though.
_ _ _
/ \/ \/ \
\_/\_/\_/
Basically, you just watch them kill the enemy. Cast Amplify Damage or
Decrepify
when necessary. When you're in a group, use lower resist, and throwing in an
attract or two doesn't hurt.
When you reach the middle of nightmare, your skeletons start to suffer a
little. Time to whip out corpse explosion. One corpse can flatline an entire
army, and since you have 10 or 15 skeletons working at once,in conjunction
with
CE, it's possible to kill 50 enemies in a matter of seconds. When used right,
this build is the safest AND fastest-killing build of them all.
Use the skill allocation advice that I gave, and as long as you take it
slowly,
you will never have a problem beating the enemy.
XI. CREDITS
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VERSION HISTORY
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1.0- I split up my necro guide into two parts. This is the summoner half.
2.0- I added several tweaks and some interesting information about skeletons
that should prove useful for everyone.
2.01(6/07)- Housekeeping
3.00(9/10)- After nearly five years of completely ignoring this guide, it's
time for a makeover. The guide has been completely gutted and refitted
with
information that is more useful and more helpful (hopefully!)