Beast or Leoric?

I have a question for some of you who are good with Necro Summoners. What has more stopping power for a Summoner and/or is better overall gearwise:

-Beast axe with Spirit Monarch (Fanaticism Aura)

or

-Arm of King Leoric with Spirit Monarch (Plus Skills)

?|||I am assuming you are talking about a max vitality summoner.

If you are playing on B.net or otherwise will not be using the /players x command, then I suggest the Arm of King Leoric because the Fanaticism aura would not be necessary; Corpse Explosion will be your main killer. Ultimately, you should seek out Heart of the Oak in this case.

If you are playing SP and interested in using the /players x command to set the player count to 7 or 8, then I suggest using Beast as your main weapon. The AoKL can still be used on weapon switch for summoning purposes, though.|||Quote:








I am assuming you are talking about a max vitality summoner.

If you are playing on B.net or otherwise will not be using the /players x command, then I suggest the Arm of King Leoric because the Fanaticism aura would not be necessary; Corpse Explosion will be your main killer. Ultimately, you should seek out Heart of the Oak in this case.

If you are playing SP and interested in using the /players x command to set the player count to 7 or 8, then I suggest using Beast as your main weapon. The AoKL can still be used on weapon switch for summoning purposes, though.




I'm playing on bnet with a max vitality necro untwinked. The only other attribute I have is strength to 157 for the spirit monarch. So know, my necro can swing at stuff all day and miss because his dex is only base of 35.

If someone can work out the math for this somehow please do.|||Quote:








I have a question for some of you who are good with Necro Summoners. What has more stopping power for a Summoner and/or is better overall gearwise:

-Beast axe with Spirit Monarch (Fanaticism Aura)

or

-Arm of King Leoric with Spirit Monarch (Plus Skills)

?




Why are you using a Spirit Monarch over a Homunculus? Homun would give you better resists, better Curses, drops FCR and FHR that you don't need, replaces the mana from Spirit with energy and mana regen, and gives block rate. Plus you don't need to have ridiculous strength to wield a Homun.

That said, I'd use Leoric or a HotO but it depends on the content you're doing. Leoric/HotO is better for CE damage which is what most of your damage will be from in large crowds while Beast is better for single targets and bosses. CE also eats up corpses that you may need for more skeletons if they're dying a lot. So, really, I'd go with whatever you either have already or can get cheapest, which is probably a Leoric.|||I checked the necro pet calc and for a top end build(lvl 50 skels with leoric, 45 with beast), they both add pretty much equal DPS to skellies, but beast helps merc too.|||Quote:








Why are you using a Spirit Monarch over a Homunculus? Homun would give you better resists, better Curses, drops FCR and FHR that you don't need, replaces the mana from Spirit with energy and mana regen, and gives block rate.




I was thinking the same thing. On the one hand, you said that you're playing untwinked, so you may not have Homunculus. OTOH, if you are playing untwinked, then you certainly don't have the runes for Beast.

If you are playing untwinked with only stuff the character finds himself, about the only thing listed that you can count on finding is the runes needed to make Spirit.

That said, AoKL and Homunculus are MUCH easier to find/trade for than the Ber rune you'd need to make Beast.|||Just to sneak in on the thread a sec

Going by the amount of unique/set items mephisto drops in normal for me i presume running him in NM is the best way to get a AoKL?|||I would go Hoto/Homunculus as beast it very situational and AOKL is not needed.

EDIT

Just run nightmare onwards or trade pgs for aokl.|||It depends what you're doing...if you're gonna be partying up a lot then Beast is far superior, CE suffers the more people in the room, my kill speed with summons is just about quicker than with CE in the larger rooms (that's holding the trigger)...

Personally I use spirit as well but that's purely because I have an enigma and the fcr lets me hit a useful break point. Homunculus is the better shield in most regards.|||To be honest beast doesnt really iincrease kill speed with more players any more so than a hoto since you have to sacrifice maybe a cast breakpoint or two to wield it or change your gear to accommodate it.

Even when I changed gear to increase the speed I continued to have noticeably slower run times.

And when I party up I usually end up with a zealot or faith user most of the time.

Gotta remember Beast is in the end only 93% ed to a skele and thats not much to be honest.