I will start by saying that this is a fun theme build, and of course will not be as effective as your standard rune-word trodden fishymancer or bonemancer. This build is not however a weak novelty build by no means, and when done properly can be very effective.
This guide centers around what is, in my opinion, THE best set in the game and one of the few worth using at all, Trang Oul's Avatar. This build pays perfect homage to the Lord of the Necromancers himself, and as such may as well be called him, but I just refer to this build as the Dragonmancer for short.
As you may have guessed, the main point of this build is fire based. What many of you probably assume is that it will be using the Trang fire skills in supplementation of Mages or Skeletons.
NOPE! In fact, while you will be ultilizing some summons, this build is rather self-sufficient and can get by without a single summon or mercenary (of course, they ALWAYS help!)
The second point in this build is the mighty poison that the Necromancer can dish out. Two reasons I chose poison over summons/bone skills: 1. It fully utilizes the bonuses of Trang's set what with the -25% poison resist on the shield and the +25% damage on the gloves and 2. It offers a second element that becomes more effective with lower resist.
Not to mention it fits the theme! I always envisioned Trang-Oul as a great black dragon who's deadly fire-breathing was only outranked by the pestilent noxious stink of his breath that followed.
So onto the build!
Part Two: The Stats
Strength: Enough for gear
Dexterity: Enough for max blocking or none
Vitality: The rest
Energy: Nil
I am not going to go into the debate of max block versus max life. I always chose life myself and never had a problem, I mean its not like this build is going into Uber Tristram by himself or anything. But for those of you who like to have that extra bit of protection:
Total Blocking % = [Blocking x (Dexterity – 15)] / (Character Level x 2)
Trang-Oul's Wing gets +30% to block on top of 30% original, maxing 60%. So at level 65 when you can fully equip Trang-Oul's Avatar, you would need 177 dexterity to have max block.
75% = [60 x (177 -15)] / 130
Part Three: The Skills
The bread n' butter of all builds, the skill point allocation! Now, this guide is very specific to what I used, however if you disagree or want to tweak how you do it, its your game not mine. This is how I laid my character out and it wourked phenomonally:
Poison and Bone
Poison Dagger - 20 (Max last)
Poison Explosion - 20
Poison Nova - 20
Corpse Explosion - 1
Prerequisites - 1 (Teeth)
With proper +skill gear, you should end up with around +12 all skills before any skill grand charms. With that in mind, your damages should look like this:
Dagger: 14428 - 14985 over 14.4 seconds
Explosion: 28035 - 30555 over 14.4 seconds
Nova: 4031 - 4203 over 2 seconds
Poison Nova will be your primary killing skill in this tree. Keep in mind, the damage listed is before the +25% on Trang-Oul's Claws, so easily add about 1000 to Nova, and way more to the others. Also keep in mind you will take resistances down with Lower Resist.
Poison Dagger, while good damage, isn't going to be used.
Poison Explosion, however, makes a nice utility skill to lessen health over its duration. For those who don't mind being hotkey intensive, I would cast this first, then switch to Corpse Explosion for the rest.
Curses
Lower Resist - 20
Prerequisites - 6 (Weaken, Amplify Damage, Terror, Iron Maiden, Life Tap, Decrepify)
*Optional - 3, one for Confuse, attract, dim vision.
*I personally never used those skills very much, but I know how incredibly useful they can be. I didn't use them on this build, but looking back it may have been a good idea since I used very limited summons.
Lower Resist is obviously a key component here. With all of your +skills, you should be able to get it to at least lvl 30~32 where it will do -66% to enemy fire, cold, lightning and poison resists.
Summoning
Here is where personal flavor can kick in more, but it is tricky. At this stage, we only have 22 points availible. Now, I did this last, opting to see how successful the build would be without any summons. It did fairly well, but there were obviously times I wish I had more meat shields, especially in the crippling aspect of Trang-Ouls' poor cast rate.
So how to get the best out of the skill tree? I decided on the one point wonder skill: Revive.
Revive - 1
Summon Resist - 1
Prerequisites - 6 (Raise Skeleton, Raise Mage, Clay Golem, Golem Mastery, Blood Golem, Iron Golem)
Skeleton Mastery - 14
That encompasses all of your skill points. Obviously few will get to lvl 99, I stopped at 90 myself. I had about 10 in Mastery and a few points left out of Poison Dagger. If you choose to make stronger summons and max Skeleton Mastery and sacrifice a few points from your poison skills be my guest. But again, I wanted to test the self-sustainability of Trang-Oul. It did work out pretty well, but once I had Revives for meat shields it was all the easier.
Also, Revives work extremely well because I got to be picky about what I ressurected. Even with a maxed Lower Resist, you won't be able to break all immunites. There are many in fact that will be tough, and hardly any cold immunes can be broken. However lightning is the easiest immunities to break. With that in mind, there was nothing more satisfying than Reviving a herd of Gloams to do my bidding! Massive lightning damage, it was like having lightning traps follow me around.
Part Four: The Gear
Your helm, shield, armor, belt, and gloves: Trang-Oul's Avatar of course!
For customization, I chose to enhance my fire damage more since Trang's set does a good job of doing that for poison, so in the helm and body armor I put in fire facets.
However, since Trang-Oul's Wing is so cheap and easy to find, I strategized a bit. I had one on each switch, in one there was a fire facet, in the other, a poison facet. When I first encounter enemies, I use my poison shield with a Death's Web (also with a facet in it.) Once I hit them with some poison, I switch over to the fire facetted one with my primary weapon.
As for the rest of your gear, which isn't much, the main focus is improving your fire abilities in the form of +skills.
Rings: Stone of Jordan/Bul Katho's, or two of each. Trang's set gives a TON of mana as well as mana regeneration, and since Trang's set caps your cast rate (grr!) you shouldn't be expelling very much energy, so you may just want more life with Bul-Katho's. You gotta love Trang-Oul's Girth for granting Cannot Be Frozen in a belt so you don't have to wear that blasted Ravenfrost.
Amulet: Only one good option here, Mara's Kalidescope. The +2 skills is very boss, for poison AND fire.
Til you get that, Eye of Eltich is okay, as well as the Rising Sun, of course the latter won't help any of your necro skills except Corpse Explosion.
Boots: Marrowalks, who can deny +2 to skeleton mastery? Not required of course, other good choices are Sandstorm Treks, Waterwalks, and Aldur's Advance for the life bonus.
Weapon: Heart of the Oak. Second to none for this build, enhances ALL of your fire skills immensely and a great bonus to your summons and poison skills. Like stated above however, it is nice to have a Death's Web with a second Trang-Oul's Wing on switch for extra poison damage. The resist on this thing + the resist from Trang's set will have you maxed in Hell.
If you can't get one of these, a Spirti Sword is good for +2 skills. If, for some reason you can't even get that, a Hexfire Shamshire is good for +3 fire skills, and a Suicide Branch will give everything +1.
Part Five: The Mercenary
There is only one perfect choice here, an Act 2 Desert Warrior. The reason? Obviously so he can carry an INFINITY! With an Infinity on him and your maxed Lower Resist, there will be very few fire immunes you cannot break. Keep in mind Conviction does nothing for poison, but that won't be a huge issue. When reviving gloams especially, the Conviction + Lower Resist combo works WONDERS!
As for his aura, only two clear choices: The best option is Holy Freeze. Since the main drawback of this build is the slow cast rate, making your enemies equally slow is choice. However, a Defiance merc isn't a bad option either for when you have your meat shields up. It is pretty much a toss up: slow your enemies down, of have your distractions live longer.
Holy Freeze stays as the number one choice since it IS elemental damage. It isn't much, but with Conviction + LR his cold damage will actually be substantial.
Though not a mercenary, I have to include Iron Golem here. Make him out of an Insight and never worry about mana again. Or, if you are rich, make him out of something highly damaging (Dream Iron Golem anyone?)
Part Six:Conclusion
So that is my guide, a VERY VERY VERY fun character, probably THE single most fun Necromancer I ever made. As soon as the next patch is released you can be I'll be making another. Bear with me, this IS NOT a good build for PvP, the cast rate is too slow and the damage wouldn't be high enough against stacked resistances.
But for PvM, this build works extremely well. You are already doing high fire and poison damage, as well as decent physical damage from Corpse Explosion. Technically you can do any kind of damage since you can be picky about your Revives, and when you throw Conviction into the mix, oh man you are in for one fast killer.
The hardest part would have to be bosses. Especially Baal since there aren't any dead minions lying around to Explode. However, with a good merc, Iron/Clay golem and plenty of revives, you can get him to hold still long enough to use Meteor. Just stack a few Fire Walls on him, then keep spamming Poison Nova in between Meteors and you are golden!
Enjoy!|||One minor nitpick. You cannot be calling this the 'dragonmancer' for 'short' because dragonmancer is longer than trang-oul. :P|||Quote:
One minor nitpick. You cannot be calling this the 'dragonmancer' for 'short' because dragonmancer is longer than trang-oul. :P
also there is a "Dragon" runeword...|||i dont want to be mean but... i thought there is guide on poison nova + maxed RS that uses T-O for fire wall support...|||^ There is, but this is just as fun!|||Quote:
One minor nitpick. You cannot be calling this the 'dragonmancer' for 'short' because dragonmancer is longer than trang-oul. :P
Ah ha, my bad, in the first draft I had called this the "Noxious Dragonamncer" and wrote that part when that was the original title but changed it and forgot to edit that portion.
Also, I didn't see a trang-specific guide in the Mouldy Tomb. I'm sure someone has written a similar guide, but this was just the one I used. Sorry if it seems "stolen" but I promise I was unawar of the guide even as I made this necro myself, and I made him several years back.|||He seems like he would be fun.. Maybe i'll try one.
I always wanted to make some sort of a poison necro since i found a Death's Web, so this is perfect!
As for the boss killing difficulties, if i make builds that have a hard time with the big guys i usually just deck up the merc in hardcore gear with as much crushing blow as i can get, and throw a life tap on it.
Duress armor and a Guillyface works perfectly if you have a weapon with some leech. Or just keep the CB gear ready for the bosses if you don't stuff your inventory.|||I mean boss killing isn't that hard, I just threw it in there so people are aware that when your cast rate is very slow to not expect to be as fast as a fireball sorc. Casting is so slow that you will almost be casting your poison novas as fast as meteors.
But again, so long as you have Gumby or Rusty, some revives and a good merc to keep them occupied and add some damage, eventually your fire and poison will do it's job.
Also, now that I think about it, I did say Poison Dagger wouldn't be used, but in the case of boss killing since the boss would be swarmed by minions, it wouldn't be hard to dash in a strike them with a Fleshripper or Blackbog's for the 25k poison damage.|||Quote:
As you may have guessed, the main point of this build is fire based. What many of you probably assume is that it will be using the Trang fire skills in supplementation of Mages or Skeletons.
Actually no. The whole set screams to make a Poison based build around it.
Maxing LR is IMO a waste of points.
A level 10 LR is not that much worse than a level 40. Level 40 won't allow to break any extra immunes anyway.
Also, having played a Trang-Oul PN build, I found the fire skills rather underwhelming (not to say useless). My semi maxed skeletons killed PoI a lot faster than the fire skills.|||Of course the fire skills aren't spectacular, but it is a fun themed build.
Back then I did max lower resist cause I didn't know any better, and just a couple days ago I was playing around with another I made for SP, and you are right a maxed lower resist is a waste. In fact even ten is a waste, you can pretty much do with just 7 points in it.
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