Thus far, this strategy has held up fairly well. I'm currently about 3/4 of the way through Act III Hell (level 79) but have had to make some consolations to make it this far through Hell. First of all, I'm running with a well-equipped Act II might merc. I've put a substantial number of points into corpse explosion, which I use quite regularly, unlocked a number of curses (amplify damage being the one I most frequently use) and most importantly have tried to get my hands on as many +skill items as I could (more on my skills, gear and stats below).
Right now I stand at the steps of Travincal and face two great challenges. The first being my character's extreme vulnerability to ranged elemental magic (gloams cut through my character like a knife through butter) and the second being the fact that my skeletons aren't lasting as long as they used to, especially when dispersed. Because this will most likely get worse as I progress through Hell, I would appreciate any advice and comments on my build.
Character type : Necromancer
Character level : 79
Strength : 110
Energy : 50
Dexterity : 25
Vitality : 300
Life : 812 / 792
Mana : 356 / 231
Stamina : 452 / 442
Defense : 1033
Fire Res: -64
Cold Res: -64
Lightning Res: -34
Poision Res: -64
Gold (Inventory): 0
Gold (Stash) : 208977
Runes in stash: 2 Amn, 1 Dol, 1 El, 2 Eth, 2 Hel, 2 Ith, 1 Lum, 2 Nef, 2 Ort, 2 Ral, 2 Shael, 2 Sol, 2 Tal, 2 Thul, 2 Tir, 1 Um
+skill bonuses: +1 to all skills, +3 to necromancer skills, +6 to skeleton mastery, +3 to skeletal mage, +3 to poison and bone skills
Skills (before +skill bonuses):
Summoning:
20 Raise Skeleton
20 Skeleton Mastery
20 Raise Mage
1 Clay Golem
1 Golem Mastery
1 Summon Resist
Poison & Bone:
1 Teeth
5 Corpse Explosion
1 Bone Spear
1 Bone Spirit
1 Bone Armor
10 Bone Wall
1 Bone Prison
Curses:
1 Amplify Damage
1 Dim Vision
1 Weaken
1 Terror
1 Decrepify|||Hi Dragnerok X I think you need to get yourself a Treachery armor to cast level 15 fade. It isn't expensive and works very well, if you combine it with a damage reduction item it would even become better.
As for the life time off your skeletons, you would want to have a call to arms weapon on switch and combine it with an act 2 offensive merc. This way you shouldn't have any problems with your build. Could you tell me what your equipment is?
I have a very good skellymancer on non-ladder and it is a very powerfull build...
P.S. Hearth of the Oak is also a very good weapon for a skelliemancer, totally forgot about this one. It has +3 skills +% increase maximum mana and 30-40 to all resistance.|||how are your resistances that bad??? cheap shield would be ancients pledge (ral-ort-tal) , as said above heart of the oak, treahery armor as said above, or chains of honour would be ideal to increase your skills and resistance, any other parts like boots gloves belt jewelry are easy to pick up resistance, and get charms to get your skills back, this character is by far my favourite build and when done right near invincible, just have a good balance on everything, fhr, resist, life, skills etc and u should do fine|||Alright, here's a listing of my current gear. One thing I forgot to mention is that this is a *single player* character, limiting my access to unique and end-game items somewhat. Ideally, I'm looking for slightly better gear with more +skill and resistance bonuses to hold me off until my end-game set.
Helm:
Lore Shako
Defense: 131
Lightning Res 30%
Damage Reduced by 7
2 to mana per kill
2 to light radius
Body Armor:
Godly Ancient Armor
Defense: 620
Required Strength: 100
165% Enhanced Defense
Replenish Life 10
Replenish Mana 38%
Wand:
White Bone Wand
3 to Pois. & Bone skills
20% faster cast rate
2 to Bone Spear
3 to Skeletal Mage
6 to Skele Mastery
3 to Bone Armor
Flee on hit 25%
10 to Vitality
13 to Mana
M.Damage Reduced by 4
50% Damage to Undead
Shield:
Dire Rock Gargoyle Head
Defense: 18
Chance to Block: 30%
2 to Necromancer Skills
2-7 pois. damage over 3s
2 to Bone Prison
10% Enhanced Defense
1 to Strength
Replenish Life 3
All Resistances 12
Attacker takes 5 damage
Amulet:
Summoner's Amulet of Regrowth
1 to Necromancer Skills
Replenish Life 8
Ring 1:
Bahamut's Ring of Regrowth
Replenish Life 7
92 to mana
Ring 2:
Shimmering Ring of Greed
All resistances 4
Extra 39% gold
Belt:
Holy Battle Belt
Defense: 83
Required Strength: 88
94% Enhanced Defense
Gloves:
Strong Bramble Mitts of Regeneration
Defense: 85
35% Enhanced Defense
Replenish Life 3
Boots:
Strong Scarabshell Boots
Defense: 90
Required Strength: 91
37% Enhanced Defense|||try socketing shield with a pdiamond for extra resists, obviously your belts boots gloves are easy slots to fill with resists, your armor is the next place to start on, run nm bosses to try and find decent armours e.g vipermagi etc, its just a case of getting good resist imo, then just amp damage everything on screen and follow with a corpse explosion clean up, you should do fine with mediocre gear with this kind of necro|||Totally agree with you. When I see your gear it's best to get some resistance first with Perf Diamonds and from there on try and get some uniques from bosses. You sould be ok
!!Quote:
try socketing shield with a pdiamond for extra resists, obviously your belts boots gloves are easy slots to fill with resists, your armor is the next place to start on, run nm bosses to try and find decent armours e.g vipermagi etc, its just a case of getting good resist imo, then just amp damage everything on screen and follow with a corpse explosion clean up, you should do fine with mediocre gear with this kind of necro|||Did anyone mention to you, that the Defense stat isn't very important for Necromancer?
Just saying, because it seems like you went for +%EDef on many of your gear choices, unless of course you just had access to nothing else. Can you not make Smoke runeword in single player? Or Ancient's Pledge? And I thought you could still use the crafting recipes in single players.... you could craft some Caster or Safety rings/amulets/boots/etc until you get some better resists.
http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp...teditems.shtml
Hate to be harsh... but your armor, rings, belt, gloves, boots are all junk. Almost any crafted attempt will beat those by far.|||Quote:
Did anyone mention to you, that the Defense stat isn't very important for Necromancer?
Just saying, because it seems like you went for +%EDef on many of your gear choices, unless of course you just had access to nothing else. Can you not make Smoke runeword in single player? Or Ancient's Pledge? And I thought you could still use the crafting recipes in single players.... you could craft some Caster or Safety rings/amulets/boots/etc until you get some better resists.
http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp...teditems.shtml
Hate to be harsh... but your armor, rings, belt, gloves, boots are all junk. Almost any crafted attempt will beat those by far.
Alright, I'll admit that despite having a fairly high level character and logging several hundred hours in the game, I'm somewhat new to the intricacies of Diablo II strategy. I've gone through the wiki / fishymancer guide quite a bit lately though, and have a better idea of what I'm shooting for. Generally, in the past I shot for 1. +skill items 2. uniques and 3. +defense gear. Of course, that was partially back when I was running as a meleemancer and directly aiding my skeletons in the field of battle with large, polearm-class weapons. Obviously, as the monsters got tougher (ala nightmare difficulty) and I realized that the perks of falling back and the bonuses of wands far outweighed direct combat, my strategy changed and is now pretty standard for a necro. However, only very recently have I took into account how little defense matters in body armor, gloves, etc (previously, I saw defense as the most important stat in those things, as I assumed that facing more dangerous enemies required tougher armor, as is the case in most RPGs).
In any event, yes I agree that my body armor, rings, belt, gloves and boots are all due to be replaced. While I'm at it, I might also replace my shield. The body armor and shield, of course, I have rune words planned for. I was going to do a few hell countess runs until I gathered another um rune for the bone rune word (especially because my skeleton army is really having some trouble lasting against mephisto + the council) and as for the shield, the rhyme runeword looks particularly useful, especially with its freezing prevention and decent elemental resistance boost.
As for the crafted items... I've looked into them in the past but I've found the bonuses a little weak, I guess I probably could enchant a nice set of gloves, boots, and a belt, though. Finally, when it comes to rings I'll probably gamble a little for Coral/Garnet/Cobalt or unique rings.|||Crafted items only look weak on paper, because the mods you see on the website are the guaranteed ones. In practice, you sometimes roll one that has so many extra/awesome mods that it becomes almost godly.
... And I didn't want to completely poo-poo Defense. It has it's place on characters that have skills to enhance the stat by a percentage - my Zealot for example had maxed Holy Shield and spare points into Defiance, which grants a Defense Bonus synergy. I ended up with almost 16,000 Defense, which granted me a low %chance to be hit which combined well with the 75% chance to block all hits.
Defense is worth it sometimes, just not very worth it for a Necro.
Here is an example pic of a crafted amulet, it's not the best craft, but it might give you an idea on some of the nice mods that can spawn in addition to the stats guaranteed by the recipe:
http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/3504/2fcrammyxs2.jpg|||Suggestion to improve gear, try shopping first for golemlord magic wand +3 to all summoning skills then for boots 20-40frw/30-40 Cold/fire or lightning resists.
Socket the shield with a perfect diamond.
Equip with smoke or vipermage.
Then gamble a golemlord amulet
Then gamble a golemlord circlet or coronet.
Craft a caster belt and gloves with resists.
Finally go back to normal act 1 and find a white necrohead with +3 to raise skeleton and better. Repairing broken heads with the cube recipe can generate low level items for this purpose too. Make a splendor runeword just for raising skellies along with the golemlord wand before switching to the head with resists/otherwand.
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