Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Questions about summoner. How to effectively clear CS?

I made my first summoner a while ago and I'm struggling a little. It seems that it takes ages for me to get a corpse in Chaos Sanctuary.

My gear is quite decent or at least I think so. I'm wearing Shako, Mara, HotO, Enigma, Homunculus, 2x SoJ, Arachnid and Marrowwalks. I also got a couple of summon skillers. In total this gives me level 41 skellies and 43 SM after Battle Command. My merc (might aura) has eth CV Insight, Guillaume's and some random crappy armor.

My build is the basic max Raise Skeleton, Skeleton Mastery, mages and Corpse Explosion.

What I do after joining the game is that I get an army of 10+ skelly warriors from act1 and then go into CS. Even after using amp on the enemies it takes a lot of time for my army to get a corpse or two. Skeleton mages seem to do little or no damage at all. In worst case scenario they use cold spells and when I finally kill something the corpse is wasted. The situation is a lot easier if I got a friend with me to actually get a couple of corpses for me; After that I rip apart pretty much everything with my CE.

What should I do to improve my killing speed? Am I expecting too much from my necro, is it possible to quickly clear CS with a summoner in a 8-player-game? In a 3-4man game I'm doing quite well.

I've read around and a lot of people seem to use Infinity on their merc to increase their own CE damage. Imo my CE does a nice amount of damage without Inf too, but it doesn't really help if I can't make corpses quickly. Some people say that skeleton mages with Conviction aura do nice damage too. Is this worth it? Should I get one?

How about Pride and Beast? Should I get Pride for my merc and maybe use Beast myself? Which one is better, Concentration for skeleton warriors or Conviction for mages/myself?

What are your suggestions guys? Remember that I'm talking about soloing in a full game, I'm having no trouble when I got a killer with me. I mainly do baalruns and the most important thing would be to quickly be able to clear CS by myself so that I can get exp from the last two waves in the throne too. I guess one option would be to respec to Bonemancer but I rather wouldn't do it cos in theory I love my army of skellies. Thanks in advance.|||What level is your +all skills at.

In other words, what level is your summon skeleton at? How about Skeleton mastery?|||Quote:








In total this gives me level 41 skellies and 43 SM after Battle Command.




I got myself Infinity yesterday to see if it's any good, I need it anyway for another char so not a big loss. Turns out I kind of liked it.

Anyway the situation probably isn't as bad as described in the first post. After playing for a couple of hours last night I managed to get a decent kill speed. Though, I still want the skellies to kill a bit faster so I guess I need to get some skillers to pump my skills to lvl ~50. Also thinking about getting Beast for myself and maybe switch Inf for Pride at some point.|||If you can afford an infi then use it. Get your merc Fort or Treachery. He's the one you should rely on for that first corpse so avoid Pride, it does horrible things to his damage.

I think this has more to do with your playing style than gear. With that amount of +skills you should have no problem tele-bombing the closest monster and it should drop immediately.|||Quote:








If you can afford an infi then use it. Get your merc Fort or Treachery. He's the one you should rely on for that first corpse so avoid Pride, it does horrible things to his damage.

I think this has more to do with your playing style than gear. With that amount of +skills you should have no problem tele-bombing the closest monster and it should drop immediately.




I did the first post a bit too early since I hadn't tried my new gear yet when I made it. I played really bad before last night as well, I used to teleport quite far away from the monsters so my minions would spread out and attack different targets. I learnt yesterday to tele right next to someone so they attack the same target and nuke it down really fast

I'm going to stick with Infinity, just need to get some proper armor for the merc (Treachery/Fort as you said). One more thing, do you think I should get Beast for myself or stick with HoTo? How big difference is it?|||Amplify damage doubles all your physical damage... Infinity gives 85% more damage to your mages which in turns improve the damage of your CE (50PI/50Fire%), gives all your skeletons improved chances of hitting the enemy, and Infinity grants the merc some quiet sweet damage and CB.


Quote:




'm going to stick with Infinity, just need to get some proper armor for the merc (Treachery/Fort as you said). One more thing, do you think I should get Beast for myself or stick with HoTo? How big difference is it?





Quote:




http://tph.tuwien.ac.at/~gottwald/ne...alculator.html




Do some calculations there and you'll see how much of a difference it makes... ehem.. you could actually get a Faith bow if you wanted to, that gives 2+�sk and 15Fanat (if it's a good one)... and the fantasm actually improves your skeletons attack speed by a few frames... and you could actually do some damage with the necro if you used the bow :>...

I m - myself would get a leoric's and replace the Hoto, summon my army with Leorics and then switch to Beast when I do the actual killing. You could do the same with Hot, have the Hoto on switch 1, and beast on switch 2. (It's the level that you summon the skeletons with that matters, 1 might die when you switch over for beast, but the damage of the skeletons doesn't go down when you use a hoto and then switch over to a beast, that is, the skeletons doesn't get worse by doing the switch)

PS: like the Ralph Steadman portrait |||To throw in another opinion I prefer HoTo over beast, I have a beast IG (eh I was gonna give it away, insight IG would be just as good, plus would stop you fretting everytime it gets hit...) so it's negligent but the fcr breakpoint from the HoTo makes tele a lot faster, which saves lives and makes runs easier! (once you have eni summonmancers are the best runners imo).



Basically as others said it's play style not skill :P Telebombing is the way to go |||Fishy is slowest in +3 player games. He really shines in 1 player games tho.|||First corpse must be you merc's problem, and i suspect you don't need insight to 8p running CS - you should have decent mana pool and regen with your stuff, and drinking mana potions isn't a shame. Infinity has the the lowest dmg roll the same as Insight's highest and has CB on itself, which frees headgear slot. I'd personally use Treachery+andy face for 65% IAS (lowers attack from 9 frames to 6.5, almost 1.5 times damage increase), +2skills (jab and might increase damage a bit more) and life leech.

This all may increase merc's total damage output threefold, but i'd start with replacing crappy armor with treachery.|||I found a cham and made a topic about pit runs in the single player forum - unfortunately I was given very good proof that Pride is completely useless for a merc. Your best bet on getting a corpse fast is Eth Elite Obedience.

Beast should help and I would rate it as a top choice for your build but if I were you I would ask for a second opinion on that.

No comments:

Post a Comment