Skelemancer in hell... how come he does no damage?

[:1]So a friend of mine has made a skellimancer (I guess they are called fishymancer... but I don't know where the "fish" is derived from). He maxed out:

Raise Skeleton

Skeleton Mastery

Skeleton Resistance

(Trying to max)Corpse Explosion

Some points in curses.

He is using Trang set and does not have anything expensive on him.

He's new to playing the skellimancer and he (and I since I never worked on a skellimancer before) doesn't know how to:

a) Get first skeleton without merc (I think he has merc now though)

b) Do damage with his skeletons

He keeps on telling me that his skeletons cant kill anything. What should be his strategy to kill things? Including act bosses? He really wants to magic find with his necro but he cannot kill anything...|||Quote:




but I don't know where the "fish" is derived from




It is called after Nightfish, who popularized summoner build in 1.10 and made the guide. You might want to take a look: http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/s...d.php?t=349093

Although I see this guide outdated and partly wrong (maybe because it was written for single player initially), it is still viable and effective. I used it myself, too, when made a comeback to diablo in 1.12.|||Are you able to shortly describe the gameplay of the fishymancer in Hell? Since I and my friend (I guess he did) do not see the basic gameplay.|||You may use red portal (nihlathak quest) to quickly summon the army when starting the game, or use any location where you can find large group of mobs. Personally, I use frigid highlands tp (1 unique with minions to the north and shenk with minions down the stairs, usually its enough to raise 25 skellies or so). But whatever.

Generally, on Hell you use your merc to kill things and other minions minions to tank and soak up damage. With amplify damage and decent merc gear, regular mobs should go down very easy at after you got first corpse, start casting CE until everything on screen is dead (usually 2-3 casts with Amplify damage on).|||here is the most up to date version of the guide btw

http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/s...d.php?t=798047|||get a clay golem or fire golem

get a might merc

take a waypoint to the Cold Plains

cast amplify damage

your merc and golem will kill stuff easily

raise skeletons

keep casting amplify damage

get an army

take Cold Plains waypoint to either Outer Cloister (to get to the Pits), Lower Kurast, Durance of Hate floor 2, River of Flame, Bloody Foothills or Worldstone Keep level 2

cast golem far ahead of you (behind the line of monsters) so you split the monster army so that some monsters stay busy with him while others atack your skeleton army (golem is especially useful for distracting ranged attackers)

cast amplify damage

your merc and skeletons will kill at least one monster

cast corpse explosion which will kill multiple monsters, cast multiple corpse explosions which will kill even more monsters, repeat|||Krupa's posted the most 1.13c version of the Fishymancer.

JamesL lets you know how to get your army and kill regular monsters.

Be sure and use Amplify Damage as his curse. This pretty much doubles the damage the Skelie's will do. It will go slow in hell, but whenever he uses Corpse Explosion, it will go quicker.



For act bosses, use Decrip (Level 24 on right side of curses) and clay golem (if he's not using an Iron Golem with a good weapon already.)



Yeah, traveling to cold plains to get your army is where it's at. You can also go to through the Red Portal as already stated and get some of those bodies before they revive.|||I've resurrected an ancient Necro half-way through Act 3 Hell and respec'd him according to Nightfish's latest guide for Patch 1.13.

Game-play is a little slow at first because you need to rely on your Might Merc (from Act 2 Nightmare) and/or a golem to get enough skeletons and/or revives up. Once you've done that though, the build works well. Use Amplify Damage on monsters and then let your minions take care of them. Use Corpse Explosion as long as you don't need the corpses. Raise skeletons and/or revives when they die. Use Decripify instead of Amplify Damage on some monsters if necessary.

I haven't reached Mephisto yet, so I can't say myself how well the build does against him. The Council (Travincal) were a little tricky. I found it useful to draw monsters away so that you can attack them in smaller, more manageable groups. A frustration I am experiencing is that my hireling dies quite frequently. I need to get some better gear for him I guess.

PS: Could "fishymancer" also be related to the fact that he uses mainly skeletons, like the typical skeleton of a fish we always see in bins in cartoons? |||Quote:








Are you able to shortly describe the gameplay of the fishymancer in Hell? Since I and my friend (I guess he did) do not see the basic gameplay.




I was bored, so I answered your question in the form of a video:

Poor-Man Skelemancer clears Worldstone Keep

And now some exposition:

Of course the run I chose to fraps wasn't as smooth as most (stupid merc died) but anyway, I started this necro last week, it's my first character this ladder season (lol months behind). All of the gear is found, except for a low torch I traded some pgems for on these very forums. I have such epic items as a 3 ptopaz grey diadem.

Gear matters very little, the most important thing is 75 lightning resist for gloams (and MF, of course), everything else is whatever. That said, your merc's gear matters about 100 times more than yours does. He starts the corpse chains (you can use attract for this, but merc is better), and he kills the bosses (crushing blow).

Your skeletons are tanks, but even with might and amp damage, they are pathetic for dealing damage. They can kill stuff, but not at any kind of rate that you'd want to wait for. They're there to keep you and your merc alive while you get the corpse explosion chain started.

My merc is still using pretty bad gear, though it's better than mine. Insight cryptic axe (haven't got an eth one yet), tal's hat, duress armor (for the crushing blow, but the cold damage is mildly annoying). I would like to make an obedience when I get the stuff for it, to keep in my cube and switch out for him to kill bosses with. You don't need mana on bosses anyway, all you do is keep decrepify up. Once you get homunculus and maybe one other item with +mana after kill you can drop insight all together and use obedience full time. You actually gain mana from corpse explosion most of the time. (You'll still drink some mana pots but you'll find a lot more than you drink)

If you watch the video you notice I'm not teleporting around. I don't see much point to it. Baal drops uniques, sure, but regular old WK monsters drop nice socketables and runes. I've gotten a ber, cham, and gul over the last few days clearing WK. Still, keeping a naj puzzler or ammy or ring with teleport charges around isn't a bad idea. Especially before you get crushing blow for your merc. You'll need to use revived maulers/urdars to kill bosses if you don't want to grow old doing it, and revives path... poorly, so teleport gets them onto the boss.

Since I'm not running/teleporting past enemies to get to a boss (if you want to do that, roll a sorc or hammerdin IMHO), I don't bother with dim vision, and instead max amp just so it hits more than a screen at a time, just because why not? It serves as a sort of early warning system for me too because I usually can't see monsters until they have the shiny amp on their head.

Skelemancer is a great first character on a ladder, because you do just fine with found gear, so it can be your first MF character and get you set for whatever characters you want to follow up with (or respec to another kind of more gear-dependent necro once you have gear - woot for respecs!)