A good necro summon build

[Dayoh]

Whats a good necro summon build that doesent relie on the lvl 1 skellies heaps?

[Neo]

I'm confused, what do you mean "doesn't rely on the level 1 skellies heap"?

A basic summoner mancer consists of the following:

20 Skeleton Warrior (Maxed First)
20 Skeleton Mastery (Maxed Second)
1 pt into every curse except confuse/attract (with Amplify Damage, or Decrepify being your main curse)
1 point into each golem, except Fire Golem (hes useless)
1 point into Revives'
1 point into Golem Mastery and Summon Resist

From there you decide on what kind of a golem (For example, an Insight Iron Golem, you would max Golem Mastery so your golems would have a bunch of life), you can also decide whether you want Skeleton Mages, I have them, but I feel its a wasted skill, mages have such low life, and do pitiful damage.

You can also get 10+ into Corpse Explosion (coupled with Amplify Damage, you can tear through crowds of monsters).

-Kupa

[CrazyTom]

I find Skeleton Mastery and Revive are the two skills to aim for, along with one point in each curse and a good level on Corpse explosion as Kupa has said. I generally find revives more useful than skellies because Revives level up alongside you - as you face more powerful monsters, those you kill will come on your side, only twice as tough as they were before. It can be tricky, but once you've killed four or five enemies it starts to get easier. Especially good is raising spellcasters, because you can have hundreds of points of damage being done in a very short space of time because your revives are blasting the monsters with their spells. Boss battles for me consist of sitting there, casting the occasional curse whilst my minions surround the boss and hack away.

[Neo]

To be fair, skeleton warriors, when maxed, and with some plus skills (ie, lets say slvl 30) can have a ton of hp, and dish out 300~ damage each. Add Amp and thats easily 6k damage after they each swing on a single target.

My own skellies have listed damage at 670~ and this is before any Amplify Damage, Fanat, or Might/Concentrate. O.O;;

Revives are nice, but don't follow you, tend to lose themselves, and have a limit of 3 minutes per raise.

edit: and some monsters like Urdars (river of flame) deal Crushing Blow -- this is how some necros solo Pandemonium Tristram, heh.

-Kupa

[Dayoh]

Oh i had the idea that revives were better then skellies.

i havent used a summon nec at high lvls so i havent used revive before lol

[Giantfish]

Well, unless your keeping track of how long you've had each revive, you'll have to expect that possibility that they will die on you when you need them most. You could keep summoning them, but the large mana cost means you'll be sipping mana potions non-stop.

Skeletons are weaker than the average choice revives but they move faster (generally), don't disappear when they get left behind, and don't die automatically after three minutes.

[Neo]

Skeletons are also powerful in their own right. And have some insane amount of life in any difficulty. I've only lost them to IM, heh.

-Kupa

[CrazyTom]

I use both - my usual tactic is to go out and build up my base forces and then take any Revives I can find - that way even if all my revives die (which only happens if I take an awfully long time between each battle) I still have the minions I need to take down more monsters and add them to my army. Also, if you have twenty revives availible, you're usually going to average having around 15/16 as they die progressively and you raise replacements - more than enough to deal with 90% of the monsters you meet (excepting certain superuniques, of course). The main reason I prefer revives for my main army to skeletons is the fact that skeletons can be outclassed by certain monsters, whereas my Revives have 200% of life and 300 % of damage compared to any of their living counterparts.

Still, the death thing is annoying - and the fact that they don't respawn and follow you like your other minions means you can lose loads if they get stuck behind a wall. It means you have to play a little strategically - or get a ring with level one teleport for emergencies. ;)

As for mana potions, I find enough scattered around the place that I never need to buy any, and I very rarely run low either. Then again, my Necro has more mana than my Sorc at the moment, so I guess it's +to energy as well.

[Neo]

Ahh. Well I've got a seriously heavy necro build (ie: tons of +skills) and my skels are up around 48/45 (mastery/warriors) which means uber skels, and revives that can actually kill heh.

I'll be switching soon to an Infinity Mercenary with a Might aura, but this is moreso because I'll be using Trang's Set (Which means access to fire skills, so conviction = more damage via those skills).

Also thinking about a Beast Iron Golem.

-Kupa

[Dayoh]

Aight, im making one as we speak, maxing mastery and raise skelly atm.

So i which is a good golem, i know the fire golem isn't that great, i haven't used the iron one before so ill prolly give him a go.

[Neo]

Iron is good if you have a good item to make him out of (those high level uniques that are crappy/you'll never use work well) or a runeword like Insight (gives meditation).

However, a Clay Golem is perhaps the best twinker golem, and barring a good Iron Golem item thing, is probably the best golem ever. Mine has a max of 18k life, and when used, never dies -- even when swarmed. He can help slow Baal/other bosses down to such an incredible crawl thats its almost painful watching them.

I would suggest that point syou get as bonuses (ie: from den/raddy/izual quests) goto curses: 1 into amp, then work your way upto to Decrep. The thing is that you want to max Warriors and Mastery asap (which means level 40) but Amp can be / is a very useful curse to spam on anything your skels are attacking. Then once you hit 40, start working your way upto 1 point into Decrepify, then a point into Corpse Explosion (this can come earlier, as it is a really kickass skill) then decide if you want Skel Mages, decide if you want to max Golem Mastery (something that you MUST DO if you're planning on an Iron Golem of any kind).

etc...

Yeah I know, I'm a necro freak.

-Kupa

[Dayoh]

I love necro's too, prolly my second fav char.

Anyway, i don't want to use mages cause they suck lol.
You can usually find heaps of useless uniques from baal runs and thats very common so an iron golem could work, after i get skele/mast maxed ill decide an a golem after.

[Neo]

Yeah, I'm going to possibly rebuilding my necro to nix Mages. Though I want to test them with an infinity merc first =/

-Kupa