First character I used in classic D2 was Bone Spear Necro. I had no idea what I was doing and just saw that Bone Spear had a lot of damage. Worked pretty good.
Launch player here dawg, I remember in middle school we'd bring each other cupcakes that would say SOJ whenever a buddy found one. Back when all your friends were playing, good memories!
Make teeth able to hit one target with multiple projectiles. Increase the synergy bonus from 8% to 10% or 12%. Add a delay to bones spirit like Frozen orb, double its damage, keeping the same dps. Now you have a nuke to start a CE chain.
I like bone spear as it is for playthrough. It's one of the only builds that continues to get stronger as you get through hell as opposed to others that cap (strictly skill points wise) in the beginning of hell
I like where bone spear is thematically at this point, but like you said the entire bone tree sufferers from too high investment cost to be useful. I use Spear to clear the game every time I run as Necro as the Bone Wall/Prison synergy make them surprisingly tanky through hell. However once I have Baal down, I swap off because the damage scaling on Bone is so bad. For changes, I agree with you and believe that the synergy with Wall/Prison needs to be removed, and the synergy bonus bumped from 8 to 16% to compensate. This would open the build up to a significant degree of hybridization, and it would only cost a little bit of power bloat in Nightmare. Like you mentioned in the Video being magic damage has hamstrung the ability to buff this skill; only a radical change is going to be able to buff PVE without making PVP a nightmare. D4's solution is to make Bone skills Physical, so that is at least worth considering.
Yes I too think making bone spear physical would allow for the use of Amplify damage and sunder charms, which would ultimately bring it to a better place I think. Also if they left Bone Spirit as Magical Damage it would basically fix any need to worry about physical immunes. This would also give bone Spirit a special use beyond just being a homing missile which they nerfed considerably back in 1.09
@@GGMentor I like that solution. Spear physical, spirit magic. If they dropped it to a 60 point build (T/S/S) you could build spear/skellies and have a versatile and safe hybrid summoner that used amp for everything. 100% would play it for the season.
5:14 that's why bone wand base with poison nova and lower resist as a given skill are crazy expensive then you create white runeword in them and boom a powerful wand
Back when I played bone necromancer, I usually sacrificed one of the synergies to dump 20 points into dim vision. It is objectively the best curse to use as a bone spear/spirit necromancer since your biggest weakness is lack of meat shields. Don't need meat shields if every single enemy just stands still and doesn't attack all the way from normal through hell mode. It does take your damage down a bit, but you basically become invincible.
My strat: bone spear/wall for groups w/ decrepify bone spirit/wall for bosses w/ decrepify Bone necro is one of the few builds that makes me NOT hate doing the maggot lair in act 2
back in Classic I only played one character, my hammerdin, and that thing did 17k damage with hammers. One shot almost everything in the game. You'd think I had a hacked character with best in slot perfect everything, but it was just putting all my time and effort into one character. Fun times.
The solution is Bone Spirit zeals in pvm, meaning it hits 5 times per cast. In pvp, it still hit once. This would solve all the issues, and give Bone Spirit an identity while not juicing it from where it is in PVP.
Meat shields and CE is the way. I've tried repeatedly to make good use of bone spear, but as you say, it chews up far too many skill points to even think about having a viable necro that's flexible enough to do everything. Edit: it would be nice if they gave bone spear some synergies with the raise skeleton skills.
Instead of fully maxing BSp, I suggest maxing BS and BW/BP and then maxing CE, so that you can use BS for the first corpse and then murder everything with CE. that leaves enough points for some curses, 1 point in revives and summon resist. has the marrowwalk bug been fixed btw? there used to be a bug where charges on an item would function as synergy points as long as the skill itself had no points in it. so in case of the marrowalk boots, that have lvl 33 BP charges, as long as you didnt put any points in BP, the other bone skills would profit from 33 synergy points, more than you could actually have normaly out of one skill, without spending a single point on it. obviously that was stupidly overpowered, but it also opened up some fun hybrid builds, bone/poison mancer.
I think Bone Spear should remove the Teeth and Bone Spirit Synergies but boost the Bone Wall and Bone Prison ones. That way you can get effective Bone Armor almost for free by maxing out Bone Spear. I figure it makes sense if you're training the ability to manipulate bones into a wall you might be able to conjure them into a better projectile. Bone Spear is lackluster damage but it boosts defensiveness in Bone Armor at the same time.
I think it would be neat if they brought back the look of the diablo 1 Bone Spirit with the red flames and skull and had it trac monsters like crazy and also have it kinda do the same effect as a Lightning fury where once it hits more spirts split off and hit and if there isnt enough monsters around to hit they all home in on the few mobs or mob in the area
It's be cool to see a Necrohead that lowers magic resist. It'd be hard to balance it for pvp tho. I'd like to see a slight roll back on bone spirit due to pvp and a slight increase to bone spear. So roll bone spirit back to a 7% synergy and boost spear up to a 10% synergy
so i think you answered you own question of why not improve bone necros. They are already top tier in pvp. they have some challenging match ups but think about how balancing their current pvp prowess with their current pvp game play would work. it could be done but it would probably mean completely changing the necro meta. it's not impossible but it would take some work to balance. idk if blizzard has it in them...
9:00 "you're at least guaranteed to get the exact amount of damage that's written on the skill" Hell Cows and Hell Duriel have 33% Magic Damage resistance, while Hell Mephisto has 50%. It is true that Hell Andariel/Diablo/Baal have 0 Magic Damage Resistance. But it's not a guarantee. 23:00 "it's a very expensive build both in terms of equipment and skill points". Expensive equipment? Where? This doesn't need infinity, death's web or Griffon's eye to name just a few items needed for poison Necro or Javazon/Nova/Lightning sorc.
I've never tried a caster necromancer. For some reason it seems to me like it would be very weak versus incoming damage without a strong army to protect him. How would you rank it as a soloing character in early Ladder?
I've been a summon necromancer since 2003. My opinion, the summon necromancer is the strongest but it's also the slowest. There's not one area in the game it can't go through with players 8 with a full army and beast runeword. Only physical immunes are a problem and amplify damage takes care of that. I tried farming tokens of absolution after finding things like death web to see how strong I could make poison or bone... It always felt unsafe not having 50 people around you. You're constantly casting there are poison immunes... Plus both caster and summon need really good gear. I never found the benefit of poison or bone and I tried both for what one person's anecdotal evidence is worth.
Bone is probably the fastest ladder starter of the 3 Necro builds. Because you have the bone wall/prison synergy you actually have a pretty beefy bone armor online by nightmare and the wall skills have a taunt function that makes them a surprisingly safe Hell clear. From a between class comparison I would say probably A or B tier. Pally and Sorc have really fast times, Sin, Necro and Java make up the middle then druid then barb is the slowest. That being said, if you run in a group or can get established early, the endgame farming tier list changes significantly.
I'm hoping Blizzard does something about the Magic Damage in the coming Ladder season. It's silly how builds doing Magic Damage get no benefit every other build does from Sunders, Resistance lowering gear etc.
D4's solution to the magic damage problem was to make bone skills deal physical damage. if we did that in D2 it would be an instant double damage with Amp :D
My kid just wants a summoning necromancer but I'm not sure how good it can be if the bosses just insta wreck all the skeletons. I will be a paladin so I think that can help if I aura on all those skeletons. Other kid wants to be a druid and be a bear the whole time. So it seems like an excess of melee physical damage.
💀Bone Nova ❄️ Act 1 Merc 99 Points Poison and Bone 11 Points Curses 40 Bone Spear + Prison would be more dmg then 40 points in Golem + G Mastery 40 points Poison dagger + Nova Some points in Bone Spirit or Poison Explosion there is 11 points left to get lower res + 5
it's not really relevant, when synergies were added and they increased the Hitpoints of all the monsters they made the old numbers seem insignificant by comparison. But since the monsters Pre-Synergies has relatively low HP it didn't take much to kill them.
Its easy to shop a +3 bonespear base from drognan within 30 mins or so, if youre lucky or are persistant you can get golem, or skeleton, on it as well. But finding a +3 Bs with decrep or revive out in the wild is basically a holy grail item.
I feel like the only reason that bone necro is in the situation it is, is due to PvP. If they made it better for PvE it would make it murderous for PvP and I feel like that’s what blizzard is afraid of.
hammers are higher damage first off, with upwards of 13k, they also pierce in a circle as opposed to a straight line. Which means that they will hit more targets per cast than Bone Spear.
Just to give you a hint that you are using it wrong, because you don't have 125fcr. Having 5-6k bonespears with 125fcr gives you faster killing speeds than having 8-9k bonespears with the previous breakpoint and at 125fcr the bonespears in many occasions interrupt monster attachs/charges. If you have a centered to +skills equipment with +fcr focus like necro fcr amulet with +15-20 fcr, spideweb, shako or necro +20 fcr +2 skills diadem, Enigma, Darkforce spawn shied , use magefists instead of trang gloves for +1 skill to CE, BK or SJ for rings, White wand with +3BS +decrepefy and +revive or hoto you can have a huge army and have an effective bone spear and CE. If using white wand you can choose not to invest in revives, mages and curses, but if you use cta on switch (and you should) the revives are gone when you rebuff and you'll have to resummon. If you put only one point in every golem type, with the +skills well, then you can make an iron golem from Obedience and you get a golem that has crushing blow and don't die. Then the Merc act2 must be with Insight with +6 critical strike, aura roll is of no concern (the lowest will be enough to give you infinite spell spamming and forget for potions) with treachery armor and Gface with +ias jewel in it you get a fast hitting merc even when done in eth CV and you get both a golem that don't dies and dishes crushing blow and merc that does double damage in 2/3 of it's hits and crushing blow on the another 1/3 and doesn't die too, because the monsters are not attacking only them, but the skellies and revives. So I invest one point in summon resistances, one in CE, all 20 in teeth, 20 bone spear and 20 bone spirit, one in bone armor then a lot of points in bone wall or prison from what is left, one point in amplify damage if not using white wand and one in revive and mages if you get tired to loose the revives from switching offhand. With this build the CE range is great and is very useful, the minions are killing it and you are a killer too with the fastest bone spears. I had no problems on killing Uber or Clone Diablo or the other ubers. If the bone spear don't cut it, then the army itself does, or the CE or cursing with Amplify damage or Decrepefy. Using only a summonmancer is very boring gameplay wise, and with this build you have huge versatility you being alike a male sorc casting projectiles and exploding bombs while protected from a gang and in this way the game can be called back an 'action' RPG :).
"Just to give you a hint that you are using it wrong, because you don't have 125fcr." This is a Test Character just for talking about the skill not an actual character built and used. However Building him with high FCR also means very high Mana Consumption, which in turn means you are basically required to run an insight merc. and who starts a conversation like that? also use some damn paragraphs My eyes hurt just looking at that giant mass of text with no form. "Paragraph - a distinct section of a piece of writing, usually dealing with a single theme and indicated by a new line, indentation, or numbering."
Bone Spear is goated. ANY IDIOT can finish the game w a spear necro and end ssf clones wich is the factual point of the game... Also hammerdin SUCKS in some zones... but im a hammerdin hater. Skill is just shit and crapier in 2024 ecosystem.
That sure is an insane amount of points to max that single skill! Thank goodness for the White runeword.
First character I used in classic D2 was Bone Spear Necro. I had no idea what I was doing and just saw that Bone Spear had a lot of damage. Worked pretty good.
Launch player here dawg, I remember in middle school we'd bring each other cupcakes that would say SOJ whenever a buddy found one. Back when all your friends were playing, good memories!
Make teeth able to hit one target with multiple projectiles. Increase the synergy bonus from 8% to 10% or 12%. Add a delay to bones spirit like Frozen orb, double its damage, keeping the same dps. Now you have a nuke to start a CE chain.
I like bone spear as it is for playthrough. It's one of the only builds that continues to get stronger as you get through hell as opposed to others that cap (strictly skill points wise) in the beginning of hell
I like where bone spear is thematically at this point, but like you said the entire bone tree sufferers from too high investment cost to be useful. I use Spear to clear the game every time I run as Necro as the Bone Wall/Prison synergy make them surprisingly tanky through hell. However once I have Baal down, I swap off because the damage scaling on Bone is so bad.
For changes, I agree with you and believe that the synergy with Wall/Prison needs to be removed, and the synergy bonus bumped from 8 to 16% to compensate. This would open the build up to a significant degree of hybridization, and it would only cost a little bit of power bloat in Nightmare. Like you mentioned in the Video being magic damage has hamstrung the ability to buff this skill; only a radical change is going to be able to buff PVE without making PVP a nightmare. D4's solution is to make Bone skills Physical, so that is at least worth considering.
Yes I too think making bone spear physical would allow for the use of Amplify damage and sunder charms, which would ultimately bring it to a better place I think.
Also if they left Bone Spirit as Magical Damage it would basically fix any need to worry about physical immunes. This would also give bone Spirit a special use beyond just being a homing missile which they nerfed considerably back in 1.09
@@GGMentor I like that solution. Spear physical, spirit magic. If they dropped it to a 60 point build (T/S/S) you could build spear/skellies and have a versatile and safe hybrid summoner that used amp for everything. 100% would play it for the season.
BOOM FIRST LIKE LETS GOOO!!!
Love this series
Played much classic, I still remember the day I took off work to go buy the expansion, twas a gorgeous day in Grand Rapids!
Shout out to grand rapids
5:14 that's why bone wand base with poison nova and lower resist as a given skill are crazy expensive then you create white runeword in them and boom a powerful wand
So since you kind of have to build the whole character around that you're basically building a fire bolt sorceress but with magic and Pierce
Back when I played bone necromancer, I usually sacrificed one of the synergies to dump 20 points into dim vision. It is objectively the best curse to use as a bone spear/spirit necromancer since your biggest weakness is lack of meat shields. Don't need meat shields if every single enemy just stands still and doesn't attack all the way from normal through hell mode. It does take your damage down a bit, but you basically become invincible.
A bone spear necro is the first character I beat p8 hell with
Anyone gonna mention the FLOATING HEADED NECROMANCER
My strat:
bone spear/wall for groups w/ decrepify
bone spirit/wall for bosses w/ decrepify
Bone necro is one of the few builds that makes me NOT hate doing the maggot lair in act 2
Molten bolder is also good in Maggots lair. It can roll the entire hall keep smashing all the bugs and when it pop it makes huge damage nearby.
I ran a summon necromancer with a bone spear as back up so far its worked out great
back in Classic I only played one character, my hammerdin, and that thing did 17k damage with hammers. One shot almost everything in the game. You'd think I had a hacked character with best in slot perfect everything, but it was just putting all my time and effort into one character. Fun times.
The solution is Bone Spirit zeals in pvm, meaning it hits 5 times per cast.
In pvp, it still hit once.
This would solve all the issues, and give Bone Spirit an identity while not juicing it from where it is in PVP.
Meat shields and CE is the way. I've tried repeatedly to make good use of bone spear, but as you say, it chews up far too many skill points to even think about having a viable necro that's flexible enough to do everything. Edit: it would be nice if they gave bone spear some synergies with the raise skeleton skills.
Instead of fully maxing BSp, I suggest maxing BS and BW/BP and then maxing CE, so that you can use BS for the first corpse and then murder everything with CE.
that leaves enough points for some curses, 1 point in revives and summon resist.
has the marrowwalk bug been fixed btw?
there used to be a bug where charges on an item would function as synergy points as long as the skill itself had no points in it.
so in case of the marrowalk boots, that have lvl 33 BP charges, as long as you didnt put any points in BP, the other bone skills would profit from 33 synergy points, more than you could actually have normaly out of one skill, without spending a single point on it.
obviously that was stupidly overpowered, but it also opened up some fun hybrid builds, bone/poison mancer.
I think Bone Spear should remove the Teeth and Bone Spirit Synergies but boost the Bone Wall and Bone Prison ones.
That way you can get effective Bone Armor almost for free by maxing out Bone Spear.
I figure it makes sense if you're training the ability to manipulate bones into a wall you might be able to conjure them into a better projectile.
Bone Spear is lackluster damage but it boosts defensiveness in Bone Armor at the same time.
I think it would be neat if they brought back the look of the diablo 1 Bone Spirit with the red flames and skull and had it trac monsters like crazy and also have it kinda do the same effect as a Lightning fury where once it hits more spirts split off and hit and if there isnt enough monsters around to hit they all home in on the few mobs or mob in the area
It's be cool to see a Necrohead that lowers magic resist. It'd be hard to balance it for pvp tho. I'd like to see a slight roll back on bone spirit due to pvp and a slight increase to bone spear. So roll bone spirit back to a 7% synergy and boost spear up to a 10% synergy
Bone spear is used for killing a few monsters then amp dmg and corpse, destroyes p8 with the right gear and skills
so i think you answered you own question of why not improve bone necros. They are already top tier in pvp. they have some challenging match ups but think about how balancing their current pvp prowess with their current pvp game play would work. it could be done but it would probably mean completely changing the necro meta. it's not impossible but it would take some work to balance. idk if blizzard has it in them...
9:00 "you're at least guaranteed to get the exact amount of damage that's written on the skill"
Hell Cows and Hell Duriel have 33% Magic Damage resistance, while Hell Mephisto has 50%. It is true that Hell Andariel/Diablo/Baal have 0 Magic Damage Resistance. But it's not a guarantee.
23:00 "it's a very expensive build both in terms of equipment and skill points". Expensive equipment? Where? This doesn't need infinity, death's web or Griffon's eye to name just a few items needed for poison Necro or Javazon/Nova/Lightning sorc.
It wasnt perfect but I did find a bone wand with +2 bone spear and +3 corpse explosion which I cubed for 2 sockets made a nice white wand.
After the necro can you do the elemental druid skills. I feel they are really under appreciated. Especially the fire skills
Isn't the TO set kinda weak, even for a Caster build?
I've never tried a caster necromancer. For some reason it seems to me like it would be very weak versus incoming damage without a strong army to protect him.
How would you rank it as a soloing character in early Ladder?
I've been a summon necromancer since 2003. My opinion, the summon necromancer is the strongest but it's also the slowest. There's not one area in the game it can't go through with players 8 with a full army and beast runeword. Only physical immunes are a problem and amplify damage takes care of that.
I tried farming tokens of absolution after finding things like death web to see how strong I could make poison or bone... It always felt unsafe not having 50 people around you. You're constantly casting there are poison immunes... Plus both caster and summon need really good gear. I never found the benefit of poison or bone and I tried both for what one person's anecdotal evidence is worth.
Bone is probably the fastest ladder starter of the 3 Necro builds. Because you have the bone wall/prison synergy you actually have a pretty beefy bone armor online by nightmare and the wall skills have a taunt function that makes them a surprisingly safe Hell clear.
From a between class comparison I would say probably A or B tier. Pally and Sorc have really fast times, Sin, Necro and Java make up the middle then druid then barb is the slowest. That being said, if you run in a group or can get established early, the endgame farming tier list changes significantly.
I'm hoping Blizzard does something about the Magic Damage in the coming Ladder season. It's silly how builds doing Magic Damage get no benefit every other build does from Sunders, Resistance lowering gear etc.
D4's solution to the magic damage problem was to make bone skills deal physical damage. if we did that in D2 it would be an instant double damage with Amp :D
God dammit I just started a Necro and was going to do bone spear but after this video I have to change it up now
My kid just wants a summoning necromancer but I'm not sure how good it can be if the bosses just insta wreck all the skeletons. I will be a paladin so I think that can help if I aura on all those skeletons. Other kid wants to be a druid and be a bear the whole time. So it seems like an excess of melee physical damage.
💀Bone Nova ❄️ Act 1 Merc
99 Points Poison and Bone
11 Points Curses
40 Bone Spear + Prison
would be more dmg then 40 points in Golem + G Mastery
40 points Poison dagger + Nova
Some points in Bone Spirit or Poison Explosion there is 11 points left to get lower res + 5
Seems like bone spirits should work like ravens. I know pvp would be messed up. But it would make the whole build demolish for the 100+ investment
All tue devs have to do is make the skill do less dmg on player.
Many skills and stats already do thay to balance pvp.
The irony here being that the maggot lair is the worst place for a hammerdin.
Why didn't they make lower resist work for magic resistances as well?
I believe it did a long time ago and it was deemed too overpowered
@@GGMentor I'm guessing overpowered knock on effects for hammerdins and pvp bone. Hard to imagine the bone pvm being overpowered.
How much damage did 20 points bone Spear in the old days?
it's not really relevant, when synergies were added and they increased the Hitpoints of all the monsters they made the old numbers seem insignificant by comparison.
But since the monsters Pre-Synergies has relatively low HP it didn't take much to kill them.
Its easy to shop a +3 bonespear base from drognan within 30 mins or so, if youre lucky or are persistant you can get golem, or skeleton, on it as well.
But finding a +3 Bs with decrep or revive out in the wild is basically a holy grail item.
Wow, I’ve been running bone spear/ summon and I’m doing 1300-1500 dmg. I just thought that was normal.
Same Problem as a Singer barb
I feel like the only reason that bone necro is in the situation it is, is due to PvP. If they made it better for PvE it would make it murderous for PvP and I feel like that’s what blizzard is afraid of.
Why does the magic of spear seem so much worse than the magic in hammers?
hammers are higher damage first off, with upwards of 13k, they also pierce in a circle as opposed to a straight line. Which means that they will hit more targets per cast than Bone Spear.
😮
My gf loves my bone spear
Just to give you a hint that you are using it wrong, because you don't have 125fcr. Having 5-6k bonespears with 125fcr gives you faster killing speeds than having 8-9k bonespears with the previous breakpoint and at 125fcr the bonespears in many occasions interrupt monster attachs/charges. If you have a centered to +skills equipment with +fcr focus like necro fcr amulet with +15-20 fcr, spideweb, shako or necro +20 fcr +2 skills diadem, Enigma, Darkforce spawn shied , use magefists instead of trang gloves for +1 skill to CE, BK or SJ for rings, White wand with +3BS +decrepefy and +revive or hoto you can have a huge army and have an effective bone spear and CE. If using white wand you can choose not to invest in revives, mages and curses, but if you use cta on switch (and you should) the revives are gone when you rebuff and you'll have to resummon. If you put only one point in every golem type, with the +skills well, then you can make an iron golem from Obedience and you get a golem that has crushing blow and don't die. Then the Merc act2 must be with Insight with +6 critical strike, aura roll is of no concern (the lowest will be enough to give you infinite spell spamming and forget for potions) with treachery armor and Gface with +ias jewel in it you get a fast hitting merc even when done in eth CV and you get both a golem that don't dies and dishes crushing blow and merc that does double damage in 2/3 of it's hits and crushing blow on the another 1/3 and doesn't die too, because the monsters are not attacking only them, but the skellies and revives. So I invest one point in summon resistances, one in CE, all 20 in teeth, 20 bone spear and 20 bone spirit, one in bone armor then a lot of points in bone wall or prison from what is left, one point in amplify damage if not using white wand and one in revive and mages if you get tired to loose the revives from switching offhand. With this build the CE range is great and is very useful, the minions are killing it and you are a killer too with the fastest bone spears. I had no problems on killing Uber or Clone Diablo or the other ubers. If the bone spear don't cut it, then the army itself does, or the CE or cursing with Amplify damage or Decrepefy. Using only a summonmancer is very boring gameplay wise, and with this build you have huge versatility you being alike a male sorc casting projectiles and exploding bombs while protected from a gang and in this way the game can be called back an 'action' RPG :).
"Just to give you a hint that you are using it wrong, because you don't have 125fcr."
This is a Test Character just for talking about the skill not an actual character built and used. However Building him with high FCR also means very high Mana Consumption, which in turn means you are basically required to run an insight merc.
and who starts a conversation like that? also use some damn paragraphs My eyes hurt just looking at that giant mass of text with no form.
"Paragraph - a distinct section of a piece of writing, usually dealing with a single theme and indicated by a new line, indentation, or numbering."
Oh mg, you 157 und good morning
Cast rate not power. Your welcome
You’re*
It’s a contraction of you and are. You’re welcome.
Bone Spear is goated. ANY IDIOT can finish the game w a spear necro and end ssf clones wich is the factual point of the game... Also hammerdin SUCKS in some zones... but im a hammerdin hater. Skill is just shit and crapier in 2024 ecosystem.