Im playing solo self found online on the switch. I was lucky enough to gamble an amulet with +2 necro summons, +20all res, and 25 tele charges. It’s probably the closest ill ever get to an enigma lol
Yo, I thought I was the only person actually playing on Switch. If you end up on BattleNet hit me up for a trade. I’ve joined thousands of rooms, all of which were empty. I’ve never seen anyone in a game yet lol.
Theres a staff that you can buy in normal mode that have 41 teleport charges you can put it in your second gear to change but this amulet is amazing bro
@@MattSeesGray switch is better for singleplayer anyways. My singleplayer Nintendo switch account is getting crazy, I've made infinity, fortitude, CTAx2(tried to get a better roll) and chains of honor along with some amazing finds like 197/7 eth titans. Being able to switch the players count is so much better than trying to farm solo online.
@@rally_chronicles it's one of the generic skills, the icon is a skull with an X on it. use that while clicking on the exact summon unit you want to destroy and it poofs. with this skill you can itemize which mages you keep and which you remove to allow for a catered set of mages for any battle.
Thanks to people like you “dumbing down” these topics “casuals” like me can start to comprehend how to properly play the role we actually wanna play not picking “whatever is appealing” 👏🏽😁 Thank you so much💯♥️🔥🔥🔥
Most people dont realize about tthe power of summoning necro, you dont have inmunes, can farm any area, great cow farmer, can do ubers, and it can work also on budged gear. But it really shines once you get Beast runword which increases a lot atk rating and atk speed.....
@@Alzorath that's why when your fully geared and have max block you make a infinity iron golem. And carry a hoto. For stacked resist in Uber trist. Mine never died. Mutilated Ubers way faster than a smiter. Trash isn't a problem. had mine for years never lost him. Used act one faith Merc also. For fanat. And she survived most times. I literally run thousand's of torch runs back in the day. Everyone on the forums got me to run there organs. Was super fast.
I loved playing Necromancer. I played Lag-O-Mancer back in the days of AOL Dial Up. This time around, I used my first respec to not put points into mages. They tended to get in the way of the warriors too often, and revives have an annoying tendency to vanish.
There was no mention, however, about just how much damage auras affect necroskeletons. IIRC, they don't give their full effect, rather stack with the %ED of the Raise Skeleton skill itself. I don't have much experience with summoner druids, but I imagine it is much the same.
Love this. I just started out tried pali and sorc, for a few hrs , then did necromancer, and loving the build, just hit Hell.. thus video is just what I needed. U get a subscription from it... ty 😊
Glad it helped :) - I have an updated one just for the poison nova necro w/ summons (Lazybones is what I call it, had to update it for the 2.5 patch and sunder charms)
Currently stacking infinity, bramble, insight on the iron golem and might + dream helm on the merc. Wisp projector makes things interesting if you use the heart of the wolverine. All of that stacked up with a pretty strong poison necro with a death's web and a +necro skills teleport amulet has turned hell into walk mode. Cows drop before my minions even reach them now. Corpse explosion finishes off anything else and decrepify on bosses slows them down to a crawl.
There are two necro classes in this game : the one without enigma, F tier on a fresh ladder start, and the one with enigma, A to S tier. A simple addition of a spell to reposition your minions would change this class forever.
Great video. I main necro as well. Ive seen a lot of chat on the forums to buff Skeletal Mage. As much as that would make this build godlike i dont think it would be balanced all too well. Once you have an enigma revives become more of a pain due to the stacking issue and basically turn into a 1 point wonder and only really used on Udars for crushing blow Uber kills. Even then, you dont need them until tristram anyways as RS is more then enough for mini's. The only way i could see SM having a good balance is if they removed the synergy from skeletal mastery and put it on something like lower resist. Which kinda seems ridiculous. I like the golem buffs aside from fire golem but buffing up mages as a replacement to raise skeletons (thats what people are asking) would be broken.
I agree. I have a teleport charges amulet and even using it sparingly with amp dmg and CE and skeletons wrecks everything. I don't get people complaining about skeletons not being strong enough. Would love for fire golem to be useful.
@@off-meta-michael Right!? i can see the desire to want to run an elemental summon build. honestly it would be really fn cool. fire golem and skele mages. the conflicting part of that is skeletal mastery. even if you maxed fire golem, mages, and mastery you would have enough for raise skeletons and dump the rest into CE, with one point wonders into amp damage or working your way up to lower res. it would be incredibly broken. If they could squeeze in something like Mage mastery or remove mage synergy from skeletal mastery and relocate it (would be pretty dumb) making an elemental summoner just isnt going to work. CE is 50/50 fire/phys so you could use it regardless.
liked and subscribed! too many voices out there are dumping on the improvements 2.4 is bringing, this video is a breath of fresh air and rationalism!! Keep it up :-)
This video reminded me of one detail: you made a video about easy starter builds a while ago. How will 2.4 change these, and would you recommend different builds with the new patch? Or are the old ones still viable?
The old ones are still viable (and improved in several cases) - though it changes the nightmare summoner strategy. It also makes a few builds more viable for starting (MA Sin especially)
Have you thought about/tested Act 3 fire merc with items such as Last Wish and Flickering Flame? I'm not sure how effective Enchant is on the skeletons, but it sounds like you could get some real Attack Rating and dual dmg on the melee ones. Maybe, in addition, 2x Dragon runeword on your merc + Lower Resist would be a thing?
I actually didn’t know about the increased damage minions take. Definitely explains why Iron Maiden works so well with the minions. I still like the clay/decrep purely for amusement at the bosses slowly swinging once every 6 seconds or so.
Good analysis. I've noticed my minions can take Diablo fire ring 3 times before they disintegrated. I'm lvl 29 with lvl 34 minions. Got 2 white weapon +3 skeletons summon. Your last comment is my bread and butter now.
How did I just now find your videos? I main necros too. After finding the thornymancer build that's what I main. Soo much fun, hella funny in melee duels.
Great guide, I wasn't sure what to do next with my summoner and this information helps a lot. Also, though you didn't refer to anyone by name it was kind of obvious which streamers you were referring to. I'd recommend steering away from this and focusing on what you do best, which is providing rational and factual information. When you refer to other content creators you run the risk of reframing the conversation into a popularity contest, which tend to be neither rational nor factual.
Mainly was intending to point out what spurred this video, since it went from "asked every now and then, but shows up on forums" to "this was asked multiple times in a week, so needed to be addressed" - I probably could have phrased it better though. Generally I don't pay too much attention to other creators in the space unless it shows up on my doorstep, since my videos are based about 70% what people comment on new/old videos, 20% an itch to try something specific, and 10% pulled from my queue list I keep (there's a bit over 120 video ideas on the list, most will never see the light of day because I don't think I could make a video that adds value on them)
More Fired at frequent forum posts and common misconceptions - the reality is magi are not commonly used, and not heavily tested like the rest of the summons because "common wisdom" - there isn't a single creator who knows everything about the game. It's like having two programmers, both may know a lot about "best practices", but one may be better at C, while the other is better at Python - there's no denying both are skilled at programming, but the Python person could likely make stuff with C, and the C person could likely make stuff with Python, but you'd probably get better work from each of them by relying on them focusing on their area of specialization.
@@Alzorath He was the one with the archer idea that you seemed upset about. & I get that you're into the class but.. What would you think about them using skills like fireball, ice blast and poison novas?
The Archer idea has been around since before LoD even released, so yea - predates him by a lot (it was used in a few mods, and was especially popular when using sprites from Infinity Engine games was a trend). And I'm not "upset" about it, it's just more of a mod territory, rather than a core game update idea. As far as the AoE approach (or in the case of blast, freeze vs chill) to them would make them harder to balance unfortunately, I think the best path for adjusting them is through initially trying out incremental bumps to elemental damage either from just a raw boost to damage per missile level - or through synergies. In terms of 'preferable options' - I would say damage increments would be my first choice since it's easiest to fine tune, damage piercing would be my second choice since it's much more variable in impact, and AoE would likely result in a need to undertune raw damage (and in my opinion, we should be focusing on mages as dual-immune bypass tools, which is easier to balance for with single-targeting and variable damage types)
we probably won't see too many more changes for 2.4 if I had to guess (though no guarantees) - I think we'll see up-tweeks of a few skills in 2.5 though as season 2 approaches - since they probably want to see 2.4 get a few months of bake in to see if any new concepts pop up.
The core obstacle to fixing skeleton mages is probably just the fact that the necromancer is overall a strong class, so giving them even more options is a lower priority than something like fixing the global melee vs spellcasting imbalance. I want skeleton mages to be one of my favorite skills, but I don't have a lot of hope for it.
Bone break charm breaks immunities and adds % to damage, add amp damage, act-2 merc with might, a pride arm for concentration, add bramble armor on merc for thorns. Mastery at 43, skeleton at 42, mage at 41, revive at 38. Mows through anything
Conviction is better than pride due to defense and chance to hit formulas - this was written before bone break was even a twinkle on diablo's left buttcheek unfortunately.
Great video. Haven't dedicated time to playing a necro since like 2002, can't wait to get back into it when ladder starts. Can't decide whether to start with necro, fire druid, or trapsin.
Strategy-wise sorc or assassin would probably be my top picks for starting the ladder, though I'm still personally considering doing a Zoomancer start, and stream it while only inviting other zoomancers or maybe paladins to the party ;)
Trangs summon necro has revived my lust for the game. I got Infinity on the thorns merc(didn't think I'd ever be able to say that 😵. I found a jah & traded jah-cham-zod for it.) I use Beast & got an Insight Golem. With my firewall we melt EVERYTHING!!! Add corpse explosion & we're unstoppable.. I feel like we could probably do Ubers 🤞😬
I'm in the archer camp just for ease of use both for the player and for balancing. Physical damage is the second least resisted damage type and is how most of the other summons in the army scale. In contrast the elemental damages are subject to the slew of immunities in Hell and will result in at least one of the elements being less (or not) effective. Additionally the Magi AI isn't sophisticated enough to not target immunes, and to my knowledge will require a large amount of resources spent on reprograming. It does strip the identity of the magi and their utility somewhat, but less so than its current state which is largely to ignore them imo. Lastly adding a synergy to a skill we currently don't build for will limit our access to another skill we do use, meaning we are going to have to either run the same magi we do now, or lose the ability to pick up a skill like CE, a golem, or a curse. Personally I see 3 major changes to Necros as propelling us into the modern era: 1) build reason (scaling) into curses to invest in them, and format synergies so that you can include a 20 point curse without neutering your damage. 2) make Magi into archers and balance the entire army based on physical damage (amp) 3) change Bone skills from magical damage to physical damage. The last is the most extreme but solves the PVP issue and also gives the bone necro a bonus from amp, decrep, and infinity which should resolve the somewhat lackluster endgame damage. The other major change I would like to see is weapon runewords generalized to 1H, 2H and all weapons; until Infinity is available on something other than a pole I do not believe we will have parity of mercenaries. it also gives the niche benefit of being able to load Faith on a Polearm or staff, which would give us options and an upgrade to Beast.
my biggest gripe with summons especially necro is and always will be the need for teleport chest i know you wanna use it anyway i just dont like how it almost feels mandatory to manage your summons regardless of your need for the chest or not
I have one thing to say to this video. I recently ran a hybridmancer with full skele and mastery plus a might merc with pride. I didn't find my skeletons missing in any capacity, even when compared to playing with my cousin whose merc runs infinity. Bosses and minions all wore out at the same rate pretty much. In fact the biggest drop in dps was when Mephisto killed my beast golem. So personally I 100% disagree about the theory that you need infinity for skeletons to be able to hit enemies.
Druids are a bit more complicated. The bottomline is that for a druid summons are natural cannon fodder and remain to be more of a supportive skill branch than an actual primary skill line, though the balance has definitely shifted thanks to the buff to the Ravens. The Ravens are basically a massive passive damage gain (summons that ignore pathing and can be used to perform precision damage attacks) BUT they ignore all auras. They will probably do more damage than all of your other minions thanks to their ability to simply fly straight to their targets, with the notable exception of the few somethings that stand still long enough for your Grizzy to bring in the DPS. Note that at comparable skill levels (ie, up until you start stacking +skill items in end-game) Ravens roughly do a little over half as much damage as the Grizzly and that's with minimal synergies. Yes - they are so powerful an underleveld druid with maxed Ravens pretty much just has to stand in a corner for a couple of seconds and the ravens will destroy normal Diablo. That in mind with a Druid you're mostly concerned with developing your character. Hybrids are fine - Fissure + Volcano or Firestorm and Volcano + Armageddon make for amazing synergy with the physical damage summons, especially considering support from easily obtainable runewords like Spirit, Lore and Leaf. The strength of the hybrid is such that they pretty much have a straight-ish path to end-game: farm Leaf, farm Spirit/Lore and then farm Lawbringer (or some equivalent). Beat game, then just farm. And then there's the "pure" summoner druid, the runt of the litter. The one that requires the most knowledge about druid progression. Damage auras are nice but ultimately they're more for you/your bear/your wolves and your mercenary, and that means they're of dubious value until very late in the game because we've established that your Ravens are gonna be doing the bulk of your DPS. Curse auras (Decrep and Amplify) are amazing but you don't exactly have easy access to these apart from CtC weapons from merchants, and unlike the hybrid you don't have a straight path towards farming Lawbringer. And even if you do manage to get your hands on one, that doesn't solve other problems with the build - the lack of a strong mob clear mechanic, for one. My personal solution has always been to develop my own druid to be an archer, and that means navigating the complicated world of choosing the right mercenary for progression (eg, given my current character status should I: a) grab the Rogue and stack CtC Amp Bows and the free Inner Sight, b) Grab the Desert Mercenary with Blessed Aim or c) Grab the flame Iron Wolf with Enchant?), determining which path to end-game gives me the best bang for my back (eg, Razortail is pretty much essential for my approach to work so that means a ton of NM Andy farming), and figuring out the lack-of-AoE problem (now that I have Razortail and a CtC Amp bow, should I maybe next focus on getting Crescent Moon on an Act 5 Frenzy Barb?). When it all comes together the build is actually quite nasty, but yeah. Also, the druid "lazy summoner" pure summoning build baffles me. The druid is not a necromancer - it doesn't make sense to stack caster equipment on something that lacks access to Corpse Explosion and curses. Why are you playing a subpar build and then complain that its subpar? Hybrids exist, so you are willfully playing what is the druid equivalent of a Necromancer without Corpse Explosion/curses... and not doing anything to fix the problem. Of course it's not going to be ideal.
25 years later, and I finally started a summoner necro. This guy slays even on P8. WTF have I been missing all these years? OMG. The level-up speed is insanely good on P8.
But without powerful runewords that most people don't have, the build is painfully slow. The skeletons damage is spread out over ten plus different minions, all with collision. This means that unless you stack all of your minions in one spot with teleport, it's going to be a slow grind with chip damage as only one or two minions get to swing in tighter spaces (and you better pray to whichever god you like that one of them is the merc). And those tiny spaces include more than just the maggot lair. There are a lot of natural choke points in the game that limit the amount of minions swings. This is why most people believe teleport to be necessary. During normal and nightmare, the damage your minions put out isn't bad, and they kill things relatively quickly. But once you get to hell, you notice a sharp decline in their effectiveness. And it takes time to find the runes for all the runewords you are going to need, along with all the other uniques that likely haven't dropped by hell yet in all honesty. Once you get to hell, you find that only your merc kills things reliably, and he doesn't survive long once he is focused. Same problem iron golem faces as well. Paper tigers. But really, the merc is the only one doing any significant damage. But that is only if the merc ai notices the enemy, which is staggeringly rare. But all it takes is the one dead and you CE everything. This isn't my ideal fantasy when I think of commanding the army of the dead. All my power comes from the bone tree and the hired help, as well as a sorceress skill on some high end equipment or a bank breaker with charges. It doesn't really come from the summon tree, at least not without end game gear. But if I need end game gear just to be able to reliably farm hell for end game gear... how am I suppose to have gotten the end game gear in the first place? Play sorceress? Because that is what this is really about. Ladder is competitive. And who you start ladder with matters. Teleport already makes anything I say after a moot point, but beyond that, it's about clear speed. And the summon necromancer just doesn't have it without those three components, none of which are unique to the summon necromancer sadly. The same thing can be said for poison necromancer as well. You need a certain combination of end game runewords and rare uniques to make the build kill anything. It's not something you typically run through the game with because it needs so much help just to be viable. I truly think that they should make mages more appealing than corpse explosion for summon necromancers. And make them ethereal so that the warriors, revives, golem and merc don't get stuck behind them. I want to see the necromancer kill quicker through hell without needing so much dependency on high end gear and runes, and without needing those three I spoke of earlier. CE, merc and teleport. And I believe the answer could lay in mages. And maybe a little bit of fire golem, though I am still partial to iron even for its price. Edit: Bwahahahaha, I forgot about druid... give him all of his pets at once. All the wolves and the bear and all the spirits and even all the creepers. And let him keep the soft synergy bug exploit.
bro, shop a teleport staff... i'm a druid, i got exactly the same problem as you - im telling you, when you hit nightmare, just shop one from akara or drognan... repair with gold, or use rals+chipped gems if you really need to, heck 5 million gold goes for a lem rune normally, it's cheap. just get a tele staff...
@@aleksaurus2722 Yeah, I do. Have one now and had a necklace with summon skills and teleport in the original. It leads to this problem where your damage output is significantly lowered because you now must leave your inventory without skillers, making you significantly weaker as you hunt for things to charsi so you don't go poor. It is not really a great alternative to enigma, as it tends to break your bank unless you have a goldfind character to feed off of. So while it's a really, really bad solution, it's doable, though it still presents glaring issues of its own. With teleport, the best skill in the game, unless you are playing sorc, you are either paying a hefty price in high runes that rarely drop, or you are paying a hefty price in gold and inventory space. Either way, you pay dearly.
I've come back to D2r after a long long time and decided to do a druid for the first time ever. Played more necromancer than I care to think about but knew basically nothing about druid. I'm finding its interestingly different than summonmancer, only just got into act 5 normal, but I am noticing my summons already starting to have some slow down on kills. Diablo for example took an absolute age and kept wiping out my merc and summons throughout the fight. Been using an act 1 fire merc just to shake it up a bit, been thinking about trying out whichever runeword has the fanaticism aura on her once I'm able to farm the runes for it.
@@Alzorath That is a good advantage; but if you shop for it between level 18-24, they are very easy to spot since they have red background; which speeds things up a lot. I am not certain if having the door next to dragon vs shopping between 18-24 is faster; but I doubt one has a significant dominance on the other; and in that case, it might be better to get it sooner than later. Keep up the great work Alzorath; top quality content so far
The problem with druid summons is the fact that it is easy (but expensive) to build strong wolves/bear with +skills and then swap to shapeshifting gear and still make a competent fury/mauler that does over 10k damage easily. This works because druid summons synergize with +skills and not just hard skill points. So if you make summons too strong then druids become very op. What really holds them back is the lack of teleport while shapeshifted and summon ai (which teleport allows you to exploit). I kind of understand why. Druids would be too op in pvp as you could tp around with a 6k+hp werebear while dragging along an a5 merc with an eth uppd headstriker build and a grizzly both which can do 10k+ damage if geared right. All you would have to do is tp on top of someone and they’d get 1 shot.
great video and good ideas, I really love necros and actually quite often shop for an amy or circlet with teleport, sure it is a bit more expensive but you can get some really nice ones.
Yeah i hit the jack pot with an amy that has +2 necro summons, 20allres, and 25 tele charges Also gambled a circlet that just has 2 to nec summons and 20fcr.
I wish they would make it so the monsters went for the summons in the Xbox version had the damn time I get stuck on the way into Diablo because they won’t all fight in the little crossover between bridges it’s so annoying I really like this build
Against physical immunes, LR - against everything else, Amplify Damage (or if you're packing the physical sunder - amplify damage for everything) Edit to note: Yes - Decrepify and Amplify will break physical immunes, but they work at 1/5th the rate without sunder breaking it first, resulting in the physical aspect doing hardly anything compared to the fire aspect vs physical immunes.
No one puts points in bone armor/bone prison , if you gonna be telestomping you need to be safe it has saved my life plenty of times I can see how you're always on low life
What's your opinion on corpse explosion? I think I'm the only person in the world who thinks maybe this skill ought to be nerfed. I never played necro much, but seems to be every necro build is 1 kill then CE CE CE. Maybe it's not "overpowered" in that necro will still often have slower clear speed... but for me it kind of makes every necro into the same thing. Also, I love when a build is viable with budget equipment but man, feels like a naked necro with a halfway naked merc can clear the game with CE.
Have you tried a summoner-archer necro with faith? It's not bad,same amount of +skills with a bit higher fanaticism ,much worse defense(no shield) and he can have some "decent" dmg and ar with faith,though just a normal attack.
Hey y'all, so I've had a question regarding investment in RW's. I've been thinking whether to make a beast weapon for the aura, or enigma for obvious reasons. Any thoughts?
Remember playing Path of Exile and I can safely say the Teleport/ Summon Army is for getting minions to where you want It happens so offten that either 2-3 get stuck in corner or wander off somewhere else and can't hit the enemy If you use Teleport for bosses it can clump them up in one spot and EVERYONE can hit him instead of being spread out and half of them just not knowing what to do I'm a tank/ brawlers as a main but love playing summoner types when available but dear god is it annoying having the minions run around like a pack of idiots while the boss chases you and can one shoot you
I love summon necro build, so laid back.. My question is which is better: Act 2 Merc with Pride and Might or Act Merc 3 with Flickering Flame and Enchant? DPS wise what is better? I never tried Act 3 Merc, but something tells me that Enchant will be better.
Act 2 - though infinity is better than pride (hit chance) - the reason the a3 enchanter doesn't work well for a summoner is that enchant is on their offensive spell rotation, so you need to be near enemies for them to randomly cast it on your minions - this results in most of your army being unaffected by them.
Thank you for finally stating this as an actual necro player! Also great stream yesterday! Had a blast watching as always! Keep up the good work brotado chip ! 🙌
Well, what if you ain’t got Infinity? Are the mages still gonna be that good? I’m sure they’ll not... that’s where the Lower Resist synergy with Skeletal Magi would come in handy :)
Oh, and they could also add a little thinking to the magi’s A.I, and by that I mean making the skeletons able to avoid attacking an enemy that’s immune to their respective elemental skill, so they don’t just stay there forever doing 0 damage.
without infinity you use them for utility (Poison to prevent healing, cold to slow) - skeleton magi are 'lukewarm' still as stated, but they're not hot garbage like people say either. And infinity is mostly for the normal skeletons, it just helps the magi (I would still stick with a boosted damage from summon resist or raise skeletons personally, since it's army focused)
yea, I generally only use them in the middle of large armies, and if I have decent golem mastery from plus skills (I'll still use them on garbage drops before then, but clay is usually better then for general use).
@@Alzorath I'm leaning towards thinking it's me who sucks with a Necro (it's a poison CE cow Necro btw) and only having 1 hard point in the golem + mastery. I'll get more points into mastery and then respec once I get better at it :)
Reality is you really don't need infinity or beast on player 1. Pure fishymancer with Amp damage and CE with max fcr while boosting your skills as much as possible is the best route and is one of the best clearing builds in the game. The issue is when you get above p2 you begin slowing down a lot and need the extra damage from fanaticism and help from conviction aura. It actually becomes quite annoying and you drop off substantially.
Early Crushing blow or Prevent Monster Heal items/runewords for Iron Golem. Decrepify is awesome to let your dudes encircle them, add on an Ice aura from anything makes it cheap to win early on. If you cast 'clayboy' on the opposite side of diablo where your skellies are facing him, he'll direct his lightning there every time because of golem taunt/priority. A 'clay boy' wand that has 'iron maiden' is a do-all for bosses on necros to switch to. I use a 3Tal Bow to complete maggot lair with the random socket gear with chipped gem stats on summancers. I run summancers on /players8 all the way without twinking. Probably on my 20th one now.
If you were to use the Act 3 Fire merc with Enchant... does he actually buff your skeletons and would it be worth it over an Act 2 merc with might aura (before getting inifity ofcourse)
He buffs them, but he can only trigger the spell when in combat (so it takes a while to get him to cast it on all minions, since he won't sit in town and enchant them) - generally I still like the A1 merc (inner sight) as the budget alternative for infinity.
yup, they do, but it's exceptionally low lol - for warriors it's 15 per level of SM/Raise, for mages it's 10 per level of SM/Mage - they get a base amount on top of this (based on clvl with a fixed bonus)
I swear, the plus skills you get from Arm of King Leoric is worth more than the Fanaticism Aura you get from beast. Does any one have any actual facts/figures to prove me wrong? I don't have the real figures myself, it just seems that way to me.
It depends a lot more on your base +skills outside of the fanaticism aura - if you want to dig down into it. (the higher your base +skills, the better fanaticism gets from just a raw DPS standpoint - ignoring AR% - with AR%, especially combined with conviction, fanaticism gets even more lucrative if you're relying on skeletons for attack damage) Going solely by damage, Arm will slightly nudge out fanaticism until the extremely high levels, but going by pure damage is how people end up using Pride instead of Infinity as well - not realizing that, without Attack Rating effects, your skeletons will miss a LOT in hell - without conviction, we're talking (approximately) 30-35% chance to hit vs 45-50% chance to hit in late Hell (with conviction, we're talking probably closer to 70% vs 80% chance to hit) - those are rough estimates from memory, since I don't feel like crunching down the numbers (and of course level, and which enemy you're fighting, play a factor)
@@Alzorath Tempted to make a beast iron golem and put insight back on my merc. My merc currently has pride. Supposs i should try infinity out instead. Then again someone has to be holding insight. My necro at the moment is level 93, Skeleton Mastery is like level 52 or 53, raise skeleton is 50 and skeleton mage is 49, all before battle orders. I'm wearing Arm of King Leoric.
I would do insight IG due to how expensive beast is, unless youre flush with resources - especially with people still sometimes mentioning the IG bug (I still have yet to run into it personally though)
@@Alzorath i had a Beast Iron Golem just before patch 2.4 and it disappeared on me, traced my steps and the iron golem was just frozen in place with a health bar saying "iron golem". My skeletons killed it immediately. Certainly is annoying.
you do CG & IM because that's the easiest combo to work in normal, in higher difficulties you use Thorns & Amp - CG & Decrep are for builds where your minions are set up for damage rather than just retaliate (which is why you use it after beating the game)
@@Alzorath You can technically make this bow runeword with Thorns aura on switch and then use Amp curse, but I guess Clay Golem with Iron Maiden is available by default.
I think the problem people face with summoners is they put too much into their minions and not into themselves. The AI isn't really smart, that's why the clear speeds are slow.
I have a few times, but they didn't give them nearly as much of a buff as they were leading us to believe when this video was written - they're still solid support, but they need a lot more work. (you can beat the game with them, but it's not quick)
Summon necro is one of my failed builds from 2002. I've started a few with D2R, just haven't played them enough yet in favor of sorc MFing and a couple pallys
just make the damage from the mages 50%/50% elemental/physical like diablo's lightning inferno. That way they benefit from amp damage/decrepify + might/fanaticism/concentration. Simple as.
Hi Alzorath. Just a off-topic question, could you make video about NHAM in Resurrected and some changes in PTR? There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding and topic comes so often, yet I personally don't think NHAM as known in classic Diablo 2 is present in Resurrected. In D2R animation update mechanics were changed and I didn't encounter "whiffing in the air" that was so common for some builds in classic Diablo 2. This also affected skills like Smite and elemental part of Charged Strike, that shouldn't miss - e.g. you would see bolts going out, but not doing damage. One of the best skills to test NHAM used to be Frost Nova - circle animation would still play, but no enemies would be chilled. Good examples of "whiffing in the air" are old videos made by Sicktoid: at around 1:20 in th-cam.com/video/nmXrug_BCYE/w-d-xo.html and at 3:00 in th-cam.com/video/EOgvyg3S7uo/w-d-xo.html Now you will get Block Shield, Hit Recovery or D/A/E animation instead. That could be problem with itself, but almost all of it was addressed in PTR. D/A/E can be now interrupted by player (so Fend isn't as bad as it used to be) and Dragon Talon is now uninterruptable (undocumented change). Some changes were also made to hit block animation, so it won't apply to pre-cast animation. I don't think it only applies to shield block, since I noticed dual-wielding Barbarian kinda "glitching", when hit and attacking at the same time. Yet, so often someone goes "I won't play melee till they fix NHAM". I'm probably missing something, but I feel that NHAM in D2R is not present or greatly reduced to the point, where it is not an issue. At the launch of D2R topic was somehow touched by other content creators, but never explored as far I know.
I'm level 48 necromancer main (solo) and still playing diablo 2 lod I used summon skill tree than cursed and bone poison I always share auras from my mercenary (prayer). I still grind to find items (socketed) to make auras items. Please do you have any tips?
generally it's best, outside of certain builds - to focus on one type, since spreading points too much can be a pain outside of one point wonders (curses are one point wonders for the most part, so for summoners - you generally want to focus most of your points into raise skeleton and skeleton mastery - with 1 point in summon resists) - unfortunately dipping into bone/poison with summoner as your main, doesn't really work well (same for dipping into summons while doing bone). The only one that can dip is poison-main (does max poison skills, but just gets cannon fodder minions, they don't actually do damage for it unless you have really high end gear) As far as auras - generally it's more which auras you pick, more than how many. Conviction (infinity) is better than Concentration (pride) for this build on the mercenary weapon. Might (Act 2 Mercenary Aura) is better for random farming, Thorns (Act 2 Mercenary Aura OR can be gotten with Bramble Armor) is better for bosses (Thorns + amplify damage specifically). You can also do a niche budget setup with Thorns (Edge Bow) and an act 1 mercenary, and their inner sight actually has an effect similar to what you'd be using conviction for (-Defense) - that lets your minions hit more. Meditation (insight) is helpful on an iron golem if you teleport a lot, but otherwise it's just a nice to have. (and if you're choosing an aura for mercenary weapon - Conviction (Infinity) > Meditation (insight) > Concentrate (pride) imo - though some people flip concentrate and meditation and just chug mana potions)
Your magic find impacts the magic find of all your minions, though your minions magic find (ie your mercenary or your iron golem's) do not influence your magic find, only their own.
Strange that you would say that enigma is optional as it makes the build much stronger. Tele-stomping enemies will kill them much faster than just running around. The ability to reposition your army is what makes the build A tier IMO.
revives really depend on which things you revive - things like gorebellies, balrogs, etc. are actually really strong revives for a wide variety of things - but caster revives and such are absolute garbage. Generally, skeleton magi are somewhere in-between those, though currently still towards the lower end outside of utility purposes.
What if they turned skeleton Magi to be more like shadow warrior for assassin, allowing casting of 1/4 skill bonus +level in skeleton mastery for skills in necromancers poison and bone skills tree?
Tho could limit the number of Magi to 1 Magi per 5 skill levels and limit spells to Teeth, Corpse Explosion,Bone Spear, Poison Explosion, Poison Nova, and Bone Spirit.
You can get by famously even in Hell difficulty with nothing but Warriors, Amp Damage and Corpse Explosion. Since you can't have both Amp and Lower Resist going at the same time you're going to have to pick whether the Warriors or the Mages do the killing (and set up your CE) and as it stands, Warriors are hands down better than Mages due to Might and Amp (which also boosts CE). Maybe mages will get closer once you have Infinity, but that's an end game build. The average casual player will never have an Infinity item and if they do they will probably have some way to also boost Warriors, so it's Warriors all day every day. Mages will just be better at surviving and doing a tiny bit of damage than they are now.
beast is actually the least useful and lowest priority of end-game gear (it's handy for some flavors, but infinity, enigma, etc. are all much higher priority and importance to the builds)
One word: telescope You cannot do that without teleport. Having a teleport staff on switch or najs puzzler is cumbersome and costly for recharges. Plus, it interferes with CTA/spirit which is a huuuge upgrade. So, I wouldn't say enigma is absolutely required ... but it should be your ultimate end goal as you can shape your army around the battlefield effectively.
For first... lets do some QOL updates. Sharpen the mechanics. Very simple. 1. When u revive cold imune u get cold Magi etc. Revive type is not random, but based on highest residence value of the monster ( u could get fire army, cold army , light army etc. Maybe they could benefit from - cold res on your gear? 2. Get them better attack frames.
Teleport is mandatory for a revive necromancer. This video is exclusively about skeleton comps that don't really need them though. Also summon builds of this kind aren't that good because mages spells are tier 1 garbage spells. They need to reduce their ai delay so that they shoot faster and drastically up their missile speed. On top of buffing their damage considerably and remove their collision completely. They should be able to stand in each other naturally because places like the maggot lair were created without these mechanics in mind. Skeletons used to be completely non viable. Worst spell in the game. They weren't updated until 1.10 where they made them a legitimate build. The problem is they only adjusted their numbers and not the mechanics. The mechanics do need addressing but mages numbers were never properly addressed. They were never given numbers competitive past normal. This patch only fixed their damage, but did not buff the damage to where they should be. The skeletons mages damage table is still the 1.01 damage table. It does not take into account 1.10 doubling the stats of every enemy in the game across the board. Which is why melee builds suck more than other builds now. Attack Rating of the enemy and their defense determine if you can hit them or not. Along with their level. 2 of those is doubled and the levels are higher. Melee builds aren't hitting anything without being severely overgeared and overleveled. Skeletons were adjusted to this and revives naturally were due to copying the exact enemy you rez. Golems and mages weren't though. Which is why tiny buffs to them won't fix them. They need complete overhaul changes to fix them. Thus why the video recommends crazy things like entire synergy sets dedicated just to them because that is the only fix for them. Summon progression is pretty horrible in general. You get most of your stuff in hell without the ability to kill them without cheating. It's a build that only really works in hell with skillers. They can't really kill anything in hell though due to stat fall off. So you basically have to play nightmare legit until you find plus skills high enough on your limited slots to kill enemies early in hell so you can farm for skillers. Skillers are what make the build possible. Skillers are also what make having a good golem with them possible too. Necromancer summoning tree cannot work without plus to skills. Since you get roughly 110 points, but every skill on the tree require max to be competent in a build.
The summoner necro is actually one of the easiest builds to go through normal/nightmare if you know the mechanics (Iron Maiden bosses in normal, the minions kill stuff just fine otherwise - Amp+Thorns Merc in nightmare, and again, minions + CE is enough to clear out trash - then in Hell you use the nightmare strat until you beat baal, then you switch to the farming setup). The build does use +skills a bit, but can easily beat the game with even just using a shopped wand, a lore, and a spirit or splendor shield. Enigma, like with many builds, is an optimization improvement, not a necessity for function - the mentality of "it's best in slot or its garbage" is one of the more toxic mentalities that still clings on to the D2 community like a rancid fart (a lot of people have forgotten how to enjoy the game)
just because you repeated it a few times - I'm adding +3 to the count, instead of +1. get's too much higher, I'm going to start pronouncing it with a soft g.
I drop 1 pt into skellies and max the bone skills... I tried poison once, was un-impressed... Bone is best, i made a summoner lvl 70s, even decked w Beast/skillet GCs hes just not as good, its fun for leveling n pvm but sucks at pvp and I'm in it for pvp in long run, why else even get lvl 93+? U can farm hell Baal easy at 84 if got GG gear
Summon Necros are actually one of the best Uber Killers out there, and with CE and proper telestomping can go just marginally slower than S-tier builds in their given areas.
@@Alzorath Does not change the fact that skeletal mages on their own suck big time as a skill. They nred some kind of utility to be good, right bow they are just canon fodder.
Also doesn't change the fact that Zeal sucks with a bad weapon, Lightning Javazons suck in Act 3, and Blizzard Sorcs suck in Act 5... the reality is - expecting a skill to work outside its scope, is going to make it suck. In regards to Skeleton Magi "sucking big time" - generally there's 3 camps: (1) People who think skeleton magi are the best thing since sliced bread are generally new players (2) People who recognize the utility of skeleton magi in their role as "secondary skill" are usually necro veterans (3) People who expect them to compete with over-tweaked skills like Blizzard, Hammers, or Lightning Fury will think they suck (it's kind of in the same camp of people who are blindly "anti-Frozen Orb") The thing with mages is they could very easily end up over-tweaked if handled improperly (which is why I'm glad they're taking it slow - since I'd rather see them creep up to the power I'd like to see them at, than to be over-tuned and have to be nerfed later)
Dare you to play the game as it's meant to be played, and not using the teleport enigma minion bomb.... I bet you wont... Because just like every other content creator, you always need the OP options to play the game, rather than playing how most of the rest of us play, without all the auras and top end broken gear.
![[GUIDE] Diablo 2 - Summon Necromancer](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/1w5qadfyAdg/mqdefault.jpg)
Im playing solo self found online on the switch. I was lucky enough to gamble an amulet with +2 necro summons, +20all res, and 25 tele charges. It’s probably the closest ill ever get to an enigma lol
Sick amulet nice
honestly, outside of the repair cost, for general playing, you really won't need more than that :) (the teleport from enigma is just 'nice to have')
Yo, I thought I was the only person actually playing on Switch. If you end up on BattleNet hit me up for a trade. I’ve joined thousands of rooms, all of which were empty. I’ve never seen anyone in a game yet lol.
Theres a staff that you can buy in normal mode that have 41 teleport charges you can put it in your second gear to change but this amulet is amazing bro
@@MattSeesGray switch is better for singleplayer anyways. My singleplayer Nintendo switch account is getting crazy, I've made infinity, fortitude, CTAx2(tried to get a better roll) and chains of honor along with some amazing finds like 197/7 eth titans. Being able to switch the players count is so much better than trying to farm solo online.
A lot of people don't use "unsummon". You can actually have pure ice mages or any combination. Takes some time to build but fun to see it in action.
yup, unsummon for mages is SUPER important... I knew I forgot to mention something :(
How do you use unsummon?
@@rally_chronicles keep summoning the mages until you get a good one
@@rally_chronicles it's one of the generic skills, the icon is a skull with an X on it. use that while clicking on the exact summon unit you want to destroy and it poofs. with this skill you can itemize which mages you keep and which you remove to allow for a catered set of mages for any battle.
Thanks to people like you “dumbing down” these topics “casuals” like me can start to comprehend how to properly play the role we actually wanna play not picking “whatever is appealing” 👏🏽😁 Thank you so much💯♥️🔥🔥🔥
Most people dont realize about tthe power of summoning necro, you dont have inmunes, can farm any area, great cow farmer, can do ubers, and it can work also on budged gear.
But it really shines once you get Beast runword which increases a lot atk rating and atk speed.....
I would say Infinity is the real turning point for it, but yea, a lot of people underestimate the army of doom.
@@Alzorath that's why when your fully geared and have max block you make a infinity iron golem. And carry a hoto. For stacked resist in Uber trist. Mine never died. Mutilated Ubers way faster than a smiter. Trash isn't a problem. had mine for years never lost him. Used act one faith Merc also. For fanat. And she survived most times. I literally run thousand's of torch runs back in the day. Everyone on the forums got me to run there organs. Was super fast.
@CesarCR isn't the + skills from arm of leoric better than beast?
I loved playing Necromancer. I played Lag-O-Mancer back in the days of AOL Dial Up.
This time around, I used my first respec to not put points into mages. They tended to get in the way of the warriors too often, and revives have an annoying tendency to vanish.
Yeah whats with that disappearing act? I dont remember that in original D2, but maybe that was just 20 years ago
@@paddington1670 Disappearing revives was common. If they are too far away from the summoner: poof!
This is why many people will tell you Enigma is a must. It's not, of course - more of a convenience, but a big one at that.
revives suck becuase timer of 180sec - need to up that to at least 8-10 min
There was no mention, however, about just how much damage auras affect necroskeletons. IIRC, they don't give their full effect, rather stack with the %ED of the Raise Skeleton skill itself. I don't have much experience with summoner druids, but I imagine it is much the same.
Love this. I just started out tried pali and sorc, for a few hrs , then did necromancer, and loving the build, just hit Hell.. thus video is just what I needed. U get a subscription from it... ty 😊
Glad it helped :) - I have an updated one just for the poison nova necro w/ summons (Lazybones is what I call it, had to update it for the 2.5 patch and sunder charms)
Currently stacking infinity, bramble, insight on the iron golem and might + dream helm on the merc. Wisp projector makes things interesting if you use the heart of the wolverine. All of that stacked up with a pretty strong poison necro with a death's web and a +necro skills teleport amulet has turned hell into walk mode. Cows drop before my minions even reach them now. Corpse explosion finishes off anything else and decrepify on bosses slows them down to a crawl.
Looks like we've come to similar conclusions re: auras to prioritize. Attack rating has always been a challenge with Skellies
Skeleton archers would be really cool instead of mages if they were done similar to the D3 skeleton archers
I think that would shred through the game. missile damage summons would be a machine gun, but I would love it, too.
I don't play summon necro because it's OP. I play summon necro because I don't want to feel lonely
There are two necro classes in this game : the one without enigma, F tier on a fresh ladder start, and the one with enigma, A to S tier. A simple addition of a spell to reposition your minions would change this class forever.
Skill issue
Great video. I main necro as well. Ive seen a lot of chat on the forums to buff Skeletal Mage. As much as that would make this build godlike i dont think it would be balanced all too well. Once you have an enigma revives become more of a pain due to the stacking issue and basically turn into a 1 point wonder and only really used on Udars for crushing blow Uber kills. Even then, you dont need them until tristram anyways as RS is more then enough for mini's. The only way i could see SM having a good balance is if they removed the synergy from skeletal mastery and put it on something like lower resist. Which kinda seems ridiculous. I like the golem buffs aside from fire golem but buffing up mages as a replacement to raise skeletons (thats what people are asking) would be broken.
I agree. I have a teleport charges amulet and even using it sparingly with amp dmg and CE and skeletons wrecks everything. I don't get people complaining about skeletons not being strong enough. Would love for fire golem to be useful.
@@off-meta-michael Right!? i can see the desire to want to run an elemental summon build. honestly it would be really fn cool. fire golem and skele mages. the conflicting part of that is skeletal mastery. even if you maxed fire golem, mages, and mastery you would have enough for raise skeletons and dump the rest into CE, with one point wonders into amp damage or working your way up to lower res. it would be incredibly broken. If they could squeeze in something like Mage mastery or remove mage synergy from skeletal mastery and relocate it (would be pretty dumb) making an elemental summoner just isnt going to work. CE is 50/50 fire/phys so you could use it regardless.
liked and subscribed! too many voices out there are dumping on the improvements 2.4 is bringing, this video is a breath of fresh air and rationalism!! Keep it up :-)
Have Fire Golem and Lower Resists grant large bonus to Skeleton Magi.
This video reminded me of one detail: you made a video about easy starter builds a while ago.
How will 2.4 change these, and would you recommend different builds with the new patch?
Or are the old ones still viable?
The old ones are still viable (and improved in several cases) - though it changes the nightmare summoner strategy.
It also makes a few builds more viable for starting (MA Sin especially)
I think a simple way of bosting the Magi is there damage increased by might same way that bless hammer is increased by concentration
Have you thought about/tested Act 3 fire merc with items such as Last Wish and Flickering Flame? I'm not sure how effective Enchant is on the skeletons, but it sounds like you could get some real Attack Rating and dual dmg on the melee ones. Maybe, in addition, 2x Dragon runeword on your merc + Lower Resist would be a thing?
I actually didn’t know about the increased damage minions take. Definitely explains why Iron Maiden works so well with the minions.
I still like the clay/decrep purely for amusement at the bosses slowly swinging once every 6 seconds or so.
Good analysis.
I've noticed my minions can take Diablo fire ring 3 times before they disintegrated.
I'm lvl 29 with lvl 34 minions.
Got 2 white weapon +3 skeletons summon.
Your last comment is my bread and butter now.
How did I just now find your videos? I main necros too. After finding the thornymancer build that's what I main. Soo much fun, hella funny in melee duels.
Great guide, I wasn't sure what to do next with my summoner and this information helps a lot.
Also, though you didn't refer to anyone by name it was kind of obvious which streamers you were referring to. I'd recommend steering away from this and focusing on what you do best, which is providing rational and factual information. When you refer to other content creators you run the risk of reframing the conversation into a popularity contest, which tend to be neither rational nor factual.
Mainly was intending to point out what spurred this video, since it went from "asked every now and then, but shows up on forums" to "this was asked multiple times in a week, so needed to be addressed" - I probably could have phrased it better though. Generally I don't pay too much attention to other creators in the space unless it shows up on my doorstep, since my videos are based about 70% what people comment on new/old videos, 20% an itch to try something specific, and 10% pulled from my queue list I keep (there's a bit over 120 video ideas on the list, most will never see the light of day because I don't think I could make a video that adds value on them)
@@Alzorath fyi it didn’t bother me one bit since it was just a quick reference and not what your video was about. Thanks for the video!
Some hi-key shots fired at llama lol
More Fired at frequent forum posts and common misconceptions - the reality is magi are not commonly used, and not heavily tested like the rest of the summons because "common wisdom" - there isn't a single creator who knows everything about the game.
It's like having two programmers, both may know a lot about "best practices", but one may be better at C, while the other is better at Python - there's no denying both are skilled at programming, but the Python person could likely make stuff with C, and the C person could likely make stuff with Python, but you'd probably get better work from each of them by relying on them focusing on their area of specialization.
@@Alzorath He was the one with the archer idea that you seemed upset about.
& I get that you're into the class but..
What would you think about them using skills like fireball, ice blast and poison novas?
The Archer idea has been around since before LoD even released, so yea - predates him by a lot (it was used in a few mods, and was especially popular when using sprites from Infinity Engine games was a trend). And I'm not "upset" about it, it's just more of a mod territory, rather than a core game update idea.
As far as the AoE approach (or in the case of blast, freeze vs chill) to them would make them harder to balance unfortunately, I think the best path for adjusting them is through initially trying out incremental bumps to elemental damage either from just a raw boost to damage per missile level - or through synergies. In terms of 'preferable options' - I would say damage increments would be my first choice since it's easiest to fine tune, damage piercing would be my second choice since it's much more variable in impact, and AoE would likely result in a need to undertune raw damage (and in my opinion, we should be focusing on mages as dual-immune bypass tools, which is easier to balance for with single-targeting and variable damage types)
@@Alzorath For sure. What do you anticipate blizzard actually doing for 2.4..? Nothing?
we probably won't see too many more changes for 2.4 if I had to guess (though no guarantees) - I think we'll see up-tweeks of a few skills in 2.5 though as season 2 approaches - since they probably want to see 2.4 get a few months of bake in to see if any new concepts pop up.
The core obstacle to fixing skeleton mages is probably just the fact that the necromancer is overall a strong class, so giving them even more options is a lower priority than something like fixing the global melee vs spellcasting imbalance.
I want skeleton mages to be one of my favorite skills, but I don't have a lot of hope for it.
Bone break charm breaks immunities and adds % to damage, add amp damage, act-2 merc with might, a pride arm for concentration, add bramble armor on merc for thorns.
Mastery at 43, skeleton at 42, mage at 41, revive at 38.
Mows through anything
Conviction is better than pride due to defense and chance to hit formulas - this was written before bone break was even a twinkle on diablo's left buttcheek unfortunately.
Great guide, what to try out skeleton mages in 2.4. Your the only one I think very positive about this build.
Great video. Haven't dedicated time to playing a necro since like 2002, can't wait to get back into it when ladder starts. Can't decide whether to start with necro, fire druid, or trapsin.
Strategy-wise sorc or assassin would probably be my top picks for starting the ladder, though I'm still personally considering doing a Zoomancer start, and stream it while only inviting other zoomancers or maybe paladins to the party ;)
Traps can be the best aoe early on, especially if you like HC. I love necro but it feels harder to clear quickly
I died with my hardcore necro last night. Fell asleep well playing lol
feel that one, 99% of my deaths are from being tired or from being distracted ;)
Trangs summon necro has revived my lust for the game.
I got Infinity on the thorns merc(didn't think I'd ever be able to say that 😵. I found a jah & traded jah-cham-zod for it.)
I use Beast & got an Insight Golem.
With my firewall we melt EVERYTHING!!!
Add corpse explosion & we're unstoppable..
I feel like we could probably do Ubers
🤞😬
I'm in the archer camp just for ease of use both for the player and for balancing. Physical damage is the second least resisted damage type and is how most of the other summons in the army scale. In contrast the elemental damages are subject to the slew of immunities in Hell and will result in at least one of the elements being less (or not) effective. Additionally the Magi AI isn't sophisticated enough to not target immunes, and to my knowledge will require a large amount of resources spent on reprograming. It does strip the identity of the magi and their utility somewhat, but less so than its current state which is largely to ignore them imo. Lastly adding a synergy to a skill we currently don't build for will limit our access to another skill we do use, meaning we are going to have to either run the same magi we do now, or lose the ability to pick up a skill like CE, a golem, or a curse.
Personally I see 3 major changes to Necros as propelling us into the modern era: 1) build reason (scaling) into curses to invest in them, and format synergies so that you can include a 20 point curse without neutering your damage. 2) make Magi into archers and balance the entire army based on physical damage (amp) 3) change Bone skills from magical damage to physical damage. The last is the most extreme but solves the PVP issue and also gives the bone necro a bonus from amp, decrep, and infinity which should resolve the somewhat lackluster endgame damage.
The other major change I would like to see is weapon runewords generalized to 1H, 2H and all weapons; until Infinity is available on something other than a pole I do not believe we will have parity of mercenaries. it also gives the niche benefit of being able to load Faith on a Polearm or staff, which would give us options and an upgrade to Beast.
my biggest gripe with summons especially necro
is and always will be the need for teleport chest
i know you wanna use it anyway i just dont like how it almost feels mandatory to manage your summons regardless of your need for the chest or not
I have one thing to say to this video. I recently ran a hybridmancer with full skele and mastery plus a might merc with pride.
I didn't find my skeletons missing in any capacity, even when compared to playing with my cousin whose merc runs infinity. Bosses and minions all wore out at the same rate pretty much.
In fact the biggest drop in dps was when Mephisto killed my beast golem. So personally I 100% disagree about the theory that you need infinity for skeletons to be able to hit enemies.
These would be some nice changes. Hope the devs have a look at this.
Cheers!
this is pure knowledge. Thx for sharing!
Druids are a bit more complicated. The bottomline is that for a druid summons are natural cannon fodder and remain to be more of a supportive skill branch than an actual primary skill line, though the balance has definitely shifted thanks to the buff to the Ravens. The Ravens are basically a massive passive damage gain (summons that ignore pathing and can be used to perform precision damage attacks) BUT they ignore all auras. They will probably do more damage than all of your other minions thanks to their ability to simply fly straight to their targets, with the notable exception of the few somethings that stand still long enough for your Grizzy to bring in the DPS. Note that at comparable skill levels (ie, up until you start stacking +skill items in end-game) Ravens roughly do a little over half as much damage as the Grizzly and that's with minimal synergies. Yes - they are so powerful an underleveld druid with maxed Ravens pretty much just has to stand in a corner for a couple of seconds and the ravens will destroy normal Diablo.
That in mind with a Druid you're mostly concerned with developing your character. Hybrids are fine - Fissure + Volcano or Firestorm and Volcano + Armageddon make for amazing synergy with the physical damage summons, especially considering support from easily obtainable runewords like Spirit, Lore and Leaf. The strength of the hybrid is such that they pretty much have a straight-ish path to end-game: farm Leaf, farm Spirit/Lore and then farm Lawbringer (or some equivalent). Beat game, then just farm.
And then there's the "pure" summoner druid, the runt of the litter. The one that requires the most knowledge about druid progression. Damage auras are nice but ultimately they're more for you/your bear/your wolves and your mercenary, and that means they're of dubious value until very late in the game because we've established that your Ravens are gonna be doing the bulk of your DPS. Curse auras (Decrep and Amplify) are amazing but you don't exactly have easy access to these apart from CtC weapons from merchants, and unlike the hybrid you don't have a straight path towards farming Lawbringer. And even if you do manage to get your hands on one, that doesn't solve other problems with the build - the lack of a strong mob clear mechanic, for one.
My personal solution has always been to develop my own druid to be an archer, and that means navigating the complicated world of choosing the right mercenary for progression (eg, given my current character status should I: a) grab the Rogue and stack CtC Amp Bows and the free Inner Sight, b) Grab the Desert Mercenary with Blessed Aim or c) Grab the flame Iron Wolf with Enchant?), determining which path to end-game gives me the best bang for my back (eg, Razortail is pretty much essential for my approach to work so that means a ton of NM Andy farming), and figuring out the lack-of-AoE problem (now that I have Razortail and a CtC Amp bow, should I maybe next focus on getting Crescent Moon on an Act 5 Frenzy Barb?).
When it all comes together the build is actually quite nasty, but yeah.
Also, the druid "lazy summoner" pure summoning build baffles me. The druid is not a necromancer - it doesn't make sense to stack caster equipment on something that lacks access to Corpse Explosion and curses. Why are you playing a subpar build and then complain that its subpar? Hybrids exist, so you are willfully playing what is the druid equivalent of a Necromancer without Corpse Explosion/curses... and not doing anything to fix the problem. Of course it's not going to be ideal.
I typically play a poisonmancer, though I agree with using Iron Maiden + Clay Golem for bosses.
25 years later, and I finally started a summoner necro. This guy slays even on P8. WTF have I been missing all these years? OMG. The level-up speed is insanely good on P8.
But without powerful runewords that most people don't have, the build is painfully slow. The skeletons damage is spread out over ten plus different minions, all with collision. This means that unless you stack all of your minions in one spot with teleport, it's going to be a slow grind with chip damage as only one or two minions get to swing in tighter spaces (and you better pray to whichever god you like that one of them is the merc). And those tiny spaces include more than just the maggot lair. There are a lot of natural choke points in the game that limit the amount of minions swings. This is why most people believe teleport to be necessary.
During normal and nightmare, the damage your minions put out isn't bad, and they kill things relatively quickly. But once you get to hell, you notice a sharp decline in their effectiveness. And it takes time to find the runes for all the runewords you are going to need, along with all the other uniques that likely haven't dropped by hell yet in all honesty.
Once you get to hell, you find that only your merc kills things reliably, and he doesn't survive long once he is focused. Same problem iron golem faces as well. Paper tigers. But really, the merc is the only one doing any significant damage. But that is only if the merc ai notices the enemy, which is staggeringly rare. But all it takes is the one dead and you CE everything.
This isn't my ideal fantasy when I think of commanding the army of the dead. All my power comes from the bone tree and the hired help, as well as a sorceress skill on some high end equipment or a bank breaker with charges. It doesn't really come from the summon tree, at least not without end game gear. But if I need end game gear just to be able to reliably farm hell for end game gear... how am I suppose to have gotten the end game gear in the first place? Play sorceress?
Because that is what this is really about. Ladder is competitive. And who you start ladder with matters. Teleport already makes anything I say after a moot point, but beyond that, it's about clear speed. And the summon necromancer just doesn't have it without those three components, none of which are unique to the summon necromancer sadly.
The same thing can be said for poison necromancer as well. You need a certain combination of end game runewords and rare uniques to make the build kill anything. It's not something you typically run through the game with because it needs so much help just to be viable.
I truly think that they should make mages more appealing than corpse explosion for summon necromancers. And make them ethereal so that the warriors, revives, golem and merc don't get stuck behind them. I want to see the necromancer kill quicker through hell without needing so much dependency on high end gear and runes, and without needing those three I spoke of earlier. CE, merc and teleport. And I believe the answer could lay in mages. And maybe a little bit of fire golem, though I am still partial to iron even for its price.
Edit: Bwahahahaha, I forgot about druid... give him all of his pets at once. All the wolves and the bear and all the spirits and even all the creepers. And let him keep the soft synergy bug exploit.
bro, shop a teleport staff... i'm a druid, i got exactly the same problem as you - im telling you, when you hit nightmare, just shop one from akara or drognan... repair with gold, or use rals+chipped gems if you really need to, heck 5 million gold goes for a lem rune normally, it's cheap. just get a tele staff...
@@aleksaurus2722 Yeah, I do. Have one now and had a necklace with summon skills and teleport in the original. It leads to this problem where your damage output is significantly lowered because you now must leave your inventory without skillers, making you significantly weaker as you hunt for things to charsi so you don't go poor. It is not really a great alternative to enigma, as it tends to break your bank unless you have a goldfind character to feed off of. So while it's a really, really bad solution, it's doable, though it still presents glaring issues of its own.
With teleport, the best skill in the game, unless you are playing sorc, you are either paying a hefty price in high runes that rarely drop, or you are paying a hefty price in gold and inventory space. Either way, you pay dearly.
I like your idea of making mages ethereal
I've come back to D2r after a long long time and decided to do a druid for the first time ever. Played more necromancer than I care to think about but knew basically nothing about druid. I'm finding its interestingly different than summonmancer, only just got into act 5 normal, but I am noticing my summons already starting to have some slow down on kills. Diablo for example took an absolute age and kept wiping out my merc and summons throughout the fight. Been using an act 1 fire merc just to shake it up a bit, been thinking about trying out whichever runeword has the fanaticism aura on her once I'm able to farm the runes for it.
Ormus in act 3 norm will sell you a staff with teleport charges incredibly easily
Yup, though I usually wait until Act 2 nightmare to shop for one, since you can spawn a door right next to drognan.
@@Alzorath That is a good advantage; but if you shop for it between level 18-24, they are very easy to spot since they have red background; which speeds things up a lot. I am not certain if having the door next to dragon vs shopping between 18-24 is faster; but I doubt one has a significant dominance on the other; and in that case, it might be better to get it sooner than later. Keep up the great work Alzorath; top quality content so far
The problem with druid summons is the fact that it is easy (but expensive) to build strong wolves/bear with +skills and then swap to shapeshifting gear and still make a competent fury/mauler that does over 10k damage easily. This works because druid summons synergize with +skills and not just hard skill points.
So if you make summons too strong then druids become very op.
What really holds them back is the lack of teleport while shapeshifted and summon ai (which teleport allows you to exploit).
I kind of understand why. Druids would be too op in pvp as you could tp around with a 6k+hp werebear while dragging along an a5 merc with an eth uppd headstriker build and a grizzly both which can do 10k+ damage if geared right. All you would have to do is tp on top of someone and they’d get 1 shot.
great video and good ideas, I really love necros and actually quite often shop for an amy or circlet with teleport, sure it is a bit more expensive but you can get some really nice ones.
Yeah i hit the jack pot with an amy that has +2 necro summons, 20allres, and 25 tele charges
Also gambled a circlet that just has 2 to nec summons and 20fcr.
I wish they would make it so the monsters went for the summons in the Xbox version had the damn time I get stuck on the way into Diablo because they won’t all fight in the little crossover between bridges it’s so annoying I really like this build
Old vid but maybe you have a hint.. LR or AD to boost CE damage? Its half fire half physic damage right? But wich Curse buff has more effect? thanks.
Against physical immunes, LR - against everything else, Amplify Damage (or if you're packing the physical sunder - amplify damage for everything)
Edit to note: Yes - Decrepify and Amplify will break physical immunes, but they work at 1/5th the rate without sunder breaking it first, resulting in the physical aspect doing hardly anything compared to the fire aspect vs physical immunes.
Wisp projector heart of wolverine
No one puts points in bone armor/bone prison , if you gonna be telestomping you need to be safe it has saved my life plenty of times I can see how you're always on low life
bone armor is solid, and for anyone unsure I do recommend it - just don't need it for what I normally do on this character :P
What's your opinion on corpse explosion? I think I'm the only person in the world who thinks maybe this skill ought to be nerfed. I never played necro much, but seems to be every necro build is 1 kill then CE CE CE. Maybe it's not "overpowered" in that necro will still often have slower clear speed... but for me it kind of makes every necro into the same thing. Also, I love when a build is viable with budget equipment but man, feels like a naked necro with a halfway naked merc can clear the game with CE.
I agree; CE is totally busted.
Have you tried a summoner-archer necro with faith? It's not bad,same amount of +skills with a bit higher fanaticism ,much worse defense(no shield) and he can have some "decent" dmg and ar with faith,though just a normal attack.
Hey y'all, so I've had a question regarding investment in RW's. I've been thinking whether to make a beast weapon for the aura, or enigma for obvious reasons. Any thoughts?
You'll get more use out of enigma generally (its top 3 in slot for a lot of builds, while beast can only claim that for a couple builds)
Remember playing Path of Exile and I can safely say the Teleport/ Summon Army is for getting minions to where you want
It happens so offten that either 2-3 get stuck in corner or wander off somewhere else and can't hit the enemy
If you use Teleport for bosses it can clump them up in one spot and EVERYONE can hit him instead of being spread out and half of them just not knowing what to do
I'm a tank/ brawlers as a main but love playing summoner types when available but dear god is it annoying having the minions run around like a pack of idiots while the boss chases you and can one shoot you
what about getting a Iron golem made out of Exile in a Ethereal Shield base? PErma Defiance aura for more defense. Good or not good?
I love summon necro build, so laid back.. My question is which is better: Act 2 Merc with Pride and Might or Act Merc 3 with Flickering Flame and Enchant? DPS wise what is better? I never tried Act 3 Merc, but something tells me that Enchant will be better.
Act 2 - though infinity is better than pride (hit chance) - the reason the a3 enchanter doesn't work well for a summoner is that enchant is on their offensive spell rotation, so you need to be near enemies for them to randomly cast it on your minions - this results in most of your army being unaffected by them.
@@Alzorath thank you for that info! I’ll put pride on my bowazon merc and put infinity on summoner merc then!
Skeleton Magi 100% need to be made Elemental Skeli archers with buffed DMG output. They are just flavour ATM.
Thank you for finally stating this as an actual necro player! Also great stream yesterday! Had a blast watching as always! Keep up the good work brotado chip ! 🙌
Well, what if you ain’t got Infinity?
Are the mages still gonna be that good? I’m sure they’ll not... that’s where the Lower Resist synergy with Skeletal Magi would come in handy :)
Oh, and they could also add a little thinking to the magi’s A.I, and by that I mean making the skeletons able to avoid attacking an enemy that’s immune to their respective elemental skill, so they don’t just stay there forever doing 0 damage.
without infinity you use them for utility (Poison to prevent healing, cold to slow) - skeleton magi are 'lukewarm' still as stated, but they're not hot garbage like people say either. And infinity is mostly for the normal skeletons, it just helps the magi (I would still stick with a boosted damage from summon resist or raise skeletons personally, since it's army focused)
i believe thorns and amp dmg actually work together in hell, if you go for returned dmg
Replace mages with archers instead
I wish my iron golem survives more than 2 runs, running out of materials to make more insights 😋
yea, I generally only use them in the middle of large armies, and if I have decent golem mastery from plus skills (I'll still use them on garbage drops before then, but clay is usually better then for general use).
@@Alzorath I'm leaning towards thinking it's me who sucks with a Necro (it's a poison CE cow Necro btw) and only having 1 hard point in the golem + mastery. I'll get more points into mastery and then respec once I get better at it :)
What are your thoughts on pride with a blessed aim merc vs might +infinity or pride
Reality is you really don't need infinity or beast on player 1. Pure fishymancer with Amp damage and CE with max fcr while boosting your skills as much as possible is the best route and is one of the best clearing builds in the game. The issue is when you get above p2 you begin slowing down a lot and need the extra damage from fanaticism and help from conviction aura. It actually becomes quite annoying and you drop off substantially.
I have 50 points revive skets 19 / 19 / 39 any can revive more? Cheers
Early Crushing blow or Prevent Monster Heal items/runewords for Iron Golem. Decrepify is awesome to let your dudes encircle them, add on an Ice aura from anything makes it cheap to win early on. If you cast 'clayboy' on the opposite side of diablo where your skellies are facing him, he'll direct his lightning there every time because of golem taunt/priority. A 'clay boy' wand that has 'iron maiden' is a do-all for bosses on necros to switch to. I use a 3Tal Bow to complete maggot lair with the random socket gear with chipped gem stats on summancers. I run summancers on /players8 all the way without twinking. Probably on my 20th one now.
If you were to use the Act 3 Fire merc with Enchant... does he actually buff your skeletons and would it be worth it over an Act 2 merc with might aura (before getting inifity ofcourse)
He buffs them, but he can only trigger the spell when in combat (so it takes a while to get him to cast it on all minions, since he won't sit in town and enchant them) - generally I still like the A1 merc (inner sight) as the budget alternative for infinity.
Sorry. Another noob question. Do necro summon skeliy/magi have defense ?
yup, they do, but it's exceptionally low lol - for warriors it's 15 per level of SM/Raise, for mages it's 10 per level of SM/Mage - they get a base amount on top of this (based on clvl with a fixed bonus)
I swear, the plus skills you get from Arm of King Leoric is worth more than the Fanaticism Aura you get from beast. Does any one have any actual facts/figures to prove me wrong? I don't have the real figures myself, it just seems that way to me.
It depends a lot more on your base +skills outside of the fanaticism aura - if you want to dig down into it. (the higher your base +skills, the better fanaticism gets from just a raw DPS standpoint - ignoring AR% - with AR%, especially combined with conviction, fanaticism gets even more lucrative if you're relying on skeletons for attack damage)
Going solely by damage, Arm will slightly nudge out fanaticism until the extremely high levels, but going by pure damage is how people end up using Pride instead of Infinity as well - not realizing that, without Attack Rating effects, your skeletons will miss a LOT in hell - without conviction, we're talking (approximately) 30-35% chance to hit vs 45-50% chance to hit in late Hell (with conviction, we're talking probably closer to 70% vs 80% chance to hit) - those are rough estimates from memory, since I don't feel like crunching down the numbers (and of course level, and which enemy you're fighting, play a factor)
@@Alzorath Tempted to make a beast iron golem and put insight back on my merc. My merc currently has pride. Supposs i should try infinity out instead. Then again someone has to be holding insight.
My necro at the moment is level 93, Skeleton Mastery is like level 52 or 53, raise skeleton is 50 and skeleton mage is 49, all before battle orders. I'm wearing Arm of King Leoric.
I would do insight IG due to how expensive beast is, unless youre flush with resources - especially with people still sometimes mentioning the IG bug (I still have yet to run into it personally though)
@@Alzorath i had a Beast Iron Golem just before patch 2.4 and it disappeared on me, traced my steps and the iron golem was just frozen in place with a health bar saying "iron golem". My skeletons killed it immediately. Certainly is annoying.
Why would you want to slow down bosses with Clay Golem and Decrepify if you want to return damage with Iron Maiden? Isn't it slowing the process?
you do CG & IM because that's the easiest combo to work in normal, in higher difficulties you use Thorns & Amp - CG & Decrep are for builds where your minions are set up for damage rather than just retaliate (which is why you use it after beating the game)
@@Alzorath You can technically make this bow runeword with Thorns aura on switch and then use Amp curse, but I guess Clay Golem with Iron Maiden is available by default.
@@arth8265 you're usually not going to be making an edge bow until nightmare unless you're over-farming or very lucky.
I think the problem people face with summoners is they put too much into their minions and not into themselves. The AI isn't really smart, that's why the clear speeds are slow.
Any suggested melee budget builds ?
Did u max out Skelett mages?
I have a few times, but they didn't give them nearly as much of a buff as they were leading us to believe when this video was written - they're still solid support, but they need a lot more work. (you can beat the game with them, but it's not quick)
@@Alzorath ok nice to know thx
Summon necro is one of my failed builds from 2002. I've started a few with D2R, just haven't played them enough yet in favor of sorc MFing and a couple pallys
They can be counter-intuitive at times for sure, since making them hit harder isn't always the right answer :(
Lmfao how can you fail a summon Necro
@@beefnacos6258 by being in elementary school :)
Sum necros can be fun but they need op gear and rune words. Other specs are easier to make and can outperform the sum necros.
just make the damage from the mages 50%/50% elemental/physical like diablo's lightning inferno. That way they benefit from amp damage/decrepify + might/fanaticism/concentration. Simple as.
i never could get in to the necro.he just dont clear fast enough for me
Wow, so Infinity is best for summon druids?
Hi Alzorath. Just a off-topic question, could you make video about NHAM in Resurrected and some changes in PTR?
There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding and topic comes so often, yet I personally don't think NHAM as known in classic Diablo 2 is present in Resurrected. In D2R animation update mechanics were changed and I didn't encounter "whiffing in the air" that was so common for some builds in classic Diablo 2. This also affected skills like Smite and elemental part of Charged Strike, that shouldn't miss - e.g. you would see bolts going out, but not doing damage. One of the best skills to test NHAM used to be Frost Nova - circle animation would still play, but no enemies would be chilled. Good examples of "whiffing in the air" are old videos made by Sicktoid: at around 1:20 in th-cam.com/video/nmXrug_BCYE/w-d-xo.html and at 3:00 in th-cam.com/video/EOgvyg3S7uo/w-d-xo.html
Now you will get Block Shield, Hit Recovery or D/A/E animation instead. That could be problem with itself, but almost all of it was addressed in PTR. D/A/E can be now interrupted by player (so Fend isn't as bad as it used to be) and Dragon Talon is now uninterruptable (undocumented change). Some changes were also made to hit block animation, so it won't apply to pre-cast animation. I don't think it only applies to shield block, since I noticed dual-wielding Barbarian kinda "glitching", when hit and attacking at the same time.
Yet, so often someone goes "I won't play melee till they fix NHAM". I'm probably missing something, but I feel that NHAM in D2R is not present or greatly reduced to the point, where it is not an issue. At the launch of D2R topic was somehow touched by other content creators, but never explored as far I know.
Mages should have different attack like fire ball lighting glacial spike psn nova as you lvl them up
Also a3 merc should be buffed I like the upgrade it got but still feels like poopoo compare to the other mercs
@@sokka957
It is the mages damage is so bad, they should have increased it by 320 percent
I'm level 48 necromancer main (solo) and still playing diablo 2 lod I used summon skill tree than cursed and bone poison I always share auras from my mercenary (prayer). I still grind to find items (socketed) to make auras items.
Please do you have any tips?
generally it's best, outside of certain builds - to focus on one type, since spreading points too much can be a pain outside of one point wonders (curses are one point wonders for the most part, so for summoners - you generally want to focus most of your points into raise skeleton and skeleton mastery - with 1 point in summon resists) - unfortunately dipping into bone/poison with summoner as your main, doesn't really work well (same for dipping into summons while doing bone). The only one that can dip is poison-main (does max poison skills, but just gets cannon fodder minions, they don't actually do damage for it unless you have really high end gear)
As far as auras - generally it's more which auras you pick, more than how many.
Conviction (infinity) is better than Concentration (pride) for this build on the mercenary weapon.
Might (Act 2 Mercenary Aura) is better for random farming, Thorns (Act 2 Mercenary Aura OR can be gotten with Bramble Armor) is better for bosses (Thorns + amplify damage specifically).
You can also do a niche budget setup with Thorns (Edge Bow) and an act 1 mercenary, and their inner sight actually has an effect similar to what you'd be using conviction for (-Defense) - that lets your minions hit more.
Meditation (insight) is helpful on an iron golem if you teleport a lot, but otherwise it's just a nice to have. (and if you're choosing an aura for mercenary weapon - Conviction (Infinity) > Meditation (insight) > Concentrate (pride) imo - though some people flip concentrate and meditation and just chug mana potions)
@@Alzorath thankyou very much for the tips.❤️❤️
Just add corpse explosion to your build get the first kill profit
are there any necro builds that don't use ce?
do summons that kill things factor with my mf? what about the merc? I run about 650
Your magic find impacts the magic find of all your minions, though your minions magic find (ie your mercenary or your iron golem's) do not influence your magic find, only their own.
@@Alzorath thank you :)
Your summons and you have the same mf (your mf). Your merc mf is the total of your mf + his mf.
The secret is to play pd2, your summons will thank you for it.
Strange that you would say that enigma is optional as it makes the build much stronger. Tele-stomping enemies will kill them much faster than just running around. The ability to reposition your army is what makes the build A tier IMO.
necro mages pounded my snizz
Are magies affected by enchant ?
nope
on this video it seems skeletons/mages is better then skeletons/revives?
revives really depend on which things you revive - things like gorebellies, balrogs, etc. are actually really strong revives for a wide variety of things - but caster revives and such are absolute garbage. Generally, skeleton magi are somewhere in-between those, though currently still towards the lower end outside of utility purposes.
@@Alzorath based on your video your Strat appeared to have played very well, I will try the skeleton mages for sure.
Make magi have auras or have special abilities!
I'm pretty sure the real answer is blessed aim merc.
What if they turned skeleton Magi to be more like shadow warrior for assassin, allowing casting of 1/4 skill bonus +level in skeleton mastery for skills in necromancers poison and bone skills tree?
Tho could limit the number of Magi to 1 Magi per 5 skill levels and limit spells to Teeth, Corpse Explosion,Bone Spear, Poison Explosion, Poison Nova, and Bone Spirit.
You can get by famously even in Hell difficulty with nothing but Warriors, Amp Damage and Corpse Explosion. Since you can't have both Amp and Lower Resist going at the same time you're going to have to pick whether the Warriors or the Mages do the killing (and set up your CE) and as it stands, Warriors are hands down better than Mages due to Might and Amp (which also boosts CE). Maybe mages will get closer once you have Infinity, but that's an end game build. The average casual player will never have an Infinity item and if they do they will probably have some way to also boost Warriors, so it's Warriors all day every day. Mages will just be better at surviving and doing a tiny bit of damage than they are now.
Just beast no? Like that's all you really need
beast is actually the least useful and lowest priority of end-game gear (it's handy for some flavors, but infinity, enigma, etc. are all much higher priority and importance to the builds)
I'm sorry. Did you just say a "mouse fart" above 1 second?
yes.
Y u offending my summons :'(
Dunno, I just had a bone to pick with them ;)
what the f are u talking about. Thorns dmg does flat +% dmg making it really nice
Time Machines still aren't a thing - but continue expecting people to know the future.
One word: telescope
You cannot do that without teleport.
Having a teleport staff on switch or najs puzzler is cumbersome and costly for recharges.
Plus, it interferes with CTA/spirit which is a huuuge upgrade.
So, I wouldn't say enigma is absolutely required ... but it should be your ultimate end goal as you can shape your army around the battlefield effectively.
Lol, teleport stupid auto insert
For first... lets do some QOL updates. Sharpen the mechanics. Very simple. 1. When u revive cold imune u get cold Magi etc. Revive type is not random, but based on highest residence value of the monster ( u could get fire army, cold army , light army etc. Maybe they could benefit from - cold res on your gear? 2. Get them better attack frames.
🤔
Nah. You need enigma for efficiency
enigma is more efficient, though I still label it as "nice to have" - a lack of enigma is only an issue for 'optimal speed', not 'functional speed'
Very hueta video
Mouse fart 😂
Teleport is mandatory for a revive necromancer. This video is exclusively about skeleton comps that don't really need them though.
Also summon builds of this kind aren't that good because mages spells are tier 1 garbage spells. They need to reduce their ai delay so that they shoot faster and drastically up their missile speed. On top of buffing their damage considerably and remove their collision completely. They should be able to stand in each other naturally because places like the maggot lair were created without these mechanics in mind.
Skeletons used to be completely non viable. Worst spell in the game. They weren't updated until 1.10 where they made them a legitimate build. The problem is they only adjusted their numbers and not the mechanics. The mechanics do need addressing but mages numbers were never properly addressed. They were never given numbers competitive past normal. This patch only fixed their damage, but did not buff the damage to where they should be. The skeletons mages damage table is still the 1.01 damage table. It does not take into account 1.10 doubling the stats of every enemy in the game across the board.
Which is why melee builds suck more than other builds now. Attack Rating of the enemy and their defense determine if you can hit them or not. Along with their level. 2 of those is doubled and the levels are higher. Melee builds aren't hitting anything without being severely overgeared and overleveled. Skeletons were adjusted to this and revives naturally were due to copying the exact enemy you rez. Golems and mages weren't though. Which is why tiny buffs to them won't fix them. They need complete overhaul changes to fix them. Thus why the video recommends crazy things like entire synergy sets dedicated just to them because that is the only fix for them.
Summon progression is pretty horrible in general. You get most of your stuff in hell without the ability to kill them without cheating. It's a build that only really works in hell with skillers. They can't really kill anything in hell though due to stat fall off. So you basically have to play nightmare legit until you find plus skills high enough on your limited slots to kill enemies early in hell so you can farm for skillers. Skillers are what make the build possible. Skillers are also what make having a good golem with them possible too. Necromancer summoning tree cannot work without plus to skills. Since you get roughly 110 points, but every skill on the tree require max to be competent in a build.
The summoner necro is actually one of the easiest builds to go through normal/nightmare if you know the mechanics (Iron Maiden bosses in normal, the minions kill stuff just fine otherwise - Amp+Thorns Merc in nightmare, and again, minions + CE is enough to clear out trash - then in Hell you use the nightmare strat until you beat baal, then you switch to the farming setup). The build does use +skills a bit, but can easily beat the game with even just using a shopped wand, a lore, and a spirit or splendor shield.
Enigma, like with many builds, is an optimization improvement, not a necessity for function - the mentality of "it's best in slot or its garbage" is one of the more toxic mentalities that still clings on to the D2 community like a rancid fart (a lot of people have forgotten how to enjoy the game)
why can no one say golem right? it's go lum. not gal umm. uhg annoying.
just because you repeated it a few times - I'm adding +3 to the count, instead of +1. get's too much higher, I'm going to start pronouncing it with a soft g.
I drop 1 pt into skellies and max the bone skills... I tried poison once, was un-impressed... Bone is best, i made a summoner lvl 70s, even decked w Beast/skillet GCs hes just not as good, its fun for leveling n pvm but sucks at pvp and I'm in it for pvp in long run, why else even get lvl 93+? U can farm hell Baal easy at 84 if got GG gear
Sadly they do suck, even with bisgear they are just bad.
Summon Necros are actually one of the best Uber Killers out there, and with CE and proper telestomping can go just marginally slower than S-tier builds in their given areas.
@@Alzorath Does not change the fact that skeletal mages on their own suck big time as a skill. They nred some kind of utility to be good, right bow they are just canon fodder.
Also doesn't change the fact that Zeal sucks with a bad weapon, Lightning Javazons suck in Act 3, and Blizzard Sorcs suck in Act 5... the reality is - expecting a skill to work outside its scope, is going to make it suck.
In regards to Skeleton Magi "sucking big time" - generally there's 3 camps:
(1) People who think skeleton magi are the best thing since sliced bread are generally new players
(2) People who recognize the utility of skeleton magi in their role as "secondary skill" are usually necro veterans
(3) People who expect them to compete with over-tweaked skills like Blizzard, Hammers, or Lightning Fury will think they suck (it's kind of in the same camp of people who are blindly "anti-Frozen Orb")
The thing with mages is they could very easily end up over-tweaked if handled improperly (which is why I'm glad they're taking it slow - since I'd rather see them creep up to the power I'd like to see them at, than to be over-tuned and have to be nerfed later)
Dare you to play the game as it's meant to be played, and not using the teleport enigma minion bomb.... I bet you wont... Because just like every other content creator, you always need the OP options to play the game, rather than playing how most of the rest of us play, without all the auras and top end broken gear.
... Glad that all the SSF runs I've done over the years don't count lol.
Lol... Sad