User blog:Brainwasher5/Summonmancer Notes

This is the first time I've seriously tried a Necromancer. Notes below.

Stats
Same as practically everyone else, with just enough str to wear equipment (156 str for Spirit monarch), nothing in energy, and everything else into vitality. Most builds seem to indicate that getting max block is fairly pointless. Given that you'll have literally more body shields between you and the baddies than any other build in the game, I agree.

Skills

 * 20 in Raise Skeleton (max first)
 * 20 in Skeleton Mastery (1 point, then max second)
 * 1 point each in: Clay Golem, Golem Mastery, Summon Resist, Raise Skeleton Mage, Blood Golem, Iron Golem, Revive, Amplify Damage (8 total)

These are the essential requirements for the build, leaving us with 62 skill points. Remaining skills to consider are:


 * Bone Prison for defense. Requires 5 prerequisites though, and you shouldn't be in danger often anyway?
 * Corpse Explosion so that you can aid with taking out crowds. Stacks with Amp.
 * Skeleton Mage: not very useful, but looks cool to have so many skeletons.
 * Golem of choice and synergies: Golems don't do much damage, so even dropping 80 points on all four golems and another 20 on golem mastery isn't going to create a particularly impressive one. The standouts here are clay golems, which are tanky and also slow the enemies they hit, or iron golem, which could maybe be made from a weapon that gives an aura. Iron golems carry on from game to game, so you can nominally create one from a Beast or Pride and just have it follow you around forever like a merc. HOWEVER--they seem to randomly die. I'm not sure what causes it. Sometimes they seem to not teleport and just drop dead instead, which sucks. Will test out the viability of iron golem when I make an Enigma.

Tentatively I'm going to put enough in corpse explosion to make it easy to use (more points just increases radius, not damage), as well as Iron Golem+Blood golem synergy in what is probably a vain attempt to make it unkillable.

Gear
What's kind of interesting is that since your minions are doing so much of the fighting for you, attributes that would be greatly improve other characters don't help you that much here. Faster cast is useful for spamming corpse explosion and amplify damage, but resistances don't matter as much because you won't get hit much, as with CBF or even vitality. They're all nice to have though.

Breakpoints for FCR are 75 and 125.

Helmet: Armor: Belt: Gloves: Boots: Weapon: Shield: Ring: Amulet:
 * Shako.
 * Lore rune word is easily obtainable in the early game.
 * Enigma. While this body armor is a strong all rounder for any class, it's even more important for necro so that you can move your army across the battlefield without any of them getting stuck in some silly corner.
 * Trang-Oul's Scales: the +2 summoning skills is nice, but the rest of the stats are a joke. The FR/W is partially cancelled by the fact that it's heavy armor.
 * Any of the unique armors that give +1 skills.
 * Arachnid Mesh
 * String of Ears is the best defensive belt.
 * Caster belt can have some tasty mods.
 * Trang-oul's Claws: the FCR is pretty much the only useful thing here. +2 curses is not really relevant since so many curses are one point wonders.
 * Magefist: FCR, mana.
 * Crafted Gloves: These grant MF, boosts to stats, and mana. They're about as good as you can get if you've already hit a FCR breakpoint, making Trang's and magefist redundant.
 * Chance Guards
 * Sandstorm Treks
 * Marrowalk is literally tailor made for a summoner, but it's not as good as treks.
 * Beast: Fanaticism gives +damage and decreases frames for attacks for your minions by one.
 * Hoto: Standard end game caster weapon.
 * Carin Shard: +3 summoning skills.
 * Arm of King Leoric: Pretty much the same thing as Carin Shard, though the random bone prisons can be annoying in cramped areas.
 * White: +4 skeleton mastery and FCR is all that this gives you, but it's easy enough to make.
 * Spirit
 * The three necro unique skulls are all pretty similar. Boneflame might be best?
 * Rhyme in a nice necro skull (can't do this on Spirit since spirit needs four sockets) is cheap and easily accessible.
 * SoJ
 * Mara's
 * Caster Amulet has great potential for necros.

The Merc will have a Pride runeword for concentration, Andy's, and Treachery.

Observations
A top-tier damage dealer this is not. I am now in the mid 30s clvl, and about to max out both skeleton and skeleton mastery, and things are already starting to slow down on higher player settings. Given that I'm still on Normal Act V, I'm not too optimistic about their performance in Hell. Revives don't seem to be reliable, either dying after a short timer or just wandering off and suddenly dying, and in all cases not doing remarkable damage. Maybe this will all change once I get the other auras and start relying on corpse explosion more.

I DO think that the necro is by far the most creative and interesting of all the classes. Everyone else pretty much clicks on a monster or an area until everything is dead, but no so with the summoner. Watching a relentless horde of bone pile onto hapless monsters is a cool experience even in 2021, and I fondly remember watching it happen for the first time twenty years ago (fuck...time flies) as child and having my mind blown.

The success of this character in the late game hinges completely on whether or not the necro has access to Enigma. With it, he can teleport his entire army in Baal's face, causing all 30+ summons to whack at the same time. Without it, this is impossible, and your summons keep running off and despawning, meaning that you can't risk powerful items on your iron golem without probably losing them over the course of a playthrough. With enigma, this build can run through player 1 hell with relative ease, though not with a great deal of speed. Higher player counts see skeletons lose their role as damage dealers and instead act as meat shields while the necromancer prays his corpse explosions clear a room before the corpses run out.