Barbarian / Amazon / Necromancer Advice

TL;DR: Is 40 points investing in

Poison Nova enough to get some decent AoE DoT? Or should I just bite my lip and go full

Bone Spear and friends?

I started to edit the other post, but I wanted to address this to the thread at large and no matter what I did it seemed like I was just asking Schnorki. I blame a lack of sleep.

I can't convince myself to go so far--102 points--into one skill. (My sorcerer is still

Hydra/

Frozen Orb for example.) I get the potential appeal; the damage level looks down bad nasty. I just can't do it.

I was thinking of spending 61 points for

Bone Spear/

Teeth/

Bone Spirit/

Corpse Explosion, tossing 5 points over in summoning for a decent

Raise Skeleton/

Clay Golem, and 4 points over in curses for

Decrepify.

That would leave 40 points to go into

Poison Nova, but I don't know if that's even enough to really get some meanness going.

I could save my respecs at the time and try it both ways, but I'd rather ask for opinions first.

I am myself very split between skills.
A few advice:
- plan for level 90. It's already a long way till there.
- when you have a reasonably good Anni and torch, respec.
That will add a ton of stats, esp. Strength that is useless afterwards.
- if you wanna have a look at my necro, it's there:
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/5j02060m
At 93. Replace 2/20 amu by a 2/10, HotO as main weapon, way less charms and you have a reasonable guy that can handle lots of stuff, incl. Ubers and DClones.
Is it optimal with points in Bone, Poison AND summons ? No.
Does it work and is it fun in PvM: oh yeah ^^

Thanks.

Now, I just need to wait until I can actually get started good.

phantomotap wrote: 2 years ago

TL;DR: Is 40 points investing in

Poison Nova enough to get some decent AoE DoT? Or should I just bite my lip and go full

Bone Spear and friends?

I would strongly advise AGAINST putting anything into poison at all unless you are willing to go all in poison.

Honestly,

Poison Nova necromancer damage is absolute trash until you get gear even with full investment. I leveled a

Poison Nova necromancer all the way through the game solo about a year ago for the challenge, and it was awful. Without all synergies, lots of +skills, and high level

Lower Resist curse, you're hitting things with pool noodles. And I even had a

Death's Web, 3 piece trangs with facets,

Shako, and Engima premade for the character for as soon as he hit the reqs, and had a +3

Poison Nova White

Wand for the meantime.

Not to mention that when monsters take physical damage from other sources,

Poison Nova damage gets interrupted. With your dad possibly going WW, mom going Multishot or

Strafe, mercs, and maybe pets running around, there's going to be a lot of ticks of physical damage. And,

Poison Nova requires

Lower Resist curse, especially when you don't have good gear, and that's also a massive DPS loss for your parents and all of your mercs/pets due to not using Amplify or

Decrepify.

For you, leveling through the game on players 3 with your parents, very low Wealth, especially considering what little you do make will be split between 3 people, any investment into poison skills will be a mistake.

Bone or pure summoner are the only ways to go through the game in your context.

Even at endgame, your

Poison Nova damage would have to be incredible just to compensate for the loss of

Amplify Damage and

Decrepify for your parents. I know I mentioned poison necromancer myself earlier in this thread, but the more I think about it, the more of a mistake I think it would be in this context.

Winterkill wrote: 2 years ago

Bone or pure summoner are the only ways to go through the game in your context.

Crud.

I knew people had talked about poison not proc'n because of physical, but I had forgot. I guess I'll go pure

Bone Spear...

phantomotap wrote: 2 years ago

Winterkill wrote: 2 years ago

Bone or pure summoner are the only ways to go through the game in your context.

Crud.

I knew people had talked about poison not proc'n because of physical, but I had forgot. I guess I'll go pure

Bone Spear...

Makes sense for Poison indeed.
I maintain though that early game you can try whatever you feel like, and just use a respec after.

That will allow you to try both Summon and Bone options - and see how you go later: one, the other or your own mix.

The good thing about going poison is that late game once you get to level 80 and up, you have extra skill points to put into summons and/ or

Corpse Explosion.

We celebrated today because my mom is probably going to have to work Sunday, and they are loving it so far.

Thanks again to everyone for the very good advice.

Ah, great ! Have fun and be lucky all !