Poison Necromancer Questions

I am running a Fishymancer currently and would like to transition over to what I'd call a mid-level magic find poisonmancer build. I don't have a deaths web or Enigma. I am not rich but I'm doing pretty decent gear wise. I plan on running the 3 piece Trang Oul's (off hand,

Belt, gloves) for the -25% poison res and then assorted other gear (HOTO, CTA, Mara's, Skullders,

Shako, 2 x Nagel, War Trav, Torch, Gheeds etc.).

The main question I have is this:

Should I add 3 X -5% rainbow facet jewels in my

Shako, skullder, and trang head for the additional -15% poison res? That would put me at -40% which is a base

Death's Web. Now I know that will be money wasted when I do eventually drop one or can afford a deaths web but at least it would get me similar results until then? I would be sacrificing either 72 MF (ptopaz's) or 48 MF and 19 AR (pdiamond). I would have around 350% MF with the Rainbow's. Thanks for any input!

Can't know until you try it!

Taste the Rainbow!!

How much would you have as resistances and faster cast rate ? High magic find is great, but if you die or cannot clear quickly enough, too bad

Would be happy to get feedback as well, seems a cool build.

Necrarch wrote: 3 years ago

How much would you have as resistances and faster cast rate ? High magic find is great, but if you die or cannot clear quickly enough, too bad

Would be happy to get feedback as well, seems a cool build.

Fire: 45
Cold: 70
Light: 0
Poison: 40

I can supplement some light res with a wisp project and

Sacrifice a little MF plus I can add some charms to bump it a bit. I think I'm pretty set in the res category with my merc / skeles / revives as meat shields. FCR is at 60% so I would like to squeeze 15 more into the build but it's not a necessity for my style of play. I would be sitting at about 360MF

Reaching 75 would be nice, a p-topazed Vipermagi with res over 30 would drfinitely help, I believe, even if you lose a bit of mf compared to Skullders

But truly it's your build, do it as you prefer.

I appreciate that feedback but my main question is about the Rainbow Facets and -40% poison res. I’m running low res right now without too much of an issue.

I am by no means a pro, but here's my 2c as a longtime necromancer fan:

Until I find a crazy

Circlet, I use

Shako even when I'm not running MF, and I basically always run Trang's Head. So, putting facets into those would not be a waste at all.

350 MF is a lot, and considering the diminishing return of adding MF, I'd definitely pick the damage of the facets over an extra 48 MF.

The only real question to me is whether to facet the Skullders. Enigma and Bramble both make Skullders obsolete, meaning that the Skullder's facet will be wasted in the long run. The important thing is how long is that run?

If you're close to Enigma, I wouldn't bother faceting it. If you're far away, then its not a bad decision at all.

I've been finessing my pnova necro for the last little while, so hopefully my advice is relevant.

I didn't respec until I had a

Death's Web in hand so I can't speak to what it's like without one. At the onset, I found no issues killing anything at all on P1 difficulty. For bosses a good crushing blow merc is required -- mine's got an

Eth Obedience and is probably now the hero of this story. My gear at the time:

Shako |

Teleport + res ammy

Death's Web [Facet] | Skullder's [pTopaz] |

Homunculus [pDiamond]

Nagelring |

Nagelring
Trang

Claws | Trang

Belt | Aldur's

Boots

Plenty of MF and res, although I agree that the res is a luxury. I used

Dim Vision a lot, particularly on any a**hole throwing lightning at me, and found the build similarly safe to as when I was followed by a horde of skeletons. I'd say another benefit of

Dim Vision is being able to position/aggro enemies from the center rather than the side (a tactic made infinitely easier with

Teleport). Although I was rocking a pathetic

Teleport ammy for a while, I ended up swapping to a tele off-hand since unlike

The Summoner losing your +skills midway through a fight has very little effect (read: no more popping skeles on swap).

While the

Poison Nova damage was a little underwhelming, it's still faster than waiting for your ragtag gang of skellies to hack something apart so you can explode it's corpse. I'm a CE addict, so you can bet that was maxed. I thought I'd be spamming

Nova, but actually it was more like

Dim Vision >

Nova >

Lower Resist (

Nova projectiles are slow enough you can get away with this mostly) >

Amplify Damage > CE spam. What I found was, like fishymancer, it's still a CE build -- you just have a bit more autonomy on creating your first round of corpses.

So to address your initial question, I'd forget about the facets.

Corpse Explosion is still your fastest way to clear a map. Enjoy the luxury of autonomy

Poison Nova provides over a

Skeleton army. Run headlong into crowds of

Dim Vision'd enemies as a Stealth necro (or idk be careful or smth) as positioning matters a lot. Save your pennies for Enigma /

Death's Web!

My poisonmancer is in a similar place: HotO, 3p Trang Ouls,

Harlequin Crest,

Skin of the Vipermagi. Hoping to get a

Death's Web some day. No facets.
I'm restricting myself to area with low poison resistance like the Pit / Cow Level / Ancient Tunnel /

Chaos Sanctuary. 1-2

Poison Nova is usually all it takes to start CE.
Others areas with higher poison resistance are doable but too slow without

Death's Web.

Unless you want to be able to farm every area of the game as soon as possible with your necromancer, I'd say put one facet in your

Shako and keep the others for later.

Hagawa wrote: 3 years ago

Necrarch wrote: 3 years ago

How much would you have as resistances and faster cast rate ? High magic find is great, but if you die or cannot clear quickly enough, too bad

Would be happy to get feedback as well, seems a cool build.

Fire: 45
Cold: 70
Light: 0
Poison: 40

I can supplement some light res with a wisp project and

Sacrifice a little MF plus I can add some charms to bump it a bit. I think I'm pretty set in the res category with my merc / skeles / revives as meat shields. FCR is at 60% so I would like to squeeze 15 more into the build but it's not a necessity for my style of play. I would be sitting at about 360MF

If a Gloam so much as even blinks in your general direction, you'll die. Maybe

Um'ing your

Shako instead of putting a PTopaz or Rainbow Facet in it might be a good idea. Or maybe the Nagel Rings are overkill and rare rings would be better. FCR, dual or all res, and magic find.

If you're already at 360MF, would sacrificing 20-30 really make that much of a difference with the diminishing returns?

tatatat wrote: 3 years ago

If a Gloam so much as even blinks in your general direction, you'll die...

If you're already at 360MF, would sacrificing 20-30 really make that much of a difference with the diminishing returns?

Dim Vision helps heaps vs. Gloams -- i think it's not so bad as you say (if you're careful). Also depends on the areas you frequent. Just floating an alternative

Definitely agree on the MF number, I aim for 2-300. There's a handy graph out there which illustrates the curve.

SkeletonFriend wrote: 3 years ago

What I found was, like fishymancer, it's still a CE build -- you just have a bit more autonomy on creating your first round of corpses.

To be fair (been playing Necro since Legacy), almost any build ends up with CE and is what you said:

you just have a bit more autonomy on creating your first round of corpses

Sadly (and good in its way) CE is super OP, you can actually finish the game with only CE + a way to make that first corps :p

Also, Personally wouldn't run a minus poison ress jewel; as they are quiet expensive, and you have

Lower Resist anyway.

I think SkeletonFriend is right, don't respect until you have a

Death's Web, i was in the same dilemma, i have a summon necro and i was thinking about respect to a

Poison Nova necro, i did that, without the facets, but using the trang arm, trang

Belt and trang gloves, the damage was not enough, plus i was dying a lot, because i didn't have my minions to protect me anymore, and i found the summoning necro it's faster, because you only need the first kill and this is faster with telestomping than the

Poison Nova. Finally i gave up with the

Nova, for me the summoning it's a better choice, clears up faster with monster density and the boss killing it's not a problem, and overall, for me it's one of the safest builds in the entire game, because i almost never die, doesn't require a really high level gear, and it can clear everything, the time you spend resurrecting mobs it's the only drawback, but with my good friend pindle, it's not an issue. Even i can clear Ubers with this build, the only precaution it's to

Revive Urdars to clear up

Tristram (for the crushing blow), otherwise it's impossible.

I guess I may be hard headed! I think I’m going to try it with the three -5% facets. That’s equivalent to a low deaths web. I have been playing with gear and stats and I think I can end up with roughly

-40% enemy poison res
+- 300mf
+- 50 all res
75fcr breakpoint

I’ll report back if I commit. Thanks for all of the feedback.

Good luck, hope you'll have great fun - after all that's what we are here for

Hagawa wrote: 3 years ago

I guess I may be hard headed! I think I’m going to try it with the three -5% facets. That’s equivalent to a low deaths web. I have been playing with gear and stats and I think I can end up with roughly

-40% enemy poison res
+- 300mf
+- 50 all res
75fcr breakpoint

I’ll report back if I commit. Thanks for all of the feedback.

Great!!, i'm very interested in your findings, i hope it works

I never started as a necromancer, always a sorc, which was used to find items. But I tried HC once with and started with a necromancer, specifically a poisonmancer - 20

Dagger, 20 explosion, 20

Nova and

Lower Resist and a

Clay Golem. I was able to make it up to lvl 78, if I remember correctly without dying.

It's about play style. Resist's are crucial. You can have a meat shield or how you call it, but a single lightning from a soul and you die. On SC it doesn't matter much. But it's annoying.

What I would focus on is the FCR, as this si something you definitely want high. You don't want to wait "one hour" to cast a

Nova or whatever spell. Also high run-walk is great and necro can be a like sprinter.

The -40% enemy poison resistance would definitely help a lot. But not sure, whether this can break poison by itself?? You still would need

Lower Resist on those with immunity IMHO.

hellmaster wrote: 3 years ago

But not sure, whether this can break poison by itself??

It cannot. Minus enemy resistance effects are only applied if the monster is NOT immune. So, you'd have to break the immunity with

Lower Resist before it does anything for you.

https://diablo-archive.fandom.com/wiki/ ... Diablo_II)

Here you can find all the Resistances / Immunities and how much you need to break them

Might help you in your quest to break poison imu

Also seems like you could break a lot of imu's with

Lower Resist and the jewel, but you wont break all, some of them are 105+

To break those you'd need 3 pieces of Trang-Oul's Avatar, with at least the offhand for that bonus

You'd rek up about -127 ress (62 from lvl 20

Lower Resist + 50 from Jewel + 25 of 3 piece set)

Of course I'll be using 3 piece trang and

Lower Resist! I'm not a psychopath.