Necromancer - upgrade summoner (w/ Beast + Infinity) or Respec to Poison nova?

ShadowHeart wrote: 3 weeks ago

luizgeo wrote: 3 weeks ago

I'm sorry the newbie talk, but what is Aggro? I've seen people using this term always when talking about

Fire Golem, but i'm wondering what that means.

'Aggro' is a term that was popularized by MMOs such as WoW - meaning to draw & hold the attention/aggression of enemies towards oneself (or in this case towards the summon), usually by a tanky character that can sustain/absorb a lot of damage (in this case the

Fire Golem), in other to lower the pressure on the more squishy characters (like a healer or a damage dealer, which are often "glass cannons" in order to maximize their efficiency - in this case the Necromancer). I have never played any MMOs myself but this is my understanding of the term

The theoretical explanation holds.

Though in my experience (I'm old, I was there! ) the term really got popularized/became subject to common use to express the exact opposite in that folks really only started yelling about aggro when they pulled stuff off the bad tanks.

Ya know..things like..
"OMG MOAR AGGRO CAN'T DPS SHIT TANK IS SHIT!"
or "CAN'T HEAL TANK, GOT AGGRO, HE BAD!"
Honestly kinda missing those early MMO days...

Schnorki wrote: 3 weeks ago

The theoretical explanation holds.

Though in my experience (I'm old, I was there! ) the term really got popularized/became subject to common use to express the exact opposite in that folks really only started yelling about aggro when they pulled stuff off the bad tanks.

Ya know..things like..
"OMG MOAR AGGRO CAN'T DPS SHIT TANK IS SHIT!"
or "CAN'T HEAL TANK, GOT AGGRO, HE BAD!"
Honestly kinda missing those early MMO days...

Haha fair! As noted, I never did play MMOs so never got to experience that personally, but I do recognize hearing about that

Bramble !?!? and

Fire Golem !?!?

Do you mean this guide
https://maxroll.gg/d2/guides/summoner-necromancer-guide
and this video

right?

From what I understand:
- Bramble:
Any damage multiplier affecting the damage dealt to you or your minions is applied to the

Thorns redirection, so against Bosses (that deal 4 x damage against Minions and 2 x damage against Merc) and on high players count (where the damage Monsters deal is increased for each extra player),

Thorns end up dealing more damage than Might overall.
-

Fire Golem:

Fire Golem is a priority target for the AI over Merc (its

Holy Fire Aura normally hit the Monsters first, so it becomes the "main target"/"aggro", and the aura continually damage the monster, so the Golem retains its "main target"/"aggro" status)
this reduce fire over Merc, and against bosses, using

Thorns, increase the chance of the Boss to hit your Golem instead of your Merc (which will redirect more damage )

Nice

ShadowHeart wrote: 3 weeks ago

luizgeo wrote: 3 weeks ago

I'm sorry the newbie talk, but what is Aggro? I've seen people using this term always when talking about

Fire Golem, but i'm wondering what that means.

'Aggro' is a term that was popularized by MMOs such as WoW - meaning to draw & hold the attention/aggression of enemies towards oneself (or in this case towards the summon), usually by a tanky character that can sustain/absorb a lot of damage (in this case the

Fire Golem), in other to lower the pressure on the more squishy characters (like a healer or a damage dealer, which are often "glass cannons" in order to maximize their efficiency - in this case the Necromancer). I have never played any MMOs myself but this is my understanding of the term

Hummmmm that's sound about right, after all the

Fire Golem has a

Holy Fire aura. Guess i'll try out it with my summoner.

Thanks!

Schnorki wrote: 3 weeks ago

ShadowHeart wrote: 3 weeks ago

luizgeo wrote: 3 weeks ago

I'm sorry the newbie talk, but what is Aggro? I've seen people using this term always when talking about

Fire Golem, but i'm wondering what that means.

'Aggro' is a term that was popularized by MMOs such as WoW - meaning to draw & hold the attention/aggression of enemies towards oneself (or in this case towards the summon), usually by a tanky character that can sustain/absorb a lot of damage (in this case the

Fire Golem), in other to lower the pressure on the more squishy characters (like a healer or a damage dealer, which are often "glass cannons" in order to maximize their efficiency - in this case the Necromancer). I have never played any MMOs myself but this is my understanding of the term

The theoretical explanation holds.

Though in my experience (I'm old, I was there! ) the term really got popularized/became subject to common use to express the exact opposite in that folks really only started yelling about aggro when they pulled stuff off the bad tanks.

Ya know..things like..
"OMG MOAR AGGRO CAN'T DPS SHIT TANK IS SHIT!"
or "CAN'T HEAL TANK, GOT AGGRO, HE BAD!"
Honestly kinda missing those early MMO days...

I never heard of it before, i'm not a mmo guy myself! Despite playing D2 since the 2000's, this online gaming thing is kinda new to me. I'm more familiar with olddies isometrics RPG like Baldur's Gate and stuff like that lol

I love the Necro. My favorite. My setup is max skelly/skelly mastery/

Golem Mastery/CE. 1 to all summon tree/amp. then everything else to

Bone Armor(helps a little). With items, I have additional +22 to summons. Beast

Double Axe in hand, Pride

Iron Golem, and Infinity merc. column of mana/2column of Bpots, and column of tps. Can do everything along with 300mf

Poison Nova necro is far more fun and capable than

The Summoner. Just my personal opinion.

Get a dweb, and then make a

Poison Nova necro. It's a big part of the diablo 2 experience.

My necro was full summoner and now is poison. I like it better and it feels stronger plus I still have some summons. So it's really just a better version of what I had where I do more damage.

Initially, I made the calculations comparing both summon builds, against only a dummy target.
I do the calculation again considering other targets. Infinity (and the AR bonus from

Fanaticism) makes a lot of difference on tought targets

* current build (Heart of the Oak + Insight)

Raise Skeleton – Level 41
Attack Damage 996–1002
Attack Rating 4720
Critical Chance (Monster) 5%

- dummy
Damage per Second: 9147 (77% hit)
-

Hell Bovine
Damage per Second: 5030 (84% hit)
- Venom lord
Damage per Second: 4495 (75% hit)
- Diablo
Damage per Second: 1622 (54% hit)

=====

* Beast + Infinity

Raise Skeleton – Level 38
Attack Damage 1004–1010
Attack Rating 8334
Critical Chance (Monster) 5%
Attack Speed 29%

- dummy
Damage per Second: 12,131 (95% hit) +~32
-

Hell Bovine
Damage per Second: 6065 (95 hit) +~20%
- Venom lord
Damage per Second: 6065 (95% hit) +~34%
- Diablo
Damage per Second: 2660 (83% hit) +~60%

As i have some extra high runes to spare (and Infinity will be useful on a lot of other builds anyway, including

Poison Nova - because of the

Corpse Explosion)
I decided to give a try to Beast + Infinity (and maybe Bramble)

To me, it seems weird to compare Poison Necro and Summon Necro. There are two very different flavours of builds, like Bone Necro (and many more) is another one.

Depending on situations, they will be more or less efficient. Poison to farm areas like Pits is crazy good. On the other side, if you do Ubers, Summoners are really nice, and so on.

If you wanna play almost afk while watching TV, summoner is much better. If you wanna feel more active, poison it is.

The mix of both exists but tends to be messier, especially with summons tempering with poison damage (though that's what I do on mine, don't have enough time to build 2 chars )

As long as you have fun, anyway, it's the good way to go.

Never did a

Poison Nova...
But my thought was thinking of another Necro build that still use some summon (on guides that I saw

Poison Nova still use skeletons, while Bone, because of the synergies, normally just use a Golem)

fredkid wrote: 3 weeks ago

As i have some extra high runes to spare (and Infinity will be useful on a lot of other builds anyway, including

Poison Nova - because of the

Corpse Explosion)
I decided to give a try to Beast + Infinity (and maybe Bramble)

I'm using the new setup, for a few days:
- Merc with Infinity + Bramble
- Insight

Iron Golem
(Necro still with Heart of the Oak)

And the feeling is that Skeletons are killing significantly more

Corpse Explosion still does the major part of the job, but the first kill on each mob is ocurring faster, and while I selecting/collecting loot, Skeletons are acctually killing some stuff (a few that survided explosions or came close after)
And Bosses are dying faster too.

(I'm doing mostly Chaos and Cows runs)

(I have a Beast but I still didn't tried it - I'm still figuring out the setup with it, to keep the Resist and FCR that I have today with Heart of the Oak...)

ShadowHeart wrote: 3 weeks ago

Schnorki wrote: 3 weeks ago

The theoretical explanation holds.

Though in my experience (I'm old, I was there! ) the term really got popularized/became subject to common use to express the exact opposite in that folks really only started yelling about aggro when they pulled stuff off the bad tanks.

Ya know..things like..
"OMG MOAR AGGRO CAN'T DPS SHIT TANK IS SHIT!"
or "CAN'T HEAL TANK, GOT AGGRO, HE BAD!"
Honestly kinda missing those early MMO days...

Haha fair! As noted, I never did play MMOs so never got to experience that personally, but I do recognize hearing about that

you sometimes find the term "threat" for aggro and "generating threat" respectively.
it's the same, just another word. for example, last epoch uses the term threat for aggro.

fredkid wrote: 2 weeks ago

As i have some extra high runes to spare (and Infinity will be useful on a lot of other builds anyway, including

Poison Nova - because of the

Corpse Explosion)
(I have a Beast but I still didn't tried it - I'm still figuring out the setup with it, to keep the Resist and FCR that I have today with Heart of the Oak...)

I can't remember if it was Schnorki or Necrarch who said it, but "All necro builds eventually devolve into a hybrid with

Corpse Explosion build". I took that to heart and built a full 100% summon necro. Yup I'm also using revives. Is

Skeleton and revives better than

Skeleton and CE? No, and I don't care.

Since I don't use CE, FCR isn't really that important.

Current Build Highlights:
- Hoto and

Homunculus
- A1 merc (SO tired of always using A2 Mercs) CoH and Faith to give me

Fanaticism (Faith

Fanaticism = 16.6yd radius at lvl 15 > Beasts' = 12.6yd at level 9)
- Steel Golem is from an Insight
The downfall with this build is I have nothing providing

Conviction. Also the A1 merc stays pretty far from monsters so my skeletons tend to walk out of the

Fanaticism aura, bummer.

Build I want to try highlights (I believe is closer to what you are trying to do, but I just haven't rolled Beast yet):
- Beast and Homuculus with

Um
- A2 merc with Infinity and Bramble
- Steel Golem is from an Insight
With this build I get

Fanaticism,

Conviction, and Insight. But I can see having a similar, but more exacerbated, issue of me being the source of the

Fanaticism aura. I stay away from the monsters just like the A1 merc but here the aura is even smaller. However, my merc will cast his

Conviction aura on lots of monsters for my mages to hit. Also his Bramble will be more effective as he will be in the thick of the fight with the skeletons.

All in all I really like my current build but I do want to try the second build. I just need to take the time to roll a Bramble and Beast.

You may try to buy a "bad rolled" Bramble / Beast (I could buy a Bramble) as even mediocre rolls will work to you

I started to my D2 adventure with Summon Necro and he's always one of my favorite builds.

I've tried almost every combination so far and for a pure Summoner, HotO-Spirit is optimum. Not only for TP but also for AD-CE spamming.

Best merc for me is might merc with Pride and IG out of a Hustle weapon to get

Fanaticism aura, even if it's lvl 1.

If you're open for hybrid builds, you can complete your summons with 20 into SM, RS, 1p into

Revive and IG. Then invest into poison or rather better into Bone skills. Since

Bone Armor is a synergy, you can benefit from it defensively as well.

This is my pure Summoner build, which is at the level 49 long ready as skill investment:
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/eue70x0a
You can arrange items as you wish if you chose to go 125 or 75 FCR and MFwise according to your needs regarding player count and other things.

And if you want to go with Bone hybrid:
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/l2iy0pwb
You can choose the base for White as you prefer an maximize the

Bone Spear output. In this build

Bone Armor absorbs almost 1k damage.

Was not me, I almost never use CE. However for summons you usually need a TP source - Enigma, Naj, charges...

Hi, noob here.
You'll increase your

Skeleton DPS by about a third by having +30 skills while summoning, then +20 while adventuring.

Arm of King Leoric +

Boneflame offhand, +3 summon amy and

Circlet, are fairly cheap. Use 9 GCs, then ditch some.

I'm currently using 52 skele + 54 master while raising my army, switching to 45 skele + 47 skele master while grinding. DPS buffs are A2 might merc, lvl1 fanatacism, lvl 5 heart of the wolverine (could be better).

Wisp Projector is swapped after summoning as HOTO maintains the Spirit despite not having any charges (is this a bug?).
Not sure of DPS but I think 22k skele + 8k mage (assuming they always hit).
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/ecox0pov