Bone necro/summoner hybrid?

Anyone ever tried it with any kind of success?

Currently leveling a bonemancer just starting NM and I couldn't resist the urge to put a couple extra points into Revives just because I love Urdars and Blood Lords (the

Frenzy bulls, not vampires) as summons, super tanky and solid support.

I tried the full Summoner build back in the day and hated it, playstyle felt too passive and it just felt super slow in terms of clear speed vs so many other builds (including bonemancer) and felt like it overall just wasnt as good at many aspects of the game. And this was with pretty much all the GG gear back on SC when i still played; arachs, trangouls

Claws, Enigma,

Shako, HoTo, Spirit

Monarch,
125 FCR you name it. Even then it felt clunky and not fun compared to my bonemancer and so I ended up respecing back to that.

Now on HC I'm pondering the possibility of a Bone/summoner hybrid. Can such a build do Ubers and/or work well farming most

Terror zones? Anyone who's been there lmk.

I did a Bone/summoner back in 1.10 LOD. It worked all the way through Hell

Baal, but it was very slow. I couldn't attest to its viability on TZ's or Ubers, but I would venture that it would be tedious if viable. Summons weren't very strong and Bone skills just tickled bosses.

The build was slow enough (and I was new enough) that I certainly died a fair bit because I lost patience, so I bet that HC would be a good test of patience.

There is a fair bit of BiS gear overlap between the two like Enigma, Arach's, SOJ and a fair bit of gear that is near BiS that would cover both like Mara's and

Shako. The big difference is how you set up your merc and

Iron Golem aura (if you use one) and whether or not you choose to use something like Beast for the summons or HOTO or White for Bone.

Caveats are that I don't think I leveled too far beyond 70 and I was all SSF so I didn't have SoJ or Arach's or any 2/20 amulets or

Helm.

RackAnewShoe wrote: 2 hours ago

I did a Bone/summoner back in 1.10 LOD. It worked all the way through Hell

Baal, but it was very slow. I couldn't attest to its viability on TZ's or Ubers, but I would venture that it would be tedious if viable. Summons weren't very strong and Bone skills just tickled bosses.

The build was slow enough (and I was new enough) that I certainly died a fair bit because I lost patience, so I bet that HC would be a good test of patience.

There is a fair bit of BiS gear overlap between the two like Enigma, Arach's, SOJ and a fair bit of gear that is near BiS that would cover both like Mara's and

Shako. The big difference is how you set up your merc and

Iron Golem aura (if you use one) and whether or not you choose to use something like Beast for the summons or HOTO or White for Bone.

Caveats are that I don't think I leveled too far beyond 70 and I was all SSF so I didn't have SoJ or Arach's or any 2/20 amulets or

Helm.

Any recollection of what your skill tree looked like?

QuadraHedron wrote: 2 hours ago

I tried this some time ago. Summoning necromancers are certifiably a hurry up and wait affair. A snore-fest. Just my opinion... I did well throughout hell. Though when I had completed hell, I returned to Barbarians, Paladins, and Amazons and never looked back. I never put a necromancer into Ubers or against the D Clone.

What sucked back then was that even the boys at Icy Veins gave up on me. They said to stay in one lane. They don't know everything.

The skill sets I used:

Clay Golem down to Summons resistance. Only one point in each. Don't go too deep on those revives as you'll need many of the synergies in Poison and Bone.

Curses, you need only

Decrepify. So single point out this tree down to

Decrepify.

All the rest in in Poison and Bone.

You're definitely ultra brave. Let us know how it turns out versus the Ubers.

Ultra brave lol just wanna try something with this game I haven't done yet but yeah I guess.

Revives I have no intention of putting more than like 2 or 3 hard points in, realistically I figure if you need more than that you should just be using different monsters for your revives.

And again, Urdars and the

Frenzy Blood Lords seem like the most solid choice here - the former being the only monster capable of proc-ing Crushing Blow, and the latter having the highest life total of any non-guest monster and highest total resistances across the board to every damage type AFAIK.

For curses yeah thats what I'm at right now. While we're on that, I'm having trouble understanding why Maxroll's guide seems to think a standard bonemancer needs

Life Tap - full summoner doing Ubers i could see the rationale, but not standard bonemancer when they don't even list an Ubers variant in that guide.

QuadraHedron wrote: 56 minutes ago

I believe that Maxroll's guide sees a Bonemancer's attacks as missiles. So similar to the Jav Zon or Bow Zon or Throw Barb... You would gain a percentage of life per hit. It may prove a boon when it comes to Ubers? Thank God for the ability to respec, right?

I used to think about armies of the dead raised by my summoner a lot. Call me a day dreamer... It always reminded me of the movie Army of Darkness. I always wanted my summoner to have a Chainsaw on his right arm and the Boom Stick in his left hand. Ever watch the movie: Army of Darkness? It's silly but great.

Seen it lots. 40yr old dad here, that was one of my favs back in the day.

Bruce Campbell is the man, lol.

I'm playing a Bonemancer on HCL right now, mainly for the reason that I found an awesome necro

Circlet and nobody wanted to have it.

Necro was my first char back in the days and I liked bones the most, everything else felt too passive.

Now I noticed that the main damage still comes from CE even when Bone is maxed out. Esp. in 8P games, CE is crazy good. So I did something unusual that you find in no guides: 20 in CE. You lose some damage from the Bone skills but it helps with clearing speed in dense areas (cows). I might even try maxing

Amplify Damage as well. (Going nuts here!)

Back to topic: Revives are a 1 point wonder. With just 4 hard points and good gear, you can have a full army. I don't like the feel of it and I want to use the corpses for CE not for summons that's why I don't spend any points on them. But I would definitely use a White

Wand with Revives on the base. Ideal would be 3

Bone Spear, 1-3 revives, plus

Bone Spirit, a useful curse, or

Summon Resist. Hard to find one though...