Why Summoner necromance guides tell me to spend 20 points in bone prison?

Hi all,

I played D2 casually when it got out originally, recently bought the remaster. I am leveling a summoner necromancer, currently around level 65. Reading the guides, I am supposed to spend 20 points in

Bone Prison. Why is that? If I cage an enemy, say, a boss, the bones prevent my minions from getting to their target. What am I missing?

Thanks for the help!

Are you reading the correct guide?

I am using the maxroll gg website, it says 20 points in

Corpse Explosion and 20 in

Bone Prison

you dont use it for the skill, you use it for the bonus to

Bone Armor

Oh ok, wow I didn't know. It's not written in the guide. Thanks!

TBH, that guide is not a typical summoner guide. It is a customized guide and I do think he's using

Bone Prison as a offensive skill. If it's for

Bone Armor, then it should be 20 points in

Bone Armor instead of 20 in

Bone Prison.

Flyhorse wrote: 11 months ago

TBH, that guide is not a typical summoner guide. It is a customized guide and I do think he's using

Bone Prison as a offensive skill. If it's for

Bone Armor, then it should be 20 points in

Bone Armor instead of 20 in

Bone Prison.

Bone Armor gets more from it's synergies in

Bone Prison and

Bone Wall, than from it's own points.

choma90 wrote: 11 months ago

Flyhorse wrote: 11 months ago

TBH, that guide is not a typical summoner guide. It is a customized guide and I do think he's using

Bone Prison as a offensive skill. If it's for

Bone Armor, then it should be 20 points in

Bone Armor instead of 20 in

Bone Prison.

Bone Armor gets more from it's synergies in

Bone Prison and

Bone Wall, than from it's own points.

It's the same for 22 skill points investment.
LVL 1

Bone Armor is +20, + 15 for each LVL after. Bonus from

Bone Wall and

Bone Prison is +15 each.
The absorbed damage to LVL 1

Bone Armor + LVL 1

Bone Wall + LVL 20

Bone Prison is 20 + 15 + 15 x 20, which is 335.
The absorbed damage to LVL 20

Bone Armor + LVL 1

Bone Wall + LVL 1

Bone Prison is (20 + 15 x 19) + 15 + 15, which is also 335.

Flyhorse wrote: 11 months ago

choma90 wrote: 11 months ago

Flyhorse wrote: 11 months ago

TBH, that guide is not a typical summoner guide. It is a customized guide and I do think he's using

Bone Prison as a offensive skill. If it's for

Bone Armor, then it should be 20 points in

Bone Armor instead of 20 in

Bone Prison.

Bone Armor gets more from it's synergies in

Bone Prison and

Bone Wall, than from it's own points.

It's the same for 22 skill points investment.
LVL 1

Bone Armor is +20, + 15 for each LVL after. Bonus from

Bone Wall and

Bone Prison is +15 each.
The absorbed damage to LVL 1

Bone Armor + LVL 1

Bone Wall + LVL 20

Bone Prison is 20 + 15 + 15 x 20, which is 335.
The absorbed damage to LVL 20

Bone Armor + LVL 1

Bone Wall + LVL 1

Bone Prison is (20 + 15 x 19) + 15 + 15, which is also 335.

Just looked it up and it seems they buffed the skill up from 10 to 15 in 2.4, I either missed it or forgot. If nothing else, at least investing in the synergies doesn't increase it's mana cost, which is still makes it best to max the synergies first over the armor itself

thanks for all the replies! Is there a more typical summoer guide i can follow? I'm getting pretty rekt at nightmare chapter 4, on bosses. My minions die and i can't kill the bosses

You can check this one: https://www.icy-veins.com/d2/summoner-necromancer-build.
I played a summoner last season, but a bit different from that. I used 20 points on raise

Skeletal Mage instead of

Clay Golem because I don't see the point in it since it's just a slow tank. Only one in

Clay Golem and

Revive, the plus skills bonuses are enough. Also spent only 4 points in curses to get to

Decrepify and dumped the rest of them into

Golem Mastery. I entered hell with very bad resistances and had a rough time at first, but after fixing those I finished hell with ease.

Thanks!! I'll check it out! Is icy veins a good resource all around? I sometimes use it for wo, and it's decent. But I'm not familiar with the best resources for d2, except for this website

You can also check out wowhead website. It's a very good one.
For boss fight, specially for under geared summon necro,

Clay Golem and

Iron Maiden are the best weapons.

Better invest your points in

Bone Wall. You'll get lvl 33

Bone Prison from

Marrowwalk. As a Summoner you won't need neither

Bone Prison or

Bone Wall but leveling it will give you synergy for

Bone Armor. Leveling

Bone Armor is less profitable, because it takes more mana when you recast it and you won't have free

Bone Wall

For summoner, you typicaly have 20

Raise Skeleton, 20

Skeleton Mastery, 1 at least on the remainder of the Summoning tab (except

Fire Golem which is useless) and 1 in Amp Damage Corpse Expl and

Bone Armor.

When done with this, though, you still have many points left, so you can pump what you want : poison skills, golem,

Bone Wall for more control, a bit of Bone attacks (

Spear/Spirit but not as much as a bonemancer), more Corpse Expl...

My advice : try the skills, see how you like them and choose one of the "options" above.

Necrarch wrote: 11 months ago

...
My advice : try the skills, see how you like them and choose one of the "options" above.

Besides those above, I would say gear is also something you want to think of.
For example, if your gear guarantees your

Iron Golem alive all time, then you can summon an Insight

Iron Golem, meanwhile your merc can use another weapon.

cassetto wrote: 11 months ago

thanks for all the replies! Is there a more typical summoer guide i can follow? I'm getting pretty rekt at nightmare chapter 4, on bosses. My minions die and i can't kill the bosses

A really good strategy fora summoner is to get revives of urdars or other big revives with crushing blow, then use a tele staff or

Charge ammy (or Enigma) and

Teleport right on top of the boss, the revives do the rest!

Thanks for the amazing replies!!! All useful tips!! my main struggle right now is my minions dying at bosses. I survive no problem, same the merc and the golem. but the skeletons die and I don't have corpses to summon them.. I have 20/20 in skeletons

cassetto wrote: 11 months ago

Thanks for the amazing replies!!! All useful tips!! my main struggle right now is my minions dying at bosses. I survive no problem, same the merc and the golem. but the skeletons die and I don't have corpses to summon them.. I have 20/20 in skeletons

Try one point in

Decrepify and 1 point in

Clay Golem. These two will slow even

Baal so much that your skellies will survive until the boss goes down. The fight might take a while though...

Also 1 point in Revives. They are very useful against bosses.