well it seems he loses most of the time in CS. considering even an extra minute for summoning, its quite slow. ofc i could "just sprint for the seals", but mobs dont die instantly from one nova at this skill lvl. perhaps some charms are needed to do so, or more rbf sockets - will try asap.
for this test, i decided to clear whole CS using nova + ce (boner does the same with spear + ce). so both chars have to face a mix of bosses/uniques and normal mobs (which - in theory - should be a disadvantage to the boner).

all baal waves died quite fast. vs magic or psn immunes you got merc/golem/minions/ce, so they're np.

i'll try some faster runs soon (only seal bosses in cs), and also pure summoner to comparison.

here's a more typical run, it was a wee sloppy, I havent played this char in several months, but it gets the point across. Since the char is now non ladder, I didnt care about picking anything up.




This post was edited by Master_Zappy on Mar 25 2017 10:18pm

cool vid, much psn

anyway just found out i made a big mistake by casting too many novas on the same mobs.. yet my psn nova is not that strong enough to 1-hit everything (using the above mentioned char without skillers), CE seems just better at that lvl.

so... my Poisoner's much faster now, but just using nova once and then smash everything with CE

test runs (still p1 complete CS/Baal):

--> Hoto / 125fcr setup / AMP / 14 skellies / 8 revives
06:49 3,3M xp
07:32 3,2M xp
07:13 2,6M xp
06:29 2,8M xp
07:07 2,8M xp

--> Death's Web / 75fcr setup / AMP / 14 skellies / 8 revives
06:54 2,4M xp
06:30 2,5M xp
06:26 2,7M xp
07:17 2,9M xp
07:03 2,5M xp

Edit: 06:15 new record

i've also experimented with casting LR and using mages, it just seems to take more time. but i think there's still room for improvement.

--> the boner in comparison



xp difference is due to lvl up

This post was edited by S_M_O_K_E on Mar 26 2017 12:57am

my iron golem died last night

i havent made a new one yet, and the strange thing is he doesnt loose much speed with clay golem only. so i'm at ~10min average now with psn setup (using death's web etc, but mostly casting amp/ce) for andy/count/summoner/meph/fullcs/dia/baal runs. using 3 skill charms now.

next will be pure summon, im curious if he can beat that.

so i was curious and did a few runs myself (cs+baal) with a poison necro (75fc/dw/no minions/ce only for w2 and w4): 5:48, 5:50, 5:20

also i think you need to specify what part of pvm. Every one of those builds excels in a certain task. i mean, for seals only boner always has been the best choice, poison can prepare dia before w2 as well and is extremely fast at full area clears but both run into problems once they need to baal.

Poison has to handle the annoying immune w4, which even on p1 takes its time with merc+ce and will only get harder with more players. Boner vs Summoner is more or less whoever gets the first kill fastest to start CE-ing and since boner has to handle immunes and is more fragile imho [x] summoner all in all.

Personally i like poison the best but that's just preference.

good info. Why would you not use the summons on a poison nec? seems like you'd tying one hand behind your back on that one


Here's a full chaos and baal run from my less then ideal but pretty solid higher end poison necro . He's using insight IG instead of beast which would make those minions shine, Botd+gface and fort instead of Infinity (legit realm over at d2slash, runes are scarce without bots or fg trade options) which means the ce isnt as stronk as could be.
This char is at 11K pnova.



This post was edited by Master_Zappy on Mar 29 2017 07:09pm

How good can do the job the poisomancer in full games playing solo? If you could make a vid of that would be perfect (if is not to much work ofc)

The clear speed in chaos run clearing all look pretty good, but for cs + baal it seems a bit more slow for me.

Kinda agree with memoism, both bone and poison can be really good for specific tasks and summoner looks like more all around character.

From my experience with bone and summoner, the largest the route the better summoner is, the time raising the army is less and less important and never have a real problem with any immunity and does not matter if you play solo or full games, he can do the job.

Bone is really nice for short runs like only seals diablo, nilathak, shenk/eldritch/pindle , a bit more slower if you want to clear all, even if is not that bad thanks to CE and for my surprise was really good even at P5 games, over P5 is star to getting some problems that can cost a lot o time.

glad i could be of help

Regarding summons first theres the time it takes, secondly they are only a defensive plus which imho you dont need. I put the remaining points in bone armor synergies - with that you survive the occasional failtele. Then you got the golem as a tank and also his immensely useful slow. A nice trick is cursing LR at seals first and then Dim Vision the whole pack - the boss wont be overcursed and the rest of the mobs just stand still and dont do anything. Also im a fan of 1pt revives for the rare occasions where you could use some meat shields. hmm didnt even think about using them between waves..

For comparison - my nec sits atm at only 8-9k dmg but uses a perfect dw, three parts TO (another -25% res) and got two rbfs socked. Im using infy on the merc but just because i got nothing else laying around. Would prefer Insight.

I encourage you to just try it out yourself. You have to put some practice into teleing right but i think the speed gain is worth it.

and id love to upload a run but atm my internet is crucifyingly slow - jsp is the only site, that doesnt take ages to load^^

nice to see some more numbers im still a bit slower. also thx to the others for sharing your views... i agrree my initial question could have been more specific, but at first i was just curious which are the most popular builds atm in general.

didnt expect much in-depth discussion^^ to me it seems that in a way, everyone is right here, in his/her own way of using the nec. and i think it's good to have a versatile class so it's not like hammerdin.