MANGA
Make a Necro Great Again
A Van Helsing like Death Commander,
That can do everything in the game. With ease.

The Necromancer is an undervalued class. Clearly. Sorc’s and Pally’s scoff at the other classes, especially the necromancer as they struggle with their metta. The paladin being nearly completely useless without teleport, and of course the hammers which can’t hit much other than the nearest wall, and the sorcs that can only kill things that are afraid of ice. And all the gear that a sorc or pally need is incredibly expensive because of the demand. For instance i sold an ohm and a gul for the price of merely a ber, as every meta chad in the game right now is trying to enigma up his paladin for gg mf runs.

Necromancer’s have become beggars in d2r. I've literally seen game names where necros are pleading for free scraps from their betters.

Well not this necromancer. This necro is clever. He thinks outside of the box. Let's think of the most important skill to a summonmancer who’s pesky skeletons wander aimlessly as often as they please: Teleport. Well there, that explains why a summoner can never be the meta at reroll, and is essentially unviable without being backed by an incredibly wealthy paladin or sorc. Or is he?

And that's where we come up with a very bright idea, oh yes… nearly every vendor that sells staffs in sanctuary can roll a staff with teleport charges on it. And these you can merely buy for gold, at any time as freely as is your pleasure! Now this doesn't allow for the speed at which a sorc can teleport through the map being as each charge costs a good deal of gold to recharge, but it does solve the bigger issue, which is skele AI!

Speedy mf runs, now there is another issue! The assassin, imo a great option that trumps sorcs and palla’s for first rolls has burst of speed, and ofc palla’s have vigor. The necromancer has neither. But some research into some speed boosts from gear can pay off nicely. The summoner can be more liberal in his gear decisions as he merely stands in the backs and laughs with his crowd controlling curses as his skeletons wreak havoc. Therefore he needs less res and def and skill bumps from gear!

-Cat’s eye - 30 frw. And it’s cheap and easy to find. With a little bonus to ias.. Hmm will this come in handy later?
-Peasants crown! 15 frw, with 20 to energy and vitality and ofc 1 to all skills
-M'avina's Tenet (belt) 20 frw
-Natalya’s Soul (boots) 40 frw, high for boots! As high as aldurs, but with cold and light resistances to boot!
-Stealth (armor runeword) 25frw with a few other goodies as well..

And for rings and gloves? Why lets gets some MF on this puppy ofc!
-two nagels
-and a nice pair of chancies if you please!
Both the rings and the gloves add just a smidge to Attack rating.. Wonder if this will come in handy too?

Now, many would argue you need much much more MF, but take a look yourself at the mf return curve on uniques… at 100 mf you get 71% better chance of finding uniques. At 200 mf you only get 111% the returns drop off even more dramatically from there…

Now for the weapon. Here is where things really get interesting, and where this guide was dreamed up!
Reading through the different runewords that can be rolled we see some interesting items.. Many of which give auras to one's party when worn. Well, the necromancer, finds this very interesting.
Enter Edge! The item that turns our little necromancer into a demon hunting death raiser one would even say Van Helsing Like!
Never mind shrunken heads and silly wands made of unicorn #@$%’s

A bow or crossbow that gives a lvl 15 thorns aura to all party members. That's over 800% damage returned to attackers. Even the brave little skeletons! And guess what runes it costs?! Tir Tal Amn! Now that, paired with our act two blessed aim merc we have two auras for the army of the dead!
Slap insight on that dessert dweller and there is your third aura! And enough mana regen to spam corpse explosions like a symphony of destruction as you gleefully pick up the remains.

So far so good. And normal and nightmare become a breeze. But what of hell!?

We have noticed that when fighting single bosses while breezing through the first two difficulties it often came down to the golem, and the crossbow, after the skeletons and the merc had put in serious work. Ahh yes. We find that the crossbow is actually quite effective as another means of dealing damage. And the blessed aim from the merc helps to some degree to add a bit of attack rating.

We started Edge in a normal crossbow, no bells, no whistles. But what to upgrade to?
Chu-Ko-Nu, best bang for the buck in terms of points spent on str and dex. At least for the attack speed. Now even in hell Van the Necro is slingin constant back up damage behind his skeleton army whenever he isn't spamming curses or CE.

And on the swap? Why ofc, our handy dandy Tele staff!

Enough about gear for now, let's talk about skills..


Now, what makes the necromancer so good at PVM is single handedly the skill Corpse Explosion. So a summoner must consider the skeleton mages rolling Ice damage could slow his absolute onslaught down some. Not to mention he needs those corpses for skeletons as well. No no no, corpses being too valuable he will ignore the skeleton mages all together.

Max Raise Skeleton, and Skeleton Mastery. 1 point into all of the golems. 1 point into revive and summon resist. But we’ll get back to these points in a moment…

One point into all of the curses: save, attract and confuse. The only crowd control you need is dim vision, which blinds the heck out of anything you want to not be shooting at you from a distance. Primarily we use amp damage (one of the best skills in the game) on just about everything. Occasionally we can switch to life tap if we see our army starting to wane in health, and decrepify can really really piss off a boss, or a player. And frankly we are only going to do lower res in case a sad little sorceress needs a helping hand from time to time. Oh the necromancer is quickly going from the beggar class, to the charitable…

One point into Bone armor, bone wall, and corpse explosion (for now).

Now it's up to you where you go from here. Our little Van Helsing decided he didn't need the extra defense of bone armor/ bone wall due to the fact that his army keeps him safe enough.
So he puts 5 points into golem mastery to give his golem a bit of a hp bump for those times when the skeletons aren't around.
5 points into summon resist to keep them all alive a little longer in hell dif.
10 points he slips into revive, which we will talk about later
And 10 points into corpse explosion to clear a room faster than a fart in a crawl space.

And there you have it! A budget build that makes the summonmancer extremely capable of doing Hell difficulty MF runs, in fact better than sorcs as he has two major forms of damage output, physical and fire (from corpse explosion) with teleport to boot if you are smart about what you pick up to vendor.

Late game one does have some idea’s in mind for the future.

One now is in love with his Thorns, and his Crossbow!
Enter Bramble armor, lvl 15-21 thorns on your merc’s armor that’s even higher than edge! But our crossbows will be missed…
Enter Faith Crossbow! And now we have the fanaticism aura increasing the damage and attack speed of our undead scourge!
Swap Insight with Infinity, put a dream on your merc and a Griffons on yourself and you now have your 5th aura and a hell of a lot of ambient lightning damage chipping away at the denizens of hell as well.
And when one does finally get himself an enigma there is the old cta/spirit that can replace that tele staff.

One has never done Uber's as one has always loved the necromancer and has never before thought outside the box in this way…
Finally it should be noted that with only 10 points into revive, and a few bonuses from items and skill charms, a summoner is one of the only characters in the game that can run uber’s solo. With a small army of revived Urder’s. Swap insight or infinity / dream for faith (concentration aura) /blackthorn on the merc When running ubers. Necro all day babay.

Thank you for reading,
Rillo..