Breach Summoner
-This build is a ranged, auramancer summoner, for pvm.
-I'm calling it a Breach summoner because shooting the repeating crossbow and its exceptional/ unique variants behind an army of followers after teleporting into a room feels like S.W.A.T busting down the door ready to detain whatever demon needs to be sent back to hell.
-This build uses faith cross bow after i realized how awesome it would be to give up a few extra skele’s, to have your current army be boosted with fanaticism.
-In the early stages of the build you use an Edge runeword crossbow and give your army thorns instead
-later you get that thorns back from putting Bramble on your merc
- you end up with viable backup damage using your crossbow, with Knockback, ignore target defense, and max’d out attack speed with a little bit of crushing blow, deadly strike, life leech, and bleed damage. while your army gets boosted by fanaticism, and thorns, (as well as might), and the curses and corpse explosion we all know and love about pvm necromancers.
- this build is really really expensive, but i do give a budget version at the end that works alright.
Gear:
Enigma
Faith (demon crossbow), (the lowest roll on a faith will work just fine for ias bp’s!)
1x 10fcr ring
Arachnids
2/20 circ
Cleglaws Pincers (lvl 4 gloves)
Mara’s
Bk band
Gore riders baby
Weapon swap
6 ist weapon
4 ist shield
Charms
8-12 5fhr sc’s ( or shimmering small charms of balance)
Nec torch
Gheeds
Merc (act 2 might)
Bramble armor
Insight
Whatever helm you desire I prefer Blackhorn or Kira’s
Faster hit recovery
We are only getting fhr from charms. this free's up item slots on our character that no longer need fhr to make bp's. This is cheap and easy to accomplish, and i don't think many people think of this.
Fhr puts us in the middle at 8-7fps down from 13 up from 4
Necromancer
FHR Frames
0% 13
5% 12
10% 11
16% 10
26% 9
39% 8
56% 7
86% 6
152% 5
377% 4
Faster cast rate
The circ/ one ring/ and arachs puts us at the following fcr
Fcr puts us in the middle at 11 fps down from 15 up from 9
Necromancer
FCR Frames
0% 15
9% 14
18% 13
30% 12
48% 11
75% 10
125% 9
Now in order to hit the next frame we would have to give up the gloves and either the ring or the ammy. But the gloves must stay as that is the only feasible way to get knockback.
Attack speed:
Will be maxed @ 11 frames per attack, 2.27 attacks per second
With demon crossbow and lvl 12 fanaticism from faith, the lowest possible role, with no additional ias on any gear. Because the demon crossbow is naturally so fast. This will make good use of the gore rider boots, and the knockback from cleglaw's lol.
Resistances:
Now this build has really bad resistance. We do have the mara’s and hopefully you can afford a 30 res, which once people start going for the fcr amulets mara’s get a little cheaper. And at least one Um rune in your circlet. But for the other 100+ resistances will have to be made up by whatever means possible. N torches are cheap. Let's say 20 res from this. That puts us at 80 to go. Let's say we get 5all res from our fcr ring, and 5 all res from our circ, that puts us at 70 to go. Now here’s where things might get crazy, technically a Shimmering Small Charm of Balance has 5fhr and 5 to all res…. So only 10 of these need to be perfect to get max’d out resistances lol.
Summoner’s don't take a heap of damage behind their skele army though, so climbing slowly with our res’s doesn't break the build
Magic Find:
100 mf from enigma
280 from weapon swap
40 from gheeds
That’s 420 magic find… kind of right in the money for the mf curve.. and if that isnt nostolgic of d2lod back in the day idk what is..
Magic find is overrated. very valuable, but slightly OR. Let me explain..
at 420% mf your chance to find unique items is increased by about 150%. comparitivly at 100mf unique chance to find increase is 71%, and at 800mf its 190%.
what is important to note here is that as you increase MF your chance to find magic, or blue labeled items, raises at an equivelant rate. meaning at 1000 mf your chance to find a blue item is increased by 1000%.
what is more valuable than blue items in d2? base items for runewords. While MF stacking sorcs flood the economy with unique items, they greatly reduce there chance to find white socketed and etherial items. The solution to this, as i see it, is to have the bulk of your Magic Find on toggle, as we do with this build. and it should be noted that runes are not affected by Magic Find at all.
Merc
-the merc must have Bramble. At lvl 15, thorns return 800% damage to the attacker.
- Merc carrying insight is important for spamming corpse explosions.
-And i chose black horn because i like the prevent monster heal but when im using bramble i might switch this out with a kira’s for merc survival.
-Iv'e considered using other merc's from other acts, but that would loose at the very elast the insight weapon. for this build we'll stick to the a2 might merc.
Additional notes
-10 slows target from arachnids, 25 slows target from Cleglaw's roughly 50 slows target from clay golem, then decrep, and another 20 from your mercs blackhorn face. The cap is 85 as far as i know this definitely hits that
-frankly the knockback from Cleglaw's pincers was a stroke of genius. By losing only one frame per second on our fcr we are able to keep anything at bay that tries to wonder our way past our army.
- As far as i can tell the crossbow, specifically the demon crossbow far out performs any bow as far as damage vs attack speed. especially with only a lvl12 fana boosting with no other skills or ias from equipment.
- the Gore Riders are best in class for boots as the small chance for crushing blow, deadly strike, and open wounds, multiplied by ignore target defence and and maximum attack speed is quite amazing.
Skills:
basic summon necro. . .
-Summoning
20 skeleton mastery
20 into raise skeleton
10 into revive
5 into summon resist
5 into golem mastery
5 into clay golem
1 into everything else
(The skeleton mage will mess with your corpses. It's very important nothing in this build has cold damage as corpses = profit for a summon necro)
-Poison and Bone
1 into bone armor and bone wall
20 into corpse explosion ( trust me this thing doesn't taper the more the merrier)
Curses
1 into everything,
But i really only use (in this order)
Decrepify,
Blood tap
Dim Vision (savage crowd control)
Amplify damage
And Lower Resistance (to be a darling to sorc's in the party)
—Budget Version—
-Incredibly important to note is that the summon necro requires teleport to not suck. Luckily you can buy a staff with teleport charges from just about any vendor in the game. This will be your weapon swap until you get enigma.
-Edge runeword is ral tir tal. Boom level 15 thorns aura for you and your party. I put this into a 3soc repeating crossbow, and later into a chu-ko-nu, but it doesn't really matter because the lack of attack rating before you get faith really just makes it something you pretend to do damage with while you're casting free thorns. It should be noted that if you main this toon and do a little gambeling having edge with gheeds makes purchasing gambled items a total of 30% cheaper.
-The rest is whatever you have on hand. I went for a Faster Run and Walk build
Trang Oul’s Scales (armor) - 40 frw
The Cat’s Eye (ammy) - 30 frw
Natalya's Soul (boots) - 40 frw (highest for boots with some resistances)
Peasant’s Crown (hat) - 15 frw
M’avina’s Tenent (belt) - 20 frw
And chancies guards and two nagel rings for my mf
Insight and Treachery for merc (one lousy Lem c’mon guys..)
Final notes-
-With the budget build I was able to run everything in hell without much dificulty by myself eccept for chaos/diablo and Baal himself. he was slower than a sorc, but able to do many things a sorc couldnt.
-an act 2 blessed aim merc is more viable until somewhere between character level 85-90 as character level greatly affects attack rating. once you ding lvl 87 or so go switch to a might merc.
Everything on this build is interchangeable obviously being an RPG that d2 is, but if you are using a Faith Demon Crossbow, and a Bramble armor on your merc, on your summoner, it probably hasnt been done very many times before, and i'd like to take credit for being the first to discover this little gem. (im probably not but ive never seen one). And as such, if you choose to make this character, please call him a Breach Necro to give credit to the build i made.
Thanks in advance,
Have fun and Enjoy!
Rillo..