It is at this point. But it is because I made the first generation. No one used Faith Merc before me. I developed it and wrote it over two years ago. This is simply a clean, finished product. The goal was not to create a revolution, but merely to have the final product written out neatly and completely with a finalized flare. I want to have my other sticky'd version replaced with this is my ultimate goal.

I like that you reach max fcr bp and not bad guide ofc, but i don't like this guide since i see the act2 merc to be more effective.
And do you really need maxing golem mastery? I had this with 1pt and +skills ofc and my golem never died. Imo it's much better to max CE

Why is act 2 mercenary more effective? See, everyone says this. One person even pointed out the damage levels.

Here is my rebuttal to the act 2 mercenary argument.


WHY ARE YOU GOING FOR MAXIMIZED DAMAGE??!?!?!?!? There are so many more important things than maximized damage. For one thing, Act 1 mercenary offers Inner Sight. This is a massively useful Skill. It drops defense like Whoa.

The point is, you are a summoner and your damage should come from your army. It takes me about 10 seconds longer to kill Baal, and the same time to kill everything else with my build as opposed to the act 2 mercenary build.

I agree with you. If you speak about max damage effectiveness, the Act 2 Mercenary offers more damage. But there is no reason to argue for maximized damage if you can crush the game without it.

Focus on other aspects, style, speed, party usefulness. The act 1 set up trumps act 2 in all of these catagories. Fuck max damage, we don't need it. If you can crush the game just as fast without it, dont bother.


You can give your party better fanaticism, the same conviction, and inner sight which, in many cases is much better than more damage if your party has lower attack rating (LIKE SKELETONS!!!)


And the Max Mastery is only if you are using Iron Golem out of infinity to give you a cushion on his life. You'll have enough extra skills to play with maxing c/e or whatever you want. its a range preference, not a necessity.

This post was edited by mephistophilis on Feb 12 2009 12:52pm

Man you can go through the game with many setups on summoner, even without merc it will be very effective due to CE, but we are looking for most effective build.

Why act2 merc?
When you are teleing on enemy act2 merc start attacking and your merc will go away or? You will have much more damage, even if you don't really care it And due to high speed of merc and CB which infinity offers, bosses will be killed much faster.
But now i have my IG free and can make it from pride! So that will boost your armies damage a lot and you merc's too.
The +'s i see of act1 merc are inner sight, immune to IM and higher lvl of fana, and imo act2 merc overtakes your merc.

It's just matter of preference, i believe that your build works also very good, just i prefer other

Bosses are not killed much faster, if you follow baal the way I laid it out, you should have 4th wave revives which offer the CB you lack from act 2 merc. The killspeed isn't much different. like 10 seconds max and chances are, that will help you from getting temp banned.

I wish I could find bryan's argument about Pride. Concentration is a strange thing. It doesn't exactly work like it seems. It adds to the base damage (which is almost nothing) of skeletons and it doesnt help your mages at all.


Our opinions fundamentally differ in the "meaning" of effectiveness. Your effectiveness, and correct me if I am wrong, completely revolves around maximizing damage. That means you sacrifice character speed.

I define effectiveness as building the best character I possibly can that maximizes the most amount of catagories. Speed, resistance, breakpoints. Effectiveness has to encompass all of these things. It can not exclusively focus on one aspect of the character. Why even have an army if you have a mercenary that does everything the army is supposed to do?

This is a summoner. It summons skeletons and mages. I have two auras that help the physical and elemental damage of those, and revives that offer cb.

The fishy is a great character, but it's not the only way to build a summoner and it's not the most party friendly. Fishys tend to summon a ton of monsters. They also don't teleport their own runs for baal.


Again, I am more interested in the principles of the character. Giving a necromancer a wand or a dagger with a shrunken head is like giving a javazon a spear or a barb two swords. Its what they were made to have. Giving him hoto or beast is making him as generic as a hammerdin.

This post was edited by mephistophilis on Feb 12 2009 01:18pm

What you mean "sacrifice character speed"? The more damage on summoner - the faster you are and maxing CE will make you even faster. What about fcr, i agree with you, last bp is insane to have.

All bp's you can reach with beast too. And don't say that summoner with beast is just cookie-cutter build and no style

You would need:
Perfect Spirit
Arach
Magefist
Circlet
10+ Rings and amulet

You sacrifice
1 skill on spirit
2 skills on rings

so you lose 3 skills there. what does that count for?

And the beast summoner rocks an axe. If we are talking about raw weapons dedicated to class specifics, the necromancer was built for a wand or a dagger. Ultimate style can only come from one of those and a shrunken head.


If you reach that 125% fcr break point, fine, but its hard to do and you lose skills.

The killspeed for everything except Baal is virtually the same. So if they are the same killspeed for 99.9% of the game, and mine teleports around faster than a classic fishy with 75% fcr, I am faster. And if they have 125% fcr, I have more skills in c/e and amp for range. so it's slightly more effective.


Either way, there is so much less flexibility with a Beast Summoner for gear than with a Faith summoner. You can wear virtually anything with a faith summoner and hit good breakpoints. A beast summoner has but 1 or 2 variations in secondary gear like boots/gloves. IF there is no variation, it is a cookie cutter.

What about 55fhr from spirit? It has some - but also +
Yes, it offer really low flexibility and to find such gear is expensive, but it is good. It's not worth discussing cause even when i say that my merc does 14k+ damage and has CB and attacks much faster than act1 merc and IG has pride, you still say that you don't feel the difference! You don't feel cause both summoners are good, both are fast, but my offered build is more effective imo

imo bad guide ;

a summoner doesnt need fhr at all, indeed he'll mostly need be hitten.
also basing your build on a infy golem is imo crap, because dying happen some times, obviously... it's nearly impossible to play like 100 hours of runs without dying, unluck + lag do the job to kill ya...
latly you better use hoto than wizzy, because oak charge can be pretty usufull for your army, moreover when you do ubers ! and you'll still hit max res with hoto ...

so imo those 3 things make your build pretty stupid.

oh and i would build my summoner around act2 merc using infy + freeze aura and my nec using beast...
act 2 > act1 merc for killing ubers.

This post was edited by maximus_le_roi on Feb 12 2009 02:43pm

Thats funny cuz imo you don't really know what you are talking about at all. Do out all the possible combinations before you say my guide is bad....

You lose FCR and resistance. You'll need to trade a soj for a fcr ring. Then'll you'll need to find where to get that much more resistance.

Don't die, or play the game for fun and dont care if you kill a few infinity golems.

EVERY TELEPORTING CLASS NEEDS FHR. Ever get hit by a snake, have shit for fhr, and get hit repeatedly until you die, yeah thats real.


I'm not even going to qualify the fact that you use Holy Freeze merc on a summoner with a response. Thats just too retarded to comment on.




So you get your 55%fhr, then you need to find the rest on charms which is fine.

The low flexibility is what makes it a cookie cutter.

I'm not saying that an act 2 merc setup is bad. Im just saying its not exclusively number 1. My build is just as efficient in time, more efficient in speed, and based on my playing style, better.


The other point is, I have minimized the number of runewords use to 3 (perhaps 4 if you want to use fortitude on your merc).

With a Beast setup you use: beast, nigma, spirit, infinity, fortitude, pride. thats another reason that it is a cookie cutter. massive runewords that all characters use.

This post was edited by mephistophilis on Feb 12 2009 03:28pm