Quote (Titus1986 @ Dec 16 2021 11:13am)

That wand and shrunken head literally can't exist in LoD or D2R.

Quote (Wbeard @ Dec 16 2021 06:17pm)

they can .

Quote (Titus1986 @ Dec 16 2021 11:48am)

No, they can't.

Raise Skeleton and Skeleton Mastery are tier1 staff mods, and therefore they need a Wand or Shrunken head that are ilvl < 25, since you also have the Golemlord's mod, you need a alvl60 to be able to spawn that, so you at least need a qlvl80+ Wand and Shrunken head to be able to get Golemlord if you also need to be ilvl24 or less to be able to spawn Raise Skeleton and Skeleton Mastery.

Unearthed Wand (qlvl86), Bloodlord Skull (qlvl85) and Succubus Skull (qlvl81) could theoretically be able to meet both requirement, but you can't get them in normal, so you need to get them in hell and then lower their ilvl to 24 or less with cube recipes or quest rewards.

The main problem is that you can't use the imbue quest, since they are magic item, and you don't have any cube recipes that can lower their ilvl lower than 25, the lowest you can get is 25 using 3 chipped gems on them.

So, you can't get a ilvl24 or less magic Wand or magic Shrunken Head with a qlvl80+ making those items impossible to exist.

The best you could get is +2 Necromancer with +3 Raise Skeleton and Skeleton Mastery rare Wand or Shrunken Head since you can get ilvl below 24 either imbuing with a lvl20 or less char or using the 6p skull recipe with a low level char.

Quote (phdinprocrastination @ Dec 15 2021 11:13pm)

Quote (Taurean @ Dec 15 2021 11:19pm)

I can paste a hardcore summoner guide i have for myself, semi-budget setup:

A decent pvm budget build with expensive options:

Max raise skeleton
Max skeleton mastery
Some points in revive
Some points in clay golem

Max corpse explosion

Some points in amplify damage
Some points in decrepify



Weapon: Arm of king leoric for budget option, or beast runeword in a low req axe for level 9 fanaticism for your skeletons.
Armor: Full trang oul's set for budget choice. Enigma is the expensive best armor option.
Helmet: Harlequin crest helmet, or a good rare circlet.
Gloves: Magefist or frostburn, or good rare gloves with resists.
Shield: Homunculus or +3 skills boneflame. Spirit is a good budget option, but has high strength requirement.
Rings: Soj or bk is the optimal choice because of the +1 skills, but they are expensive. Otherwise, anything can be used for the situation. For example nature's peace for nihlathak.
Amulet: Mara's kaleidoscope, but it can be expensive. Seraph's hymn is a cheap +2 skill booster, but has no other stats for necro. Eye of etlich and highlord's wrath both has +1 skills. Otherwise, use what you need, a good rare amulet perhaps.
Boots: Marrowwalks can boost skeleton mastery by +2, but any boots that boosts whatever you are lacking is a good choice.

+1 Summon skills grand charms
Whatever you need for small charms; Life, fr/w, resists.

Can use call to arms on switch if you don't mind recasting all the time. Otherwise, keep a gull and magic find shield (milabrega's orb or rhyme runeword) to boost magic find at boss battles.


Merc; Might merc is the obvious choice.

Weapon: I have read that conviction aura from infinity is the best, because it lowers enemy defense by a huge lot, making your skeletons hit every time. But i have not tried it myself. Otherwise, pride boosts damage a lot through concentration.
Armor: Fortitude or treachery
Helmet: Life leech helmet, like andariel's visage, vampire gaze, or crown of thieves.


I personally do not use corpse explosion, but it is obviously a very powerful skill. Use amplify damage first, to boost the 50% physical damage. Use decrepify at bosses in combination with clay golem to slow them down to a near stop.

Quote (sheaker3 @ Dec 16 2021 04:51am)

I strongly advocate for the following build, which will allow you to defeat everything D2R throws at you in terms of pvm.

Skills:
Summon Tree

Max Raise Skeleton
Max Skeleton Mastery
1 Point into Clay Golem,Blood Golem, Iron Golem, Summon Resist and Revive
As far as Skeleton Mages are concerned - they are not worth it unless you roll infinity on your merc and even then they won't contribute significantly. But as you want to have a legion of skellies you can max it.

Curses

1 point into Amplify Damage, Weaken, Terror and Decrepify

Poison&Bone

1 point into Teeth and Bone Armor
Max Corpse Explosion if you haven't put points into mages

Gear:

Beast in double axe, caduceus or similar weapon with low str req
Shako um'd/jah'd
Maras
Eni
Spirit Monarch 35FCR
Trang Gloves
SOJ/BK or SOJ/SOJ or 2x BK
Arachs
Sandstorm Treks or solid 30frw/10fhr/tri-res boots (if you don't really like these two you can go with Marrowwalks, WWs or Aldurs but be sure to get one skiller or small charm with FHR on it)

Cta and lidless on switch

Inventory

Torch, Anni and a pack of summon skillers/ life-res or life-mana scs.

Mercenary:
A2 nightmare offensive
Infinity in eth tresher
Treachery
Andy's with 15ias/30 fire res jewel in it

Now we have two options for the golem creation - if you gonna do ubers with your nec I'd suggest creating iron golem out of random insight (it will die 9 out of 10 times). Should you opt not to go for UT you can create IG out of pride for extra punch.

The above build is not the most efficient in terms of clear speed, but it is the "legion" build you wanted. Cheers!

Quote (Banjoco @ Dec 16 2021 06:40am)

Prob of summoner in general pvm is that, aside specific diablo (aka bosses speed) if u run p8 cs a lot, it holds basically no benefit.

- any mancer in pve is a CE mancer after 1 body dies, since all your real DPS is CE -> losing infinity for CE fire side is annoying, since corpse explosion is the best way to farm anything in pvm and is your "real" DPS spell.

- losing insight on golem, while not mandatory, is annoying. Necro is basically a slower teleporter soso at end game (similar playstile/clearspeed) with the plus of never ending regen // better utility toolbox (thx from 1 extra RW aura for "free", up to 25ish LAEK of enigma/DW, trash tank summon and amp/ll curses that allows a DPS centric merc)

- poison does let u basically max out the not "garbage" summon skills tree for general tanking and telestomp anyway (so you can play the standard suicide infinity/treachery merc with amp/leech curses) -> revive is useless in general MF and mages are a meme.


other minor problems are no P&B skillers (poison dmg but mainly ce radious for "free" compared to summon skillers) and slower start at game resets. You need to summon stuff, while with nova u can do 1st few mobs with merc faster and you summon in the meanwhile.

If you REALLY want to try:

75fcr breakpoint, mara shako 2x bk 3ll arach -> "all skill" hit summon trees, p&b (ce radious) and bo buffer, Then as above suggested, u basically drop DW for beast. if you really want to drop insight from golem, use sojs over bk.

Quote (eric1014153 @ Dec 16 2021 09:38am)

I think CE can hold its own on P3 farming with end game gear, due to how CE can go quite a bit above 100% P1 health with Amp damage.

Are mages bad? I don't think they are as bad as people make it out to be. They kill more hell monsters than Revives do with end gear, due to how high the Hp to damage conversion is. Revives also scale a lot better with +skills, so you don't need to max it.

You can max Skele, Mastery, CE, Mages, dump a bit into Summon Resist and Revives, have all the basic curses/other 1 point wonders, and still leave room from spending points into Golem Mastery for HP. Trash Insights on a 5k hp Golem is pretty easy to keep alive, but that comes when you have all the other gear pieces too.

Quote (J03SL4YS @ Dec 17 2021 07:05pm)

That is fantastic.




Awesome input. Definitely was looking for a cheaper options gear setup.




This is similar to what i had in mind but looking for something a little off the beaten path. Likely will end in this though. Cheers



I know there are certain pitfalls for the summoner but i just want to enjoy the lazy grind for a bit. But let’s be real, my necro will eventually end up being a pvp boner no doubt.




Thx for this input on mages.


Certainly appreciate all this info everyone provided. Apologies for the belated response, work etc, but this is definitely the responses i needed.

Is it not worth stacking auras for the skellies? Bramble beast etc?

Quote (eric1014153 @ Dec 17 2021 07:11pm)

There are certain Auras that work well, and some that don't. Infinity is kind of a mutual benefit in the case of summon nec. You get better CE damage, but your mages are also buffed a substantial bit too. -85% resist means your Mages are doing quite a bit more against non immunes.

Thornes, however, just doesn't have high enough conversion to justify it. This is a similar problem with Revives. Some monsters can do like 50 damage, but have thousands of HP. By the time you reflect whatever damage after calculations, you're giving back maybe 10% max of the monster's hp at the cost of a bunch of other benefits.

Really you only need Might Aura from your Mercenary to get through Hell. Conviction, Fanaticism, and Concentration ate extras that make it easier, but are also more expensive. +Skills will be a lot more valuable early on than any Aura outside of Merc and Insight.

Quote (J03SL4YS @ Dec 16 2021 06:12am)

I’ve always played the poisonmancer. Even played a boner for pvp for quite some time. But now i wish to overwhelm the masses with an undead legion.
I can’t seem to find anything thorough enough in the stickies or through googling guides for a summon mancer to satisfy my curiosity.

I’d ask questions but there are simply too many that I’m sure have been answered; so i am merely here looking for guidance in the right direction. Some links to posts on jsp (or wherever) from someone who’s dove deeply into being king of the undead.

Thanks for any help 💀

Quote (Banjoco @ Dec 18 2021 11:39am)

Also keep in mind to use the right ias table in case u use lvl 9 fata for merc:


https://i.imgur.com/RZ42kFi.png

It is worth nothing that you can skip treachery // play around with a GPA infy over the standard GT if u are confortable with 10/9 frame on jav atk. As usual, do ignore normal attack frames since a high level merc jabs way more then a normal atk, making the secondary breakpoint useless/not worth aiming for.

still, a pretty clean set up to me with beast looks like:

GPA infy
treachery ap/sacred armor
chammed gface

and all the standard beauties of a pve necro with a 0ws weapon over the standard GT

also, if u use a 15/40 gface (questionable to lose cham for your nec, but till) you can actually stay at 10fpj with a GPA and flex the armor slot for: eCOH (2 points to might aura/capped res/ll let you just put ONE point in curses for amp) or bramble on merc itself. never use forti on a merc for any necro. u want the corpses for CE.

^ actually wondering if anyone has ever tried to go this route. Anyway, GT over GPA seems to hold little to no benefits with fana lvl 9 at most breakpoints/combo build I can think of atm.

d2 max roll also let you check the exact ias requirement for the weapon once you equip a clean ws 0/-10 on merc and fana on your necro, so worth taking a look if u want to know the single BO for each table