Higher radius = Faster killing speed. You don't need more than 2 CE to clear half an area with a fully maximized CE. Also, casting the summons is initial at best and an extra frame won't matter much when doing so in the first 2 minutes of your run.

Extra life doesn't help at all when they don't die regardless.

You'd be switching to your mf stack when killing act bosses, that's about it.

Homu is the best summoner shield, if you didn't understand why, read my post again. Example- 2 CE = 20 mobs dead = 100 mana restored.

Beast only boosts your skeletons' damage, whereas Hoto or White boost your CE damage. If you believe your meatshield summons are your main DPS source, you're sorely mistaken.

anyone who suggests pride is a focking retard.
edit: i prefer using spirit... with gg silkweave!!!!!!!!

This post was edited by Soccergoal10 on Aug 14 2010 11:05am

Dunno I had 20 pts in CE and many + skills and monsters where always dying in few CE anyways, I don't see how little more radius will make big difference. Also CE is makes no help while killing bosses, while with Beast Baal will fall more quickly.

Mana has nothing to do with killing speed or survivability or anything here. Mana is just for your comfort and if you see no problem using mana pots then your summoner will be faster/stronger. So you loose huge FHR and FCR just for mana? Not to mention spirit add 100 mana anyway..



Pride just for an extra aura? Why not?

This post was edited by Sladeinflame7 on Aug 14 2010 11:10am

Hardly huge. FHR isn't necessary at all, it takes a monkey to get hit in PvM as a summoner, and 1 extra frame for a big CE +skill item loss isn't my idea of "faster killing".
Yes, stopping for pots is a loss of time, not just comfort.
Spirit adds 100 mana to your maximum mana pool, it doesn't replenish it like maek does.

Pride offers an idiotic aura that adds damage to a meat puppet that's not suppose to do any damage, rather just protect you and have an occasional kill for the CE triggering, which is mainly done by your merc anyway.

This post was edited by Synonym on Aug 14 2010 11:14am

The more you play a summoner, the more you realize how useless summons are for damage. I've given up playing summoners. My Revives/Bonespear/CE build just clears shit faster, and is way more fun to play. Great alternative is a 3 piece trang Pnova/Lower Resist/CE, But it doesn't have the instant death bomb power of the first one.

Summons are meatshields.
Maybe just my opinion.


edit: lolmages

This post was edited by Serdra on Aug 14 2010 11:29am

Like 1.5k damage for 1 skele, when having 15 of them + amp and it's only meatshields?

And mages are very nice with conviiction on. I remember trying to kill Hell Mephisto only with mages and conviction from merc by teleing around and it took like ~7 seconds. I would say very nice just for mages.

gz guide

i disagree that they are just meat shields but i do agree that other varients of necros can do stuff just as fast.

In a p8 game, yes, their damage is way too low and restricted to be considered as real "DPS". CE is your killer spell, use it. Amplify is made for CE damage, period.
Mages are a complete waste of skills, they're just in my way to get 1pt revives so I'm forced to put a single point in them.

Where do you find that we are only talking about 8 player games? No to mention that in 8p games CE also sucks, you need ton of CE to kill something.

One more thing is that summoner does not have where to put pts. I mean mages are best choice there, or do you prefer having 40 revives lol ?