Adding a small sub section for who would like to give up to infinity and play with botd. I honestly think that this set up is sub optimal but it can be usefull IF you run a lot of bosses with a necro.

I do think that the biggest iussue of most pvm necromancers is indeed bhaal running but, if you like to mix that and you don't mind to give up on fire break from infinity, this can be the right character to do so since it has 3 different damage forms (ce phisical / fire, nova poison, merc phisical).

The Dying Mercenary

If you want to bump your merc phisical DPS to steroids while giving up on extra Corpse Explotion abuse, feel free to try out this set-up. Botd is an underrated mercenary RW (with my WW eg baba, I do run with it on my merc to great success for example) and its low played status is just given due to how much OP infinity is.

- No Infinity goodies, and that goes w/out saying
- Especially in this set up, go for Might. I would also suggest to replace Insight Iron Golem with Beast. IF you want to go crazy with it, you could try an hybrid approach with Beast/faith aura on you plus golem but I think that set up is bad even on a full Summoner at player 1, so I would not suggest it.
- Again, no Forti and Gaze, avoid shattering.

BoTD comes in with an amazing 60% build in ias, up to 400%dmg and 15ll. This let's you set up your merc in multiple ways but, again, I do think that Guillame is an EASY Best in Slot for your merc headslot, so think twice before replacing it!

The Aggressive Dying Companion

This set up will land at an incredible 105%ias thx to treachery & botd combination! You can use GT/Trasher for 9/9 Jab/Normal Attacks frames or CV for 10/10! We also Finally found a set-up where your 10 attack speed Polearms are actually pretty good!

Weapon Infinity Trasher/GT (9/9 Jab/Normal Attack) OR Colossus Volger/Cryptic Axe (10/10 Jab/Normal Attack)

Armor AP ebugged Treachery. Again, the Best armor for your merc with 45%IAS 20%FHR and fade.

Head Guillame's Face with Cham. The fact that we don't need any further IaS to achieve our breakpoints is a big plus if we do choice to focus on phisical damage so much, Cannot be Frozen it's basically given for free and a gigantic bonus while focussing so much on our mercenary.

Pros: 10 Frames per Attack // 10 Frames per Jab (CV/CA) or 9 // 9 (GT/Trasher), 9 Frames Fast Hit Recovery, 30% Crushing Blow, 15% Deadly Strike, Fade, 15ll and Cannot be Frozen.

Cons: no infinity

You can go crazy with Jewelers 4os AP and 3os Circlets as well with 40/15 jewels or duped one (I owned a sick jeweler fhr AP builded for my merc back in the day, just to burn some duped). But I think it's honestly useless to suggest those set-ups nowadays, as well it was back in the day.

Also, with only blue jewels, I don't think you can surpass treachery utility for your mercenary and replacing crushing blow/deadly strike for a 3os circlet for some 40ED/X jewels will just make you worst vs bosses, witch is the opposite goal of this set-up.

This post was edited by Banjoco on Mar 30 2020 03:42am

Sorry for the typo here, this last set-up is obv around BotD

Cool build, I'd say it's more of a hybrid between Poison Nova and summon/CE, though. 8k nova damage is quite low.

Typically I gear it pretty much the same, but all open sockets are filled with 5/5 poison facets. Oh and I use Mara's or a +3 P&B amulet. I either use SOJ + BK in ring slots, or SOJ + an FCR/+adds ring to hit the 75FCR breakpoint on swap for teleporting. As there's not really much point spamming Poison Nova I don't worry too much about FCR on the Death's Web side.

There's a fair bit to be said for using revives over skeletons in this situation, too. They're much more tanky, require far less skill point investment, and thanks to Enigma you can just tele to regroup/position them if they start wandering off, as they do.

Thanks for sharing, good read. Poison nova necro is my favourite character to run Chaos with, tons of fun!

This post was edited by Mukhalif on Mar 30 2020 04:30am

I agree. As well that, as I said, this could be considered more off an hybrid approach.

As for the fcr discussion, teleporting on switch it's much better if you are on a budget and can't afford 20%fcr 3pnb/2necro circlet and all the fcr needed to make the end build avaible. I do think that circlet & fcr amu is better no matter what, but shacko/mara and free slot ring with 75fcr on switch it's a much easier set-up to achieve for sure.

Fun fact, at lvl 99, you have enough points to be "full hybrid" as some1 asked before.

PnB - 63 hardpoints

1 teeth
20 poison nova, prereq and sinergies

Curses - 3 hardpoints

1 Amplify
1 Life Tap and prereq

Summoning - 44 hardpoints

20 Skeleton Mastery
19 Summon Skellies (again, with 3PnB circlet)
1 Iron Golem and prereq.
1 Summon resist and prereq.

Also, BotD become interesting at this point for Iron Golem with Beast and max Skellies. I would suggest to go 2Necro Circlet over 3PnB and put the full 20 points into Summon skellies as already discussed. BotD will also let you skip Life tap. So full build achieved at 98 or 97 if u give up on Teeth. This set-up should work a bit better on bosses, IMO. Anyway, always cover all the other skills and then start adding into Skeleton Mastery as last thing.


This build is tinkered around player 1 and max Magic Find. skiller and facelet are much more interesting at higher players base, plus the already discussed insight vs beast on golem.


This is a very versatile character no matter what due to the low requirement points of Nova sinergies and the good mix of damage sources (fire/phisical/poison). You are basically playing around 3 different axes on a NovaMancer PvE build since you got that many choices on the DPS counterpart:

- Poison Damage. Already a lot of freedom here, 75fhr set-up with Trang or 125fcr set up with spirit/arach. You can choice to boost dmg with Facelets/Skillers or boost MF with Ist Runes/SCs as we discussed above.
- Fire Damage. You can max this out with infinity, you can also give up on summoning to max CE for better radius.
- Phisical Damage. You can focus more on Mercenary and Summons DPS with BotD over Infinity and Beast over Insight on your Golem.

This, to me, is a BIG plus to make the character always freel fresh, amazing thing for a game as old as Diablo II

This post was edited by Banjoco on Mar 30 2020 05:34am

Thanks for sharing, I also found it very helpful as i am very interested in a build like this for next ladder season.

The only issue I had with the build was the survivability of skeletons, as I like to be able to run all areas (chaos, Travincal, ancients).

I ended up doing my own testing on bnet with a few different skill point allocations, and I found a good balance for me @ lvl 85 was:

20 skeleton
15 mastery
7pts summon (all prereqs and revive)
7pts curses (lower res)
45pts poison (20 Nova 20 explosion 5 dagger)

With just a 2/2 deaths web and full Trang set (no rings or ammy), this gave me -70 res and 3500 Nova damage. It seems low but it was enough to one-shot all monsters in A1 with no curses, and enough to one-shot most monsters in A3-A5 with lower resist. And skeletons were strong enough to survive chaos, ancients, and most other areas (only had trouble in Travincal and with Diablo).

I was very happy with this build and I'm looking forward to seeing how it performs with a full gear setup/torch/skillers/iron golem/etc.

Bumpity!

Yeah, that's pretty much why I went "hybrid" plus full MF at p1. Poison dmg is retarded high with death web, T-O set and optimized gear at 75FCR. Only reason couz I will really consider to change it is to go higher players on plugy or to go 125FCR. At least optimized with 20%ifcr circlet and ammy, as we discussed. With shacko u have to compromise a little!

This post was edited by Banjoco on Apr 8 2020 06:40am

I got a 1443 % mf necro summoner
https://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=82828747&f=54

That feel almost amazing to play, aside WR I would tink it to go 1k MF and playability but who Im to judge such an hipster char


Btw, as some people suggested, Im trying beas aura on golem over insight (and switched CV infinity instead of trasher base).

- props: even more full hybrid feeling and much, much faster boss killing
- slops: mana reg management while teleporting long distances.

Till. the 60% mana reg from t-o set and up to 12 maek of death web makes me thing it is a very slow cost to big reward switch. Definitely liking it so far, 120mana // 10fcr magical ring is a big friend in this configuration IMO.

This post was edited by Banjoco on Apr 8 2020 03:18pm

Broski this nec had super stacked res and the minions kill with merc they killed hellbaal superfast all the minions etc so its a solid functional char aswell.

But ofc i would go back to like 1k mf and buff him like u say