Hi Folks,

I'm making this guide in 2020 since Im bored at home due to the whole Corona thingy and, for the most part, I still see suboptimal builds about pvm necro nowadays, so I wanted to put some effort on my favorite PvM char and build a good guide around it. Feedbacks are always appreciated!



The PvM PoisonMancer



One of the best and most versatile Magic Finders in the game but, due to the rarity of some items and HL runes plus an inventory that can become expensive, this is better used in the middle stages of the ladder.

The skill build & playstyle covered will focus on player 1 runners, with some tips for p7 as well if you are into that.

This detailed build will let you covered with 75fcr, over 400mf, 8k Nova dmg at -75%poison res, never ending Mana and the most effective PvM Merc in the game.


Recommended LvL

Let's start with something that it's never discussed enought in PvM, especially for characters that run with Enigma and Act 2 Mercenaries.

For this character I suggest an end game goal of level 91 wich is a nice balance between exping time and enigma scaling, while already completely playable at 86.

Why, exactly, 91? Because your Act 2 Merc gain 1extra aura skill point every 5 levels (1/6/11/16 and so on), so if you want to optimize your PvM char you should stop at 81/86/91/96 unless you have minimum skill points required to make your char build or you are into Gambling with something like a gold finding Baba.

Level 91 will leave you with a 19Might aura plus 91MF/68Strenght with enigma. Knowing how much Strenght you will have with Enigma it's also a good plus to min-max your Strenght points allocation and don't waste a single Attribute Point to further boost your HP.

Stats invested

Strenght enough to wear your eth Spirit Monarch on switch (see itemization for details)

Vitality all your points // leftover points

Simple allocation char, you just need all that vitality since you will not need anything else. Your golem will net you never ending mana for free thx to meditation aura and the overhall strenght requirements are really low.


Itemization

Ah, the best part of any guide, nerds! The optimazed 75fcr PoisonMancer has very little customization to play around with, but you can still make it personal while picking up your circlet, ammy and ringos.


Switch Off-hand ETH Spirit Monarch random FCR. I do start with this slot since it is is the ONLY item with high Strenght requirement and you should know how to play around it. At level 91 (68str enigma) with 20/20 anni&torch you will need EXACTLY 14str to wear this Monarch, due to it's lower Str requirement (146) compared to a normal one. IF your anni/torch sucks and you dont' want to invest any jewelry affix and/or HardPoint in Strenght then opt for Lidless, instead.

Switch Main-hand 6/6/x CTA. Your old but gold buffer, pick up the weapon that fix your aesthetic needings the most.

Main-hand Death's Web. The Weapon that makes this build the most effective, 2/2/4x Ist'ed is what you should hunt for. I like to go for a good ETH version for stylish points and Forum Gold draining, but you should avoid this choice unless u're a stupid Neet like Myself

Armor Enigma. No way around it, pick one that fix you strenght requirement and aesthetic needings. With this build you can wear up to Archon Plate (you will be at exactly 103str before Enigma IF you go for 146str on switch for ETH Monarch), nice thing if u have one optmized Enigma to switch between your chars, but I like to wear random bases that fix my, much greater, aesthetic needings. This is a PvM Teleporting Char, so you can give up on your gosu Light Armor AP base without any downside and appreciate the cosmetic side of things a bit. My pick for the season? 15/15 Gothic Plate, for example.

Boots War Traveler 50MF. Another must have for Magic Finders, with very helpfull 10str/10vita bonus in the mix.

Gloves Trang-Oul's Claws. Must have! One of the best legit gloves in the game with 2curses/20fcr/25%PoisonDmg/30%ColdResist

Belt Trang-Oul's Girth. This belt is... Well, usefull for set bonuses, plus a very minor cannot be frozen/66life/5rep life/up to 50mana.

Off-hand Trang-Oul's Wing. This shield is the reason why you are "wasting" your belt slot. -25%EnemyPoisonResistance set bonus/45%FireRes/2PnB plus the possibility to socket it with an Ist for extra 25%MF make it the perfect off-hand for a PoisonMancer


The 3x Trang-Oul bonus will net you with an extra 60%ManaReg/40%ColdRes/-25%EnemyPoisonResistance and, so far, an amazing 0%FCR on the whole gear. time to fix it, shouldn't we?


Your Circlet, Amulet and Ringos will let you achieve 75%FCR so ALL the listed FCR bonuses are a must have. As extra, you should prioritize PvM stats, especially your big hole in Fire and Light Resistance plus Vitality / Mana. You can also make some use of one Strenght affix if you choice to use the Eth Spirit Monarch on switch and a bit of extra MF as luxury.


Circlet 3PnB 20%FCR 2os (Ist'ed) circlet. Hands down my favorite choice since this boost your Corpse Explosion AoE and Poison Nova a bit more. You can also use a 2 Necromancer20%FCR 2os circlet wich will grant extra small bonuses to curses AoE and Summons, up to you.

Amulet 2Necro 15%FCR. Again, vita/mana/@res/fr/lr/str/ are the only affixes you actually need as extra.

Ringos 10%FCR. You can start with 100plus mana or 15@ magical rings and work your way into some decent rares, while hunting for your usual good affixes already mentioned above.

Golem 17 Meditation Insight random base it's all you need. If you are into that, the only reason to waste an eth Insight is to make your golem looks ethereal since it does no damage no matter the Insight base you will burn. I do like my eth golem but I acknowledge how it's a complete waste of resources. Anyway this little friend is one of my favorite reasons to play with a Necromancer, who doesn't like an extra, overpowered, aura for free?


The Mighty Mercenary

Now, with your follower you actually do have some options. I will start with what I think it's the best set-up and then add one more if you don't like to use LifeTap curse once in a while but, remember, the 1st build listed it's much more effective then the others!

- Main hand will be, no matter what, Infinity. Infinity doesn't help to break poison resist but it does help with Corpse Explosition since it's actually 50% FireDmg 50% PhisicalDmG. Since CE is, in reality, your main damage and killer, infinity become your only real choice for an optimized merc.
- The only real choice for aura is the Offensive Nightmare one, aka Might. You want Might to further boost your mercenary damage and, to minor extend, your other summonings.
- Avoid at any cost Gaze and Fortitude, does 2 items procs chilling and, in second istance, corpse shattering. Like a gold find barbarian, you are actually making use of all the corpses to use Corpse Explosition and, to a minor extend, to summon skellies.

The only alternative to Treachery is, in my opinion, ebugged CoH but I think it's a waste here. You can still play around with it, just remember to 1st choice your head & armor set up, check the IaS you are at and then use an IaS Mercenary Table to understand the right Poleaxe Base you shoud use for the best Frame per attack breakpoints avaible.

Spoiler alert: I have yet to find a set-up where 10 fpa Poleaxes are better then 0/-10 counterpart. My Honest answer is that those set up simply don't exist, so learn to understand how to use a frame per attack mercenary table and stop using those horrible and sad Colossus Voulge, please

The Suicide Companion



This is another nice future of any PvM Necromancer since, thx to the lifetap curse and tanking summonings, you are the only char in the game who can run with the best heavy hitting companion set-up at zero life steal.

Weapon Infinity Trasher/GT. GT/Trasher will let you achieve the best FPA breakpoint of all the Poleaxe options at 60ias, witch is the goal of this set-up.

Armor AP ebugged Treachery. Aim for one with 1.1k plus def, just the best aggressive merc armor with 45%IAS 20%FHR and fade.

Head Guillame's Face with 40ed/15ias jewel. As we said, thx to lifetap, we are free to wear this amazing 15str/30%fhr/30%CB/15%DS helmet. 15ias jewel is a must to achieve the 60ias breakpoint.

Pros: 10 Frames per Attack // 10 Frames per Jab (GT/Trasher only!), 9 Frames Fast Hit Recovery, 30% Crushing Blow, 15% Deadly Strike, Fade.

Cons: no Life Stolen per Hit make it Life Tap dependant from time to time.

Verdict: the best DPS set up for any PvM necromancer, this thing hit like a truck and I strongly suggest to not give up on your Guillame's Face Mercenary while playing a Necro, just get used to lifetapping once in a while to make your killing speed much faster.

The Lazy Companion

I suggest this set up only if you want to give up on The Suicide Merc due to laziness of Life Tap and Micro Management or if you are missing the right base for your Infinity.

Weapon Infinity Great Poleaxe/Ogre Axe. GP/OA will let you achieve the best FPA breakpoint of all the Poleaxe options at 80ias, witch is the goal of this set-up.

Armor AP ebugged Treachery.

Head eth Andy with 30fr/15ias jewel

Pros: 10 Frames per Attack // 10 Frames per Jab (GP/OA only!), 11 Frames Fast Hit Recovery, up to 10%Life Stolen per Hit.

Cons: lack of crushing blow / Deadly strike.

Verdct: this is the best "lazy" DPS set up. No worries on your Andy Poison Nova procs since they do NOT overwrite your own Poison Nova.

Last set-ups worth mentioning, that I will cover if requested to avoid a Wall of Text about the Mercenary on the main guide are:

Infinity / ebugged CoH / Andy (cham'ed or with 40ed/15ias)
Infinity / ebugged CoH / Guillame's Face (cham'ed or with 40ed/15ias)

Those set up are a mix if you want to have a much more defensive Merc and, usually, that will hit much slower. CoH / Guillame will be a decent way to Keep Guillame's goodies w/out giving up on Life Steal, while CoH // Andy let you cap Resists even if you give up on 30fire resist jewel on Andy for a classic 40ed/15ias or a Cham rune.

Skilltree and Playstile

Finally, let's talk about your skills and what you should aim at to min-max your character.

PnB - 63 Points

Bone Armor - 1 - very cost effective 1 hardpoint buffer for yourself.
Teeth - 1 - Prereq.
Corpse Explotion - 1 - Your main killer, 1 Hard Point is enough since you should be at 19 points with a 3PnB circlet (18 with 2Necro Circlet) before considering any skiller from inventory. 9plus radius is all you need for a really fast kill speed, IMO.
Poison Dagger - 20 - Max Sinergies and Prereq. to Poison Nova.
Poison Explosion - 20 - Max Sinergies and Prereq. to Poison Nova.
Poison Nova - 20 - your 1st body killer with the assist your mercenary. At player 1 the most effective rotation is Poison Nova - Amplify Damage (to boost Corpse Explosition) - Corpse Explosition. At p7 you should add LR in the mix, with a rotation of LR into Poison Nova into Amplify into CE. This make, actually, LR an OPTIONAL skill for this character if you only Magic Find at Player 1.

8k Poison Nova Dmg plus with -75% Poison Res and over 400 Magic Find is the end game goal of this build.



Curses - 1 or 3 or 7 Points

Amplify Damage - 1 - your CE booster, you should ALWAYS Amplify Damage before start Corpse Explosition Spamming.
Iron Maiden - 0 or 1 - Prerq. to Life Tap.
Life tap - 0 or 1 - Very usefull Mercenary buffer, must have if you are running with the "Suicide Companion" and prereq. to Lower Resist.
Weaken - 0 or 1 - Prereq. to Lower Resist.
Terror - 0 or 1 - Prereq. to Lower Resist.
Decrepify - 0 or 1 - Prereq. to Lower Resist.
Lower Resist - 0 or 1 - as we said while discussing Poison Nova, Lower Resist is actually NOT mandatory for magic finding at player 1. I do like to take it no matter what since, to me, a Necro w/out LR doesn't feel like a Necromancer, plus this skill is really helpfull when not playing solo.

Summoning - leftover Points

Clay Golem - 1 - Prereq. to Iron Golem
Blood Golem - 1 - Prereq. to Iron Golem
Iron Golem - 1 - This is mandatory for your free Insight. Remember to NOT QBind any Golem to avoid random resummoning and, in second istance, to lose your Golem in the most stupid way possible. Yes, it happened to me
Golem Mastery - 1 - Small HP boost to Iron Golem and Prereq. to Summon Resist.
Summon Resist - 1 - very cost effective 1 hardpoint buffer for your summon.
Raise Skeleton - 19 or 20 - IF you are using 3PnB circlet, after Battle Order Prebuff, 19 HardPoints in Raise Skeleton will net you 12 skellies at lvl 30 Raise Skeleton. IF you are using 2Necro circlet, 20 HardPoints in Raise Skeleton will net you 13 skellies at lvl 33 Raise Skeleton.
Skeleton Mastery - 1 plus - Your Skellies booster skill. You should put all the leftover point in this skill.
Revive and prereq. - 0 or 1 - I do hate Revive, honestly. It's an horrible skill while Magic Finding, usefull only if you use an Uber Necro or play at player 7 the whole time. Skellies are a much more effective DPS / Tanking unit that can easily telestomp with you, Making Raise Skeleton the superior support skill for summoning while Magic Finding.


Inventory



Must

Anni - best you can afford
Necro Torch - best you can afford
Gheed - 40mf
PnB skiller - 1x 12fhr is what I start with, since it's an easy way to jump from 13 to 11 FHR frames while adding a bit of damage.

With all sad and done, it's time to run some math on your Magic Finding and Resistances.

Before considering ANY affix bonus from ring/ammies and inventory slot, your resists with 20/20 Ammy and Torch (best case scenario) are 15 Fire / 40 Cold / -30 Lighting / 10 Poison.

Magic Find, at lvl 91, is 286 (105 from Ists, 91 Enigma, 50 War Traveler, 40 Gheed).

I strongly suggest you to Focus on small charm to 1st fix your Fire Resist and Light Resist hole (plus affixes from ammy and rings, if possible) with a mix of fr/lr cheap SC. 5@ sc are, also, a very effective but slightly expensive option and then leftover cover the inventory with 7mf.

The most expensive part of the character is to go nuts, with your Inventory. After 400MF you can start considering adding Life skillers while hunting for those crazy 5@/7MF & 17Mana/7MF SC. 11fr-lr/7MF SC are cheaper and should be your starter upgrade at some point.

For example, atm my inventory is

19-20-5 Anni
20-20 Torch
1x PnB 12fhr
1x PnB 38 life
5x 5@/7MF
1x 5@/6MF
2x 11FR/7MF
4x 11LR/7MF
4x 17Mana/7MF
3x 7MF plain

For a good 75Fire/75Cold/75Lighting/55 Poison Resist and 418MF. Upgrading your inventory, as I said, is the most expensive part but also the most satisfying in the long run on a Magic Finder Char, at least IMO.

Have Fun with your Optimized 400MF plus 75FCR Poison Necro!

This post was edited by Banjoco on Mar 28 2020 08:31am

Reserved!

not bad guide which describes standard psn build

to be honest i would like to see something like botd on merc

it is poison necro, not summoner, and sometimes it is kinda boring to abuse op skills like ce on every possible build

psn tree gives us an opportunity to avoid ce style and play for something different

Thx For the feedback.

I do agree that this is a very min-maxed guide on how to play a standard PvM Necro. Most extra insights lies in eth spirit switch and Str optimization plus right skill rotations at player 1 and 7, with some minor insights on how to allocate your skill points depending on your needings while using the best possible Merc set up avaible.

Sadly, on this matter, Skellies is the best support skill after you are done with your Poison Nova, at least IMO. Luckily I do like to play with summons since it's one of the unique future of the class, even if in this case it is more supportive as a role.

This post was edited by Banjoco on Mar 28 2020 09:03am

ehmmm let me correct myself:

im not against skells, im against ce/amp spam

of course it is better to have a small army

Why not put 2x Um rune in helm and get 4 more skillers for damage? Isn't 400mf already over kill as it is? It would be a lot cheaper than filling inv with res/mf scs. Just my thoughts!

Nice guide

400+ is surely an overkill. 200ish is more than enough and lets you focus more on killing speed.

I also agree with this.

A big Prop (wich can also be a Con, depending from point of view) is connected to how this build works.

The damage that you achieve with Poison Nova at over 8k Avg and -75% poison resist let you already kill ANY trash mob at player 1 with a single Merc & skellies hit // telestomp. After that is all Amplify // CE DPS. Since PnB skillers just add Radius to Corpse Explotion, all you gain from PnB Skillers at Player 1 is what you call "paper DPS" since you don't, actually, increase in any way killing speed no matter how big your "paper" Poison Nova damage is gonna be.

This let you boost MF to insane numbers with SC 7MF and Ist on gear without any drawback but, at the same time, you have an "hardcap" in killing speed given the way a Necromancer works.

Skillers (and poison facelet over Ist on gear) are usefull only if you play at p7 OR if u like to add a lot of bosses run in the mix, where extra Poison Nova DmG would actually help on the killing speed but, again, your heavy optimized Mercenary with Amplify will do most of the work there.

At player 1, trading 200 extra MF for 1 extra second of killing speed on Diablo alone doesn't really make any sense, does it?

This character shine at lvl 85 areas and, especially, the clean speed at Chaos Sanctuary is insane once you are used to play it, even if most people consider a NovaMancer a simple Pit Runner.

Regarding Ist vs Um, ofc you can mix till you are satisfied with your resists but, past that, you should just focus on MF given the points discussed above after basic needings are covered (all resistance), at least at player1.



Thx!

This post was edited by Banjoco on Mar 28 2020 12:38pm

you don't need insight when you have death web
iron golem can be fana for merc
facets over ist runes, skillers, and you kill everything in 1nova except for act bosses, without needing to cast a curse or have your merc attack or use CE