Intro

This guide is for making the best PvM summon necro possible, capable of doing every single thing in the game safely, efficiently, and with respectable MF. It assumes access to high-end gear and intermediate game knowledge on the reader’s part. This character does best on /players 5 or less (eg. you and 4 other people in the game). While he’s safe and capable in full games, he slows down disproportionately due to the build’s mechanics, irrespective of gear quality, and becomes inefficient. If you need to obliterate everything efficiently in a full game, go hdin, lit sorc, java, etc.

However at p5 or below he is at least comparably fast, if not faster, to most other builds for most content. He requires no prebuff or situational gear taking up precious space in the stash. He’s remarkably effective and versatile, there’s nothing he doesn’t do well. Yet a lot of people don’t know how to do the build properly and how good it really is. I’ve read no other summoner guide that comes close, and there's a lot of bad info out there about the build. Plenty of pros out there know the ropes, but I don’t think any have written a guide, so here goes.



Gear

Weapon: Beast double axe, fanaticism is required
Shield: Spirit monarch 35%
Helm: 2/20 circ
Armor: Enigma
Gloves: Trangs
Belt: Arach’s
Boots: Travs
Ammy: 2/10
Rings: 2x fcr ring

The breakpoints we’re hitting are 125 fcr and 56 fhr. 125 fcr is the max necro breakpoint, they share cast frames with paladins and are 2nd fastest behind sorc/barb frames. It’s vital for teleporting as fast as possible thus making the character more efficient and survivable, and the fhr breakpoint is easy to hit and aids in survivability.

You’re better off with two good fcr rings and a 10fcr ammy, the +1 on the bk/soj you could wear with a 2/20 ammy doesn’t benefit the build all that much. You’ve got a lot of stuff to make up for due to the beast having nothing but fanaticism and str. This also means that the ideal ammy is rare, giving it potentially 6 affixes instead of the 4 on a craft.

The goal is to not spend any points in str (and obviously none in dex or energy). Necro base str is 15, if your torch + anni combine to give you 43 you equip the beast double axe for another 25-40. If these 3 items rolled well enough, you’ll have 95+ to equip the travs, then it’s enough for an AP enigma. If it doesn’t work for the AP, at least try to use an elite base. DS has the lowest str req at 77.

The circ and jewelry are where your budget (b.net) or luck (single player) will really come into play. You’ll want a mana roll on at least 1-2 of those items, 800 mana with BO is a good minimum number to shoot for. You'll want a str roll or 2 also, since you'll lose the str from beast when swapped for BO and may not have enough to equip the BO spirit. Last but not at all least, the more life & resists on this stuff, the better. You definitely want max resists btw, or at least as much as you can get while you work on it. Some guides say it’s not important, those guides are for a less effective and/or budget necro.



Inventory

Gheeds, anni, torch
Summon skillers, preferably with life
Use SCs to fill out resists, raise life/mana, or boost mf, depending on needs

You’ll need one charm with any amount of fhr to hit the breakpoint at 56, with the spirit giving you 55.

Gheeds is worth it over an additional skiller. Once you have 15 skeletons, and around 20 revives with only 1 point invested, you’re fine and more skills don't help as much as with other builds. With just perf travs & gheeds, and enigma, you’ll have 180mf at level 90 with zero impact on your kill speed or survivability. MF has big diminishing returns and more isn’t as good as you might think.



Merc

Might aura (act 2 nightmare offensive)

Gface – ias jewel, with ed if possible
Fort ebug – for this build treachery is bad
Infinity – giant thresher is ideal, otherwise thresher. Highest % ED possible

Your merc’s job is to do the most damage possible. He’s 90% responsible for making the corpses you need to start chaining CE and wreck everything - this is part of why it slows down so much in full games. He doesn’t need leech, your skeletons take most hits on trash, and you can't leech most bosses.



Golem

You’ll be using iron golems, which die occasionally. Sometimes you do too, which kills the golem obviously. Thus instead of wasting expensive runewords, Iggy is made from insight. The mana regen is so important that you’ll do better with this than a pride golem, so I’d suggest this even in HC where you don’t die. Other casters can get by without meditation aura, but their spells are cheaper than max CE.

Eth insight = eth golem, mega style points. Nothing high damage, he’ll pull aggro constantly and you’ll end up babysitting him and losing efficiency. Normal eth polearms are best (halberd, scythe, etc.) Most IG deaths will be due to Nihlathak’s snakes or Diablo’s firestorm, be especially quick in these encounters to tele, tp, or exit game if it’s bad enough.

If you’re uber rich.. and crazy "eccentric".. and have boatloads of life / mana / resists from your undoubtedly Godly circ ammy and rings.. then go ahead with the pride I guess. It's definitely better, especially for bosses... if not for the mana issue, and the inevitability of losing a big runeword (a concern for us mere fg mortals). To aid in your mad quest, you could put less points in CE, making it cheaper at the expense of a bit of radius. And use magefist for the free point in CE and mana regen. Use whatever base you want, pride has no ED so it won't draw undue aggro to Iggy. The golem WILL eventually die. You've been warned.



Skills


Curses

- 1 Amplify Damage – Main curse to be used almost always
- 1 Decrepify – Has some use in ubers, and used for Baal, Lilith, and when shtf


Poison & Bone

- 20 Corpse Explosion


Summoning

- 20 Raise Skeleton
- 20 Skeleton Mastery
- 20 Golem Mastery
- 1 point in every other skill except Fire Golem
- All remaining points in Raise Skeletal Mage

Note: Maxing Iron Golem reduces his survivability. The increased thorns damage makes him pull aggro more. I spent 2 tokens and 2 eth insights learning this so that you don’t have to.



Gameplay Basics

Forget about sitting back and watching your minions kill stuff, that's not efficient in hell. If you really want to do it, make a 2nd necro for it. The plan here is to amp hordes of monsters and CE (corpse explosion) until everything’s dead. CE does half fire, half physical damage. The fire is increased by infinity, the physical by amp. Being a fire skill, its level is increased by 1 if you use magefist.

Teleport directly onto major bosses, this gets all of your minions attacking the boss and not jostling around trying to find a spot in the hitbox. It’s also helpful for killing specific monsters in crowds. Ubers on the realms would be impossible without this technique, your army would fight all the monsters instead of focusing down the bosses.

For dclone / uber tristram, revive urdars for their crushing blow. The ones from river of flame are noticeably better, but the ones in a2 palace / tombs or a3 durance will do the job. Once your gear is good and you’ve done ubers a few times, you don’t need any bleed effect to negate their regen on /p1. While learning or gearing up, or in multiplayer games, you can keep a toothrow stashed for your merc for open wounds. The PMH (prevent monster heal) on infinity works for dclone, but not ubers. I've never needed a pdiamond shield or a treachery prebuff or anything - but don't try uber tristram without at least the enigma, beast, and 15+ revives. It's not as faceroll as a smiter, you do need some gear here.

Outside of the above, revives are only useful for the ubers mini bosses, baal, and cows. For this content, just revive the effective monsters out of what’s there and explode or ignore the bad ones. Urdars are unnecessary and time-consuming for this. For other content, revives just get in the way and using them is a decrease in efficiency due to constant resummoning and the hitbox issue.

While you can efficiently do any content, the build really shines at slaying vast hordes of melee monsters since they group up so readily. Cows are a great target, and check out the act 2 tombs. Duriel’s is meh, but the other 6 have insane monster density and are a blast with this build.

Thank you for writing this! I think there’s another mob that has CB. Not sure their name. Thumbs up for you!

Ps. Forget them hdin, java or sorcs. They all have their weaknesses.

This post was edited by Tarisus on Apr 30 2021 09:14am

Very nice guide, mate. For once, i agree with mostly all, well done

Just one tip that a lot of people don't know: Dim Vision, this curse helps A LOT against dangerous enemies, makes archers and souls 100% useless. And you only need one point.

Nice Guido.
For hardcore players I would recommend a small change gearwise which only results in lower fcr bp but in my experience for rushing ppl and clearing all on 8ppl game that doesnt matter


Id go for 75fcr with

Shako
Mara
Beast
Spirit
Enigma
Hotspur/ waterwalks
Wisp
Soj/bk/dwarf (i prefer soj since with infy you're mana hungry)
Arach
To gloves

Nontheless, fine guide.

I concur with the 1pnt in Dim Vision as Cantero says

This post was edited by Itsjustpain2 on Apr 30 2021 10:25am

Pvm is pretty easy, you want to maximize your damage and there's nothing a 2/10 ammy will give you more than a 2/20 one for this
If you have mana issue consider getting mana after each kill since CE does a lot of killing (unless you're constantly playing p8)
Making pride in a bad base like voulge reduce the chances of iron golem to die
fhr is useless not sure why you mention it and why you tell people to waste a slot for it

Great guide and tips (I am not a necro user, so still educational). I normally do tombs (A2) as well with my bowa, and not very many people do that area, so was great to see someone else does.

Just an off the cuff question:

Is it worthwhile pre buff BO out of town, switch items for pride (chest) and then tele to areas with Conc aura supporting your summons and infinity merc... you would be flashing between Beast & Pride (W) for both auras to be active and not worry about an IG?.

Remember, not a necro player, but if I remember correctly you can flash the auras and skeles & merc gains both auras at one time.

I'll reply to several points here in one reply.

- Dim Vision: My SP guy is geared very modestly, 2.4k BO'd life and max LR, never had an issue with souls or archers. I feel like Dim was a thing back in the day when ppl were still using uniques and PvM was harder, and it just got grandfathered in to a lot of modern advice & guides. No offense to those who use it, but I just don't see it ever being useful. If monsters have dim vision on them, they can't have amp, thus they die slower. The best defense is a good offense imo, this build's all about the speed.

With that being said, once you finish up the main skills and are putting excess points in mages, you can certainly put them somewhere else, mages don't make or break the build. They add a few more meatshields and a bit more dps, and are especially useful for phys immunes. All immunes retain a high resistance to the broken immunity, so amped PIs still take awhile for melee minions to kill - and some PI bosses are unbreakable by amp. CE works, but sometimes you run out of corpses or they're too far away. The mages just smooth things out.

Other things I've tried: Fill out the curse tree for fun / co-op play, pump bone spirit (it'll get to around ~500 dmg, meh), max IG (bad idea). You could do bone armor for survivability, but I can't stand wearing a hula hoop, it just looks so silly and isn't necessary. There's no real solid place to put the points, so mages are the next best thing.


- Flashing multiple auras: I've heard of this but never tried it. It sounds really interesting, but ultimately would be a lot of work. If I ever make a pride in SP I'll give it a try. This poster mentioned not worrying about the golem if doing this, but if you were flashing between pride / infinity, then you'd still want an insight golem.


- PvM is easy, your guide is stupid, you're stupid, etc: First, bro you should meet up with Mary Jane and chillax. Of course PvM is easy, there are vids of naked summoners soloing hell baal on p8. Anyone can do it. This guide is how to do it as efficiently as possible, and is the culmination of my experience playing this (my favorite build) for years with a PvM focus. I gave my reasoning for not bothering with a 2/20 amulet, I think it's pretty easy to understand. And I never suggested making the pride from a voluge, read the post again. Sheesh!


I'm trying to figure out some game recording software, a video would say more than a thousand words. No promises though, I have a budget laptop which slows down with all those minions even without trying to record it.

This post was edited by MickeyRat on Apr 30 2021 03:26pm

I never said you're stupid, nor did I show any agitation, I think you're the one who should chill. If your guide is doing it as efficiently as possible, why are you disregarding my advices that make it more efficient? Just in that reply you say that offense is a better defense, why are you contradicting yourself? You never said in your guide what affix the 2/10 ammy is worth the -1 skill. The obvious answer is that there is not, if you're aware that pvm is easy then I don't know why you would remove offense for a few useless affix. I never implied that you suggested a voulge, I am telling you to make the insight/pride into a voulge because you don't seem aware that it is the most efficient way to keep golem alive. Read the post again. Sheesh!

+1 is simply not that big a deal when you're already at +20 in the summoning tree. You'll kill bosses 0.02 seconds faster, and your speed on trash will not change because an extra point in CE only boosts the radius very slightly, and not the damage. Beast has no life, mana, or resists, and using it fulltime means making up for those deficiencies with other slots. Your choice on the 2nd ring is ~45 life (bk) or a bunch of mana (soj), and +1 in either case - vs. a fcr ring with potentially str, life, mana, resists. But ok, if your circ, 2/20 ammy, and 1x fcr ring each cost 5k fg and you have max resi and a ton of life/mana, then go for the unique ring if you want. Most people won't be able to max out the resists without a 2nd fcr ring, or if they do it'll come at the expense of life / mana / str.

The golem doesn't really draw aggro unless he's made from something about 400 damage or higher, and even then it's not horrible. It's really bad with ECV insights, those golems had a death wish I get your point, but you don't have to min-max everything that much.

You're not losing much by having one SC be fhr/x instead of life/x. The spirit gives you 55 and it's so easy to get one more for the breakpoint, which does indeed help in PvM. PvM can get monotonous and you're not always paying full attention, or you can just get lazy, and you end up getting hit. Recovering from that more quickly is certainly a good thing. It's not good enough to warrant hitting the 86 breakpoint, no - but 56 absolutely yes.

U can juv in PvM, nn fhr

id max Amp over golem mastery too(even if ur using pride golem), 2-3 screens of amp is just juicy and saves time

This post was edited by bioshocker on Apr 30 2021 04:46pm