TPB’s Versatile 1.11b Summon-mancer Version 2.5

Introduction:

Necromancers have long been my favorite character class. And the best PVM (player verses monster) necromancer out there in my opinion would have to be the summoner. Why? Because they are hard to hit, harder yet to keep hitting, can take hell naked (which we will not be doing, but it’s just a fun fact), have high damage of all types (except magic), can curse to make enemies more venerable, are cheap (some people think necromancers are the worst class, LAUGH), and much more. This is my first guide, so don’t be too harsh, although some constructive criticism is welcomed. This was also my first character I’ve ever built, and I have remade him a lot of times since. I’ve tried with corpse explosion, multiple golems, with and without mages, and the following build is my favorite of all of them. Also included is a small PVP (player verses player) section, this is for the rare –or not so rare- occasion you’ll have to uberly pwn some poor unsuspecting player. After all it happens.

In this guide I tried to make things clear to new-players, such as when I used an abbreviation for the first time I usually include the unabbreviated version beside it in brackets, this kind of ruins the purpose of an abbreviation, which is to be short. But I believe this will help out anybody who happens to read my guide, and didn't know what "MF" (for example) stood for, and it will help them later on. After all what’s the purpose of a guide if not to help out others?

In this guide I tried to give you the most strait answer possible, avoiding making you choose between multiple options. This is because I believe the readers of a guide are clueless, and that’s why they are reading a guide. Giving the clueless options they don't have experience doesn't make sense now does it? Now don't take offense, I mean your clueless on how you should build your new summoner, not about life or anything like that.

For the following guide, I suggest you get to at least level 89. Anywhere between 80-89 will work fine, it’s just a suggestion.

Table of Contents:

• Chapter 1: Goals, Advantages, and Disadvantages
• Chapter 2: Stat placement, Skill placement, and Character Statistics
• Chapter 3: Gear Choices, and their Auras
• Chapter 4: Mercenary Gear, and Statistics
• Chapter 5: Skeleton Statistics
• Chapter 6: Skeleton Mage Statistics
• Chapter 7: Golem Statistics
• Chapter 8: Dueling Strategies
• Chapter 9: Ubering with your Necromancer
• Chapter 10: FAQ's
• Final Notes

Chapter 1: Goals, Advantages, and Disadvantages:

FCR (Fast Cast Rate %):

For those who are uninformed on FCR, it works like this: FCR effects your speed at casting spells (teleporting) when you reach a certain BP (breakpoint), which means you have enough FCR % added up to reach a certain speed. For example if I have 84% FCR all together from my gear, then I reach the 75% BP, and teleport exactly the same as if I have 75% FCR, or anything in between such as 83% FCR.

So if I had 124% FCR I would teleport at the same speed as if I had 75%, so that means I can replace some FCR gear with resistance, damage, or life gear. But if I get 125% FCR then I hit another breakpoint, and teleport faster than if I had 75-124% FCR.

Now that we know what FCR is and how it works, we can tally up how much we want. The BP’s are as follows:

Frame (BP) | FCR%

14-----------------9%
13-----------------30%
12-----------------48%
11-----------------75%
10-----------------125%

For those who don’t know what a frame is, it’s basically the amount of screenshots it takes for a spell to cast, so the lower frame, the faster you cast!

With this build we will reach 85% FCR, which means the 11th BP. If you do not like the 75% FCR build you can switch around some of the gear to include FCR, just make sure not to replace your Beast axe, or else you will not have fanaticism any longer, which is crucial. Some things you can do to increase your FCR are as follows:

• Replace rings with 10% FCR rings
• Wear a circlet in place of your helm, they can spawn with up to 20% FCR
• Wear a FCR amulet, they can spawn with up to 20% FCR

FHR (Faster Hit Recovery%):

The way FHR works is similar to FCR, there are BP's you can get to or go over to reap the rewards. What hit recovery is though, is how fast (in frames) you get back to your normal state after being hit with an attack that takes away alot of your health (1/6th up I believe), or any attack that hits you when you have a swirly sign above your characters head, it looks like this:

[img]http://upload.noob3.com/Jan08/fed412aa4c5057fff0b5b8f6e1b9252e.bmp[/img]

The breakpoints are as follows:

Frame (BP) | FHR%

13-----------------0%
12-----------------5%
11-----------------10%
10-----------------16%
9-----------------26%
8-----------------39%
7-----------------56%
6-----------------86%
5-----------------152%
4-----------------377%

With our gear, we achieve (exactly) 75% FHR, which sucks, because the BP is 11 FHR% away. How do we solve this problem? A 12 FHR summon GC will do the charm (pun indeed intended).

Resistances:

Now I won’t go into detail explaining what resistances are, but they are basically a way to reduce (or increase, if you have bad resistance) elemental damage done to you when you’re hit with a fire, lightning, cold, or poison attack.

With this build and with only torch / anni (20-20 torch used) you should have:

[img]http://upload.noob3.com/Jan08/132173052dc317d6e0a91e43ab9227b0.bmp[/img]

These aren't that great, how can you increase them?

• SC's (Small charms) can spawn with up to 5 all resistances, or 11% resistance of a single element
• Lower your FHR breakpoint from frame 6 to 7, by socketing you helm with an um rune instead of a shael rune
• Give me 10 FG (this is a joke and will not work, lol...)

MF% (Magic Find %):

I refuse to go into detail about this, if you don't know what MF is I suggest this guide. Also google is your friend.

With this build we get 200ish MF, including charms. Don't think it's enough?

• Replace your belt with Goldwrap
• Replace 1 or 2 rings with Nagelrings
• Replace your boots with Wartravs
• Replace your shield with an Ist'ed Lidless
• Add more MF SCs

Chapter 2: Stat placement, and Character Statistics:

Stat placement:

Basically, place enough points in Strength to wear your gear, and place the rest of the leftover points into vitality. Dexterity is not necessary because this is not a max block build, and you should have enough mana for your purposes without any points in energy.

Just be sure you can wear all your gear and I suggest getting a friend to kill you to see if you can get all your gear back after just one click on your body, with a full inventory. Also make sure you have enough strength and dexterity for your switch weapon/shield.

Skill placement:

Being a summoner you only really need to max a few skills, and you have alot of supporting skills that you pretty much HAVE to put points into. At any rate this build is pretty simple to understand.

Summoning Spells Tree:

• 20 - Raise Skeleton
• 20 - Skeleton Mastery
• 20 - Skeletal Mage
• 1 - All other summoning skills

Poison and Bone Spells:

• 20 - Corpse Explosion
• 1- Bone Armor, Teeth, Bone Spear, Bone Wall, Bone Prison, <optional>Bone Spirit</optional>

Curses:

• 1 - All curses with the exception of Attract and Confuse

Reasons for my Choices in Skills:

Summoning Skills:

The reason I chose to max Raise Skeleton and Skeleton Mastery are pretty obvious, they are our main summons. Now there is much controversy whether Skeletal Mages are a good choice in maxing, or are a 1 point skill. I chose to max these because, well I love these fellas. And there shouldn't be any doubt in the damage of them, they suck individually. But when there are 15 of them you can expect some good damage. Also the poison mage's poison does unbelievable small damage over 10 minutes or so, and when a monster such as a boss is poisoned they cannot heal. In other words if you are ubering and need to town for more summons or something the poison will give you a good 10 minutes to do whatever you need to do, and the ubers wont heal a bit .

Revive, Summon Resist, all the golems, and Golem Mastery are all one-point-wonders. Meaning your +skills should boost them up to the point where they are at the highest levels possible ( or near it) before diminishing returns.

Poison and Bone Spells:

The only skill you want to max here is Corpse Explosion, to increase the range of the skill to extreme amounts; basically you'll be killing monsters on the other side of walls with this skill.

PS: CE (corpse explosion) is 1/2 fire damage 1/2 physical damage. So you'll rarely if ever encounter a monster that’s immune to this attack, and your amp will increase the damage of this attack by 50% in most situations.

Bone Armor is to reduce the damage taken if a monster or player DOES manage to get to you, if your Bone Armor is down this is a sign to teleport away to a safe location. Bone Spear, Bone Spirit, Bone Wall, Bone Prison, and teeth are all 1 point wonders. I use Bone Prison and Bone Wall when dueling or ubering, and the Bone Spear and Bone Spirit are just to play around with, after all this is a game remember ^^.

Curses:

These are all one point wonders, every single one of them (With the exception of Confuse and Attract). And I do NOT want to see any more than 1 point in any of these. Your main curses are Amp (Amplify Damage) and Decrep (Decrepify). To put it simply Decrep is for bosses, and Amp is for regular monsters/champions/minor uniques. Terror is used later on, when ubering.

PS: Decrepify + your cold mages do a great thing to bosses, they basically freeze them down to the point where they can only use their melee attacks, and even those are slow beyond belief.

Dim Vision I mainly used in Baal runs to stun Black Souls (when they are Dim Vision’ed they cannot attack, they just have to sit there and take it =D), and Lower resist, Life Tap, and Iron Maiden are used in dueling/team dueling.

Chapter 3: Gear Choices, and their Auras

Gear:

Here I will list the perfect gear IMO (in my opinion) for PVA (player verses all, monster and players)

Helm:----------Shako, Shael'ed
Armor:---------Enigma Mage Plate
Weapon:------Beast Double Axe (Ethereal if possible)
Shield:---------Spirit Monarch, 35% FCR
Belt:-----------Arachnids Mesh
Boots:---------Marrowwalks
Gloves:--------Trang-ouls Claws
Ring #1:-------SOJ (Stone of Jordan)
Ring #2:-------SOJ
Amulet:--------Mara's Kaleidoscope

On switch:

Weapon:------CTA (Call to Arms) Flail (Ethereal if possible)
Shield:---------Spirit Monarch (Ethereal if possible)

Charms:

3 Summoning skiller GCs (grand charms)
1 Summoning skiller GC, 12% FHR
Highest torch possible
Highest Anni possible
5x7% MF scs (more if desired)

Reasons for my Choices in Gear:

Shako:

http://upload.noob3.com/Jan08/524894f9714bfc214fd203e272ab1fe8.JPG

This helm is an under appreciated godly helm, it has skills, life, mana, DR (Damage reduction), and MF! Shael it for your FHR BP.

Enigma:

http://upload.noob3.com/Jan08/66199d865a3d8ea2960e360349c76918.JPG

The only armor for this build, it sports skills, life, huge strength, DR, high defense and best of all, the skill teleport, which can speed you up TREMENDOUSLY and helps you keep track of your summons and mercenary.

Beast:

http://upload.noob3.com/Jan08/4c7641214393de714664cc662cb67e56.JPG

The main reason for this is the Fanaticism aura when equipped, it also has some strength. Why eth (Ethereal)? Because the stat requirement is lower when its eth, and you aren't gonna be bashing anything upside the head with your axe anytime soon. Although it does deal some good damage XD.

Spirit:

http://upload.noob3.com/Jan08/e7a96eaf379bfd1cf6d3da67012dd3b8.JPG

This is god in a shield, and cheap as sin! It has skills, FHR, FCR, resistance, life, and mana!

Arachnids Mesh:

http://upload.noob3.com/Jan08/efcd916acc00afc45fea80abad344fe8.JPG

The only legit belt with +1 to all skills, so you've got that, also there’s the FCR. Best belt you can get IMO.

Marrowwalk:

http://upload.noob3.com/Jan08/f4f387e26f91ac5fc4428050070e916f.JPG

These boots have +2 to skeleton mastery, which is a boost to be sure. Then there’s the strength, life, mana regeneration and enhanced defense.
At this point, I'd suggest eth treks if possible.

Trang-ouls Claws:

http://upload.noob3.com/Jan08/5e3a310df7e692d013b14d0d02948b15.JPG

You've got you're 2 to curses, which isn't really all that. Mainly you've got a choice between these and Magefists (for the FCR), I chose these for the cold resistance.

SOJ's:

http://upload.noob3.com/Jan08/6b011cb7c9c156063b36b50b29d6865c.JPG

With the only +1 to all skills rings in the game being these and BK's (Bul-Kathos), I chose these for the mana. You rarely if ever have to pot with all the mana + regeneration you've got. But if you’re a life freak who would prefer to pot mana for the extra 80 HP, get BK's.

Mara's:

http://upload.noob3.com/Jan08/e5783db95a470785d1a94aaac74eac7b.JPG

Skills, resistance, stats. Godly.

CTA:

This runeword is a great thing, it gives you BC (battle command) and BO (battle orders), which will greatly increase you and your minions HP. Make sure to cast BC before BO, so that your BO is that extra level higher.

Spirit:

It's only used for the +2 skills here, to add to your BO.

Auras, and their Purposes

Fanaticism:

This aura increases the damage, attack rating, and attack speed of our minions.

At level 9 (the level of the aura our Beast gives us) the stats for our minions are as follows:

DMG: 93%
ATK: 90%
ATK Speed: 29%

Concentration:

This aura increases the damage of our minions, and adds a chance for their attacks to be uninterruptible.

At level 20 (the level of the aura our Pride gives us) the stats for our minions are as follows:

DMG: 345%
% Uninterruptible: 20% (not based on level, fixed stat)

Thorns:

This aura deals more damage back to any enemy who attacks our minions with a melee attack. This is a way of gaining benefits from being attacked, or destroying a threatening attacker.

At level 21 (the level of the aura our Bramble gives us) the stats for our minions are as follows:

DMG Returned: 1050% (this is ALOT)

Might:

This aura just increases the damage of our minions.

At level 20 (The level of the aura our merc gives us, at level 87 +, with the +2 all skills from his helm) the stats for our minions are as follows:

DMG: 210%

Meditation:

This aura increases your mana regeneration by astounding amounts; it basically makes you have infinite mana (with exceptions, excessive casting, mana burn monsters, ect.)

At level 17 (the level of the aura our Iron Golem gives us) the stats for our necro are as follows:

Mana Regen %: 700%

Chapter 4: Mercenary Gear, and Statistics

This build is very mercenary dependant, without our merc's we'd be missing out on some of the best auras for our minions. This is also bothersome, as it always seems our merc is hit first when we tele on something, and I usually make sure to keep around 200k in the stash for reviving him. If you are having trouble with money you should get ALOT from Travincal runs, and always make sure to ID and sell the rares that drop that aren't worth keeping.

For this build we will be using an act 2, OFFENSIVE merc for the inherent might aura which will increase the damage of our minions alot. Some builds suggest an act2 merc with a faith bow, others a build with uses infinity rather than pride. I have tried both these builds and can comfirm that this is the best merc setup. It provides damage, a good chance to hit, and high resistance/defense/damage. The only downside is this merc is easily killed by IM, but it’s still worth it in my opinion, after all your only going to encounter IM in the chaosing.

Mercenary Gear:

Helm:-----------Andariels Visage, ral'ed (Ethereal if possible)
Armor:----------Bramble Dusk Shroud (Ethereal if possible)
Weapon:-------Pride Colossus Vouge (Ethereal if possible)

Reasons for my Choices in Merc Gear:

Andy's:

http://h1.ripway.com/tcmraven/Andys.JPG

A common merc helm, this thing has +2 skills which benefits our mercs might aura, also comes with high poison resistance (for Andariel MF'ing), and the LL (life leech) is helpful to keep your merc alive. Strength also included, helpful to get the merc's gear on earlier. The ral is to counter the -fire res that comes with Andy's.

Bramble:

http://h1.ripway.com/tcmraven/Bramble.JPG

This armor has defense, more stacked poison resistance, but most important the Thorns aura. Glitch the eth armor if you can, it will benefit your merc greatly.

Pride:

http://h1.ripway.com/tcmraven/Pride.JPG

This is another aura-giving runeword, this supplies us with the aura Concentration, this weapon also sports damage, 20% deadly strike (which means it has a 20% chance to do double damage), hit blinds and freezes target, lightning damage and vitality.

With the gear listed, and at the level I suggested at the beginning of the guide (89), your merc should have the following stats:



Not the greatest res/HP/def, but comes with some serious auras. Note: This is with a BO'ed merc.

Chapter 5: Skeleton Statistics

In this section I will talk about the damage of our main minion, the skeleton. You should have 15 of these with the gear I've suggested, which will be plenty. Now I've gathered some statistics from an online necromancer pet calculator (I can't give u the link, but google is again your friend), with the gear I suggest, with BC and BO cast, you should have skeletons with:

Life:---------------------------7718
Attack Rating:---------------8701
Minimum Damage:-----------1756
Maximum Damage:----------1766
Average Damage:-----------1761
Attack frames:---------------14
Hit Recovery:-----------------7
Resistance:-------------------66
# of Skeles:------------------15

Thats pretty damn good, with that amount of HP your skeletons will not die easily. This is already alot of damage per skele, but factoring in amp? It's alot more. Double in fact, well you have to remember the 50% physical resistance all hell monsters have but not to worry, amp reduces that to zero and then some, so by the end of it all hell monsters have -50% physical resistance.

Example:

I do 1000-1000 damage with my normal attack, no elemental or magic damage just physical. I attack an Amp'ed hell monster with my normal attack, it hits, since he has -50 physical resistance from Amp, he takes:

1000 * 1.5 = 1500 Damage.

So let’s say we have 1761 damage, much like our skeles. We teleport on an Amp'ed hell monster, with 1 skeleton.

1761 * 1.5
= 2641.5

Now lets teleport on an amp'ed hell monster with 15 skeletons, lets say 13 hit (because their attack rating is pretty high compared to a monsters defense).

(1761 * 1.5) * 13
=34339.5

That’s some good damage, assuming the monster doesn't have anymore than the usual 50% DR (physical resistance). Now let’s try a boss, say Mephisto, since he's such a popular target for MFing. This time we can only assume 1/2 of our skele's hit mephy, after all he has a 50% chance to block, 1/2 of 15 is not an even number so lets just round it to 8, because we're full of ourselves. Meph only has 20% physical resistance , however we won't be hitting him with amp, let’s try Decrep. Decrep will slow meph by 50%, and reduce his physical resistance by 50%. So we're dealing with a 50% blocking, -30 physical resistance. Now for the math:

(1761 * 1.3) * 8
=18314.4

That's still a heap load of damage, not including merc or mages.

Chapter 6: Skeleton Mage Statistics

Now to talk about the underdogs of the necro's summons, the skeletal mage. These can spawn (randomly) as a poison mage, a fire mage, a lightning mage, or a cold mage, and since we have 15 of these critters at our disposal, lets assume that 1/4th of them become each element, ick, more uneven numbers. It comes out to be 3.75, so let’s just assume for our own benefit that 3 mages become poison, 4 cold, 4 lightning, and that leaves 4 to become fire. That's at least what we'll use in our calculations.

But first for the stats of each mage:

Fire:
Life:---------------------------2070
Minimum Damage:-----------409
Maximum Damage:----------414
Average Damage:-----------411
Attack frames:---------------14
Hit Recovery:-----------------7
Resistance:-------------------66

Cold:
Life:---------------------------2070
Minimum Damage:-----------231
Maximum Damage:----------234
Average Damage:-----------232
Attack frames:---------------14
Hit Recovery:-----------------7
Resistance:-------------------66

Lightning:
Life:---------------------------2070
Minimum Damage:-----------61
Maximum Damage:----------644
Average Damage:-----------352
Attack frames:---------------14
Hit Recovery:-----------------7
Resistance:-------------------66

Poison:
Life:---------------------------2070
Minimum Damage:-----------34.47
Maximum Damage:----------34.47
Average Damage:-----------34.47 (over 620 seconds! AKA: 10.33 minutes
Attack frames:---------------14
Hit Recovery:-----------------7
Resistance:-------------------66

It appears the only thing that varies is the damage, now assume we are teleporting on a monster with 0% all resistance, using only these guys (ignoring the poison mages damage, which is pretty much none):

(Bare with me I don't know how to write this with mathematical perfection, but here's hoping you get what I'm saying)

(4 * 352) + (4 * 232) + (4 * 411)
1408 + 1292 + 1644
=4344

Not bad, considering these guys are pretty much there for physical immunes that amp cannot break. I won't spend much more time on these, as they are a minor part of our army. Still extremely helpful and worth the points IMO.

Continued...

This post was edited by thepwnbros on Jan 29 2008 07:52am

Continued!

Chapter 7: Golem Statistics

Now I haven't mentioned yet where I'm getting this meditation aura, simple answer: An iron golem made of insight.

FLAME FLAME LOLZ OMFG ROTFZ WHAT A NUB ROTF CLAY GOLEM FTW THAT GOLEMS DEAD TY TY EZPK.

Let me defend myself! With your mages and decrep bosses will already be at max slow, and let’s face it: mana is the worst. With your golem mastery and iron golem 1 point wonders, combined with BO you should have a golem with 6k hp, 66 all resistance, except lightning and poison, which he will be immune to! Killer! This IS enough to survive any hell monster or boss, assuming your not trying to solo the game with just your IG (iron golem). Another thing I should say is that iron golem may come with thorns, theoretically opening the armor slot of our merc to some other armor, but his aura isn't like the aura. In other words his aura affects only him and none of the rest of his party. The stats (again taken from my handy calculator) for rusty are as follows (BO'ed and with auras):

Life:---------------------------6241
Attack Rating:---------------7857
Minimum Damage:-----------92
Maximum Damage:----------255
Average Damage:-----------174
Attack frames:---------------12
Hit Recovery:-----------------0
Resistance:-------------------66/66/116/166

This doesn't include the damage of insight, which I will leave to you. But should you choose to make your IG out of an ethereal Colossus Vouge, your looking at alot more damage, I won't calculate this because it'd be annoying to add auras and such. I personally suggest you make your IG out of a cheap insight such as a poleaxe. This makes them less Susceptible to IM casting monsters which will BTW, own your skeles, merc, and IG. A poleaxe is also a lot less expensive. Another reason not to chaos run with your nec, also another reason mages pwn. If you plan on dueling your IG is bound to die, so I usually keep an extra insight in my stash for AFTER IM FINISHED dueling, after all what’s the point of having a backup if your gonna kill it again 2 seconds after?

If your running this build on NL ignore the IG golem thing, and go with clay golem, unless your rich enough to buy a lot of (ladder only) insights and not care if they 'poof' on you.

Chapter 8: Dueling Strategies

Now for the part of the guide I've been looking forward to, I've had an absolute blast with my summoner wrecking duel games. A summoner is easy to duel with, near immune dueler, the only drawback is the cost of your merc and the time spent summoning and re-summoning.

Also if you like to play nicely, very few will be happy of your presence in their duel games =/, you are 110% BM (bad mannered), and they will NK (naked kill) and BM you as much as possible and you can't blame them. If your still willing to duel with this char, then read and enjoy ^^.

General Strategies:

'Heavy' Revives will cause all your minions to stack into one small space ontop of you, which is extremely cool and makes it damn near impossible to hit with *most* attacks. Some of the more popular heavy vives are:

Venom Lords - River of Flame / Chaos Sanctuary - Immune to fire

Urdar - River of Flame, Durance of Hate lvl 3, Canyon of the Magi - Immune to cold

Wailing Beasts - Disused Fane, Ruined Temple, Forgotten Temple, Forgotten Reliquary, Disused Reliquary, Ruined Fan - Immune to Magic

Burning Souls - Throne of Destruction - Immune to lightning / poison

Storm Casters - River of Flame / Chaos Sanctuary - Immune to lightning

Also, immune monster's, when revived, will be even more immune to the elements thanks to summon resist. This is a huge advantage, making you basically immune to most elemental attacks players can muster.

Note on Wailing Beats: These are IMMUNE TO HAMMERS! This means that no matter how much a hammerdin spam’s hammers on you, you won't take any damage or even lose a summon for 3 minutes (time it takes for revives to timeout, die), so long as you stay stacked.

Note on Paladins and Amazons: Beware of desynch, this is a trick of these pests that allows them to appear in one spot when they are really in another, or makes their attacks appear where they aren't. Namelocks should take care of this if you chainlock (name lock teleport over and over again). Boneprison also limits their movement and stalls them long enough for you to tele-stomp, it also reveals their position.

Verses Specific Characters:

Paladins

Hammerdin

These guys are pretty easy so long as you stay stacked, amp them, and if they try to tele stomp you they’ve killed themselves. If they try to desynch you, namelock them with bone prison and tele-stomp, decrep helps to slow the charge. Repeat as long as necessary.

Smiter

I wouldn’t suggest tele-stomping these guys unless your prepared to tele off immediately after. They tend to be able to hit you regardless of your summons. Best way is to tele onto them and walk a distance, if they chase you and ignore your summons (like they should) tele stomp them before they can figure out what happened. Make sure to decrep, and IM them if they get BM. Best way to BM them is to IM, tele on, walk a distance and let them smite or be eaten up by your skeles.

V/T

Basically treat them like a smiter, if they FOH you it’s your chance to bone prison and tele-stomp. Decrep them if you get the chance.

FOH

Basically they will kill you if your not fast, you have to bone prison them and tele-stomp as fast as possible. Amp them if you get the chance, and make sure to be all over the place so they can’t get a lock. Get some souls if you can, they are great to help range guys like these.

Charger

If you want to GM them, be prepared to tele all over the place. Decrep them from the start to help kill their desynch, and then just start chainlocking. If you want to play BM, IM them and bone prison, when they are trapped in the prison tele stomp them, do this fast because they pack a punch and will most likely get out of the prison fast. If they manage to actually get to you you’ve pretty much got them with IM, they are screwed either way.

Auradin

Treat them like a charger, kill their desynch with decrep, bone prison and tele stomp. IM isn’t really much of a BM tactic here as they are mostly elemental damage, just be aware after a while they tend to actually eat your orb down to the ground (the good ones at least). Souls help to get in that extra hit or two.

Zeal

These guys pretty much cannot hit you, unless they get really lucky. Decrep them and tele stomp if you want to GM, BM is just as fun with IM though, up to you really. They have no chance as long as you stay stacked.

Sorceress

Fireball

These are one of the few builds that will beat you more often than not, your only chance is to stack/sorb, which is of course is BM. Amp them and the only thing I can suggest is to tele stomp them when they are between attacks. Make sure to get some souls, as these will be drawn out and souls will provide a nice range attack for you. Good luck =/.

Lightning

If you’ve got some light immune vives you’ll be fine, just tele stomp them, amp would be the only curse you’d want to use. If you want to play ‘GM’ on a summoner, just use your normal skeles and follow the same tactic. Beware though; these will eat your summons after a while! If they are smart they will start to nova you, in this case you have to let your mages play offensive and range them as you slowly run away, giving them time to follow, when they start to lightning you again tele-stomp!

Orb

The stupid ones will just try to orb you to death, this will not do anything for them and soon their ear will be in your stash. Get cold immunes if you really think you need them, beware though, the smart ones will frozen bolt you. This can hit you, so watch out and wait for them to start orbing again (which will eventually happen if you play defensive).

Blizzard

Make sure to always keep teleporting, stay in a blizzard for more than a fraction of a second and you’ll lose a few summons. If they start blizzarding themselves and sitting in it, tele-stomp them. You will lose a lot of summons but are pretty much guaranteed to kill them. The smart ones will shoot you with ice blast while sitting in their blizzards. These are more difficult, your best hope is to wait until they cast another blizzard on themselves and tele stomp them then.

Melee Sorc

Treat them like a zealer with a lot more punch, IM actually helps a bit here, after all they do have around 3-5k physical damage (if they are good). IM and light immunes should make these pretty much effective less verses you.

Amazon

Bowzon

These shouldn’t be able to hit you, I suggest decrep as it slows them down killing their desynch and also slowing their attack speed. There’s a trick where you bone prison them twice, and tele-stomp them, and none of their arrows can even hit you or your summons. This should be effective against them.

Farcast

BM meets BM, however, your BM is stronger . Vives some lightning immunes and bone prison these for the win, one tele stomp and they are done. They shouldn’t be able to hit you with lightning immunes, as they will take all the charged bolts. Treat legits like this too, minus the light immunes if you want to be that much less BM.

Druids

Elemental

These are FB sorc’s are what your have to worry about, ele’s are built to kill you. They have an attack that hits you and all your summons when stacked, they have summons to take the hit for them, they have high unabsorbable damage and high amounts of life. Your only hope would be to get souls and tele around letting them get rid of the summons, when they go to resummon try to tele on, and then off. Hopefully they will take some damage and repeat. Again, good luck.

ShapeShift

These shouldn’t be a problem, and are often considered the joke of the moor when they are dueling. Bone prison, IM, and telestomp fury druids. Poison ones are a bit tougher as they can hit you and your entire army with one attack. Best solution is to either let your mages eat at them from behind a well place bone wall, or tele stomp them. Either way you should win.

Barbarians

WhirlWind

It doesn’t really matter if they are BVC, BVA, or BVB, treat them all the same. The ones that can’t tele just bone prison and decrep them for the win, the BVC’s however you should IM and wait for them to come to you =D. Either way a nec is pretty much built to beat a barb, just like an ele is built to beat you.

Singer

They have a close-courter attack, it stuns and hurts after a while true, but they have to be close to your remember. Amp and tele-stomp these, they shouldn’t be much of a problem. If they get annoying you can get some souls to range them while you are stunned.

Assassin

Trap

These are annoying, the ones that sit in their traps are annoying because they don’t even try, the ones the move all over the place are annoying because they are harder to get XD. The only way to beat them is to tele stomp, and boneprison helps as most of them can’t tele. Decrep them to reduce their trap laying speed and get on them as fast as possible. The stupid ones will mindblast once and run, the smart ones will keep mindblasting. MB knocks your out of your summons, just glue your finger to the tele button and keep chainlocking them. Souls help because they are not only immune, but will do some nice amounts of damage.

Whirlwind

Treat the just like a defensive BVC, IM doesn’t do so much verses these guys, I suggest amp as they have high DR from fade and claw block, decrep would lower their attack speed but that won’t do so much if your not hurting them much. Again souls help here, to range them as they WW across you.

Necromancers

Bone

They simply cannot hit you without auto aim, and that’s just with bone spirit. They will certainly have 125 FCR and be teleporting all over the place. They will run all over the moor and back trying so hard just to kill one or two of your summons, keep chainlocking them and try to avoid running out of your summons.

Poison (the good ones)

These are better than most people think, they will play the defensive and eventually your summons will get eaten up. Amp them whenever possible and jump right onto their backs, you don’t want them to get out! Souls are invaluable here.

Summoner

This is usually a confusing and laggy battle, IM them and make sure to stay stacked. If they IM you lifetap them. If they EVER walk away from their summons tele stomp them immediately and the duel is over. Physical immunes help here, as do souls. Your merc will die fast, and if you plan on dueling the summoner again after don’t revive him.

Chapter 9: Ubering with your Necromancer:

Some say it cannot be done, some say it can. I would like to point out I can and have ubering with my build. As have others, here’s an example of a necromancer solo’ing tristram (note: this isn’t me, I know this necro’s build and am willing to supply it to anybody who;s interested, just PM me):

http://youtube.com/watch?v=bNQ2fCngwtM

This necromancer is extremely skilled, and you can tell he’s done it a lot of times. Here is a simple short guide on how to get to uber tristram with our necromancer:

Keys

The easiest but more repetitive part of ubering, there are 3 keys, the key of destruction, key of hate, and key of terror. Only one monster in the game can drop each key, those monsters are:

Key of Destruction----Nihlathak
Key of Hate------------The Summoner (ironic, eh?)
Key of Terror----------The Countess

Nihlathak is by far the hardest, he has a 1/12 chance of dropping a D key, I suggest using a natures peace ring to help keep him from corpse exploding you. It kills you and your minions very fast. Rather than clearing the area just aim for him as he is by far the most dangerous.

The summoner is located in the arcane sanctuary, and is the easiest and fastest to kill in my opinion. He drops keys at a 1/11 rate, and isn’t really all that dangerous.

The countess drops keys at a 1/14 rate, she is the most common key target as she is easy to kill, but you can’t uber with just tkeys. She’s located in the forgotten tower in the black marsh, and is very easy to kill. She can also drop runes which are nice.

Now for the rest of this uber section I suggest you revive Urdars, as they have crushing blow. Crushing blow will basically take away 1/10th of the uber boss’ current HP away instantly. And they have A LOT of HP. Urdars can be found at the river of flame, durance of hate, or even the frigid highlands. They have huge clubs, just so you know which ones I’m talking about .

Keep key hunting until you have 3 of each key; remember that each key holder only drops one type of key! Once you have all 3 keysets, get at least 12 full juvs and get ready for a fight!

Organs

Go to act5, and open up your cube, put one of each key in the cube and transmute. A red portal should open leading to one of these three places:

Matrons Den
Furnace of Pain
Forgotten Sands

Open all 3 in one game to insure you get all 3 organs, but don’t open them ontop of each other or else you won’t be able to get in one of them! Each of these portals leads to a different and dangerous place, with a powerful and dangerous boss. The matrons den leads to the strongest boss, Lilith. She has an extremely strong poison attack and will take you down to 1 hp with one hit! I suggest you tele-stomp her, walk a distance, decrep, and bone prison her. She should be helpless as your summons kill her, as after they do she will give you Diablo’s Horn.

For the furnace of pain, you have to tele around until you find uber Izual. The uber form of him isn’t much more threatening to your summoner as the normal version. Decrep him, tele stomp him, and bone prison your summons in with him. Make sure your clear of all surrounding monsters though, they get annoying. When you kill him he will give you Mephisto’s Brain, ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

The Forgotten Sands is also easy, in here is Uber Duriel. He is usually right by the port so get ready to fight as soon as you enter. Decrep him, tele-stomp and bone prison him in with your summons. This might take longer because of his holy freeze aura, which will slow down your summons. But he is also really slow from your mages + decrep. He will give you Baal’s Eye.

Tristram

Now comes the final part, this is where you earn your torch! Full your belt with full juvs and transmute all the organs, boom! Uber Tristram! Summon as many urdars as possible and enter, there are three uber bosses in here. The most dangerous by far is Mephisto, then Diablo, then at last Baal (opposite order they appear in the game, weird eh?). Try to separate them like the nec in the video did, then decrep them, tele stomp and walk away. As your summons kill them you will notice that they will spawn monsters on you! Use terror on these. After you repeat what the nice man in the video did you’ve earned yourself a hellfire torch! Just remember that you can’t hold two at once.

Chapter 10: FAQ's:

What do my Summons inherit from me?

They only get your auras, MF, and GF (gold find). Crushing blow deadly strike ect. Does not carry onto them.

How is my damage to other players calculated?

Unlike you, your summons and merc's damage is only reduced by 1/2.

What curses should I use and where?

This question is so over-asked and under-answered. It's simple:

Amp: Normal monsters including champions/minor uniques
Decrep: Act bosses and melee players.
Dim Vision: Burning Souls

How do I get that first body??

Theres a few ways to do this:

• Go through the Anya portal in Act 5 and use the dead bodies to summoner before they revive. (Cannot do if you grabbed the Halls of Pain WP and killed Nith for the quest)
• Go outside of town in Act 5, there will be a few bodies around.
• Go to the cold plains, find a ground of monsters and let your golem/merc kill. (My favorite)

I play on non-ladder, why shouldn't I use the insight IG?

Insight is a ladder-only runeword, meaning there is a set amount of insights left on non-ladder and that cannot increase even 1 insight until the next reset. This means insights become expensive, and bothersome to buy more.

I've got a scab that I keep picking at, and that doesn't help at all and it's been there for months how do I get rid of it?

Put half a cup of salt into a cup of rubbing alcohol and dissolve it, pick the scab and apply.

My girlfriend dumped me, what should I do?

Go out with her best friend.

I've heard summoning time takes too long, and increases my run time by too much. Is this true??

It only takes around 30 seconds to summon, get over it.

Final Notes:

And that's the end of my guide! I hope you've enjoyed it, if you found any mistakes (which you most likely have) free free to drop me a PM. If any images get broken please pm me so I can upload them again.

Please refrain from spamming this topic, wasted 30 fg reposting.[/QUOTE]

from what i read so far pretty gg but i am also long time necro fan (esp summoner) and id like to offer 2 things

1 use hoto

2 faith merc

^i do this cause i hate my merc freezing everything and u really dont need conc and might and i dont like im...just something i found usefull GG guide tho

9/10

ok...lol

i never thought summoners were efficient cus u'd have to keep summoning skellys and mages if they die...

u have a duel video on ur necro? or u can show me ur duel skills in game

This post was edited by drewtx84 on Jan 29 2008 08:03am

Well it's really a matter of opinion not necessity, I'm beginning to agree tho...



Well summoners are fun, which is really why people sometimes choose to use them over hdins and other cookie cutters. I unfortunately don't have a video, and retired D2 about 2 months back, just thought I would make a guide now that I'm not playing to help the new generation.

This post was edited by thepwnbros on Jan 29 2008 08:07am

9/10 i think it's a pretty awsome guide tbh.

tpb*

And thanks!

nice job...

overlords nec rocks

Who's overlord?

And thanks

I looked over your guide, got to the part about mercenarys, go with Act 1 Merc with Faith Runeword. Fanaticism + Skeletons = Godly Damage.



Actually, knives get better results.

This post was edited by Wrongbow on Jan 29 2008 08:35am