I just started my first Summon Necro and I'm really enjoying it. Didn't know where to allocate points but this video helped a lot. Thanks for taking the time and really explain in detail and options available. Much appreciated.
It's a really fun build! I like it when I'm grouping with people so I can contribute without trying too hard lol, everyone loves curses and the Bone Brothers
Dun care what llama says. Some mastery is well worth speccing early on. Rraise gives 7% while mastery gives fixed 2 damage that stacks with the boost. So raiselv2-mastery-raiselv3-masterlv2 or 3.
Doing this as my starter. My machine way back in the day just couldn't handle all the skelly's on the screen and now it's going to at a far higher resolution. Can't wait.
Not only that, a lot of people hated summoners regardless of if their pc could handle it, because it would kill the internet connection for everyone lol. Good 'ol dial-up days!
I played in a Diablo II game with 8 summon necros before LOD. Everyone had at least 20 Skeletons out but the game stopped drawing any creatures when at least 3 necros were on screen. Lol
@@celphalonred1999 2007? Are you on crack? Sacred came out about that time , go look at those graphics compared to d2r and them come back here to delete your dumbass comment
I'm doing this build at work because at any moment I can be called for an emergency, so I can let the game run idle, and the summons will protect me :)
a year old and still such a good guide i go to it every time I swap back to summoner from a pvp build. Great tutorial.... so well done you'd think sweet phil did it
I'd defo go for attract. It pulls mobs from pretty far away and allows you to stack up a huge pack for corpse explosion. Must have IMO. Dim Vision is also really handy during leveling at least. Basically just turns ranged mobs off.
great video like always! but what blew my mind was when you dropped the Gear in the Merc's Icon to auto equip them. 15 years later still learning new things cause of you =)
For merc gear (lategame) you want to get an infinity, because it lowers the defensive rating of enemies and makes your skellies hit more often. You can Ue iron golem on an insight weapon for mana sustatin or on a Pride if you are really rich. :D
@@Divinevert Not only that, also for your corpse explosion, and also improves the damage of your skelly mages by a ton which make those 20 points in clay golem just a waste as an insight golem is just superior in every possible way. When he said "Even infinity is not the worst thing honestly for this mercenary", was just painful to hear as it is by far the best choice. Then again, he suggested Pride, which is the number one runeword to avoid as your hireling will shatter everything just by looking at it while doing crap damage himself and you'll have no more corpse explosion to kill entire rooms in 3 seconds.
@@Patrick_The_Pure I am trying this approach but I have been struggling to keep my insight iron golem alive, while also missing the "slow" of clay golem, which I replaced by decrepify instead of amp damage. It's more fun, but more challenging. I am not sure it is all worth it all for mana regen as I can simply keep using mana potions instead
New player love the content so far. A little piece of advise? when your showing gear, make sure you hover on it for a few seconds. Trying to stop the video exactly when you glance at piece of armor for .3 seconds is kind of hard (like you did with the shako on here)
I actually think he’s self conscious about doing that because sometimes people give streamers crap for “showing off” the rolls they have on that gear. All their gear have maxed out rolls (aka affixes). They expect you to know what the name they throw out there is. I recommend just writing down the name of the item he mentions, then googling how to get/make it. People give llama crap all the time for “showing off” when he’s really just looking for stuff in but one of his completely decked out stashes.
I’ve been viewing a lot of your guides recently to build the hype, but these are so clear and concise, especially the skills. Subbed as I’ll definitely be consulting these for pretty much every class. Thanks!
Absolutely, rune words are often slept on for necromancer shields for some reason. On a summoner, since you want to stack magic find primarily, rhyme is the best option to just throw on the first decent 2os head you find considering cbf and resistances and it will easily carry you until you have a raven frost ring and can afford to replace that shield.
10:04 Question for comment section: Mr Llama is paging through his inventory and on 'Shared Page 8' there are dusts that he passes really quickly. What are those multi-colored piles of dust? I've never seen them before. Edit: Nevermind. I figured it out once I looked up what was at 15:45, the Token of Absolution. I see that those 'dusts' are Essences used to make the Token.
My bigger question is how the hell he has like 60+ shared inventory pages! Maybe I’m missing something but I’m stuck with only 3 and it’s filling up fast.
@@mRudie1318 in this video he's using a mod for Diablo 2 before it was remastered. I'm not in a position right now to look up the name of the mod but it is a mod.
Fishymancer aka Summon Necro was the first build I got anywhere with back in the early days of D2. Back then there was precious little advice for n00bs anywhere close to Llama level. Really appreciate all these excellent guides!
I'm having so much fun playing summon necromancer, back in the day my PC would lag so hard that it literally wasn't possible to do do, so far I have 4 characters in hell since reserected has come out, hammerdin, light/orb sorc, javzon and my summoner, he's by far the strongest budget build overall, I pretty much only play solo self found and he destroys everything so much faster than all my other characters
It would be nice at the end of the guide to see a ~1min gameplay with the suggested budgeted gear. Most people won’t be maxing out bnet chars any time soon. Thanks!
I think we all agree: 20 pts each Raise Skele and Skele Mas. The great thing is from there it's whatever flavor you want. If you have the teleport staff on switch and are very adept, you could substitute Golem Mas for Clay and occasionally raise an Iron Golem out of fun finds, being careful to move him away if something awful starts to happen. Amp is a one-point wonder, critical for PI.
this is the primary fishymancer build. you could go pure skely army and max all skely. his man gripe is that skely mage suck but ya you could put like ten into ce and then put more points into other things
what a lot of people do is create runwords and turn iron golem into that runeword good for ones like beast etc that have auras. could make one from grief etc and might be pretty strong. as long as they fix the despawn issue
Amp is 1pt wonder after you have +skills. It's useful early on to have more since it helps CE hit harder. Like you said though... 20 in the two skel skills, 1pt wonders everywhere, then do what you want. It'll still perform well.
I like the mages, i feel like they would do more passive damage during my playtime than ill ever get out of corpse explosion that i wont use because i play summoner necro to make the gameplay as easy as possible. STILL i would argue they do more damage and are more useful from the get go than corpse explosion ever will as an alternative accoutrement to the main build.
@@paddington1670 so here the deal. Ce is the main dmg for mobs and thrn your army can kill bosses but mages are weaker because of immunities but you don't have to play fishymancer if you don't want to. This is primarily a fishymancer build that he showcase
Infinity is BIS on a summon merc. The conviction -def improves skeleton dps more than anything else, even Pride. Conviction also increases corpse explosion damage. What do you have in mind that's better than infinity?
by the way, if you want to be really cheeky with summons, gather 2 sets of gear and charms; one that that is purely dps-oriented, and one that ONLY focuses on summon/necro skills+ then head to a skill shrine, grab it, pop your golem and skeletons. then switch back to your dps gear. your summons will remain at max power level until they die despite switching gear and the skill shrine fading. this way you can have skellies that are super strong as well as pump damage yourself with either psn nova or whatever you prefer. my current build has 12 skelly warriors when i switch to my dps gear (16 in summon gear + skill shrine) with 42 raise skelly, 22 skelly mage, 44 skelly mastery, 23 summon resist and 19 golem (all of them) with 38 golem mastery. it fookin slaps mates. each skelly warrior does 682-686 damage per hit, has 1213 health, 1295 attack rating and defense and that's before any auras are applied.... oh, and i don't even have my torch on yet. Oh sidenote: don't forget to get a spineripper (you're gonna need one for Dclone anyway) and a "peace" runeword, so you can summon a lvl 15 valkyrie on top of your army, it ain't much but its something, and if nothing else she can act as a tank/debuffer, depending on the gear she spawns with... for example; frost nova when struck/on strike, which when combined with decrepify is super strong vs large groups of high damage enemies. alternatively, if you got a ton of +skills, you can get a "Harmony" runeword and summon a higher level valkyrie +17 all skills is recommended as that is the point where valkyrie passes a certain breakpoint damage-wise (upgrades her Lance to Pike), but the higher the better, obviously. this is a hard ask though, since you'll be limited by the items with +all skills available to you, which means to achieve this, your Harmony MUST roll the maximum valkyrie summon (lvl 6) if you plan to reach lvl 17 valkyrie or above.
Thanks for this video. Remembering from back in the day I recall crushing up until baal. Then I go in there and in like one hit he nukes my minions. Ofc, I wasn't doing the build right! I'm excited to do the build right!
Great guide. Back in my days of playing old Diablo 2, I was basically super rich, super hardcore which getting to lvl 99 did took awhile and now can't be super hardcore player now, time has chsnged :P Which I mostly played summoner and hammerdins which seems most OP class out there. SORC was good but hell I'd quiet a problem for them.
how can you equip spirit shield with only adding strength points up to 45-55 as you mentioned in the video? do you eventually add to 155 pts for the spirit shield?
A Mageplate Enigma, combined with a torch doesn't need any added strength and the Enigma gives strength. (The higher the lvl the char, the more str enigma gives)
No mention of Homonuculus (interchangeable BiS with Spirit, depending on needs) and didn't explain reason behind no skelli mages, for those who don't know which is that they get in the way of regular skellies who do more damage, thus impacting DPS.
I've read somewhere that an Act 1 rogue with Faith's Fanaticism is a great build for Summon Necros, and some argue that Infinity is arguably BIS for Act 2 due to the aura giving physical resistance reduction on mobs. what are your thoughts ?
This video just reminds me of how much i've forgotten between then and now. I don't remember crap about this game lol. I'm going to save this tut for later and find a newb one for now haha
This will my comfy build. I wont even put points into corpse explosion, just let summons do all the work. No need for insane late game gear. This build works well with average items and late game stuff will be cheap if prices drop. :D
Literally a Summon Druid on steroids! Question, whenever adding points to Raise Skeleton, do I have to re-summon my minions for the new stats ect or is it automatically applied?
They will have to be resummoned for the new points to apply. The same thing applies when you find a skill shrine. Your skeletons need to be resummoned when you get a skill shrine but they will keep the plus levels after the shrine wears off until they die or resummoned
Just wanted to say how important having an Insight Act 2 Offensive Merc is for this build. You will be OOM (out of mana) after a few summons/CE/etc. without it. You want a really good base for it that allows the merc to do 500+ damage with Insight, however just know that an Eth 4 OS CV requires 200 str for the merc which he won't have until level 87+. So just be mindful of the str requirements on the merc with what gear you give him.
I generally have two to three versions of insight rolling for low, mid and high level characters. Especially because it takes a while to find the proper CV base.
I tried on my own without following a build and did pretty well until Diablo at around level 30. His spells would just nuke my skeletal mages and the clay golem couldn't do much. I had quit using regular skeletons and just had a lot of points into clay golem which made him really tanky. May have to use the developer code command line re-spec and try something like this.
Thank you so much for this! Unfortunately for me I started with Diablo 3 so these videos definitely help me better understand what to do and expect throughout
I made a summon necro, but truly my roadblock monster(s) are those with physical immunity. Even with decreptify it won't take away the immunity on all of them, mainly just the basic ghosts and what not. The special ones are a pain to kill if you don't have corpses laying around
Can you make a guide for where melee peeps should grind for gear? Some of us just want to play a class we like and not do the meta. I never play caster classes in my ARPGs.
Just craft pairs of blood gloves and belts as you level. That will give you crushing blow and open wounds. After that just kill them with whatever sticks you pick up lol. I recommend Strength (Amn + Tir) Steel (Tir + El)/Malice (Ith + El + Eth) early on.
yep make malice early on and buy / keep anything with 5 to replenish life on it to counter act the 5 life drain on malice, make malice in a flail at start of game aswel. if making a barb be aware that dual wielding 2 malice is pointless ( instead you go with 1 flail with 3 tal runes, giving poison damage and 1 malice giving open wounds ) melee builds are about cheesing the game with crushing blow mod, in NM you wana make a black runeword - can only be made in maces, gives 40 % crushing blow. i play a sorceress mainly but experimented with solo gearing a frenzy barb and its logistically bad to try gearing up as a melee character first. because to find the best weapon base ( tyrant club with 0 sockets or with 3 sockets ) for 2 black runewords, can only be found in nightmare act 5 and most reliably found in worldstone levels and baals level, but Its only actually good for slicing everything like butter in nightmare from act 1 to act 5, not THAT great in hell because in hell everything has 50 % physical damage reduction and alot more health ! its like how sigons set isnt found right at the start of the game but is great for melee characters starting out...melee just requires OP gear only found in later parts of the game, you will also get this idea from lamas guide on leveling a barbarian, he sais it gets tough to go the damage route so he also goes over the warcry singer support barb build. and to answer your question of best place to find stuff, type silospen into google its a diablo 2 drop calculator...and you really do need a sorceress to farm gear...and you also really need to make a smiter to farm torches solo....its just how the game is for optimal solo play...i imagine if you try grinding through everything as a poorly geared melee you will get burn out ! and think the game is shit and quit...since a sorceress with teleport can get there and kill the boss like 10 times faster than you.
I built a summoning necro on this strategy. My gear was leoric, shako, humunc with um, some nice light and fire resis gloves, string of ears, upped tearhaunch boots for resis, and resis rings and ammy. Budget build and I could do Ubers with my buddy who had budget smiter. We play hardcore but my necro was a tank
Thank you for posting a Necro summon guide I've been checking YT daily for new Guides and Character stuff should be Live on Console early Saturday morning at 1am I'll start a Bone necromancer 1st then a Hamerdin 2nd
Any reason not to use heads instead of shields? I currently have a Hellspawn Skull with +3 summoning skills and I don't really need to block since I hide behind my skellies.
Hey Mr. LlamSC, I wondered if it is viable to use Iron Golem instead of Clay Golem as an endgame build for solo Ubers. If you make the Iron Golem out of a powerful weapon, like a runeword or a unique item with great stats, is it worth it? If so, how would you put the skill points? Would you put some skill points in Fire Golem for extra damage?
It's a shame that you explain everything as if I was already 69420 hours into the game, cause i ended up understanding like 40% of this. The whole Gearing part completely flew over my head lmao
Yea agreed stats and talents were talked about nice but some of the words my man said when talking about gear blew my mind I’ve been spending the last 2 hours with the homie looking up how runes work got it down a lil but some more info on them would be nice
@@raymondlaine9617 that’s crap cause I’m in act 3 of nightmare and I stoll have the most vague of an idea and all the knowledge I have is from videos and sites the game doesn’t tell u shit
Additional tips While magic finding, do pindle first You can make an army instantly with all the free corpses Mana a iron golem out if insight or pride for the extra aura
Re leveling a Summoner Necro. One of the most important skills is Skeleton Mastery. Put enough skills to get 3 skeletons in Raise Skeleton. Then put points into Skeketon Mastery. Sturdy Skeletons are way better than constantly replacing tissue paper skeletons. When I hit Andariel, I had 9 in Skeleton Mastery and 7 in Raise Skeleton including the pluses from equipment. I had to replace the skeletons once. The curse I used on her was Amp Damage. 1 point in Clay Golem and Golem Mastery. I farmed Andariel for equipment since I didn’t have the interest in rushing the game. Lots of points in Skeleton Mastery means more slack for the player.
@@caliking6717 You start in the Rogue camp. Portal to Cold Plains to fill up on skeletons. Buy a couple of antidote potions. One for you, one for your merc. Portal to Catacombs 2. Travel as fast as you can down to Catacombs 4. Avoid opening chests and fights. Clear rooms 1 and 2. Set a safety TP in room 1. Open the door to room 3. Head for the Shaman on the right. Kill him. Trigger Andariel. Amp damage her. Lure her into room 2. The fresh bodies will provide replacement skellies and also Corpse Explosion fodder. She goes down quick.
I also feel you need insight somewhere to not have to chug mana pots. So you can wear an insight and iron golem a pride. Pride freezes enemies which makes them pop and have no corpse to use for summon/CE. But use iron in a golem and get the aura and less wasted bodies.
You usually aren't doing much while waiting for your party members or your summons to kill the first monster for CE, so you have time to cast Amp Damage a couple of times.
Disagree heavily with llama and these guys. A few extra points in amp make for much harder hitting CEs. You can spec out of it later, but early on you'll want the extra range on it to couple with CE.
@@sodapopinski8064 how early would you say you'd put points in Amp and CE? You have to consider that putting points in Amp means less points in Raise Skeleton, Mastery, or CE. Your CEs hit hard regardless if you put 1 or 20 points in Amp Damage. Except for Lower Resist, and I think Iron Maiden, extra points in curses only increase duration and/or radius. SP: If in Normal, your skeletons are the primary source of damage - they own stuff regardless if you use Amp or not. CE consumes a bunch of mana, especially without Insight, so it isn't that useful then. In Hell you should have some +skills to at least give it a decent radius from stuff like Lore. Skellies would probably start falling off mid-late Nightmare, so that's the only logical place to add points in Amp. But then again the Amp AoE isn't that useful if you don't have the CE radius to back it up (i.e. you need to put points on both Amp and CE to make the most of your investment in Amp). MP: Extra points in Amp seems useful only when you're heavily playing in a party, and in a meat shield/clean up role (taking points off of Mastery). Though in a party setup your CE doesn't hit as hard as it would in SP.
I'm a little torn about where to put my points after maxing out skeleton skills and corpse explosion (and one point skills). I've seen some builds that max out revive, which seems like an excessive number of revives, but I could be wrong. I've seen other builds that max out amplify damage, which just increases the radius and not the effect. I've seen some with investment into bone wall/prison, which is interesting, but doesn't really up the damage. And here you put a bunch into clay golem, which is also interesting and useful, but also not helping with damage. I guess what I'm saying is that there doesn't seem to be some home run skill to max out after skeleton skills and corpse explosion, just helper skills, and a need for better gear. I'd love to hear any arguments for what I should go with next skill wise.
You are right, after maxing Skeleton, skeleton mastery and corpse explosion your damage skills are basically done. There's not one other skill that really puts the build over the top after the base skills are maxed. You actually have a lot of leeway with where to put the remaining skills, though nothing really pops as a big damage boost. Personally, I would recommend the extra skills you have to spread out a little and upgrade some of your base support skills based on need. I like to get Revive to where I can summon 9-10. I increase my best curses, specifically Amp Damage until it has a radius that I like. Casting once or twice to cover the screen and curse off screen enemies helps a lot and frees you up since you are not casting a smaller area Amp Damage as much. Adding a few points into Summon Mastery if your summons get killed in Act 4-5 a lot from AoE magic attacks. You can also pump up Golem Mastery to increase the life of all golems instead of leveling once specific one. If you start making Iron Golems out of decent items then leveling that skill can help but it's not helpful until you have a steady supply of items for the golem. You can put 1 point into all curses so that you can do things like cast Lower Resist if playing with sorcs. You can also put some more points on your other favorite curses like Decrepify for bosses. I wouldn't recommend adding points to Bone Wall, prison, bone spear etc. as you don't have enough skills to max bone spear and a synergy and the bone prison/walls just block your army.
@@davideo7286 Thanks for the in depth reply, that helps a lot! I already bumped up revive, so maybe I'll bump up amp damage and golem mastery next. I still have 2 re-specs, so I can always use one to go all in on golems later if I want. One skill that I hadn't really considered before is skeletal mage, because they don't do much damage. However, I started creating a few in act 3 hell to help with physical immune monsters, and they actually helped quite a bit with those. Not sure if that will be the case in acts 4 and 5, but I might consider it for that specific case.
Infinity is straight up the best merc weapon for a summoner. High dmg, crushing blow and most importantly the conviction aura reduces targets defense by 83% so that your skellies can actually hit things. It also improves corpse explosion dmg.
@@raymondabrenica8471 clay golem is for distraction and slow only. No golems really do damage unless you have a buffed-up and well crafted iron golem. Your skeletons and merc bring the dps, golems are there purely to tank.
Its best in slot for summon nec.. i don't know why he said there's better options, ur main source of dmg is CE.. u only need merc and summons for the first kill, with enigma u tele stomp the easier targets just to get the first kill and explode everything else
I am confused about pride runeword on merch. It freezes targets, therefore corpses shatter. It simply makes corpse explosion useless. I feel like obedience or infinity suits merc better.
Fishy-mancer is my hands down favorite build. The only downside was having to babysit the iron golem so I just have my merc hold the infinity. 400 mf and can magic find literally any area of the game easily.
So, I have two ways that I build summon necros. Physical: - Skeleton Warriors - Revives - Clay Golem - Decrepify Elemental: - Skeleton Warriors - Skeleton Mages - Fire Golem - Lower Resist. Edit: Some overlooked boots for Summon Necros are Marrowalks. WE LIKE THE SKILLS.
Cheers Dude! Nice Vid! I figured out that the Mercenary switches his Aura depending on which difficulty you play. So I couldn't use might in Hell difficulty. What would you recommend otherwise?
If you hire him from Nightmare then he will keep his might aura throughout Hell. It's not about which difficulty you're currently on, it's about which you hired him from.
@@Forty2de that doesn't seem to be accurate - I seem to have the same issue. Hired Might merc on Nightmare >>> it got switched to Blessed Aim as soon as I go back to Hell. Is that a bug or supposed to be like that?
@@RukashTheRealOne yea I found out it's just a bug that came with the D2R. A good way to know what aura is being used is the animation bellow the merc/your character
did i miss an explanation of why revive over mages? when i last played it was 1.12 and mages felt good as a way to get some slows on targets without needing to curse.
They just do less dmg and lower health plus the many immunities and randomness of the type of mages. Revives are good because they are a undead version of what you revived but unfortunately they don't last. This is just the optimal build if you are also maxing ce. You could max all 3 and use like an infinity to help your mages. But this is like if you are only going to like 68. You could pour the other 20 into mages at the end
Summoner always been my favorite toon a bit time consuming farming till you get enigma,but I also have blizz sorc,,Necro does ,chaos,travincal,cows,sorc does Andy,memphisto,countess,summoner and fire sorc does nithiliak.
I did not know whether to play hammerdin or summon necromancer, now i made my choice. Mostly because im so lazy, like you said, you can beat all monsters up without doing anything :D
Great video llama! But I'm still wondering if plus skills is valuable on summon necro, you seemed very conflicted in the gear guide. Hope you could clear that up in the future!
i havent played this build. ive done every pvp pnb version. and more of a windy/lightS/hdin for pvm. but interesting how every guide has been so different from one another for this summoner build and even on jsp the guide and comments I see are different. I guess we will see which guide is right when I reach a full build. I will come back and shame whose guides are wrong. I mean really all you have to do is play each build for 5 minutes in a typical hell run to see which ones were wrong
Yeah I agree I remember when I first saw the D2 trailers and screenshots (remember screenshots? Lmao). I assumed that you could control the skeletons like an rts. I was a huge StarCraft player and thought that D2 was simply some expansion to Warcraft or something. Didn’t turn out that way but I still loved it.
What are your thoughts of using an Act 2 Might w/Bramble (Thorns Aura) & a Fire Golem (priority target from boss). This would be for a Summon/MF build. Am learning, all information is highly appreciated!
I'm new and trying to figure out items. Why are you browsing through them so fast that I can't see them? I have no idea what the left wing is because you spent less than a second highlighting it. =/
I do have some massive disagreements on the skill point allocation, the merc equipment and the golem used. -Clay golem and revive are wasted points, A lot of extra +skills while having no proper mana regen means it is a pain to get all those revives up and running while also having to deal with corpse explosion. I usually have a max of 10 before they already die as the units are not worth it to revive. For clay golem, it's good but in the long run it doesn't do a whole lot, against regular enemies you don't seem to need it at all, it's most useful against bosses but even then, a cold blast and decrepify is more than enough slow... actually just decrepify is more than enough. I'd say put them in skelly mages, they are not as strong but with plenty of skill levels they survive plenty of attacks and deal okay damage without having the need to constantly make more like revive. -For what Golem to use, the Iron Golem made with an insight runeword. It doesn't matter what kind of poleaxe, a crappy one is good enough, you don't have him for the damage, but that sweet aura he makes for you so you can use corpse explosion all day every day. But what if he dies someone asks?, make a new one, my necro is lvl 92 right now, thing died twice, in that time i found hundreds of those runes, i literally throw them away, that's how common they are. -Merc?, get Infinity on him, that aura reduces resistances for your skelly mages and corpse explosion and also lowers defense so everything else hits. Why not pride?, it makes your merc shatter everything just by looking at it. It also lacks damage itself, the concentration combined with Might and Fanaticism doesn't feel like it adds to much anymore. Why not make your iron golem with pride?, same shattering problem, you want those corpses for corpse explosion, that is your main form of damage, use that. So why use mages who give cold damage?, regular cold damage has a small chance of shattering, it doesn't have the same properties as freezing opponents does. For the helm, get Guillaume's Face, that 35% crushing blow combined with the 40% on Infinity makes bosses melt, especially if you play on /players 8 or something. His lack of life steal is noticed, so give him an armor with life steal, such as Skin of the Flayed one (seriously, an eth one upgraded into elite with a socket in it with an Um rune is a great choice), or maybe a Chains of Honor. Fortitude is great and all, but it isn't needed for the damage as your hireling is not the main source of dps, his crushing blow does that for him already and does a whole lot more in the long run than a bit of enhanced damage. I found the combo of Infinity, Guillaume's and Skin of the Flayed one a lot better and a lot cheaper than Pride, Fortitude and Andy.
@@ctaffy919 Clay mastery?, i believe you mean golem mastery?, only 1 point. If your build is done you could always put points in there. Clay Golem, just 1 point. You could put more points into it early on and then respec it later for just 1 point. An insight iron golem is just far superior. Revive, again just 1 point. Most enemies revived aren't worth it, and if you have too many they start dying before you even have your max. With my charms, equipment and shout, i have +18 to revive, i usually have like a max of 12-15 before they starts dying again. Most of the times i don't even bother and enemies are still dead in a few seconds and then the rest dies by corpse explosion in the next few seconds. Also, i play at least at players 5.
@@Patrick_The_Pure Right now I have 5 in Clay Golem and 5 in Golem Mastery, but I'm also using budget gear...S, I don' t have a lot +skill items just yet...As of right now, with +skills I do have, they are both at +15...I'll probably respec when I get more +skills gear...As for Revive, I hate that spell...lol...So I only have 1 point in it anyway...
@@ctaffy919 That's what the respec option is for, it took me ages to get my gear but well worth it. Also, know that your summons get more toughness on higher difficulties. The same summons who constantly died on Diablo normal, with barely any different equipment and skill ups, shredded Diablo on nightmare as their toughness just tripled or so just for going to nightmare. More hp, more resist, more defense, it's ridiculous.
For Diablo 2 LOD, the original game, what is the best tactic against Diablo for a summon necromancer. My army of 8 skeletons, 1 mud golem and my mercenary are pretty much wiped out in two seconds.
With no gear at all, this build can play through all three difficulty levels, and will only have trouble when souls spawn in the game. Also, you can craft a wand (wand + Tir + p sapphire + jewel) with a chance of +3 to summoning skills.
Rares cannot have +3 skilltab affixes, those are magic only. So you can reliably shop +3 summoning wand once you are high enough level for ilvl 60 items to be sold.(character level 55 i think, or just wait to 60 to be sure) You may need to refresh the shop a few times.
The first ever character I got to higher lvls in D2 was a summoner necro. There was no respecc at the time I played iirc, and I hit a wall when I completed hell and wanted to do ubers etc. I never took anything but summoning skills I think... as a side-bar, why is nothing invested into skeletal mages? Are they not worth it?
![[GUIDE] HOW TO FIND HIGH RUNES in Diablo 2 Resurrected](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/wgSOaFmxnnY/mqdefault.jpg)
![[GUIDE] HOW TO FIND HIGH RUNES in Diablo 2 Resurrected](/img/tr.png)
![[GUIDE] Diablo 2 - Summon Necromancer](/img/n.gif)
My level 7 Necro got a wand with +2 skeletons, +2 amp and +2 corpse explosion! Clearly a blessing from wayching MrLlama!
Epic roll!
Damn! Give it to me please. NOW
Clearly a cheat engine / bull shit. Nice work
@@acharndael9159 Cheat engine? You can buy that to the NPC dude, loll wtf.
Nah, the best is when you find a 3 skeleton, 3 mastery with 2 open sockets for White wand. Monstrous.
RIP the days when Summoner Necro was forced to solo because having too many summons would lag people out of the game.
Now it only fries their video cards.
Lol good ol army of lag
@@s4nder86 get a better card X'D
Kinda wanna see 8 summoners now let's go
Well get a better internet or pc otherwise eat my dust.
5:10 I love how excited his dad gets over dumping so many points into Vitality.
Time to move out lmao
@OriginalGangsterGrow well his dad is yelling at the game in background. Maybe his dad lives with him, or did you miss that part?
LMFAO “dump ALL your points into vita- “
“YES.”
It's so satisfying to dump all your points into vitality even dads can't resist
I just started my first Summon Necro and I'm really enjoying it. Didn't know where to allocate points but this video helped a lot. Thanks for taking the time and really explain in detail and options available. Much appreciated.
It's a really fun build! I like it when I'm grouping with people so I can contribute without trying too hard lol, everyone loves curses and the Bone Brothers
@@serpentsaurus7969 it really is some chill fun
Dun care what llama says. Some mastery is well worth speccing early on. Rraise gives 7% while mastery gives fixed 2 damage that stacks with the boost. So raiselv2-mastery-raiselv3-masterlv2 or 3.
@@sandro5535 Just buy a wand if you want extra Skeleton Mastery early on. Then you can trade it in later. And by "later" I mean around level 10.
A good place to start your army is basically doing a pindle run and using as many of the corpses as possible before they animate.
Thanks for changing my life, Chris Jones.
@@woreeur4495 who ? Chris Jones. Chris Jones. The one and only you cant clone em. Lot a fakes lot a phonies.
I love how you quickly hover over all of the items makes it really easy to follow what you're saying.
Drives me crazy
You can pause the video or slow it down
Same thought. Damn Nerds. Also this is an old video he tries to sell us as a NEW one.
Doing this as my starter. My machine way back in the day just couldn't handle all the skelly's on the screen and now it's going to at a far higher resolution. Can't wait.
Same, i always loved Summon Necro, i would start with this even if it were F tier. But it's also S tier. Just too good :D
Not only that, a lot of people hated summoners regardless of if their pc could handle it, because it would kill the internet connection for everyone lol. Good 'ol dial-up days!
I played in a Diablo II game with 8 summon necros before LOD. Everyone had at least 20 Skeletons out but the game stopped drawing any creatures when at least 3 necros were on screen. Lol
Honestly I don't remember Summoners being any laggier than anything else back then.. maybe I had a decent computer? lol.
Cant wait for the HD Skelly army... just hope it wont set my laptop on fire haha
“ ohhhh if you want some random armor…”. Pulls out enigma
I can't believe in just a few hours, I'm going to be playing this game, with modernized graphics. My mind is blown.
took a while for the servers to acftually work though lol
Meh , looks 2007.
But yea suppose its considered modernized if you compare it to the old pixelated mess of the original (graphic wise)
@@celphalonred1999 2007? Are you on crack? Sacred came out about that time , go look at those graphics compared to d2r and them come back here to delete your dumbass comment
Ya well if those bloody servers at least keep up and don't remove char list each time
Being flooded with d2 content the last few weeks has been amazing! Keep up the good work!
This is my "I'm kinda tired but I still kinda want to play Diablo" build 😆
For real though I’m doing this build cause after work I just wanna chill and watch the chaos ensue from my minions!
I'm doing this build at work because at any moment I can be called for an emergency, so I can let the game run idle, and the summons will protect me :)
@@TheCasualCrow405 nice let’s those skeles go to town!
It's nice with gold find too just sit back harvest gold drops
@@azurekite4694 same :D
a year old and still such a good guide i go to it every time I swap back to summoner from a pvp build. Great tutorial.... so well done you'd think sweet phil did it
Thank you for the hard work u put in these guides.
I'd defo go for attract. It pulls mobs from pretty far away and allows you to stack up a huge pack for corpse explosion. Must have IMO. Dim Vision is also really handy during leveling at least. Basically just turns ranged mobs off.
God damn it I just fought a whole bunch of archers in Nightmare difficulty and completely forgot about Dim Vision. 😫
I just use Amplify and Decrepify. My crew attracts the mobs. Corpse explosions for the win.
I've watched so many guides being made on the stream that when I found myself actually watching one I reached out to type in chat...
I've referenced your guides for every char I've made in D2R. Leveling this Summon Necro has been fun. Thanks MrLlama 💪
great video like always! but what blew my mind was when you dropped the Gear in the Merc's Icon to auto equip them. 15 years later still learning new things cause of you =)
lol, me too!
No one has ever been able to properly explain breakpoints to me. Thank you sir
If you are looking for a solid wand for a summoning necro, "Arm of King Leoric" is one of the best one out there.
It's the best.
For merc gear (lategame) you want to get an infinity, because it lowers the defensive rating of enemies and makes your skellies hit more often. You can Ue iron golem on an insight weapon for mana sustatin or on a Pride if you are really rich. :D
This. I feel like people are so used to Infinity on the sorc that they completely forget how it affects enemy defense.
@@Divinevert Not only that, also for your corpse explosion, and also improves the damage of your skelly mages by a ton which make those 20 points in clay golem just a waste as an insight golem is just superior in every possible way. When he said "Even infinity is not the worst thing honestly for this mercenary", was just painful to hear as it is by far the best choice. Then again, he suggested Pride, which is the number one runeword to avoid as your hireling will shatter everything just by looking at it while doing crap damage himself and you'll have no more corpse explosion to kill entire rooms in 3 seconds.
@@Patrick_The_Pure I am trying this approach but I have been struggling to keep my insight iron golem alive, while also missing the "slow" of clay golem, which I replaced by decrepify instead of amp damage. It's more fun, but more challenging. I am not sure it is all worth it all for mana regen as I can simply keep using mana potions instead
New player love the content so far.
A little piece of advise? when your showing gear, make sure you hover on it for a few seconds. Trying to stop the video exactly when you glance at piece of armor for .3 seconds is kind of hard (like you did with the shako on here)
I actually think he’s self conscious about doing that because sometimes people give streamers crap for “showing off” the rolls they have on that gear. All their gear have maxed out rolls (aka affixes). They expect you to know what the name they throw out there is. I recommend just writing down the name of the item he mentions, then googling how to get/make it. People give llama crap all the time for “showing off” when he’s really just looking for stuff in but one of his completely decked out stashes.
I’ve been viewing a lot of your guides recently to build the hype, but these are so clear and concise, especially the skills. Subbed as I’ll definitely be consulting these for pretty much every class. Thanks!
Rhyme can be a fantastic midlevel runeword for Necro if you put it in a doublesocketed necrotrophy with good +skills.
I had a beautiful +1Decrep/+2Lifetap superior Necroteophy 😌 .... I put 2 rubys in it because I wasn't smart ^-^
I got +2 skelly master and +1 clay golem 2 open socket 😬😬
Absolutely, rune words are often slept on for necromancer shields for some reason. On a summoner, since you want to stack magic find primarily, rhyme is the best option to just throw on the first decent 2os head you find considering cbf and resistances and it will easily carry you until you have a raven frost ring and can afford to replace that shield.
Amazing guide! I think this is what I'm rolling first in d2r! :)
10:04 Question for comment section: Mr Llama is paging through his inventory and on 'Shared Page 8' there are dusts that he passes really quickly. What are those multi-colored piles of dust? I've never seen them before.
Edit: Nevermind. I figured it out once I looked up what was at 15:45, the Token of Absolution. I see that those 'dusts' are Essences used to make the Token.
My bigger question is how the hell he has like 60+ shared inventory pages! Maybe I’m missing something but I’m stuck with only 3 and it’s filling up fast.
@@mRudie1318 in this video he's using a mod for Diablo 2 before it was remastered. I'm not in a position right now to look up the name of the mod but it is a mod.
It's called PlugY, spelled like that, and it's not available for Diablo 2 remastered
@@Tingdere14 Damn. I'd lose my shit if Blizz made it so you could have a 60 page stash 🤣
@@bstrickler plugy is basically infinite stash not just 60
Fishymancer aka Summon Necro was the first build I got anywhere with back in the early days of D2. Back then there was precious little advice for n00bs anywhere close to Llama level. Really appreciate all these excellent guides!
Thank you so much for all the hard work, llama. it's a big help for people like me who are new and wants to get into D2
I'm having so much fun playing summon necromancer, back in the day my PC would lag so hard that it literally wasn't possible to do do, so far I have 4 characters in hell since reserected has come out, hammerdin, light/orb sorc, javzon and my summoner, he's by far the strongest budget build overall, I pretty much only play solo self found and he destroys everything so much faster than all my other characters
It would be nice at the end of the guide to see a ~1min gameplay with the suggested budgeted gear. Most people won’t be maxing out bnet chars any time soon. Thanks!
Mr Llama slaying it tonight with the content! Imagine the influx of subscribers once D2R is actually out.
I think we all agree: 20 pts each Raise Skele and Skele Mas. The great thing is from there it's whatever flavor you want. If you have the teleport staff on switch and are very adept, you could substitute Golem Mas for Clay and occasionally raise an Iron Golem out of fun finds, being careful to move him away if something awful starts to happen. Amp is a one-point wonder, critical for PI.
this is the primary fishymancer build. you could go pure skely army and max all skely. his man gripe is that skely mage suck but ya you could put like ten into ce and then put more points into other things
what a lot of people do is create runwords and turn iron golem into that runeword good for ones like beast etc that have auras. could make one from grief etc and might be pretty strong. as long as they fix the despawn issue
Amp is 1pt wonder after you have +skills. It's useful early on to have more since it helps CE hit harder.
Like you said though... 20 in the two skel skills, 1pt wonders everywhere, then do what you want. It'll still perform well.
I like the mages, i feel like they would do more passive damage during my playtime than ill ever get out of corpse explosion that i wont use because i play summoner necro to make the gameplay as easy as possible. STILL i would argue they do more damage and are more useful from the get go than corpse explosion ever will as an alternative accoutrement to the main build.
@@paddington1670 so here the deal. Ce is the main dmg for mobs and thrn your army can kill bosses but mages are weaker because of immunities but you don't have to play fishymancer if you don't want to. This is primarily a fishymancer build that he showcase
I love this build. After work, cold beer(s), while cooking dinner.
Infinity is BIS on a summon merc. The conviction -def improves skeleton dps more than anything else, even Pride. Conviction also increases corpse explosion damage. What do you have in mind that's better than infinity?
by the way, if you want to be really cheeky with summons, gather 2 sets of gear and charms; one that that is purely dps-oriented, and one that ONLY focuses on summon/necro skills+ then head to a skill shrine, grab it, pop your golem and skeletons. then switch back to your dps gear.
your summons will remain at max power level until they die despite switching gear and the skill shrine fading.
this way you can have skellies that are super strong as well as pump damage yourself with either psn nova or whatever you prefer.
my current build has 12 skelly warriors when i switch to my dps gear (16 in summon gear + skill shrine) with 42 raise skelly, 22 skelly mage, 44 skelly mastery, 23 summon resist and 19 golem (all of them) with 38 golem mastery.
it fookin slaps mates.
each skelly warrior does 682-686 damage per hit, has 1213 health, 1295 attack rating and defense and that's before any auras are applied.... oh, and i don't even have my torch on yet.
Oh sidenote: don't forget to get a spineripper (you're gonna need one for Dclone anyway) and a "peace" runeword, so you can summon a lvl 15 valkyrie on top of your army, it ain't much but its something, and if nothing else she can act as a tank/debuffer, depending on the gear she spawns with... for example; frost nova when struck/on strike, which when combined with decrepify is super strong vs large groups of high damage enemies.
alternatively, if you got a ton of +skills, you can get a "Harmony" runeword and summon a higher level valkyrie +17 all skills is recommended as that is the point where valkyrie passes a certain breakpoint damage-wise (upgrades her Lance to Pike), but the higher the better, obviously.
this is a hard ask though, since you'll be limited by the items with +all skills available to you, which means to achieve this, your Harmony MUST roll the maximum valkyrie summon (lvl 6) if you plan to reach lvl 17 valkyrie or above.
Thanks for this video. Remembering from back in the day I recall crushing up until baal. Then I go in there and in like one hit he nukes my minions. Ofc, I wasn't doing the build right! I'm excited to do the build right!
What were you doing wrong?
@@FrostRare iirc I was not stacking vitality. I was putting points into stats that didn't matter.
@@mrgriff3044 gotcha. I’ll avoid that myself
Do we like the skills? I just started a necro and loving it. Thank you for the guides!
Great guide. Back in my days of playing old Diablo 2, I was basically super rich, super hardcore which getting to lvl 99 did took awhile and now can't be super hardcore player now, time has chsnged :P Which I mostly played summoner and hammerdins which seems most OP class out there. SORC was good but hell I'd quiet a problem for them.
Dang Bro! Pumping out the guides!! Thanks for lovin the community!
Been so long since ive played d2 excited and cant wait thanks for these man
how can you equip spirit shield with only adding strength points up to 45-55 as you mentioned in the video? do you eventually add to 155 pts for the spirit shield?
Most likely +strength gear and charms.
A Mageplate Enigma, combined with a torch doesn't need any added strength and the Enigma gives strength. (The higher the lvl the char, the more str enigma gives)
No mention of Homonuculus (interchangeable BiS with Spirit, depending on needs) and didn't explain reason behind no skelli mages, for those who don't know which is that they get in the way of regular skellies who do more damage, thus impacting DPS.
I've read somewhere that an Act 1 rogue with Faith's Fanaticism is a great build for Summon Necros, and some argue that Infinity is arguably BIS for Act 2 due to the aura giving physical resistance reduction on mobs. what are your thoughts ?
This video just reminds me of how much i've forgotten between then and now. I don't remember crap about this game lol. I'm going to save this tut for later and find a newb one for now haha
This will my comfy build. I wont even put points into corpse explosion, just let summons do all the work. No need for insane late game gear. This build works well with average items and late game stuff will be cheap if prices drop. :D
Yea this shall be my drinking character!
So much content the summoning necro can't even keep up
best guides ever
he cant keep up? well imma play him because I love summon class. :D
Starting D2R with my classic Summoner! love the guide!
Literally a Summon Druid on steroids!
Question, whenever adding points to Raise Skeleton, do I have to re-summon my minions for the new stats ect or is it automatically applied?
They will have to be resummoned for the new points to apply. The same thing applies when you find a skill shrine. Your skeletons need to be resummoned when you get a skill shrine but they will keep the plus levels after the shrine wears off until they die or resummoned
I
LIKE
THE
SKILLS
Pretty much sums up this Necro build :)
Just wanted to say how important having an Insight Act 2 Offensive Merc is for this build. You will be OOM (out of mana) after a few summons/CE/etc. without it. You want a really good base for it that allows the merc to do 500+ damage with Insight, however just know that an Eth 4 OS CV requires 200 str for the merc which he won't have until level 87+. So just be mindful of the str requirements on the merc with what gear you give him.
I generally have two to three versions of insight rolling for low, mid and high level characters. Especially because it takes a while to find the proper CV base.
I tried on my own without following a build and did pretty well until Diablo at around level 30. His spells would just nuke my skeletal mages and the clay golem couldn't do much. I had quit using regular skeletons and just had a lot of points into clay golem which made him really tanky. May have to use the developer code command line re-spec and try something like this.
I always played summoner necro when I was a kid. Best char ever :D.
Found these guides on icy veins, great stuff! Thank you
Thank you so much for this! Unfortunately for me I started with Diablo 3 so these videos definitely help me better understand what to do and expect throughout
I made a summon necro, but truly my roadblock monster(s) are those with physical immunity. Even with decreptify it won't take away the immunity on all of them, mainly just the basic ghosts and what not. The special ones are a pain to kill if you don't have corpses laying around
Can you make a guide for where melee peeps should grind for gear? Some of us just want to play a class we like and not do the meta. I never play caster classes in my ARPGs.
Just craft pairs of blood gloves and belts as you level. That will give you crushing blow and open wounds. After that just kill them with whatever sticks you pick up lol. I recommend Strength (Amn + Tir) Steel (Tir + El)/Malice (Ith + El + Eth) early on.
yep make malice early on and buy / keep anything with 5 to replenish life on it to counter act the 5 life drain on malice, make malice in a flail at start of game aswel. if making a barb be aware that dual wielding 2 malice is pointless ( instead you go with 1 flail with 3 tal runes, giving poison damage and 1 malice giving open wounds ) melee builds are about cheesing the game with crushing blow mod, in NM you wana make a black runeword - can only be made in maces, gives 40 % crushing blow. i play a sorceress mainly but experimented with solo gearing a frenzy barb and its logistically bad to try gearing up as a melee character first. because to find the best weapon base ( tyrant club with 0 sockets or with 3 sockets ) for 2 black runewords, can only be found in nightmare act 5 and most reliably found in worldstone levels and baals level, but Its only actually good for slicing everything like butter in nightmare from act 1 to act 5, not THAT great in hell because in hell everything has 50 % physical damage reduction and alot more health ! its like how sigons set isnt found right at the start of the game but is great for melee characters starting out...melee just requires OP gear only found in later parts of the game, you will also get this idea from lamas guide on leveling a barbarian, he sais it gets tough to go the damage route so he also goes over the warcry singer support barb build. and to answer your question of best place to find stuff, type silospen into google its a diablo 2 drop calculator...and you really do need a sorceress to farm gear...and you also really need to make a smiter to farm torches solo....its just how the game is for optimal solo play...i imagine if you try grinding through everything as a poorly geared melee you will get burn out ! and think the game is shit and quit...since a sorceress with teleport can get there and kill the boss like 10 times faster than you.
I built a summoning necro on this strategy. My gear was leoric, shako, humunc with um, some nice light and fire resis gloves, string of ears, upped tearhaunch boots for resis, and resis rings and ammy. Budget build and I could do Ubers with my buddy who had budget smiter. We play hardcore but my necro was a tank
Thank you for posting a Necro summon guide I've been checking YT daily for new Guides and Character stuff should be Live on Console early Saturday morning at 1am I'll start a Bone necromancer 1st then a Hamerdin 2nd
Any reason not to use heads instead of shields? I currently have a Hellspawn Skull with +3 summoning skills and I don't really need to block since I hide behind my skellies.
Love these guides, but would love to see a bit more on gameplay and see the builds in action for a bit longer than
Hey Mr. LlamSC, I wondered if it is viable to use Iron Golem instead of Clay Golem as an endgame build for solo Ubers. If you make the Iron Golem out of a powerful weapon, like a runeword or a unique item with great stats, is it worth it? If so, how would you put the skill points? Would you put some skill points in Fire Golem for extra damage?
Rolling Necro tomorrow for sure, back in the day i was druid but after hanging around with Xul in HOTS its time for necro power.
It's a shame that you explain everything as if I was already 69420 hours into the game, cause i ended up understanding like 40% of this. The whole Gearing part completely flew over my head lmao
I was thinking the same thing.
Yea agreed stats and talents were talked about nice but some of the words my man said when talking about gear blew my mind I’ve been spending the last 2 hours with the homie looking up how runes work got it down a lil but some more info on them would be nice
by the time you will be getting endgame gear you will have already learned most of the terminology and runewords.
@@raymondlaine9617 that’s crap cause I’m in act 3 of nightmare and I stoll have the most vague of an idea and all the knowledge I have is from videos and sites the game doesn’t tell u shit
You'll pick up on it as you go.
Additional tips
While magic finding, do pindle first
You can make an army instantly with all the free corpses
Mana a iron golem out if insight or pride for the extra aura
Re leveling a Summoner Necro.
One of the most important skills is Skeleton Mastery. Put enough skills to get 3 skeletons in Raise Skeleton. Then put points into Skeketon Mastery. Sturdy Skeletons are way better than constantly replacing tissue paper skeletons.
When I hit Andariel, I had 9 in Skeleton Mastery and 7 in Raise Skeleton including the pluses from equipment. I had to replace the skeletons once. The curse I used on her was Amp Damage. 1 point in Clay Golem and Golem Mastery.
I farmed Andariel for equipment since I didn’t have the interest in rushing the game.
Lots of points in Skeleton Mastery means more slack for the player.
How do you farm the boss?
@@caliking6717 You start in the Rogue camp. Portal to Cold Plains to fill up on skeletons. Buy a couple of antidote potions. One for you, one for your merc.
Portal to Catacombs 2. Travel as fast as you can down to Catacombs 4. Avoid opening chests and fights.
Clear rooms 1 and 2. Set a safety TP in room 1.
Open the door to room 3. Head for the Shaman on the right. Kill him. Trigger Andariel. Amp damage her. Lure her into room 2. The fresh bodies will provide replacement skellies and also Corpse Explosion fodder.
She goes down quick.
Thank you very much for all the content and guides MrllamaSC. Old D2 & D3 player turned PoE player xD I'll ofc have to play D2R! D4 next!
I also feel you need insight somewhere to not have to chug mana pots. So you can wear an insight and iron golem a pride. Pride freezes enemies which makes them pop and have no corpse to use for summon/CE. But use iron in a golem and get the aura and less wasted bodies.
My starting build... just in time!
Is there ever a reason to add points in amp damage? Or just rely on +1 skills later on?
All you do by giving it lvls is increase it's radius and duration. So keeping it at 1 and getting + to skills is the preferred method.
You usually aren't doing much while waiting for your party members or your summons to kill the first monster for CE, so you have time to cast Amp Damage a couple of times.
Yeah pretty great skill tree, lot of single point skills.
Disagree heavily with llama and these guys. A few extra points in amp make for much harder hitting CEs. You can spec out of it later, but early on you'll want the extra range on it to couple with CE.
@@sodapopinski8064 how early would you say you'd put points in Amp and CE? You have to consider that putting points in Amp means less points in Raise Skeleton, Mastery, or CE.
Your CEs hit hard regardless if you put 1 or 20 points in Amp Damage. Except for Lower Resist, and I think Iron Maiden, extra points in curses only increase duration and/or radius.
SP: If in Normal, your skeletons are the primary source of damage - they own stuff regardless if you use Amp or not. CE consumes a bunch of mana, especially without Insight, so it isn't that useful then. In Hell you should have some +skills to at least give it a decent radius from stuff like Lore. Skellies would probably start falling off mid-late Nightmare, so that's the only logical place to add points in Amp. But then again the Amp AoE isn't that useful if you don't have the CE radius to back it up (i.e. you need to put points on both Amp and CE to make the most of your investment in Amp).
MP: Extra points in Amp seems useful only when you're heavily playing in a party, and in a meat shield/clean up role (taking points off of Mastery). Though in a party setup your CE doesn't hit as hard as it would in SP.
I'm a little torn about where to put my points after maxing out skeleton skills and corpse explosion (and one point skills). I've seen some builds that max out revive, which seems like an excessive number of revives, but I could be wrong. I've seen other builds that max out amplify damage, which just increases the radius and not the effect. I've seen some with investment into bone wall/prison, which is interesting, but doesn't really up the damage. And here you put a bunch into clay golem, which is also interesting and useful, but also not helping with damage. I guess what I'm saying is that there doesn't seem to be some home run skill to max out after skeleton skills and corpse explosion, just helper skills, and a need for better gear. I'd love to hear any arguments for what I should go with next skill wise.
You are right, after maxing Skeleton, skeleton mastery and corpse explosion your damage skills are basically done. There's not one other skill that really puts the build over the top after the base skills are maxed.
You actually have a lot of leeway with where to put the remaining skills, though nothing really pops as a big damage boost.
Personally, I would recommend the extra skills you have to spread out a little and upgrade some of your base support skills based on need. I like to get Revive to where I can summon 9-10. I increase my best curses, specifically Amp Damage until it has a radius that I like. Casting once or twice to cover the screen and curse off screen enemies helps a lot and frees you up since you are not casting a smaller area Amp Damage as much. Adding a few points into Summon Mastery if your summons get killed in Act 4-5 a lot from AoE magic attacks. You can also pump up Golem Mastery to increase the life of all golems instead of leveling once specific one. If you start making Iron Golems out of decent items then leveling that skill can help but it's not helpful until you have a steady supply of items for the golem.
You can put 1 point into all curses so that you can do things like cast Lower Resist if playing with sorcs. You can also put some more points on your other favorite curses like Decrepify for bosses.
I wouldn't recommend adding points to Bone Wall, prison, bone spear etc. as you don't have enough skills to max bone spear and a synergy and the bone prison/walls just block your army.
@@davideo7286 Thanks for the in depth reply, that helps a lot! I already bumped up revive, so maybe I'll bump up amp damage and golem mastery next. I still have 2 re-specs, so I can always use one to go all in on golems later if I want.
One skill that I hadn't really considered before is skeletal mage, because they don't do much damage. However, I started creating a few in act 3 hell to help with physical immune monsters, and they actually helped quite a bit with those. Not sure if that will be the case in acts 4 and 5, but I might consider it for that specific case.
It helps to grab Decrepify asap for soloing bosses
Agreed, and if you xp farm in Act 2, Duriel becomes an easier encounter with decrep.
YES!! I was waiting for this guide, thanks!!
Infinity is straight up the best merc weapon for a summoner. High dmg, crushing blow and most importantly the conviction aura reduces targets defense by 83% so that your skellies can actually hit things. It also improves corpse explosion dmg.
Infinity+Treachery+GFace with IAS jewel
if you have problems with boss killing speed
Quick question, why are skeleton mages not used at all? I really like them and find them useful, but the build guides never call for them :(
The one thing is missing are instructions on how to deal with bosses, especially ones that can't be dealt with Iron Maiden. Otherwise, great guide.
Decrypify slowing them and they don’t cast some abilities at all of very seldom
spam decrep and clay golems. no boss will do much at that point, they just slowly wither down and die.
Yep Mr. Gumby and Decrep.
@@imboredidid1 but is clay golem damage enough?
@@raymondabrenica8471 clay golem is for distraction and slow only. No golems really do damage unless you have a buffed-up and well crafted iron golem. Your skeletons and merc bring the dps, golems are there purely to tank.
infinity is dope on necro it has so much synergy with the corpse explosion and -def make skele easier to hit
Its best in slot for summon nec.. i don't know why he said there's better options, ur main source of dmg is CE.. u only need merc and summons for the first kill, with enigma u tele stomp the easier targets just to get the first kill and explode everything else
I am confused about pride runeword on merch. It freezes targets, therefore corpses shatter. It simply makes corpse explosion useless. I feel like obedience or infinity suits merc better.
Fishy-mancer is my hands down favorite build. The only downside was having to babysit the iron golem so I just have my merc hold the infinity. 400 mf and can magic find literally any area of the game easily.
So, I have two ways that I build summon necros.
Physical:
- Skeleton Warriors
- Revives
- Clay Golem
- Decrepify
Elemental:
- Skeleton Warriors
- Skeleton Mages
- Fire Golem
- Lower Resist.
Edit: Some overlooked boots for Summon Necros are Marrowalks. WE LIKE THE SKILLS.
Cheers Dude! Nice Vid! I figured out that the Mercenary switches his Aura depending on which difficulty you play. So I couldn't use might in Hell difficulty. What would you recommend otherwise?
If you hire him from Nightmare then he will keep his might aura throughout Hell. It's not about which difficulty you're currently on, it's about which you hired him from.
@@Forty2de that doesn't seem to be accurate - I seem to have the same issue. Hired Might merc on Nightmare >>> it got switched to Blessed Aim as soon as I go back to Hell. Is that a bug or supposed to be like that?
@@extriciplate88 it only switches the symbol at the character screen. If you hire A merc in nightmare he uses the same aura in all difficulties.
@@RukashTheRealOne yea I found out it's just a bug that came with the D2R. A good way to know what aura is being used is the animation bellow the merc/your character
did i miss an explanation of why revive over mages? when i last played it was 1.12 and mages felt good as a way to get some slows on targets without needing to curse.
They just do less dmg and lower health plus the many immunities and randomness of the type of mages. Revives are good because they are a undead version of what you revived but unfortunately they don't last. This is just the optimal build if you are also maxing ce. You could max all 3 and use like an infinity to help your mages. But this is like if you are only going to like 68. You could pour the other 20 into mages at the end
Mages are actually very useless on Hell, they die quickly and often block the way while the elemental dmg is insignificant.
Awesome video! Question, do you really get your strength to 156 in order to equip a monarch spirit shield? I am thinking this is kind of a waste.
Summoner always been my favorite toon a bit time consuming farming till you get enigma,but I also have blizz sorc,,Necro does ,chaos,travincal,cows,sorc does Andy,memphisto,countess,summoner and fire sorc does nithiliak.
Thank you for adding the merc. That’s always been the weakest of my build choices
I did not know whether to play hammerdin or summon necromancer, now i made my choice. Mostly because im so lazy, like you said, you can beat all monsters up without doing anything :D
I took your advice, @MrLlamaSC and I LIKE THE SKILLS!
Great video llama! But I'm still wondering if plus skills is valuable on summon necro, you seemed very conflicted in the gear guide. Hope you could clear that up in the future!
For you guys that read the chat as VOD boys only.. his voice isnt actually changing between twitch and youtube, chat is just a bunch of chuckleheads.
i havent played this build. ive done every pvp pnb version. and more of a windy/lightS/hdin for pvm. but interesting how every guide has been so different from one another for this summoner build and even on jsp the guide and comments I see are different. I guess we will see which guide is right when I reach a full build. I will come back and shame whose guides are wrong. I mean really all you have to do is play each build for 5 minutes in a typical hell run to see which ones were wrong
I wish d2 had a command skeleton skil (not an actual skill but just a command for the skeletons) to choose thier targets.
Yeah I agree I remember when I first saw the D2 trailers and screenshots (remember screenshots? Lmao). I assumed that you could control the skeletons like an rts. I was a huge StarCraft player and thought that D2 was simply some expansion to Warcraft or something. Didn’t turn out that way but I still loved it.
The closest you will get to a Command Summon Skill/Feature is Teleporting on top of the enemy. 🤓
What are your thoughts of using an Act 2 Might w/Bramble (Thorns Aura) & a Fire Golem (priority target from boss).
This would be for a Summon/MF build. Am learning, all information is highly appreciated!
I'm new and trying to figure out items. Why are you browsing through them so fast that I can't see them? I have no idea what the left wing is because you spent less than a second highlighting it. =/
I do have some massive disagreements on the skill point allocation, the merc equipment and the golem used.
-Clay golem and revive are wasted points, A lot of extra +skills while having no proper mana regen means it is a pain to get all those revives up and running while also having to deal with corpse explosion. I usually have a max of 10 before they already die as the units are not worth it to revive. For clay golem, it's good but in the long run it doesn't do a whole lot, against regular enemies you don't seem to need it at all, it's most useful against bosses but even then, a cold blast and decrepify is more than enough slow... actually just decrepify is more than enough. I'd say put them in skelly mages, they are not as strong but with plenty of skill levels they survive plenty of attacks and deal okay damage without having the need to constantly make more like revive.
-For what Golem to use, the Iron Golem made with an insight runeword. It doesn't matter what kind of poleaxe, a crappy one is good enough, you don't have him for the damage, but that sweet aura he makes for you so you can use corpse explosion all day every day. But what if he dies someone asks?, make a new one, my necro is lvl 92 right now, thing died twice, in that time i found hundreds of those runes, i literally throw them away, that's how common they are.
-Merc?, get Infinity on him, that aura reduces resistances for your skelly mages and corpse explosion and also lowers defense so everything else hits. Why not pride?, it makes your merc shatter everything just by looking at it. It also lacks damage itself, the concentration combined with Might and Fanaticism doesn't feel like it adds to much anymore. Why not make your iron golem with pride?, same shattering problem, you want those corpses for corpse explosion, that is your main form of damage, use that. So why use mages who give cold damage?, regular cold damage has a small chance of shattering, it doesn't have the same properties as freezing opponents does. For the helm, get Guillaume's Face, that 35% crushing blow combined with the 40% on Infinity makes bosses melt, especially if you play on /players 8 or something. His lack of life steal is noticed, so give him an armor with life steal, such as Skin of the Flayed one (seriously, an eth one upgraded into elite with a socket in it with an Um rune is a great choice), or maybe a Chains of Honor. Fortitude is great and all, but it isn't needed for the damage as your hireling is not the main source of dps, his crushing blow does that for him already and does a whole lot more in the long run than a bit of enhanced damage. I found the combo of Infinity, Guillaume's and Skin of the Flayed one a lot better and a lot cheaper than Pride, Fortitude and Andy.
How many points do you recommend for Clay Golem, Clay Mastery and Revive as base?
@@ctaffy919 Clay mastery?, i believe you mean golem mastery?, only 1 point. If your build is done you could always put points in there.
Clay Golem, just 1 point. You could put more points into it early on and then respec it later for just 1 point. An insight iron golem is just far superior.
Revive, again just 1 point. Most enemies revived aren't worth it, and if you have too many they start dying before you even have your max. With my charms, equipment and shout, i have +18 to revive, i usually have like a max of 12-15 before they starts dying again. Most of the times i don't even bother and enemies are still dead in a few seconds and then the rest dies by corpse explosion in the next few seconds.
Also, i play at least at players 5.
@@Patrick_The_Pure Right now I have 5 in Clay Golem and 5 in Golem Mastery, but I'm also using budget gear...S, I don' t have a lot +skill items just yet...As of right now, with +skills I do have, they are both at +15...I'll probably respec when I get more +skills gear...As for Revive, I hate that spell...lol...So I only have 1 point in it anyway...
@@ctaffy919 That's what the respec option is for, it took me ages to get my gear but well worth it.
Also, know that your summons get more toughness on higher difficulties. The same summons who constantly died on Diablo normal, with barely any different equipment and skill ups, shredded Diablo on nightmare as their toughness just tripled or so just for going to nightmare. More hp, more resist, more defense, it's ridiculous.
wdym insignt runeword on iron golem ?? on necromancer itself or merc ?
@13:55 You show a helm with Ral-Ort-Thul. I don't see this rune word combination on any of the sites I have visited. Was it taken out of the game?
For Diablo 2 LOD, the original game, what is the best tactic against Diablo for a summon necromancer. My army of 8 skeletons, 1 mud golem and my mercenary are pretty much wiped out in two seconds.
Decrepify to slow the boss down
Thanks so much. Haven't played since og d2.
With no gear at all, this build can play through all three difficulty levels, and will only have trouble when souls spawn in the game. Also, you can craft a wand (wand + Tir + p sapphire + jewel) with a chance of +3 to summoning skills.
What is the crafted wand's name? Thanks for your input!
Rares cannot have +3 skilltab affixes, those are magic only. So you can reliably shop +3 summoning wand once you are high enough level for ilvl 60 items to be sold.(character level 55 i think, or just wait to 60 to be sure)
You may need to refresh the shop a few times.
Can’t wait to give this a try!
Noob here. I just started a nercomancer. So I shouldn’t use weapons to attack myself? I’ve been raising strength to attack with my axe.
Mr. Llama is it worth using an armor with Bone rune word? Not that I would have the two Um runes yet... 🙄
The first ever character I got to higher lvls in D2 was a summoner necro.
There was no respecc at the time I played iirc, and I hit a wall when I completed hell and wanted to do ubers etc.
I never took anything but summoning skills I think... as a side-bar, why is nothing invested into skeletal mages? Are they not worth it?
Was hoping to see an infinity on your Merc. Game changing weapon for a Summoner Necro Merc