A couple of ??? for a Summoner in Hell

[darzog]

A couple of ??? for a Summoner in Hell

OK, until recently I've been running sorcs (Meteorb, Bizzball and Pure Cold) but decided that even after 100 Meph runs I was getting bored. So I decided to start a Summoner (Fishymancer guide) so I can run through full areas instead of just boss runs. So far I'm level 74 and walking my way through Hell (Solo'ed A1 and in Maggot Lair atm). I have decent gear but not great:
Trang Armour
Trang Gloves
Leoric's Arm
+1 Necro circlet
+1 Necro ammy
+21, +23 MF rings
Goldwrap
+34 MF Boots
Sig Shield (thinking about switching to something else for resists since I have negative in all)

I have maxed Skel, SM, close to max CE, 1 pt in Mage, Revive, golems, GM, all curses, Bone Armour and 4 in Amp and DV.

For the most part the character is very solid and is doing much better in Hell than any of my sorcs. My one frustration is that I don't have a direct damage skill for bosses and uniques. In particular I hit a unique beetle in Maggot Lair that was healing himself faster than my skels could hit him (since only 1-2 could fit int he tunnel at a time). I ended up dying 4 times and couldn't get my corpses back (so I lost my +3 summon back-up wand). I tried luring him into a bigger room so more could attack, tried several different curses, no corpses were around for CE and I forgot that I have Fireball from Trang. I would even cast my CG on the opposite side of the beetle to pull away from my skels and slow him. And since the tunnel was so clogged my merc never got close enough to him or died if he was the only one there.

What would be your advice for me? Is there anything I can do that would help out my minions in a situation like this?

Also, I was wondering how effective adding a few more points int Bone Armour would be. I plan on finishing CE and maybe another couple of points into DV so increase radius. Would a few points into BA be worth it? Right now since I'm focused on +skills and MF if I get hit I almost always die. BA has been able to help some and I'm wondering if more points would be worth it.

And completely off topic, if you kill the Hell Cow King, can you still make cow games? In Normal and NM I'm always careful to stay away from the King but wasn't sure if that was needed for Hell.

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Darzog

 

[Tengu]

If you have a good melee merc with decent equipment, you can always try unsummoning your skeles and letting your merc do all the dirty work in the maggot lair (you can always re-summon the skeles inside the bigger rooms where there are lotsa enemies). With help from amp/decrep/life tap he should be able to handle pretty much all monsters 1on1 in the narrow tunnels.

Also, remember to use the AI curses, confuse & attract are always useful against packs of monsters.

Putting extra points in bone armor is not worth it. It only gives you +10 absorbs per level, while bone wall & bone prison give +15.. If you are using the marrow bug, you only need to put 1 point in bone wall, though..


Alas, the Maggot Lair and the Arcane Sanctuary are always hard places for almost any summoner (without enigma, at least ). That's the reason why I prefer a bone/summon hybrid to a pure summoner.. Gives ya a good source of direct damage.

 

[Myrakh-2]

Actually, if you have a merc that can handle it, going in with no summons is an excellent choice for maggots lair. You can still use your golem if necessary, but without the firewalls from a full TO it's bound to be some work. You can build up your army when you rieach the boss, since the room there is filled with baby maggots --- with some corpse explosion you should be able to work your way into there.

If your merc can't handle it, you might want to try to go in with skeletons and lifetap. I've never had the healing problem you described, but you could try shopping for a dagger or another low-requirements weapon with PMH on it... if that works on bosses. You should be able to attack from behind your minions...

Other than that, if you can't handle it, get help. Maggots lair and arcane sanctuary can be a serious problem for weaker builds, and it's nothing to be ashamed of

As for the cow king, the same rules apply in every difficulty level. I just use my mules as cow openers.

 

[Olio]

I like to use bone spear rather than the fishymancer guide. Something like this:

20 SM
20 RS
1 revives and prerequisites
1 clay golem and support
1 in amp, decrepify, prerequisites
20 Bone Spear
20 Bone Wall
+ bone spear prerequisites
Rest into CE or more bone spear synergy.

With Marrowalk bug I had around a 2.5k bone spear which was great on the left click. I'd just walk up to a group of mobs, then hit them with amp, bone spear whichever one was most annoying, pop them all with CE, revive the rest of the corpses and repeat on the next group.

I'm not a big fan of DV since it doesn't actually kill anything. The same was true of nearly all of the other curses as well. They may be great and fun to use but in the end Amp wins because it speeds you up by 2x. The only reason to ever use Decrepify instead is on boss mobs that kill your merc too fast.

Olio

 

[GenXCub]

If you can, try to get a wand with +poison Nova. It should stop the regeneration if you fire it off every 2 seconds.

 

[Peacrusher]

well I hate to disagree b/c spear is viable as is some other techniques... but Curses help you... Each curse has a purpose and a situation.....

I personally love attract. DV is for gloams, Amp is great but Decrep helps tough fanat packs.. so ingnoring curses is folly.

Maggot lair is a pain and should be done only once... or if your some sort of sick freek you should invest in a teleporting ammy to speed your progress there.


Terror is nice as well Just keep casting it and they run away.

 

[darzog]

Thanks for the advice. I'll try to find something with +Poison Nova for anything like that if it happens again. Otherwise I'll just wade through the lair. Hopefully I won't run into that guy again (or if I do hopefully he'll be in a bigger intersection).

And my merc has Undead Crown, Shael'ed Meat Scraper and Rockfleece so he's pretty decent but nothing like my Sorc's merc (Reapers, Up'ed Shaftstop and Blackhorn Face). Other than the one guy, I was getting through the area pretty well so I'll just try again after work.

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Darzog