Corpse-less direct damage spell? Help with build please if

[Wolfgard]

Corpse-less direct damage spell? Help with build please

I'm currently building my skellimancer. Problem is, I can't decide on which spell to use as a direct damage spell. I read that poison nova is nice in hell diff, and some people say bone spear/spirit is better. I'm kinda new on the necro thing, so can somebody please give me a good comparison between bone and poison for direct damage ( plus it's synergies, points to allocaate, YOUR personal opinion and which is more popular). Btw, I'm playing for fun in ladder so I won't be going after much gear and most probably will be stopping in Nm or early Hell diff so please don't assume that i'll get XXX gear to boost my XXX spell :uhhuh: Thanks!

 

[Mad Mantis]

Being that you are a Skellimancer you will not be able to max all the synergies on the Direct Damage spells. So you will need to see which of the two spells will give you the most damage. Let's assume that you have about 40 points to spend.

If we max PNova and a synergy this will give:
1104-1210 poison damage over 2 seconds for 20 mana.

If we max Bspirit and a synergy this will give:
768-833 magic damage for 21.5 mana.

PNova will do a lot of damage very quickly and doesn't require a lot of points. The disadvantage is that you will meet a lot of enemies with a large poison resistance.
Bspirit will require a pretty hefty investment to get a result similar to PNova. The up-side of Bsiprit is that there will not be a lot of enemies that have a large resistance to magic damage.

The PNova seem to be the most popular choice nowadays. There are a lot of threads concerning this topic.

 

[Wolfgard]

If I go with PN, which synergy is better, PE or PD? Can't seem to find a thread that discusses this.

 

[Mad Mantis]

Doesn't really matter. It depends on what you think will be helpful. The Dagger will allow you to help your Skellies beat bosses. The Explosion will allow you to get rid of corpses.

 

[Forbiddian]

Doesn't really matter. It depends on what you think will be helpful. The Dagger will allow you to help your Skellies beat bosses. The Explosion will allow you to get rid of corpses.

If all you're using the explosion for is to kill off corpses, just put one point in that and use dagger.

Dagger seems to actually have a purpose. Poison Explosion doesn't have a purpose beyond one point (and Corpse Explosion would be easier, anyway).

And for PvMing, isn't Bone Spear the better choice? The homing effect is pretty much moot as the ******** baddies run right into the spear anyway. Plus Spear pierces to hit more guys (and I think it does more damage).

Oh, and Poison Nova can only be cast every 2 seconds.

It doesn't sound like much, but let's take the worst case scenario:

Poison Nova does 1200 damage everytime it's cast.

Bone Spirit does 750 everytime it's cast.

Poison nova is going to knock off 600 life/second. That's 300 life every 12.5 frames.

You can easily get to 13 frame cast (even by accident), and that's 700-725 damage every 12.5 frames. You're doing more than double the damage output.

Plus, Poison Nova's synergies are crap... poison dagger and POISON EXPLOSION?!?!?!?

On the other hand, Bone Spirit (or Spear, I think would be the better choice) gets you easily a 300 damage Bone Armor (doesn't sound like much, but you'll recast it and that'll save you a lot of stray damage). And as a last point, if you happen to find Marrowalks (great boots even without the bug), your damage on Bone Spear/Spirit will go through the roof (as will your Bone Armor).

Because most summoner builds rely on getting the first corpse for a Skeleton chain, and then rely on getting the first corpse in every battle after that to get a Corpse Explosion chain, the simply faster damage output from Bone Spear makes it a better choice.

But maybe I'm just biased against poison since the time I played Softcore and occasionally ventured out of public dueling into poison land.


Oh, Poison has the benefit of owning up high life guys. Cannot Regenerate helps a lot. As does the fact that in random combat, you can really give your skeletons a hand... beyond Curses, that is.

 

[JoJeck]

If I go with PN, which synergy is better, PE or PD? Can't seem to find a thread that discusses this.

I'd recommend putting points in poison dagger since that would let you use that skill to help kill bosses faster if you find a good dagger. PE doesn't seem to me to do much.

Forbidden, in your comparison you're forgetting that with the Poison Nova you often don't need to use CE against the group fighting your skellies since the nova hits all of them at once and after the first one falls one more nova finishes the others off. In fact I seldom bother to use a curse ... either AD to help the skellies or LR to boost the poison. Most normal monsters (non immunes of course) die to 2 or 3 Novas in Act 4. Champions and a few monsters with a high poison resistance take an extra nova or two and I might switch to CE to get a quick finish especially if I had to break the poison immunity. I should say that I'm using a Death Web and Trang Ouls to lower poison resistance 66% which is equivalent to casting a LR anyway but I have only maxed PN and PD and have 1 point in PE at present.

 

[Forbiddian]

Forbidden, in your comparison you're forgetting that with the Poison Nova you often don't need to use CE against the group fighting your skellies since the nova hits all of them at once and after the first one falls one more nova finishes the others off. In fact I seldom bother to use a curse ... either AD to help the skellies or LR to boost the poison. Most normal monsters (non immunes of course) die to 2 or 3 Novas in Act 4. Champions and a few monsters with a high poison resistance take an extra nova or two and I might switch to CE to get a quick finish especially if I had to break the poison immunity. I should say that I'm using a Death Web and Trang Ouls to lower poison resistance 66% which is equivalent to casting a LR anyway but I have only maxed PN and PD and have 1 point in PE at present.

Yes, if you have trangouls and all of that, poison is much more effective.

I was taking this from the standpoint of: He's a summoner that wants a backup skill.

If you're finding that you're mainly using poison, you're more of a hybrid (poison first, summoning second).

You find that you're not using Corpse Explosion. Corpse Explosion wipes out a pack almost the instant you click it. I can probably get Amplify Damage, a corpse, and a Corpse Explosion off before or around the time it takes you to wait for Poison Nova to kill a pack.

It probably takes more finger dexterity, but it's A: not dependant on gear like Trang-Ouls; B: allows me to take out poison immunes; C: allows me to pick off individuals much faster (taking out packs is almost moot when you have Corpse Explosion); D: gets me an extra 300 or 400 life against Physical Damage (life that can be replenished at my leisure); and E: has a bigger range and is therefore more effective in places that summoners have trouble (tombs, Arcane Sanctuary, River of Flame, etc.).

Albeit it takes more mana, mana pots are now on sale!


And I didn't just spell "Forbidden" wrong.

 

[Mad Mantis]

Since this is only a support skill for the Skeletons I like poison better. It has a much better screen coverage. Thus only one casting allows me to help my Skeletons. Poison immunes do not bother me because I have Skeletons.

 

[JoJeck]

Yes, if you have trangouls and all of that, poison is much more effective.

I was taking this from the standpoint of: He's a summoner that wants a backup skill.

If you're finding that you're mainly using poison, you're more of a hybrid (poison first, summoning second).

You find that you're not using Corpse Explosion. Corpse Explosion wipes out a pack almost the instant you click it. I can probably get Amplify Damage, a corpse, and a Corpse Explosion off before or around the time it takes you to wait for Poison Nova to kill a pack.

It probably takes more finger dexterity, but it's A: not dependant on gear like Trang-Ouls; B: allows me to take out poison immunes; C: allows me to pick off individuals much faster (taking out packs is almost moot when you have Corpse Explosion); D: gets me an extra 300 or 400 life against Physical Damage (life that can be replenished at my leisure); and E: has a bigger range and is therefore more effective in places that summoners have trouble (tombs, Arcane Sanctuary, River of Flame, etc.).

Albeit it takes more mana, mana pots are now on sale!


And I didn't just spell "Forbidden" wrong.

Some good criticisms of my advice Forbiddian, and sorry for misreading and getting your name wrong :bonk:

Anyway I have to confess that I have 2 Necros and I have long been an advocate of the Bone Spirit to suppliment the skeletons and help by killing off the awkward bosses and clearing stairways and doors. My old Necro is level 91 now and still doing fine work as a mf character in the Pit and WSK. He was started on Day 1 of the 1.10 patch and has found at least half the stuff my other characters use. The BS he uses does about 1100 damage and it is very useful and because I pumped Bone Prison his Bone Armour is a very nice 295. With only 8 plus skills (since he is in mf mode) his skellies, might merc and the odd revives and skell mages he uses from time to time he is a fairly efficient killing machine that can go anywhere and kill anything.

It was my old Necro that found the Deaths's Web, Fleshripper, Blackbogs and Marrowwalks that my new Necro uses. But having those very nice pieces :jig: of kit it would be a shame not to use them I hope you agree

So I took note of your valid comments about uber-gear and did a little test of the effectiveness of PN at killing in early Hell and clearing the Pit. So I used only a ordinary +2 Necro head instead of the Trang-oul Wing and a Gull dagger. The killing is obviously slower but not horrendously so and it took about 50% longer. I did have to use Lower Resist more and the extra novas meant I was drinking potions (incidently, another reason Death's Web is soooo... good is the mana after a kill). It is surprising how weak a Necro can be and still clear these areas of Hell. Here are the "detuned" stats I used for the test run.

Basic Skill Points
PD 20
PE 2
PN 20
RSW 20
SM 11
And one point in all curses, clay golem, GM and revives.

Only +4 all skills was used and Trang Gloves for +2 curses and 25% extra damage. My PN was 1926 - 2062 over 2 secs and PD (with some odd charms giving poison and other elemental damage) was 5900 - 6352.

I conclude that maxed Poison Nova (with 20 odd points in synergy) is a very useful additional skill for a skellymancer in many situations like blocked stairs or tough boss packs (slowed by decrepify) even without the uber gear you mention. Once the Poison / Skelly Necro is built of course he will play better if and when better gear is collected and is ready to make good use of it.

Is Poison better than Bone to suppliment a skellymancer? That is a hard one for me to choose between two of my favourite characters, the new or the old:scratch: Both are good and fun and interesting and play differently in a given situation. Perhaps the only way to decide is to build 2 Necros and use both...but then again I did that and I can't decide ... heheheh

 

[Wolfgard]

Wow. Great help on the advice guys! One last thing before I start dumping points around for direct damage (I'm leaning towards bone currently since it's a faster PvM spell after testing it in singleplayer). Bone spear vs spirit, and it's synergies bone prison vs wall. Which to pick? Lol. I just can't make up my mind :scratch:

 

[Mad Mantis]

As a support skill I like BSpear better. The pierce is fantastic. I like to use BPrison in my games a lot so I would go for that one. But if you are able to get Marrowwalk and want to abuse it then BWall is the better.

But why not just pump both Spear and Spirit so you can choose between the two?