Pride

[Korlic]

Hey there after a break I am starting to get back into D2. I am currently making a melee Necro who is lvl 70 and starting hell. His weapon is a BOTD War Pike, and it does decent damage, but I would still like to improve so I get 1 hit kills as often as possible.
Then I thought Pride would be the answer due to Concentration aura, but then I saw it has no ED, and now I fear my merc will die constantly if I make Pride. The alternative is Doom, that would prolly keep him alive much easier, but the cost would be less damage per hit for my Nec. Any input on this would be much appretiated, as the RWs are rather expensive

 

[pharphis]

If your goal is to boost your dmg per hit then might + conc sounds like your best bet. If your merc has ANY leech he'll be fine even with no on-wep ED. Make it in a superior eth base if you want to feel better about it.

 

[Korlic]

Thx, think I will do that then Does it have to be superior?! JK I think I get it

 

[zaphodbrx]

I would get faith rogue instead, to increase attack speed.

 

[jeffy]

I would go with Grief. It's pretty easy to hit a 10 frame attack with a phase blade (max) without Fanaticism. With War Pike, Faith would help you each a 14ish frame attack vs. 17ish without it. I'm not sure what the "rules" are for meleemancers, but you could probably build a pretty funky melee/poison*/corpse explosion hybrid. A might merc with infinity would improve CE a bit, and the merc itself would do good damage.

*remember the -PSR on Grief

 

[Korlic]

Zaphod: True it would increase attack speed, but it would also lower damage quite a bit.

Jeffy: The thing is BOTD has 50 proc lvl 20 Poison Nova when killing enemies, so it has to be that pike.

 

[zaphodbrx]

Korlic - see this thread. I explain why bone walls are important to the strategy, and as an additional bonus a rogue merc can fire over walls and get reanimate skeletons for tanking. I just don't see any reason not to use faith merc for this if you have one, it is certainly way better than 'pride' - for one thing, the hit blinds target will constantly override your amp and is a big nuisance.

Also, I think using poison nova/CE defeats the purpose of making a meleemancer, same goes if you just equip the merc heavily and watch it kill things.