Pvm boner, viable?

[DLoveSwe]

Pvm boner, viable?

Heya!

I currently own a lvl 95 Fishy that i love but im getting a tad bored with him and are thinking of using his eq to build myself a bonermancer for pvm.

My question is if he can be able to do everything i use my fishy for. I do keyruns, mf in the pits and wsk/baal and hellrush. will a boner be able to do this? i guess wsk/baal is out of the question because of magic immunes and hell rushin can be annoying in a2.

My planned gear set up is this
Helm: Shako/ ptopaz
Armor: nigma
Shield perf fcr spirit
wpn: wizspike
boots: war travs
gloves:trangs
belt:arach
jewelry i havent decided yet i dont really own any great rings or amus:tongue:

 

[MrKaxe]

Pvm boner, viable?

They do tend to slow down in games with a greater number of people but my Bonemance flies along solo...I maxed Teeth first to play him as a Dentist as I just plain love the skill!

My gear is:

Helm: Shako (not sure whether or not to trade for a PnB circlet or stick on Trang's Helm with a pSapp in it)
Amulet: Rare +2 PnB (need a crafted with FCR n skills!)
Weapon: Blackhand Key (at 79 i'll switch out to Boneshade)
Armour: Skin
Shield: Homonculous with pDia
Gloves: Trangs
Belt: Crafted FCR (thinking I might switch out to Trangs with Helm n Gloves...)
Boots: Waterwalks
Rings: 2x10% FCR with life n res etc

One plain PnB skiller, assorted mana, life and res charms

This is a less-than-ideal gear setup (one bp below max for FCR but it's enough PvM!) but this character is all about the strategy...I mean sure, massive FCR and skills make this character really stomp but you can get by with a bit less...
Most of the time, I spam Teeth at a crowd to thin it out then depending on how tough they are throw some CE's into the mix or just keep spammin' while they engage my merc n gumby...if they come in fast i'll Decrepify them and use Bone Spear to gain a few corpses at the front and back of the group to explode to start a chain and if they are coming in stupidly fast i'll throw a Bone Wall or two up, Decrepify, then spam Teeth (or maybe a few Bone Spirits if I want a quicker kill) from behind the safety of the Wall and then start the CE chain again!
Champ packs get the Teeth treatment until only the champ is alive then he gets Spirit-ed to death! If the pack is a bit more dangerous i'll use the above stages/methods depending the ferocity of their attack to whittle them down until the only the champ is left alive and gets Decrepified and Spirit-ed to death!
Some people recommend a Holy Freeze merc but I tend to find that is overkill and unecessary as the Necromancer has his own crowd control skills in the form of a beefy Bone Wall (mine has 15 with +skills atm) and Decrepify (1 point but radius nicely boosted by +skills as well) and what with Spirit taxing a huge amount of mana for boss kills I prefer a merc with a nice Insight stick...although I was thinking about the 3-part Trang with the helmet providing a huge mana boost and if this was enough of a boost, to give the merc a Reaper's for magic immunes...I will test this in the future!

Hope my ramblings help!

 

[Wizdomm]

Re: Pvm boner, viable?

I've got a lvl 94 PvM boner that is a blast to play. I made a thread about it awhile back: here. At lvl 94, I maxed all five of the bone skills and then added one point in bone armor, corpse explosion, amp damage, and dim vision.

I also have Revives on my White wand...but don't use them much as they aren't very strong (don't die, but don't kill anything either). If I do use them, they are simply meatshields for me and my merc.

 

[DH Amazon]

Re: Pvm boner, viable?

Still leveling my boner, lvl82 now. But he can do dia or baal just fine.
Zero points in curses, don't need corpse explosion, so even amp curse is useless.
Kills fast in 1-3 players games and in full games corpse explosion is kind of useless anyway.
And merc uses reapers toll, thats enough curses for this char.

Act2 is no problem, all key Q, maggot, valley of snakes, arcane and Duri are quite easy even full games.

Full game pits is easy too, so boner can mf just fine.

I use wizpike,arach,magefist and 35 spirit at teleside, so with 125fcr keyruns are fast. That setup gives max resist too, so teleing to baal is easy too.

That setup gives lvl39 spear at teleside, using white and good shield, gives lvl49 (about 5k spear at lvl80) spear at damage side. White has attract curse, so that, reaper merc and glay golem gives enough meatshield to kill almost everywhere.

1 glay golem, 1 golem mastery (gives 10k tank) and rest skill points are in boner+synergy.

 

[Cast_Raider]

Re: Pvm boner, viable?

I haven't made a serious nec since 1.09, so maybe you guys can answer some questions. (I actually had an idea for a build like Wiz's back in the day, except it wasn't practical since enigma and insight didn't exist, heh)

1) CE is a great 1-point spell, especially with amp. However as you've probably noticed, it works far better when all the monsters in a mob are partially hurt. What I used to do back in 1.09 was, use a thorns merc + blood golem. Thorns with amp is far better than IM of course, and gets melee monsters' health whittled down pretty quick. And blood golem was the perfect, 1-point invincible tank (for casters and archers, you used clay of course).

But now blood golem is nerfed, and is no longer invincible to melee monsters. So my question is, will bone wall and clay golem work as acceptable substitutes? Are they durable enough to not die after a couple hits? Or maybe 1 point skeles and mastery boosted to lvl 20 or so would do the trick? (Revives are not ideal for reflecting thorns damage because everything in hell is physical resistant, 35%~50%, and that applies to your revives, or it did at least.)

2) Does bonewall still act as a monster magnet? They used to come from 3 screens away for whatever reason. It was really convenient for rounding up cows, heh.

3) Does CE work through bonewall? I can't remember.

4) Mercs and minions don't attack bonewall anymore, do they?

5) Chaos sanctuary: how do you protect your merc from iron maiden? Spam bonewall to keep him back, and careful use of teleport, I guess? I would really prefer to use an act 2 merc with bramble...but then you can't use insight. Doh.

 

[DH Amazon]

Re: Pvm boner, viable?

I haven't made a serious nec since 1.09, so maybe you guys can answer some questions. (I actually had an idea for a build like Wiz's back in the day, except it wasn't practical since enigma and insight didn't exist, heh)

1) CE is a great 1-point spell, especially with amp. However as you've probably noticed, it works far better when all the monsters in a mob are partially hurt. What I used to do back in 1.09 was, use a thorns merc + blood golem. Thorns with amp is far better than IM of course, and gets melee monsters' health whittled down pretty quick. And blood golem was the perfect, 1-point invincible tank (for casters and archers, you used clay of course).

But now blood golem is nerfed, and is no longer invincible to melee monsters. So my question is, will bone wall and clay golem work as acceptable substitutes? Are they durable enough to not die after a couple hits? Or maybe 1 point skeles and mastery boosted to lvl 20 or so would do the trick? (Revives are not ideal for reflecting thorns damage because everything in hell is physical resistant, 35%~50%, and that applies to your revives, or it did at least.)

2) Does bonewall still act as a monster magnet? They used to come from 3 screens away for whatever reason. It was really convenient for rounding up cows, heh.

3) Does CE work through bonewall? I can't remember.

4) Mercs and minions don't attack bonewall anymore, do they?

5) Chaos sanctuary: how do you protect your merc from iron maiden? Spam bonewall to keep him back, and careful use of teleport, I guess? I would really prefer to use an act 2 merc with bramble...but then you can't use insight. Doh.

1) Not enough points to make good golem to tank, synergies take so much points. And all non-magical immunes get killed fast enough. So merc is mainly for killing those immunes and help with bosses. Those thorns, IM are not viable anymore. And corpse explosion, all my other necros use it a lot, but with boner not needed.
I sometimes use nature piece ring, so I don't leave corpses, no use for my build.

2) Don't know, I rarely use bonewall, only for last two waves in throne.

3) Should work, not sure

4) Haven't noticed, or I get lucky with sand warrior.

5) Inside chaos, monsters have so low life, so I dont need mercs killing power. I just took his weapon off. And give it back when Iron Maiden cursing ones are dead. And I don't have mana problems, so Insight not needed.
While using teeth I run out of mana, but thats only for fun skill. Rarely run out of mana while using spear. I pick some mana bottles, but not many while killing. Around 900 mana pool while killing and around 1100 mana in tele side.

 

[DLoveSwe]

Re: Pvm boner, viable?

Ok, im pretty sure im going to make this char now but i have one small question

is max block needed? it would be pretty convenient to use spirit monarch and then max block is a big nono.
but my fishy have max block which has saved his butt more times then i can remember.

 

[DH Amazon]

Re: Pvm boner, viable?

Ok, im pretty sure im going to make this char now but i have one small question

is max block needed? it would be pretty convenient to use spirit monarch and then max block is a big nono.
but my fishy have max block which has saved his butt more times then i can remember.

I went max vita route. Its one of the safest char to tele and mercenary with golem help can tank almost everywhere. You have more fcr than fishy, so tele is safer from that point too.

I use spirit shield for teleside, and +1all +3spear shield for damage side. Both have very bad blocking, so I put dex only to use wizpike.

And you get around 500-700 damage protection from 1-point boneshield, so its easy to survive.

And while using holy freeze merc, you have more time to react and you see more clearly what is happening when no skeletons are not messing hole screen.

 

[Cast_Raider]

Re: Pvm boner, viable?

Ok, I'm up to lvl 75 now. A few findings:

1) Bonewall does not reflect thorns damage. I tested it with an "edge" runeword bow. Damn. I could put 1 point into skeles, and then let the +skill gear do the rest; but then I might as well go with a might merc instead of thorns.

2) The "monster magnet" effect in 1.09 seems to be gone.

3) Minions don't attack bonewall.

4) Spells do indeed pass through, including CE. Unfortunately this works both ways, so at least some monster's spells pass through.

I don't have all my gear yet, but overall he's a lot more fun to play than the hammerdin I stripped to make him. Actually come to think of it, his gear will be basically standard hammerdin stuff, only with homunculus instead of HoZ.

 

[Serath]

Re: Pvm boner, viable?

Minions do not attack bonewall if there is a way to get to your necromancer, so if you block every way to you (which I think is the whole purpose of bonewall) the minions will concentrate on your bonewall.
Some spell do indeed pass through bonewall/boneprison, but some don't like mephistos spells which makes meph really easy.

 

[Cast_Raider]

Re: Pvm boner, viable?

Yeah, I think magic damage passes through, but (monster's) elemental doesn't? Vipers can pass bone spear, oblivion knights can pass bone spirit, and succubi can pass those...red ball thingies.

On the other hand, oblivion knights doing any of the four elemental attacks are blocked. Baal's fourth wave of minions can spit fire through them, but you just have to step back a little.