Some Questions.

[TheGaiden]

Some Questions.

Well, Im completely new to Diablo 2. I got the game about a week ago, and I achieved level 70 tonight. I am making a skele-mancer, with my own build, using a base of a guides. Well I have a couple of questions regarding their abilities. Im having millions of mixed answers so here I go.

1. Really simple, are skele-mancers good at mfing.

2. Are Mage skeletons really a waste? I will be playing on battle.net, but i will only be playing 1 player game limits, so only I can join, so I dont have anyone whining about how I cause them lag with all my monsters. I hear mixed opinions, I just want a simple pro and cons here, thanks.

3.Equipment. Im using horrible equipment. A level 21 wand with +2 to all necro skills, and some normal armor that has no+ skills. The thing is, I hear tons of comments about how equipment is the most important thing in the world, and then someother person says I could walk into the middle of a mob with my army and live to tell the tale. So which is true?

4.Im thinking of making a hammerdin, or something akin to that, thats good at soloing stuff, and mfing(no sorc's,or barb's I got nothing against them, I just dont like playing them.) Any suggestions?

Thanks a lot to whomever can answer my questions, and great forum guys, I love it.

 

[MedctnStn]

Well, Im completely new to Diablo 2. I got the game about a week ago, and I achieved level 70 tonight. I am making a skele-mancer, with my own build, using a base of a guides. Well I have a couple of questions regarding their abilities. Im having millions of mixed answers so here I go.

1. Really simple, are skele-mancers good at mfing.

2. Are Mage skeletons really a waste? I will be playing on battle.net, but i will only be playing 1 player game limits, so only I can join, so I dont have anyone whining about how I cause them lag with all my monsters. I hear mixed opinions, I just want a simple pro and cons here, thanks.

3.Equipment. Im using horrible equipment. A level 21 wand with +2 to all necro skills, and some normal armor that has no+ skills. The thing is, I hear tons of comments about how equipment is the most important thing in the world, and then someother person says I could walk into the middle of a mob with my army and live to tell the tale. So which is true?

4.Im thinking of making a hammerdin, or something akin to that, thats good at soloing stuff, and mfing(no sorc's,or barb's I got nothing against them, I just dont like playing them.) Any suggestions?

Thanks a lot to whomever can answer my questions, and great forum guys, I love it.

welcome to the forums.

WOW!! one week and you already got your necro to lvl70.

well, i'll try to answer your questions:

1. absolutely yes. lots of people choose these or meteorb sorcs as their starting character for new ladder seasons

2. i think this is a highly debated question. IMO, i would max these too, though the cold mages can shatter corpses leaving less for Corpse Explosion.

3. you are gonna want as many +skills to help boost your skills. necros and sorcs live for lots of +skills as they are not really involved in much fighting. some of the best stuff, like heart of the oak and enigma runewords are gonna be crazy hard to get your hands on, expecially legit ones. don't know if i would stand in the middle of a pack of enemies though no matter how good my gear is.

4. hammerdins are very overpowering with high end gear. never made one so i cannot help further here. go for whatever makes you happy.

hope this helps

 

[Forbiddian]

Mages are pretty useless in Hell. Their damage is pretty low to begin and everything in hell has 50% resistance to everything. A lot of enemies have 75% or more, as well, not to mention 1/4th of your skeletons will be useless every fight due to immunities. 1/2 damage (or less) from resists and 3/4ths damage (or less) from immunities, coupled with low damage, hps, armor, and regen? NT.

If you use Lower Resist, they can be decent, but that goes against using Amp Damage or Decrepify, which are much, much, much better. Also, they don't get a bonus from Might from your Merc.

They're extremely good in Normal and pretty good in Nightmare, but you'll be kicking yourself if you invest heavily in them when you hit Hell. And about the same time, your raw killing speed will really drop off without Corpse Explosion.



With a single point and some plus skills, you can get 4-5 Skeletons, which is plenty sufficient to have personal bodyguards (absorbing arrows and charges that get past the frontline), as well as Poison (prevents monster heal) and Cold on the enemy bosses.

 

[Eilo Rytyj]

Mages are pretty useless in Hell. Their damage is pretty low to begin and everything in hell has 50% resistance to everything. A lot of enemies have 75% or more, as well, not to mention 1/4th of your skeletons will be useless every fight due to immunities. 1/2 damage (or less) from resists and 3/4ths damage (or less) from immunities, coupled with low damage, hps, armor, and regen? NT.

If you use Lower Resist, they can be decent, but that goes against using Amp Damage or Decrepify, which are much, much, much better. Also, they don't get a bonus from Might from your Merc.

They're extremely good in Normal and pretty good in Nightmare, but you'll be kicking yourself if you invest heavily in them when you hit Hell. And about the same time, your raw killing speed will really drop off without Corpse Explosion.



With a single point and some plus skills, you can get 4-5 Skeletons, which is plenty sufficient to have personal bodyguards (absorbing arrows and charges that get past the frontline), as well as Poison (prevents monster heal) and Cold on the enemy bosses.

That's complete bull. Mages are great in Hell. Sure, they wont be doing the same kind of damage numbers as the Skeletons, but the fact of the matter is that they're extremely valuable to the army as a whole, and maxing them makes them even more so. They may only do ~300 damage per shot with a few +skills, but when there's 10 of them, the damage starts to pile up, just like with Skeletons. You don't need to use Lower Resist to increase their damage - it's just a supplement (extra) to your Skeletons damage.

Think about it. Say your Skeletons do 10k damage/seconds against a certain enemy. Mages add another average 2k damage/second. That's an increase of 20%. Of course, I'm ignoring the factors of enemy resistance and other variables, but you get the idea. It's a small but noticable extra, you've got the skill points to spend (like 25 free points at level 80), so why not spend the extra 19 skill points there?

Mages are arguably the best place to put your skill points after maxing Raise Skeleton, Skeleton Mastery and Corpse Explosion. In Hell difficulty, an untwinked Summoner needs as many in his army as possible; as tanks, as damage dealers, as utility providers (poison PMH, cold slow). Even when fully decked out, Mages still show their worth by being able to provide a decent damage output on their own. There's no reason not to max Mages on a pure Summoner Necro.

You wont be kicking yourself. You'll be loving every minute of having a bigger army with no drawbacks.

 

[MasterMynd]

Level 70 in a week with your first character?!?! Congradulations on a feat that is achived by very few.:thumbsup:

If you're using the Fishy as the base build, an alternative to maxed Mages is maxed Dim Vision. (I imagine this is what is being talked about when you hear "walk into the middle of a mob". It's not a very safe tactic, but it's fun to do if you can make it work.) Once DV is maxed, then start on the bone armor synergies (Bone Wall/Prison.) This is probably the "safest" of all the general purpose builds.

Regarding equipment: For a Summoner, anything with +3 Summoning Skills is better than anything with +2 all. You can buy +3Summon wands, although it may take 10-15 minutes of "shopping" to spawn one. (Get a game with the Rogue Camp entrance in the NorthEast wall. That makes for a 3-4 second "round-trip" to reset Akara's inventory. She always has the biggest selection of wands.) And you can gamble a +3 Summoning Skills ammy, although that can take dozens and dozens of tries, depending on your luck. I would guestimate that I spend around 5 million gambling ammys before I finally got a +3NecSummon.