Will this poison build work?

[FooSoft]

Will this poison build work?

Never done a poison necro before, but I've had nothing but good luck with this class in 1.10, so why not?

Here's what I'm thinking:

Poison/Bone
------------
Poison Dagger: 20
Poison Explosion: 20
Poison Nova: 20

Summoning
-----------
Summon Resist: 1
Revive 5
Clay Golem: 20
Golem Mastery: 10

Curses
-------
Pre-req for lower Resist: 1
Lower resist: 1-2
Dim vision: 1

(don't have an exact pre-req point count, but anything I lack is coming out of GM)

The general play style I'm going for here is as follows:

1) Summon clay golem to tank, while I stay in background and do poison nova
2) Monsters die, get revived and act as tanks
3) Repeat

Yes, I know revives are stupid but I only intend to use them as meat shields to protect myself while poison damage takes effect. The clay golem is there to tank when there are no revives or they have expired. I put 5 points in revives because I have had nothing but good experiences with them on my summoner.

How viable is this build in say, single player? I'd think that it would be effective as I have good damage and built in tanks. Please comment.

edit:

I'm also thinking of potentially dumping clay entirely and going 20 CE (I LOVE this skill) and rest in revives. This would give me a poopy-load of meat shields for safety, poison for damage and CE for whatever survives.

 

[FooSoft]

Oh, another thing:

I just noticed that revies get bonus from skeleton mastery. What is this bonus, exactly? Revives still have same duration, same count, and 200% monster life...

 

[HarbingersOfSkulls]

Never done a poison necro before, but I've had nothing but good luck with this class in 1.10, so why not?

Here's what I'm thinking:

Poison/Bone
------------
Poison Dagger: 20
Poison Explosion: 20
Poison Nova: 20

Summoning
-----------
Summon Resist: 1
Revive 5
Clay Golem: 20
Golem Mastery: 10

Curses
-------
Pre-req for lower Resist: 1
Lower resist: 1-2
Dim vision: 1

(don't have an exact pre-req point count, but anything I lack is coming out of GM)

The general play style I'm going for here is as follows:

1) Summon clay golem to tank, while I stay in background and do poison nova
2) Monsters die, get revived and act as tanks
3) Repeat

Yes, I know revives are stupid but I only intend to use them as meat shields to protect myself while poison damage takes effect. The clay golem is there to tank when there are no revives or they have expired. I put 5 points in revives because I have had nothing but good experiences with them on my summoner.

How viable is this build in say, single player? I'd think that it would be effective as I have good damage and built in tanks. Please comment.

edit:

I'm also thinking of potentially dumping clay entirely and going 20 CE (I LOVE this skill) and rest in revives. This would give me a poopy-load of meat shields for safety, poison for damage and CE for whatever survives.

Put only 1 into Gumby...Golem Mastery...and Summmon Resist your + skills will do the rest needed in case of summon resist...then you can use rest in CE.

HoS

 

[prion]

I don't think that's anything special, bliz just decided to list that necro summoning skills get bonus from x. even tho it's no different from sorc masteries which they don't describe the same way.

 

[det]

I hope a few more Necro masters will post here, as I have very similar questions.

Like you I am thinking of 20 in all P&B skills. Since I play mostly in a party with friends, I have 1 pt in all curses and a few more in DV (planning on 6-8 and then +skill items).

I occasionally however play alone (and since it is an untwinked build I don't count on much more than +4 skills for now). So I need somebody who can make the first kill for me.

Act 2 or act 5 merc? Clay, Iron or even Fire Golem? Should I get revives at all? And if...do they need SM at all?

Thanks for any help/input.

 

[Mad Mantis]

Act 2 or act 5 merc? Clay, Iron or even Fire Golem? Should I get revives at all? And if...do they need SM at all?

Act II Mercs can give you and your tanks additional benefits. A Defiance Merc will be a great tank if you give him some high defense armor. A HF Merc can make things go really slow, but he shatters something along the lines of 30% of the bodies. A Might Merc can make you Revives do good damage.

Act V Mercs have higher HP's, they are very aggressive and have a death wish.

The choice of Golem depends on your personal preference. Clay will tank and slow monsters and since he is easy and cheap to cast will make for a great distraction device. The IG can be made elementally immune very easily. Check out this post. FG is costly and has lower HP’s than IG and Clay. The HF aura doesn’t do that much damage. I would only use him in PvP.

Revives can be handy. You can use them to tie up some larger mobs. They can even kill monsters if you put some points in SM. For tanking purposes they do not need any points in SM. If you want them to do some more damage you do need a few points.

 

[det]

That sounds good. Thanks for the info :thumbsup:

 

[JoJeck]

Revives get a 10% damage bonus for each point of SM (from skill points or plus skills) when they are raised. That bonus is for any physical attack that the revive does ( including ranged attacks from revived archers and the witch's red globe, I think). Revives get a 200% life bonus and then another 5% per level of SM. So if you had SM at level 20 inbcluding plus skills the revives would do 300% of the damage and have 400% the hit points of the original monsters.

So without SM they will be very good meat shields but will not do much damage as they undoubtedly did with your skelliemancer. That leaves a weakness with your design in how you will deal with poison immunes. About 25% of the monsters in Hell are poison immune or highly resistant. Even if you break the immunity using LR they will still be very resistant to poison unless you have expensive gear to lower poison resist (eg. Death Web, 3 parts of Trangs or facets). Maybe you can get a powerful well equiped mercenary to kill the immunes.

Anyway, that will be the most difficult problem for your proposed build, so good luck with however you solve it.

 

[FooSoft]

Ah! But that's the beauty of it all - just need to kill one or two guys (even merc can accomplish this), then CE will take care of the rest.

 

[det]

However I turn this around, I will be very tight on skillpoints.

I am not sure if i can actually max all three poison skills, seeing that CE is so powerful. So I am thinking indeed, that Poison will act as the tool that really lowers monsters HP's, and when they are under decrep just die that much faster when CE goes off.

If I only spend 50pts in the poison skills, this gives me maybe the 10 extra points for CE.

 

[rickcarson]

So without SM they will be very good meat shields but will not do much damage as they undoubtedly did with your skelliemancer.

Well, if you're raising them for their Crushing Blow, then bonus damage isn't really the point, and he can save some skills by not having mastery.

In addition, I've been thinking about Revives, and how the 7% damage bonus on Skeletons is *Enhanced Damage* (and hence, is suckful).

What if the 10% bonus is 'Enhanced' Damage? And if it is, what does that imply for any 'caster' type minions you raise. Eg a Vampire's Fireball/Firewall - is it effected by Skeleton Mastery or not???

On the other hand, if its *not* enhanced damage, then that would mean that Revives would get a much bigger bonus from your might merc than your skellies... (and hence, that Revives would pretty much always trump skellies...)