Hi,
I am a bit new to Necros as I usually play Amazons, Druids and Sorceresses, but I decided to give the Necro a go. I personally do not like to follow official guides and prefer creating characters that can clear all areas (maybe except the ubers, but that is a bit different story), but I am curious if anyone of you have ever used the posion nova + bone spear together and you think is viable or not? As respeccing is limited - given I do not play 20+ hours a day -, I am interested in opinions.
My plan is to have 20-20 pts on the two main skills and one of their synergies, have a golem like the druidâs bear, 1 pts up to Lower Resist and having an Act 2 merc with Obedience. This would be a budget build, I already have a few good items from my other casters, so the only thing is the leveling and then having a skill distribution that fits my playstyle and plans. Due to prerequisites I would have Corpse Explosion and I guess(?) I can spend all remaining skill points on it to increase its radius, so at the end I would have about 1500 poison damage per second, around 1k magic damage and from CE and my Merc I would have the third type of damage as physical.
Iâd appreciate all help! 
What do you think?
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Generally most will do a summon/poison or summon/Spear hybrid. Those options give you the meat shields to get your âlower damageâ spells off.
To sum up my thoughts on it, I think you will be underpowered and have redundant skills. Maxed out PNova is fully capable of taking out screens of monsters on itâs own, Maxed out Spear is also great at getting you bodies to CE. For this build you will probably just use spear as a âfillerâ spell between novaâs so you have something to do on boss fights. Iâve run Poison necyâs and I know the patience it takes on boss fights to cast Nova, LR, NovaâŚcount to two, nova count to two, nova count to twoâŚMany players feel if their APM isnât constantly maxed they arenât playing optimallyâŚ
Down to the numbers/comparing to a âpure buildâ, I tried to match your numbers of 1500 poison/1K spear.
20/20 into Pnova gives about 3K/2sec or 1500 dps. Accounting for LR and Trangs gloves thatâs 2300/dps
Fully synergized gives 5K/2sec or 2500 dps. Accounting for LR and Trangs gloves thatâs 3700/dps.
Spear - again modestly gearedâŚ
20/20 spear giving you 1K spear, depending on cast rate you will get about 2500 dps
80 Pts into spear and synergies gives you @1700 spear or 4K dps.
Traditional PNova doesnât need much CE as Nova kills everything hit at a similar rate. Most monsters die at the same time. CE is used on PI/PI (poison/physical immune) monsters.
Traditional Spear drops targets and lets CE clear the room, just like summoners.
All that said I say go for it, you can always re-spec if you arenât feeling it.
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Thank you very much! These insights are definitely helpful!
When âcalculatingâ dps I did not take into account the +poison damage / lower resist modifiers, the numbers were simply the values from skills, but given how much +things comes from items, in case of poison it is better to do this.
I also did not take into account that CE does 50% physical and 50% fire damage, so technically the poison build already has 3 elements on its own, even without skeletons and hireling. So I might just go with PNova.
Thank you once more!
Poison Mancer Optimal Build (Maxing Poison Nova + all Synergies + 20 Skeleton Mastery + Revives) is quite weak without Dark Web. You really need that - resistance from dark web on top of Trang Set Bonus. So this build can be very strong, but has hard to aquire gear. Until you have that gear, it does not play very well.
Bone Mancer is not that gear dependent (you will be able to aquire sufficient gear), but you need to put everything into bone synergies to be good.
Using a combination of both builds will bring you only trouble, I believe. Unless you are in for a serious challenge and dont mind crawling slow play.
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Thank you, I will keep this in mind!
Edit:
I tried both builds, although my Necro is only lvl 36. I could not remove the Poison Immunity from Baalâs second elite packâs boss even though I have +5-6 all skills on Curses. For poison build what is the ideal Lower Resist skill level to be able to remove poison immunity for PNova and Phyical immunity for my Merc? I am calculating for about +8-10 all skills as I already have a HotO and a few other nice items for hell.
When it comes to breaking immunities Lower Resist, Amplify Damage, Decrepify and Conviction work only at 1/5 of their listed values, so the answer is - 20 hard points and all +skills you can get if you wish to reliably break poison immunity. Also check d2 wiki about immunities of monsters, because some of them have poison resistance so high you canât break it below 100% even with maxed Lower Resist.
Yes, I know that, thank you!
Right now at lvl 63 in act 1 hell I am still destroying mobs very easily. I also used the character planner on d2.maxroll.gg and I see no real reason to use 20 pts on LR for such a small increase in lowering resist value. I took a quick look at different guides and also tried experimenting with different build setups in the planner to see if Revive or Skeleton, maybe SMages should be the perfect fit for my playstyle. I also checked the Fire Golem.
Right now I dont know how to proceed with the build. Bosses usually pretty easily destroy the Skeletons, even when using Life Tap and now I will not have 40-50 pts to max out their dmg and survivabilities. I really would like to use Mages, given my main curse is LR, but they are even weaker than melee skeles. Revive seems reasonable at this point and because I dont allocate many pts in summons the clay golem will be good enough for additional meat shield.
Of course, I am lacking of the Dark Web wand and I also do not have any poison facets, so my damage is far from max. My merc also does not have Infinity, I am not even sure I can easily switch from Insight to anything else, like Obedience, because I need quite a lot of mana. Anyways, it is gonnabe a fun build as this is my first time using the Necro and I really enjoy it.
Thanks for all the help for everyone once more!
Max investment into Lower Resist is needed to break poison immunity whenever possible, however while you donât have Deathâs Web wand yet to bring broken immunity into some manageable level itâs not that meaningful. Just aim for ~17 yeards of range, thatâs way you should cover all the screen when you cast the curse pointing on your location. Thatâll be a great quality of life once youâll get some source of teleport - youâll teleport to chosen point, then immediately, without moving cursor cast Lower Resist and then Poison Nova. According to Diablo II Necromancer Skill Calculator - Diablo II 8 points in Lower Resist is enough to obtain that radius having +10 all skills.
Well, itâs enough to put 1 point everywhere in summons tree, except Fire Golem, and use revived monsters as meat shields; as you noticed skeletons require a bit of investment to become viable option, while revives are good enough with just few +all skills items.
There is a way to keep Insight, and give the merc Obedience, or smth other - just create Iron Golem of the Insight, and invest extra points into Golem Mastery to boost its life.
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Hitting a few pts:
Infinity does not help with Poison Damage, itâs not an âoptimalâ merc weapon for PNova necyâs. I personally still use Insight as I need the mana. If I had Deathâs Web the mana issues would probably be non-existent.
Breaking Immunities works at 1/5th efficiency. Thus if you want to break a 100 Immune monsters you just need lvl 1 LR (31%) as that will lower it by 6 giving you 94% resistant. To break a 110 Immunity you need lvl 10 (-55%), that will lower the resists by 11 giving you a 99% resistant monster. Even if you got to lvl 33 LR which gives -66 Resists you will be lowering resists by 13% which only puts a 110 down to 97% and a 100 down to 87%. Radius is what you are getting by the extra pts.
Neither of these cases will do much to an immune monster (unless you have Deaths web or 3 piece trang) as your poison damage will be anemic at that point, thus you are better casting amp/decrep so your merc can kill it and you can CE it to kill the rest.
I recommend the Revives as when going after bosses you can at least get revives with CB or other decent attacks to help out.
I also use a Fire golem (unless I need lumpy), but thatâs partially in anticipation of him doing âbetterâ once the patch drops.
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Right now my Necro is lvl70 and in Act 2. There are already a few normal mobs with not breakable poison immunity (with the 1 pt LR that has something like -49% p.res). I added a few points to CE and its quite brutal after my merc kills one mob. I think even with the current skill allocation I can safely complete hell, then after 2.4 we will see what is changed and how to modify the character, after all I still have 2 respecs.
Gear-wise I have Trangâs gloves/armor/shield, so I already have the 3 partial bonuses. I have HotO as I do not have D.Web, I also have 2 PB skillers, a +2 skill coronet, a +3 pb amulet, so + skill-wise I think I am kinda okay for player 1. Starting from Act 4 I know things will get more serious, but I think even with this gear it will not be a big problem to complete the game and then do some moo-moo farming.
As for Insight, I am not sure if Iron Golem is a good choice, at least I dont think it would survive too much if I do not add pts on it. I always use the d2.maxxroll planner and set my character at lvl75-80 to see how I should use my points to beat the game in solo p1. Anything above that is end-game focused, so I need to use the available skill points within 80 levels wisely. Theoretically, I will have ~4-5 extra pts for Iron Golem if I put 1 pt on Revive and SMastery + prerequisites. So maybe IG with Insight is for starting the end-game, not for beating the game the first time.
But these are good ideas, thank you everyone for helping me fine tuning my Necy!
I you are not that good item wise, a few points in Lower Res are ok, since you will respec later. But I would not max Lower res. You have revives and corpse explosions.
FOr skellies not dying, you need max skeleton mastery, max skeletons, one crucial point in summon resist and lets say at least +6 skills.
In any case, poison mancer with skeletons = not enough skills. You need to go revives to save the 20 points in skeletons. One point in revives + 20 skeleton masterie is enough, your +skills will do the rest.
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Yap, thatâs the plan! I hope they will do some damage next to my merc!