Hello,
I am looking for a necro build that can do Baal and Nithalak runs. What would you recommend for both. This will be my fourth 80+ is D2R. I know some basics but would appreciate any tips 
Thanks
Ps what level could I spec into it around…
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The three main builds for a necy are Summoner, Bone and Poison, then there are the variations based on the three of those.
Summoner uses skelly’s to do the damage, you sit back summon up and curse everything. When you get a Body CE the world!
Bone uses bone spear to shoot everything, when you get a body, CE the world!! This is a more traditional caster build, where you shoot things. Spear is magic damage just like Hammers so there is very little that is immune.
Poison uses Pnova as the main damager, once you get a body CE everything that was Poison immune. Again Traditional caster but pNova kills everything in a ring around you.
Summoner is the easiest to get into and the least gear dependent. Poison is good in the beginning but really shines once you have Death’s Web, one of the most rare items in the game.
A fishymancer is probably the easiest, the concept of a fishymancer (stupid name) is max skelly’s and Corpse Explosion. This build leaves a lot of extra points to put into whatever else you want, so it can be what you want. For skills you basically get 20 points into Raise Skelly real quick, this will give you skellys that can take on mid nightmare by the time you hit lvl 23. Even if you want to do poison I would still build it as a summoner through normal.
Pt 1-3 raise skelly, p 4 Skelly Mastery, p5 Amp Damage, p6 clay golem, p7-13 Raise Skelly p14 iron maiden, p15-25 Raise Skelly…By level 23 you have maxed raise skelly and you can start filling out the rest of the skills.
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In a nutshell, any necro build leads to the corpse explosion fest deleting anything off screen.
Bone:
Best single target (bosses)
Medium gear dependant (+skillers) but easy to gear
Average damage, but no immunities
summoner
Lowest single target dmg
Not gear dependant, you can beat hell nakes
Lowest damage until you get the very best gear, but you can do UBERS easily with revives
Poison
Do not use this build until level 34. You need lower resist at level 5.
Best aoe dmg, average single target
Contrary to popular beliefs, you don’t need Dweb at all. very few mobs are immune to poison and even so you can break it. I leveled myself 34-91 as poison, beat the game, no dweb.
Very gear dependant end-game
Harder to play, poison nova forces you to get closer to monsters
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Google fishymancer. I’m currently running it with barely anything specifically to do wsk walks to Baal (got bored with meph runs on blizz mf)
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I feel as if bonemancer is easiest. Poison is best end game IMO, but you need insane gear. Back in the day I had a great setup with 3 socketed poison facets. My nova was doing 8500-9000 damage, no joke. Was incredible.
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I rolled a 47 psn / lvl 20 thorns Bramble, super lucky. My novas went from 6k to 9k.
You do need the 3 tranghoul set bonus, shield gloves(+25% dmg, best piece hands down) and shield for the -25% ennemy psn resistance.
And yea what’s nice about it is that the poison facets are the cheapest.
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I remember I had the 9k psn nova without bramble. Had enigma. But I’m working on a Bramble right now, great piece. And agreed, you definitely need the trang set. My RNG luck is not so great this time around and with work, I can’t game 24/7 like I could as a kid.
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DO you need the whole set or just three pieces. Im not familiar with Necro.
THANKS TO ALL WHO REPLIED
You absolutely need the shield to activate the 3 piece bonus. It reduces poison resistance by 25%. Gloves, belt and shield.
The gloves should be your first goal, honestly all 3 pieces are super cheap (lem or lower usually).
I got super lucky and found 2 Sur’s, still missing half my gear but definitely with decent +skills u go up to 9k. Rn I only have 1 skill charm, shako and a BK.
I figure once I get dweb and the rest I can easily go up to 15k.
Infinity on the merc with a good LR curse and the nova just crushes anything in hell. I loved it.
Conviction does not lower Poison resists (or magic.) Infinity won’t help a PNova necy…
Summoners only benefit from conviction from the lower def for the skellys. If you have mages, your mage damage goes from 1/6th the damage of the skellys to 1/3rd the damage of the skellys.
Correct, mages are overall bad and have terrible AI and die off screen. Summoners best weapon is Beast, for the fanatism aura.
Edit: you would want an Arms of King Leoric to summon, then swap to beast.
So Ive been playing Fishymancer. Currently im level 41 and Im still maxing the skele mastery. have 3 more points to go. I have +5 to skills through Viper magi, crystal in wep, Tarnhelm, and a +1 ammy with 32 mf. I have over 200 mf now and im farming to 45 at baal then will run to andy and farm it for a while.
If you have any tips on cheap runewords that would help me summon higher level skele’s that would help. I saw someone say +50 total is attainable.
At your level your doing fine, + 5 by end of normal is strong gear wise…
Getting to 50 Skellys , note +30 not +50, would take the really ‘good’ stuff. Enigma, Arm of King Leoric, Homunculus, +3 summon hat and amy, Soj’s, Arachnids, torch, anni, grand charms etc…
I leveled with viper/2x spirit (had eyeless then lidless before monarch) that alone was enough really. Spirit is really good and insight on the Merc helps spam CE early on. Some people say you can use rhyme for a shield, Im considering it to boost my mf now for wsk/Baal runs. Fishy literally doesn’t need much.
I recently traded for a torch which is expensive, and an arm of king leoric (fairly cheap) which wrecks hell.
Here’s the tl;dr version of literally every build:
- STR and DEX enough to equip gear
- NRG nothing
- VIT all the points
- A2 merc with Insight
- Max out [insert skill here]
- Max out synergies for that skill
- Enigma
- Shako
- Spirit monarch
- More godly stuff you ain’t got
Then farm, baby, farm.
And now you know how to make literally every build for every class! 
Except for the block capped poison nova necros and Insight being less useful than Pride or Infinity for fishymancers.
Tried that last year, I advise against it. As poison you get much closer to ennemies due to nova range and got to wait 2 full sec for the poison. When you block it staggers your character and you can get swarmed very quickly.
I’m 100% vita this time and it’s much, much smoother.
If you find a good 2 socket shrunken head with the right + to skills you can make a really nice rhyme in it. I’m still using the one I made in normal that had +1 to smelly and + 1 to mastery.
I guess it’s time to make the spirit, I just like the MF and I’m not having issues…