After trying a Warlock Summoner , it’s painfully obvious just how underwhelming the D2R Necro Summoner is by comparison.
Without Corpse Explosion (CE), the Necro Summoner is straight-up terrible. I’m not arguing that CE shouldn’t be included—it’s essential—but even if you doubled skeleton and skeleton mage damage, boosted their attack speed by 50%, and increased their movement speed by 50%, they’d still underperform in Hell difficulty.
The only reason Necro Summoners can clear endgame content as an “S-teir build” is Teleport (via Enigma), CE, and a strong merc. None of these are summoner skills. if you make a pure Summoner, what teir would the build fall to?
So I have to ask: Is the “Necro Summoner” actually a summoner build… or just a CE nuker with some pets as window dressing?
List of issues by order of magnitude(in my opinion).
- Bodyblocking - Skeletons clump up, block doors/paths, and get in your way constantly.
- Attack Speed - very slow….
- Movment Speed - Crawl behind you
- Damage (this is number 1 on Skeleton mages)
- Leash range
- not beeing able to direct skeletons - Can’t command or position them.
- AI - (due to the amount of summons this is less dire)
- Minions beeing unsummoned when leavin game(QoL and efficiency issue)
- Minion survivorbility agains bosses, before you get decrepify+ another source of slow.
It is important to note that minions have:
Debuff Vulnerability - They get cursed/stunned/slowed/chilled/blinded by enemies; can miss on hit.
A lvl 27 skeleton (w/ lvl 27 mastery) hitting 240 damage vs average Act 1 Hell mob 2,500 HP (ish) , and Act 5’s ~10,000 HP (ish).
you can add, might aura and amp damage to this, but still the damage it self is not the biggest challange with this build, it is just part of the problem.
(note! Golems also suffer mostly the same issues)
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The summon necro fully decked out is broken. I’ve solo ed hell with one easily even without enigma users included. You need to get raise skeleton and skeleton master both up to about 38 to 42 and have the right gear.
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No summon necor is not even close to being broken. Can be strong with revives with crushing blow. But the summon necro ia trash. Only ce makes it strong.
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I think they need to revamp Skelly mastery. They could perhaps add splash to your melee skellys at a certain lvl then upgrade mage spells to a higher spell tier (example fire bolt to fire ball) and maybe increace duration of revive as well as damage. I think this would help with summon necro issue of how little aoe is in the summon tree.
2 Likes
A fully geared Summon Necro can definitely clear Hell, no argument there.
But compared to other top builds, it’s not actually strong — it’s basically a CE build with a merc doing the first kill while skeletons act as a meat shield.
If you compare it in a vacuum it looks good, but relative to other classes it falls behind.
And saying it’s ‘broken’ when you’re running +18–22 skills isn’t really a fair comparison — with that level of gear almost any build feels strong.
Nevermind the splash, They straight up need damage/def boost
A very undergeared summon necro can fully clear hell.
In players 8.
They are the most ‘modern’ gameplay spec in the game before warlock. Their kill speed is pathetic and not ‘modern’.
But they most definately can clear hell with like a spirit sword/leorics, any shield, any armour a skeleton hat/lore and an insight on the Merc with somelifesteal and reasonable def armour.
Any build can do that, most of them faster.
And they are not using merc and CE as their main damage….
D2 necro summoner is not a summoner. Its a CE build. With a merc and some meat shields running around.
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as a pure summon necro with lvl 51 skills i somewhat agree ce is basically carrying the build and doing 70 percent of the damage. Make it so sekeltal mastery give skeletal warriors 1 percent crit, attack rating, crushing blow, increase their base damage by 3x make skeletal mastery buff skeletal mages elemental mastery 15 percent damage per lvl bonsus percent damage per lvl and -3 to enemy res per point. This would give lvl 40 skeletal mages and skeletal mages have -120 to enemy res and they would do 6x the current damage they do now.
2 Likes
Another variance is to simply give Fire Golem Corpse Explosion at half the radius and tie Corpse Explosion cast speed to its attack speed.
Giving fire golem enchant at 1 level of enchant per 2 levels of golem would also be functional as it adds 1-3 skeletons of damage depending on gear. While assisting with groups and levellers yet still leaving space for pure enchant sorcs.
Give Fire mages reduced defence per hit and lightning mages crushing blow.
Its still a CE build, but with more golem juggling and space for ye old school summoners to pop CE themselves. While increasing kill speed on single targets - like bosses, for the low and middle of the +skills range.
This keeps it tighter and more inline with the previous gameplay state while providing some* buffs.
(whats wrong with giggle?) ?
necros alreayd have corpse explosion, dont think that would work well, the enchant from fire golem seems legit thou, scale it at 1 enchant per 2 lvls. So a lvl 50 fire golem gives lvl 25 enchant.
Aye, it would be ~100 fire damage and thus 30-70 damage with mob resistances.
So averaging out to 1-3extra skeleton warriors I think from low to high end gearing.
The AR increase is great for low geared and not so good for high geared.
It also ‘displays’ further the dynamic of a necro and specifically a necro summoners as support and synergistic to party play.
Its not really alot and stacks onto the core loops with a mild bonus while forcing shifting of golems.
After all that all it really needs is an item that adds +15 or so to blood golem (like a ring) and outside of iron, its golem juggling loop is far better. Another item with the ability to have two differing golems at the same time would complete the structure.
So to be clear:
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clay golem for boss control - slow and taunt.
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blood golem for walking and health recovery
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fire golem for aoe/buffs/CE
AND iron for whatever aura/CB bonus
I wish poison dagger would become “poison enchant” so you could enchant and help your own skeletons(kill 2 birds one stone), poison dagger FINALLY becomes useful and skeletons get buffed
so your gonna enchant 60-80 minions each time you joing a new game? What said doesnt even make sense for the game.
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