I am in A3 Nightmare. So far, the summoner has been the easiest time I have ever had playing this game. I played the original, but only 30 or 40 hours. Dont think I ever made it into nightmare. Just tried a few builds and moved on. I am having tons of fun, and im playing through nightmare trying to set myself up for hell.
As a summoner, I am finding it ridiculously easy. I have summon skeleton maxed out, almost maxed out skeleton mastery, 5 or 6 levels in the first golem, one point in amplify, and decrepify. Nothing can touch me. Fighting Duriel, I did not loose a single skeleton, my golem, or my henchman. I assume hell wont be as easy, what should I do to prepare? What do summoners generally need to be successful in hell? My resistances need a little work, but I never get hit soâŚI dont know.
The Benefit of a Summoner is your main skill is a lvl 1 skill. This allows you to start maxing it at level 1 as opposed to other classes that have to wait until lvl 30 to start maxing their skills. The upshot is if you build your summoner âcorrectlyâ you will blow through early normal to mid nightmare easily. Once you get a bit further and definitely into hell you will find itâs not as easy as it was in the beginning.
Its also generally slower than other classes but if you play well it will speed up.
Is summon resist worthwhile? Im having trouble coming up with the next skill in the build. My corpse explosion is at level 5 right now thanks to gear and it seems to be sufficient.
summon resists is a 1 pt wonder. Once you have maxed skellys and mastery you can:
If you are on B-Net get every curse, it helps when running with others if you can help out. I ran around with some trappers and sorcs this morning and just spammed LR. If you are single player Amp and Decrep is all you need.
Max out CE - the radius gets really massive
Max out Dim Vision - Usually a HC option, Dim makes everything stop doing what they are doing. Archers no longer attack, Gloams go sleep sleep.
Max out Clay Golem - he slows things down
Mix of the above - usually split pts between Golem and CE.
Mages - Almost forgot about them. You can Max Mages they do about 1/3rd the damage of skellys at their bestâŚusually about 1/5 at bad levels. The good news is if you get Infinity for your merc, they will do only 1/2 the damage of the skellys!
Addressing the other questions about hell:
Get your resistances up!
Get more + to skills, I think you have 4, try to double that if you can.
Shop a Telly Staff for weapon swap
Get your Might merc
Grab PopcornâŚyou need to do something while your skellys kill.
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Is skeleton resistance worth it?
1 point. Your + to skills will do the rest.
These two guides are pretty good references for the classic âFishymancerâ (Summon + CE focused Necro, âfishingâ for Corpse Explosion).
MrLlamaSC from the second video seems to be the closest this community has to a full on D2 Scholar. All his guides are on point.
Anyway, as you see, so long as you:
- max Raise Skeleton, Skeleton Mastery and Corpse Explosion (for the radius).
- grab one point into Amplify Damage, Decrepify, maybe Dim Vision for crowd control, maybe Lower Resist for team play, and their requirements like Life Tap or Iron Maiden.
- ⌠the rest of the build is really up to preference. Some people like to max Amplify Damage or Dim Vision to debuff or daze the whole screen at once. Some people like to max their Clay Golem to make it more than a a one-point slow debuffer. Some people like to put more points into Revive and Skeletal Mage to get more bodies.
Itâs up to you. The cool thing with D2R is that once you can clear Hell Act bosses and gather the reagents, you can craft respec tokens to experiment a bit.
The cooler thing with the Fishymancer specifically is that itâs recognized not only as an S-tier build (it can farm every area in the game), but one that can beat the game almost naked once their skills are setup.
Thanks for that. I just made it to hell yesterday. I noticed quickly that it wont be as easy this time around. In nightmare, it required no thought, and I didnt even have the need for CE as my skeletons were murdering things quickly enough. I think now, I will max out CE and then max out Clay Golem as he was dying a bit closer to the end of nightmare.
It is nice to not be so gear dependent, I finished nightmare wearing mainly Magic find gear. Im just collecting runes, gems, and gear for my next sorc or amazon run. Thanks again for the guides. Super helpful.
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Skelemancer has always been my go-to. Easy mode for sure.
I max Skeleton Warrior / Mastery, Corpse Explosion, grab all the curses (just 1 point is enough with high +skills), 1 point in everything else in the summon tree, 1 point Bone Armor, and max Bone Prison for a ~500 phys absorb Bone Armor.
I donât really see the point in maxing anything Golem-related. With just 1 point in Clay Golem it can get upwards of 8k HP in Hell and a 50%+ slow, which is mainly what heâs used for. Iâd rather have that extra layer of defense from Bone Armor.
Only time I mess with anything Golem related is when I want to use the Iron Golem + Runewords to just have another Aura based offense. It isnât the most efficient thing in the world but isnât bad at all.
As others have said what I tend to recommend is:
- Max RS/SM/Revive/CE (or close to here)
- Then you can pick where the remaining points go to do a tad different. Curses, Iron Golem, bone defense, etc. it becomes a lot of what makes you feel the best as the player
