I’ve abused my wrists too much over the years (get your mind out of the gutter). For this reason, I much prefer to play on controller. With controller it’s impossible to precisely place a bone prison cast. Therefore, this question.
Thanks in advance if anyone can help.
Bone prison is only used because it is bugged and has 100% procc chance for ring of medeln.
If you don’t have the ring or don’t want to use prison, Just switch it out for anything, Prison is only there to procc ring
I beg to differ. I dont have the Ring of Mendeln yet and I want Bone Prison on my Summoner build becoz I am dealing with mobs way higher level than me. Bone Prison is one of the best defense of the Necromancer against powerful threat. And my Bone Prison has Blight and has Vulnerability. I could use it to anything while it keeps mobs/elites away from.
Wanna see my video of me using it?
To OP, if you dont like Bone Prison, use an Ultimate Skill either Army of the Dead or Bone Storm depending on your style. I remember way back then I had an Ultimate Skill before I learned how to use Bone Prison. I am forced to use Bone Prison when I started dealing with Hard hitting Elites, those who are 15+ levels above me.
So, the bone prison/mendeln thing isn’t mandatory as everyone is saying it is?
On my bone spear build, I use bone storm with Lidless Wall, and the aspect of Sheltering Storm to deal with hard-hitting elites. As long as the mob density is good (and it’s going to get better according to what’s been said), I have zero problems keeping my barrier up. It also deals with poison, which bone prison can’t do.
Thanks for your input.
At the risk of sounding like a Kripp fanboy. Look up his golemancer full minion build.
Im using it now. Feels good to play focus on minion attack speed. Clears decent NM withoit mendeln
That’s the stronger version of a minion build you can achieve
You don’t HAVE to use Bone Prison even if you use Mendeln. I am running a minion build, similar to Kripps Golemancer, cept I use BCE instead of Blood Mist (On Eternal, softcore). I use Iron Golem with Vulnerable, and 6 cold mages (Amulet) with Blizzard Aspect. I use Mendeln, but I’m optimizing Paragon for Minions not Crit chance/Damage. It still works, and Mendeln procs sometimes from BCE but very often from Tendrils. Also using Howl From Below gloves. I’m not pushing deep into NM dungeon levels, but idc about that or I wouldn’t probably be specced for minions at all.
If I switch out the amulet from Mages to Grasping Veins (crit/crit damage on Tendrils) then my Mendeln will hit way harder but I am hooked on 6 mages and Blizzard atm.
The thing is, I am borderline refusing to use Mendeln, and not just because I haven’t dropped it. I have one in Eternal, and don’t use it there either because I know it’s a crappy crutch unique that doesn’t have the right to exist.
Let me explain myself: Mendeln is there for people who want to run minions, but Blizz is very reluctant about actually supporting a “Lord of the Undead” playstyle, even though they (their rep) verbally said they want to. Mendeln needs to go away, and minions need a buff, period. However, in the meantime, I don’t want to abuse a stupid gimmick just to get something that should work out of the box, to work at all. My conspiracy theory is that bone prison/mendeln IS working as intended, to keep Blizzard from having to actually provide viable options for a build archetype (that happens to be the core identity of necromancy). I have no evidence for this except the convenience of the situation, and how easily almost everyone accepts “well, you just have to run Mendeln”.
I want to at least be able to run NM 70 (at current difficulty) at level 100 without having to use Mendeln, and without crawling like a turtle. Is that too much to ask?
Fair enough. And I don’t disagree with you about Mendeln or the state of Minions. But I do currently use it because when I try the build without it, it just feels worse. That’s why I’m kind of splitting the difference, not speccing for Mendeln but using it anyway, and just pretending there isn’t a serious problem with Minion Necro.
It’s sad though that I am specced for Minions, and therefore NOT for Mendeln (the first red flag), and still Mendeln makes the build much stronger (the other red flag).
Another way to go, with a build like mine, is Shadowblight (which I do use, though without any aspects) plus the appropriate Aspect(s). BCE is a good way to supplement the minions’ mediocre damage, while still (imo) feeling like a proper minion-mancer build.
Hey m im Super happy with this one.
h ttps://youtu.be/5XpwFI59tyk
And u only need 2 buttons. Big + for your wrist 
Yeah golemancer is great too.
The most fun build IMO is corpse explosion build.
The core is Howl from below combined with all the + levels in corpse explosion and general corpse skills.
Run with full minions, max their life and paragon defense nodes.
Corpse explosion, corpse tendrils, decrepify are your core skills, army of the dead to proc more corpses and renew your army, I also run with a golem but mist might better than golem as an escape skill.
I stack lucky hit and run with a wand and orb for the lucky hit and cooldown, (faster weapons seem to make the minions attack faster?) and faster hits means more corpses. (run reapers obviously)
For the absolute most fun get a Back river. Basically let your minions build a big corpse pile for you then BOOM! set them off with black river. Brings a smile to your face ever single time.
Yeah golemancer is great too
I keep hearing about golmeancer, can you link to the build?
For my own part, I agree, howl/BCE is very fun. I think part of it is the fact that the corpses turn into skeletons that su|cide bomb enemies. But I’ve found the survivability is better if I eliminate minions from the skill bar and use better defensive options, since the minions are doing f-all for damage. i.e. pure shadowblight.
You need reapers to make corpses.
not unless you’re using black river. The chance to make a corpse hits every 7.33 ticks, and when mob density is good, the corpses pile up. yes it struggles against single target.
also, each stack of bce procs its own hewed flesh (tested against bosses). The only bosses that really give me trouble are spiders. Suppressor elites are a pain, too, but doable.
“each stack of bce procs its own hewed flesh (tested against bosses)” Hewed is a max 12%l lucky hit proc. How much luck are you running? (I am running +71.5%). I run Reapers and a deliberately weak bone golem (to proc corpses off his body).
“15% chance to make a corpse procs every 7.33 ticks,” sorry what is this referring to? ie which skill are we talking about in this quote?
I’m sorry, I made a mistake. Hewed flesh isn’t on lucky hit It’s on “your damage”. So each stack of BCE procs their own corpse generation. If you’re using black river you get about 1/5 the corpses, except when the corpses you start with are scarce. And yeah I’m running about the same lucky hit as you, 70% or so. The whole reason I mentioned lucky hit has nothing to do with generating corpses, but bringing Bone Storm off cooldown.
Read it again. It says “Lucy Hit: your damage has up to a 12%…etc”
Ok so bone storm is your corpse generator? at 70% your CE is lucky 68% of the time and 12% of 68% is about 8.16 so every 12.5 hits per target generates a corpse for hewed flesh.
Would love to hang out in the game some time and compare builds in action.