Bone Spear:
- Least gear dependent
- Easy to use/play
- No set up
- Reliable unless you run out of essence often
- Can run out of essence quick (gear dependent)
- Squishiest out of the 3
- Every Necro you meet out there probably has the same build as you
Infinimist (Blighted CE + Blood Mist)
- Probably the strongest build Necro currently has
- You are immune to damage almost all the time
- Zips around the battlefield (might be a surprise to some, gear dependent)
+/- Braindead gameplay
- Your performance gets worse as the number of mobs goes down
- Can’t just shoot an obstacle/structure to bring it down
- Your necro is aesthetically a red blob most of the time
- Somewhat gear dependent
Minion with Ring of Mendeln (RoM)
- A minion build!
- Second tankiest after Infinimist
- Most gear dependent, needs RoM
- Needs set up
- You have least control on the battlefield out of the 3 builds
- Deals damage indirectly by proccing lucky hits/RoM
If the minions (not the RoM) could be buffed a bit, I think they would be in a pretty good place in relation to each other.
I’m on the RoM Minion build right now. Probably will try Blood and then Sever build later on. I noticed that Blood builds are there on the leaderboard on Hardcore, so they should be pretty decent I guess - feel free to tell me.
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What people don’t tell you is how often the blighted corpse explosion procs the ring. Which is a lot. Along with blood surge you can facetank any pack of mobs or single target.
I don’t think you understand Bone Spear …
It has the most setup of all 3. The most burst. The most survivabilty.
To really make spear work, you need to micro manage your flesh eater/corpse explosions. Popping that 49-58% all damage multi right when you tendril is the diff between you being deleted by their reply and picking up loot. Keeping the flow to maintain your permanent bone storm for dr/shield/crit while executing combo’s means you can’t miss often or spam. Max damage is accomplished by position and aiming at the environment to shotgun 6 hits into 1 target.
If your idea of Bone Spear is holding left click til mana is gone and shoveling #$@% for 30 seconds then yeh, it’s on par with ROM and Blighted CE.
That’s not what I mean by “needing setup”, it’s not micromanagement like you alluded to. What I meant is that you can immediately engage the enemies with Bone Spear, as opposed to the other builds which need to get corpses first, and in the case of any minion build, you need to build your whole army first (it takes even longer if you don’t use any core skill).
Bone Spear has the least survivability since you don’t have minions as meat shields and you aren’t in Blood Mist 99% of the time. I agree that it has the most burst damage.
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You are correct, I have run the first and last and am currently running the middle build. 
wtf? My bone spear is: 100% fortified all the time thanks to tendril/wall combo, bone storm is up almost constantly because I dropped CE for decrep…which also gives more DR. I never have any essence issues due to open flesh+umbral+bone wall+tendrils+essence on kill paragon. You just swap your “dmg bonus per corpse consumed” for ossified essence aspect, and dmg while fortified nodes instead of the legendary paragon node for corpse consumption dmg bonus.
I face tank butcher in t80+ (especially since he’s an idiot and just runs in place if you bone wall him) and have essentially no issues in endgame unless I charge straight into elite packs with bad modifier combos like frozen+explode on death.
Spear isn’t tanky only if you don’t have open flesh/umbral/life per kill paragon. At that point you can drop basic skill for wall and CE for decrep then the game is hilariously easy…you don’t take dmg, and you obliterate most everything in one hit.
It’s still squishiest out of the 3 though, I didn’t say that it can’t be tanky. Semantics/technicalities aside, if you don’t have end game gear then Bone Spear build is not that tanky, while Infinimist and RoM Minion build have built-in survivability.
minion builds are trash period. tankiness or not doesn’t change that. Monsters ignore minions and charge you, minions can’t taunt effectively, their dmg output is hot garbage even with RoM…you can be the tankiest build in the world but if you can’t kill anything you still die.
infinimist is fine but painfully slow to c lear and I simply kick anyone who runs it out of the party immediately because of blighted corpse explosion visuals. I won’t even give them a chance, they are just instantly kicked.
Okay, but I’m not debating their performance. RoM Minion can clear T70, and maybe T80 when fully optimized so I think it’s more than enough for most people.
if a build can’t do T80+ comfortably, and t100 with some effort+uber lillith it isn’t a viable build. Just because it “works for casuals” doesn’t mean it works.
Being able to clear T50 comfortably and then some is what I consider a working build since you are facing lvl 100+ enemies in the dungeon, which is above player’s max level.
Clearing T70-80: good build
Clearing T100 OR defeating Uber Lilith: great build, if it can do both then it’s one of the best builds.
Different builds are meant for different types of activities. There will be trade-offs.
Some class/builds are going to be able to speed-farm in helltides or 35+ NM. A few builds can clear 100 NM, but the gameplay loop is probably going to sux for other types of content.
Ultimately as long as the best items can drop in the activity your build can do, it is a decent/good build.