Lamo, barbs WW is doing about 100k at this point…but hey keep playing necro is slow, tedious, and boring is your thing.
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I wouldn’t say that it is completely broken but I do agree that there are limited builds using minions. I have been using reaper skeletons and they have been providing me with corpses but the fact that they don’t get healed when summoning a priest is very frustrating. Simply put, relying on strictly minions id no longer an option. I am not sure if they want to do away with that system or just can’t figure out the balance but the option is gone.
Well, you can play a summoner necro perfectly fine in D4.
It just won’t work the exact same way as the summoner necro did work in D2(R).
My summoner necro looks currently like that:
- Decompose + Acolyte’s decompose
- Skeleton Reaper Warriors (15% Chance to form a corpse)
- Shadow Mage with stun
- Corpse Explosion + Blighted Corpse Explosion node
- Blight + Super Natural Blight node
- Bone Golem with chance to shed a corpse
- Army of the dead + its support nodes
- Shadowblight
The rest goes in passive nodes that supports the damage output of darkness/shadow skills and improve your summons.
This build relies heavily on generating corpses. So, the summons of this necro’s build are just there to support generating corpses and not to do the actual damage.
The actual damage comes from corpse explosion (and blight) that one can (and have to) spam like crazy with this build and I promise, once there are few corpses, the monsters will die like flies.
Even boss fights aren’t a huge problem for this build.
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I am using a similar build as well. I don’t have any issues but it is frustrating that there are no more minion based builds at all.
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So, I got back on my Necro and decided to look at my skeletons and see if I should just take the self buff. I than decided to take the defenders because I figured if they are even a little more tanky I can deal with the DPS lose since they’ll be around longer for me to do something other than chain summon. Well, they are beasts compared to the Skirmishers.
I went to the Defiled Catacombs and fought this crazy Spider that just spit crap everywhere and kept chain spawning spiders and I did NOT have to resummon them once. I know for a fact that the Skirmishers would’ve been dead in the first pool of poison and that is with the extra 5th one. The Skirmishers are the problem.
Defenders > Skirmishers
Necromancer for me, well:
For starters, I literally rolled dice for the very first character I picked to play. From class, to body type, to every little thing you could customize. I used physical dice to determine everything.
Then.
Been playing. Currently level 25, just finished obtaining the Golem.
Now, I have been focusing on Summoning build. And so far, not bad. Have killed the Butcher twice, never died, and the skely’s did ok, but then the Butcher just chased me anyway.
What I have found that works for me, and this is without considering gear obtained skills:
I maxed out the summon tree options.
I maxed out the Scythe skill.
Maxed out Exploding Corpse.
And working through a couple of the curses.
Also maxed out skills for hewning flesh from enemies with Scythe and the same sort of skill for the Skeletons so that I get plenty of corpses.
So I start a battle against a large mob or boss, build up some corpses, keep throwing curses, and then start exploding corpses under the bad guy’s feet.
Easy peasy, and don’t lose many minions. Sure, you are going to get some whacked, but no biggie.
Actually not that horrible, yet.
Will see as I get higher.
On Tier II, I have no issues playing with my cute little sexy Necrogirl.
I can even tank the painful Butcher with my minions and Golem pet.
4x Reaper
3x Bone Mages
1x Golem which fits to your playstyle and skill tree (you can control him on battlefield)
By reaching level 33~35, skill points are correctly set to 3/3 health for my reapers, mages and golem, as well as 3/3 for the buffing/healing priest for 60% health.
Just contantly use/cycle the Priest every 5th second and my summons never die, not even the bone mages. Miniions die by a boss’es super attack though, but in meantime my reapers created a lot of “corpses” to re-summon them in an instant.
What is important to use are AOE de-buffing “curses” and spells. So far at my current level, even one AOE curse is enough. I can even complete these red fortified stronghold boss markers solo.
So I would say: in your case it is literally a “skill issue”.
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It’s just the 2nd day. And you are talking about high ilevels where Tier Sets are involved. Those were not explored yet. It would depend on the Special Gear. I would deal on that later on the game.
As for leveling on WT2, they seem fine to me. But I understand those who has no quick fingers who expects the Pets to kill everything for them… they will be frustrated becoz it wont work like that. Maybe it would work but you would need special gear for it that is not readily accessible right now.
Skellies is not the answer for everything. They are useful on some kind of fights. Not all fights. This is not summon them and forget. It’s way more dynamic than that.
Dude… try Kripp’s build. When I fought him at about the same level, by the time you’d procced that bubble, I’d already gotten his health down to the first arrow above his bar.
Use reap, bone spear, blood mist, decrepify, army of the dead, and Kalan’s edict. Sack your golem for attack speed and use a two-handed scythe. It’s an amazing build! I finished having lost only two skeletal reapers. Everything else was standing.
Non-sense, my Cold mages kill lots of things, and my reapers, they are also great CC. I’m doing just fine with 5 cold mages 6 reapers and a blood golem. I hardly get touched. You also have to invest in blood or shadow magic to enhance as well as blood drops to heal them and use the priest healer ability when you have a full staff. Also there are abilities that goad additional corpses to use.
I will also have to try that Lolamarie, I like my current setup but would be awesome to try diff configs
I love how everyone’s response to “being primarily a summon master sucks” is “use anything else except focusing on the summons”
like wow…
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I agree, also getting the armor bonuses to increase the amount of summons you get
They’re more than a little more tanky. They go from 85% life, to 115% life (roughly a 1/3 increase) - and one of their upgrades lets them negate one entire hit every six seconds.
Then, provided it’s multiplicative and not additive? Skeleton Warrior Mastery makes them even BETTER at surviving: 1.15 x 1.45 = 1.667 life (compared to just 1.233 for Skirmishers).
But you do lose a chunk of DPS in exchange. But … use them to TANK, not DPS. The mages are for DPS. I roll with Shadow mages (and lean heavy into Shadow damage / Darkness skills all 'round), because one of their upgrades lets them Stun an enemy for 2 seconds, once every 5 seconds. That tends to make the Warriors live even LONGER, because it’s that many fewer attacks coming in.
Mitigate the damage loss with liberal application of Blight, and the upgrade that lets you and the minions do more damage to things in Blight … use Decompose and it has a similar upgrade (plus it generates extra corpses) … 
I do sometimes have to resummon 2 or 3 Warriors, even with all that … typically, if I accidentally pull 2 Elites and a LOT of adds at once.
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Mostly, I agree. But having seven skeletons is enough until I get the paragon and gear to boost them. Sacking the solitary golem, considering he takes up a whole ability slot, was well worth it.
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There’s some minion multipliers, but they’re not nearly enough to compensate for the low base damage of the minions.
Plus, it’s spread out damage most of the time. Anyone that played a lot of minion builds in D2 can tell you the biggest damage boost (by far) was enigma.
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The really big problem I see is the fact your minions dont focus what you attack. They just attack what they want.
Having your minions not attack during vulnerable windows etc. is just going to kill the class.
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I’m not convinced they’re meant to. Their supposed to be half the summoner’s damage. I always keep Decrepify up and spread Bone Spear out among the mobs, marking as many vulnerable as I can, after lining up my shots. Then, assist the minions in finishing them off with Reap to get my essence back. Seems to work.
They aren’t going to do it all, and neither will you. You have to work together.
I have played the Entire game As pure summoner necro and it feels great. AoE fights can be a bit slow at times but my single target is crazy strong. im currently in world tier 3 level 54 and still going strong dispite not finding one of the important legendary affixes for minions
This is complete nonsense. Bone Spear is so good you can sacrifice all the minions and still tear through everything with no fears.
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