Diablo III - Official Discussion Thread - Who will beat Inferno first?

[lestatdark]

Shinobi-san said:

lestatdark said:

Shinobi-san said:

Can you maybe share some tips for my necro build?

I was really intrigued by your focus on skeletons....so im trying to go with something similar.

The last time i played as a necro i leveld my golem mostly. But then again back then i was much younger and wasnt the kinda guy to read up on builds etc.

I seriously didn't touch the golems, though I did put up the basic point for prerequesite unlocks since I needed Summon Resist for my build. Having said that, my Clay Golem is now at level 7 thanks to + skill modifiers, has 2150 Life and slows enemies by 33%, nothing too shabby. 

All my summonecro builds are focused around skeletons. Not only are they permanent (unlike Revives which have that pesky 180 second limit coupled with the insanely high mana cost and shitty pathfinding AI, makes them a no-no for me), they're easy to replace and deal a ton of damage while having good attack ratings, defense and life (especially if you focus on Skeleton Mastery at first).

My build basically went like this:

Amplify Damage -> Raise Skeleton x6 (to get an army of 4 skeletons for the majority of Normal) -> Skeleton Mastery x20 -> Decrepify and it's prereqs (Corpse Explosion, Weaken and Terror) -> Summon Resist and it's prereqs (Clay Golem and Golem Mastery) -> Raise Skeleton x14 -> Skeleton Mages x20 -> building on Corpse Explosion now. 

I wanted to focus on Skeleton Mastery early on rather than augmenting the size of my army because if you focus on Raise Skeleton, your skeletons won't get that much stronger plus you'll be increasing the mana cost for each skellie. With Skeleton Mastery, you can make stronger and sturdier skeletons without adding any additional mana cost. 4 Skeletons and an Act I merc with Cold arrows is more than enough to hold you to Act V Normal. 

Afterwards it was a matter of expanding the army, adding the mages, getting decrepify (my favourite curse) and now Corpse Explosion to deal with large mobs in a couple of seconds (though I have to be conservative with CE because you can run out of corpses for skeletons fast if you aren't careful).

In my opinion, anything other than Skeletons is too expensive and not cost-effective because of lack of proper "punch". You want strength in numbers, not strength focused on a single force (golems). While in theory, an Iron Golem made from a good Rare piece of equipment can be very strong, you'll just end up killing things slower, plus your necromancer will get exposed much more. With a minion army of 23 elements, plus the mercenary, I basically have a shield around my necromancer which is almost impregnable. I haven't died once yet. 

Couple this build with some good gear (I have +7 skill levels overall and +12 for Skeleton Mastery) and you'll really see the whole concept of strength in numbers coming into fruition.

Wow thanx! That was just the info i was looking for...

I currently have an army of 6 skeletons and im only on level 19 lol, granted i do have an item giving me +2 to raise skeletons. I havent focused that much on skeleton mastery i have about 3 points in that.

I spent one point on my clay golem...he helped me most of the first act but became too weak now. I leveld one into blood golem now though. Is a blood golem worth investing points in :?

With regards to spells, i leveld corpe explosiong and terror and weaken. I was using mostly corpse explosion (does insane amount of damage with large groups of mobs!) So true what you say about running out of bodies to use for raise skelleton

Its fun though to spam corpse explosiong while  constantly replenishing my mana XD (given the abundance of potions this doesnt seem to be an issue)

I have also been leveling my stats very randomly...i figured two points for vitality, 2 points for magic, and 1 on str...

Edit: I gave you wrong info! Im level 18 - I have 12 points on raise skeletons! lol - 1 on skeleton mastery - 1 on clay golem - 1 golem mastery - 1 blood golem - 1 amp damage - 1 corpse explosiong - 1 teeth. My weapons gives me 2 points to raise skelly -  2 points to corpse explosion - 2 bone armour - and 3 to weaken.

Well, Blood Golem doesn't usually get stronger than Clay Golem, their damage usually stay amongst the same level, though I prefer the Clay one because of his natural ability of slowing down enemies which when combined with Decrepify and some frost mages or the act I Cold Arrow mercenary, you can effectively slow down an enemy's movement to -90% (which is amazing for end act bosses, I can get Nightmare Baal to get an attack frame once every 2 seconds, when he usually has an attack frame of 2 attacks per second).

As for stats, I never put any points into Energy, it's mostly a waste of points since you'll get enough Mana from gear later on (this is a rule I follow for every character, including sorcerers). My stats distribution went: 10 vitality -> 10 Strength until I hit 156 in Strength (which is the Strength requirement to equip a Monarch shield which will have the Spirit runeword) and then went 10 vitality -> 10 dexterity (so I could increase the Chance to Block).

How much damage do your skeletons put out? To give you a comparison point, at level 18 I had 6 points of Raise Skeleton and 13 on Skeleton Mastery (10 + 3 from a Rare Zombie Head), and each of my 4 skeletons were dealing 28 - 30 damage.