Brand new to Diablo2 Necro Help needed :)

Hi everyone !



I have picked up D2 classic from a friends reccomendation and its awesome !

Im a wow addict at moment, raid in a top guild with a fury warrior and never thought it put it down xD

Cant believe i havent played this sooner, just fobbed it off for wow ( stupidly!)

well basically i appreiate any help with my queries !

I have started a necromancer and have gone down the summoning route. basically Im after advice and tips on anything i can improve on / respec and/ or any tips :)

i dont understand the short hand terms yet so if poss please explain when needed any short hand ;P

The character is level 35 so far

I have skills as follows :

20 ~ Raise Skeleton

13 ~ Skeleton Mastery ( want this to 20 i think ? )

3 ~ Skeleton Mage

1 ~ Golem mastery

1 ~ Clay Golem

1 ~ Blood Golen

2 ~ Summon Resist

1 ~ Amplify Damage

i use a blue text (common ?) wand that gives :

1 ~ bone Spear

1 ~ Golem Mastery



Is this a good build so far ?

Ive noticed my skeles can take on all of everything on normal mode, act bosses etc HOWEVER they got completly smashed by Diablo, ifound my self running around, using a few more then basically i took him down from half HP with level 1 bonespear, lots of pots and dodging lol took ages.....



Now what was i doing wrong my army got owned xD

I have started nightmare mode and have got to catacombs lvl 2 so far , takes a while but the XP gains are incredible in Nightmare

Stash Box :

I have around 6 perfect gems so far and 5 or 6 flawless gems is that good at my level ?

Equipment is all yellow items, blue staff for necro abilities , i have a gold helm and gold shield that both dropped on Dariel end boss 2 nightmare mode ( got a boost on him xD)

i have 600,000 Gold in stash ( APPROX)

I currently have :

75 strength

26 dexterity

55 energy

100~ vitality



What can i do to improve or conentrate on ?

as ive finished normal ive noticed i have a free respec :)

really appriecate any input guys on what to do next,

i mainly play solo and im on ladder at moment so if i can somehow get through nightmare solo taking down diablo nicely with some minions left then i will

also.... can i upgrade to LOD and still keep this character unchanged or does he get deleted if i upgrade to LOD ?

So grateful for replies guys :)

p.s i love this game |||It's completely normal that Diablo kills your skaletons so easily. It happens to everybody who does the quests without being rushed through the game.

Get a better wand. Pass a heap of gold to a L1 character, for shopping one with +3 to raise skeleton and maybe skeleton mastery. Leave and re-�nter the town to reset the shop inventoryies. The lower the character level, the higher the chance for such a wand because they are level 1 skills. There are also necro shields with these bonuses, but you cannot shop for them, so you have to find them in the lowest level areas. That will take much longer, so just any necro head with a RS bonus would be OK.

Don't invest more than one point into summon resist. No points at all in skeleton mages, IMO they aren't worth it, although 1 point is inevitable because it's a revive prereq (which needs just one point as well).

Use corpse explosion to blow up whole screens full of enemies. Invest one point right now and max it as soon as raise skeleton and skeleton mastery are maxed.

Stats:

Str/dex - enough for gear, no max blocking needed

Vit - all the rest

Energy - nothing|||Thanks so much for the speedy reply !

My next point will go in corpse Explosion then finish off 7 more points to max mastery then dump next 20 in corpse explosion rite ?

Thanks so much im really starting to like this game !

Progress with nightmare or farm some normal act bosses?



also :

wat does mean ?: That will take much longer, so just any necro head with a RS bonus would be OK.

where can i get such a head ? ive not seen anything drop with bonuses to skills only vendor goods.

Is my gear ok all yellow with 2 gold items ?

Thanks !!!!!|||Summoning necromancers can finish the game in Hell completely naked. Your gear, while not optimal, is sufficient. Once you reach Nightmare Mephisto, you'll probably want to spend some time running him for better gear. Even Nightmare Andariel can give you some useful equipment.

I'd recommend a skill point each in Attract and Dim Vision, for defensive purposes. They're particularly effective against ranged attackers such as archers and gloams / black souls.

Best of luck to you!|||Don't go beyond act 4 before you are level 25 because you receive severe penalties for to high level areas until then. After that, proceed as far as you can, as long as you lose less skeletons than you can produce replacements.|||Max Corpse Explosion will speed up your killing a lot, and when/if you get an insight runeword for your merc.. you can spam it like crazy :)|||Maybe I missed someone else say this, but it would seem like Iron Maiden would also be a useful curse to have on hand for some of the higher damage/life melee monsters. Not sure how many points into it would be best, though I would think at least 1.

Hope that helps.|||Iron maiden is completely useless beyond normal mode. Monsters have far more life than your characters then and in pvp it suffers from the usual 1/6 reduction, so its effect would be negligible. The other way around, however... but Oblivion Knights cannot cast it anymore since game version 1.13.|||Since it hasn't been mentioned here yet I guess I'll do: Against act bosses a summoner should be using decriptify and clay golem. The stacked slow will make both diablo and baal a lot easier to deal (it especially messes up baals ai making him near harmless).

There comes a point when clay golem may slow enough for you to not need decrep, allowing the use of amplify damage to speed up the killing. However that is later on when you have a lot of +skills. For now always keep decrep at hand whenever you're facing tougher monsters such as bosses, frenzytaur packs and the minnions of destruction.



Regarding iron maiden it can still be effective (aka overpowered) in pvp, however your opponent must be hitting a minion or bone wall/prison. It's widely considered bad mannered to use it on any melee character (and ofc useless against casters/ranged), but in bm vs bm it's a good thing to have on hand ... bone wall + IM on an nking wwbarb is always fun