Hey everyone!
I’m currently playing a Poison Necromancer Lv.78 on Hell difficulty.
I am struggling to kill some normal monsters not to mention bosses that have immunity to Poison and some of them also have to Cold (which my mercenary has), these bosses don’t even get hurt, their life stays the same and they heal very fast.
I was wondering if anyone’s got any advice, tips, recommendations and guidance for me on how to be able to kill them.
I do have some nice gear and Lower Resist skills acquired.
Thanks in advance!
first of all i’d advise to get a few more baalruns in, reach lvl 85+
furthermore maybe try different specializations? u can find so many good working but cheap builds online for necromancer.
A2 mercenary with might instead of deep freeze will allow for way more damage from your merc towards immunities.
It’s really hard for any of us on the forum to say what might be wrong we don’t know what gear you’re using and how your skill points have been distributed etc.
Currently Level 85 Necro Fishmancer now at act5.
When I got to hell, it was a hard difference to nightmare, but also I started to find better gear. Using runewords like ryhme and white helped a lot. Good trick with normal act2 NPC is using exit from town to refresh his offers to get white weapon +3 scellies, +3 to bonespear and more and have Dol Io in it. Before using spirit sword and a nice skull offhand with ryhme.
Fix your resis very important by filling inventory with charmes of resistances. Before I found my trang oul armor I used heks of wsdom giving +1 to skills.
You need a lot of + to skills. My scellies are now level33 and scel mastery 30.
Take your time and try to stay in background.
Thing is…
I even struggle killing a bunch of Poison Immune skeletons and I left their boss just cause I couldn’t scratch him! hehe…
Well I did try to hire A2 mercenary just yesterday and he died too many times that I got back to my A3 one…
As for skills, I got all the Poison maxed, Curses just 1’s and Lower Resist 14
And I’m currently working on a hybrid build so Skeletons Lv.12, Golem Lv.8 (With +Skills not only bases)
Act2 merc with healing aura and then give him Insight runeword and he will better stay alive.
Later give him obedience for heavy damage. Insight is nearly a must have for him.
Always look for better defense armor for your merc. He has a lot of strength and could wear heavy armor.
For a pure poison build, you break immunities with your Lower resist, as you already are, but LR works only at 20% of its listed value against immune monsters, so they’ll be left with ~90% resist and you will not do enough damage. The exploit here is that once broken, the resist can be further reduced by gear: Poison facets, Trang shiled, dweb, … Aim to get as much -enemy poison resist as possible and you’ll start killing faster. Act 3 mercs are notoriously useless. Try to find some better gear for an Act 2 merc so that he can stay alive and he’ll serve you better. Nightmare defensive should be your best bet in terms of survivability. Get him some life leech (absolute must), the highest damage weapon you can think of, and possibly some damage reduction/resists. His damage will also help against immunities you can’t break.
Ral tir tal sol on a 4 os polearm type weapon. Be careful not to use a spear instead, some people make that mistake because a2 mercs can equip spears as well as polearms. Ethereal is better as mercs don’t lose durability
Offensive is better for killing. They have a Might aura when you get them from nightmare. But if you have problems with survival, defensive is better. Holy freeze slows everything, including cold immunes (the only exceptions are death lords and dolls) and you can get them from nightmare, too. That’s the defensive type mercenary, now it probably just shows the aura icon and it’s name.
It can be superior, but it must not be magic, i.e. NO prefixes/affixes allowed. In game its name should appear with grey text. That applies for all runewords. Otherwise any polearm would do - Voulge, Bill, Colossus Voulge for example are all OK. They are the normal/exc/elite version of the same weapon and they are all listed as polearm class. It needs to have exactly 4 sockets. You cannot socket 4 runes in a 5 socketed polearm for example.
Well, with a poison mancer you picked the potentially fastest, but also most demanding (item wise) necromacer build. You basically need (any) Death web (or pile up facets while staying high with resists) to be able to play this build decently. Trang Bonus of -25% is not enough alone.
Oh Jesus lucky I read that before moving forward…
I literally just found a 5 Sockets Polearm and was gonna do it than read what you said…
You’re a genius thank you!
Hey pbihq!
Well I am currently looking for Death’s Web nut have no idea on how to find it, I read online that it has a better drop rate at “The Sewers” A2, I guess I’ll go farm there, is it called “Death’s Web” when it is dropped?
I just managed to get through act 5 solo hardcore yesterday with my skelemancer. I don’t know details of poison build, but if you at some point wanna try something else, a skelemancer need no special gear to go through hell. Just 20/20 on skeleton mastery/raise skeleton and a single point in summon resist, amplify damage and decrepify will suffice, and quite a few points in corpse explosion will speed things up. No more skills needed, so feel free to experiment with rest. Might merc from act 2 nightmare. I’m still using three topaz helm for magic find, vendor bought wand 3 diamond shield for resistance, rare rings/amulets/boots and a magic belt to mostly get resistances. I made a smoke (runeword) armor for merc to get him to max resistance for survival, and eventually a bone (runeword) armor for myself to also get resistance while also boosting skills. Try to create a set of gear to max summoning skills while you summon your minions, as their power is decided when they get raised. For regular item set, get max resistances, and try to get plus skill items to boost skeletons and improve curses.
Got a long necro thread on it, but sadly I had to give up writing to it, as I’m not allowed to reply to my own posts. But there are threads with info if you manage to ignore all the whining in between that sadly dominates the forum
Damn lucky I read that! I literally just found a 5 Socket Polearm and was planning to give it a go! You’re a genius!
So what you’re saying is that I have to go to Nightmare difficulty and hire A2 mercenary from there?
Yeah I am currently looking for Death’s Web! I read online that it has a higher drop rate in A2 “The Sewers” but better on A5 which I didn’t get yet. It’s gonna take a while I bet haha
When it drops does it called “Death’s Web”?
The available A2 mercenaries are as follows:
Normal: Prayer, Defiance, Blessed Aim aura (that’s combat, defensive, offensive)
Nightmare: Thorns, Holy Freeze, Might (that’s combat, defensive, offensive)
Hell: same as normal
So yes, go to nightmare to hire one.
!!! Be careful to unequip everything from you mercenary as the new one will be naked and the gear from the old one will disappear irreversibly. !!!
Death’s Web is the name of the unique. The item is an Unearthed Wand. It will drop as such, in golden color. Don’t rely on just finding it, it’s a very rare drop. It might take months to find it yourself (if ever) as is the case with many elite uniques.
First of all, Corpse explosion should be your main dmg. ALWAYS
It does phys+fire dmg 50/50
All other means are just to get that precious first, or maybe 2 corpses.
Get an Act 2 might or holy freeze merc, might = faster, Freeze = more cc.
Give him either a Polearm with obedience, It does some cold, so they can shatter at times, which is annoying for Corpse Explosion, but Obedience is an insanely high dmg low investment RW for your merc. Being a necro you shouldn’t need a reapers as you could decrepify them yourself, also reapers is a lot harder to get in self found than obedience.
If you can’t get a corpse between merc+clay golem+poison, skip the pack. Otherwise just get corpse+Explosion → profit.
By the way the most elegant way for a poisonmancer for alternate damage are revives. You have 60 points in poison. Get one Point into Revies and Summon Resists (+prereq ofc) and then max out Skeleton Mastery. This way you have perfect damage dealing shields which give you time to apply your poison damage.
