Diablo II: Lord of Destruction - Necromancer (Running Act 1)

[suga]

Okay, here's my plan for running Necromancer.

I'm pretty sure there are many flaws in this plan and I have to experiment more in-game, so any suggestions are appreciated.

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Stats
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Str: 25 for Belt (30 if the boots you got was Hsarus')
Dex: None
Vit: Rest into here
Ene: TBD (just enough to cast Bone Spear against act bosses without hiccups)

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Skills
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2-5: Teeth (main crowd controll skill in Act 1-3)
6: Corpse Explosion (might have some use for boss packs in the early part and Andariel, but not more than one point)
7-17: Teeth
18-21: Bone Spear (main skill for Duriel, Mephisto, Diablo, Ancients, Baal, crowd controll in Act 3-5)

Acquired by staffmod:
Clay Golem (the meat shield for the early part of the game. Probably not used often in the later part)
Iron Maiden (used for Andariel)

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Gears
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clvl 1-17
Weapon: +3 Teeth Wand / +1 Clay Golem / +1 Iron Maiden Wand
Shield: +3 Teeth Head
Armor: Anything
Helm: Anything
Belt: Any Belt
Gloves: Anything
Boots: Gorefoot or Hsarus' Iron Heel
Amulet: 10FCR Amulet
Rings: 10FCR Ring * 2

clvl 18-21
Weapon: +3 Bone Spear Magic Wand
Shield: +3 Bone Spear Rare Head
Armor: RW Stealth [Tal + Eth]
Helm: +1 PnB Circlet / RW Nadir [Nef + Tir]
Belt: Any Belt
Gloves: Anything
Boots: Gorefoot or Hsarus' Iron Heel
Amulet: +1 PnB Amulet
Rings: 10FCR Ring * 1

The reason +3 Bone Spear wand and head are without +1PnB, and +1PnB circlet and amulet are without 10FCR, is a chance of getting +3 Bone Spear or +1PnB affix alone is pretty low already.

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Plan
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General
-Gather 3 Chipped Gems and a magic wand until I hit clvl 18, to reroll a +3 Bone Spear wand.
-Stash a white Head until I hit clvl 18, to Imbue +3 Bone Spaer Head.

Act 1
-Do Poison Shrine leveling in Stony Field until (TBD) level.
-Manipulate valuable drops from Rakanish at the same time to buy +3 Teeth (5460) and +1 Clay Golem (3281) wand. Perhaps I could get drops from a magical chest like Siyko did in his sorc WIP.
-Get + 3 Teeth Head as soon as possible. It's also ideal to get 10FCR amulet and 2 rings for 30FCR (12 frames). It might be better to do a single manipulating segment for each drop, but I don't know if I have patience for it.
-Run and do leveling in The Forgotten Tower. Get Tal Eth and Nef Tir from Countess. Do the run (TBD) times.
-Get Horadric Malus in Barracks and bring it to Charsi to make Imbue available.
-Buy or get +1 Iron Maiden Wand (8037) until you hit the Catacombs Level 2 WP.
-Kill Andy. Get Gorefoot or Hsarus' Iron Heel from her.

Act 2
-Do leveling in Far Oasis up until clvl 18 (TBD).
-Use the RW Stealth glitch before I hit clvl 17 in a segment with long running.
-When I hit clvl 18, Imbue +3 Bone Spear Head, and reroll +3 Bone Spear Wand with 3 Chipped Gems.
-Kill Duriel.

Act 3
-If I haven't got a 10FCR Ring up to this point, get 10FCR rare ring from Ormus with the Gidbinn quest.
-Kill Mephisto. Get valuable drops from him for gambling in the next act. Something like 20000 (upper limit in Act 4) * 5 would be ideal.

Act 4
-Gamble +1 PnB amulet (63000) and circlet (27865).
-Ignore Izual.
-Clear the way through Chaos Sanctuary using Cloak of Shadow on RW Nadir.
-Kill Diablo.

Act 5
-For Baal's minions, kill wave 1-3, park wave 4-5 with death abuse.
-Kill Baal.

[suga]

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Maps
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Act 1
***Stony Field has a shrine, the Carin Stones and a boss pack near the WP for poison shrine leveling.
**Black Marsh's WP is near The Forgotten Tower.
*Smith isn't far away from the route in Barracks.

Act 2
***Far Oasis has a shrine and several Death Beetle boss packs near the WP.
*Halls of the Dead and Maggot Lair entrances aren't far away from the routes.
*Maggot Lair is short.

Act 3
*Spider Cavern isn't far away.
**No Great Marsh.
*Flayer Dungeon isn't far away.
*Sewers is short
*Durance 2 WP isn't far away.

Act 5
*Ancients WP isn't far away
*WSK WP

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TBD
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Act 1
-How many runs should I do for Countess. It could be one time If I didn't go for the Nadir runes, and then I can do leveling in Jail-Catacombs instead if that's more efficient. But Naidr sure helps in Chaos since nec's hp is low. I could also go for manipulating a fire shrine if Chaos got easier.
-How to kill Andy. Clay Golem + Iron Maiden, or Corpse Explosion on corpses of the monsters around her. I think IM would be better since it's much easier. I have to be very careful about radius and luring if I were to use CE. Not to mention I have to manipuate boots from her. I have to check if throwing potions work as well.

Act 2
-Whether or not to do Far Oasis leveling. Pros: Teeth works well against low hp Death Beetles. Maggot Lair and Arcane Sanctuary will be fast If I could use Bone Spear at that point. Cons: All the running part in leveling will be time-waste. Necro doesn't benefit from it as much as Sorceress. I might have to do some test Act 2 runs with and without FO leveling, and compare the times between them.

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Links
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Old topics:
http://speeddemosarchive.com/forum/index.php/topic,2053.0.html
http://speeddemosarchive.com/forum/index.php/topic,6659.0.html

[DateHell]

Very interesting to see (both planning and once it starts ... hope you'll make it
lvl 15 teeth, lvl 4 BS, +8 PnB/Spear..... gets you over 200 dmg per spear @ 10 mana each, hope that'll cut it
did you try using a comparable char yet? (e.g. to run CS, ancients, etc) looks like you're focussing a lot on output dmg so I wonder how hard itll be to survive

Good Luck!

[suga]

Yeah, I've tested the build throughout the normal game once and he worked fine for surviving. Getting more hit points and FHR would help on tanking the later bosses but I don't plan to manipulate items too much.

[shoop]

Okay, I've been looking at the damage you'll get for teeth and bone spear.

1-5: Teeth (main crowd controll skill in Act 1-3)
7-17: Teeth
18-21: Bone Spear

This gives you 4 + 11 = level 15 teeth (you don't actually get a skill point for reaching level 1), and a 4 point bone spear synergy.

Suppose you get +8 to teeth. Then you would end up at level 23 teeth with a 4 point synergy, so your total (ideal) damage would be 24*33.5*1.6=1286 (!) Your bone spear damage would be negligible though.

On the other hand, suppose you get +8 bone spear. Then you would end up at level 12 bone spear with a 15 point teeth synergy, so your bone spear damage would be 119.5*2.05 = 245 damage per spear. At the same time, your teeth would be reduced to +2, or only 18*21.5*1.6=619.2 total damage.

It appears to me that teeth will clearly be your superior skill, especially when it comes to mobs, but quite possibly also as a boss killer. Since you are planning to get a lot of VIT, I would expect that you should be able to get in close enough to hit 'em with 5 or more teeth per cast, which does more damage than bone spear does. But you'd have to test if that is doable.

You could decide to forego bone spear altogether. This would first of all save you the hassle of getting a +bone spear wand and shrunken head. But you could then also consider using a different synergy to teeth. This may seem suboptimal as it involves getting bone armor as another prereq, so you end up doing less damage, but it means you can start getting synergies before level 18, which could be advantageous at the time you are doing most of your leveling.

As an example, at level 15 you could have:
lvl11 teeth
lvl1 corpse explosion
lvl1 bone armor
lvl1 bone wall

say you have +6 to teeth. Total damage is 18*21.5*1.15=445 at a mana cost of 11,

compared to

lvl 13 teeth
lvlv 1 corpse explosion

again with +6 to teeth, which gives damage 20*25=500 at a mana cost of 12.

Thus, the damage is only slightly less, but the mana cost is better, and since you have fewer teeth you should be able to hit with a larger percentage of them. Also you get a 35 point bone armor, and a bone wall which may be useful to draw in monsters(?)

If you are interested in this, I could work out the optimal skill point / synergy progression. I'd need to know exactly at what levels you expect to obtain your +teeth and +skills items.

[suga]

Only one of the individual teeth will hit each target, so it's used only against Fetish in the later game.

Thanks for doing calculations though

[DateHell]

Hmm some comments I'd like to make first of all....

Only one of the individual teeth will hit each target, so it's used only against Fetish in the later game.

Do you mean only one actually hits it, or only one tooth is is registered as a hit and the others disappear and are ignored?...
(although it seems stupid to tell because I'm confident you already know...) The spread of the teeth is influenced by the location of clicking, so clicking at the side of the screen rather then an enemy next to you surely will make multiple teeth pierce the enemy?

Suppose you get +8 to teeth. Then you would end up at level 23 teeth with a 4 point synergy, so your total (ideal) damage would be 24*33.5*1.6=1286 (!) Your bone spear damage would be negligible though.

Well like suga said (in a different way)... you'll never get all teeth to hit something useful, and iirc spear can hit multiple targets
not sure if enemies have "X dmg reduce" (non-percentual)... because it would have a *much* bigger impact on teeth (-X on 1 spear vs -X on every tooth)

bone wall is cool but too weak at low levels (if un-synergyzed) and would only be used at bosses i think? (also it makes a poor combination with teeth)

If you are interested in this, I could work out the optimal skill point / synergy progression. I'd need to know exactly at what levels you expect to obtain your +teeth and +skills items.

I'm a big fan of grinding numbers but I think in this case field tests are better

[erdamus]

Do you mean only one actually hits it, or only one tooth is is registered as a hit and the others disappear and are ignored?...
(although it seems stupid to tell because I'm confident you already know...) The spread of the teeth is influenced by the location of clicking, so clicking at the side of the screen rather then an enemy next to you surely will make multiple teeth pierce the enemy?

Meaning Teeth is more like Multi Shot than Charged Bolt. Only one projectile per cast hits any particular monster, despite the spread you use. A shame, too, as otherwise it would be a major boss killer.

[shoop]

Only one of the individual teeth will hit each target, so it's used only against Fetish in the later game.

Thanks for doing calculations though

Hm, I checked this first but I must have stumbled upon some bad information  Are you guys really sure? It's so stupid...

In that case, your build seems fine

[shoop]

Suppose you get +8 to teeth. Then you would end up at level 23 teeth with a 4 point synergy, so your total (ideal) damage would be 24*33.5*1.6=1286 (!) Your bone spear damage would be negligible though.

Well like suga said (in a different way)... you'll never get all teeth to hit something useful, and iirc spear can hit multiple targets.

Yes, but you'll hit a boss only once per spear - that's why I said that you'd have to hit with 5 teeth to equal the damage. Except that apparently you can't 

bone wall is cool but too weak at low levels (if un-synergyzed) and would only be used at bosses i think? (also it makes a poor combination with teeth)

Depends how you use it; I think it attracts monsters so you could cast one while levelling and then kill all the monsters that approach it. Maybe. I'm sure all these clever players on this board can find some use for it. Also, bone wall would get stronger as you get more synergy points. But once again, since teeth is not viable, all this doesn't matter.

If you are interested in this, I could work out the optimal skill point / synergy progression. I'd need to know exactly at what levels you expect to obtain your +teeth and +skills items.

I'm a big fan of grinding numbers but I think in this case field tests are better

I actually think you'd need both in this case. It's too complicated to work out by field tests only, because what's better now may harm you 6 levels later. However, the bone spear build is much simpler; there is no room for choosing when to synergise there.

[suga]

Perhaps you read this one? You should sue them for lying DiabloWiki is more reliable.

I'm aware of teeth spreading is affected by where you click. Thanks for the heads-up anyway.

[shoop]

Okay, so teeth suck.

Still, they do a ridiculous amount of damage when you can get many of them to hit something. Any chance that you could level quicker using teeth than using spear if you picked your areas cleverly?

[shoop]

Perhaps you read this one? You should sue them for lying

Yes it's them  

I never understood why some people go to the trouble of building a website while simultaneously not caring whether the information on it is correct. If I were them I'd just link to a site with proper information and spend my time getting laid or something.

[Chypizo]

Putting every skill point in Teeth is a bad idea.

At level 17 with your plan:

Teeth lvl 21 (15+6)
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22 Teeth
24-33 Damage
13 Mana

However, by putting 1 point into Bone Armor and 6 points into Bone Wall you would get:

Teeth lvl 14 (8+6)
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15 Teeth
28-38 Damage
9.5 Mana

I really doubt you would be facing more than 15 enemies at the same time, besides fetish packs. Even then, I'd probably be worth it considering the differences in damage and mana. Plus you would have a rather powerful Bone Armor absorbing 110 damage to keep you alive, and the Bone Wall might just be useful for something.

EDIT: Forgot about the fact that you would have 1 less synergy point in Bone Spear thanks to the point in Bone Armor because of this.
It's damage would drop from 259-278 to 251-270 at character level 21, Bone Spear level 12 if you have a total of +8 to Bone Spear.. Up to you if you think it is worth it.

[DateHell]

hmm never knew that about Teeth's limitation (and I used to have a bone necro :X)
always used The Arreat Summit for info (http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/) and can't remember what for drop-rates