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

[Ghoti]

no, because only one tooth will hit for cast AFAIK

[Zurreco]

Yeah, I just did a little tinkering with Andariel.  At level 12, my 10 Teeth/1 CE build using a 3 Teeth/1 Amp wand and 3 Teeth/1 Clay Golem head was able to kill her in about 45 seconds or less.  I was able to get a Ghoul and Disfigured mob at the door, which I killed, lured Andy, cursed, dropped a golem to hold her at the bodies, and then detonated everything while chugging potions.  When I ran out of high HP corpses, it only took about 4 Teeth casts to kill her.

I also got bored and checked out what a burly Necro would do against Diablo.  Level 20 with 3 BS/1 CE/15 Teeth, 3 BS/3 Teeth wand, 3 BS/3 Clay Golem shield, Tarnhelm, Bloodfist, Sander's boots, Arcannas amulet, 2x Nagels, some white belt and no merc.  I was able to kill him just by casting BS nonstop and letting Golem occasionally lure him in to a corner.  It took some dodging, but the end time was only around 2 minutes, making me pretty confident in the build.  BS was single/double cast killing things through to A5.  It was better to prioritize BS damage than to worry about managing Teeth mana by pumping BW.

[suga]

I'd like to see the video of your Andy fight, because I can't seem to lure/CE smooth like you are saying even with +3 CE wand and shield.

Err, wouldn't this be avg health*avg CE*resist mod?  Average CE is 80% (60%-100%) and CE damage is modified as 50% physical and 75% fire (-50% fire res), so 125% total mod.  60.5*0.8*1.25=60.5  With Amp, physical gets doubled and you get 60.5*0.8*1.75=84.7.  You're really underestimating CE and Amp, unless there is some modifier here than I'm not aware of with bosses.

assuming only the fire damage was taken

Radius and damage of CE are separated by fire or physical. I assumed only the fire damage because I find it hard to hit the physical damage with low level CE.
http://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Corpse_Explosion

It was better to prioritize BS damage than to worry about managing Teeth mana by pumping BW.

Bone Wall is not just for mana, it'll add more damage to teeth than putting points directory to it, which will help in act 2 and 3.

[Zurreco]

I'd like to see the video of your Andy fight, because I can't seem to lure/CE smooth like you are saying even with +3 CE wand and shield.

I can try to record it, sure.  No promises, though.  Keep in mind that I had a decently stacked pile of corpses in place, rather than a field of them.  Also, Andy did her poison spray attack two times in a row after the first golem, making it easy to keep her parked with a second golem while detonating.  I think the trick to skipping IM for Andy is just getting the mobs to die in opportunistic layouts for CE usage.

Bone Wall is not just for mana, it'll add more damage to teeth than putting points directory to it, which will help in act 2 and 3.

Yeah, well, I'll concede that it's probably better for Teeth optimizing in spite of losing Teeth count, but I still don't like it so there.

[MrHama]

I think that one point lost in synergy for bone spear is outweighed by the damage increase for teeth and the reduced need for potions thanks to bone armor. 110 damage reduction (more with + skills) for 11mana is not to be underestimated with just 1 hard point invested. Dont know if bone wall also reduces hit recovery, but if it does it will definitely increase the speed of the run.

[mfb]

CE:
The radius of the physical damage is 0 or 0,6 yards smaller than the fire radius, depending on the skill level. Nefarius explored this and the skill calc at inDiablo displays the correct values (with the lower number for physical damage and the higher number for fire).

CE uses the maximum hit points (without modifications for bosses and minions), so exploding a ghoul with 43-78 life will deal 78*0,8*1,25=78 damage without AD. With AD, the damage is 78*0,8*1,75=109 - more than 10% of andariels life (1024)!

[suga]

Thanks for the correct info.

It made me really like to use CE. But after an hour of practicing, I still found IM to be better, because the chance of getting enough high hp monsters around to CE Andy to death is too low. I'd have to abandon 20FRW boots if I had to manipulate the monster spawns. I think it's more important to get those boots rather than 10 seconds or so faster Andy fight.

[suga]

Okay, I've started running and done up to the point before The Countess runs.

The video is here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7WO0r5Anyo

Seg 1 - Running to Stony Field. The short staff I got was worth 5000 gold.
Seg 2 - Shrine leveling. I stood still for a while after I touched the fire shrine because I didn't know it could kill Rakanish. It looks pretty bad and the luring was messy but I kept this segment because this one had the best drops.
Seg 3 - Shopping +3 Teeth wand and some potions.
Seg 4 - Manipulating Teeth Head from Rakanish. I spent too much time to kill Rakanish and the head I got was +2 one, but I never got +3 one after countless attempts, so I settled with it.
Seg 5 - Leveling and running to Black Marsh.
Seg 6 - Leveling and running to Outer Cloister. The ring I got was 10FCR one.

You might find mistakes here and there but I'm getting sick of luck manipulations already and I want the entire run to be finished as soon as I can so don't expect a perfect run

[bimanc]

It's actually very good! The head turned out almost godly for this run with the clay golem and fhr. I can only point one thing to you now, i saw you id'd an item with a very low price. Just sell the items unid if the price is just a few hundred gold. Not much time-saving but still.

Anyway, except the fire shrine segment, you didn't do big errors. For me, it's totally high quality, and there is not (and won't be) any perfect run of D2. Keep up the good work!

[suga]

Yeah that id was unnecessary. Besides, I have to wait equipping the 10fcr ring until I get a scroll from drop or the next time I shop +1 Iron Maiden wand. I should have bought some id scrolls.

Well the head isn't as godly as you think because it has increased blocking which can stun-lock me from missile type monster pack. +3 to clay golem means more slow % so Andy fight will be slower with Iron Maiden.

Oh no... I completely forgot about the head had +3 clay golem when doing the last two segments. I might have to redo the last segment if clay golem saves much time and forget about the 10fcr ring

[20-100]

Maybe you should stop opening chests... I don't think much can come from them (when one popped with about 100 gold you didn't even pick that up, which is nearly the best drop you can expect I think) and they do cost half a second or a second to open.

[NMS]

Won't the increased life on the golem make iron maiden more effective? It has 100 at lvl 1 and gains 35 per level.

[suga]

I got 5000 gold staff from a chest in seg 1

I can't seem to find the information about this, but if the melee damage over the target's life isn't reflected by Iron Maiden, then it's indeed more effective.

I think I'll just keep the last segment. Golem actually scatters monsters all over the place since he hangs around nowhere, and makes it difficult to aim Teeth. And it costs a lot of mana so I think I'll just use him only for some tough boss pack, act bosses and act 4-5.