I took the plunge and made one of the new runewords - Prudence (Mal + Tir) - with some Diamond Mail that had a base defense of 481. I even took a picture for you! Pretty slick 
Beg to differ, punha. You preferably mule up a Khalim’s Will for the early game and go through at players 8 until you hit 18 - usually around the same time as you get the Cube. It’s a bit harder if you don’t twink, but not impossible. My one try at the build ground to a halt around level 26, but I know that better can be done.
Necros are still unplayable in SP. The class exists only to be curse-bitches on BattleNet.
I would try a Hurrisage Druid if I am going potless. Well the Druid still acts like he uses different pot altogether
My Werewolf/Fury druid uses far fewer pots than my Wind druid.
Thanks to the sheer number of small, annoying, mana-stealing, immune-to-physical, resurrecting monsters in the game who also happen to be immune to cold, you need another attack besides Hurricane. In my case, this is Tornado, which happens to be so inaccurate that my Wind druid may as well be a melee fighter considering how close he has to get to the monsters to hit them. He takes a lot of hits himself, though not as many as my paladins and barbarians.
My Werewolf/Fury druid, OTOH, has a ton of life, thanks to Oak Sage, and a lot of leech, and help from Carrion vine. Rarely has to use a pot. My Wind druid has Oak Sage, but I haven’t had any points to spare for Carrion Vine. Still, he only dies slightly more often than my Werewolf. Of course, part of that is because he can be a bit farther from the monsters and is able to TP to safety more easily.
Have you used a necro in 1.10? I’ll admit that my summoner can’t consistantly solo Hell Baal but he can solo anything else, although getting to Diablo can be a pain. I regularly do Meph runs, it takes some time because he can’t move as quickly as other classes but he can kill Meph in a minute or two once he gets there.
My laptop fan died, I’m hoping it didn’t do a lot of damage when it overheated, so I’m down to one computer for the moment. Maybe I’ll get the nerve up to start it up now that it’s cooled down and see whether it only needs a fan or whether it needs a lot more. Well, no more self rushes for me for a while…
Yes. I can’t kill normal Duriel. (P&B, if you were wondering.)
Why not?? I can do it all of the time.
Use Lower resistance. Works for poison, teeth, bone spear and spirit
… and requires level 30. Who the hell can be bothered levelling to 30 in Act II?
Someone who needs more levels to beat the guy;) Players 8 the tombs and arcane. It’ll be slow, but you’ll get Xp and maybe a decent item or two.
Can you recommend gear and skills? I have a fair wodge of necrojunk lying around.
A wodge … now how many thingamajigs and dohickeys are in a wodge?
My suggestion actually is that you go with iron maiden, a merc that can leech and a blood golem. Be prepared to feed your merc a steady diet of potions, or have some mana pots lying around in case Duriel decides go after your golem. Try to keep your skellies alive for a bit of time, because while they can’t exactly be re-summoned they will A) contribute some damage and B) divert attention away from same blood golem and merc. If you have way more invested in the summoning tree, you might want to go with Amp instead of Iron Maiden, though; I haven’t played much with necros to know the finer points, so I’ll happily defer to someone with more experience.
The sorc is into A2 and doing decently. I might just hang around in A2 and get her to level 30 for Duriel just so I don’t have any worries about that particular fight. I’m leaning very strongly toward a prayer merc in lieu of an A1 (since I won’t exactly be tanking…).
I’m having fun playing the Bonemancer… I must be the only player in the world ever to max Teeth because whenever I use it I keep getting asked what the hell it is. I doubt that teeth will be much use in Hell, but it still does the job in nightmare (around 270+ damage each tooth with 26 teeth total I think). I have realized that there are just too many synergies to totally max, teeth, bone spear, bone spirit, bone wall, and bone prison are all synergy linked… That means I have to get to lvl 89 just to have enough points to max the synergies without any points in anything else.
Right now my Bonemancer is level 61 and needs to get Anya. After that he’ll do baal runs to 70-75 (he has Ancients) and go to Hell. He has Bone Spirit and Teeth maxed, 18 or 19 in Bone Spear, and one in both Bone Wall and Bone prison. Bone Spirit is up over 1700 damage so far.
A fair proportion of a metric fuckload. (Before you ask, an Imperial fuckload is slightly more the metric, and both are an order of magnitude above a shitload.)
I don’t invest in skellys. I tried it once, and couldn’t ever get past Diablo. That’s why I’m trying a P&B necro.
Except that your synergies are points in something else. All of your main skills are linked; at the same time you’re maxing Teeth, you’re also maxing Bone Spirit, and Bone Armor, and Bone Spear, and Prison. This is also the reason I made a fire sorc, incidentally: Firebolt, Fireball, and Meteor are all synergies for each other. Of course, you’ll want to drop ten points on the Curses tree, too, and maybe a point or two in Clay Golem and Golem Mastery, but that’s no big burden. And you’ll always have something left to add points to, without resorting to the “Well, this raises the duration of X by 1%” thumb-twiddling that a specialized build usually ends up with.
Does anyone else find it ironic that Evil Death is looking for help on playing a necromancer?
Most of my Necros have been called Evil Death. The sole exception was my attempt at a pure daggermancer, who was called Machiavelli because of his propensities for using poison and stabbing people in the back.
However, I don’t go by the nick Evil Death anywhere but on SDMB. I’ve asked a mod if my nick can be altered to my normal nick, but got no reply.
Well, my amazon finally made level 90 over the weekend when I found some very effiecient baal runners (about 3 minutes per run!). It consisted of two hammerdins (who were tanking), a fire telesorc, 2 javazons (me being one of them), a singer barb, a curse necro, and a trapassin. All of us were lvl 80+ and each time I got on the next game, I only had enough time to potion-up, and repair my Titan’s before the sorc already had the portal up for the Throne room. We all jumped in and beat up anything that was remaining before Baal summoned up his usual suspects. As a unit, nobody died in any of the runs because no monsters had any chance of laying a finger on any of us. After I reached lvl 90, I happily bailed out, but it got me to wonder…
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How close are we (as a Bnet West SDMB group) to do our own 8 player uber-efficient Baal runs? Are we even close to being that efficient?
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If we get that efficient, how obtainable is it to get to lvl 95? Lvl 99? I do have a level 94 javazon from 1.09, but it was easier back then.
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For mfing, crafting and reroll item purposes, what is the maximum level needed to be obtained before it becomes pointless?
I don’t know. What would we need to do 8 player Baal Runs?
I’ve got a wolf I’ve been working on, but I don’t know how soon he’ll be up in the 80s, and I don’t know that he’d be the most effective partner in hell, at least not with the equipment he’s got now.
But, I’ve jsut started a vengeance Paladin (I think they have some sort of nifty moniker), who I think would be pretty valuable later in the game.
That’d be an avenger (I know, I know, it was on the tip of your tongue!). IMO, the best 8-player party would look something like this:
[code# Class Party Skills Merc Summons/Other
1 Paladin (avenger) Conviction Might none
2 Paladin Salvation Defiance none
3 Paladin (fanatic) Fanaticism Holy Freeze none
4 Druid (grizzly) Oak Sage Prayer none
5 Barb (singer) warcries Blessed Aim none
6 Necro Amp/LR Thorns Clay Golem
7 Barb Zerk none
8 Amazon (Magic Arrow, Strafe) Valk
Dammit.
# Class Party Skills Merc Summons/Other
1 Paladin (avenger) Conviction Might none
2 Paladin Salvation Defiance none
3 Paladin (fanatic) Fanaticism Holy Freeze none
4 Druid (grizzly) Oak Sage Prayer none
5 Barb (singer) warcries Blessed Aim none
6 Necro Amp/LR Thorns Clay Golem
7 Barb Zerk none
8 Amazon (Magic Arrow, Strafe) Valk
'Course, the least I could do is give my reasoning…
Three paladins is the really the minimum to be working with. There are a handful of other auras you could be working with, but fanaticism, conviction and salvation are your big three for a party. You could replace the singer or the amazon with one or two more pallys. If you replace the singer, your barb is going to have to have his cries maxed.
There are two blanks for mercs. These guys could be anything, really. You may even want to leave them in town dead, for fear of lagging out. Experimenting is your best bet. You best bet is to go with either a couple Act II mercs with big hurty sticks, or some rogues to stay out of the way. But since you’ll have Thorns going, go with some Act II mercs for the added wall of defence. Plus, their damage is just so much higher.
There are also only two summons, despite having a necro and druid on the squad. Piling up a bunch of skellies is going to possibly crash someone server, so it’s best to keep this at a minimum. But the Valk’s killing power and the Slow Monster from a Clay Golem are too much to give up. With Slow Monster, Holy Freeze and possibly decrepify, any monster you face isn’t going to be moving much.
No monster you face should have an elemental immunity, due to Conviction and Lower Resists. To really take advantage of that, you might consider a sorc instead of the singer. Then you could include Enchant to your party’s arsenal.
The grizzly should take point at every battle. A well equipped and skill-alloted grizzly has the most hitpoints of any character in the game. Add Oak Sage, Battle Orders and Prayer to this, he simply can’t die! Give him a massive club with massive leech, and he’ll plod straight through the baddies. Remember to have a Pally switch to Vigor between battles to get him moving. (You may consider loading him down with faster r/w charms as well).
Equipment is pretty trivial with this party, really. You could focus solely on MF gear, with a few front guys with excellent weapons. But auras, curses and war cries should keep these folk alive.
Oh, and the Zerk and Magic Arrow are for when you need some solid magic damage. No better source.