Is it realistically possible to play Diablo 2 LOD on Hell difficulty using a necromancer with all points in summoning?

Question

I played this game years ago and I've been playing again recently. While I realize most Diablo 2 players use battle.net, I've always played in single player mode. I've never made it quite this far before in the game on single player and I was curious if it is realistically possible to get through the hell difficulty with my necromancer. All of my points are in summoning skills.

I have the option to respec again now that I'm on the hell difficulty so I really have two questions:

• If it is possible for me to play this difficulty level with all of my spells in summoning, how should I redistribute my skill points?
• If not, what is a good build for the necromancer in which I can use some the of the summoning skills; such as golem, revive, and raise skeleton?

Thanks for any help you can give.

Answer 1

I tried this once upon a time, and found that some of the boss fights were quite complicated and difficult. You can definitely make it work, although you might want to consider some of the Necromancer/Summoner builds available around the internet. They'll show you what skills to prioritize and what equipment to search for.

This one in particular seemed quite complete, but there are many to choose from.

Answer 2

I would argue that summoning necromancers are the easiest character type to play through hell difficulty with. My experience fighting all of hell as a summoner in single-player, bosses included, was mostly a cakewalk. This is true for several reasons:

• Summoners put up a lot of bodies with a lot of health. You can get anywhere in the range from 10 to 30 allies depending on your build. This leads to incredible damage mitigation, as you will rarely be even targeted by an enemy due to your mobs.
• Your summons scale with difficulty. A clay golem may be easily slain in normal difficulty by any boss, but in hell difficulty his hit points go into the hundreds to thousands (even at skill level 1!)
• Slowing effects. Slowing and stunning are some of the most powerful abilities available in most games. An enemy that cannot move or act is an enemy that cannot hurt you. Decrepify is my summoner's lifeblood. A 50% reduction in speed cannot be ignored. Couple this with the slowing effects of the clay golem, and you will reduce enemies, including end act bosses, to a crawl.
• You will trigger hit stun often. Having more than 10 allies means you are applying a vast number of individual attacks against an enemy at once. Even though your summons weak attacks are unlikely to stun, having 10+ chances to stun per second gives you a good stun rate. Permanent stun lock is a real thing when considering the slow effects noted above.
• One point wonders. Necromancers benefit from one point skills more than any other class. A one point skill is any skill that becomes immediately, and consistently, useful and viable with only one point in it. Examples include: Dim Vision, Decrepify, Amplify Damage, any of the Golems, Revive, Corpse Explosion, and Life Tap. If you also consider the sheer amount of +skill items you are likely to find (giving anywhere from +3 to +10! to all your skills depending on your luck), the list expands to include skills like: Bone Armor and Bone Wall.
• Auras benefit you greatly. With any of the rune words that bestow an aura or the Act 2 mercenary, you will be applying bonuses on many targets, effectively squeezing more value out of those auras.

There are also some tricks to increase your overall effectiveness as an undead master. For example, there are particulars about your summon's AI that can be exploited. Normally, your summons will collide with each other, which means that only a set number of them can gang up on an enemy at a time. You can get around this with the spell teleport. Necromancers do not get this skill, but you can find weapons with charges of it on them. Keep these items. Teleport is a powerful defensive ability, teleport when you are bringing 30 skeletons with you is a devastating weapon. When you teleport, all of your minions move to your exact destination with you.

Now here is where the trick is: if you teleport on top of an enemy, all of your minions will engage, all overlapped, with that enemy. This can be dangerous with enemies like Diablo that have powerful area of effect attacks, but if you execute it right you can permanently stun lock him with this technique. For example, I defeated hell difficulty Baal without losing a summon in less than two minutes. The technique goes as follows:

1. Apply a decrepify curse on your target.
2. Teleport on top of your target (your minions will follow).
3. Step away from your enemy.
4. ???
5. Profit!

The slow from your clay golem and decrepify (and any cold skeleton mages you have) all stack to slow Baal down to a crawl. Your minions many, many, many attacks cancel all of Baal's attacks before they happen. He will remain stunlocked until he dies. You just need to keep decrepify up on him at all times.

I will warn though that a effectively built summoner can get boring to play, as you will often have to do little aside from cast a curse or a corpse explosion and then wait for the battle to end. However, it is a safe and powerful character to play, that is unlikely to hit the effectiveness wall in nightmare or hell that other character might encounter. Summoners are mostly about learning about your minions and corralling them properly to get them to do what you want.

Answer 3

I find in all three difficulties that as long as your skeletons are reasonably durable and can kill at least one enemy in a pack, Corpse Explosion will do the rest of the work for you.

There's a tough balance between points on Corpse Explosion and Skeleon/Skeleton Mastery that you need to maintain as you level up; the hardships that I face when putting too much focus onto Corpse Explosion are:

1. Boss battles - Corpse Explosion is useless for these and you will need to rely on the power of your skeletons. Duriel in particular gives me a lot of trouble here because there are no enemies in his environment (nothing to convert into new skeletons).
2. Small groups of really tough enemies.
3. Ranged enemies that are really spread out.
4. I often find my skeletons attacking smaller targets, meaning the Corpse Explosion damage is minimal against other larger enemies in a pack.
5. You find your mana running out extremely quickly if you push too many points too early on.

From memory, once you get into the final acts of Nightmare and throughout Hell you'll find that your skeletons act as more of an indestructible wall than a damage dealing source. I slowly made my way through hell using skeletons by sitting back until they finally kill something and then bombed the rest. The ones that don't die normally aren't far off and once a second or third falls it's game over for them.

You can add a lot of damage dealing potential to your skeletons using some Runewords that add Fantacism or similar.

As for which summon skills to use - I strictly use Raise Skeleton, Skeleton Mastery and Summon Resist. I have never placed points into the Raise Skeletal Mage, Golems or Revive.

Back all of this up with a curse of your choice (I find Iron Maiden, Confuse and Lower Resist to be the most effective). Attract is also a good skill to have a point in just to get your initial kill when you have no skeletons.

I play a lvl 92 Necromancer with the above and it is by far my favourite and most fun class/build.

Side note: Corpse Explosion in the Secret Cow Level is hilariously overpowered. The Hell Bovines are so tightly packed that you can kill 20+ per cast. I highly recommend trying this some time!

Answer 4

Summons don't scale very well as you go higher in difficulty. The damage they can take and dish out just doesn't keep up with the minions of hell. Surprisingly, the Clay Golem is the best summon you have in hell. It has the highest health, slows the targets and costs almost nothing to cast after he dies. It acts as a tank while you can sit back and cast bones spells.

My personal favorite Necromancer build is to use Bone Spear as your main nuke spell. It goes through enemies so it can hit many targets when you get better at using it. With Bone Spear I would use Lower Resist and Decrepify. Lower Resist makes you hit harder and Decrepify slows the mobs so they don't hit you at all.

I know this isnt the build you were looking for. It is only the build I have the most experience and success with in hell. Hope it helps.

Answer 5

• 20 to Raise Skeleton
• 20 to Skeleton Mastery
• 9 to Summon Resist
• 1 to Decrepify
• 20 to Revive
• 20 to Corpse Explosion and spend the rest as you like

The only reason I said 20 in Revive because if you can get the Enigma then your army will be easily recovered when you Teleport and you have no idea how strong revives can be in hell. I can kill every thing in hell and any player on Battle.Net in no time. You just need to make a big army and simply teleport on the target. I guarantee you no one will be able to beat you.

Answer 6

As above, don't put all points into Summoning, since a lot of the skills are useless. 20 Skeleton, 20 Skellie Mastery, 1 Amplify Damage, 1 Decrep/Lower Resist, and max Corpse Explosion. Should be able to get you through everything with points to spare.

Boss fights are doable, just slow.

Answer 7

Answering as a Necromancer with all points on summoning skill, Currently playing in Hardcore realms :

• lets talk about boss kills : put your summons on (warriors, mages, Clay Golem, revives + the hireling - I use Act 1 Cold arrow mercenary), Curse Boss on Sight with -Iron Maiden- when your clay Golem hit boss it will get the full attention of boss on it(we call it Agro), cast iron maiden on boss and let he kill himself, don't worry if Clay Golem falls, you don't need anything to re-summon it, so re-summon it when you see its health going near end, continue this and you will have the dead Boss under your feet. [ oh, how do you get iron maiden while you have all skills on summoning? just buy one magic wand from any weapon vendor with at least one iron maiden skill on it]

• lets talk about one large stack of monsters who look really tough to kill, question is how to kill em? answer is don't make your hands dirty, let them kill themselves ! cast attract on them, and watch them kill each other while your army of summons helping them get rid of each others existence. [same as up, the magic wand with one attract skill help you on this way]

• the last part of our encounter in Diablo 2 world are Champion or rare monsters who are immune to attract, so use iron maiden on them and bang ! hope it helps