Difference between revisions of "Necromancer Summoning"

Revision as of 08:33, 12 February 2008

The Necromancer's summoning skills enable him to draw up skeletons and revives from corpses, and to create golems to fight for him.

• Necromancer Skills
  • Curses
  • Poison and Bone
  • Summoning

Golems
Only one golem, of any type, may be active. If you cast another golem, the first one will be dispelled. Golems do not require a monster corpse to summon, though Iron Golems require a metal item to be created. Golems have a fixed defense. The Hit Points and Damage of Golems increase on Nightmare, and again on Hell Difficulty.

Skeletons and Skeletal Mages
In earlier versions of the game, one skeleton warrior or mage was summoned for each point in the skill. Since v1.10 only five skeletons may be summmoned, but each one is much more effective. (And the screen is much less crowded.)

The attack ratings for summoned creatures are based on the Necromancer's level, and can not be raised with equipment or more points in the skills.

Raise Skeleton

Required Level: 1
Prerequisites: None
Requires: Valid monster corpse. Synergies: Raised Skeletons are made more effective by points in:

• Skeleton Mastery
• Summon Resist

Details: The Necromancer targets a monster's corpse and casts this spell, causing a humanoid skeleton to emerge. Raised skeletons are melee fighters who spawn with semi-random equipment.

• Skeletons have a 5% chance to spawn with a shield, and a 3% chance to block attacks with a shield.

Skeleton Mastery

Required Level: 1
Prerequisites: Raise Skeleton
Synergies: None.
Details: Increases the hit points and damage dealt by Skeletons, Skeleton Mages, and Revived.

Clay Golem

Required Level: 6
Prerequisites: None
Synergies: Clay Golems benefit from points spent in the following skills.

• Golem Mastery
• Summon Resist
• Blood Golem: +5% Life Per Level
• Iron Golem: +35 Defense Per Level

Details: Raises a Golem from the earth to fight for you. Before spending more than one point into Clay Golem consider that you will probably want upgrade to Blood Golem (at 18), Iron Golem (24), or Fire Golem (30), all of which replace the Clay Golem.

Golem Mastery

Required Level: 12
Prerequisites: Clay Golem
Details: This skill provides a passive bonus to the speed and hit points of all golems. Enhances speed and life of Golems. Golem Mastery adds more Hit Points to the Golem's Original Base Life, not the Life shown with more than one point into a Golem skill.

• Most useful if you're planning to use a lot of Iron Golems, since the others can simply be recast as often as you like.

Skeletal Mage

Required Level: 12
Prerequisites: Raise Skeleton
Requires: A valid monster corpse.
Synergies: Skeletal Mages gain bonuses from points spent in:

• Skeleton Mastery
• Summon Resist

Details: Summons a skeletal mage from a monster corpse. Skeleton mages occur randomly in four types; fire, lightning, cold, and poison. Keep summoning new ones and unsummoning individuals if you wish to get all poison, or no cold, etc.

• Cold mages are useful if you wish to slow monsters and potential break their corpses so shamans can not resurrect them. Cold is not good if you want monster corpses left to raise more skeletons from, Revive, or Corpse Explosion.
• Skeleton mages have high elemental resistance, especially to the element that makes up their own attack.
• See the Summon Skeleton Mage page for a complete breakdown of the damage, hit points, and more for each type of skeleton mage.

Blood Golem

Required Level: 18
Prerequisites: Clay Golem
Synergies: Blood Golems receive bonuses from points spent in the following skills:

• Golem Mastery
• Summon Resist
• Clay Golem: +20 Attack Rating Per Level
• Iron Golem: +35 Defense Per Level
• Fire Golem: +6% Damage Per Level

Details: Blood Golems are linked to the Necromancer who casts them. As the blood golem damages the target it leeches life, and shares this with the Necromancer. As the blood golem loses life, so does the Necromancer.

• The Necromancer can not die when a Blood Golem dies, but he can lose enough hit points that any other damage might finish him off.
• Hit points lost through the golem taking damage bypass the Necromancer's Bone Shield skill.
• The Golem gains 70% of the health it steals while the player gains 30%. If the current life + stolen life > maximum life of the Blood Golem, the Hit Point overflow goes to the Necromancer. If the current life + stolen life > maximum life of the Necromancer, the Hit Point overflow returns to the Golem up to the maximum life for each target.

Summon Resist

Required Level: 24
Prerequisites: Clay Golem, Golem Mastery
Details: This skill passively raises the elemental (not physical) resistances of all the Necromancer's minions: skeletons, golems, and revives.

Iron Golem

Required Level: 24
Prerequisites: Clay Golem, Blood Golem
Requires: A metal item. Iron Golems can not be created from Clubs, Wands, Crystal Swords, Gloves, Belts, Throwing Weapons, Staves, Bows, Crossbows, Quest Items, Jewelry, Leather Armor and Leather Boots.
Synergies: Iron Golems benefit from points in the following skills:

• Golem Mastery
• Summon Resist
• Clay Golem: +20 Attack Rating Per Level
• Blood Golem: +5% Life Per Level
• Fire Golem: +6% Damage Per Level

Details: This golem is created from the item, and takes on properties of the item. This feature was underutilized in earlier versions of D2, with little more than some defense, or a type of damage transferring to the golem's stats. Since v1.09, the item used has become far more important, with most of the item properties showing up in the golem itself. It's worth it to most Necromancers to save nice items for future Iron Golems, rather than simply selling them.

• Iron Golems have an inherent Thorns property, reflecting damage back to attackers. This adds to damage from the Iron Maiden curse, making striking an Iron Golem a very painful experience.
• Some item properties do not work on Iron Golems, such as Magic Find, Gold Find, or Mana steal.
• Iron Golems made from ethereal items are translucent.

Fire Golem

Required Level: 30
Prerequisites: Clay Golem, Blood Golem, Iron Golem
Synergies: Fire Golems benefit from points added to the following skills:

• Golem Mastery
• Summon Resist
• Clay Golem: +20 Attack Rating Per Level
• Blood Golem: +5% Life Per Level
• Iron Golem: +35 Defense Per Level

Details: Fire Golems are beings of flame. They deal fire damage, heal from fire damage, and have a Holy Fire Aura.

• Fire Golems have the most hit points of any golem, but they also cost by far the most mana.
• Fire Golems are very effective at drawing in monsters, thanks to the constant damage their fire aura deals everything on the screen.
• Fire Golems deal substantial fire splash damage when they die. This can be used as a weapon by casting and recasting them beside a target.

Revive

Required Level: 30
Prerequisites: Raise Skeleton, Clay Golem, Raise Skeletal Mage, Blood Golem, Iron Golem.
Requires: A valid monster corpse. (It will highlight when targeted with this skill active.) Bosses, SuperUniques, leapers, undead mages and some other monsters can not be Revived. Synergies: Points spent in Skeleton Mastery, and Summon Resist boost Revives.
Details: Revives the dead monster, raising it up in its living form, but colored dark gray. Revived monsters retain most of their attributes from life, and deal the same damage, type of damage, attack speed, foot speed, and more. Revives gain a bonus to their hit points, damage, and resistances.

• Revives will use magical attacks, but shamans will not resurrect their monsters or your Revives.
• Revives retain their original AI, so resurrecting aggressive attackers is more useful than shamans or others that wander around a lot.
• Revives do not warp to keep up, though they will instantly reappear if you pass through a portal/waypoint, or use the teleport skill. It's easy to lose them if you run around too quickly.
• Gather useful Revives in one area, then quickly portal to another area, such as for a boss battle. You can use waypoints to move between acts as well, taking Flayers to fight Diablo, for instance.
• Revives only last for 3 minutes, so keep moving and keep summoning up new ones to replace the old.
• Each point in Revive simply adds one more to the number you can keep alive at once. If you're not using them all on a regular basis, more points here are not well spent.