The purpose of this thread is to brainstorm the gear (throughout all levels), skills (Curses, Summons, B&Pois, Charges and oSkills), and other aspects of Necromancers that are available, and that could allow a necro to melee productively as part of a team. I think productive teamwork is the easiest part to satisy, since curses are as party-friendly as auras, but stack with them.

In another thread, Abominae pointed out that one of the main problems with melee necros is the lack of ARating, and lack of an attack skill (beside PStrike), and poor shield blocking. I'm pretty sure the community can overcome these obstacles, and I know many of us enjoy just such a challenge.

Here's some ideas to get things started:
Poison Strike - this skill does not passively give Attack Rating to Daggers, so it can't be maxed with the hope of using an oSkill with a dagger. Basically, this is just an attack skill the Necro has that can be used with any melee weapon, and gives him a good Attack Rating boost. Perhaps if the weapon had either Amythests or Eth runes in it, this should solve any attack rating problems encountered with bosses. I think it's safe to assume that this skill has the same breakpoints as regular attack.

Bone Armor - This does passively benefit Wands exactly as stated. This skill does give a massive Defence boost, but only as long as the armor has HP remaining. HP are taken from this skill whenever a hit is taken. It has 525 HP at lvl 20. Average trash in normal do something like 20-100 dmg, maybe 40-500 in NM, 60-1000 in Hell. The only ways to reduce this incoming damage is via EnergyShield, Blocking with a shield, having a very high defence, and having a very high leveled character (level comparison is about 1/2 of the defence formula). The relatively low HP of BoneArmor in later difficulties makes it impractical to rely on alone, but if combined with things like Defiance, FrozenArmor, Shout, and HoWolverine, it might be able to raise the Necro's defence high enough to last about 20 attacks (5% chance to be hit by monsters). Combined with a shield and 75% block, it will last 80 attacks. Without Energy shield, there's no better result than this, and it is bottleneck in the melee-necro design. When combined with Blocking, perhaps this defence issue may not become a problem (how quickly do you take 80 hits when you're amoungst a party and/or Golems?).

Blocking - Blue's Strategy site shows a 5-frame block speed at 86% FasterBlockSpeed. It might be possible to attain the 4-frame speed at 174%. The Melee Neco should be capable of 5 blocks a second (although he's block-locked when doing this). This slow blocking speed is another bottleneck in the melee-necro design. When combined with Defence, this blocking issue may not become a problem (how often does a necro receive 5 attacks a second?).

I haven't mentioned many strategies for overcoming the problems with this build, so I know there's a lot more to this discussion. I hope that at least a few people are willing to keep the ideas flowing.

I tried an "Elric" build in HU several seasons ago and didn't have much luck with him. For those who aren't sci-fi geeks, Elric is a pasty white haired fellow with a big sword; preferably one that leeches a lot of life. One of the big problems I had was Fast Hit Recovery. Any pack of archers would pincushion me like crazy. I think I died in A1 normal twice, once in some underground pit and once at the bottom of the Countess's cellar and decided to toss in the towel (was playing HC back then).

So any sort of melee necro item should probably include some sort of FHR. I also think that a big problem with melee necro oriented items is the item itself. One comment that no one has made in oblivion is why the heck can it only be made in wands? Why not allow it to be made in swords? With heavy necro oriented words, if someone is using a zod it probably would only be a necro, otherwise they would find a better use for that zod.

I also think that some other unique/runewords could be tweaked with some melee necro friendly mods that aren't limited to wands and daggers only. If our skinny white dudes are gonna flex their puny muscles, why not let them have access to a full arsenal of weapons?

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People who live in cinder block houses can throw whatever they want.

Thanks for the reply Blue, but your post starts to go off-topic after the 1st paragraph. This thread isn't about tweaking runewords, although if it is found that FHRecover is mandatory for a melee necro, or that Faster Block of like 600% is needed to make them viable, then perhaps a necro-head runeword could be created with exactly those mods. It would have to be a necro-head to prevent abuse by already-powerful melee. I hope this thread doesn't degenerate into a "runeword buffs pls" thread. I guess it might be easiest for people to just post their attempted Melee Necro builds, and then discuss how to solve the problems they came up with.

To get the thread back on track, I'll offer some possible solutions to Elric's issues.
1) dr/mdr (particularly with the current stats on diamonds) will solve any problems in normal difficulty, where they are concerned with a character's duability. The high defence of diamonds keeps them useful in NM and Hell as well. The dr/mdr of the higher diamonds seems very good even against Hell trash monsters (except when they are buffed by something).
2) Maxing Bone Armor quickly is an extremely strong way to defend yourself in Normal Difficulty. Both the HP of the armor and the defence boost are very pwerful for Norm.
3) Faster Hit Recovery isn't an issue if your character is appropriately leveled and has a defence high enough to acheive a 5-10% chance at being hit. Your recovery animation might still be rediculousely slow, like 7 frames, but if you're only getting hit once in 20 attacks, it's really not a big issue. Also keep in mind that Hit Recovery animations only play when you receive more than 1/12 of your HP as damage.

I agree with you that if Necromancers are going to do melee, it almost certainly will not invovle wands and daggers, since those base items have flaws in their design (range, durability, socket capacity) that make them unsuitable for melee. I mentioned that Poison Strike is useable with any weapon to encourage people to consider using non-daggers with it while posting in this thread.

Bone Armor alone does go down quickly in endgame, but if you use marrowwalks, that 525 HP goes up to ~2k. Much more managable already.

Also to further the character, you may have to go further into to the curses tree to remain effective. (Though that does remind me of a character I always considered building, a curses only necro)

2k BoneArmor is certainly better than 500, no doubts about that. I'm certain that would keep it a viable defence into Nightmare, since those boots are available at level 80, and I think the larger damage won't really occur until A4/A5 NM anyways. I suppose the builds people come up with could allow for maxing BoneWall too, for another 1k to BoneArmor, which I think would make it decent into Mid Hell at least. Afterall, it looks like a melee necro can count on only taking a hit once in 80 swings.

I agree that working with more curse variety could be mandatory, and frankly damn refreshing. I was poking around in SinglePlayer, and was reminded that Attract really can't be overridden, and really is quite effective for removing the heat from the necro. I would take some decent +Skills to get going though, since the radius and duration start very low (although the duration goes up pretty well). Maybe 5 hard points into Attract to make the build more manageable in the earlier game. This curse reminds me of a Zon's Decoy skill, creating an unkillable tank at a decent distance from the player. A shame Attract will only be useful against trash, which likely won't be a big problem anyways. I think that Attract is the way to go though, since the duration climbs much faster than DimVision or Confuse. One could always build the necro with "Delerium" in mind though, for high level curses it offers (although MindBlast and Terror on struck are pretty annoying to me).

So far the bulid looks like:
20 BArmor
20 PStrike
20 GolemMastery (4 recastable tanks is hard to pass up)
5 Attract, probably some into Amp, LRes, Decrep, Weaken, etc
maybe 20 BoneWall

Defensively, it looks reasonable to me, so we might start looking more towards offensive abilities. There's plenty of ways we could consider this, here's a few:
1) Might merc in the early game. We have 4 golems, so should be decent attack damage with Amp and Might. Maybe later game could "Faith" javs on this merc.
2) A3 merc. We have golems and Attract to keep things off of him. We could LowerRes to help him kill things we stuggle with.
3) We could gear up a merc and the necro similarly to a Convictor, using PStrike to hit consistently and LRes to drop resistances. I think ForceGolem still uses HolyFire for another tiny boost to fire damage.

Consider those few ideas and offer new ones, I'm sure we can figure something out.

I'm wondering if you are thinking of running a melee necro build brevan. If so I wouldn't mind running one around the same time on sc so we can compare notes on progress etc. This idea has been one I've wanted to try for a while but hc is not really the place to try a build such as this.

I had a few ideas on stat placement already.

Str: 50-60
Dex: 40-50
Vita: the rest
Energy: 10-15

Needing some dex for block and to boost his ar etc. and str so I have more room for life charms. Melee equip is rather heavy at times.

Skill wise, I would invest 1 into curses only to start with and focus on bone armour and bone wall + golem mastery. I would probs switch my weapon type frequently, focusing on more melee friendly weapons untill later. I would devote to amethysts in weapons to keep my ar up and a good fast speed. Bone armour would be for the def and damage absorbing qualitys until the higher damage wands are available. The problem will be finding an attack I am happy with, I'll come up with something im sure.

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However, with Attract we have an interesting new metagame waiting for us. Now we have to be more choosy with our other curses for example. We come across a horde of your standard melee fighters, we hit attract and we have a suitable decoy tank. Now what do we use as a second curse?

If we use Amp, our tank dies faster, but that is more of an issue in the mid game. Life tap is out of the question, Weaken will only make our tank more durable. Iron Maiden is a good option until their health dwarfs their damage. Lower Resist would only help your act 3 merc, or your own poison damage. Then we finally have Decept, which oddly enough, makes them all take more physical, but also keeps our tank alive longer with decreased damage and attack speed.

As for Golems, I would lean more towards Spirit blades, as they can be used to tank bosses, when Attract cannot, and they do a better job at tanking bosses than golems can.

I would love to go out an try this build too, but my Diablo CDs are not working at the moment. I have the damn CD-keys and everything, but I cannot get the CDs to work. Years of abuse has finally caught upto me. If I can, I'll see what I can do with the character. If I can't, I'll keep up with you guys here in theories..

no, attract cant be overwrited by another curse. Once they are attracted you can amp on top of them and it wont effect them, just the mob around them.

Decrep will keep them alive alot longer though so depending on the mobs around it, you may want to decrep them (if they are heavy dmage and you attract a weaker foe.

If you cant install arc use demon tools or something similar and download the Iso files for the game. If the game is installed then use a loader. I posted one in the topic "No CD" Sorry I dont have time to link you but I gotta shoot off.

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As mentioned, Attract isn't overridden by other curses, I tested it on SPlayer and everything. It seems like a nice little Decoy-maker, but you have to have at least 2 baddies. This means you'll need the golems and merc for the one named critter that manages to outlast all of the decoys.

I recommended Golem Mastery because 4 golems are a proven-effective group for most trashy situations, while the swords are hindered by issues such as low life, low damage, and foot-print (these swords easily block narrow ares like Arcant Sanctuary or caves. You have to unsummon them to walk past). So far, the sole point of swords is that they look neat, and have close to a 1 second cast delay, meaning you can occupy bosses fairly well with them. If the boss attacks slowly, such as Moloch or Diablo, then you can completely occupy him with blades.

I'm under the impression that all summons get considerably beefier in later difficulties, since their base life is increased (I think it's doubled in NM, and then trippled in Hell, something like that anyways). This makes the 20 points in GMastery very effective.

As Purerage mentioned, it's not impossible to find an online copy of D2:LoD. If you get a regular .iso file that doesn't have the SecureRom v4 security algorithm covered, then just use DaemonTool's Emulation feature.

With regard to mercs, I just considered that you could use an A1 merc, since their InnerSight spell is very good for lowering monster defence in Norm and NM, and it stacks with any curse or aura you apply. It's actually a really nice spell, and a shame the excessively high def of Hell monsters makes it less useful. I wish that spell existed as procs on items.

from what I noticed
its 50% more life in nm and double life in hell.

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First torrent didn't work, so I'm working on the next one. Yeah, damn swords block you. Really annoying in Maggot lair.

I think it might actually be better to use an Act 1 merc in the long run, though phys immunes will pose a slight problem, but your poison damage might help fix that, that an Amp. Trash may be annoying at times with this char, but man, bosses are going to be ridiculous. I was thinking about a char to start in HC once I get the game and mod running again, though something tells me that this is not the best one to start with lol. Prolly will try a psnmancer for the 90th time, hope he doesn't die.

Though, as I've said before, I've wondered how a pure curse necro would do. Occasionally I would find myself being nothing more than an amp/decp bitch, so I wondered what would happen if I made a pure support necro with that in mind. Kinda like a healadin or chanter...

Ugh. Got D2 Installed, mod installed, I grabber the loader from the no CD thread. But I can't get it to work. As in, nothing happens. I have the ISO of LoD mounted, but nothing. If I try to use the new loader as Diablo2.exe it asks me for Storm.dll or something like that. Dammit.

did you move the loader into your folder and replace the original file with the loader?

Remember to open with the loader and not hu.bat.

Try it in wondowed mode

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EDIT: It works

Dang, this thread got derailed pretty badly. Hopefully a modder can erase the 3 posts above this one, or at least move them to the Tech Support forum where they belong. Also, it probably would have been a lot faster to just use the search button for the answers to your Loader questions.

Phys immunes mostly just exist in Hell difficulty, so maybe switch to an A3 merc, or a fire/cold rogue. The Fire rogue would need an exploding arrow bow though, she doesn't use her exploding arrow spells very often. I think the fire rogue would work out well and gets you InnerSight. In the long run, it might still be better to get an A3 for Hell, since once your LRes has broken immunities, it's very easy to load the merc up with -%Res and wipe out any trash.

I don't think the melee necro will be able to rely on the poison damage from PStrike. Keep in mind that at lvl 20 the skill only does about 150dps. Even if we used Venom gear, it would probably still only be doing about 1k dps (however that occurs around level 45, so maybe it won't be bad until about lvl 70). Poison damage will help prevent certain monsters from healing though, which can be nice.

So does anyone have ideas for offence besides mercs and PStrike with Venom?

If we want to persue the phys-damage route, then level 20 PStrike gives about 400% SkillED for daggers, but daggers are pretty useless, with the only exception being the lvl 90 unique (indistructible). But it's not good to design the char around waiting until level 90 before playing it. The text files show that a lot of weapons get 2.25% SkillED per str or dex, so I don't think SkillED will be too big an issue. Perhaps it's better to consider elemental damage as an offence. I was thinking that a reasonable weapon for around level 45 was "Harmony" javs. That'd get us a nice level 20 DeathKnight (While the other Neco summoners are wakling around with like lvl 15 Death Knight... heh, noobs), the option of a lame little lvl 6 Valkyrie, Vigor to help us walk comfortably (preserving high defence), and a Ko rune for the ARating and blocking boost.

If our meele necro is becoming a ranged necro, why not grab him one of the Necro Crossbows, I think there is only one though, and use poison strike with that.(unless it's meele only)

PStrike is melee only. Sorry, I had meant to use the javs in melee. I guess we could throw them, but there would be significant ARating issues.

I've tried necros with bows. That's essentially what my Convecro build of a few years ago degenerated into. I figured Kuko's with lots of +Fire damage (Mav's peices were level 45 at the time) and FireGolem's aura would be a nice combination with LRes. It was. Fire Golem was changed, and there were no suitable melee gear for my necro so I got bored of him. Also, I was annoyed at his capped block speed and low defence. I decided he was not viable in melee, but that was years ago. The explosions on the bow were ideal, since ARating is irrelevant (even if you miss, the explosion goes off).

I've messed around with heroeditor a bit to see what was viable. (Ended up finding out that IM is amazing with enough points in it.) Necros with xbows suck. I learned that.

I think the character may be dependent on skill granting gear, for at least some good attacks, though of course, that nullifies the need for PStrike, which in turn makes us need more AR

Sweet, I look forward to hearing about what you found.

1) What skillpoint spread did you use
2) Where were you testing (Hell tundra? NM Tundra?)
3) Which crossbow were you trying, Hellrack?
4) Which oSkills did you have in mind, when you mentioned that the melee necro would require skill granting gear?
5) What level of IM were you using? Were you using it with IronGolem?

I've done experiments with thorns gear too, mainly with a Thorns barb dual-wielding SuicideBranch. That test was back when monsters had about 3 times the HP they do now, and it was very effective at times. I'm sure it would be even more devastating in those areas now. However, in Hell and some parts of Nightmare, the enemy's 50% phys resistance base make the build drastically weaker, and makes Amp curse mandatory, so no IM.

To be honest, my findings were trivial at best, as I find using hero editor as an item creator frustrating at best, but I'll try to answer the most I can.

1) I put 20 into bone shield, one in each curse(10), 20 into golem mastery and one into each golem. Then I was at a loss of where to put remaining points, so I fed them into bone wall and bone prison.
2) I actually tend to make my way through the game while testin a character, to check how they far in each part of the game. Sadly this char failed the act one hell test.
3) Like I said, as I couldn't get hero editor to work, I ended up just throwing together gear. Sadly this was a problem with whole trial.
4) For oSkills, I was thinking more damage than survivability. Zeal would be a helpful one, still looking on others that would be feasible to get on the necro.
5) Since I couldn't get the gear, I just edited the IM to a level that was possible. I did 40, as it wouldn't be too hard to get it to that level. I used it with Bone wall and bone prison, as the ai have a weird habit of attacking it even when they are attacking me.

Still mulling over the details of a meele necro though.