I haven't made a Necromancer in ages upon ages. At least one that I followed through on. Part of it is that DWeb is one of the few items that I have never found since it got introduced. But I enjoy summoner characters and decided to make a Summoner, or at least play through the game as a Summoner and possibly switch to Poison Nova later, or perhaps if Summoner works out keep him or maybe a hybrid.
What I really wanted to ask, was if people get into trouble when they get to Diablo in Normal? I do all my playthroughs on 8 player games, because at this point of playing D2 for over 15 years, even 8 player walkthroughs are pretty easy and I typically can make it through without dying or maybe once at most. But on P8, Diablo just shreds all of the summons to smithereens and leaves me with trying to get aggro on the Clay Golem and letting my Mercenary get a few shots on before he finally gets fire hosed or firestormed. While I'm trying to constantly cast Decrep, I have been firing the collection of the highest poison potions I had amassed throughout each act when I have faced all the bosses so far on him, as it is really the only way I can assist in damage without sacraficing my wand's stats. But Diablo gives me like 3-5 seconds before everything is blown to crap. And my goal is to always never die on a character, but more realistically to at least kill Hell Baal without dying. So I have to be super careful as well, because that hose and storm will eat me up in a half second.
What do Summoner Necromancers typically do at this point? I really don't want to have to waste a respec already and I don't know what I could spec without going completely away from Summoner and then not being what I want to be and having to wait to NM A1 to go back to Summoning. I am level 35. I went back and did some Mephisto runs and found the unique Voulge on the way there. It has 30% Deadly Strike. That might help drop Diablo's life a little faster if he happens to get a few of those shots in, in time. But even then the DS damage probably isn't any better than my old polearm, which isn't that great to begin with.
Even if I accumulate a ton of items from Mephisto, my personal gear isn't going to really change anything. My damage is all done by my summons and mercenary. I could level up more, but I'd need an impossible amount of level growth to not have my summons melt in two seconds.
I've played the P8 Normal Diablo game before, which is often the hardest, or one of the hardest points in the game for me lol. I've ran around with a Bowzon for 30 minutes. I haven't been at this part in awhile, will Diablo's life stay put in Normal or will he regenerate life? I feel like it stays the same, but I'm having a brain fart. I just am wondering if there is some secret here or if I am going to have to accumulate a ton of gold, pull out all the Full Juvies I've been saving and Clay Golem, Decrep or Amp, hope to get Diablo's attention with the next Clay Golem, toss poison or fire potions and when my Merc dies, go revive him and keep doing this for the rest of the night. But that only will work if his life bar stays put, as this is super tedious and there is no way I can keep up the required speed to do this for the amount of time it is going to take lol.
Thanks for any pointers here. Necromancers and Assassins are a tad bit foreign to me. Want to do a blade sin soon. The kicking part seems tricky to me lol.