Skill census/analysis of the SPF Mat/Pat/Guardian build compilation

Dec 2022 Update: Every druid summoning skill was significantly modified in the D2R 2.4 patch.

Poison Creeper
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I really like the concept of "carnivorous pet weeds." The developers at Blizzard North designed and implemented three interesting "intelligent plant" minions, which burrow underground and attack enemies from below. Only one vine may be summoned at a time, so summoning another causes the previous vine to instantly die, with a really cool "screaming plant" sound effect.

Poison Creeper is the only weed that actually causes damage. The creeper itself doesn't cause the damage; rather, it sprouts a stationary mat of greenery that covers a plot of ground (3x3 tiles) under a monster. The sprouted mat causes the poison damage. It isn't much - the poison duration is just four seconds, and the damage is about one per second at skill level 1, or 21 per second at skill level 20 - but every monster that walks over the sprouts gets poisoned. The toxic mats persist for a while longer, so monsters could get re-poisoned again and again by the same sprouts. I believe the mat duration is about 4 seconds at skill level 1, and another second per skill level after that - 23 seconds at skill level 20. With luck and enough nearby enemies, the creeper will seek out another foe that's not yet poisoned, and sprout another mat under that monster as well. A clever player can sometimes maneuver many monsters to poison themselves over multiple green carpets. I recently played a berzerker barbarian who summoned level 21 Poison Creepers, using charges on a Carrion Wind unique ring. Those weeds worked very well, not just to distract monsters, but also to briefly arrest unique and champion monsters from replenishing their hit points during battles.

All three weeds are difficult to harm while they remain slinking underground. When the Poison Creeper comes above ground, it is very vulnerable, and only has 42-58 hit points at skill level one, 241-333 hit points at level 20.

Most of our SPF heroes that maxed Poison Creeper were the Rabies werewolves discussed previously, who wanted the poison damage synergy. But there were a few other distinctive max-PC builds: Alfonso the Great's Schrute, bcoe's Corvus_Corax, Solar Ice's Lycander, TopHatCat64 's Dendron, and Dezrok's Kodi.

Carrion Vine
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The other two weeds don't attack monsters, but instead are utility corpse eaters. Whenever the druid's life bulb is even one point below his maximum life, Carrion Vine will seek out and consume a corpse, after which the druid regains health. At skill level one, each corpse replenishes 4%, and the percentage rises at certain skill level thresholds (5% at level two, 6% at three, 7% at 5, 8% at 7, 9% at 10, 10% at 15, 11% at 26). For a severely injured druid with only one hit point left, a level one CV could heal him fully by eating 25 corpses; a level 15 CV swallowing just ten could fully heal. Personally, I would like to test this some more. For a wereform with high Lycanthropy, I expect that a Carrion Vine might actually heal a druid at faster rate than drinking super healing potions.

A CV is a little more durable during battles than the Poison Creeper: 80-110 life at skill level one, 460-632 life at level 20.

We don't have any guardians nor patriarchs that maxed Carrion Vine. The heaviest investor was Liquid_Evil's Trifecta, who put fourteen hard skill points into his CV. He shared several opinions about it in his write-up: "I wanted a change of pace on a PvM Druid and thought it would offer me a bit more survivability on a character that had so few hit points. After Fury, Werewolf, Lycanthropy, and a spirit are maxed, there aren't many options left for a werewolf that doesn't want attacking summons. The vine didn't appear to be a bad investment, though I don't see any real reason for more than 15 points in it after +skills (and that's me being generous). So yeah, depending on your play style, a Carrion Vine might deserve some future love."

Solar Creeper
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The Solar Creeper is the most durable of all three vines: 138-192 life at skill level one, 662-921 at skill level 20. This one regenerates the druid's mana. Its thresholds are: two percent at skill level one, 3% at level three, 4% at 4, 5% at 7, 6% at 12, 7% at 22. A Solar Creeper is a great corpse disposal tool. For example, when a devilkin shaman threatens to raise slain devilkins, or a greater mummy threatens to raise skeletons, just spend some mana by casting any spell, and the SC will then seek out and eliminate the nearest corpse to regenerate some of that spent mana.

Mana regenerates by itself over time. Regeneration is pretty slow for the typical druid that keeps his base energy stat. It isn't much faster if he has higher energy, or wears equipment with "+mana" or "regenerate mana" mods. For a mana-burned druid, it's quite nice when a Solar Creeper quickly restores enough mana to cast another spell; that's another reason why almost all of my druids have this vine follow them around. Usually I get my Solar Creeper from a pelt's staffmods, but other times I happily invest the three necessary skill points to get one. So far, it appears some of my fellow SPFers seem to have a similar attitude. I could only find ten "one-point-wonder" investments for Solar Creeper in the entire Mat/Pat/Guardian compilation. Only three of them had any remarks about SC in their write-ups: jiansonz's Burt, Stephan's Shib, and maareek 's Fruor.

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That's the last of the druid's skills. There are many popular projects in the compilation that use druid shapeshifting abilities with other classes: barbarians that become werewolves using a Wolfhowl unique helmet, and runewords that let any class transform into a werebear. They are pretty easy to find and explore - just scan for "bear" among the compilation links. I choose to discuss cross-class werebears in the respective individual class skill reviews rather than here, but I felt that the deep creativity I found among those builds is still remarkable and worth mentioning.

Next up, I plan to explore the skill placements of our necromancers, beginning with the mastery skills in the left column of the summoning skill tree.
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[2022 Dec Update: new histograms, D2R patch notes link]
 
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Skeleton Mastery
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Wow, one hundred twenty seven patriarchs/guardians maxed Skeleton Mastery. It adds life and damage to any minion summoned from a corpse - that is, by either Raise Skeleton, Raise Skeleton Mage, or Revive. Here are three interesting representatives (one of each):

Maxing Raise Skeleton and Skeleton Mastery is a cornerstone of a build frequently called "fishymancer" here in the SPF. In honor of its author, Nightfish, a link to his guardian Sessarioth seems appropriate. Those two skills make a very effective combination; I have successfully patted four such necroskeleton summoner "skellymancers." (Many-many more of these are found in the compilation. I'm sure I'll post links to them soon... 💀 )

I have seen the appellation "Lord of Magi" used for builds with Skeleton Mastery and Raise Skeleton Mage both maxed. I found nineteen of these in the compilation, including Vulpine's Ghana_II, a "Lichlord" werebear leading a small army of necromagi.

There were also a couple of necromancers that maxed Revive and Skeleton Mastery, which together at least treble revived monsters' damage and quadruple their hit points. Patriarch NoMoreSorrow by Neksja chose this skill combination.

Golem Mastery
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A necromancer doesn't need a corpse to summon his golem minion. Golem Mastery adds life, run/walk speed, and attack rating to that golem.

These necromancers only put one or two skill points into their chosen golem summoning skills, but then maxed Golem Mastery to beef up their low-point-wonder golems: level 99 heroes Ric by ffs and Raising_dead by Cyrax; Caly's "dark ranger" missile weapon user named Dark_Cloud; and summoners Brand and Seven by scrcrw, Thanatos by PhineasB, BarroomHero by Skinhead On The MBTA, Imhotep by zaphodbrx, Minime by OldSoldier, Daemian by Starcrunch, Ghana_II by Vulpine, and Skelemancer by WailingDoom.

Dec 2022 Update: Grisu's recent D2R guardian Randomnipotent was an impressive tournament build that maxed both Golem Mastery and Skeleton Mastery.

Summon Resist
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Summon Resist suffers from tightly diminishing returns on investment; I believe that's why we haven't yet seen any build in the compilation max it. Only skeletons, skeleton magi, and golems benefit from SR - not revives nor other classes' summoned minions.

Our heaviest Summon Resist investor so far is guardian Filip by sequana, an untwinked successful tournament competitor that put fourteen hard skill points into summon resist, enough to add 62% fire, lightning, cold, and poison resistance to his skeletons and clay golem. (Interesting trivia: since a clay golem already gets 20% LR and 50% CR. Filip's golem actually had 82% LR, and was immune to cold damage!)

The next highest investor was also a tournament guardian, Grisu's Poison_Dexter, with eleven hard points in SR. With his gear, that was enough to give his skeletons 60% resistances.

The third highest investor was BioWerm by YoungDbl. Ten hard SR skill points were enough to give his skeletons 57% resistances, but then 9 more from equipment edged that number up to 65%.

The fourth highest investor was Colorless Green's Klaatu - nine in SR, and then twenty more skills from equipment, for a total of 29 levels in summon resist: +70% resistances for Klaatu's iron golem! (More interesting trivia: an iron golem already gets poison immunity and 50% LR, so Klaatu's golem was also lightning immune, and unbreakably so - even around uniques with conviction auras.)
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Dec 2022 Update: The D2R 2.4 patch offers interesting improvements to the Blood, Iron, and Fire Golem skills.

Clay Golem
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The Clay Golem's unique feature is it's slow effect (11% at skill level one, 63% at level 20). The slow effect happens both "on striking" and "when struck." (In other words, an enemy is slowed when the Clay Golem successfully hits it, and conversely, a melee-attacking enemy is also slowed when it strikes the Clay Golem.) It also gets a good attack rating bonus that scales with skill level (twenty AR per level). Furthermore, that bonus is shared as a synergy to the other three golems, to boost their AR as well.

Clay Golem's life also scales with skill level (100 hit points at level 1, 765 at level 20). Golem Mastery magnifies CG's life (20% per level), and so do synergy points in Blood Golem (5% per invested skill point). LozHinge the Unhinged 's untwinked GumbyBalboa used maxed Clay Golem with maxed GM and twenty points in BG. Without +skills equipment, his CG would have had 4,590 hit points. With the +skills gear he collected and equipped, his CG had over eight thousand hit points. (GumbyBalboa usually summoned iron golems, but at times he used clay for an alternative minion.)

Clay Golem's physical damage also grows with skill level, but its damage remains pretty small (2-5 at skill level one, 15-28 at level 20). That damage can be increased by a synergy (6% per point in Fire Golem) and by difficulty (a few points in nightmare, a few more points in hell difficulty). However, even with the damage synergy maxed, CG's maximum damage is still just 61, and another dozen +skills on equipment still won't be high enough to give it a three-digit maximum damage number. So most successful heroes use CG for its enemy slowing, attack rating, and life - not so much for damage. Regardless, two Clay Golem users maxed the Fire Golem synergy anyway: War by Brak and LegionMaster by Arfurala.

The mana required to summon a Clay Golem also increases with skill levels - fifteen at skill level one, 72 at level 20.

A maxed Clay Golem skill featured prominently in a few Patriarch/Guardian write-ups:
  • Tra-Sung by Cormallon wrote: "the golem has 8888 life and 67% slow. Fighting [Baal] and Lister is a piece of cake with this setup."
  • Werebear necromancer Tuurngasuk by Cygnus: "Gumby was a great tank. He better be, with 10000 life."
  • IndianaBones by RadTang: "14,000+ life on CG ! He's pretty much immortal. Thick as a brick."
  • Fishymancer Patton by Shagsbeard: "I like this build, but it doesn't kill fast. Baal took about 5 minutes to fall in the end, but the battle was without risk or incident."
Nonohara by NagisaFurukawa (Is that you, @Nagisa?) showed a rather interesting themed build. He cursed normal Diablo with Iron Maiden, and then repeatedly recast Clay Golem beside the act boss, toward which Big-D proceeded to injure himself. Another inspring build was TheNix's Hugh_Encry, a "slow-mo-mancer" who profited from combined slowing effects of Clay Golem and a Decrepify curse.

Blood Golem
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The Blood Golem's distinct feature is its life-stealing and life-sharing ability. As noted above, GumbyBalboa was the patriarch that maxed BG for its life synergy to other golems. There was another SPF project, Vang's Corruption, whose ten-point Blood Golem was a core component. "Blood Golem isn't that bad. He lasted quite a while and rarely died actually. He only had 2300 life and 70-190damage w/ 136% returned. Using Potions to heal me and him also was fun, and saved him a couple of times. Overall he performed well above what I expected and really took a pounding."

I was already aware, when a hero fights with "life stolen per hit" gear or a Life Tap curse, that "life leech" also heals a Blood Golem. I was also aware that a BG's "life leech" also heals the hero. But I did not know that drinking red potions would also heal a BG. (I do remember that in software patches before 1.13, this skill also carried a damage-sharing curse: when the necromancer was hurt, so was the Blood Golem, and vice-versa.)

A Blood Golem's damage, life stolen per hit, and mana cost increase with skill level. Examples: in normal difficulty, these are 6-16 damage / 86% stolen / 25 mana at level one, 45-122 / 138% / 101 mana at level 20. (BG's base damage numbers get rebalanced a little higher in nightmare and hell difficulties.)

Iron Golem
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Iron Golem requires a suitable metal item on the ground before it will actually create a minion. The IG inherits that item's mods. At a minimum, an IG produced from a normal (not magic) weapon will do more damage, and an IG created from a normal armor piece will have more defense. Magic, rare, gemmed, etc. items can make some very interesting Iron Golems. (There are a few exceptions - for example, magical properties such as "+mana" or "indestructible" won't have any effect.) The IG also carries its own Thorns effect, returning melee damage back to enemies. The thorns improve with skill level: 150% damage reflected at skill level one, 435% at level 20. Its defense bonus also increases with skill levels: 140 at level one, 35 more per higher level - 805 at skill level 20. (This defense bonus is also shared as a synergy to the other Golem skills.)

Since thorns and defense are the only things that improve with more points in Iron Golem, the majority of SPFers that use it choose to leave IG at one or a few points, create the golem from a nice weapon or armor, then pump synergy/mastery skills to beef it up in other ways. Here are several such builds:
  • GumbyBalboa, by LozHinge the Unhinged, who recommended Malice runeword golems.
  • Frodo by PhineasB : "I used up lots of 2H weapons with crushing blow for the golem."
  • Precious by PhineasB: "The golem generally was a random weapon that had dropped."
  • SummonMaster by domac: "Right before ancients I searched for a skill [shrine] and once I found it I raised my iron golem from IK maul (socketed the IK maul with 2xETH runes) and went to the summit. Boy I was suprised how fast the ancients fell."
  • Minime by OldSoldier was a tournament entry. He used Steel and Malice runewords for open wounds, and Strength runewords for crushing blows.
I found two that maxed Iron Golem. Miron's Kel-Thuzad also maxed Golem Mastery and put twelve synergy points in each of the other golems. He liked Iron Golem for almost all monsters, but strongly recommended using Clay Golem instead at the ends of acts 4 and 5 for Diablo and Baal. The other was Solar Ice's Voorhees, who transformed Obedience runeword cryptic axes into effective Iron Golems. Solar Ice also warned that expensive golems can disappear due to lag, and recommended using teleport to keep the Iron Golem nearby. But he really liked his synergized IG: "It is an incredibly strong tank, the best in the game with the right gear. It has excellent damage even on higher player settings, resists in the 90s or even immunity, good HP, and is quite unkillable under most circumstances. It's AI is good and it has good speed."

Fire Golem
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Summoning a Fire Golem requires a lot of mana: fifty at skill level one, ten more per skill level after that - 240 mana at level 20. Without mana boosting gear, a necromancer would need to do something almost unthinkable in order to summon a high level FG: spend stat points in energy! Yeah, seems like a pretty blasphemous idea, doesn't it? Just wear the mana boosting equipment instead. ;)

At skill level one, a Fire Golem causes 66-50 fire damage; at level 20, 401-449 fire damage. It is also surrounded by a "holy fire" aura which adds to its fire damage, and also periodically pulses fire damage at enemies which are close enough (4-6 fire damage within 8 yards at level one, 34-36 fire damage within 21 yards at level 20). It can also absorb fire damage to heal itself (36% fire absorb at level one, 88% at level 20). When killed or unsummoned, a Fire Golem causes a small amount of explosion damage to enemies up to four yards away.

Two SPFers used Fire Golem prominently in their build and questing: FireMage by EasyG, and Precious by PhineasB. But the most common reason for Fire Golem investment was the 6% per point damage synergy it gives to one of the other golems. In practice, that's almost always an Iron Golem, such as those listed above, as well as DaveWThe2nd 's LittleSucka and Nightfish's Dalariath.

Dec 2022 Update: check out maxicek's Anomander_Rake, a recent melee fighter and iron golem summoner.
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Raise Skeleton
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Raise Skeleton is the most common skill found among our SPF Pat/Guardian necromancers. It converts a corpse into a "necroskeleton" melee-fighting minion. At skill level 2 up to two skeletons may be raised, then three at skill level 3, and another skeleton every three levels after that - four at level 6, five at level 9, and so forth. Higher skill levels also give necroskeletons more hit points, and let them do more physical damage. At skill level one, the lonely minion has 21 life and does 1-2 damage, but at level 20, up to eight skeletons may each have 199 hit points and do 37-41 damage, and higher skill levels continue to increase life, damage, and number of skeletons. Skill levels in Skeleton Mastery also augment their life and damage, making them much more durable and powerful. With enough Skeleton Mastery, a small squad of eight or more skeletons are capable of taking on almost any group of monsters in any difficulty level. Skill levels in Summon Resist make them even more durable around elemental or poison attacks, and there's also a built-in boost to necroskeletons' base life in nightmare and hell difficulties.

The maxed skills in a standard "fishy" skeleton summoner build are Raise Skeleton, Skeleton Mastery, and Corpse Explosion. More than a hundred of the patriarchs and guardians followed this pattern; forgive me for not linking them all here. Here are some of them, associated by other skills that were chosen to supplement their sixty-skill-point "fishy" basis:
Some players put fewer points in Corpse Explosion. A smaller CE radius required they rely more on their skeletons and other skills to clean up leftover enemies that remained outside of their explosions' range. Examples: GrrBag by Norcim105, Xaviar by XaviarGangrel, Peeter by Tanksaabas, and bone/summon hybrids Me-undead by Online, Flood by TopHatCat64, and Conjuratus by D2DC. PhineasB's Stinger almost maxed CE, but rather elected to max Poison Dagger and engage in melee fighting right beside his skeletons.

Maxed Raise Skeleton was popular among many poison necromancers, particularly those wearing Trang-Oul's set pieces. Here are some that maxed three poison skills and Raise Skeleton, after which they were unable to put as many points in Skeleton Mastery: Faffenoiby by SkaMan, Karrn by Low Key, Milenko by Rummski, Bao-Dur by Darkoooo, Dracula by zaphodbrx, Mandragoran by Aylear, who pondered a lot about his skill options in his write-up, and Jagreen_Lern by maxicek, who reported that his necroskeletons "were very robust and didn't need re-summoning often, even with only 1 point into mastery." Here are some others that maxed Raise Skeleton and Skeleton Mastery, after which they were only able to fully max one or two poison skills: FredOfErik by Kitteh , Gargoth by sorcererbob, PhineasB's Trang, and Andreich by Enrico.

Dec 2022 Update: here are some recently added and very worthwhile skeleton summoner reports: Seethe by Nona, The_NightKing by maxicek, and ffs' ZodNecro.

Coming soon: the last two summoning skills.
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Raise Skeleton Mage
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This skill turns a corpse into a "necromage" ranged spellcaster, which uses one of four possible missile attacks: a fire bolt, ice bolt, charged bolt, or a poison bolt. Some players like to unsummon necromages with less desirable elemental attacks, and then summon others, hoping to get lucky with a more desirable attack. One reason for micromanaging mage minions might be to prepare for a particular battle against resistant or immune enemies. Another reason is to unsummon ice bolt attackers, because they sometimes shatter corpses that would have been put to better use.

There are some nice tables at the Arreat Summit and the A.B. wiki which detail the effective elemental/poison damage that each type of necromage can inflict depending on Skeleton Mastery and Raise Skeletal Mage skill levels. The LCS ("lying character and skill screens") only calculate necromages' life based on Skeleton Mastery level, but happily, they also get more hit points with each Raise Skeleton Mage level as well, although it isn't shown in the LCS. Regardless, they are still comparatively fragile compared to raised melee skeletons, because a leveled necroskeleton will still have many more hit points than its necromage peer.

Many interesting necromage specialists: patriarchs Colorless Green's Zarathustra, queenEm 's DeadLarry (she wasn't as happy with her necromages), Stax's Tichondrius, T72on1 's WrathOfMages, zaphodbrx's KelThuzad and Duran, Cygnus' Dante, Kimppi's SweetDreams, and guardians Cyrax 's GiveMeThyLife, Jason Maher's Deeds, Mursilis' Bob, Nightfish's Fetharioth, OldSoldier 's Tribble, StarCrunch's Daemian, and skunkbelly's OneTrickSkunk.

(Also, just last week, @PhineasB finished maxed Raise Skeletal Mage patriarch Alastor, proving that the spreadsheets I compiled will always be out of date without continued maintenance.)

[Update: Pb_pal capped of his project of color-restricted heroes with necroskeleton/necromage overlord ROYGBIV.]

Dec 2022 Update: Another Pb_pal masterpiece, guardian Ribble: a tournament summoner (necromages and revives). -- The D2R 2.4 patch brought several improvements to necromages.

Revive
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When cast on a monster's corpse, Revive temporarily (for three minutes) summons a dark shade of that monster. Each Revive skill level adds one to the number of monster minions the caster can simultaneously summon. There are a few monsters (such as leapers, oblivion knights, and unique or champion monsters) whose corpses cannot be revived.

Because of the time limit on revived minions, a player may consider this skill "maxed" even without a full twenty-point investment. For example: suppose a player has an average revive rate of about one monster every ten seconds. After that player achieves approximately eighteen revives, the earliest revived conscript will expire, having reached its three-minute "deadline." This timered attrition will continue to limit the effective size of the revived army. So if that player equips gear that adds a total of +9 to Revive, then with only nine hard skill points invested, the skill would be effectively maxed in this situation. On the other hand, suppose another player can manage "six seconds per revive" on average. That player could theoretically maintain an army of up to thirty minions before timered attrition kicks in.

Three necromancers put twenty points into Revive. One of them was Maltatai's Thant, who wasn't overly impressed with his experimental build. Another was Neksja's NoMoreSorrow, who took advantage of the Enigma runeword's teleport 0skill to keep the revived army close to the action instead of wandering away. (More recently, Pb_pal's Black also enjoyed 20 Revive points, proving that the spreadsheets I compiled will always be out of date without continued maintenance.) Other necromancers with lots of points invested in the Revive skill: maxicek's themed-hero Corum, Suiling's fishymancer Archimonde, Elfie's Trang-Oul vampire Mr.Foo, and Lacerta's Immortal King wearer GummyFish.

Dec 2022 Update: Another Pb_pal masterpiece, patriarch Black.
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The necromancer poison skills each provide a poison damage synergy to each other. At least 45 of our patriarchs and guardians maxed all three, and while Poison Nova seems to be the attack of choice among the poison skills, some players still used the other two skills situationally: Poison Daggers against bosses or poison immunes, amd Poison Explosions to help thin out crowds.

Poison Dagger
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This skill is only available for melee attacks using dagger class weapons (daggers and thrown knives). Poison Dagger increases attack rating (+30% AR at skill level one, another twenty percent for each skill level thereafter). Naturally, it also adds poison damage to each successful attack.

At skill level one, the poison duration is fifty animation frames (two seconds), and ten more frames for each additional level. The poison damage rate starts at 3.5 to 7.5 per second at skill level 1. That rate increases steadily (+2 minimum and maximum poison damage per second per level) through skill level 8, and accelerates dramatically after that (approximately +3 minimum and maximum per level 9 through 16, +4 per level beyond). Each skill point invested in Poison Explosion and Poison Nova boosts the poison damage rate by a very (un)healthy twenty percent. It is pretty easy to find items that add poison damage, such as charms or shrunken heads. These always increase poison damage rate, but at high Poison Dagger skill levels, they also often decrease poison duration, because an attack's effective poison time ends up being the average of the items' and skill's poison lengths. Having a shorter duration is only a problem for players that want to play a "hit-and-run" necromancer, stabbing once and then moving along to the next monster while the poison works its course. But most of our Poison Dagger fighters didn't seem to mind stabbing over and over, especially if they had a nice heavy shank weapon that inflicted physical or elemental damage in addition to the poison.

Here are some of the nicer write-ups involving Poison Dagger: patriarchs Syringe by Colorless Green, FlyAmanita by Pijus, Varnae by Stony, Fang by zaphodbrx, and guardian Baby by Grisu.

Poison Explosion
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Poison Explosion turns a corpse into poisonous clouds. The area of effect is limited - the clouds stay within a couple of yards of the corpse, and a monster must be within a couple of yards of a cloud to get poisoned. Their poison duration is the same as that of Poison Dagger - fifty animation frames (two seconds) at skill level one, 250 frames (ten seconds) at skill level 21. At skill level one, a cloud's poision damage rate is 12.5 to 37.5 per second. Up through skill level 8, its minimum/maximum damage rate increases by about three per second; +6 per second at skill levels 9 through 16; +9 per second at levels 17 through 22. Each skill point spent in Poison Dagger or Poison Nova boosts a cloud's poison by 15%, so over its duration, a maxed and fully synergized Poison Explosion cloud usually causes more total damage than any single attack with one of the other two poison skills.

Regardless, most players that attacked with corpses preferred merciful quick attacks by high-range Corpse Explosion, rather than slower torturous suffering by low-range Poison Explosion. An interesting erstwhile poison exploder was Pb_pal's Green. Also, Tra-Sung by Cormallon and Naz Ghoul by RIP reminded me that, for its low mana cost, PE is an inexpensive corpse disposal tool.

Poison Nova
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Poison Nova is an expanding ring of 64 poison bolts, each one floating about eleven yards away (almost, but not quite, to the edge of the screen). It always costs 20 mana, and a bolt's poison duration is just two seconds. However, it has the highest poison damage rate of all three necromancer poison skills: 25-45 per second at skill level one, 200-220 per second at skill level 20, with a 10% synergy boost for each point spent in Poison Dagger or Poison Explosion.

Guardian Cyanidous by winmar, and patriarchs Pestilence by PhineasB and Ric by ffs each wrote nice reports about their untwinked Poison Nova adventurers.

Some other fun patriarch reads: Stinky by AJK, Vayde by Aconite, Velsharoon by Baltha, Kakistos by Colorless Green, Mr.Foo by Elfie, Lars by J-Dog, Blighter and Poy_Zen by maareek, MC_Snails by RobbyD, Saint Anky by sirpoopsalot, Marvel by zerth, Andreich by Enrico, Jobim by maxgerin, Pyrshal by nualum, InNeedOfUV by TedDeeBoy, Ryu by aman, Melmoth by Doctor Clock, and Yuri by humbuggerer. There are also many impressive PN guardian posts, including Kalan by Kitteh, Nazgul by b1ur, Putricide by Milb, and Gargoth by sorcererbob.

Dec 2022 Update: some more poisoners: Lars by J-Dog, McFleagle by Ancient of Mu Mu, and Green and VinceThePince by Pb_pal.
[edit, Feb 2021: correct PN damage numbers]
[Update, Aug 2021: new histograms, fixed links]
[2022 Dec Update: new histograms, builds. Full disclosure: Pb_pal offered a wager regarding VinceThePince, which I won!]
 
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Teeth
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A necromancer's Teeth spell fires a spread of multiple glowing missiles toward a target. The missiles fan out with the same count and pattern as an Amazon's Multiple Shot skill: two missiles at skill level one, and another missile with each subsequent level, up to 24 missiles at skill levels 23 and beyond. The fan pattern is wide when aimed at nearby targets, but more narrowly focused when aimed at distant enemies.

A "tooth" inflicts magic damage: 2-3 for three mana at skill level one, 23-31 for 12.5 mana at level 20. Every point in synergy skills Bone Spear, Bone Spirit, Bone Wall, and Bone Prison magnify that magic damage by fifteen percent. With enough +skills equipment and synergy points, it is possible to cause hundreds of magic damage to every foe caught in the fan-shaped area of effect.

Patriarch Bain by Cius was a proud "dentist," using Teeth as his primary attack for most of the game. He wrote: "While I was using teeth right up till the throne room towards the end I found myself using bone spear more and more which did not feel right as he was meant to be a dentist first and foremost but I did not have the patience by act5." With lots of gear with +skills, Bain cast skill level 38 Teeth (boosted with 65 synergy skill points), spraying twenty-four teeth per spellcast, each tooth causing 677-860 magic damage!

Teeth provides its own synergy bonus to Bone Spear and Bone Spirit, and most of our maxed-Teeth necromancers did so to enhance one or both of those spells. Weller by aman and Deucalion by Grape are notable "pure spellcaster" examples.

There are some choice items with "chance to cast bone spell" mods. One of these is 'Brand,' a ladder runeword for crossbows and bows, featuring "100% chance to cast level 18 bone spear on striking." Three of our patriarchs attacked with Brand weapons, and maxed Teeth as a synergy for Brand's bone spears: scrcrw's Brand, TopHatCat64's Matau, and zaphodbrx's John Mandrake. There were also two "meleemancers" that maxed Teeth to synergize chance-to-cast "procs." Grape's David used Bonehew, the unique elite pole arm with "50% chance to cast level 16 bone spear on striking," and TopHatCat64's Cairn fought with an 'Oath' runeworded weapon ("30% chance to cast level 20 bone spirit on striking") and 'Bone' runeworded armor ("15% chance to cast level ten bone spear on striking").

Corpse Explosion
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A few write-ups have used the word "artillery" to describe this skill, and it's an apt metaphor - it "detonates at range." Whatever hit points a normal corpse had before it became a corpse, Corpse Explosion converts between 35% and 60% of that former life into physical damage, and again into fire damage. Every enemy within range suffers those damages. (It turns out that the range for physical damage is actually just slightly shorter than the range for fire damage). At skill level one, the mana cost is 15, and the range is just over two yards, or about six or seven "terrain tile" steps away from the corpse. At skill level twenty, for 34 mana, the range is a whopping nine yards - physical damage is applied to all enemies up to about 26 steps away, and fire damage up to about 28 steps away!

So, 222 necromancers invested in Corpse Explosion, and 122 of those put fifteen or more hard skill points into it. The vast majority of them are disciples of the "fishymancer" skeleton summoner build guide - Nightfish deliberately emphasized the importance of a large explosion radius in that guide. Here's a selection of approvals from many of our SPF fishymancer players:
  • TDC-Kovalev by GoHabsGo: "This skill is nasty but so powerful. 'The bigger they are, the harder they fall' took all his meaning here. All the monsters I usually hate suddenly became my favorites spawns (maggots, flesh spawners, etc)."
  • Mort by Ancient Of Mu Mu: "Once [an enemy or two] hit the ground, CE cleaned up fights FAST. Was quite impressed. I'd never maxed this skill before and man it makes a difference radius wise."
  • Maladath by Grishnakh: "Lister was a joke, extra fast spectral hit and I don't recall what else. He and his ilk were all dead within 20 seconds. Corpse explosion is fun."
  • Maxigoth by maxicek : "I love the smell of Corpse Explosion in the morning"
  • Maksin by maxgerin: "My main weapon was the Merc, with his high damage. Add in the Conviction + Amp + CE, critters were no match."
Other players shared their gameplay advice:
  • Cerebus by MukTuk: "Things are pretty easy as a fishy, let your minions engage things, throw an amp damage, and as soon as a corpse drops, explode away and watch everything before you fall at the same time. Good fun. Corpse explosion really is quite overpowered, once its around slvl 25 or so it hits most of the screen, so things you wouldn't think are in range actually are, and are them subsequently turned into corpses themselves, ready to explode and kill things you can't even see yet. Its also great for speeding things up, skeletons can kill stuff on hell, but it'll take forever to kill a large bosspack or three, so corpse explosion helps out."
  • Zookeeper by HellHoundBarb: "I use CE sometimes between some summons to speed up the killing). After I have all 14 Skeleton Fighters, I mostly use CE."
  • Tracul's short and sweet summary was "Gameplay: Amplify and CE"
  • Necronomicon by ReDragon had a few more gameplay details: "Amp Dmg and let my merc get the kill, raise, rinse and repeat until at max allowed, clay golem. Then Amp and CE."
  • Skullrazor by ps2v12's alternative: "sipping a cold beer and exploding a corpse now and then."
Not all players sang Corpse Explosion's praises, though. Some criticisms:
  • Ishmael by Are: "Corpse Explosion is less useful at higher player settings."
  • Skeletor by Phosheez: "I personally like being in the battle rather than spamming curses and CE."
  • Lorgalis by LD50: "Sure it's fast and safe to do full clears with CE, but the style just isn't for me"
  • McBeth by teddeeboy : "I avoid Obedience and Insight on any necro CE build because of cold damage shattering the corpses."
  • Teron by Tupsi: "In my opinion CE is often just a skill that cuts off the last seconds of the fight. All this may sound like major disrespect for the build and skill that many people find extremely effective, I hope it isn't. I may have brought out my point in an exaggerating manner, but basically that's how I feel deep inside me. Sure there are situations where CE really clears the screen and I give CE all the credit for that, but those situations are more rare in a higher player setting game."
Beyond fishymancers, there were also some bone spell casters that maxed Corpse Explosion. OldSoldier's BonerBoyd, XyleneCyanol's Nortom, and DaveWThe2nd's BoneColdKiller were each such "explosionmancers," and coju's Corn-Eater used bone spirits, a golem, and put many extra points in several curses, and then explained the build with these phrases: "liberal usage of CE, nothing else really mattered."

To reveal my own opinion of Corpse Explosion, I offer this little "love letter," a quatrain in iambic pentameter:

To my dismay, the traitor Nihlithak
seeks out his opportunities to cast
a version of this spell. For that damn hack
have I fostered a loathing not surpassed.​

Dec 2022 Update: innovative patriarch Shiv by ffs, a werebear necromancer that frequently un-shifted long enough to cast curses and 'splode corpses.
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[2022 Dec Update: new histograms]
 
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Dec 2022 Update: The D2R 2.4 patch increased synergy damage percentages for both Bone Spear and Bone Spirit.

Bone Spear
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Bone Spear is most necromancers' favorite offensive bone spell. It's a fast piercing paranormal talon, causing 16-24 magic damage for 7 mana at skill level 1 or 204-217 for 12 mana at level 21. Points in synergy skills Teeth, Bone Spirit, Bone Wall, and Bone Prison each boost a spear's magic damage by seven percent, so with enough investment a Bone Spear can do well over a thousand magic damage. Favored equipment to complement this skill are items that grant +skills, faster cast rate, and energy/mana.

Among the bone spells, most of the "bonemancers" in the compilation preferred casting Bone Spear. Recommended readings: Azazello by PhineasB, Decay by janooo, Mazrim by Luhkoh, Mr.Bones by chumley669, Noise_Pollution by SiTro, StymiedAgain by TheNix, Ben by sequana, Bloody Spears by Vang , Boneweaver by PandadudeSP, Eliot by Brak, Espiritu_Hueso by JoeBruce , Haematopoiesis by Kitteh, Skunkbone by skunkbelly, and Zeriand by Nightfish.

Here are a few unconventional builds involving Bone Spear: poison/bone hybrids Luumyrkky by Neksja and Avernus by Nightfish; Dim Vision bonemancer Peasant Yu by Drystan, iron golem bonemancer MasterGomez by RobbyD, and blood golem bonemancer MindGames by ERayz.

HappeningKT maxed KTmancer's Bone Spear to synergize an Oath runeword's chance-to-cast Bone Spirit.

Dec 2022 Update: another sweet bone necro, moiselvus' D2R console patriarch Darius.

Bone Spirit
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Bone Spirit spells take a little longer to reach an enemy than do Bone Spears, but they are guided missiles, in that always seek out and strike an enemy. 20-30 magic damage for 12 mana at skill level 1, or 358-388 for 22 mana at skill level 21. Synergy points in Teeth, Bone Spear, Bone Wall, and Bone Prison each boost Bone Spirit's magic damage by six percent.

A few interesting builds with maxed Bone Spirit are: summoners Tanksaabas' Peeter and Online's Me-undead; two-handed sword meleemancers Grape's David and maxicek's Elric; and coju's Corn-Eater , who only lightly synergized Bone Spirit in favor of heavy investments in some curses.

Hopefully soon I'll get opportunity to study and post about the defensive bone skills.
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Bone Armor
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Bone Armor erects a damage absorbing shield around the character. At skill level one, it costs eleven mana to cast, and absorbs 20 physical damage. If boosted to skill level 20, it costs 30 mana and absorbs 210 damage. There is little incentive to invest in Bone Armor, because any synergy point (Bone Wall or Bone Prison) makes it absorb fifteen more hit points of damage, but each additional Bone Armor level only lets it absorb just ten more damage.

Conversely, each point in Bone Armor boosts the hit points of Bone Wall and Bone Prison (10% and 8% respectively). Of course, walls and prisons are temporary barriers; they collapse anyway after 24 seconds. If there are situations in which monsters clobber wall or prison barriers much faster than they would crumble on their own, then such situations might provide a reason to synergize those walls/prisons with more points in Bone Armor.

I found just one report of a 20-point investment in Bone Armor. That was scrcrw's Brand. I suspect it was an error, because Brand wore a "Bone" runeworded mage plate armor, for its chance-to-cast level 10 Bone Armor, and I doubt scrcrw would have spent twenty points on a skill that gets nerfed down to level 10 each time it is "proc-cast." My guess is that he actually put twenty points invested in Bone Wall instead, to fully synergize his "proc" Bone Armors.

About ten years ago, YoungDbl's "fishymancer" BioWerm had spent twelve leftover points in Bone Armor. A couple of years later, fishymancer HardcoreThree by queenEm achieved guardian with the help of six points in Bone Armor, boosted by nineteen synergy points.

TopHatCat64's Matau, a melee fighter, put ten points into Bone Armor (110 absorb, not counting +skills) and used forty more skill points to max the synergies (another 600 absorb). TheNix's Hugh_Encry was also a melee fighter, who raised dexterity instead of vitality in order to achieve maximum chance to block. His partially synergized Bone Armor helped him survive the non-blocked hits that otherwise might have been lethal. He placed just one skill point in Bone Armor, but had weapon switch gear that let him cast it at level 18! OathKeeper by PhineasB and AJK's FearlessLeader were also melee fighters with synergized Bone Armor, again from a Bone runeword's chance-to-cast.

Zarquon by purplelocust wore all of the the Trang-Oul's set peices, cast a partially synergized Bone Armor, and fought with melee weapons in vampire form. I imagine that would be an interesting sight to behold.

Dec 2022 Update: werebear necromancer Mordu by maxicek, with maxed synergies to some Bone Armor and Bone Spirit procs provided by runewords. -- In the D2R 2.4 patch, Bone Armor is finally up-balance up to match the strength of its synergies.

Bone Wall
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Bone Wall erects a physical barrier, in the form of a straight line, perpendicular to the necromancer's line of sight toward the target location. I'm not exactly sure how long the Bone Wall is, but I think it's about four or five yards at skill level 1, and just slightly longer at higher skill levels. If there's already an obstacle on the battlefield (such as a wall, tree, shrine, monster, etc.) then the wall won't extend beyond that obstacle. Sometimes monsters will start attacking the wall, but many enemies "A.I." behavior checks will influence them to target the necromancer or a minion, and those will try to walk or run around the wall to get to their intended prey. If they cannot find a path around the wall, they may then decide to attack the wall instead. A Bone Wall has "life" (hit points) at each "terrain tile" over which it is built (nineteen in normal difficulty, more in nightmare and hell). Those hit points increase by 25% with each skill level, and by another ten percent for each synergy point in Bone Prison or Bone Armor. When one terrain tile of a wall absorbs that much damage (or after a 24 second timer expires) the entire wall collapses. A necromancer spends 17 mana to build a Bone Wall, regardless of skill level.

Personally, I consider this spell a defensive utility, and I feel that it takes some practice to figure out how to use it effectively. I try to trap monsters behind walls, and then attack them with bone spells or ranged weapons, but sometimes I have been able to safely attack with melee weapons too. Long-range weapons like pole arms can easily reach monsters behind bone walls, but I have also observed range-1 daggers successfully poke through a bone wall at foes.

Here are five selected Bone Wall write-ups: Syringe by Colorless Green, Dark_Cloud by Caly, Nonohara by NagisaFurukawa, Nathaniel by zaphodbrx, and LordOfTheBones by Kool69.

Bone Prison
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Bone Prison creates the same barriers as Bone Wall, but configured as a ring around a target rather than in a straight row. If there's an obstacle in the way, that barrier segment will bend toward another nearby unoccupied "terrain tile."

Prison barriers have almost the same hit points as their Bone Wall counterparts -- the only exception is that synergy skill points (Bone Armor and Bone Wall) only boost life by 8% instead of 10%. One of the best benefits of Bone Prison is that their mana cost decreases with skill level: 27 mana at skill level one, one fewer mana per skill level thereafter, and at skill levels 28 and beyond, a monster can be enclosed in a prison without depleting the blue bulb at all. The low mana cost is a welcome feature for bonemancers that prefer to reserve their mana, so they may spam more Teeth/Bone Spears/Bone Spirits at imprisoned monsters.

A couple of players wrote nice things about their Bone Prisons: Kanthor by Reborn2k and Nevim by RIP.
[Update: new histograms]
[Update: new histograms, D2R note]
 
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For almost all of our necromancer patriarchs and guardians, the curses are treated as one-point wonders, usually boosted by +skills items.

A curse tree outlier that stands out in the compilation is guaridan Pete by jiansonz, a tournament character who let a random number generator choose his skill investments. Pete was a capable "mojomancer" curse caster, who also summoned a clay golem, some revives, and lots of corpse explosions, all of which were used to support an act 5 mercenary. The barbarian hireling became Pete's primary monster killer and quest achiever. Pete's happy-go-lucky random selections gave him unique "beyond one-point-wonder" investments in Confuse, Life Tap, Terror, and Weaken.

The left column contains three spells that alter enemy behavior: Dim Vision, Confuse, and Attract. There's another "A.I." curse in the right column, Terror, and I'll discuss it briefly here as well. All four of these behavior modifier hexes suffer reduced duration after normal difficulty - they last half as long in nightmare, and a quarter as long in hell.

Only a few necromancer players focused heavily on these A.I. curses. It was a lot more common to see Confuse and Terror spells happen due to chance-to-cast items -- in particular, a Delirium runeword worn by a character or mercenary.

Dim Vision
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Dim Vision reduces monsters' awareness radius. If a monster is already moving, it will keep going toward its intended position until it arrives (unless it is stunned or put into hit recovery). After that, the game's "A.I." behavior code only lets the monster attack whatever happens to be in melee range; otherwise, the monster will most likely hold its position.

At skill level one, Dim Vision blinds most enemies (not uniques or champions) within approximately eight "terrain tiles" of the selected target location, and they'll stay blinded for seven seconds (normal difficulty). Each additional skill level increases its duration by two seconds and its radius by two more terrain tiles, so at skill level 21 it blinds every foe within sixteen yards for 47 seconds (again, that's normal difficulty - 1/2 of that duration in nightmare, 1/4 in hell). Dim Vision costs six mana.

Four players maxed Dim Vision on their necromancers: skeleton summoner messiah by naab, Drystan's summoner Ashtoroth and bonemancer Peasant Yu, and melee mojomancer AustinPowers by OldSoldier .

There were many others with significant Dim Vision investment. Fishymancer Golumn by xduckster, and bone-spirit/mojomancer coju by Corn-Eater, each put seventeen hard skill points into this curse. Dim Vision helped them both stay alive and achieve guardian status, but they had very different experiences. The response from xduckster was: "soooo ridiculously boring. It was boring. Did I say that I was bored yet?" On the other hand, Corn-Eater's write-up seemed very upbeat: "Dim vision everything. Believe this was the first skill I maxed. It was awesome in the act 3 Durance. Those little critters couldn't see anything! BLINDED BY THE LIGHT! Curse, what have you. It also would light up everything since everything in the [radius] has a nice little bulb above them. Then, depending where everybody else was, I would cast either Amp or Lower Resist."

Magic and rare items such as rings, daggers, and circlets can have Dim Vision spell charges, so heroes of all classes have opportunity to use this blinding curse.

Dec 2022 Update: have a look at a recent guardian, Hades by Jcakes. He's a D2R Dim Vision tournament summoner.

Confuse
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Aside from Pete's three-point Confuse investment, there was only one player that put more than a point into this curse. OldSoldier maxed it for two different heroes: AustinPowers and Minime. AustinPowers didn't rely too much on Confuse, but Minime used it extensively. Here's a snippet of OldSoldier's write-up: "Confuse has a huge radius at level 24; larger than the screen if you cast it on yourself. You can confuse-scout ahead and see if things through doorways start moving and attacking each other. My MO in hell was to scout with confuse sometimes (other times I would run headlong with 50% FRW and simply retreat behind the "lines" at first sign of trouble). Once a confused group of monsters was battling it out, my merc would generally pick the closest monster to him and begin to hit. I'd sometimes amp the pack closest to him for more effective corpse bombs and quicker dispatching of the first monster. Once a monster or two was down, I'd amp the area within CE range and start blasting."

Just as with Dim Vision, a Confused monster will continue moving or fighting until it reaches its destination, or is interrupted by stun or hit recovery. Then its A.I. "behavior" code will make it choose and try to attack something, usually whatever target is nearest. In most cases, this will make monsters begin to attack each other; nevertheless, some confused monsters may still sometimes choose to engage the necromancer and his pets and allies. Unique and champion monsters will not themselves be confused; however, if a confused monster chooses to attack them, they will defend themselves, so in that indirect way they can still be affected by a Confuse curse.

At skill level one, Confuse has a duration of ten seconds and a four yard (twelve terrain-tile) area-of-effect radius. Each subsequent skill level adds two terrain tiles to the radius and two seconds to the duration. In Minime's level 24 Confuse example above, the spell lasted 56 seconds (14 seconds in hell difficulty) and affected monsters up nineteen yards away from the cast target. While confused, a monster cannot have this curse replaced by any other A.I. curse (Dim Vision, Terror, Attract, or even Confuse re-cast); however, it can still be affected by other curses (such as Amplify Damage or Lower Resist).

Attract
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This curse applies to just one enemy, but then immediately affects the behavior of every other monster within a six yard radius of the targeted enemy. All affected monsters stop whatever they were doing, and proceed to attack the cursed monster instead; in turn, the attracted monster is forced to defend itself. No subsequent curse will affect the attracted monster, but other curses affect the other monsters forced to fight it. In normal difficulty, Attract lasts for twelve seconds at skill level one, and each higher skill level augments that duration by 3.6 seconds. (In hell difficulty, where A.I. curse durations are reduced by 75%, level 1 Attract only lasts for three seconds; it must be cast at skill level eleven to last for twelve seconds in hell.)

I didn't find any necromancer in the compilation that maxed Attract, but I did find a few that pumped the skill a bit: Thant by Maltatai, AustinPowers by OldSoldier, madHamish by corax, Hitoshura by Harrid, Skullrazor by ps2v12, and CalvinAndHobbes by Hp_Sauce.

(The Delirium runeword features Attract spell charges, which allow characters of any class to cast Attract at skill level 17.)

Terror
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Terror alters a monster's behavior in the same way as a barbarian's Howl and Grim Ward skills: under the influence of this curse, a monster moves in the opposite direction from the necromancer that cast the curse. Its area-of-effect radius is fixed at eight terrain tiles (just under three yards), and its duration is eight seconds at skill level one, plus one second for each skill level thereafter. (In nightmare and hell difficulties, a level 21 Terror curse has its 28-second duration reduced to fourteen or seven seconds, respectively.) A monster cursed with Terror can have its fleeing behavior replaced by another curse.

I don't think there were any necromancers in the compilation that bothered with Terror. If there is one, I failed to notice him.

(Magic and rare wands, daggers, and shields can have Terror spell charges, which allow heroes of any class to cast it.)
[edit Mar 2021: formatting]
[Update Aug 2021: new histograms]
[2022 Dec Update: new histograms]
 
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The middle column in the curse tree contains four spells that each affect damage in some way.

Amplify Damage
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Nobody maxed it, but that doesn't stop Amplify Damage from being the favorite curse among our necromancers. It reduces an enemy's physical damage resistance by 100%. Here are three examples of how this would affect a monster:
  • A cursed enemy with no physical resistance will suffer double damage each time it is struck.
  • An enemy with 50% physical resistance, such as a "Stone Skin" unique monster with no other physical resistance, usually only takes half-damage when struck, but under this curse, its physical resistance changes to -50%, which makes it take half-again as much damage. (To put it another way: this "Stone Skin" monster takes three times as much damage when cursed than when uncursed.)
  • A physically immune monster has 100% or higher physical resistance. Unfortunately, in these special cases, Amplify Damage only reduces resistance by 20% instead of by 100%, so such a monster will still have 80% or higher resistance while cursed, and a monster with 120% or higher physical resistance has "unbreakable physical immunity," even while cursed.
Its area-of-effect radius and duration scale with skill level: two yards around the spell's cast target at skill level 1, lasting for eight seconds, with another 2/3 of a yard and two more seconds each level thereafter. So, for example, at skill level ten, it curses enemies within eight yards for 35 seconds.

Amplify Damage is a staple spell used by fishymancers and explosionmancers, to prepare enemies to receive maximum damage from the physical component of subsequent Corpse Explosions. It is also used to enhance damage inflicted by mercenaries, skeletons, revives, and perhaps even the necromancer's own melee or ranged weapon attacks.

It only costs four mana to cast, so many players choose to put just one skill point into Amplify Damage, and then cast it as many times as necessary to keep all of the monsters on a battlefield under a curse. However, players who want their necromancers to do more than hang back and repeatedly "amp" enemies, will instead try to pump it up to higher skill levels. Here's a sample of SPF fishymancers that chose to increase their Amplify Damage investment: ReDragon's Necronomicon, IMAGEEK's LitchLoath, MukTuk's Cerberus, bassen's Vrykolas, steelsixtyIV's Magic_Fishy, Shagsbeard's Patton, and D2DC's Infernal. Another "not-fishy" summoner, Skeletor by Big_P, also spent ten skill points in "Amp."

Iron Maiden
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Melee-fighting monsters that cause physical damage, while under the Iron Maiden curse, get harmed by having their damage reflected back upon them. Iron Maiden's area-of-effect curse radius is always four yards, and costs four mana. At skill level one, it lasts 12 seconds and returns 200% damage (that is, for each successful strike, a melee attacker receives twice as much damage as it dishes out.) Subsequent skill levels increase curse duration by 2.4 seconds and returned damage by 25%, so at skill level 21, they take 700% returned damage over 60 seconds (in other words, for a full minute, a cursed monster takes seven times as much melee damage as it causes: "avenged sevenfold!")

Maltatai's Thant was a tribute to a character in another video game franchise. He experimented with maxed Iron Maiden curses against monsters fighting their revived and attract-cursed peers.
[edit 7 Mar 2021: corrections]
[Update, Aug 2021: new histograms]
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Life Tap
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When a monster is under a Life Tap curse, then each time it takes physical damage, the attacker is healed by half of the damage inflicted. In his write-up about Pete, jiansonz singled out this curse as one of the primary tools he used to keep his barbarian mercenary alive.

Casting Life Tap costs nine mana. Its radius and duration scale with skill level -- 2.3 yards and 16 seconds at level 1, with another 2/3 of a yard and 2.4 more seconds for each higher skill level. At skill level 10, it affects monsters within 8.6 yards for 37.6 seconds. Any character that wears "Dracul's Grasp" unique vampirebone gloves gets a 5% chance to cast level 10 Life Tap with every successful hit, and this is by far the most common means by which this curse has happened for any of the Mats/Pats/Guardians in the compilation.

Lower Resist
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Lower Resist requires six prerequisite curse skills (Amplify Damage, Iron Maiden, Life Tap, Weaken, Terror, and Decrepify), and also requires a significant 22 mana to cast. At skill level one, cursed enemies within a 4.3 yard radius have their fire, lightning, cold, and poison resistances reduced by 31%, for 20 seconds. Each subsequent level increases the area-of-effect radius by 2/3 of a yard and duration by two seconds. The resistance penalty is also improved with each level, although with diminishing returns: 6% harsher (37%) at skill level 2, then another 5% (41%) at level 3, then 3% more (44%) at level 4, and so forth. Skill level 7 reduces resistances by 51%, a nice threshold that a necromancer player might try to achieve with enough skill points and +skills items. Most necromancer setups won't surpass resistance reductions higher than about 64% at skill level 23, or 65% at skill level 26, or 66% at skill level 31.

Many enemies have 100% or higher resistance to one of these damage types, making them immune to that damage. For these special cases, Lower Resist's penalty is only 1/5 as effective as it otherwise would be. Examples:
  • a fire immune monster (100% fire resistance) under a skill level 1 Lower Resist curse would have its fire resistance lowered by 6% (31 divided by 5).
    • It would no longer be immune to fire, but it would still resist 94% of any fire damage it receives.
  • a fire immune monster (100% fire resistance) under a skill level 26 Lower Resist curse would have its fire resistance lowered by 13% (65 divided by 5).
    • It would no longer be immune to fire, but it would still resist 87% of any fire damage it receives.
  • a monster "very" immune to poison (110% poison resistance) under a skill level 1 Lower Resist curse would have its poison resistance lowered by 6%.
    • It would remain immune to poison, because it would still resist 104% poison damage.
  • a monster "very" immune to poison (110% poison resistance) under a skill level 26 Lower Resist curse would have its poison resistance lowered by 13%.
    • It would no longer be immune to poison, but it would still resist 97% of any poison damage it suffers.
High resistance percentages, like those shown in the examples above, can look daunting. In actual gameplay, most clever players use equipment and skill synergies to achieve very high elemental or poison damage numbers, sufficient to effectively wear down monsters' health quickly enough, even though their attacks or spells are only 13% (or 6% or 3%) effective against a formerly immune monster. ("Formerly immune" is always a little easier to defeat than "immune.")

I noticed three common situations for our necromancers to cast Lower Resist: to improve poison damage caused by poison skills, or elemental damage by raised skeletal necromages or a fire golem, or fire damage by the 0skill fire spells granted by Trang-Oul's Avatar set pieces. Samples: Vulpine's Ghana_II, Xios' Squid, Colorless Green's Kakistos and Zarathustra, EasyG's FireMage, skunkbelly's OneTrickSkunk, and zaphodbrx's Duran and KelThuzad.

(Personal experience: I recently built a poison skills necromancer with maxed Lower Resist, and did not regret the spent skill points at all. I loved the large curse radius, and I loved that monsters stayed cursed for over a full minute after casting. Both of those features were nice compensation for diminished returns on the resistance penalty.)

Many players of all character classes like to find or shop for daggers or wands with Lower Resist charges, which they can use to try to break monsters' immunities.

(Coming soon: the remaining two curses from the right column.)
[edit Mar 2021: added personal experience]
[Update Aug 2021: new histograms]
[2022 Dec Update: new histograms]
 
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Consistently interesting. There are two necromancers maxing iron maiden and I am familiar with the one you mention in text, but which was the other one?

Staves with lower resist charges deserve a mention as well. A sorceress can shop for an arch-angels staff of lower resistance with some relevant staff mods as well, quite a formidable weapon.
 
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There are two necromancers maxing iron maiden and I am familiar with the one you mention in text, but which was the other one?
Sorry to disappoint, but yours was the only one. The other was a typo in the spreadsheet - somehow, I had accidentally marked one of the poisonmancer 99ers with 20 points in IM. When I reviewed the 99er thread, I saw my mistake - those 20 points were supposed to be in Golem Mastery instead... :( (Before I'm done, I must correct the spreadsheets and update the histograms.)

Also, thanks for mentioning Lower Resist staves - I completely agree.

[Update, 3 Aug 2021: the spreadsheet and I.M. histogram above are now corrected.]
[Update Aug 2021: the Iron Maiden histogram was finally corrected]
 
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Weaken
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Weaken is a prerequisite for Terror, Decrepify, or Lower Resist, and hasn't seen much use other than that. The best features of this skill are its range and duration, which scale with skill level - six yards and fourteen seconds at skill level 1, 19 yards for 62 seconds at skill level 21. The second best feature of this skill are the yellow fireworks that appear over cursed monsters, perhaps the brightest mark of any curse. I occasionally cast this a couple of times when fighting gloams or burning souls, to make them easier to track when they turn invisible and reposition. The actual curse effect is to penalize victims' physical damage by 33%. A monster that usually hits for three damage hits for two instead. A minion of an "Extra Strong" unique monster usually gets a 49% damage bonus, but Weaken reduces that bonus to 16%.

It's interesting to compare Weaken to Amplify Damage. Both cost four mana to cast. A monster cursed by either one will reduce its ratio of 'damage caused' compared to 'damage received.' "Amp" is the offensive version: make a monster take more damage, and it can be more quickly defeated. Weaken is the defensive version: fighting time isn't reduced, but a monster inflicts less damage, so the hero might not need to drink as many healing potions during the fight. With that observation, it's not too surprising that most fighting cursers prefer "Amp." I have read a couple of theorycrafting defensive build ideas, which couple long-lasting Weaken curses with damage reduction gear, but I haven't seen such a build yet in the compilation.

Patch suggestion: alter the curse so that its damage reduction scales with skill level. The barbarian warcry "curses" Taunt and Battle Cry were implemented this way. I think Weaken should have been as well.

Dec 2022 Update: The D2R 2.4 patch followed the above suggestion precisely! When maxed, Weaken's damage reduction is now actually slightly stronger than Decrepify's.

Decrepify
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Decrepify is a very popular curse among our SPF players; Many necromancer players report that they used it during act-ending boss battles. It has three simultaneous effects on hexed victims:
  • It reduces a cursed enemy's physical damage by 50% (instead of just 33% like Weaken).
  • It amplifies the physical damage taken by an enemy, by reducing physical resistance by 50%. (For physically immune foes, it only cuts physical resistance by ten percent, so it will break 100% physical immunities, but will not break 110% "very" physically immune monsters.)
  • It also diminishes a cursed monster's attack and movement speed by 50%.
All this at the modest cost of eleven mana. Decrepify has the smallest area of effect of all curses: just a four yard radius, and unlike the other curses, this effect radius does not increase with skill level. The only benefit provided by a higher skill level is curse duration: four seconds at skill level one, and 0.6 seconds per skill level thereafter. (That's 14.2 seconds at skill level 18, so it needs a lot of skill points to outlast a level 1 Weaken curse.)

Our necromancers that put more than a point into Decrepify seemed rather pleased to do so. Those that maxed Decrepify: madHamish by corax, AustinPowers by OldSoldier, and Poison_Dexter by Grisu. Other notable Decrepify boosters: CoRnJuLiOx's Mr. Bones and Harrid's Hitoshura.

Many players (who are lucky enough to find one) like to equip a Reaper's Toll unique pole arm on a town guard mercenary, in part for its chance-to-cast Decrepify curse.
[edit Mar 2021: grammar and corrections]
[Update Aug 2021: new histograms]
[2022 Dec Update: new histograms, D2R patch note]
 
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I remember reading about a necromancer with fire golem or something else less conventional, where the poster appreciated the ease of the generous duration and radius of weaken. Still treated it as a one point wonder, which it certainly is.

The thing with defensive builds and weaken is I think that since necromancers have access to the more powerful decrepify anyway, other classes would be more likely to make use of the curse, especially since it is available from both wands, gloves and the practical Smoke runeword. For me weaken is the most influential curse on the whole when planning characters, despite never meriting more than one point from necromancers. Valkyries and mercenaries benefit immensely from its use.
 
My next sequence of posts will cover paladin defensive and offensive aura skills. (If your right mouse button breaks, play a paladin!)

All paladin auras [update: except Conviction and Redemption] have an area-of-effect radius that increases with skill level. Most of these are identical: at skill level one, the range is 32 "terrain tiles" (nearly eleven yards), and two more "terrain tiles" per skill level - so at level 20, the range reaches 36 yards. There are a few auras whose ranges scale differently from this pattern, though, and those exceptions will be noted.

Prayer
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All paladin auras appear to operate in "pulses." This means that the aura's effect is delivered once every two seconds. Prayer is one of these pulse-aruas. At skill level one, whenever a paladin activates Prayer as the "right mouse button" skill, this aura depletes one point of mana (per pulse), and replenishes the Paladin's life by two hit points (per pulse). When the paladin runs out of mana, the aura stops healing -- to start healing again, he must either turn off the aura (by selecting some other RMB skill) and wait for his blue mana bulb to regenerate, or else he must drink a rejuvenating or mana potion.

Also at skill level one: if there are any wounded allies, mercenaries, or pets within range (almost eleven yards), each is also healed by two hit points (per pulse), at the cost of another mana point. Prayer's mana cost, replenish rate, and range increase with skill levels. Examples:
  • Skill level 17: Prayer heals 19 hit points and costs four mana per pulse. (Eight mana to heal wounded allies up to 32 yards away.) MukTuk's Patriarch Spazz, a charger paladin, was satisfied with this level of Prayer investment.
  • Skill level 20: Prayer heals 25 hit points and costs a little over 4.5 mana per pulse. (A little over nine mana per pulse heals 25 life to all wounded allies up to 36 yards away).
Prayer is a prerequisite skill to both Cleansing and Meditation. Furthermore, it provides its own healing effect as a synergy bonus to both of those two auras, without the mana cost. In other words, if a paladin with one hard skill point in prayer has Cleansing activated as the RMB skill, then the Cleansing aura will, at each two second "pulse," also heal one hit point to the paladin and to each ally in Cleansing's range, but without depleting any of the paladin's mana. A paladin with maxed Prayer and with a Cleansing or Meditation aura active will heal 25 hit points per pulse, again with no mana cost. The community has adopted the title "Abbot" for such defensive paladin tanks: twenty points in Prayer, one-or-fewer-point-wonder Cleansing or Meditation, and usually enhanced with equipment providing physical damage reduction. The compilation features many "abbots." Examples:
Prayer also provides a synergy boost to the ally-healing aspect of the Holy Bolt skill. I found several that maxed prayer for this purpose: Irmo by Ugla, veran by Ojimaru, OldSoldier's Horatio, and Maltatai's first ever guardian Sigfrid.

Alexander by Cattleya was simultaneously an "abbot" zealot as well as an "ambulancedin" holy-bolt healer, and TopHatCat64's Flynn was simultaneously a holy-bolt medic and a missile weapon fanatic.

Combat town-guard mercenaries, hired in normal or hell act 2, provide a Prayer aura. A [normal difficulty] town guard's Prayer reaches skill level 18 when he gets up to mercenary level 75 or higher.

Dec 2022 Update: We have a new werebear abbot in the compilation: Ciaran, by LouB, with lots of good advice about what worked well and what didn't.

Cleansing
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This is a one-point-wonder for almost all of our paladins, except for Knightfish by Nightfish (four skill points) and DaShocka by Serdash (three skill points.) This aura reduces poison and curse durations. At skill level 1, these durations are reduced by 39%. Higher skill levels increase range and percentage reduction - at skill level five, 60% reduction to the paladin and all allies within sixteen yards, or at skill level 20, 80% reduction within 36 yards. Caution: as far as I can tell, Cleansing also seems to reduce beneficial shrine effects, as if they were curses.

As mentioned above, Cleansing also gets a healing synergy (at no mana cost) for each point invested in Prayer. However, the range for this synergy is still that of the active Cleansing aura, not of Prayer.

Cleansing is supposed to provide a magic damage synergy to each knock-back pulse of the Sanctuary aura. I'll kvetch about that in a future post...

Update: TheNix's recent zealer Amphetamine dropped ten points into Cleansing, and he judged his investment "worthwhile."

Meditation
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Nobody put more than a point into this skill. For those with the Runeword Mod, there's no need to bother, because an Insight-runeworded staff or polearm provides a Meditation aura. Many players of mana-hungry characters like to hire a town guard mercenary and make him fight with an Insight polearm.

At skill level one, Meditation speeds up mana regeneration by 300%, which makes mana regenerate four times as fast. At skill level 12, it regenerates by an additional 575% up to 25 yards away. That's the lowest Meditation level an Insight runeword might bestow, but it can go as high as level 17, which accelerates regeneration 700% (eightfold) up to 32 yards away.

Meditation also benefits from the same Prayer synergy as Cleansing. Many of the "abbot" paladins listed above used synergized Meditation on an Insight weapon to get their pulse healing.

For players like me that do not use RWM, there still doesn't seem to be much incentive to invest heavily in Meditation. Blue potions are cheap and plentiful. Also, under most combat circumstances, there is another defensive aura (Redemption) which might more quickly fill the blue bulb. A paladin's high-mana attack skills, such as Vengeance or Charge, tend to benefit more from offensive auras; furthermore, "mana stolen per hit" equipment might restore mana faster than would Meditation. A paladin's high-mana spellcasting skills, Blessed Hammer and Fist of the Heavens, also both get greater benefits from offensive auras, and "mana added per kill" equipment isn't too difficult to obtain for caster paladins. Regardless of these disincentives, I still think it would still be nifty to see someone here beat a single-player game with a maxed Meditation aura.
[edit 15 Mar 2021: corrections]
[Update 3 Aug 2021: new histograms, more corrections]
[2022 Dec Update: new histograms]
 
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