Radamancer - Necromancer build

[Vadriel]

All right, folksies, time to unleash the most powerful necromancer build I've ever known: the RADAMANCER! While I'm at it, I'll show you what a real character build guide should look like.

Good morning ladies and gentlemen, boys and mother****ing girls. This is your captain with no name speakin' and I'm here to rock your world.

The RUNDOWN:

This build relies heavily upon the use of Radament souls, without a doubt the best Necromancer soul in the game. It gives amazing skeleton summoning bonuses, grants you Unholy Bolt, which is probably the best sniping magic skill in the game, and transforms you into Radament, the undead zombie beast of the Lut Gholein sewers. Radament form is just plain awesome, as you can still cast all skel summoning and Bone skills from within it, and it carries a number of other great bonuses.

For one, I may be wrong, but I think your melee damage and defense go up a bit in Rad form, and I'm almost positive there's a bit of damage reduction. In addition, you gain another solid skill, Mummy Breath, which can only be cast from within Radament form, but costs no mana (in spite of what the skill text says) and does pretty decent poison damage in short bursts. Also, when melee attacking, you have a pretty good chance of casting Mummy Breath on attack...around 30-50%.

As icing on the cake, you get a little bit of a "second chance" when your health is dropped to zero. If you get a hit that would JUST kill you, you're instead knocked back into normal form with 1 Life left. This isn't always guaranteed to work, however, if the damage dealt to you is really high, or does continuing damage, like Diablo's Firestorm.

The only real downside to Radament form is how slow he is. Even with maxed movespeed, he's pretty damn slow. If you get into a tight spot in Rad form, you're not going anywhere in a hurry. A positive note for this is that he moves the same speed walking or running, which means you can conserve Stamina by just switching to Walk, saving that Stamina for if you NEED it to get outta there should you be knocked back to norm form with 1 Life.

Also, you can get out of Radament form at will if you transfer between Acts via Waypoints or Act completion. Be warned, however...if you level, you'll go back into Rad form...and be slow as hell.

Stats:

• Strength: Not your primary concern...I don't think you'll need more than 200 Strength, depending on what items you choose to customize your build with the weapon and shield slots.
  
• Dexterity: As much as you care for...it's not that important unless a specific item you're after requires it. Again, depends on your customization preferences.
  
• Vitality: It's always good to pack some points in here, but the Nat set gives you SO much in the way of keeping you alive, that it's not the most critical thing you'll find yourself needing. Once you've gotten your strength and dexterity to the level you're after, I'd advise putting two points out of every six you get when you level into your Vitality.
  
• Energy: The soul of any caster...pound as much as you can stand. A necro should always have a solid Poison Nova, and packing Energy points can make it godly. Once desired Strength and Dexterity are met, I advise putting four of every six points per level into Energy.

EQUIPMENT:

• Helm: I advise Blood Omen. It's quite possibly the best necro helm out there. It may take a couple tries to get it, since there are two Unique Bone Visages, but it will serve you well. I'd socket it with a Hell level Izual soul...the aura is very good to have, and the summon is a must for just about anyone.
  
• Body Armor: Armor of Larian. Duh. Best armor for any character. Use the sockets for either Hell level Radament souls, or Perfect Diversity Stones, or Bone Sets. Whatever combo you like. I advise you use the Radament souls, because the boots, gloves, and belt sockets are best used for the class gems or div stones.
  
• Boots: Definitely Natilie's Gauntlet Attire set. Amazing bonuses, the sockets are groooovy...just make sure you don't use anything in the sockets with more than a couple attributes. The set piles on so many attributes that you could bug out your game and crash if you use any souls or whatnot in the sockets. And you DON'T want THAT. I advise Perfect Diversity Stones or Bone Sets...preferably the former.
  
• Belt: Go with the Natilie set here, too. It's just uber. Seriously. Same things to be considered with the sockets for the belt, too.
  
• Gloves: Nat set. Same caution on sockets.
  
• Shield slot: This is fairly open to you...it all depends on how you plan to take things. A Boneflame (Succubus Skull) is an EXCELLENT Necromancer head, probably the best one available...also possible is Mother In Law (Demon Head), which gives great bonuses to Poison Skills. If you feel like going full out on the summoning aspect, you could give Smite to the Grave a try. You could also go with your favorite shield. One of my favorite things to use, however, is either a Crafted Teeth, or a Crafted Shining Poison. You can do a LOT with them, and get your magic or poison skill damage up pretty high, depending on which you choose. Note: if you use a Necromancer head here, it is strongly advised to use some Talismans of Skill on it...the +All Skills is great for pumping that Unholy Bolt.
  
• Weapon: Again, fairly open. If you want to use the staff from the Natilie set, be my guest. It's not your BEST choice, but it truly unlocks the set's power. I'd at least have it for your alternate. If you do, fill it with either Perfect Div Stones or Bone Sets. My personal choice for weapon is usually Death's Web, a Unique Unearthed Wand. Gives GREAT poison skill damage, and I believe some -enemy poison res, some 43% I think. It's really up to you what you do. The weapon should suit your style.
  
• Amulet/Rings: Well, I always use a custom amulet for this. The basic core essential is to fill up with +Necro skills using the recipe involving Bone Sets. Aside from that, it's what you choose to throw on it, be it resistances, goldfind, movespeed, cast rate, whatever. As for rings, early on it's integral to use Radament souls...it's what the build is based on. Once you can do Gauntlet and get some Montreals, therefore moving your Radament souls into sockets, you can free up your ring slots for some custom rings or SOJs. Once you've got some Rad souls in your armor and such, the rings are up to you, but in the early stages, I'd advise using both for Radament souls.

Skills:

• Unholy Bolt: Granted by the Radament soul, can be cast from Rad form. Insanely strong magic damage, playable mana cost...it's an EXCELLENT sniper spell from behind the wall of your minions.
• Raise Skeleton: Oddly enough, not as critical as skel mastery...just put enough points into this to get a decent number of skels and let the +skills bonuses from your equipment and stuff do the rest for building your army.
• Skeleton Mastery: Buff UP those skels and SLAUGHTER! More important even than the skill that lets you summon the skels themselves!
• Summon Resist: Makes your summons way tougher lategame. Advised for any Nec with more than a passing interest in summoning.
• Bone Armor: A Nec's bread and butter. Always pump points into this. It can SAVE YOUR LIFE.
• Warmth: A given. You'll need it big time to keep the mana flow for all the casting you'll likely be doing.
• Exp Boost: Duh. Another given. Plop a point in when you can spare. It helps.

Optional Skills: other Bone skills, Poison Skills (focus on Poison Nova, most others are just for Synergies), Poison and Bone Masteries, Raise Skeletal Mage (useful if you wish), Amplify Damage (1 point is all you need, and it doubles the power of your minion's attacks). Remember, Poison Skills and Curses can't be cast from Radament form, Bone Skills and Skeleton summoning skills CAN. Also, no Nec should be without Corpse Explosion. It can't be cast from Rad form, but chances are you won't always BE in Rad form, and it can be a great way to help your minions out and weaken enemies in clusters.

Play Strategy:

A Radamancer is designed to be a PvM build...it's not so hot against other players who can demolish your minions in one move. The Radamancer is excellent early game, and going this path early on can keep you alive through a lot of the tougher parts of the game, allowing you to build up to a different build. Before you get to Act 2 and can start farming for Radament souls, pound points into Bone Armor and your Skeleton army. It should get you past Andy if you're careful enough, and once you get the Radament souls you're homefree.

Basic combat should consist of you lumbering behind your hordes of Skeleton minions, raising them from new corpses when they die, and pegging your enemies with Unholy Bolts from the safety of your little vantage point behind your wall of the undead. The Unholy Bolt and the skel summoning are kinda costly for a lowlevel, so points into Energy are smart in your earliest levels. Your better equipment isn't available until fairly decent level (the Nat set is level 123 to use, and Blood Omen is around there, too) so don't worry about strength requirements too much until you're closer to being able to use it.

If you start running out of skeletons and corpses to refresh your ranks, Town Portal out and find an area where you've left a few corpses to build your army back up, or find a lowlevel "no challenge" area to Unholy Bolt a few Fallen or Sand Leapers for rank-replenishing corpses. Take your TP back in and clean house.



The Radamancer is by far my favorite build, and it's become sort of my "signature" build. I've worked it out to a bit of a science, so I'm hoping it can benefit you guys as much as it has me. Enjoy!

[Chris]

Personally, you should get mages anyways. Helps you defeat immune to physical creatures with ease.

[little-cheeze]

with chris's pont this is a good build

[Vadriel]

Yeah, skeleton Magi are useful, but sometimes the extra points aren't in supply. This build tends to get pretty point-absorbing later on, especially if you end up working on going full summon (Revive, Golem skills) or poison (entire poison tree). Point is, you won't be caught with many physical immunes that will cause too much blockage, with the Unholy Bolt right there to smack em down. All you need fear, really, is Poison/Physical/Magic immunes, of which there ain't many...

[T3h Sorrow]

a better shield is the Smite to The Grave head, boost skelly dmg, makes revives last long and 5 to summon skills, Hellspawn Skull is the type

[Vadriel]

Hmm, sounds nice. I'll add it to the list of potential shields. Thanks! =)

[Chris]

Originally Posted by Vadriel

Yeah, skeleton Magi are useful, but sometimes the extra points aren't in supply. This build tends to get pretty point-absorbing later on, especially if you end up working on going full summon (Revive, Golem skills) or poison (entire poison tree). Point is, you won't be caught with many physical immunes that will cause too much blockage, with the Unholy Bolt right there to smack em down. All you need fear, really, is Poison/Physical/Magic immunes, of which there ain't many...

There are plenty of MAgic and Poison together. And Hell Satan is the one that is immune to everything unless you sabotage his powers iwth a curse.

On the server, I can start this character if I wanted to. But I need necro items. I have the Horadrim Ancient soul which is 1 less than radament. Besides, the only real golem a Radamancer would use is the Iron. Cause there are 2 gears that cause Amp damage on striking.

[T3h Sorrow]

my damn sorc got coruppted!

on topic, ill have to go home and make this build, i found out i have a asn in hell, pally, barb, zon and my old sorc with junk gear , i have her saved somewhere i know.

anyone have a druid or nec i can have that is in hell?

[Vadriel]

I'm going to be superrushing a Druid to Act5 Norm. I mean, slap a test charm on him and give him a couple Diablo Hell souls...throw in a Diversity is Our Strength for teleport, and his sole means of existance is to complete around half of Act 5. If you want, I'll give him to you afterwards.

[T3h Sorrow]

i got my sorc back, she is just 4 days younger, and already better, just lost all those souls :-\

ill wait till it is in hell :P.

i made this build also , very very nice

[Chris]

You also forgot to add that Rod of the Anti-Paladin will be your friend till you can carry the more advanced equipment. For those who don't know, its a unique War Scepter. It gives +6 Unholy Bolt, +3 Skeleton, +2 Mage, +5 Skeleton Mastery. A Paladin also gets Deny Penance and Thorns auras.

[Vadriel]

Yeah, good addon. The point is, you can do a lot with it. It's a very diverse build, and probably the strongest Nec build I've ever heard of.

[Johnny]

Get Demo souls on switch to be unfairly rigged.

[Vadriel]

That applies for just about any build, lol. Demoshield = insane.

[Chris]

DemoGorgon anything is rigged. Hell, I probably would just need Lady Mia socketed with 4 and I would rock (need one for Divine Skull and one for Zod).

[T3h Sorrow]

i found that soul laser night while running threw the item codes, very sweet soul. and hey guess what? i failed 12th grade english

[Chris]

Congratulations, Diablo II has caused you to fail english, THAT UNPOSSIBLE!

Too bad I got 82 so HAH!

Yeah, DemoGorgon is too cheap for my blood.

[Vadriel]

12th grade English...hmmm...I think I made an A.

[little-cheeze]

i tried this build and i can say i think i killed most everywere i went it was wicked thanks Vad

[Chris]

On the server, I can officialy start the build. I managed to score a Radament normal soul when I was doing doll runs.