[0.10.1] HC Necro-Witch Guide | How to survive and progress as a pure summoner.

"

Nightstone13 wrote:

Just some quick notes... I ran into some issues with the build around level 25 or so. Even with all the health I was taking a pounding. Came close to dying a bunch of times. This got me to thinking and I ended up modifying the build. You need a meat shield for the dungeons. Something to absorb that initial damage. The undeveloped zombies at this point did not hack it.

My choice was to split the build a bit and add some meat to the minions while still taking the other stuff as I go along. So far so good. Act 2 is done.

The boss at the end was taken out with skellies and firestorm. Skellies to distract added mobs while I killed them. Worked great.

Lastly got lucky on some drops and have some real good mana regen and evasion now. Have not needed pots at all now.

Will keep posted.

Nightstone

I believe the idea is to use damage spells, not rely on minions, at those early levels of 25ish. The mininions would be impossible at that point.

I'm level 22 on my witch going for this build plan and using ice nova for AoE and incinerate for single tartet and destroying everything easily without fear of death. Ice Nova lets you takle packs much more easily since you slow and or freeze them permanently. Use an added cold damage gem to help with that as well and get yourself a decent low level spell damage wand and shield, with some faster casting on the wand if possible. Throw on a mana regen ammy as well to assist. Just keep all those summoner gems socketed to level them up as you go, as you have space become available for them. a +to ice skills would go a long ways early too if you can get one. This makes leveling your necro through normal mode and easly cruel at least very easy compared to trying to utilize the minions before you have the skill tree for them.

the guide does warn minions will suck until merciless.

If you have a spell totem from another toon or buy one, you can get to level 31 and then use it for Vaal and onwards to cast yourself up some skellies. while dpsin the bosses and rares.

"

I believe the idea is to use damage spells, not rely on minions, at those early levels of 25ish. The mininions would be impossible at that point.

That is correct. I used freezing pulse + LMP + added lightning damage with faster cast gear all the way to about level 60-65 until I started to rely completely on my minions. Around level 31 when you get the Minion Instability keystone and spell totem for skeletons you can start to rely on your minions a little more. Leeching xp in groups is also an option if you want to level up fast.

hi, your build looks like the best ive seen so far. just 1 questions, did u intentionally skip the 3 health nodes near inner force? they seem way less costly than the mid map health nodes.

"

Napoleon420 wrote:

hi, your build looks like the best ive seen so far. just 1 questions, did u intentionally skip the 3 health nodes near inner force? they seem way less costly than the mid map health nodes.

Yes, the reason being the health nodes at the center have 3x 12% life nodes and because of that are actually a more efficient use of points even though they seem to be way off the beaten path. Lets compare: the life nodes near inner force provide 24% life (ignoring strength nodes) for five points. 24/5=4.8, therefore each point essentially provides 4.8% life. The center of the tree provides 84% life for 16 points. 84/16=5.25, thus each point is worth 5.25% life.

Hope that explains things!

Ive found that using this tactic is very quick and easy for leveling this type of build. You need 2-3 low level uniques to do this and poison arrow + fire trap + fire trap

Basically you use
The bow gives your poison arrow an extra level which is nice and 10 mana gained when you kill and enemy is even better. The quiver is an extra, i just boots your damage even further by giving you more mana and 44% converted fire damage.

If you have one, or buy one for cheap i recommend
this gives you the extra dex to level your poison arrow and fire traps untill you can pick up a dex node. Then i would switch to Sidebreath or

for some extra xp. If you are leveling this as your second or third charicter you should have some of these unique lying around. Im also using
untill level 22 when ill switch to .

Notice that all of these uniques have no level requirement allowing you to plow through mobs at low levels because you are vastly over geared for your level.

The basic tactic is to have both fire traps on different hotkeys. Spam poison arrow and complement the dd and aoe it has with both fire traps. This kills mobs very fast especially in packs and you never run out of mana when mobs are dieing because of the bow modifier. When you get to a boss you just summon up some zombies and skeletons and let them tank a little while you spam fire trap and dps with posion arrow.

Hope this helps! Will edit as I level up more currently level 19

I'm likely moving to softcore, but I still find this is one of the best laid out passive skill trees I've seen, so I'd like to stick to it for the most bit.

What I would like to enquire though, is what would you change if this was a SC build instead of a hc one!


PS: would it be remotely viable to use Elemental equlibrium, and use frost skills to trigger the debuff so your spectres can benefit from it?(since they don't cause the debuff themselves)
PPS:Never mind, that would kill partying lol.

PPS: I eventually settled on the build posted by Vath on page 4.
So the only other pressing question I have left is if 30 Int is worth giving up 40 hp.

I have a question. Seeing as so much of our damage comes from spectres and zombies, how would the Haste Aura stack up compared to some of the other auras. Do you think the massively increased AS and CS would increase our dps enough to make it worth using over one of the other auras?

Excellent build and also a very informative guide.
Currently level 62 and Loving this summon witch.
Looked at the tree so many times I see spots before my eyes.
Keep up the good work( Yes I am a copy cat) what can I say:)

They say Kripp is the best. People should look here and really learn.
Thanks for all the time you put in.
Regards Janet aka Stupid_but_fast.
UK.

Lost my lvl 46 elecleave to lag and instapopped. Lost 20 chaos worth of stuff with it. Then i was wondering what should i try next. And this hit me like a train. Thank you for the build. I am currently at lvl 24 and decided to do some things little bit differently. Any ideas how i could left the eldrich battery out and take something else beside it? i Feel really voulnurable without ES and would like to keep it just in case. So any ideas about that kind of a build and maybe dual curse or something?

I'm actually at lvl 65 with 2.4K HP and 750 ES.
Not a lot of armor and resists around 50-60%.

I'm a also little afraid of dropping my ES with EB (i know it's still a little early for EB), because ES is very useful (i'm in HC).

Taking the reduced mana node and ignoring EB could be enough for running multiple aura ?

Thank you and great guide btw !





PS : Sorry for my not so good english.