Guide The Ultimate MF Char - The Summoner

Preword:
I will explain in this guide why I am convinced that a Necromancer is one of the best mf/farming characters in this game. The Summoner is one of the few chars who can solomaster every part in PvM including Ubertristram. While many people farm on sorcress or hammerdins, the Necromancer has superior advantages over other chars. He is a pure weapon of massdestruction, has pratically none imune enemys to care about and can equip ridiculous high MF without losing real effeciency. Surely one can build a hammerdin/mf sorc with 800+mf but at the cost of killingspeed while the necromancer is nearly free of this. What I also like about the Necromancer is that he can develop in different ways no other char can. When you reach endgame you can give him Beast, summon a pride Iron Golem and let your Merc wear Infinity making him a total Offensive supporter for every party. You can also give him a psn nova setup or let him become a bonespear artellery. The Summoner reaches his max skillsetup very early giving you many options what you want to do. This way the character wont become boring.
This guide is useful for everyone who has not played a summoner yet, starters who want to farm the most promissing areas (TC87, diablo, baal) which an mf sorc cant master really well due to imunities and also for advanced users who want to run really high mf builds. First part of this guide will be about stats/skills/equipment while the second part will be about most promissing areas to farm and I will add an ubertrist setup. But first a small overview what are the main advantages/disadvantages of a summoner:

Advantages:
Capable of Mastering every area in PvM
Can equip really high MF without losing effeciency
Maybe one of the best chars for starters due to item independency
If you play alot public baalhunts, this char is a strong party supporter
One of the few chars that can equip all 3 physical damage auras + Conviction (pride Iron golem, Might Merc + Infinity, Beast Axe in weaponslot)

Disadvantages:
High depency on your merc, especially in Ubertristram
Becomes weaker in high player number games, so it's best used in solo games or at maximum 3-4 players.
A high dependency on Teleport skill (teleport is used to micromanage merc + minions)
For full effency you would need 4 weapon slots - and hence switch weapons for prebuff (but the mf part of this guide wont need this)

Stats:
Str: Enough that you can wear Enigma (best armor for this build). If you start the game and dont have enigma yet, you should add enough str for equipment.
Dex: base (maybe you have to add some for Alibaba if you dont have torch/anni yet)
Vita: basicly all points you have after str.
Energy: base
Notable fcr Caps for Necromancer: Same as Paladins. 30 / 48 / 75 / 125. I would recommend to have at least 48fcr on cta/teleswitch
FHR Caps: 39 / 56 / 86

Skills:
There is one thing to say here. The Summoner will only require 91 skill points (after skill quests reached at charlevel 80). So you are free to put your Points wherever you like. I will give some suggestions where you could invest your left points. What follows now is a discription of the most important skills. I will explain what you need to know and I will leave out those we wont use.
Summoning:
Raise Skeleton 20 - These are your main Warriors in your army. They become really tough in hell and will probably only die to bugged vipers at nihlathak or in Ubtertristram. The ingame description is bugged and will diplay wrong values.
Skeleton Mastery 20 - Not much to say. This skill will make your skeleton's and your revived Monster's stronger.
Clay Golem 1 - He is a really tough blocker and basicly unkillable. The big advantage why we will use this one is that he will slows down enemys including Bossmonsters/Ubers. We will use him all the time.
Golem Mastery 1 - We wont need more points here. You will have enough from items.
Raise Skeletal Mages 1 or 20 - These guys are much weaker than your Skeleton Warriors. They can die much faster, wont deal alot of damage (allthough it's elemental damage vs some imunes). We will still use them because Poison Mages will neglet Monster Regeneration and Ice Mages will deal some frost dmg and slow down. I would suggest 20 points here but put 1 point if you want to run a different build. Big disadvantage: You will lose those guys when they are distracted and you run to far, just like revived monsters. One of the reason why we need teleport.
Summon Resist 1 - Will increase all your army's resistance, 1 point is enough here. It's a hard dimishing skill.
Iron Golem 1 - Few words about this golem. You can summon him from any weapon or armor and he will get those benefits. That means if you summon him out of Insight you will have a wandering meditation aura following you. Advanced users summon Iron Golem out of Pride to get another concentration aura and hence more dmg for your army. We wont do that here because the clay golem's slowdown is too strong to neglet it. Anyways should you think of this option later, I suggest maxing out Clay Golem, increasing the life as a synergy, so this guy wont die. Btw if you leave/join a game the clay golem will be active so we dont waste any Insight/Pride. But should you or the golem die the golem will be gone, so only use this option when you reach endgame.
Revive 1-xx - Usually we will be fine putting 1 point here. Every point will increase the number of maximum revived Monster by 1. We will have enough skills for this with items. You should invest only more points here for Ubertrist runs. Some noteworthy Monster's to revive: Deathlords at throne of baal / world stone keep, Pitlords in throne of Baal / Chaos Sanctuary, Council Members in Travincal / Throne of Baal, Black Souls in Worldstone Keep/Throne of Baal and very important for Ubertristram: Mauler's/Urdas in Durance of Hate/Flame River. (I will explain this below)

Poison & Bone:
Corpse Explosion 20 - This is our main attacking skill so let me explain it a bit. It will convert 70-120% life of fallen body's monster into damage. This damage is split into half firedmg and half physical dmg. Therefor we will use Amplify Damage as our main Curse and another option to increase the damage would be infinity on a Merc if you have one.The higher skill levels will increase the radius and make the Necromancer a pure weapon of mass destruction. What you need to know is that the body's life converted into damage is based on player1 life stats. And this is the reason why the necro becomes weak in highplayer games. Monsters will gain bonus life by 50% for every player ingame and Champion/Bosses even much more depending on their properties.

Curses:
Amplify Damage 1-x - This will be our main curse which we gonna use always except againt diablo/baal. The Curse will reduce Physical resistance by 100% and this will boost the damage of our Mainskill Corpse Explosion and also the damage of your Merc/Minions Army. It can further reduce nearly all physical imunities (*there are very few exceptions to this, namely generic boss spawns with natural physical resistance 130+ and Stoneskin Property and Spectral Hit. You wont find many of those in the game but should you encounter one, use Lower Resist + Corpse Explosion and let your skeletal Mages kill it). More points put into this will increase the radius, so for high mf builds leaking some extra skills I would recomment to put some extra points here. 5points spent here should be enough for every setup.
Lifetap 0-1 - This curse is important for Ubertristram/Diabloclone. We wont use it otherwise.
Decrepify 1 - Now this is a fun curse to have. We use this one vs actbosses like Diablo/Baal. Baal cursed by this, hit by an icemage skeleton and slowed down by our golem will practically dont make a move. He will stop casting spells and wont summon a clone. It is our best curse here. Overall it will remove physical damage and resistance by 50% so it's also buffing our Army's damage. More points wont increase the Radius but only the duration so 1 point is enough here.
Lower Resist 0-1 - If you dont play alot in public party's you wont really need it. AD is the stronger curse for our party is nearly all situations. Should you not run Ubertrist on your Necro and wont skill lifetap I wouldnt put a point here. Should you have skilled lifetap alrdy you can put the point here if you like.
A few words about the Crowd Controlling Curses (if you never used them before they are fun to try out but not necessary for our build):
Dim Vision - It is a useful Curse for Baal Minions Wave 3. Use dimvision on them and the council Members wont cast any Hydras and hence it's improving the baalhunt speed. Can also be cast on ranged attackers like souls if you have problems against them.
Confuse - Makes Monsters randomly attacking each other. It's fun to watch them but not very useful imo. Should your minions aggro them before you curse it's practically useless.
Attract - This curse can be very useful if you play with starter gear and dont have a well equipped merc. It will make Monsters around the cursed one attacking it and so it can be used to get your "first corpse" for CE. Cast attract, let one Monster die, Cast AD on the rest and use CE. It is only recommended for starters without good gear but always fun to watch...

Equipment (High MF Setup):
Helm: Shaco (socked Ist/Ptopaz) - Simply the best mf helm.
Armor: Enigma (low req to wear it with base str, I would recommend MP. Breastplate Skin Armor's have the best style for a Necro imo so maybe make Enigma in Breastplate/Cuirass/Great Hauberk if you want) - Simply the best Armor with teleport and mf. For obvious reasons dont use Tyrael's Might. If you are a starter and dont have Enigma yet, you should run any other mf armor like skullder's or wealth. The Summoner without teleport can be a pain to play. I will write below starter strategies how to play without enigma.
Weapon & Shield: For mf runs I would recommend Alibaba (2 Ist) or Crystal Sword (6Ist) and a Monarch (4Ist). If you cant afford so many Ists yet, use Alibaba and a shield like Pride or Splendor.
Weapon Switch: Cta + Spirit (28+fcr!!) for prebuff. You can use this slot also to Summon your Army for higher Mastery/Skilllevels. Your Minions will become stronger.
Amulet: Many opions here. Best would be rare/crafted Amulet with stats like 2skills fcr mf resistances. If you dont have one use Maras. Magic Amulets can have stats like 3Summoning/2Necro + 35mf.
Rings: Magic's 40mf would be perfect but those are hard to get (max prefix and suffix roll on mf). Nailring 30 otherwise, rare/crafted fcr rings with up to 25mf and resist. If you should have problems with souls use WispProtectors with 20mf.
Belt: Here I would recommend Arachnid's. This will give +1skill and 20fcr. If you use your weapon switch with spirit you can reach 48fcr cap which is enough when using autotele. You only give up 30mf for an fcr cap which I recommend should you not have crafted/rare fcr Amu/Rings.
Gloves: Chanceguard 40mf
Boots: Wartraveler's - 50mf wt's cost something but random's are given away for free often on this server. Just ask Around for basic gear.
Inventory:
random Anni - preferable high res
random Torch - high res
Gheeds 40mf
1 sc 5fhr - reaches next fhr cap when using spirit switch and teleport
Small charms 7mf - Should you not have enough yet just use 5-6 mf or whatever you can come by or any sc's with res or life.

Mercenary (Might - Act2 Nightmare Offensive):
The whole setup depends on your choice of Insight base. Try to run an attackspeed calculator if you want to make your merc perfect.
Helm: Andy's or Tals Mask or Stealskull should you want some mf on your merc
Weapon: Eth Insight
Armor: Eth Duress is preferable over anything else. Why? Duress will add 15%cb which is very useful against Bosses. 33% Open Wounds is very useful against Uber's to shutdown Monster Regeneration ("Prevent Monster Heal" doesnt work against Ubers but Open Wounds does)
Gloves: Laying on Hands - 20ias and huge damage bonus against demons + 50fr are useful should you fight conviction Aura Council in travincal or at mephisto. I am not sure though if dmg vs demons works on mercs.
Belt: Nosferatus if you can reach ias cap, the slow effect is also useful. Otherwise String of ears maybe. Many options here.
Boots: Goreriders - will add more CB & OW. OtherwiseGoblin Toe's for higher CB but those miss frw.
Ring: Raven is Best imo for cnbf.
Amulet: Highlords for ias cap,Maras, Crescent Moon, Eye of Ettlich... It doesnt really matter...use what you have!


General Strategies/Playstyle:
After Summoning up Golem/skeletons/mages (this can be done on the first farming Area) we basicly use AD on the Monsters, let merc/minions kill first one and use CE. Depending how many mobs we can cluster together the more we can kill in short time and 1 CE should kill most monsters alrdy. Teleport is used to control your minions and merc. For the last surviving Monsters just tele on them and Army kills them instantly.
You should be aware of one thing: When you teleport and all minions/merc are on ur spot you will become autotargeted/hitted by Monsters. So you should not teleport into big Monster clouds. You should tele around to aggro/cluster them and when they are balled up let your minions safely kill first monster. This way you can clear,e.g. the sanctuary with a few CE's. Anyways it's not hard to play a Necromancer.
Especially for Nihlathal Runners: You can run Nihlathak with this char in around 20seconds per run. Simply cast golem in town, prebuff bo on wp and start autotele. You dont have to summons any skeletons just let ur merc kill one of the monsters and bomb them all away in 1-2 CE. Nihlatak himself will die in around 3-5 CE's (depending on his properties,e.g. Fire Enchantment will reduce CE dmg). Still I recommend to kill pindleskin first and summon a few skeletons there. Pindle + Nihlathak will take around 40seconds.

Profitable Areas to farm:
The Summoner shines in all areas with open wide spaces and alot of place to let your Army wander around. So here's the list of areas that are really easy/fast to farm:
Act1: Cowlevel(TC87*), Pits(TC87), Bloodraven, Countess, Andariel - basicly every area except the Mausoleum. The Mausoleum is simply to ugly for a Summoner. The Pits on the other hand work fine. Cowlevel can only by cleared faster by a Javazon imo. (*Cowlevel is not really TC87, it has a really high reduced chance to drop from TC87, basicly it's TC84 area. Still the best place to farm pgs/craftstuff so especially useful for starters)
Act2: Ancient Tunnels(TC87), Summoner, Duriel - basicly all areas, Ancient Tunnels work fine if you have teleport, otherwise I would skip them.
Act3: Travincal, Mephisto + Council - Travincal is fun, basicly everything dies in around 5 seconds. Dont forget to open the chests and armor/weapon stands at mephisto. (You can also run lower Kurast for superchests if you like. But a sorc is much faster at this due to best fcr frames)
Act4: Flameriver(TC87) + Hephaisto, Chaos Sanctuary - The only bad part are the bridges between FR and CS. I would skip them for faster runs. The Chaos Sanctuary is made for Necro! No Character can farm it faster if you do it right.
Act5: Eldrich, Shenk, Pindleskin, Nihlathak, Worldstone Keep(TC 87), Throne of Baal (TC 87) - I use to kill eldrich/shenk and hope for good rare drops. Pindleskin can also drop most uniques (not all) and high runes. 1 Word about nihlathak: Autotele will teleport directly into his mob cluster. You must be fast here: Caster AD and use CE before nihlathak does. If you are not used to it he can kill you with 2-3 CE's. And also viper's can be annoying. I suggest you dont use Autotele for him in your first runs.
Worldstone Keep is basicly easy and fast to farm. Black Souls wont shoot when any of your minions attacks them in melee making them easy to kill. Still you should not teleport in Boss Souls with conviction aura... just let ur minions engage them first.

Complete Starter's Tips
This part is only for complete Starters who dont have Enigma or anything yet and just started playing here. First of all, you can ask around for items. Many people on this server will help you with starter items like shaco, maras, arachnid and so on... What you wont get are free hr's and enigma's. Well you can use the following strategy's:
First of all farm the cowlevel and collect PG's, Jewel's. You can sell 40 of them for around Vex(1/16 Ber) - Ohm(1/8 Ber). Eventually some High Runes will drop for you and you can build your Enigma. You can also use Multiclient to start the game as often as you want (there are guides in this forum). You can for example teleport to baal or nihlathak and use townportal so that your necro kill everything. This way you can reach the higher TC87 areas easily.
If you run Areas like Pit or Ancient tunnels, dont summon many minions so they wont block each other. Your Merc, Clay Golem and around 4 Skeleton Warriors are enough so that you can kill everything there. You wont farm as fast as if you had enigma but with this Necro you can farm every area of the game. Anyways I would leave out some areas like Ancient Tunnels/Flame River.
Multiclient strategy: If you decided to run multiclient and start Diablo multiple times, here is what I did when I started:
Create 3 characters (Barb for BO, Sorc for teleport, Necro for farming)
Your barb should have maxxed Shout, Battle Orders and Battle Command. These skills will work as a synergy and will give you longer duration on Battle Orders. Equip your barb with any +skills items and warcry skillers you find. (Special Tip: Use Hoto + CTA +3Bo. This will give your barb a +7bo switch and is the best you get. Hoto +3 all skills will work on the increased +3Bo CTA skills. CTA will give +1all skills additionally.)
Equip your sorc ith enough res/fcr. I would recommend Spirit + Wizzardspike + Vipermage. These items are easy to find and will give you at least 105fcr for cap.
Now use your barb to bo your sorc + necro, start summoning and use autotele on your sorc. This way you can easily reach any desired area with your necro. GL Hunting!

Ubertrist Section
I would suggest to swap some items for your ubertrist setup. Also it is recommended to prebuff/precast more and hence swapping weapons. Now here is a solid setup if you run ubertrist the first time, should you become more experienced you can simply use the setup above, I would only recommend to swp CTA for HotO then:

Equipment
Helm: Shaco (Um)
Armor: Enigma
Gloves: Trang Gloves
Belt: Arachnid
Boots: Boneweave +2
Amulet: Maras or Crafted/Rare +2Nec with 10fcr and resists
Rings: Soj/Bk3 or 10fcr Ring with resists (when you dont have 10fcr Amulet)
Shield: Spirit 35fcr Monarch
Weapon: Hoto/CTA
(optional: Precast Switch: Leoric + Boneflame(+3), will give you +8 skills on Skeletal Raise, good but not really necessary)
(optional: Beast in Inventory, will explain this below)
Summonskillers if you have any.
You will have 125fcr with Hoto for faster teleport and hence increasing Runspeed.

You can run the Merc setup above but I suggest to swap the Weapon for faster killingspeed.
Best/Cheapest Weapon would be Obedience in etheral thresher 5sox. Some people dont know this Runeword but it's very cheap and effective. Will give 370%ed 40%cb 20-30@res and the chance to self-enchant your merc for higher attackrating. You will have 70%cb on your merc with Duress + Goreriders.
Should you have Guillaume's Face you can use it too for 100%cb but it costs around Ohm-Lo Rune atm and we want to make this as cheap as possible

Strategy:
After spawning Uberportals go summon your army at Eldrich/Shenk. We dont need revived Monsters for Prebosses. After using CTA for Bo switch it in inventory for Hoto.
Uber-Izual: There not much to say, teleport to him and kill him. Use AD + CE if he's clustered around monsters. You can use AD/Decrepify on him. He should die in around 10seconds.
Uber-Duriel: Find him Forgotten Sands and kill him. His holy freeze aura will slow down your army so if you have a beast in inventory switch on it. The fanatism will increase speed/damage here. Use AD or decrepify as you like.
Lilith: Now she is a little tougher. Find her and use Lifetap on her. Switch to beast if you have. Your Mercenary should not die with Lifetap.

Before spawning Ubertristram Portal we have to revive Urdars or Maulers. There is one bad thing. Sometimes they dont spawn in Durance of Hate or Flameriver. There is a pool of 4/5 Monster's and only 3 of those will spawn randomly. If they didnt spawn you should leave game and spawn Ubertrist Portal in a game whre those Monsters spawn. So you can check in your game before Spawning Portals if you like.
Why are those Monsters so important? Revived Urdas and Maulers will have 25%cb chance and Maulers are imune to Lightning damage and hence have a higher Lightning resistance against Uber Mephisto, making them good Ubers Killers. I would suggest reviving 6-8 of them and pre-Bo again before entering Ubertristram.

The best tactic for Ubertristram would be to lure Mephisto first. Use Lifetap on him and make sure your Merc wont get hit behind those Mauler's/Urdas. Switch to Beast when it's save for Fanatism. Should you lose a big part of your Skeleton's army/Urdas or Maulers you should resummon more before killing baal or diablo.
What you should be aware about in Ubertristram:
Use Lifetap for Mephisto/Diablo because they have 100% leech malus and your Merc can die without it.
Make sure your army attacks the Uber so teleport on Baal/Diablo and run out.
When there are too many minions spawned, use AD+CE to kill them quickly. They will respawn fast but you should kill Uber's in around 15-20seconds.
I made some torch runs on this server alrdy and it works well. When you are getting more experienced at this, you dont have to switch your equipment alot. This Necro Uber build is also very party friendly. You can invite friends to do torch runs with them if you like. Good teams for duo-ubertrist runs would be FrenzyBarb / Zealer / Smiters / Java / Lightsorc.

Additional Information
Here is a useful link for an attackspeed calculator. You can use it to give your mercenary a "perfect setup" for highest attack frames based on your weapon choice:

Some people always want to know stuff like "How much mf is the best to run?". Well, nobody can really tell you what's the "best mf" in order to find your desired items. I suggest you should use a drop calculator for your chances on specific item drops. There are some links in this forum or use google to find one.
Anyways there are some so called "mf caps" on finding rares/set/magic/unique items. I add them here:
Uniques: 1644mf (incredible hard to reach, in vanilla Diablo the maximum equippable mf was 1704mf, here we can get even more if you equip ur merc with max mf + full inventory 7mf sc's...) - it is absolutely not recommended in my opinion and would require items like 3sox/35mf Tiara socketed with Ists...anyways gl trying!
Sets: 569mf
Rares: 600mf
Magics: 100mf (who wonders about this?)

There is one exception to the rules, namely when a "failed" set or unique item is generated. Failed uniques become always rare with trippled durabiliity, failed sets will result in magical items with doubled durability.
So should you want to find more Sets/Rare items, I would suggest to run at least these caps.

 

1 question why use raven frost on merc since it has cold damage that makes ur merc kill the monster and shatters making it more difficult to use Corpse explotion skill. Carrion wind would be fine though.
PS:Nice guide

 

Thx man
Yes, it is true cold dmg will shatter corpses and the same apply's for Ice Skeletal Mages. The chances anyways that cold dmg will shatter a corpse are around 20% and that only apply's when they are "chilled" for at least 1second (frame). So the chances arent that high especially when your merc kills very fast. Btw keep in mind that "chilled" and "frozen" are different things. If your army skills the monster under 1 second - which is very likely with AD - the corpse wont shatter. If it really interests you in detail I found this link for you: https://www.diabloii.net/forums/threads/exactly-how-does-the-cold-shatter-mechanics-work.850169/

The best option hence would be to socket a Cham Rune into your mercenarys helmet, but I wrote this guide for starters too and it's not likely you get a Cham Rune early. Other options would be Armor's like Gladiator's Bane or Duriel's but I tested around with merc builds on necromancer a long time ago and I think that duress is the best option in order to kill bossmonsters.

 

2nd question Hmm why not use guilaumes face for 100%crush merc breakpoint?

 

Added this for Ubertrist. Well, Gulli's is a rare drop on this server. I did alot of mf runs and found only 2 Gulli's yet. Andariels is easier to find and often gives an ias breakpoint. I use Andy's with 15%ias jool for a breakpoint on my setup. It depends which merc weapon base you use.

 

A small update: I did add a so called "Additional Information" section. It includes a link to a well working speedcalculator so you can modify your merc equipment for good attackspeed frames. (in fact you can run this calculator for any Character Build and it has some nice features like Fanatism levels, holyfreezy or golem slowdown. Very useful for pvp imo...)
You can also find the so called "MF Caps" for magic/rare/set/unique items.
And I did reworked the starters section with a "multiclient strategy". This should be a good way for starters who play without enigma.

Now this guide should be more or less at final version. Enjoy!

 

Is it even possible to reach 1644 mf?

 

Well the key is that you equip your mercenary with high mf. When he gets the lasthit on a Monster your mf is added and so you can reach these incredible high mf values.
The 1704mf build was a barb with 2x 6Ist weapons but it is all about theory because an act3 merc with 4ist monarch + 6ist weapon cant kill anything really.
What people actually did use were Act2 Mercenarys with Eth Tombreaver with max mf and 3 Ists resulting in around ~1400mf. Anyways it makes no sense at all imo. The relative chance between 730mf and 1644mf is around 10%...

I was told not to add any links here, but a bit of google research will lead you to those topics where I copied it from.

 

Spawn chance for Uber Revives