Zoomancer Guide

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The Zoomancer is a Necromancer build that specializes in the use of the summoning tree for its offense and defense. This is intended as a PvM build, and would fare poorly in PvP.

Introduction

The Zoomancer is one of THE easiest builds to create and play. Starting from level 1 and through the rest of the game, a Zoomancer can be very effective, and offers a break from the traditional clickfest that is Diablo. Relying on only two core skills, it allows for a great deal of customization to your favored style of play.

Strengths

  • Safety. Although Zoomancer must kill his first prey completely alone, once he's dirtied his wand for hopefully the last time, he may never need to get close to another enemy ever again. He will have potentially dozens of minions, all happy to waltz into harm's way so that their master doesn't have to.
  • Versatility. Most characters will eventually need help when faced with the monsters' immunities in Hell difficulty. Zoomancer's primary damage type is physical, and physical immunity can almost always be broken by the use of Amplify Damage. Later on when monsters with unbreakable physical immunity are encountered, they can usually be dispatched with your secondary skills. A Zoomancer can go anywhere in the game and kill everything. And the Zoomancer can do all of these naked (or with magic find gear).

Weaknesses

  • Minion Dependence. Without your help, your skeleton army will struggle. Without your skeleton army, you are extremely vulnerable. Starting out a new game, especially in Hell difficulty, can be dangerous, as you will have to rely on your mercenary (and Golem) to make the first kill. In addition, you may have low resistances, low hit points, a low defense rating, and negligible blocking.
  • Choke points. Doors and bridges are your enemies. The Maggot Lair and Arcane Sanctuary are, in particular, scenarios which really hurt this build. Your explosion skills can take advantage of these situations, but they are still a nuisance.

Skills

The core skills for this build are Raise Skeleton and Skeleton Mastery. After you've made that 40 point investment, you will be "Hell viable". You could go ahead and max out Summon Resist, Weaken, and Bone Armor if you wanted. But for the love of Trang-Oul and all that is unholy, DON'T!

Summoning

Raise Skeleton

Max it first. It will be the first spell you ever cast, and raising an army at the start of the game will become ritual to you. The best place to do this at the beginning of a game is Nilathak's Temple (aka Pindle Garden, Anya Portal, etc.), if you have access to it in that difficulty level. There are a lot of corpses there, which stay that way for about 6 seconds to raise as you please. With a good knowledge of what the corpse layout is and fast cast, 12 or more skeletons can be raised without having to kill anything at all.

Skeleton Mastery

Max it second. If you aren't using Skeleton Mages, you should initially build up your character with a 3:1 Raise Skeleton to Skeleton Mastery point allocation ratio. If you're using mages or revives, you may want to opt for a 2:1 ratio instead.

Clay Golem

1 point strongly suggested. The basic clay golem has enough hit points to stay alive most of the time, and can be simply recast when it dies or needs to be repositioned. It has an extremely useful "slows enemies" effect that is particularly of note versus act bosses. The clay golem can be cast wherever you need it due to the fact that it doesn't require a corpse. You can cast it in front of monsters flanking you to buy some time, you can cast it into blocked-up rooms to distract monsters away from the door, or you can cast it on the far side of enemies to draw their attention away, among other things.

Skeletal Mage

0-20 points. These guys have two main purposes: broadening your damage, and defending your flank. Their damage output is rather low, but will sometimes chill monsters and prevent their healing, and can harm those physical immunes that refuse to die even after you've reduced the corpses around them to chunky kibbles. Also, a monster will sometimes sneak up behind you or around your front lines. This is particularly frequent when facing blowgun fetish and demon imps. Your mages will hang out in back with you, and you can hide amongst them instead of having to frantically block with your clay golem.

Golem Mastery and Summon Resist

1 point wonders. With +skills items, they get as high as they need to be. More, however, is generally a waste. Summon Resist suffers major diminishing returns, but your minions do not suffer the same resistance penalties that you and your mercenary do in Hell difficulty.

Blood Golem

1 point suggested. Although they have low hit points and no significant offense, Blood Golems are useful for leeching back life. They are most useful when fighting monsters whose attacks frequently hit your Zoomancer but don't kill him in one hit, like blow dart Fetish and Slingers. Their leeching is unreliable, so don't count on them when fighting severe damage dealers.

Iron Golem

1 point suggested. An Iron Golem is immune to poison, returns damage to melee attackers, and has the highest damage potential of any golem. You can also summon Iron Golems with fun and useful magical properties, like the chance to cast Frost Nova when hit. Unfortunately, your ability strategically position them is highly limited.

Fire Golem

0-1 point. It attracts enemies with its fire aura, which can help keep the heat off you. It has a tendency to pull extra monsters, but Zoomancers are seldom afraid of a large crowd, especially if they have....

Revive

1 point, and with some +skill items you will have enough of them. Once you've maxed your primary skills or if you really like them, you may wish to invest more. With the exception of NASTY monsters like Urdars and Frenzytaurs, their damage output is not helpful, but for those three minutes you have them they are practically indestructible. In addition to these two, you may want to bring along the following...

  • Vile Children. All revives have enough hit points. These little buggers are very fast and very aggressive.
  • Corrupt Rogues and Sand Raiders. Like Vile Children, they are fast and aggressive, and will patrol a wide radius looking for trouble when not in combat.
  • Claw Vipers are nasty and fire bone spears!
  • Megademons will blow your enemies with Inferno!
  • Thorned Hulks are very similar to Urdars.
  • Council Members and Vampires make excellent revive mages.
  • Wraiths can fly through obstacles, doors, some walls, and other minions (including each other). However, they have physical resistance, so do not use them with Iron Maiden or Thorns.

However, NEVER revive these monsters...

  • Gloams don't do nearly enough damage to other monsters, tank poorly, trigger other monsters, and confuse you as to which lightning bolts are from your team.
  • Sand Maggots (not their young) will occasionally lay eggs that are not on your side.
  • Corpse Spitters will eat your precious corpses, only to be wasted on a useless projectile.
  • Demon Imps do very low damage, and refuse to tank.
  • Succubi and Stygian Furies will overwrite your curses with their own.

One note is that, occasionally, you will meet a monster that remains physical immune even after you cast amplify damage on it. At that point, elemental revives are your best bet to kill it, usually in conjunction with the lower resist curse.

Poison & Bone

You may want to eventually put points into the higher-level damage skills for this tree. Poison in particular may be useful, as those skills require a lower skill point investment to be effective and can be boosted by Lower Resist. However, you will still have to be very skimpy with your points in other areas if you want a strong poison attack.

Teeth

1 point. It is a prerequisite to Corpse Explosion, and may be the only skill you can bind to your left click button. You can bind the "throw" action instead, but Teeth will remain bound even when you switch weapons. You do NOT want to accidentally walk up to dangerous monsters!

Corpse Explosion

1-20 points. The greatest skill of all time. Even with only one point, your +skills items will bring it up to a useful radius. It really shines at choke points and with tightly packed mobs. That, and it's really good at making a cool mess. You should Amplify Damage or Lower Resist all monsters in the vicinity before you cast CE, to maximize its damage potential. One thing to note is that CE does not scale with higher player count, so your CE damage will drastically be lowered in games with many people, doing only 2/9ths of the damage relative to the monster's life in a 8 player game.

Curses

Amplify Damage

1-4 points. Amplify Damage is a MUST for your skeletons, at least doubling the physical damage they deal. This skill can even break most physical immunities. However, if you have a strong crowd control curse, such as maxed confuse or dim vision, you actually want to keep the radius of your amplify damage somewhat small. This is so that you can amp only the monsters your skeletons are actually fighting, leaving the remainder under the influence of your other curses. You may want more than one point, though, so that you don't have to spend as much time casting it and so it lasts longer. A good point to aim for is 4-8 points after +skills.

Dim Vision

1-20 points. This is your primary defense against ranged attackers, particularly piercing ranged attackers, and even MORE particularly against Gloams. It also helps to keep enemies from attacking your army all at once, which is useful for getting that crucial first corpse before the bone hits the fan.

This skill can also be very useful by preventing enemies from casting spells. Shamans will not resurrect their minions, Pit Lords will not use their Inferno attack, and Vampires will not drop meteors on you. However, Oblivion Knight mages are immune to Dim Vision, Attract, and Confuse... the only way you can effect their AI is with Terror, which often is not desirable at all.

Confuse and Attract

0-20 points. Some players hail them as incredibly useful because they trick monsters into fighting each other. However, that damage is not particularly high, and is chiefly a bonus before your skeletons get in for the major damage. These skills are used more for the distraction they cause then the damage. Attract in particular can be useful, as the defeated monster can quickly avenge himself by blowing up all of his traitorous friends via Corpse Explosion. These skills tend to make a more chaotic battlefield, so they are often ineffective when you are trying to keep piercing ranged attackers from shooting all over the place wildly. To best achieve this defensive effect, use Attract on a monster in the rear of the pack. One thing of note is that attract need only be placed on one or two monsters, and cannot be overwritten by other curses. This lends it well towards use in conjunction with other curses, while confuse is best used alone.

Everything else

1 point wonders. Lower Resist is great for parties, poison skills, and skeleton mages, and can be used to speed up the killing of the unbreakable PI. Decrepify is most useful versus bosses, and ideally is attained before facing Diablo. Life Tap will keep your minions (most importantly your mercenary) alive when the going gets tough. Terror can be useful as a "get out of my face!" panic spell if something decides to come after you, and is also useful for dispersing the monsters bottling up a door so your skeletons can get inside.

Stats

Strength

You can get through the whole game leaving it at base, although that's probably not the best idea. You will need 81 strength to equip the entire Trang-Oul's Avatar, widely considered the best Necromancer set in the game. Bringing it to above 100 is pushing it, but some players like to do so for alternative gear.

Dexterity

Base. You aren't swinging at anything, and the amount of points you need to invest for blocking just isn't worth it. The only exception is if you're using Poison Dagger as an alternate skill.

Vitality

CRANK it! You won't get hit much, but when you do, it will HURT. You will never regret putting points into Vitality.

Energy

How much you need is entirely dependent on your auxiliary skills, as Raise Skeleton is rather cheap. Up to 100 points may be necessary for some summoners, but most will get by with less. You'll encounter more mana potions than you need, and running out of mana will rarely be as disastrous as it would be for the other classes. If you use an Insight weapon on an Act II mercenary, you will regenerate all of your mana quickly enough to spam Corpse Explosion and Revive to your heart's content. This weapon would allow you to get by with no energy investment at all.

Of course, if you play in hardcore mode, safety will be even more important than usual. In that case, adding points to energy is a big no-no - put them in vitality instead. Mana potions are, after all, much cheaper than your life.

Mercenary

Act I Mercenaries

Act I mercenaries will also occasionally overwrite your curses with Inner Sight, and are not suggested.

Act II Mercenaries

You're going to want to use an Act II mercenary. Their auras are far more useful than anything the other mercs have, have more hit points than the Act I or Act III mercs, and comparable damage potential to the Act V merc.

  • Prayer is useful at lower levels, but later on the healing just isn't significant. It's nice to regenerate, and great if you're waiting for one of the Nightmare difficulty auras, though.
  • Defiance is useful early on, but eventually your skeletons will rock so much later on that you just don't need it.
  • Blessed Aim is also good early on, but like Defiance it eventually becomes unnecessary.
  • Thorns will rock while your character level is low compared to the monsters, but loses effectiveness as you level up. You can also get the Thorns aura easily from an Edge runeword weapon.
  • Holy Freeze is good defensively, but can cause monsters to shatter and rob you of a corpse.
  • Might is generally considered to be the most useful aura for a Zoomancer, as it will significantly improve your minion damage.

One useful strategy is to use Defiance until Act II Nightmare, then switch to Thorns until early Hell difficulty, then switch to Might for the late game.

Equipment

  • Insight runeword polearms deal high damage, prevent monster heal with poison, and drastically increase your mana regeneration.

Act III Mercenaries

None of them do significant damage, and the Cold mercenary will destroy corpses. Not recommended.

Act V Mercenaries

Very good damage and life, but they do not provide any benefit to the party. Select this is you for some reason need more tank, or you're sick of paying to revive your Act II merc.

Equipment

There are two general options for zoomancer equipment: an emphasis on +skills, or an emphasis on magic find. Of course, these are by no means completely exclusive, but you will have to make choices.

The +skills focus makes your offense more potent. In particular, your one-point wonders really start to shine with a fair amount of +skills. This is probably best if you're having a hard time progressing, or simply want to lay the smack down even harder than before, or in higher player games. Note that in hardcore, the faster you kill the monsters, the less time they have to kill you.

The magic find route is a more specialized character. You won't be getting hurt much, and don't really need equipment to be effective. Hence, you can afford to load up on magic find gear to an extent probably greater than any other character.

Note that in hardcore, you will want to pay some attention to defensive modifiers. When death is so much more permanent, you can't afford to skimp.

In addition to the items noted here, the entire Trang-Oul's Avatar set is a very nice option for all necromancers, in addition to being wicked cool.

Helms

  • For the skills focused, the Lore runeword is very useful, and not too difficult to create. It also features a bonus to lightning resistance (the most important, thanks to gloams) that is useful for hardcore play.
  • Other choices for the MF focused include the Tarnhelm, or a hat filled with 3 topazes of some kind.
  • If you're rich, the Harlequin Crest unique shako combines the best of all three worlds, with huge skills, life, magic find, and even a bit of damage reduction.

Body armor

  • Stealth is easy to make early in the game, and has a wide range of beneficial effects.
  • For the magic finders, the simplest route is to take a 4 socket armor and stuff it with topazes. You can also pick up the unique Skullder's Ire, or make the runeword Wealth.
  • Bone is very useful, once you find the semi-rare runes required for its construction.

Shields

  • A good shrunken head is very hard to find. You can try farming the early areas such as Act I in normal difficulty to try and get a head with bonuses to the low level skills that are useful to you. Also, if you pick up a cracked/crude/damaged/low quality necromancer head later in your travels, you can toss it in the cube with an el and a chipped gem to repair it to normal status. This will reroll the modifiers, and the way that this transmutation works gives you a good chance to get lower level skills on the head.
  • If you're out for MF, on the other hand, you can try the set shield Milebrega's Orb, which is easy to find, or make a Rhyme shield, which also comes with a range of defensive properties that make it more attractive to hardcore players. You can even make this runeword in a necromancer head for the best of both worlds, if you're lucky enough to get one with 2 sockets and nice skills.

Gloves

  • Frostburns are great for the mana bonus, although you may end up not needing it.
  • Chance Guards provide nice magic find, or you can pick up some Magefists or the set Trang-Oul's Claws for a bit of faster cast rate that can speed up your corpse exploding or cursing.

Boots

  • Marrowalk is good for the skill bonus, but honestly this slot is hard to find offensive mods in.
  • This is a good place to pick up resists or magic find on rares, however.

Belts

  • Anything with four slots should be adequate. A common practice is to imbue the first exceptional sash you find.
  • You aren't going to get any skills here unless you're insanely rich (e.g. Unique Spiderweb Sash - Arachnid Mesh), but this is a nice spot to pick up resistances and life, if that's what you're looking for. Shop for magic belts with these mods.
  • Goldwrap or the set Tal Rasha's Fine-Spun Cloth provide some magic find.

Weapons

Remember to use weapon switch!

  • You can boost your summoning skill levels while raising your army, and then switch to something that provides them with an aura or boosts your curses. Note, however, that although the skeletons you summon will remain at their original level after you weapon switch away from your summoning rig, any extra minions you were able to summon will disappear.
  • Any wand with good skill bonuses is nice. The ultimate is the Arm of King Leoric, but that's not that easy to get ahold of. You can shop normal Akara for wands with bonuses to raise skeleton, skeleton mastery, amplify damage, or corpse explosion as long as you do it before you get to too high of a level.
  • For an alternate weapon, try using an Edge bow. That Thorns aura really comes in handy, especially when you encounter an extra strong, extra fast, cursed Urdar boss pack.
  • Another choice is a shopped staff with teleport charges; it helps so much in gameplay that you won't regret it (other items with teleport charges are fine, and of course there is the Godly Enigma runeword, if you can ever get your hand on it...)

Rings

As usual, +skills will be nice, and a Stone of Jordan will help your CE'ing as it gives quite a bit of mana. Otherwise, rare rings with stats/resists/FCR will be awesome.

Amulets

+3 Summoning skills and +2 Necromancer skills can be gambled, and can also come with other great mods. Crafting can also get skills and even more cool mods; watch out for the level 89 requirement on the +2 Necro amulet crafts though.

Charms

In softcore, your primary purpose in combat is to pick up loot; charms make you less effective at this, so don't use them unless they give you something VERY nice (skillers with life, All resist charms with 2nd mod, etc). In hardcore, the convenience of always having room to pick up loot takes a back seat to survival, so look mostly for life and resistance on charms.

Strategy

Shamans and Greater Mummies

Dim Vision on the monster raising its allies is your best bet. It will force the offending monster to mill around until your troops come in to attack it melee, and by then it's in big trouble. If the target is immune to AI curses (Champion/Unique) or your Dim Vision skill level is too low, try summoning a clay golem next to it instead. The golem will distract the monster more than simply hanging in back would have, and slow it as well. As a last resort, you can always just destroy the corpses he is raising with an explosion skill or a summoning skill.

Gloams

The bane of many a character, these nasty monsters are no less dangerous to a summoner. Found in the Great Marsh, Plains of Despair, some of the underground river areas in Act V, and occasionally in the Worldstone Keep, their deadly lightning pierces right through your protective horde of bone. Maxed Dim Vision is the best way to deal with this threat, spamming it at the edge of your screen before advancing to blind monsters that have not yet become aware of you. Confuse is not advised, as they will still shoot and you can still be hit. However, Dim does not work on champion and boss gloams, and it's these guys that you really have to watch out for. They have been known to kill many weaker characters such as bowazons and necromancers in a single volley. For these, about all you can do is load up on lightning resistance and pray. If you can raise your maximum resistance above 75% or gain some absorb, that will help greatly.

Oblivion Knights

These undead mages can be found in the Chaos Sanctuary, some of the 'red portal' areas in Act V, and sometimes in the Worldstone Keep, and are always accompanied by their melee cousins, Doom Knights. These baddies toss nasty curses, in particular the dreaded Iron Maiden. While you yourself don't have to worry about one-hit KO'ing yourself while under the influence of this curse, your skeleton army will kill itself off fairly quickly if it is cast on them. (cast it on some monsters a few times to get used to what it looks and sounds like. Knowing instantly when it has been cast can be very important.) The solution would seem to be casting dim vision or confuse on them, but sadly they are immune to these 'AI' curses. The best way to keep them from casting iron maiden on your skeletons is to distract them. You can do this by using attract on a Doom Knight near them, or by casting your clay golem on top of them. In both cases, this nearer target draws a substantial amount of their attention. However, nothing will completely keep them from attacking your skeletons. You can simply retreat to previous areas and raise more skeletons if you don't mind, or you can TP to town the instant you hear the noise and talk to the healer to get the curse removed. As a last resort, you can use life tap to reduce how much your minions hurt, but it won't even come close to canceling out the returned damage.

Act Bosses

In general, Decrepify and Clay Golem are your best bet against bosses, along with at least one cold mage (or a merc with some cold damage), since it will slow them to a crawl. Also, be sure that you have at least one poison mage, or poison or open wounds on your merc to stop them from regenerating. Once they are slowed down enough, your skeletons will eventually wear them down. The Clay Golem's slowing effect isn't as helpful early on as Decrepify, but will gradually slow them down more and more, an effect that persists even after the golem is gone. Some Act bosses have large "bases", meaning they take up a large space, so more skeleton warriors can crowd around and attack. With smaller bosses, items with charges of teleport are really handy and makes the fight a lot faster. Before facing a boss, make sure to lay down a town portal out of harm's way for retreat and/or corpse recovery. If it looks like you are going to lose, run. It is much easier to take that portal and come back when a boss isn't chasing after you.

The strategies below are all for normal, as there are no bosses you cannot take down in Nightmare/Hell as long as you have Decrepify and Clay Golem.

Andariel

This shouldn't really be a problem if you chug mana pots and cast Clay Golem next to her as his health goes down. Meanwhile, your skeletons are beating down on her. She will only focus on the Golem as long as you keep casting it, so if you are fast she may never cast her poison attack. Remember to raise as many fire skeleton mages as possible before the battle, because she has a negative resistance against fire.

Duriel

A good strategy here is to cast Iron Maiden on him and watch him beat himself up on your skeletons. Sometimes he hits too hard for your skeletons to take, and in that case revert to the Clay Golem strategy you used with Andariel. He doesn't seem as attracted to the golem as Andariel, but that just means he will be all the slower.

Mephisto

He is a wuss, his close up attacks don't really do anything, and his life is low. Amp him and be done in about 15 seconds.

Diablo

Considered the bane of all summoners, even with Decrepify, at around level 30 your skeletons cannot take his powerful attacks. This battle is based on luck; hopefully you have Decrepify by now, or it will definitely be a lost cause. You can help out if you have a wand with Bone Spirit, but all it comes down to is who kills the other faster. One quirk of his AI is that he absolutely hates clay golems for some reason. If you keep casting your golem on the other side of him from the majority of your skeletons, it can help take some of the heat off of them.

Baal

If you STILL do not have Decrepify he will be quite hard, as he likes to teleport away frequently and cast a clone if you spare him some time. Get close, slow him down, and hit hard.

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