New to Median - seeking Summon/Totem necro advice

[gcfbrian]

Hi guys, a friend and I have recently started playing and love the mod. However, we are approaching 120 and realizing the end game is much more complex than we had initially realized. I have struck up a totem necro, and love it, but can't help but feel like my equipment is in dire need of an overhaul. I've read through a handful of guides, and picked up on how to craft proper bases etc. for runewords, but alas I cannot identify what kind of runewords I should be shooting for. Right now I'm following the itemization given in the beginners thread build for the totem necro, and have T6 uniques all around with a single honorific piece of gear to cover resist holes. I've identified a major issue with character defense in general, and feel like there must be something I'm doing wrong as we start progressing through Destruction difficulty.

Here are my stats currently, wearing a Lord of Thorns, Queen of Glass, Lionpaw's, Aerin Orbiter, honorific gloves with 60 all res, a rare circlet, and various stated rings+amulet (+2 amulet, minion damage, FHR, -19% fire res)


Any suggestions for what I should be aiming for is greatly appreciated. I'm not opposed to the idea of swapping to a new build either. I've read that melee necros are good, but again, I'm not sure how I should approach this.

Thanks guys

[Jaedong]

1. what base item did you use for the honorifics
2. did you upgrade your current equipment with orbs?
if you not should upgrade items with high base def up to 350 ed and get minion life/total character defense
totemancer is quiet strong and should be able do quiet some charms with this gear
3. random jewels with minions lifes are quiet helpful if your minions are dying to quickly
4. you could also show ur skillplan

[gcfbrian]

The honorific gloves are a low tier, and my circlet definitely needs replacing. I planned on trying to craft a pair of sacred honorific gloves from scratch, is this smart? I saw there is a +2 skills runeword (pul rune) for gloves - is this better than crafting a pair of honorific? What about my helm? I'm assuming a +2 helm would be better than an honorific?

Is it better to run minion life over minion damage? I have 6 p onyx in my staff atm for minion damage, would it be better to run minion life instead?

[gcfbrian]

1. what base item did you use for the honorifics
2. did you upgrade your current equipment with orbs?
if you not should upgrade items with high base def up to 350 ed and get minion life/total character defense
totemancer is quiet strong and should be able do quiet some charms with this gear
3. random jewels with minions lifes are quiet helpful if your minions are dying to quickly
4. you could also show ur skillplan

My skillplan is basically identical to the one in the beginners guide for totemancers. here's a screenshot, the remaining points you don't see are put in funeral pyre. I'll be boosting my minion life, as I feel like my shadows die entirely too often, so that might help.

[suchbalance]

The minion damage stat only boosts the physical attacks of your army - as such it is pretty useless.

From what I can see your gear is OK but your build could use some work. Filling out one of these: http://skillplan.median-xl.com/ would be useful as we can see everything. If you want to have good defence you will want to put points into deathlord (max it for now) and use it - NB: in deathlord form your cast rate is determined by your attack speed. Since totems do not benefit from minion life or minion damage stats the drawback is not as big as you might think. Go into Death Ward as your uber skill and max it. Furthermore Embalming needs to be maxed - it is absolutely amazing. You don't need to pump so many points into shadows - the maxed embalming + all skills you will start obtaining from better gear & charms will take care of their hp.

I would also advise you to get the Kra runeword in a tier 6 ancient armour. Make the base superior and lucky with at least 90% ED first, then orb with 13x enhanced def orbs and then put jewels and rune in. This way you will have really great defence and a huge life total thanks to the max embalming. Only thing you should make sure is that your jewellery is rolled with + skills and cold resist pierce (since this is the totem you maxed out) so you reach -100%.

Afterwards do what strobel said - make sure your armour pieces are orbed up to 350% ED so that the huge TCD bonuses from deathlord + death ward grant you good defence. Remember to switch to walking as running reduces defence to 0 in diablo 2.

As far as socketing goes - totems inherit your spell damage and elemental resistance pierce. Therefore perfect diamonds are the best choice in your staff. For your body armour go for Jah runes and for the rest of the equipment perfect gems with +max elemental res if you are lazy or rare jewels rolled with 40+ life and spell damage / 2% energy if you don't mind spending some more time.

[Taem]

I'm curious as to this myself. It's been awhile and I completely mind-blanked totemancers. How do you increase totems damage output again?

* Totems are not affected by any of the '+% ' item modifiers.
The Totems do, however, inherit your %spell damage, -%enemy resist, and total Energy Factor,

Q: Do my minions / hirelings / reanimate / attack totems benefit from my -% resist?
Necro attack totems are a special case, in that they do inherit your -% resist, despite being minions.

The wording is a bit ambiguous, and I'm a bit rusty with the mechanics, so perhaps another poster can enlighten us? At first, it clearly says that totems do not benefit from +% item modifiers, but then it goes on to say totems can "inherit" %spell damage and -%enemy resists. The way the LFAQ is worded, it could mean one of four possibilities:

• Totems DO benefit from -% resist "items" and +% spell "items"
• Totems do NOT benefit from -% resist "items" and +% spell "items", however DO benefit from skills they inherit from you such as Jinns (-fire resist) and Shadows (+%spell damage), but probably not Dragonfire Oil (+fire damage)
• Totems benefit from BOTH of the above mentioned things
• Totems not only do NOT benefit from any of the above, but they also INHERIT your -% resists, such as when your cursed

I don't know which one is the correct answer, but if it's the first or third one, then craft jewels with Zods for +%spell damage and try to get +%fire/cold and lucky your jewels. Also get double MO on your items and MO with -%fire/cold and +%fire/cold damage. Aim for RW with those stats, and high defense if you use Deathlord, and +skills never hurts. Completely ignore me if I'm wrong !

[Marco]

totems will benefit from %spell damage and -enemy res. Both stats are applied to the unit.

that said, they will also get affected by any kind of aura/buff the same way players do.

so if for example you cast burning veil on yourself, they will inherit your buffed spell damage. And then, if you cast it on them, they will get it again because they're buffed. Aka they can get the bonus twice (as long as they remain buffed).

[Milkakuh02]

Just to be sure and since i dont see a Harkon Crystal. Did you do Level challenge 2?

[gcfbrian]

Just to be sure and since i dont see a Harkon Crystal. Did you do Level challenge 2?

I did, but didn't realize you needed to cube it in the first 30 seconds and haven't bothered to fire up a new toon assuming you can transfer it.

Thanks for the feedback guys, it's much appreciated. Unfortunately I invested a bunch of MO's on my jewelrys for minion life/damage under the pretense it affected my totems after jaedong's post. Had I known it didn't transfer to the totems, I would have strictly done minion life so my frontline was a bit tankier. I'm taking a step back and leveling another character now to further my working knowledge of the mod and will revisit the totemancer at some point.

Thanks again guys~