Totem Hybrid Necromancer

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Jaedong
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nice guide
but if you really want to play hc u need to go for death ward, else your defense is way way too low and ur units cant tank all types damage of all units
for example heroics and u WILL get killedR

cookie for not suggesting deathlord

fighting volrath:
first of all, u should use death furys totem vs volrath, atleast when i fight him alot of times the totem somehow doesnt get killed by the lightning and if it doesnt it is a huge damage boost, i havent tested if boneyard massacre is faster than what i usually do, i usually clear him with buckshot and deathfury totem which results into oneshotting totems
investing into death fury totem allows instant use of ice claw once u hit lvl 6

might considder highlighting the 1 Pointer and MAX for the lazy people like me

wouldnt it be easier for skillswitching to use a honfour head? so you have dagger and head on switch instead of wand and dagger
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suchbalance
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Why would you not use deathlord on hc? It literally has no downside for totems. Death ward is also preferable, you won't be able to keep jinns alive too much early on penalty or not.

Guide looks nice - well done LH, and nice pics by seekers. Always good to see detailed guidance for staple builds to help new players out.

@Strobel Boneyard for LC0: https://youtu.be/NoNeTJSXF8I?t=155. The advantages are faster levelling to 5 and no need for respecs.
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annihilus5
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suchbalance wrote:Why would you not use deathlord on hc? It literally has no downside for totems. Death ward is also preferable, you won't be able to keep jinns alive too much early on penalty or not.

Guide looks nice - well done LH, and nice pics by seekers. Always good to see detailed guidance for staple builds to help new players out.

@Strobel Boneyard for LC0: https://youtu.be/NoNeTJSXF8I?t=155. The advantages are faster levelling to 5 and no need for respecs.


I messed around with deathlord totem on hc a bit a few weeks ago. The only downside I think I felt was a significantly slower cast rate (bend the shadow/summon shadows spam/mobility). Though, all the bonus defense definitely makes up for it, just need to keep this in mind.
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suchbalance wrote:Why would you not use deathlord on hc? It literally has no downside for totems. Death ward is also preferable, you won't be able to keep jinns alive too much early on penalty or not.


I've seen a lot of players who play totem use deathlord, especially on HC. It certainly is a nice option, but I never cared for it for two reasons:

1.) It takes an extra 5 skill points to spec into, which I normally put forward to gaining an extra Rampagor or two as a new tank, eliminating more of the need for the boost defense (though I can see how you'd enjoy the str/dex boost from it).
2.) It locks us out of using Funeral Pyre. This part is dependent on the playstyle of the individual player, but I like having this 1-pointer early game as a utility skill for single targets or large mobs that you know are going to all walk into eachother.

Jaedong wrote:if you really want to play hc u need to go for death ward, else your defense is way way too low and ur units cant tank all types damage of all units


I'm fairly new to HC myself, but I've never had an issue with using Jinn over Death Ward because we have summons that near a later mid-game into end-game, virtually don't die except to one-hit mechanics or to things like Quov Tsin's beam, which we have no control over protecting our minions for.

I'm considering editing out the HC Friendly part in the post title and just keeping it as a small disclaimer in the Intro section just because I know it's a very easy build for general gameplay, but haven't messed with ubers enough in HC to really credit myself for saying "Yea, it's fully HC friendly."

Also, in terms of your Volrath suggestion, Buckshot/Death's Fury Totem is certainly a nice option. I've done that before. It just felt way easier and faster to spec full energy and 1pt Boneyard early on because it'll pave the way more towards what we are going for. A respec will still be necessary to get rid of Massacre once we have Frostclaw Totem, but it feels less of a hassel, along with Boneyard providing us with full screen range, instead of having to run into melee range (especially helpful for this challenge season where you can get killed fairly quickly to the newer area monsters). Suchbalance provided a video, I believe, in the comment on Page 2 here.

Jaedong wrote:might considder highlighting the 1 Pointer and MAX for the lazy people like me

wouldnt it be easier for skillswitching to use a honfour head? so you have dagger and head on switch instead of wand and dagger


In the actual skillplans for each game section, they are written in bold, but it's tricky to see. I might go back and alter the color a little bit to make them easier to read.

As far as the Hounfor head is concerned, yes that's an option, but we want to get Trollskull as soon as we can, so I chose to just keep it as a wand RW, which is really easy to make instead of spending some extra time crafting or rolling for the head.

void wrote:embalming does not boost totem life, and as far as i know they are uneffected by any type of item minion boosts, including res

totem get shadows and jinn boost twice. once when they are cast by the nec, and it is applied again when they were summoned, so essentially its not necessary to put more than 1/2 of what you need to reach 100 or 200% pierce enemy res that you dont get from gear or charms

for early game/gris box farming nef staff is highly recommended (personally this ladder i used it as main until i was able to make the creep), not just because its an ok item early, but also as switch the blink saves some time to cut corners or blink away in a very difficult situation (heretics) where bend the shadows would take too long

would be good to mention that you can bless crafted items too, so there are even more gg rolls possible


I don't have access to the game right now, but why would Embalming not boost Totem Life or receive %Minion Res bonuses? They are a summon, and display their HP amount in the skill icon itself, thus my confusion why boosts to minion life would not affect them. I know %Minion Damage doesn't affect them for the very clear reason that they don't do physical damage.

You can use
Pax Mystica
Pax Mystica
Staves

'Tir'
Runeword Level: 10
+1 to All Skills
+7% to Spell Damage
+(2 to 5) to Blink
Elemental Resists +(11 to 15)%
(11 to 13)% Magic Find
for early game if you want, but there isn't really a need to. Totems fly through Tristram without having any gear equipped at all, and those reanimates that they spawn are rather overpowered in terms of strength, numbers, and durability through early Act 1 -- They drop off pretty quickly and can be annoying since they lock out any other useful reanimates that you might have, but oh well.

I thought I mentioned craft blessing somewhere around the midgame notes when I discussed the Magical Crafted circlet. I'll go back and check again to make sure.

void wrote:its sometimes useful to resummon totems far away with sacrifices. this is useful for places like tran or mangler areas


Resummoning totems can be useful and/or necessary early game with that method if they are still dying to incoming damage, especially in Tran Athulua, but it's not that necessary if you look at how we MO our Honorific items. Seekers took a screen for me in the Level Challenge 1 section where you can see he completed LC1 at Level 31 with not even half of the gear mentioned and only 114 (?) Defense, facerolling the level while the minions took the hits for us.
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annihilus5 wrote:
suchbalance wrote:Why would you not use deathlord on hc? It literally has no downside for totems. Death ward is also preferable, you won't be able to keep jinns alive too much early on penalty or not.

Guide looks nice - well done LH, and nice pics by seekers. Always good to see detailed guidance for staple builds to help new players out.

@Strobel Boneyard for LC0: https://youtu.be/NoNeTJSXF8I?t=155. The advantages are faster levelling to 5 and no need for respecs.


I messed around with deathlord totem on hc a bit a few weeks ago. The only downside I think I felt was a significantly slower cast rate (bend the shadow/summon shadows spam/mobility). Though, all the bonus defense definitely makes up for it, just need to keep this in mind.


You need to use attack speed in death lord form instead of FCR for cast rate.
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suchbalance wrote:
annihilus5 wrote:
suchbalance wrote:Why would you not use deathlord on hc? It literally has no downside for totems. Death ward is also preferable, you won't be able to keep jinns alive too much early on penalty or not.

Guide looks nice - well done LH, and nice pics by seekers. Always good to see detailed guidance for staple builds to help new players out.

@Strobel Boneyard for LC0: https://youtu.be/NoNeTJSXF8I?t=155. The advantages are faster levelling to 5 and no need for respecs.


I messed around with deathlord totem on hc a bit a few weeks ago. The only downside I think I felt was a significantly slower cast rate (bend the shadow/summon shadows spam/mobility). Though, all the bonus defense definitely makes up for it, just need to keep this in mind.


You need to use attack speed in death lord form instead of FCR for cast rate.


^ ^ I think some other morphs do this same speed flip thing. This is why you see such a slow cast rate at first because of TU Marrow Staff having Very Slow Attack speed.
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god i hate fucking deathlord on totemancer, half minion life for more def? sounds really bad trade to me
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Jaedong wrote:god i hate fucking deathlord on totemancer, half minion life for more def? sounds really bad trade to me


Yea, that's the other part about the setup that I have here that defers me from choosing Deathlord. Removing all of your tanks and requiring you to focus more on your own physical defense takes away from other aspects. Higher cost than reward in most cases, from what I've been able to tell, unless you plan on using gear that requires you to have higher strength or dexterity earlier on.
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Btw, only reason for deathlord is really the str/dex boost, which is not worth at all the loss of minion life or the skillpoints.
Def boost wont be more than 200k w/o dumping skill points in it, and even if you smax it, you'll need stats in str/dex for it to work, and we use energy so yeah.
And really, the entire point of the minions and minionlife/res is to not get hit, at all, which is why we also don't use too much %DR, and if you're getting hit a lot that means you're being careless (which is something you don't do in HC) or poorly geared (again, you don't do this in HC).
Same applies to deathward, you sacrifice too much -res for extra safety, which will probs never come into play (only way I can think of it saving you is in case of lag or when a mob decides to ruin your day and ignore all minions, which doesn't happen very often).
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Dungeon Ubers added.