I've started a new necromancer on USEast. I have previously gone the BG-revive-IM route, and am looking to try something new. I have read about minionless necros, arty necros, and poison necros, and have decided to take the road less travelled. I plan on using only a golem, no points in any of the skeleton/revive tree. Main weapons i'm planning on using will be poison nova, lower resist, bone spirit, attract, and the occasional lvl1 IM.

I am currently lvl13 and ready to take out andariel, if the game will stop &(%(@#($!$-ing crashing on me when someone sneezes in the next county.

I did a few calculations, and with lvl 20 poison nova and lvl 10 lower resist, a monster with 0% PR will take only 12 damage/second, on average ((((145+217)/2)/23.2)*1.55) ....this means that the average H/H finger mage(0% PR) will die in 79 seconds, and the average OK(75% PR) will die in 129 seconds. Lower resist will be used as much as possible to enhance the poison nova, a golem to help heep the packs away from me as much as possible, attract to keep the monsters fighting each other, and BG/IM when all else fails. High Resists and blocking will be the order of the day with no meat army to separate me and the bad guys.

A few questions for anyone who has tried something like this:

1> Attract. Ive never used it before. Does attract make the monsters cursed "neutral", meaning they will attack anything that comes near them, player or monster?(this is what i make of it, according to the description on blizzard's site)

Note- a response on the old forum indicated that attract worked on single monsters only(thanks, Niomosy!); any ideas why it has a "range" attached then? does it affect a randon monster within that range?

2> Lower resists/Poison nova: Is there a "natural" reduction in poison length in nightmare/hell, as there is with cold? I am also unclear if PR decreases total poison duration.

I'll post again next week if anyone's interested in my progress. Thanks in advance for any assistance.

FooBarBaz

Poison damage and length remains the same in all difficulties.

Attract works as follows:

Say you have monsters A, B, and C (three Flayers). B is 2 yards from A, and C is 4 yards from A.

You cast Attract on A. Let's say your level of Attract has a 2-yard radius. B rushes up and start whacking on A. C, on the other hand, keeps going towards _you_ -- it was outside the affected radius.

A, most of the time, will fight back against its erstwhile buddies. It will probably fight B unless you're closer -- then it might attack you.

Good luck!
-Polare

I love attract. Combo it with Dim Vision and you have an excellent crowd control curse combo.

1) Cast attract on the minions in charge of the horde charging you.

2) Cast Dim Vision on the hole mob. This works because Dim Vision will not overide Attract. AFAIK only Decrepify, Amp Damage, Iron Maiden will override Attract or Confusion. I'm not sure about Lower Resist overriding them.

3) The monsters are only able to see the attracted monster and will attack the cursed monster, who will fight back. Then, you can "free" blinded monsters by casting attract on them (the "radius" i\doesn't matter, it is only used to see if 1 monster is in range of where you click), the newly cursed monster will attack the nearest monster, OR the next creature to damage it.

Be warned that all Attracted monsters are treated as your minion so if a cursed boss hits one of them all of the attracted monsters (as well as yourself and golem) are cursed. The "Cursed" effect shows above the monsters head and overrides the attract, making them your enemies once again, so be careful when fighting a cursed boss.

If you click on a monster to curse it with attract, that monster is cursed, but if you click off of a monster the nearest monster in the radius in the spell gets the curse, AFAIK.

I hope I helped somewhat.

Falomin

it sucks, i know.