I also highly encourage reading Nightfish’s guide, which is comprehensive and well-researched. It also includes some thoughts on gear and options for using the extra skill points.

This Guide is intended to give a quick-and-easy overview of the key details on the build and pointers on playthrough/progression. The Necromancer can also wade into battle himself alongside the skeletons as a “commandomancer” (which is actually a distinct build and so not addressed here, but covered in this guide). The mercenary will be Act II Nightmare (Might), for the extra damage for the skeletons and merc.īeyond that core build, it’s highly customizable, allowing maxed Golem Mastery, high-level Revive, or higher-level secondary curses. Named after Nightfish, an SPFer who pioneered the build (and literally wrote the book on it), it uses maxed skeleton warriors (Raise Skeleton), Skeleton Mastery, and Corpse Explosion, with Amplify Damage as the primary curse. All of them can draw on various curses to enhance offensive attack or manage the battlefield, and Corpse Explosion is the great equalizer, potentially levelling entire screens at higher levels.Īmong all these options, however, the safest and most fool-proof build is also extremely powerful on the offensive side: the Fishymancer. This allows melee builds, summoners with skeleton fighters dealing physical damage, summoners with skeleton mages dealing elemental damage, golem-mancers who focus on powerful golems to pair with the merc, summoners that focus on reviving dead enemies to fight with the necro, poison spell casters, bone (magic) spell casters, and back to melee with any combo of summons. The Summoning tree provides multiple options for minions the Poison and Bone tree allows powerful poison damage, magic-based bone damage and defensive spells, and the all-powerful Corpse Explosion that brings area-of-effect fire and physical damage and the Curses tree allows complementary spells that enhance damage or provide major crowd control. The Necromancer probably has the most variability of possible builds among the Diablo 2 character classes. Other Stats – Resists and Faster Hit Recovery.

Diablo 2 mercenary best build