Bone Spear Necromancer Guide

While every Stat in the Desirable Stats column is useful for this build, we highlighted the Priority Stats in Teal so you can easily identify the Most Important Stats on them.

Hover over any Item to see a pop-out with the full Item description.

The areas below are efficient farming locations that make use of the build’s strengths. Other farming spots might not be as effective due to Immunities or bad layouts. These areas are strong without a Sunder Charm.

Anything that has a ✔ in the "Starter" column can be farmed with the Starter Variant.

Act 1

Act 2

Act 3

Act 4

Act 5

Your Mercenary serves an incredibly important role to the overall success of your build. They can be a front line tank, provide a pivotal Aura, and/or deal Physical Damage to kill enemies with Immunity to your Skill set.

Act 2 Desert Mercenary

Insight, Holy Freeze

Use a Desert Mercenary with Holy Freeze Aura for its powerful Crowd Control. A Mercenary with Might Aura isn’t used, since we don’t rely on his damage or benefit from the Physical Damage increase.
Equip him with Insight for the high Mana Regeneration provided by Meditation Aura.

Mercenary Gear Options

Your Mercenary needs maximum Resistances, Life Leech, a high damage Weapon, and high Defense and/or Damage Reduction to stay alive reliably. Cannot Be Frozen is also a great stat for maintaining Mercenary DPS and leech. Ethereal gear is preferred since it doesn't lose durability.

The Mercenary is hard to keep alive until you have the minimum gear recommended in this guide. Remember you can drag Healing Potions onto the portrait, or shift + 1/2/3/4 to directly feed them a Healing Potion from your Belt. The Mercenary also gains bonus Resistances from Thawing Potions and Antidote Potions.

If your Mercenary dies in battle, you can revive them from any of the Mercenary NPCs in each Act. This does come with an increasing cost, capping at 50,000 Gold. Keep that in mind and decide if the Mercenary is currently worth the cost.

General

• Bonespear deals damage in a straight line, with a decent width, and pierces every target to the end of it's trajectory. You want to have monsters in tightly packed areas, preferably bottlenecked in corridors.
• For areas that you cannot funnel monsters, Boneprison allows you to artificially create corridors by boxing monsters into place and allowing you to pick off big packs at your leisure.
• For Magic Immunes, or monsters packs that are stuck BUT wide spread, you can employ corpseexplosion to deal wider AoE Physical and Fire Damage.
• Tip: Make sure to cast amplifydamage before casting corpseexplosion to maximize your Physical Damage.
• Note: boneprison can box you into some dangerous scenarios by cutting off your ability to maneuver. It can also trap you inside its inner ring with dangerous monsters. Familiarize yourself with boneprison's radius to get a good sense of when and where to use it.
• Note 2: boneprison and bonewall cause monsters to aggro from much further away than they typically would. This does help to wrangle up more monsters to increase farming speed, but may draw in unwanted attention from highly dangerous monster types. The most notable example would be Gloams which cast high damage lightning and can catch players unawares.
• claygolem is an amazingly sturdy speed-bump and a 1 point wonder, as Golem stats scale with increasing difficulty.
• Without Teleport you cannot remove yourself from inconvenient or dangerous scenarios caused by being boxed into your boneprison.

Immunities

• Decrepify drastically reduces Attack speed, Physical Damage, animation speed, and Physical Damage Reduction of affected monsters. amplify damage has an even larger impact on Physical Damage Reduction.
• lowerresist reduces enemy Resistances, most notably, their Fire Resistance which can break their Immunity. This allows our corpseexplosion Fire Damage component to kill otherwise Immune monsters.
• bonebreak allow us to never face Physical Immunes while farming, and increases our effective corpseexplosion damage.

Late-Game

• With teleport you can safely reposition if and when you close yourself into a boneprison. Once you are at a safe distance and monsters are locked into place, you can continue to cast boneprison as long as needed to round up targets for bonespear.
• Using teleport brings your Mercenary to your position, so you can save them from dangerous situations.
• Intentionally boxing in other players with boneprison is considered griefing, and should be avoided when possible.
• For Uber farming lifetap is best used on a team that is dealing damage with weapon attacks. decrepify is a great option if your team is primarily using spell-based attacks.

Breakpoints in Diablo 2 are the minimum values required to reduce the frames of an action. Below are the important breakpoints considered for this build. For more information on the mechanics involved, check out our in-depth Resource: Breakpoints.

Faster Cast Rate (FCR)

Faster Cast Rate speeds up your casting animation for spells. Aim for at least the 125% FCR Breakpoint. Note: FCR only controls the animation speed of the Character, and not any internal Cooldowns spells have.

Faster Hit Recovery (FHR)

Faster Hit Recovery increases survivability. Aim for at least the 86% FHR Breakpoint.

For all Hardcore gameplay, your primary concern is increasing your Resistances, Damage Reduction, Chance to Block and Maximum Life. This can mean sacrificing overall power level for a more secure playstyle.

This build can become Hardcore viable with key changes to the Skills, Stat Point allocation, and items. Review the changes below before building this character, as they may differ significantly from the normal build.

Stat Point Changes

• Allocate 171 Stat Points to Dexterity at by Level 99 for 75% Chance to Block for Stormshield.
• Allocate 128 Stat Points to Dexterity at by Level 99 for 75% Chance to Block for Homunculus Hierophant Trophy.

Item Changes

• Use Stormshield to maximize Physical Damage Reduction, Resistances, and Chance to Block.
• Use Homunculus to maximize Resistances, Chance to Block and Faster Block Rate.
• Use of Shimmering Small Charm of Vita for more Maximum Life instead of Better Chance to Find Magic Items.
• Use String of Ears or Verdungo's Hearty Cord for + xx% Damage Reduction.

• teleport allows a Player to select any square within the total range of the visible screen and teleport to that location, bringing any Mercenary or Minions with it. (Other than Traps).
• You are able to teleport an even farther distance by holding down right click and opening either the Attributes or Inventory screen and dragging your mouse to the edge of the screen in that window, while casting.
• Teleporting is not obstructed by walls or other impediments but can fail if your cursor is not completely passed those impediments when cast.
• In single player, clicking the Escape key after teleporting can give you enough time to determine if you are in a safe location before continuing. If you teleported into a sticky situation, consider Save and Exiting and try again.
• Depending on Minion type, your Minions/Mercenary becomes “stuck” to the spot you have teleported, so you often have to move from this spot to allow your Minions to spread out. Get into the habit of moving backwards after every teleport to give your Minions this opportunity.

• The speed of this Skill is based on Cast Rate.
• Fires a projectile in a straight line which pierces and deals Magic Damage to any target within its path until it expires

Scaling:
Mana Cost:
The Mana Cost increases with each Skill Level:

Mana Cost = 0.25 * slvl + 6.75

Example slvl = 20:
Mana Cost = 0.25 * 20 + 6.75
Mana Cost = 11.75

Base Damage:

Example slvl = 20:

A slvl 20 Bone Spear has a base Magic Damage range of 192-204.

Synergies:
Synergies increase the base Magic Damage by 7% per Base Level (blvl). They work as a singular multiplier:

+% Magic Damage = 7 * (Teeth.blvl + Bone Wall.blvl + Bone Prison.blvl + Bone Spirit.blvl)
Example, assuming all Synergies have a blvl = 5:
+% Magic Damage = 7 * (5 + 5 + 5 + 5)
+% Magic Damage = 140

Note: Synergy Skill Levels that come from + to Skills do NOT count towards the blvl!

Total Damage:
Taking the values from above we have a damage range of 192-204 and +140% Magic Damage which equals a multiplier of 2.4.

Conclusion:
Our slvl 20 Bone Spear with 20 Skill Points in Synergies deals 460-489 Magic Damage per projectile. Each cast costs 11.75 Mana.

• The speed of this Skill is based on Cast Rate.
• Shoots out a number of projectiles in a cone-shaped arrangement in the direction of the cursor. The closer your cursor is to the Character, the wider the spread of the projectiles. Going far away concentrates them heavily.
• Each target can only get hit by 1 projectile. A projectile hitting a target is destroyed, while the remaining projectiles pass that target without colliding with it.
• Teeth causes a Next Hit Delay timer of 4 Frames (0.16 seconds) in which no Next Hit Delay Skill can damage that target.

Scaling:
Projectiles:
The number of projectiles increases by 1 per Skill Level. This scaling is capped at 24 and starts with 2 projectiles at Skill Level 1.

Number of projectiles = min(1 + slvl, 24)

Example slvl = 20:
Number of projectiles = min(1 + 20, 24)
Number of projectiles = min(21, 24)
Number of projectiles = 21

Since 21 < 24, the number of projectiles at Skill Level 20 is 21.

Mana Cost:
The Mana Cost increases with each Skill Level:

Mana Cost = 0.5 * slvl + 2.5

Example slvl = 20:
Mana Cost = 0.5 * 20 + 2.5
Mana Cost = 12.5

Base Damage:

Example slvl = 20:

A slvl 20 Teeth has a base Magic Damage range of 23-31.

Synergies:
Synergies increase the base Magic Damage by 15% per Base Level (blvl). They work as a singular multiplier:

+% Magic Damage = 15 * (Bone Wall.blvl + Bone Spear.blvl + Bone Prison.blvl + Bone Spirit.blvl)
Example, assuming all Synergies have a blvl = 5:
+% Magic Damage = 15 * (5 + 5 + 5 + 5)
+% Magic Damage = 300

Note: Synergy Skill Levels that come from + to Skills do NOT count towards the blvl!

Total Damage:
Taking the values from above we have a damage range of 23-31 and +300% Magic Damage which equals a multiplier of 4.

Conclusion:
Our slvl 20 Teeth with 20 Skill Points in Synergies deals 92-124 Magic Damage per projectile. Each cast costs 12.5 Mana.

• The speed of this Skill is based on Cast Rate.
• Creates a circle of walls around a selected target. Gaps can occur when obstacles or units are in the way, allowing the target to escape.
• The walls collapse, when either one segment is destroyed or when it expires after 24 seconds at all Skill Levels.
• Walls obstruct the pathing of all monsters except for flying monster types such as Wraiths, Willowisps, etc. It also blocks most ranged attacks. Exceptions are piercing projectiles and Throwing Spear attacks, like from they monster type Slinger.
• After being damaged, they regenerate 2 Life per second.
• Despite being "summoned", the walls are not considered pets, therefore Summon Resist won't apply, and they take 100% damage from bosses (Andariel, Duriel, etc.), not 400%.
• Auras and Buffs from party members do not apply.
• Conviction and other hostile Auras do apply.
• Life and Mana stolen per hit don't return anything from walls. They also can't be chilled as they are immobile.
• Cannot be cursed, however, Battle Cry and Cloak of Shadows do apply when used.
• Monsters that are killed by Iron Maiden don't grant experience.
• Surrounding monsters are drawn to the Bone Prison from off-screen. Be aware of this!

Base Stats:
The base stats of Bone Prison change depending on the difficulty they are used:

Scaling:
Life per Skill Level:
Each Skill Level adds +25% Life to the base Life of Bone Wall. +% Life from Synergies is added to this value before it is applied to the base Life.

+% Life = 25 * slvl - 25

Example slvl = 20:
+% Life = 25 * 20 - 25
+% Life = 475

Synergies:
Synergies add +8% Life per Base Level (blvl). The blvl is the amount of Skill Points that have been put into a Skill. The bonus is added to the +% Life from Skill Levels in Bone Prison before it is applied to the base Life.

+% Life = 8 * (Bone Armor.blvl + Bone Wall.blvl)

Example, assuming all Synergies have a blvl = 5:

+% Life = 8 * (5 + 5)
+% Life = 80

Total Life:
As mentioned above, the +% Life from Skill Levels and Synergies are added up before they are applied to the base Life of Bone Prison. Taking the values from the examples above, we have 475 + 80 = +555% Life, which is a 6.55 multiplier. The total Life value calculated is rounded down. Using the base Life values from the table above, we get the following calculations per difficulty:

Life = Base Life * 6.55

Conclusion:
Our slvl 20 Bone Prison with 10 Skill Points in Synergies will have 124 Life in Normal, 962 Life in Nightmare, and 2823 Life in Hell.

• The speed of this Skill is based on Cast Rate.
• Affected monsters will have their "Physical Resistance" reduced by 100% at all Skill Levels (slvl). This effect is reduced to 1/5 on monsters that are Immune to Physical.
• Amplify Damage will affect Undead type monsters before Sanctuary.
• Will be overwritten by any other Curse.

Scaling:
Amplify Damage will affect a circular shaped area around the cursor. The radius scales with the Skill Level (slvl).

The affect duration scales with the Skill Level (slvl).
Example shown use slvl = 12:

• The damage dealt is split 50%/50% between Physical and Fire Damage. This means only 50% of the damage benefits from Amplifydamage.
• Monsters with an Immunity to either Physical and Fire Damage can still receive damage from the other damage type of corpseexplosion.
• Each Skill Point in corpseexplosion increases the radius, with the Fire Damage having a slightly larger radius than the Physical Damage.
• This damage is not blocked by Physical obstacles.
• Damage is calculated using the base Monster type's average maximum Life. This means the player count and Champion/Unique/Super Unique status do not increase the damage dealt. Damage does NOT scale with Player's count making corpseexplosion less efficient in Multiplayer.
• If the Character's Level (cLVL) is less than the Monster's level (mLVL) of a targeted corpse, the damage dealt is multiplied by a variable (cLVL/mLVL) which reduces the total damage dealt.
• corpseexplosion is considered a Fire Skill for items which give + to Fire Skills, but not for items which give +% Fire Skill Damage or Fire Mastery.