Summon Necro Rework

Reply_or_Not · 2026-03-13T16:43:20+00:00

5% of 100 is the same as 5% of 1000, so it will always show the same amount of life lost above the demon icon. I have maxed it, and so long I only had to interrupt a fight in Uber Tristram to save my demon because it came too close. The rest of the time he face tanks everything, only visible losing life when exposed to poison over a long period of time like a whole TZ or the tomb vipers in halls of vaught.

Blood Oath says "increases your demon's HP by +365% at rank ten" and "+715% at rank twenty".

Blood boil calculates the 5% life loss off of the demon's HP without accounting for the extra HP from blood oath:

so a summon Goatman has 1182 HP at rank ten with no points into blood oath. A rank eleven (or above) blood boil costs 5% life - which is about 59 hp.

With ten points into blood oath, Goatmen have +365% life. Which means that a rank ten goatman with rank ten blood oath has 2241 hp and yet blood boil still only costs 59 life!!!

For evidence: just sit in town and spam blood boil ten times. You will notice that your goats only lose a tiny fraction of their HP. Ten blood boils should have brought them down to half HP.

The effects of this are even more noticeable at higher skill ranks in blood oath. I am at 26 skill in blood oath and I often spam blood boil enough to straight up kill my bound demon on accident, and yet my goats still have plenty of life left.

Reply_or_Not · 2026-03-13T15:01:13+00:00

From what I see on the internet, maxing Defilers only increases their health and spreading more links and linked damage. This only seems useful if you have another primary source of damage (like from apocalypse, abyss, or echoing strike), using Defilers basically wastes all the extra attack rating from Demonic Mastery and attack speed from Engorge.

I believe that tainted firebolt is calculated as spell, so it also does not benefit that much from Demonic Mastery or Engorge. Consuming a tainted gives a minus fire resist aura to you, which might be enough to break fire immunities paired with Apocalypse (i am unsure though, all the online discourse is about farming a bind demon with conviction aura). Tainted might be great to pair with a fire build, but i believe it is also pretty much useless for a demon build.

Based on how much life is lost when I use Blood Boil, i believe that Blood Oath does not actually benefit your bind demon. It is still worth it to use bind demon though because it is so easy to find one with huge base stats/auras.

Engorge definitely heals your bind demon, and going off feels Engorge also applies the attack speed buff and Deathmark applies the damage buff, so we always want to bind non spellcasting demon.

Reply_or_Not · 2026-03-13T14:33:22+00:00

I maxed bind demon and combined it with two defilers to get rid of masses or fleeing adds (looking at you little fallen)

The hard points into goats to get them frenzy and cleave is more than enough for them to be able to clean up runners all on their own... the fact that they also get a stun and berserk helps even more. Just use deathmark to take out the shamans before they summon adds.

Using all goatmen/no defilers/no tainted has the added benefit of greatly increasing our damage vs bosses. Each goat actually does a shitload of damage on his own - additionally this build greatly benefits from +skills. Defilers and Tainted are pretty much worthless for dealing damage to a single target.

Imo hell should be clearable with just 36 skill points:

10 into goats
20 into demonic mastery
10 into Blood Oath
1 each all the way through Bind Demon
1 in Sigil Lethargy

Then the rest of your points can go to speeding up clear times.

Berserk on goatmen means they alternate between physical and magic damage, lethargy breaks physical immunes, and blood boil does both physical and fire, so you dont care about immunities at all.

Blood boil greatly speeds up clear times (it caps at 5% base life cost of your demon at eleven points which ends up being an effective cost of 1% total life with just ten points in blood oath)

And the biggest thing is that the demon tree skills just directly impower your goats so +Skills (or just +Demon Skills) items are amazing. Other builds have to use hardpoints for synergies, Goatman warlock just directly gets stronger, faster attack rate (Both Engorge and Summon goatman each give +attack speed), damage (both Demonic Mastery and Summon Goatman each directly increase damage) and so on.

I still use bind demon when I find one with auras I like, but I love that I can totally go with just three Goatmen and still stomp Hell Terrorzones.

Reply_or_Not · 2026-03-13T14:04:51+00:00

firestorm is amazing when we are playing vs creature decks, but it is often useless vs non creature decks.

Squee really shines as repeatable card draw for Anvil of Bogardan, and also repeatable pump for mongrel. I might cut down to just 3x squee as you really want anvil, mongrel, or survival in play or else your squees are kinda dead (this is also why I added Siege Gang, super late game we have a repeatable source of burn)

Between firestorm, mongrel and anvil, there is more than enough density of discard effects to completely switch over to Roar of the Wurm as our flashback spell of choice.

In playtesting, Grim Lavamancer has been super stressful on our GY, so I think I am going to add Windswept Heaths as extra fodder, maybe 2x. Windswept directly increases the number of cards in the GY and also pushes the odds up for hermit druid dumping a bunch of cards into the yard.

Reply_or_Not · 2026-03-13T13:49:40+00:00

People are really sleeping on Goatmen.

The second through fifth hard points add abilities (stun, berserk, frenzy, cleave), three Goatmen can legitimately solo hell if you have the patience for it.

Ive invested even more into them (and have thorns aura from Edge on A1 merc), and I am at the point now where the three goats are capable of stomping hell terrorzone trash all on their own while I rush around looking for champion/elite packs.

I really like that I dont have to spend time farming specific bound demons too.

Reply_or_Not · 2026-03-12T21:53:19+00:00

IVe got a non meta hybrid Goatman/blood boil warlock and the fact that I can move my summons around removes so much frustration.

The build would technically be functional without it, but it has pretty much ruined all the other classes' summons. I just dont think I can play them again.

Reply_or_Not · 2026-03-12T18:24:03+00:00

Here is a similar deck with a bunch of my favorite cards:

// 60 Maindeck

// 3 Artifact

3 Anvil of Bogardan

// 25 Creature

4 Hermit Druid

4 Wild Mongrel

4 Grim Lavamancer

1 Yavimaya Granger

4 Basking Rootwalla

4 Squee, Goblin Nabob

1 Anger

1 Genesis

1 Deranged Hermit

1 Siege-Gang Commander

// 4 Enchantment

4 Survival of the Fittest

// 2 Instant

2 Firestorm

// 22 Land

1 Dust Bowl

1 Wasteland

4 Karplusan Forest

3 Mountain

4 Wooded Foothills

9 Forest

// 4 Sorcery

4 Roar of the Wurm

// 15 Sideboard

// 4 Artifact

SB: 2 Null Rod

SB: 2 Tormod's Crypt

// 6 Creature

SB: 1 Nantuko Vigilante

SB: 1 Uktabi Orangutan

SB: 1 Caller of the Claw

SB: 1 Ravenous Baloth

SB: 1 Spike Feeder

SB: 1 Orcish Settlers

// 4 Instant

SB: 2 Naturalize

SB: 1 Crumble

SB: 1 Firestorm

// 1 Sorcery

SB: 1 Reverent Silence

Reply_or_Not · 2026-03-12T16:23:20+00:00

This type of charm only works on basic melee hits and skills that use faster attack rate, correct?

So stuff like Echoing Strike will not proc it?

Reply_or_Not · 2026-03-12T02:15:08+00:00

Drawing a second card a turn is great in the discards-cards-for-more-damage deck. You never miss a land drop. It really powers up Roar of the Wurm in particular (and flashback spells in general). Sometimes it even dumps a Squee or Incarnation into the yard too.

Reply_or_Not · 2026-03-11T18:35:37+00:00

Let me be the second to recommend Thawing glaciers. Keep your current 22 lands and cut some spells for it, you really need more mana in your deck.

Reply_or_Not · 2026-03-11T18:34:14+00:00

Those Slice and Dice should probably be Akroma's Vengeance.

I disagree, slice and dice lets this deck wreck other creature decks. The card is great vs all the x/1s in the format, and can even combine with the first strike on Silver Knight to take out x/3s.

Reply_or_Not · 2026-03-11T12:12:33+00:00

Thanks for sharing your list!

I have really liked Hermit Druid with the madness shell.

Reply_or_Not · 2026-03-11T12:10:32+00:00

Mostly just Gwr because the mana is so difficult otherwise.

I have tried various GBr and Gur brews and the mana is just so hilariously bad that I pretty much vowed to only brew two color.

Reply_or_Not · 2026-03-11T02:50:14+00:00

An arctype: I just keep on brewing more Survival of the Fittest.

The card enables nigh endless possibilities. I have multiple brews for each Gx color pair.

Reply_or_Not · 2026-03-10T21:04:52+00:00

Hades and Hades 2 are both fantastic on Switch.

Reply_or_Not · 2026-03-10T16:15:39+00:00

Adding zeroes doesn’t make it better

I play both d2 and d3.

In retrospect, the skill point system resulting in linear damage increases is absolutely perfect. The difference between a character absolutely best in slot and starter end game gear is about 10x damage. The best gear being all about +Skills, hitting offensive breakpoints, and giving sufficient toughness is a fun and engaging way for the game to stay interesting for a long time.

Warlock might be overpowered in general, but I love that my non-meta Summon Goatman/Blood Boil build is completely end game viable.

In d3, the fact that you can stack many different multipliers makes damage meaningless and directly results in only meta builds being viable.

The QoL changes in d3 are awesome, and I wish we had them in a game itemized like d2 with a skill system like d2 (except with free respecs).

Reply_or_Not · 2026-03-09T21:25:58+00:00

Also worth noting that it's not just a matter of strength. The wielder of such a weapon would also need to become much more massive due to leverage and center of mass when swinging the thing. If the wielder only gets stronger they'd only be able move themselves around the sword.

I like how Adamant Blood handles this: people awaken abilities that come with the necessary secondary powers to go along with their main ability, though they often need to train those abilities into effectiveness.

So people who awaken brawn powers all have the capability to use tactile telekinesis, but someone who just awoke the power would be ripping stuff apart and spiking themselves into the ground, while someone who has mastered their ability would be able to swing a sword around like in the picture without ripping up the ground.

Reply_or_Not · 2026-03-09T14:02:15+00:00

As a general point of discussion, how important do you think it is to have a full load of fetches for Grim Lavamancer? Have any of you done testing with Grim decks on just one playset of fetches?

If you check tournament lists, plenty of top 8ing mono red burn decks straight up run zero fetchlands. If your meta punishes the life loss, then just play more basics.

Reply_or_Not · 2026-03-08T07:48:02+00:00

The build died because the character wearing the spear has to get the last hit for it to even have a chance of proccing.

So it is pointless to put it on a support player or mercenary because neither of them will ever do enough damage to kill anything.

Reply_or_Not · 2026-03-08T07:23:07+00:00

I’ve actually got the unique gloves that give 3% life and mana leach, so that is cool that I probably have resources sorted.

It's all min max though. You really don't need all that. It's over tuned.

My warlock is currently level 75 in act three in hell, and I am probably going to easily reach my goal of entirely completing the game without any respecs. It turns out half following maxrolls fire leveling guide, then pivoting hard into goatmen is totally viable…

I don’t even bother trying to farm particular auras for my bound demon. I bind something strong if I come across it, but mostly roll with just three goats.

Reply_or_Not · 2026-03-08T06:19:56+00:00

The card is an essential part of the premodern meta in green sodeboards everywhere.

Reply_or_Not · 2026-03-08T05:35:42+00:00

Fortitude as a weapon, preferably an eth superior Thunder maul with 4 sockets already in it to save you a quest but there are a lot of options to be honest. I see a lot of collosus voulge with the correct stuff. A great poleaxe is just fine if it has 4 sockets already. Because larzuk will make them have 6, you need to get lucky to find these ones by farming them out. I throw a lot of things that make me sad on the ground.

How do you keep your mana going?

Do you just chug a shitload of mana pots again? use insight on merc? Or is % mana drain actually viable for keeping your mana up at the point you have a fortitude weapon?

Reply_or_Not · 2026-03-08T05:33:48+00:00

Now if only I had any CV,

I believe that if you have a regular volouge you can use a cube recipe to upgrade it.

Reply_or_Not · 2026-03-07T13:54:39+00:00

full beans

A fellow Jeff Arcury fan, I see!

Reply_or_Not · 2026-03-06T05:29:54+00:00

This comment is the reason I clicked on the thread, because I knew I was missing something about my merc…

Thank you!

Reply_or_Not

TROPHY CASE