Fishymancer Starter Necromancer Build Guide - D2 Resurrected
The Fishymancer is the smoothest ladder start in the game: a full skeleton army tanks everything while Corpse Explosion clears rooms, and none of it requires a single unique item. Full skills, stats, gear and farming route inside.
Overview
The "Fishymancer" nickname comes from its trademark visual — a Necromancer under Bone Armor with a fishbowl-shaped helmet effect, standing safely behind a wall of skeletons while everything around it dies to Corpse Explosion chains. It's the single most forgiving ladder starter in Diablo 2 Resurrected: your army absorbs hits, Curses neutralize dangerous monsters, and you personally almost never need to be in melee range. It requires essentially zero gear to function and scales all the way into Hell on a summoner's normal itemization.
Pros:
- Clears entire rooms via Corpse Explosion chain reactions with minimal player input
- Skeleton army and Skeletal Mages tank and deal damage independently, meaning gear investment goes toward your own survival, not damage output
- Extremely safe — you rarely need to be near danger
- Requires almost no starting gear; playable from level 1 with base skills only
- Scales into a fully viable Hell farmer without ever "graduating" to a different build
Cons:
- Slow single-target damage against bosses without Corpse Explosion fuel
- Managing 13 skeletons plus mages across a screen can feel cluttered
- Corpse Explosion is your main damage tool, so the very first kill in a pack (with no corpse yet) is always the slowest part
- Weak against physical-immune bosses until you lean on curses and merc damage
Stat Allocation
- Strength: enough for your armor, typically 60-90
- Dexterity: none needed beyond base, unless chasing block on a shield
- Vitality: everything else — you want a comfortable life buffer even though your army tanks for you
- Energy: none; base mana plus a few +skills items is enough, since your main spells (Raise Skeleton, Corpse Explosion, curses) are cheap
Skill Order 1-99
- Raise Skeleton — max first, this is your army's core damage and tank count
- Skeleton Mastery — max second; boosts every skeleton's life, damage, resistance and speed
- Raise Skeletal Mage — max third; ranged elemental damage that clears from range (pick the mage type that suits your resist coverage — Cold Mages are a community favorite for their crowd control)
- Corpse Explosion — max fourth; your actual clear-speed tool, scales with your own skill level and the fallen monster's life
- Curses: 1 point each in Amplify Damage (early game) and Lower Resist (mid-late game once available) to soften tough packs; 1 point in Decrepify for boss fights to cut their damage and speed
- 1 point in Bone Armor for a personal damage shield
- 1 point in Clay Golem for an extra body and slow aura, or Iron Golem later if you're feeding it a good weapon
- Remaining points into Corpse Explosion or Skeleton Mastery filler, or into Summon Resist if the army needs elemental survivability
Leveling curse choice matters: Amplify Damage carries you through Normal and Nightmare fights easily since it doubles physical damage taken. Swap emphasis to Lower Resist in Hell once available, since Hell monsters have flat resistance penalties that Lower Resist punches through further, amplifying your Skeletal Mages and Corpse Explosion.
Breakpoints
Summon Necromancers don't rely on personal attack speed, but a few numbers still matter:
| Stat | Breakpoint target | Notes |
|---|
| FHR | 48% (7 frames) is a comfortable early target; 86% (5 frames) endgame if you can spare slots | Prevents your own hit-recovery lock while curse-casting |
| Skeleton count | 13 with maxed Raise Skeleton (11 base + 2 from +skills) | Softcap is 16 skeletons with heavy +skills gear |
| Skeletal Mage count | Scales similarly with +skills, cap around 12-13 | Mage damage output benefits heavily from +skills |
FCR doesn't matter for this build — you're not casting fast-repeating attack spells, just occasional curses and Corpse Explosions.
Gear by Budget Phase
Starter (levels 1-40, essentially free):
- Weapon: any wand with +skeleton or +curse skills, even a plain one
- Shield: any cheap shield for the block/resist
- Armor: whatever rare or magic item has resistances
- Helm: rare with +skills or resist
- No unique items required at all — this is the point of the build
Mid:
- Weapon: a rare +3 Necro skills wand, or Gravenspine/other budget unique wand if found
- Shield: Homunculus or a rare with FHR/resist
- Armor: Skin of the Vipermagi if available, or a resist rare
- Belt: a resist rare belt
- Boots/gloves: resist rares, Magefist for the +1 skills/mana regen (careful of the -25% mana it doesn't have — that's other items; Magefist is safe)
- Rings/amulet: resist rares, +1 skills if cheap
Endgame:
- Weapon: Bone shield of the Necromancer's choice, or a rare wand with +3 skeleton/curse skills and FCR
- Off-hand: a Necromancer head (Homunculus) with +skills, or a rare shield
- Armor: Enigma if you ever want teleport mobility (huge QoL, not required), otherwise Skin of the Vipermagi
- Helm: Harlequin Crest (Shako) for the universal +skills, life, MF and resist
- Belt: Arachnid Mesh or String of Ears for the life/mana leech safety net
- Boots: Gore Rider or War Traveler
- Gloves: Trang-Oul's Claws for poison resist and +skills, or Magefist
- Rings/amulet: Mara's Kaleidoscope for the +2 skills and huge resist chunk, +skills rares
- Charms: +skeleton/curse skillers, life/resist small charms, Annihilus and Torch
The build genuinely never needs endgame gear to farm Hell effectively — the "endgame" tier here is about quality of life (faster clears, more mana, more resist buffer) rather than a hard requirement.
Mercenary Setup
Act 2 Might mercenary boosts your skeletons' physical damage output when standing near them, which stacks nicely with your own army-focused build. Alternatively, an Act 2 Prayer merc with Insight in his weapon supplies free mana regen to keep your curses and Corpse Explosions flowing. Gear the merc in whatever survives — Duriel's Shell or a rare armor, a decent polearm — since he's a bonus damage source, not your main plan.
Best Farming Targets
- Countess — fast, safe rune farming from level 1 onward; your skeletons make short work of the tower
- Andariel / Duriel — Amplify Damage plus a full skeleton wall makes these bosses trivial even underleveled
- Mausoleum / Crypt / Pits (Act 1) — undead-heavy areas with lots of corpses to chain-explode
- Pit — great item density with plenty of fodder for Corpse Explosion chains
- Cows — huge, dense packs; Amplify Damage plus Corpse Explosion turns cow runs into one-button clears
- Chaos Sanctuary — the army tanks the Oblivion Knight packs while you curse and detonate corpses from a safe distance
Leveling Route
This is arguably the smoothest leveling arc of any class. Start with Raise Skeleton and one point in Amplify Damage as soon as it's available, then Skeleton Mastery. Add Clay Golem for the early slow aura and extra tank body. Corpse Explosion comes online meaningfully once you have several skeletons feeding it corpses — start putting points in around clvl 12-18. There's no real respec needed; the leveling build and endgame build are the same skill spread, just with points filled in over time. This is why it's the recommended ladder-start pick for players who want to gear other characters off Countess and early Hell farming without any twinking.
Common Mistakes
- Forgetting to recast Skeleton Mastery-boosted skeletons after leveling it up — mastery only affects skeletons summoned after the point was added, so re-raise your army whenever you level the skill
- Neglecting Amplify Damage/Lower Resist — curses do most of the heavy lifting against tough packs, and skipping them makes fights feel much harder than they should
- Standing too close to danger out of habit — the entire point of the build is staying back and letting the army work
- Under-investing in personal FHR/resist because "the skeletons tank" — you still die to ranged packs and elemental damage if you're careless
- Raising golems before skeletons/mages are capped — golem points are the last priority, not an early one
Related reading: see the Necromancer class overview and Necromancer breakpoints for full skill tree math, the ladder start best classes comparison if you're still deciding on a starter, and the Summon Necromancer endgame guide for the natural build evolution once you have real gear.