Bone Wall

Bone Wall Class: Necromancer (Diablo II) Required Level: 12 Skill Tree: Poison and Bone Spells Requires: Bone Armor Active Cost: 17 Mana Creates a barrier of bone. Damage Type: Physical Synergies: Bone Armor, Bone Prison, Bone Spear, Teeth, Bone Spirit

Bone Wall is a Necromancer skill in Diablo II.

Lore

This spell enables the Necromancer to call upon the remnants of the spirits of all the creatures who have ever died in the area. It accumulates their fossilized remains and summons forth from the ground a barrier of dense, fossilized bone. This spell is an effective method for keeping adversaries from reaching a Necromancer, while allowing him to attack from range or make his escape.

Synergies

• Gives synergy to:

Teeth: +15% Magic Damage per level

Bone Armor: +15 Damage absorbed per level

Bone Spear: +8% Magic damage per level

Bone Prison: +8% Life per level

Bone Spirit: +8% Magic damage per level

• Receives synergy from:

Bone Armor: +10% Life per level

Bone Prison: +10% Life per level

Usage

Bone Wall acts as a temporary wall, allowing the user to safely attack with ranged attacks or run away. If leveled and used correctly, this skill can last the Necromancer even into Hell difficulty.

The Hit Point numbers below are only for Normal difficulty; the life of the barrier scales up with Nightmare and Hell. It is possible for some enemies to ignore the wall and run around it to pursue the Necromancer without bothering to attack through the wall's health total.

The wall does not block most of the Necromancer's own missile attacks. However, in a group, this skill is of more harm than use, as for other classes it blocks both pathing and projectiles.

Skill Progression

Mana Cost: 17
Duration: 24 seconds

Level	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11
Hit Points	20	25	30	35	39	44	49	54	58	63	68

Level	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	25
Hit Points	73	77	82	87	92	96	101	106	111	136

Note that most skill points increase wall Hit Points by 5, but every 4 skill points it is only 4, and that all synergies increase the wall HP by 10%, which is relative to the base health of the wall from direct skill points. Therefore, the optimal upgrade path is to get the base Hit Point total up to about 50, at which point a synergy point gives about as much HP as a direct skill point. Then, loosely alternate between synergies and direct points so that +5 * current synergy % stays about equal to +10% * base wall HP.

This results in an optimal strategy (roughly): Direct skill points up to level 8, synergies up to 3, direct points up to 12, synergies up to 7, direct points up to 16, synergies up to 11, direct points up to 20. There is a discontinuity on direct skill point tiers that only give +4 HP, where the immediate benefit of the point is not as great as a point in a synergy, but after a certain amount of synergy it is better to take the point anyway because the next point makes up for it.

Trivia

This section contains facts and trivia relevant to this article.

• "Bonefarming" is a term given to a bug that existed until Patch 1.03. It consisted of casting Bone Wall then running far enough away that the Wall destroyed itself and dropped loot. This bug is thought to have been in the game mechanism of automatically killing off summons that were too far away from the caster, where instead of killing off a Bone Wall it would only detach it from the caster, giving it the default monster stats for that area instead.