1 or 20 to skeleton mages

[Hellemyr]

1 or 20 to skeleton mages

Hello

Is skeleton mages worth 20 points?

Im building a skele nerco and the plan is to take

20 skeleton
20 skeleton mastery
20 corpes explotion
1-20 skeleton mage???
1-5 to amp damage
1 decrafy
1-5 clay golem??
1 revive
1-or more in summon resist?

So shud i take 20 in skele mages, or just 1 and take some in maybe bone armor or more in sumon resist, clay golem, revive?

I konw that skele mages get a nice elemental damange if you put som points in them, but everyone in hell got alot of magic resist and\or imuneties.

What do you guys think?

 

[MalVeauX]

Heya,

I've gone the plain old Mastery/Skeleton/CE route and dumped the rest of my points into high levels curses for radius and duration. I've also dumped points in another build into Revives for additional meat. Then rebuilt and did the full skeleton route with Mastery/Skeleton/Mage/CE all maxed. My remaining points when into Dim Vision and 1 point wonder curses.

The Mages don't really do damage at all. But, they do other things that are very helpful. Poison is a big deal. It's duration is very long and so there's no healing during your beatings. Cold is great. It's duration is long too. Monsters chill even though you're not using holyfreeze merc, since you've no doubt got might going on. The lighting and fire guys are just.... fireworks for show. Mages are great tanks too. They hang back around you and always attack something and get in the way. So things that are getting past your front line skellies will bash on a Mage. It's one more layer of protection, like absorbing those rouge lighting bolts from an LE monster for you. They die fast, but resummoning is easy and you can keep doing it until you get as many poison/cold mages as you need. The more Mages you have, the more poison/chill you will have spread out to more monsters.

After trying hybrids and revive builds, I find Mages to be much more effective for my style. Some folk use poison as a Hybrid setup with their Fishy. I like just having 12 more skeletons that shoot poison and ice and support my other 12 super skeletons who deal the physical damage. It makes it a better engine to produce a body so that I can explode it and level the field.

Try things out. Don't be afraid to rebuild either if you don't like something.

Cheers, :Sunny:

 

[anilrobo]

The Mages don't really do damage at all. But, they do other things that are very helpful.

Well mages do considerable damage, but it's less as compared to skeletons which can chunk out a good deal of damage. There was a thread here where someone compared killing hell Mephisto with mages alone, and with skeletons alone. He concluded that although mages take some extra time to kill, they still add to your total killing power. In my opinion, placing more than one point in curses is waste because you can always recast a curse by clicking one more time. And once you are fully geared, your curse radius is fairly large with just one point. And don't forget Trang Oul's gloves (+2 to curses)!

Mages are great tanks too. They hang back around you and always attack something and get in the way. So things that are getting past your front line skellies will bash on a Mage. It's one more layer of protection, like absorbing those rouge lighting bolts from an LE monster for you. They die fast, but resummoning is easy and you can keep doing it until you get as many poison/cold mages as you need.

Vouch!

 

[JayhawkFan]

i never found the need to have maxed mages. 1 pt with plus skills is good enough for me for the extra-tough PI Stone skin monsters. rather than mages and curses, i invested 1 pt into bone armor and 20 into bone wall. i think my bone armor is around ~450 which is a considerably high recastable shield.

 

[Archangel Manael]

I'd max Skeleton mages once you have a decent Corps Explosion and Revives.

I'm going for max SM, RS, RSM, CE, and then rest distributed between revives, summon resist, decrip and prerequisites.

 

[BlargX]

What you are going to see here are tons of very opinionated answers. Which is fine, just take it all with a giant grain of salt. Some advice will be and I think already is a little unbalanced.

Revives -- how big a mana pool do you have and how many do you really need? Do you have enigma to keep them from wandering off constantly in the first place? A single point will get even someone with pretty low level equipment a half dozen or more. There are probably better places to spend more points.

Curses -- They are far from valuable only because more points extend their duration. They cover more area. This is very valuable with dim vision. It's valuable with amplify too, but you have to ask yourself, do you want all the things you've dim-visioned to suddenly see you again if you cast a boosted amplify on what your army is fighting at the moment? You can only have one or the other at once. Since your army can only fight so many guys in so broad an area, there's a lot to be said for making amp a one-point wonder and, if you boost any curse, to boost dim vision instead of amplify.

Mages -- very useful as meatshields sometimes, but also get in the way quite a bit. Additionally, they die fairly quickly unless you have a ton of plus skills, and it takes a long time and a LOT of corpses to keep recasting them so you always get the cold and poison ones. You can get many bad and time-consuming runs of casting that don't get you what you want. The tediousness of trying to get the right mages shouldn't be understated -- this is a game, after all, and it's about fun in the end, not tedious busywork. Plus, when you run out of corpses and still can't get the poison mages and cold mages in sufficient number you want(remember they keep dying), it won't matter how many points you put in skeleton mages -- all of them will be unsatisfactory for the situation at hand.

Finally, the summoner is an extremely rebuildable character. You may not get your ideal build right away. It's probably pretty common that people don't. So if you want to experiment, go ahead. Just make your experiments coherent instead of little side trips here and there that all eventually add up to nothing. Get your main strengths, then some helper strengths that are still strong, and see how you like those helpers. The basic 20 in RS, SM, and CE will always be strong. If you're methodical and thoughtful, you can experiment a lot and refine your game over time and still enjoy characters who don't wind up to be precisely your favorite build in the end.

 

[Perfect Hatred]

I found this quote from one of the greatest summoner players in the world :grin:

A summoner should definitely max out skelly mages. Why?

1.Free extra damage (especially if you use infinity on merc to boost mage damage). The damage is NOT negligible. If you wanna see your mages damage in action then go to WSK and find some physical immune monsters and dont cast amplify damage but let your mages handle them alone and you will see the monsters go down fast (if you have 16 mages like me and level 45-50 mage skill level anyways).

2. Mages have 6 minutes or more of poison damage duration to prevent monster heal even when you are in town or out resurrecting your army after a retreat from battle.

3. Cold mages have crazy chill duration, on Hell usually 6-7 seconds to slow monsters down.

4. extra tanks to keep the master safe.

5. Mages attack from a distance and so can never be blocked by crowding and prevented from attacking enemies like your melee skellies.

6. Occasionally you come up again a monster with unbreakable physical immunity and then you will see that it goes down quickly because of mages.

And it isnt like there are any other good skills to put the skillpoints into after you max out the 3 fishymancer skills. Pointless to go bone/poison attacks since you cant get synergies properly, Bone armour is annoying to recast all the time and isnt worth it after the marrowwalk bug was fixed, curses are marginally improved by additional skillpoints if you have high + all skills already.

Especially I cant recommend Dim vision because a well equipped summoner that is high level has no problem with any ranged attacks whatsoever. If you find black souls hurt you too much then socket 2 Lo in shield and helm to get your lightning resist to 85% and they wont be much of a problem. Amplify damage is always a better choice than dim vision to have on monsters. Only a hardcore summoner would have use for Dim vision since death is not an option there.

I recently got my hands on a shrunken head with +3 summon skills and +2 raise skelly mage to use for prebuffing my mages so they will be even nastier now hehe

 

[bogie]

To me its not really a question >_>. What else are you going to spend your points on?

Finaly point layout for a summoner should look like this.

20 Raise Skeleton
20 Skeleton Mastery
20 Raise Skeletal Mage
20 Corpse Explosion
1 in all Golems
1 Golem Mastery
1 Revives
1 Summon Resist
1 in Amp, Terror, IM, Decript, and any preqs.
1 in rest of the preqs I missed.

Gumby already has ridiculous hp, and costs next to nothing to renew, so wheres the point in buffing him further? Summon resist gives a pretty much useless return for skillpoint wise after 5 points, you should have +20 or so to summoning with decent gear, so this shouldnt be a problem. Curses only need 1, as do revives, who manages to keep up 20+ revives neway?

-Bogie

 

[BlargX]

Perfect Hatred, I think you sell bone armor way short.

 

[Eilo Rytyj]

Bone Armor is only a 1 point wonder on a Summoner anywho. Like Perfect Hatred said, you don't have the points to invest in it to make it absorb more than 1 or 2 hits. I have never used it though, I've never needed to since I know how to play a Summoner safely and properly.

Mages are personal preference. I prefer to max them because I see them as a potent secondary source of damage. When a broken Physical Immune is still at 80%+ phys resist, Mages turn out to trump the Skellys in the damage against those particular monsters. And then there's those unbreakable Phys Immune bosses; Mages are your only reliable way of taking care of those.

I also agree with Hatred in that you get 4 or 5 more meat shields to guard your pasty little behind. It's like an active version of Bone Armor really, only it absorbs hundreds of times more damage than BA ever could.

 

[jkra]

I used to always say no. But Rawness had a good reply on a previous thread about why mages are the best place to put your points after you maxed the essential skills. I think I've come around to his point of view.

The dealbreaker is going to be in your equipment. Do you have enigma? Do you have in infinity? Enigma will allow you to place your mages where you want them to be. Infinity will make them hurt.

 

[BobCox]

It's a build choice, Add them late with extra points or early if you know you have the equipment needed.
It's a lot more summons and takes some time to get the ones you may need for some situations so if the build is already seeming slow or you don't have a good Internet connection skip it but very nice to just collect the type you need to damage the mobs in a immune to this or that area.
It's nice for ubers if you plan on that, adds lots more meat sheild and they can Keep a long poison on them so you can run to town etc.
Whats the Merc going to use? If he has conviction then use them.

 

[Eilo Rytyj]

Even if you don't have Infinity, still 20 points is desired.

I'd wait until at least RS and SM are maxed and all the other 1 point wonder are taken care of before putting more than 1 point in it. You can max it alongside Corpse Explosion - alternating skill points, or max it before or after CE. Either way, throw the full 20 point there.

 

[spigot]

Using the necro pet calculator I worked out that I get an average of about 5k dps from my skelly mages and 19k dps from my normal skellys, proportionally I think thats well worth having. I think they're well worth it and as bogie said, what else are you gonna spend your points on? I too would tend to put my points into it last, max RS SM CE and get all your 1 point wonders in and then max it, it makes a difference, trust me.

 

[StatusCloud]

But in HC, shouldn't we consider Dim Vision in priority? Or is it possible to run it with lvl 1? While poor geared, what I most worry about in HC are ranged attacks. Before reading this topic, I was intent to max Dim Vision... If I want Skel Mages, how should I work it out?

 

[tigercan]

But in HC, shouldn't we consider Dim Vision in priority? Or is it possible to run it with lvl 1? While poor geared, what I most worry about in HC are ranged attacks. Before reading this topic, I was intent to max Dim Vision... If I want Skel Mages, how should I work it out?

I know I do.

DV saved my hide more times than I could count with my fishymancer, and if it's HC you only get one chance.

If it's SC & you're not worried about dying, then yes - I'd suggest mages. In HC it'd be DV all the way (10 mages aren't going to stop gloam lightning from hitting you, DV will)

 

[Jary]

How much does Lower Resist + INfinity merc help mages?

Does anyone have a vid or clip of mages killing Mephy raw vs mages killing Mephy with lower resist + Infinity or something like that.

That'd be something cool to see.

I mean, someone could argue that poison nova does crap damage too... but all of a sudden, Dweb + lvl 32 lower resist... [email protected]#! lol

 

[BlargX]

If you go mages, I wouldn't alternate them with CE at all. CE is much more useful, and mages very quickly start to take multiple points to get the next one. CE also really needs its radius increased quickly at first, because it starts out so short. You'll need more bodies to use it and therefore use much more mana for much less effect at first.

Throwing in enough points to get three mages before maxing CE won't make you suffer, but after that many mages your points start to become much less useful in mages than they would in CE. I think mages are better later and in small amounts before CE is maxed.

 

[relliKniaP]

Hello

Is skeleton mages worth 20 points?

Im building a skele nerco and the plan is to take

20 skeleton
20 skeleton mastery
20 corpes explotion
1-20 skeleton mage???
1-5 to amp damage
1 decrafy
1-5 clay golem??
1 revive
1-or more in summon resist?

So shud i take 20 in skele mages, or just 1 and take some in maybe bone armor or more in sumon resist, clay golem, revive?

I konw that skele mages get a nice elemental damange if you put som points in them, but everyone in hell got alot of magic resist and\or imuneties.

What do you guys think?

You dont need mages for dmg since ordinary skelies do the job.
Mages die faster than ordinary skeletons, so as tanks, they wont last long.
Also, they tend to stand exactly on a doorway and generally suck at positioning. They can complicate things for you.

I would put just a single point in mages since you only need theirs "on-hit effects" like poison and chill, which come very handy vs act bosses and other single, tough targets. And its fun.

By the way, i suggest only 1 point in CE. With some +skills its radius is gonna be more than sufficient.
I wouldnt put more than 1 point in Amplify and Clay Golem either.

 

[SoCoOffroading]

You dont need mages for dmg since ordinary skelies do the job.
Mages die faster than ordinary skeletons, so as tanks, they wont last long.
Also, they tend to stand exactly on a doorway and generally suck at positioning. They can complicate things for you.

I would put just a single point in mages since you only need theirs "on-hit effects" like poison and chill, which come very handy vs act bosses and other single, tough targets. And its fun.

By the way, i suggest only 1 point in CE. With some +skills its radius is gonna be more than sufficient.
I wouldnt put more than 1 point in Amplify and Clay Golem either.

So what do you spend all your points on if you only do 1 in CE and Mage?