Bowmancer and Clay Golem Help

[timevalue]

Bowmancer and Clay Golem Help

Hey all,

I wanted to ask...are there any good Bowmancer guides around? I checked the strategy guides to no avail. Couldn't find anything in the "Mouldy Tome" either.

I am thinking of finally starting my old Nitromancer build idea and I wondered if using a bow with maxed CE to back up my Golems/Revives would be do-able in Hell....

I'm trying to figure out how much to put in the DEX attribute to make this work. As for Clay Golem....I also wonder if its "Slow" ability is being underestimated by most players. Yes, having max Clay Golem seems like a waste...but at 63% slow (even more with + skills) it would seem like a huge boon to the Nitro-Bowmancer when monsters are THREE times as slow as normal while I am shooting away with a bow and using a maxed CE.

Any thoughts? Thanks for reading.

~timevalue

 

[Mad Mantis]

Re: Bowmancer and Clay Golem Help

I'm trying to figure out how much to put in the DEX attribute to make this work.

Bows need the Dex for equipping. That will be your main goal. The extra Dex also increases bow damage, but the increase is not that high. Dex for AR is not recommended since it doesn't really work in the Necro's case. So just pick a bow you would like to use for endgame and aim for that Dex.

As for Clay Golem....I also wonder if its "Slow" ability is being underestimated by most players.

I guess the problem is the fact that at level 10 Clay already has 51% Slow and that 10 more skill points only add 12% more slow. The diminishing returns kick in too hard for most folk to spend points on.

 

[timevalue]

Re: Bowmancer and Clay Golem Help

Mad Mantis,

Thanks for replying to my post. The thing about the slow % diminishing returns is tricky, though.

If I have a lvl 10 CG with 51% slow compared to a maxed CG (with some + skills) for a 66% slow, the monsters fighting the lvl 10 CG will actually be almost 50% faster than the monsters fighting the max CG + some skillers, wouldn't it?

In other words, a monster slowed to 49% of its original speed would be almost 50% faster than a monster slowed to 34% of its original speed. There's still diminishing returns here, yeah, but it doesn't seem as bad as it first looks on paper.

~timevalue

EDIT - It almost seems like Blizzard *had* to assign diminishing slow% returns to keep the CG's slow ability from becoming seriously overpowered.

 

[Mad Mantis]

Re: Bowmancer and Clay Golem Help

From a standard players point of view the returns are incredibly diminishing. You can hit the 51% real easy with a mere one point and some +skills. That is why it is underestimated.

What I don't follow are your calculations comparing percentages. Either I'm missing something or you've done something wrong.

 

[timevalue]

Re: Bowmancer and Clay Golem Help

Mad Mantis,

Let me see if I can figure out a clear example of what I mean. For this example let's say a monster is standing next to my Clay Golem and my Clay Golem is being attacked by this monster.

For simplicity's sake let's assume that the Clay Golem is *always* hit (we'll just ignore the monster's 95% max chance to hit so I can show my reasoning more easily). Also, let's assume that my Clay Golem is being hit for 100 hps of damage every second during combat.

If I have a lvl 10 CG it will have a 51% slow rate. The monster then attacks at 49% of its normal speed. It would take the monster just about 2 seconds to inflict 100 hps of damage in that case.

If my CG is lvl 20 + some skills items to make the slow rate 66%, it would force the monster to attack at about 34% of its normal speed. At this point it would take the monster 3 seconds to inflict 100 hps of damage.

Taking 2 seconds to inflict 100 hps of damage is about 50% faster than taking 3 seconds to inflict 100 hps of damage.

If I really went *all out* on the CG slow ability with + skills items and could somehow beef up the CG to lvl 35 or so, I could achieve around 75% slow....In this case it would take the monster FOUR seconds to inflict 100 hps of damage. A monster slowed by 51% is actually almost *twice* as fast as a monster slowed by 75%.

Each slow % you gain beyond 50% is actually more and more critical to slow ability:

50% slow = 2 seconds to inflict 100 hps
66% slow = 3 seconds to inflict 100 hps
75% slow = 4 seconds to inflict 100 hps
80% slow = 5 seconds to inflict 100 hps
90% slow = 10 seconds to inflict 100 hps
95% slow = 20 seconds to inflict 100 hps
99% slow = 100 seconds to inflict 100 hps

~timevalue

 

[DH Amazon]

Re: Bowmancer and Clay Golem Help

No time to check, but I think there is cap how much you can slow down from one source of slow.
For bosses and champions its 50% and for normal monsters 75%. Or something like that.

So above 50% slow from golem is quite useless, it can tank those normal monsters more than fine.

Those high lvl golems survive just fine, rarely need to recast.

I have high lvl glay golem, at 20000 life it still get killed, but when I push it over 30 000 life, its survived just fine, more than fine. Still some monsters, like uber Lilith kills it quite fast.

 

[timevalue]

Re: Bowmancer and Clay Golem Help

DH Amazon,

I don't know if there is a slow % cap or not, either. I wasn't too worried about whether an easily re-castable Clay Golem would be a good tank or not. My thinking was more along the lines that a high slow % allows your merc/minions/Poison Nova/etc. to get a lot more damage done without taking nearly as much in return from super-slow monsters.

In a very real sense, raising the slow % from 50% to 75% can be considered just as strong of an improvement as from 0% to 50%.

~timevalue

 

[Mad Mantis]

Re: Bowmancer and Clay Golem Help

@timevalue: I see now. I did make a mistake.

No time to check, but I think there is cap how much you can slow down from one source of slow.
For bosses and champions its 50% and for normal monsters 75%. Or something like that.

Info on Slow. It says that %slow is capped at 90% per source.

 

[Ax2Grind]

Re: Bowmancer and Clay Golem Help

It depends on how you build a character with which to decide how much slowing. If you believe one source of slowing, down to 50%, is enough and you should aim at pushing other things up to a decent level (all grade C, or average), then Clay Golem is all you need, and not very high at that. If you're looking to prioritize slowing, you tend to give up something(s) to make it B, and there's the tendency to drop many things to D level. Whereas abusing it on a one-trick pony puts everything else in nearly useless grades. The only thing that tends to counter this is a gawdly build, with gawdly gear, etc. For instance, an elemental zealot (Zenic, which maxes Holy Shock) only care about attack speed and accuracy, letting physical damage wane. The advantage is that won't be missed, as Zeal is cheap and almost any form of mana retrieval works.

BTW, if I'm not mistaken, dexterity is used for five things: equipping weapons, blocking, attack rating, damage, defense. The blocking is useless with a bow, damage is almost negligible with elemental attacks on a Necromancer, and defense may be worse than both since he won't be using armors or bonuses, as from a Defiance Warrior, for it to be worth the investment. Attack rating is incidental as you have more than one meatshield, especially since charms or other effects can take care of that. So, pick a bow, up your dex, and you're done.

 

[NumtyDoo]

Re: Bowmancer and Clay Golem Help

(Mentioned on Mantis' attached thread) I too have noticed that bosses under the effect of decrep,clay golem, and cold at the same time never cast, half the time they don't even melee, they seem to get interupted half way through.

 

[timevalue]

Re: Bowmancer and Clay Golem Help

After thinking about all this slowing....

---A maxed-out poison mancer (20 each, PDagger, PExplosion, and PNova synergies)

---Maxed Clay Golem

---A few points in Revives, curses (such as Lower Resist)

---Holy Freeze Act 2 Merc


Sounds like it might be a fun alternative build!

~timevalue