mage skelliemacer

[bobbob]

mage skelliemacer

Has anyone tried or know how well a mage summoner works? i would think it's the same principal as a skeleton warrior summoner just with lower resist right? maybe throw a fire golem in there. change your merc to a holy freeze maybe.

i figure this'll help because then with trangs set or bone skill, the lower resist will give you more damage.

 

[Myrakh-2]

Yes, somebody around here is making one of these these.

The basic idea is to use bonewalls to protect your mages, let them drop a monster or two, and CE away the rest as usual.

 

[rickcarson]

Has anyone tried or know how well a mage summoner works? i would think it's the same principal as a skeleton warrior summoner just with lower resist right? maybe throw a fire golem in there. change your merc to a holy freeze maybe.

i figure this'll help because then with trangs set or bone skill, the lower resist will give you more damage.

Search for "Lord of the Mages" or LoM.

Principal is similar, but wildly different.

Golem is not really important. You can add Revives, PNova, BSpear etc to the mix to 'flavour to taste'.

Merc is better *not* being Act 2 merc, especially in Hell, since he gets ganged up on much more so than with say a Skellimancer (who also should probably not use a golem, certainly not in confined spaces, but I digress).

Try Act 1 Rogue, or Act 3 (recommended for PNova only).

All sorts of other skills become a lot more interesting for a LoM than a skellimancer, such as Dim Vision and Bone Prison.

Maybe even PDagger (raise up a bunch of cold mages and tank for them???)

Though stabbing things is not my cup of tea.

 

[rickcarson]

Yes, somebody around here is making one of these these.

The basic idea is to use bonewalls to protect your mages, let them drop a monster or two, and CE away the rest as usual.

If you're going to CE a lot, might as well use amp, then you might as well use skellies, then you might as well use a might merc....

See gvandale's excellent compendium for why.

 

[bobbob]

CE is 1/2 phys and 1/2 fire damage right? so it's helped by amp or lower resist correct?

 

[Mad Mantis]

CE is 1/2 phys and 1/2 fire damage right? so it's helped by amp or lower resist correct?

CE is indeed 50% physical and 50% fire damage. The physical damage is helped by Amp and the fire damage is helped by LR. That is correct.

 

[Tengu]

After reading this I feel like making an "all elemental necro" too

Lower res, poison, mages, fire golem, holy freeze merc, fire from trangs set... It all sounds just so sweeet

 

[izrafel]

After reading this I feel like making an "all elemental necro" too

Lower res, poison, mages, fire golem, holy freeze merc, fire from trangs set... It all sounds just so sweeet

hrmmm i was about to start another necro
mayb i should try this...

 

[Planet_Smasher]

Search for "Lord of the Mages" or LoM.
Merc is better *not* being Act 2 merc, especially in Hell, since he gets ganged up on much more so than with say a Skellimancer (who also should probably not use a golem, certainly not in confined spaces, but I digress).

Are you saying that a skellimancer should NOT use a Golem at the same time as a MERC? That seems ridiculous.

 

[HarbingersOfSkulls]

Are you saying that a skellimancer should NOT use a Golem at the same time as a MERC? That seems ridiculous.

This build uses mages instead of skeletons...but still needs to use a merc to act as a tank even more so than a Summoner.

HoS

 

[rickcarson]

This build uses mages instead of skeletons...but still needs to use a merc to act as a tank even more so than a Summoner.

HoS

An Act 3 Merc is a tank**. Lets think outside the box a little here..

The function of a tank is to stop the monsters from doing damage to you.
An act 3 cold merc does do that.

To a lesser extent, an act 1 cold merc (or with cold damage bow) is also a tank. To an even lesser extent, any other act 1 or act 3 merc is also a tank.

Likewise, all of your cold mages are pretty good tanks, because they slow the monsters down. And your other mages are okayish tanks because they might kill the monster before it gets to you.*

In great numbers, with a ranged merc, the Mages have little or no need for a golem or any other specialist tank.

If you get some Revives, that just adds more tankage than you need.

Since all those little bits of tankage start adding up quickly, a Lord of the Mages has so much tankage, that Bone Armour becomes strictly superfluous.*

A LoM with 1 pt in Raise Skeleton and one point in Revive, with an Iron Golem and only +2 summoning skills (easily shoppable) has 7 minions to tank*, not counting the merc and mages

That compares favourably with, for instance, a summoning Druid(!!!)
3 Dire Wolves
1 Spirit
1 Vine
equals a mere 5 minions. (If you want to count Ravens, thats fine, just the bare minimum of mages (3) will even the tally back up to 10 a piece... and the LoM still hasn't included the merc...

You might complain that some of the minions on the LoM side of that comparison are 'paper thin', but if you do, then of course I would point out that some of the Druids minions in that some example are 'tissue thin'.

*With the obvious caveat, that these apply more to normal and nightmare than hell, where all bets are off. As they say, your mileage may vary.

** Since an Act 3 cold merc turns everything to icecubes in hell, I don't recommend them except possibly for a good PNova build, since in hell (but not so much the other difficulties) he can make it very hard to find corpses.

----------

My conclusion: that people who say Mages need tanks have not really considered the issue, or are using their mages badly (pretty much by definition, if you're a skellimancer you are using your mages badly, because if you weren't, then you'd be using your skellies badly... (which would be a lot worse)).

 

[Myrakh-2]

Sorry, but at least the cold mages SUCK as tanks.

Their glacial spike does stop monsters. Unless they are cold immune. Unless they are spread apart, so the splash damage doesn't hit all of them (which is usually the case).

A cold mage is VERY BAD at killing monsters, since his damage is very low. He will retreat when monsters get close to him, which causes him to draw the monsters back to you.

And yes, I've used them. In the previous ladder; I thought cold damage would be a nice addition to the lightning and fire damage from my Trapsin. The cold mage only worked well enough if I used the shadow master to tank, so the mage could glacial-spike the monsters that crowded around the shadow master.

Things would be worse with a A1 cold "tank": they don't freeze the monsters, just chill. So unless you can give them a high damage bow they are useless (they have the same AI, retreating when monsters get too close).

Skeleton mages actually make much better tanks, as they don't retreat. They are also easier to resurrect on-site. The A3 cold mage doesn't die a lot, IF you can protect him from the monsters --- the combination of his "coward AI" and careful play to prevent him from retreating into other packs does protect him well enough.

For an LoM build, I would definitely use an A1 merc --- their ranged attacks with a decent bow should be superior to the A3 spells. Although that's just a first guess; I would probably try to find damage tables for the fire/lightning mages first (I assume it's similar to the skeleton mages: the fire/lightning versions do damage; the cold version does a bit of damage, but it's mainly there for the chilling. The poison version doesn't do any damage, but does a great job at preventing healing --- I don't think anything else in the game gives you 500 seconds and more poison duration).