Pure fire golem necromancer??

Z

Zoid

Diabloii.Net Member
Pure fire golem necromancer??

Ok, so I'm starting HC on ladder and I want a build that isn't gear dependant and has a good chance of surviving. Just so I can find items for my future, more gear dependant chars.

So I thought about making a pure fire golem build since I've never seen anyone use that kind of build before, and it just seems like fun.:laugh: That way I can hang back practically naked/high MF'ed while my loyal golem puts his miserable life on the line for me.

Obviously I'll have trouble in hell because of all the fire immunes, but is it a good build before that? Also, fire golem has no less than 5 synergies, so maxing all synergies isn't an option. Which skill setup would be best for making a good golem?

Many of you may not have alot of experience with a pure fire golem build, but speculations are welcome too.:thumbsup:

Edit: on a second thought, I could just mix up the golems when facing fire immunes, so the only real problems should be fire & physical immunes.
 
G

grausherra

Diabloii.Net Member
Iron Golem is the key.

Crappy uniques that no one else will use will make hawt golems.

I keep my brother supplied with items and he got a golemancer to 80 with no issues. 20 iron, fire, mastery, and some clay/blood is good.

Take the crowd control curses so you don't get raped while your golem goes to town. Get decrepify and use it all the time, it plus a slow from a merc keeps mobs under control. Don't take many points in the curses, 1 is fine, let your +skills boost it.

Keep some CB items for bosses, and get yourself an act2 merc, defiance or holy freeze are good. Don't skimp on his gear either. Kelpie snare, tal rashas mask and a bp of your choice, bare minimum. Woestave and face of horros are good options for lower levels.

Skill layout:

10 clay
1 blood
5 summon resistance
20 iron golem
20 fire golem
20 golem mastery

1 to all curses( good utility for the points)

Focus on maxing iron/fire first, then mastery and clay. Get the curses as they become available. Keep decrepify up to hit mobs with, will help your golem and merc live longer. Use terror/dim/confuse/attract to stop from being mobbed.

This skill layout is aimed at lvl 80ish, put extra into clay for more AR, blood for life, or summon resistance for resists, as you need.

Unless you are fighting a mob where the fire golems fire absorb/resistance is necassary you will probably be better off with an iron at most times.
 
Z

Zoid

Diabloii.Net Member
Thanks for your reply, you make a good point about using crappy uniques for iron golem. I'll give it a go:thumbsup:
 
G

grausherra

Diabloii.Net Member
I got a bunch of unique silver edged axes that make golems of horrible rapedness. Random rares work well too.
 
G

grausherra

Diabloii.Net Member
A good story. However the skills therein leave something to be desired in. 20 summon resistance is horribly waste!

The possible synergies from golems are:
Clay- 20AR/lvl
Blood- +5% life/lvl
Iron- 35 def/lvl
Fire- 6% dmg/lvl
Mastery- 25 AR/ 20%life/ +velocity
Summon resistance- diminishing returns on +resitances

Right off the bat we can safely say that 20 iron is a necessity. It is by far the best killer of the group.

Next since we use our golem for the largest portion of our DPS fire golem seems to also be a must-have.

Blood golem synergies effect is inferior to golem mastery in every way. Since we only have so many points, lets chose golem mastery.

Summon resistance gets to poor returns after about 6 skill points. Since a +2 necro skills wand a circlet can be easily found, shope,d or imbued, I'd assume I can get +5 necro skills quite easily untwinked. Lets leave it at 1 for this reason. If you are afriad of not being able to find/shop items with +skills, take it to 2 or 3 max. Those points could be better spent elsewhere.

So far we are at:
20 fire
20 iron
20 mastery
1 to all curses(for utility)

That leaves us clay golem for the remaining points. The AR will help.... unless you are smart and make irons out ofcrappy socketable weapons with an ETH rune or 2 in it. Or a weapon with ITD on it, that can be shopped :p

Nevertheless I'd drop 5 or so points in it early game for survivability, then max it last.

So now we prioritize our skillpoints when leveling:

Top priority: Get whatever curses open up! They are all handy in one situation or another. And only a single point!

Clay golem to 5! You need it to slow the boss mobs! Always summon a clay first to land a slow, unless you have a really, really hawt iron made form exspensive gear!

And then: Iron/fire/Mastery! Really, it doesnt matter. Judge based on what is happening to you at the time. Depending on your style you might find that your golem lacks survivability, in which case take mastery for life or iron for defense. If you lack damage take Fire. If you golem drags *** between mobs, take amstery for the speed boost.

As you level up you can spend your skill points on whats available, but you'll end up heavy on clay early. This is fine. I prefer to save them, but its hard and slows you down!


Also, stats:

Str - Enough for your gear.... id stay low(definatly 100 or less)
Dex - Vit returns crappy life, keep max block for christsake!
Vit - all the rest
Energy - base

Get a sigons shield as a baseline, keep max block with it, despite what you use actually. It roughly reflects the blocking on a homonculus, mosers, or KoKoMal shield, which are things you should aim for!

(BTW for those of you who see a discrepancy in this advice and my earlier post, I got interested enough to go back to my notes from my golemancer and look up why I took the skills I did :p)
 
G

grausherra

Diabloii.Net Member
Yay double post!

If you actually enjoy this playstyle, consider a modified cleric.

20 prayer
20 Holy Bolt
1 Meditation

Run meditation and keep your merc alive with bolts/prayer! I hear that with the new runeword Peace (Shael Thul Amn) you can swing to get a Valk proc, and have 2 death machines to keep healed.

You could also use a Metalgrid, Stone Runeword, or one of the many other uniques/runewords that give you an off-class pet instead(harmony lets you hardcast a crappy valk as well).

Later points can go into damage synergies for holy bolt, or holy shield/defiance for max block and Def to make a barb chick blush.
 
drinkturps

drinkturps

Diabloii.Net Member
I'm kind of intrigued about this now. Which merc would be most suitable?

You don't really want a defiance merc or do you? Do you want the iron golem to get hit a lot so it will reflect back the damage? Do you want it safe as it will be dealing out the damage? Depends what you make it out of I guess.

Holy freeze? Slow them all down so your bad boys do the work?

There's a lot of possibilities. Would a point in revive be frowned upon?

I'm going to have to make one.
 
G

grausherra

Diabloii.Net Member
The damage reflected by the iron golem is really poor. Past norm al it will be completely negligable.

I'd take holy freeze, which will significantly slow down monsters when paired with decrepify. Your golem and your merc will love yolu for this, and you don't want to lose a really good golem or pay out the nose repeatedly to keep your merc ressed.

Edit: I'd say at the point your using revives, your a summonmancer :p Of course thats personal opinion.
 
NecromanSassin

NecromanSassin

Diabloii.Net Member
I would spend any extra points in Revive's, but that's just my style of play.

It would be real fun to toy around with Thorns and Iron Maiden with Iron :scratch:
 
waflob

waflob

Diabloii.Net Member
There has been no mention of Corpse Explosion so far. I took part in a tourney a while ago where CE wasn't encouraged. I ended up placing one skill point in Raise Skeleton, not for the skeleton itself, but as a cheap way to get rid of corpses that kept getting revived by shamans, unravellers etc. I don't think act 2 would have been possible without this strategy.

In the tourney, I was lucky enough to find a Pus Spitter, so while the golem and merc were prodding away, I was standing back plinking the monsters with the xbow. Got all the way to hell act 2 before getting swarmed. Was a fun build.

DelBoy
 
AgentMarth

AgentMarth

Diabloii.Net Member
I still think an untwinked Poisonmancer would do more damage with NO plus skills then any untwinked golemmancer with +5 plus skills. With Mastery, Clay, Iron, and Fire all maxed and +10 skills, Sparky will do 578-636. With Nova, Dagger, Explosion maxed with NO plus skills, Nova will be at 1781 - 1953 (Assuming the calculator is correct).

If Rusty dies, which he most certainly will eventually, you'll lose your item. Sparky will be weak to immunes, if not weak in general, Gumby won't kill a damn thing, and the other is not really even good enough to mention.

It may be a fun build to play through for a test of skill, but for your first character or MFer, its not a viable choice IMO. You also will have more skill points the poison route for more meatshields, while your golems will tank well, having 10+ tanks is better than about 2.

You'll have a Merc either way so I don't include him in damage output.

To be honest, I'm quite curious as to why, if you don't mind the stand behind minions playstyle, that you don't just go with your standard Fishymancer.
 
G

grausherra

Diabloii.Net Member
AgentMarth, I fail to see in this entire post where anyone has claimed a golemancer will out dps a poisonmancer...

Some of us play odd builds because we've already played everything else. Or for simple variety.

If you need the easiest MF capable necromancer, a fishymancer is the safest bet by far.

However the poster asked about a golemancer, hence why the posts that follow it discuss mainly golemancy.
 
AgentMarth

AgentMarth

Diabloii.Net Member
Zoid said:
Ok, so I'm starting HC on ladder and I want a build that isn't gear dependant and has a good chance of surviving. Just so I can find items for my future, more gear dependant chars.
Click to expand...
Thats what he said, a non gear dependent, safe, MFer. I may have assumed a bit to much that he didn't want a Fishymancer, sorry about that, so I recommended Poison if he didn't want the standard Fishymancer. He also asked if it was a good build, which I don't think it is hence why you don't see any of them around. I don't deny though, that they could be fun, but as a first character/MFer, I personally wouldn't do it, especially in HC.

As I said in my previous post "It may be a fun build to play through for a test of skill, but for your first character or MFer, its not a viable choice IMO." If he chooses to do it well than the best of luck to him, but I still think it wouldn't be great for a first character, which is my opinion, which he can disregard if he chooses.

He ask for opinions on a Golemancer, and I gave mine, just because I recommended something else doesn't mean he has to do it.



 
drinkturps

drinkturps

Diabloii.Net Member
I'm so far up to level 21 with my Golemancer. 1 point in each curse and a few in gumby. Been pumping mastery so when I do get to rusty, it will be at a reasonable level. Been saving rare's and junk uniques to experiment with.

It's an interesting build. Quite a challenge, as I've gone the max block route he's very fragile. Gumby can take a pounding at the moment whilst my act1 merc sits back and pumps away. I've gone for Corpse Explosion and I'm going to go for revives too. It takes a lot longer to do things but it's interesting and fun.
 
L

Lycanthronick

Diabloii.Net Member
As far as Fire Golem goes.... with 20 hard points into Fire Golem, and 16 plus skills, it will cost you 400 mana to cast 1 Fire Golem. Your return for the 45+ points you just spent is....

Mana cost: 400
Damage: 10 - 27 (ø18.5)
Fire damage: 656 - 720 (ø688)
Aura Fire Damage: 43 - 45 (ø44.5)
Attack Rating: 1040
Defense: 860
Hit Points: 2582
Absorb Fire: 95%
Resist fire: 164%
Resist cold: 64%
Resist lightning: 64%
Resist poison: 64%

If you max Iron Golem and Golem Mastery you will have this....

Mana cost: 35
Damage: 15 - 41 (ø28.5)
Attack Rating: 1000
Defense: 1400
Hit Points: 2524
Resist lightning: 114%
Resist poison: 164%
Resist fire: 64%
Resist cold: 64%
Damage returned: 675%

In addition to the item you use, and its properties. This constitutes the best option for a Golem Mancer hands down, with 1 pt in all other Golems.

If you think you'll be able to lay back and have it easy with a Golemmancer though, your playing the wrong build. To get through hell you will have to malee or range attack, as well as curse effectively, to get this difficult build through Hell. Sinking 20pts into Bone Wall and Bone Prison would help you buff/surive and give crouds something to pound on while your Merc and Golem+You pound on them. Iron Maiden+Bonewall is also an effective tactic vs Malee Monsters. I know many Golemmancers don't use CE for the reason that the whole point of this build is to be challenged. But if using CE doesn't bother you, 1-20 pts in it should take your difficulty of making it through Hell about zilch.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top