quick quick question

[Seungyoun]

quick quick question

what do you guys prefer when it comes to a summon necro (perhaps this sounds like a newb question to you) maxing out skeletal magi or one of the golems. If so which golem?

 

[HarbingersOfSkulls]

what do you guys prefer when it comes to a summon necro (perhaps this sounds like a newb question to you) maxing out skeletal magi or one of the golems. If so which golem?

With the 1.10 patch...they kinda make it not worth maxxing any of the golems...that's one reason why golemancer's are very seldom seen and are only made now for those that like to have a challenge.

Gumby is the best golem even with 1 point in it...cheap to cast...most life of all the golems...and causes slow.

I max mages after my skeletons and mastery are done...I will never max any golem with the 1.10 patch...it's a waste of points period.

HoS

 

[Myrakh-2]

The standard build puts 1 point in clay, golem mastery and summon mastery, and let's +skills do the rest.

So, unless you are going hybrid, you have the points to max magi.

 

[rickcarson]

what do you guys prefer when it comes to a summon necro (perhaps this sounds like a newb question to you) maxing out skeletal magi or one of the golems. If so which golem?

It depends if you have gone the path of the Skellimancer.

If you have, then *neither* Mages or Golem are a particularly effective choice.

If you have less than ~10 + skills or +summons then Iron Golem is a much better one point wonder than Clay Golem.

If you want to dump a bunch of points into golems, then Clay Golem plus Golem Mastery is probably your best bet.

For example: If you had 30 points to spend on Golems, you should spend 16-17 on Clay Golem and 13-14 on Golem Mastery, in order to maximise the Clay Golems hit points (and the *only* point of having any Golem is to tank, hence maximise the hps). With 20 points to spend you'd split them 12/8 or 11/9. Keep Mastery 3-4 points behind Clay.

For Mages, be aware that you want to end on a total skill number that is *even*. So you might want to put only 19 points in. But again, if you've spent a load of points on Skeletons already, putting points into Mages is not very effective.

Better things to do with your hard earned points:
Revive - best value for skill points as you get one extra minion for every skill points spent, not 1/3 as per other corpse based minion skills. (NB: the concept here would be to summon ranged attackers, so they don't get in your skeletons way)
Corpse Explosion - bigger *is* better. You might also want to pump up the Amp to match the CE radius.
Poison skills (I tried Bone and I tried Poison, and Poison seemed to be the better combination with summons)
Dim Vision out the wazzo (for one reason - Gloams/Black Souls)

The other AI curses don't seem all that great for a Skellimancer, your Skeletons should be able to tank most stuff.

If you have trouble with end of act bosses, maybe dump some extra points into Summon Resist.

Most of the options above are mutually exclusive, especially the Poison one, since that will suck up all the skill points you can throw at it, and then some.

--------

Revives make a better 'second class minion' no matter whether you are going Skeletons or Mages as your 'first class minion'.

For example, if you were a Lord Of The Mages, and had dumped 47 points into the Summons Tree (one of everything except Fire Golem, and maxed Skeleton Mastery and Mages (assume only say... +2 to skills), and you've gone out and spent 7 on curses (for Lower Resist), at that point you still don't have:

• Bone Armour
• Corpse Explosion
• A way of dealing with two end of act bosses (Diablo and Baal)

At this point, you decide to beef up your army, but you realise that skill points are at a premium.

You could spend another 19 points on Raise Skeleton, getting an extra 6 minions (and greatly buffing up the three you already had, but they were mostly cannon fodder anyways).

Or, for six points, you could get the same number of extra minions in Revives, and have *13* points to spend elsewhere (!!!!)

The same thing applies for a Skellimancer, except there the comparison is another 18-19 points in Mages, vs another 6 points in Revive.

To herd the Revives, you can use the "poor man's Enigma" - otherwise known as the book of town portal.

For mana issues, just buy some blue pots every now and again, or even... pick them up off the ground...

 

[Myrakh-2]

To herd the Revives, you can use the "poor man's Enigma" - otherwise known as the book of town portal.

Did you actually TRY that? Problem is, Revives vanish after a few steps; with only 20 scrolls (full tome) you won't be getting very far.

I've found that the only way to get my revives from their natural habitat back to the cairn stones (which is where I spawn diablo clone) is to TP out after raising them, and then TP back to the clone --- if the waypoint is more than a step or two away, revives will vanish.

Skeletons vanishing into thin air is annoying. Revives have a MUCH MUCH MUCH higher chance to vanish, which makes them next to useless. I almost never use them, except vs. the clone (for now, anyway... need some crushing blow for the merc), and in moo moo farm. In the farm, their vanishing burns through my mana in no time, but there is a decent supply of cow corpses and mana pots...

 

[JoJeck]

Did you actually TRY that? Problem is, Revives vanish after a few steps; with only 20 scrolls (full tome) you won't be getting very far.

I've found that the only way to get my revives from their natural habitat back to the cairn stones (which is where I spawn diablo clone) is to TP out after raising them, and then TP back to the clone --- if the waypoint is more than a step or two away, revives will vanish.

Skeletons vanishing into thin air is annoying. Revives have a MUCH MUCH MUCH higher chance to vanish, which makes them next to useless. I almost never use them, except vs. the clone (for now, anyway... need some crushing blow for the merc), and in moo moo farm. In the farm, their vanishing burns through my mana in no time, but there is a decent supply of cow corpses and mana pots...

It is true that revives vanish much easier than other minions but you exaggerate the problem when you say they vanish after 2 steps, either that or you are doing something very wrong. My revives :king: are slower and less responsive than my skellies so I move slower and stop and wait a few seconds for them to catch up. I could easilly lead a herd of 10 revives around an open area and only lose maybe 2 before the timeout... you just have to go slower and be more considerate. They are not skellies. Some of us old hands had to deal with these dumbos in 1.09 when they were the only minions viable in Hell. You new Necro are spoilt with the new skellies, it is all too easy now

Another very easy way to use revives is to swap out your normal amulet for a teleport one when you want to move a long distance fast or when you want to go around corners. A teleport charge only costs a few 1000 gold and that keeps all the revives together. I use such an amulet in the WSK and revives are pretty much essential there as soon as you meet OKs on WSK3 or the Throne of Destruction... my merc dies instantly with the first IM (or gets cut down without his spear to leech) and half my skellies follow him 3 seconds later. The revives just tank on, and on, and on... allowing me time to curse intelligently and until I can raise more skellies and eventually use CE and blast the OK away.

Some people use a Naj Staff or Spellsteel on reverse tab to do the teleporting but I find that causes me to lose too many plus skills and I lose skeletons and upto 6 revives so the amulet is the best bet for me. I would really appreciate a nice +2 Necro amulet with teleport... that would be so nice.

 

[Myrakh-2]

Another very easy way to use revives is to swap out your normal amulet for a teleport one when you want to move a long distance fast or when you want to go around corners.

Yeah... but I want the uberest of uber gear So I'm waiting for a +3 summoning of teleportation... and waiting... and waiting...

Currently, that's the only amulet that could make me give up my +3 summon/23% mf amulet (short of another +3/mf amulet with more mf).

I use such an amulet in the WSK and revives are pretty much essential there as soon as you meet OKs on WSK3 or the Throne of Destruction... my merc dies instantly with the first IM (or gets cut down without his spear to leech) and half my skellies follow him 3 seconds later.

In that care, you are doing something wrong. :lol:

I always take away my merc's needle in chaos sanctuary, and do the same when I see Doom Knights/OKs in WSK3 or the Throneroom. And my merc (almost) never dies, not even to Lord Du Seis and his fanatic followers --- which is quite interesting, since he still runs to the monsterpacks and attacks them (he's only using a crappy rare armor and a crown of thieves). I still keep an eye on his health, but much less than I used to.

I believe it's the usual "my warriors run faster than my merc" thing, so monsters lock on the warriors. He's also level 89, which means he gets the upper hand when level differences are considered, and he has decent resists as well.

Skellies going down is sometimes an annoyance, but usually some other OK will soon override the IM. And even if that doesn't happen... there are lots of corpses. Besides... maxed magi and maxed CE help taking down those OKs quickly, and if there are no other monsters in range for the warriors to lock on I usually wait for the IM to expire (or TP back to town to stash away stuff).

In any case, I found IM to be much less of a problem than I had originally anticipated (when I made my first Skelemancer during the last season).

Well, some people have problems with revives, others have problems with IM... I wonder whether we are really all playing the same game :scratch:

 

[rickcarson]

... I wonder whether we are really all playing the same game :scratch:

Well duh! No kidding!

I mean, you've got what? People who've been playing 2 days, people who've been playing 2 years, people who've been playing since d1 came out.

You've got hardcore vs softcore, you've got rich vs poor, you've got twinkers and mulers vs purest of the pure, you've got people using every hacked and duped item they can get their pasty white little hands on.

... PvM vs PvP ...

... PK vs PPK vs everyone else ...

Gee, why don't we all come to exactly the same conclusions about everything???????????

I mean you've got me, with three accounts of 8 characters each that I play regularly, plus another dozen or so offline.... with only a single SOJ between all my online characters!

And on the other hand, you've got the Indomitable KBob pimping away several Trangs sets, because he wants some kind of ego boost... (talk about 30 seconds of fame!)

The contrast is *staggering*. (!!!)

You've got people who want to write guides, you've got people who just want 'teh best build' who can't even look at the stickies (which, BTW, were missing the FAQ last time I checked, so I guess I can't be too hard on them).

You've got the ones who turn up and want to know 'what is teh bestorz gearz to get for my Bonemancer'. Its like... price is no object, they can easily get any object in the game... and I just want to reach down the Internet and throttle them and yell at them that if they're so darn freaking rich why don't they engage a freaking braincell or two and actually look at the freaking stat on the items themselves and then the best ones are freaking obvious.

I'd insert a rant icon at this point, but that would be belabouring the obvious.

We *are* playing a different game.

If we weren't, we'd all kill baal, go, well that was okay, but so what, and go off and play something else.

Part of what makes these games go the distance is that you can set your own goals - you start playing a game *within* a game.

For instance, when I finally got a SOJ I had to seriously consider giving up the game, because that had been my whole point in playing till then. I kept going because I'd never had a Burriza. Later on some guy I know in real life found his fourth one, and gave me his suckiest one, and I still give him kudos to this day.... but I had to find another reason to keep playing.

Its amazing that we find any points of commonality at all!!!

 

[HarbingersOfSkulls]

You still haven't found your first burrito so you can't quit yet regardless...figures it would be the suckiest one you would get from your friend.

Also...I've been playing this addicting game since 1.04 when pole barbs was the roxxors...and your mercs was only good for each act...then you had to hire a new one.

HoS

 

[Mad Mantis]

but I had to find another reason to keep playing.

The day I make a legit Zod and Beast is the day I need to set new goals to keep playing. I’ll probably keep playing this game for a long time.

It is true that revives vanish much easier than other minions but you exaggerate the problem when you say they vanish after 2 steps, either that or you are doing something very wrong.

Listen to JoJeck because he is very right. It took me only a week or so to get back in touch with my lost herding powers. All you need to do is take things easy and stop rushing.