"Voice of Reason" Iron Golem for Trang-Oul Poison/Summoner?

[maiku]

"Voice of Reason" Iron Golem for Trang-Oul Poison/Summoner?

Well, with some trading, I got my complete Trang-Oul's set. But before I start work on my Poison/Summoner, I had some ideas to increase his overall damage output. I was thinking about it, and after posting in the Iron Golem thread here in the forum, that I haven't used an Iron Golem on a build in a loooooooong time. Or, rather, I haven't used one outside of destroying useless junk in a while.

Here are my thoughts: A Poisonmancer uses Lower Resist as his primary curse, which lowers *all* resists similar to Conviction, and similar to the Conviction Zealot that I built quite a long time ago who used "Voice of Reason" as his primary weapon, the Poisonmancer is the one who can best incorporate hefty elemental damage into his repertoire. What better way than to make an Iron Golem out of "Voice of Reason"? It's a cheap but powerful rune word (which means if my golem dies I won't be out of a few HRs). And this is probably one of the few builds where I won't be using CE as my primary or supplementary form of damage...so I won't be needing corpses beyond what I need to raise my first couple skeletons. I would also take advantage of this by giving my Merc a "Rift" Thresher, so he could join in on the Frozen Orb fun.

So, the gist of it:

"Voice of Reason" Iron Golem --> Lots of Frozen Orbs + Ice Blasts which freeze and shatter enemies, good for safety and hitting them with Poison Nova

"Rift" Thresher on Merc --> Spewing high-level Frozen Orbs and Tornados all over the place, again good for safety and extra damage

Chilling and freezing will also allow my supplementary skeleton warriors to kill and handle mobs easier, because they won't be fully synergized in a Poison/Summoner build.

Thoughts?

 

[clsi]

Re: "Voice of Reason" Iron Golem for Trang-Oul Poison/Summoner?

LOL

Obviously you know my feelings on VoR ;p. I'm also a big fan of rift and as much as I love the idea I just don't see it working. In hell as you well know monster res are quite high and as awesome as lower resist is as a curse it just cannot compare to conviction.

LR:
lvl 1: 32%
" 5: 47%
" 10: 55%
" 15 60%
" 20 63 %
" 30 66 %
" 40 68

Obviously LR is much better then conviction when it comes to poison, however since we are considering just cold it is like you are running around with a lvl 8 [-65% res] conviction. Even with the -24 cold res I still personally do not think your golem will do THAT much damage. I could be wrong, you might want to try testing the IG and merc on SP.

Also while skeletons do deal good amount of damage, your merc is still the Bamf position that muscles your way to victory. I personally feel it isn't worth giving a weak physical damage weapon to him. He's the heart of the army! Maybe just give him a typical merc weapon [insight, obedience, infinity, etc] and make an IG out of rift. Maybe you are just too used to your VoR paladin and all the orbs.

Oh just as a sidenote, if you were to make a VoR IG you won't be able to use your PB one as a paladin. So you'll need to make a new one as apparently there is no metal in phase blades. Before I got a lawbringer I wanted to make an azurewrath IG and that didn't work. That being said lem, ko's are cheap and you can easily find 4os swords and maces all over the place.

Also another plug for VoR. It is a very seldom used and seen runeword. For those who have no idea what it is PLEASE look it up and look at the VoR build guide in the paladin section. Seriously a gem of a build.

 

[Mad Mantis]

Re: "Voice of Reason" Iron Golem for Trang-Oul Poison/Summoner?

The Golem will provide

Frozen Orb
Cold Duration: 5 Seconds
Cold Damage: 170 - 181 (ø175.5)

Ice Blast
Cold Duration: 1.7 Seconds
Cold Damage: 253 - 266 (ø259.5)

And 100-220 Cold Damage with -24% To Enemy Cold Resistance. Now let's assume an Infinity on the Merc and a maxed LR. That would give a whopping -63% + -85% + -24% = -172% Cold Resist. However the cap at -100% would make these numbers

Frozen Orb
Cold Damage: 340 - 362 (ø351)

Ice Blast
Cold Damage: 506 - 532 (ø519)

Not really impressive numbers of damage to be honest. Remember this is only when the Golem actually strikes an enemy. With his decent attack speed, but very long Next Attack Delay I must say that you probably won't be seeing a lot of extra damage from your Golem. It is something different, but I don't see it as adding a lot.

 

[Soepgroente]

Re: "Voice of Reason" Iron Golem for Trang-Oul Poison/Summoner?

In practice the best you can hope for is chilling monsters I'm afraid.

 

[clsi]

Re: "Voice of Reason" Iron Golem for Trang-Oul Poison/Summoner?

Mad Mantis,

There is a -100% res cap? Are you talking about monsters can only have a low of -100% res or that their resistances can be reduced by a max of -100%?

A numerical example to help clarify previous two questions:
1. Let's just say Andy has-30 fire res. Infinity's conviction, at -85%, and will your LR curse will only drop her res by 70% as resistances cannot go below -100% res. Your res is not a bottomless pit.

2. Let's say we have a ghoul monster that has a 80% cold res. So if the VoR IG is attacking him in conjunction with conviction/LR, the ghoul will have -20% res? or -92% CR?

2a. Also how does immune breaking affect the numbers? Let's say we have a monster with 115% CR. If in question 2 the answer was -20%, then does the game code treat the conviction as 85% as part of the 100% cap? or does it treat the -17%, or the immune break, as part of the cap?

Why do people suggest for conviction based builds to go for lvl 25 auras (-150% res)? One obvious reason would be to override uber meph's lvl 20 conviction but aside from that does conviction then can only lower a monster's resistance by a max of 100%? Is the conviction on a paladin subject to different rules?

 

[AnimeCraze]

Re: "Voice of Reason" Iron Golem for Trang-Oul Poison/Summoner?

I think he means by that enemies can have at most -100 resist.

 

[naskali]

Re: "Voice of Reason" Iron Golem for Trang-Oul Poison/Summoner?

Why do people suggest for conviction based builds to go for lvl 25 auras (-150% res)? One obvious reason would be to override uber meph's lvl 20 conviction but aside from that does conviction then can only lower a monster's resistance by a max of 100%? Is the conviction on a paladin subject to different rules?

You can decrease enemys rez more than 100%. If monster has 50 fire rez and lvl 25 conviction is on, he has -100 fire rez.

 

[maiku]

Re: "Voice of Reason" Iron Golem for Trang-Oul Poison/Summoner?

LOL

Obviously you know my feelings on VoR ;p. I'm also a big fan of rift and as much as I love the idea I just don't see it working. In hell as you well know monster res are quite high and as awesome as lower resist is as a curse it just cannot compare to conviction.

LR:
lvl 1: 32%
" 5: 47%
" 10: 55%
" 15 60%
" 20 63 %
" 30 66 %
" 40 68

Obviously LR is much better then conviction when it comes to poison, however since we are considering just cold it is like you are running around with a lvl 8 [-65% res] conviction. Even with the -24 cold res I still personally do not think your golem will do THAT much damage. I could be wrong, you might want to try testing the IG and merc on SP.

Also while skeletons do deal good amount of damage, your merc is still the Bamf position that muscles your way to victory. I personally feel it isn't worth giving a weak physical damage weapon to him. He's the heart of the army! Maybe just give him a typical merc weapon [insight, obedience, infinity, etc] and make an IG out of rift. Maybe you are just too used to your VoR paladin and all the orbs.

Oh just as a sidenote, if you were to make a VoR IG you won't be able to use your PB one as a paladin. So you'll need to make a new one as apparently there is no metal in phase blades. Before I got a lawbringer I wanted to make an azurewrath IG and that didn't work. That being said lem, ko's are cheap and you can easily find 4os swords and maces all over the place.

Also another plug for VoR. It is a very seldom used and seen runeword. For those who have no idea what it is PLEASE look it up and look at the VoR build guide in the paladin section. Seriously a gem of a build.

I am used to my VoR paladin. :thumbsup: I will get to lvling my new remake...one of these days. The reason why I didn't want to go ahead and burn a "Rift" on IG is that it'd require one of my Hellforged Guls, and I'm not exactly rolling in them. If I keep it on a Merc as a "Rift" Thresher, I can still use it for either this build or my remake VoR Zealot later on. Forges haven't been good to me. I've gotten Hels, Fals, etc. lately. Since I don't have as much time as I used to, wealth creation is a little harder now. I like to keep up reusability, so my costs for new builds and chars are minimal, except where it's a pretty minor issue like sacrificing a Lem + Ko.

This is a further thought, but it would be weird (and maybe a little cool) if you had the Necro walking around with a Scythe "Infinity" to get Conviction going, so that the "VoR" IG + "Rift" Merc were enhanced. Can't test this, as I have no "Infinity" and haven't found/cubed any legit Bers.

 

[maiku]

Re: "Voice of Reason" Iron Golem for Trang-Oul Poison/Summoner?

I think he means by that enemies can have at most -100 resist.

Yes, exactly. Enemy resists can only be lowered to a max of -100% resist.

BTW, it should be kept in mind that Frozen Orb's listed damage is per shard, it has multiple shards that scatter across the screen, and that a Frozen Orb explosion deals significantly more damage than one shard alone. I can't remember how many it is, but I might hazard a guess around 20-30 shards.

 

[Xdeathfire]

Re: "Voice of Reason" Iron Golem for Trang-Oul Poison/Summoner?

Frozen Orb
Cold Duration: 5 Seconds
Cold Damage: 170 - 181 (ø175.5)

To give perspective on these numbers, a sorc with 20 hard points in FO and -100 from CM can get around 450 damage per shard so you're looking at FOs that are a bit weaker than half a sorc's FO which would probably proc left since IG don't exactly attack too fast and without any proper aiming for the sweet spot.

 

[IntelligentX]

Re: "Voice of Reason" Iron Golem for Trang-Oul Poison/Summoner?

Does iron golem has good attack rating though?

 

[maiku]

Re: "Voice of Reason" Iron Golem for Trang-Oul Poison/Summoner?

I tinkered a bit with the Necro Pet Calc, and it seems that IG's AR is tied in part to Necro level, just as skeleton AR is. Their ARs are almost the same, so an IG should hit about as often as a skeleton.

 

[IntelligentX]

Re: "Voice of Reason" Iron Golem for Trang-Oul Poison/Summoner?

I see. So using VoR won't be a problem then. As you know, the orb from VoR requires character to actually hit a monster to trigger, where the orb from rift only requires swinging.