yet another Fishy question

[HBeachBabe]

yet another Fishy question

My lvl 43 fishymancer Zeq is about to start act1 NM. he has 10 skellies and 9 revives plus an iron golem and a merc and pretty much kills everything in site, so this may be overkill but here it goes:

thanks to +skills gear, he has 7 points in skeletal mage. is it worth adding them to his army just to increase killing speed or are they just going to be useless w/o Lower resist curse and get in the way? seems to me extra damage is always a good thing even if not optimized.

and wouldn't they help against stoneskin uniques and PI's later on?

 

[Naraka]

They wouldn't hurt one bit, seeing as how you can walk thru them, the only issues are with them walking thru each other but their pathfinding seems decent. I would avoid summoning the mages when you go thru maggot lair though, and any other tight small spaces (countess perhaps? nah) as that just gets annoying.

Naraka

 

[mn4nu]

I only had one pt in mage with my necro. I put other pts in summon resist and bone spirit. Having 4-5 mages out was enough for me.

 

[Nightfish]

If you read the guide you'll find that this question and others are thoroughly covered there

 

[Tennant]

I, personally, have not found any need for them. The PI are a bit problimatic but my clvl 92 'mancer uses a maxed CE and a merc with a Stormspire to take care of any PI that I run across. If I run into a PI + Stoneskin superunique I usually leave it alone :grrr: as it would take forever to kill.

I have about 25 skill points left so if you finish up the main build you can always go back and add them.

Tennant

 

[Lothric]

As Nightfish has said, he has covered the topic in his guide. Allow me just a word or two from my experiences with my Fishymancer though.

I found the mages to be more of a nuisance than anything else most of the time. They don't benefit from the might aura of your merc so the damage they do is usually insignificant when compared to your ordinary skeletons/merc. And since you've got Amp/Decrep to drop physical immunes, the fact that they're doing magic damage is really not a bonus at all.

Most times they simply block entryways (they have a tendency to walk ahead of the rest of your skeletons a lot of the time). And given the number of minions/monsters on the screen at any given time you'll find it pretty hard to pick them out so you can unsummon them to work around it.

The only time I ever really summoned them was when dealing with Act bosses since every bit of extra firepower is helpful in such situations and there's generally no way for them to get in the way because all their chambers are fairly open.

 

[cft]

Indoors, the magi are a pain. Every time you go through a doorway, one of them will stop in the door and block all your skeles.

Outdoors they are nice.

 

[HBeachBabe]

If you read the guide you'll find that this question and others are thoroughly covered there

i read the guide. :thumbsup:

just wanted a second opinion, as it were.

 

[Araknis]

For this skelliemancer, mages do more harm than good. Especially in tight areas like the maggot lair or the arcane sanctuary where they will block your skellies' path. They also like to block doorways

Indoors, the magi are a pain. Every time you go through a doorway, one of them will stop in the door and block all your skeles.

Snap.

stoopid ten letters thing

 

[Starcrunch]

Indoors, the magi are a pain. Every time you go through a doorway, one of them will stop in the door and block all your skeles.

Outdoors they are nice.

Kill the offending mage and move on... Use Attract when mages come under attack. LR and mages can will kill ghosts and many other PI monsters faster than warriors (especially stone skin boss ghosts) . Mages are nice in some constricted areas where only one or two warriors can engage at a time all of the mages can engage (in reality I find it best to go with just a merc and golem for the magot lair, except when tackeling the burrower, and mages and a merc in the Arcance Sanctuary). Poison mages are very powerful and will hasten along the death of your foes, in addition the poison is around for so long you can visit town without monster regen hurting you. Cold mages help against Act Bosses since it stacks with Decrepify like HF, unfortuantely the effect does not last long and neither do mages against Diablo and Baal. I find them a handy 20 point investment, their only real competition being CE, but you can eventually get both. Never put more than one point into Summon Resist due to diminishing retunrs and if you want a direct attack spell go with PN and sacrifice the mages and any points into CE.

-Starcrunch