As in title…
the thorns paladin like aura that IG had from the very begining of the v1.00 was replaced with an undisplayed stat of “attacker takes damage” while it seemes unconvinient as IG does far less damage from lvl 1 it actually has some bold brainopwer decision behind it…
You see in order to do damage with Thorns aura the critter has to be constatly hit, misses nor any successfull blocks will not trigger Thorns aura % damage reflection, on the other hand Attacker takes damage while doing flat predetermined damage does trigger on attack attempt sort of:
“100% chance to do X damage on each enemy attack”
rather than
“100% to do X% weapon damage on being struck”…
this is a meaningfull difference…
in the thorns aura case we had growing X% damage on succesfull geting hit going up with Iron Golem level while at the same time Iron Golem’s Armor Class also went up reducing the chance for him to become struck… this is counter-productive the higher level damage yet lower chance to actyually do damage with every skilpoint investment?
so th devs decided to replace this mechanics with a bit different one, let’s make him dal smaller amount of damage that grows as th skill goes up, but let it trigger regardless if he gets hit or not, just on enemy attack atempt…
and yes it is bummer on lvl 1 with just 15 points of damage, however the real difference begins when he’s maxed out and you have some additional +skills on the items…
for example i used to utilize blood golem as a startup booster for act 4 hell on D2R Classic…
As You know no merc and no pet transfers between acts, and no merc to hire in act4, so a summonmancer is pretty much on his own, and one gas got to kill the first mobs somehow…
poison nova is an unreliable option as right out of the gate you may encounter Poison Immune monsters and bone skills do meh damage unless you pump all of the synergies, simply put mobs will outrege the damage done with damage spells that are not fully synergized…
so i opted for Blood Golem i ecided to pump points into him and Golem mastery so that he has enaugh hp, and some attack rating, and neither amping the mobs nor iron maidening them was successful… blood golem was not hitting frequently enaugh and not hard enaugh to do significant damage… i mean he killed some eventually after two recasts ( cause he almost died twice), i’d have to max out fire golem and clay golem as well for him to be viable… pretty lame tho…
so after visiting maxroll’s planner i decided to take a different aproch… ditch attack rating from caly golem and damage synergy from fire golem, why not just pump iron golem and golem mastery + amp mobs to kill themselves…?!
i had a couple of + skills items on me already had, tarnhelm, silks of the victor, sigon’s shield, +1 amu, two sojs, and +2 nec skill wand, with +1 to Iron Golem on it as staff mod… after dumping my stats into maxroll d2 planer… it turned out mobs would deal 435 damage per attack attempt…
this is damage to all surrounding mobs regardless if they hit or not just per attack, and it is subject to regulation based on mob physical damage resistance, and my amp damage… i just had to figure a way for cheap means of migitation for the iron golem that is also easily obtainable, and I’ve found out that Iron Golem has three types of items it takes properties from…
He either:
takes damage forks from the weapon + affixes
takes armor class from armor + affixes
takes shield’s blockchance with a -20% debuff + armor class + affixes, (using shield he’s able to block, and he has a native bonus to chance to block of 41% on all difficulties hidden within game files, this is in addition to what he gets from the shield and or of deflecting suffix, minus 20% penalty to what’s visible for the necromancer on a shield)
this was a total shock 4 me if i created Iron golem out of a shield it actually had a chance, though very low, to block… the highest block chance shield is either tower shield or pavise with 44% for the necro or 24% for Iron Golem, so the only thing left to do was to waltz from town to town between the acts searching vendors for “of Deflecting” suffix on a tower shield, as this evens out the penalty yealding a 44% block chance for the Iron Golem… ( plus 41% to block hidden bonus in the game files)
finally hratli was my man as he had it…
the efect was that combined chance to block + decent amount of armor class + life bonus from Golem Mastery that goes coupled with increased life regen for him, paid off when dropped at act 4 entrance he barely took a scratch, yet the amped mobs melted within few moments, as it took just a couple of their swings for them to die and produce first corpses…
435 isn’t top notch damage for Classic iggy attacker takes damage. The max + skills yealds 525 damage with perfect gear, possibly even 585 as shrine effects get transfered between acts ( skill shrine in this particular case ) according to maxroll’s d2 planner, yet 435 ATD + amp dmg did the trick for me…
starting off is easy peasy now in act 4 hell if only my resistances were decent to hold out monster elemental attacks, as i lack trires boots+belt+gloves combo, and literally sit at -38%res to all currently which is a major bummer…
Hope this reading will enlighten someone on Iron Golem mechanics, and inspire some new builds and not just “hey iron golem take my insight, be my mana recovery stat stick and shut up” or other stupidity like wasting a beast runeword just to lose it a moment later…
EDIT:
I’ve looked up the skills.txt of the iron golem skill and i’m ready to clarify the iron golem’s attacker takes damage of numbers:
he starts out at skill level:
level 1 with 15 points
level 2-8 he gains 6 points of ATD per level
level 9-16 he gains 12 points ATD per level
level 17-22 he gains 18 points ATD per level
level 23-28 he gains 24 points of ATD per level
and finally
level 29+ he gains 30 points of Attacker Takes Damage per each additional skill level
So on D2R classic in best case scenario, assuming we have the best +skills gear +5 wand +1 sigon’s guard, +1 Tarnhelm, +1 Silks of the victor, +2 amu, and 2x SoJ, and additionally we found skill shrine in other act ( yes shrine effects are about the only things that travel with you from act to act, unlike pets and mercs)
You’ll be sitting at slvl 34 and 585 Attacker Takes Damage. (BTW Maxroll and wiki are EDIT#3 right it was me who did an oopsie in calculation which ended in everything past IG slvl 14 have +12 additonal ATD)
despite the fact the number seemes low take into account this damage gets applied every monster attack, it damages regardless if it’s a succesfull attack or not or if it’s a ranged or melee attack, blocked attacks do damage as well and it’s a 585 to any mob attempting an asault on the iron golem on classic, this is superior damage than other golems blood golem is behind with ~5xx damage on the upper fork yet his damage relies on him hittng, and he misses roughly 50% of the time, and is able to attack only one mob at a time, fire golem despite gaving slightly higher fire damage, also hits one target and also misses 50% of the time…
D2R expansion…
Since IG is re-created on each new game ( provided he didn’t die before leaving previous game), and is prone to snapshotting mechanics, so any skill shrines norbattle command will do jack, on the other hand it would be a good practice to equip all + skill / summon gear into item slots and inventory… so out of your usual setup just switch your wand and shrunken head for a 2x+6 to iron golem and kick that cube and sunder to stash for extra two summon skiller talismans sitting at level 56 for a total of 1245 attacker takes damage, still suprisingly little yet damage wise it still outperforms any weapon equipped by the iron golem, due to attacker takes damage always doing damage instead of roughly 50% of the time IG hitting with his weapon, and ATD is applied to any monster attcking the iron golem…
In the end
if someone wants decent damage out of IG it is best to make him out of a defensive option with high life pool from maxed golem mastery and +skills, and preferably use Jewelerer’s Sacred Targe of Deflecting which rolled ~30 all res ( by putting 1 hard point itnt summon resist you get 70% @res to IG) so with the shield he’s quad immune…
on top in monstats.txt it is stated that IG is able to block unlike act 3 merc, IG however requires a shield to block attacks… and in monstats.txt IG has a whopping 41% bonus to block chance on all diffculties and a -20% penalty to actual shied’s block chance so sacred targe has base of 30% for IG ( including the penalty) of deflecting adds +20% block chance so he has 30%+20%+41% ( monstats.txt bonus), so just with this he’s sitting at awhopping 91% block chance… toss in two Eld runes and he sists at 105% Block chance ( still probably capped at 75% though), yet if you toss in additionally two Um runes, his immunities are virtually unbreakable for anything except sunder charms sitting at exactly 144% which is what penalized max lvl conviction + penalized max lvl lower resist coombined are unable to break…