As someone who uses Mages on my summoner regularly, there is nothing wrong with their life. They don’t tank, they either get in the way or hide in the back. If they get in the way, you want them to die, if they hide in the back, they don’t get hit. No issue either way, I don’t understand why people who say they need to have more life on their mages. Yes you occasionally re-summon one, I do that on skellies too but who cares.
Mages do not do damage that is exciting, yes that’s true but I still use them because IMO/from my experience they do better damage than putting those 20 pts anywhere else. Would I like to see them do more damage, who wouldn’t? They still do more damage than putting that same 20 pts into bone spear.
what situations are you in where the mages just crumble? tellying into packs of things?
Well you can put these 19 points into Golem mastery and make Beast or Pride IG. Risky investment but if you dont die, it justifies itself. Bone Prison and Bone Wall as synergy for BA is also more preferrable for me, because I play careless and often telestomp in the wrong packs. But its the matter of preference. I still think that mages should get health buff as addition to huge damage buff. If your minion at level 40 has less health than weakest monster in the game, it means that something is wrong.
very low life; that would not be so bad alone, but with the below…
very low damage output
poor AI, most of the time they wander around, and even when they start to attack they cast not so often. This also is extremely bad with telestomp, as 1st they do is backing off.
bad cooperation with other necromancer skills; only Lower Resist helps a bit, but a summoner build rather wants to use Amplify Damage for skeleton warriors, revives and mercenary.
makes them bad skill. Changing them to archers which deal physical damage, with a conversion to elements, with a better AI would help immensely, as their damage and attack speed could be affected by ex. auras. Sure, with 20 points investment + all skills bonuses Skeleton Mages start to do something, but you can have better result by putting that 20 points into Corpse Explosion for greater range.
Golems, while they can be made decent tanks or utility units(slow, aggro attraction, aura provider), completely fail as damage dealers - this is a window for improvement for them.
Revives, while really good, do not encourage to invest more than one point + all skills. Sure, theoretically you can have 40+ revives, but they in such number are just wandering around, as only around ~12-15 are capable of fighting in melee. True, there is a telestomp, but it is not available immediately. So, some encouragement is needed.
I usually have a bone necro each ladder and i use bone spirit plus bone prison to cheese uber diablo for anni. Off screen him ez. You could do the same with bone spear but its safer to name lock with spirit.
I have a list of skill synergy suggestion here. I added my thought about skill changes that go with those synergies.
For summoning skills I think
Cold mages should be removed be they can explode bodies
Golem skill should increase their base damage not off weapon bonus
Golem attack speed should be quicker
Revives instead of a time limit should have drain % max life effect instead and points into revive reduces this drain life effect to a minimum value. This way life tap is basically a synergy because it will make your revives live longer.
I’d rather them change mages to archers (as they already have the creature model/skill for them). I use mages currently on my summoner but they really only start to do damage with infinity and its fairly low damage even then. The reason i use them is because they look neat and it’s nice to have a large looking army, i think of it as a substitute to bone armor. Unfortunately there is several issues with mages beyond cold mages slowing down clear speed. The poison mages damage doesnt increase with more than one, so it’s never effective to have more than one in your army. Their A.I. is horrible, so much so that if you dont have enigma, they actually slow down your clear speed by getting in the way of your melee skeletons. They tend to be very glassy with very low damage output as well.
With the change of mage to archer, they’d have both a physical and magical component to them and their A.I. is slower moving with larger range that would tend to keep them more centralized around the necro rather than chasing down enemies like mages. I’d be all for toning down regular skeletons damage in exchange for boosting up archers (mages), encouraging players to invest in both.