Has anyone heard any upcoming changes (and hopefully buffs) to this skill ?
If you are anyone who has played with summon necro in the past you will be well aware of the infamous skill, but let me summarize it either way.
It is very underwhelming skill for a few reasons.
It doesn’t provide any bonuses to other summon skills (although that is true for other skills) nor does it receive such.
The skeleton magi have low damage output. First, theoretical output is low, which is bad enough, but even worse, their practical damage is even lower as their projectiles are very slow and tend to miss all but the tankiest and largest enemies.
They are flimsy. Sure, not that important for a ranged summon, but noticeable non the less.
Feel free to add more reasons why aren’t really that useful in reality.
I would really love some synergy with the skeleton warriors and buffs to the ranged skeletons themselves.
Here is a simple proposal, I don’t insist it is any good, but skeleton magi definitely need something.
First - make them elemental skeleton archers along with buffed damage. Damage should be pure elemental, just like the OG skill. This will increase their theoretical output some, but will greatly benefit their actual output as the projectiles won’t take an age to reach their target.
Second - synergize them with skeli warrior. Something along the lines of
Each point in skeli warriors converts 2% of skeleton magi (archer) elemental damage into physical damage. Like reverse vengeance.
Each point in skeli magi (archer) converts 1% of skeli warriors into elemental damage, exactly like vengeance.
Any numbers are purely placeholders. This might make skeli warriors + mages a bit too much, so may be a reduction on max number of ranged skelis can be implemented as well.
Is that possible ? I have no idea. Is it a balanced change, don’t know.
But I really wish ranged skelis to become actually useful (and used).
I am currently working on d2 mod and i have recently found out something amazing. You can actualy give your summons ability to use your item mods.
For example you can have 50% open wounds on equip and it will be transfered to your skeleton warriors too.
So this could be used for skeleton mages in certain ways like maybe benefit from items with faster cast rate so they cast their spell faster or gaining + %elemental damage from from items like nightwings for cold skeleton mages.
I will be working on necro in future but my main suggestion would be changing their spells.
Fire - fire bolt with pierce
Cold - either faster target piercing ice bolt or ice blast
Lightning - lightning spell from sorc
Poison - Poison bolt but a lot stronger
My main issue is that what do skeli mages do, considering they are you higher summons ?
1.They can’t tank as well.
2.They don’t do as much damage.
3.They don’t even synergize with anything nor provide bonuses.
So no wonder no one is using them seriously.
I don’t know exactly how your proposition will work, are there any item mods that benefit them all apart from FCR ? Although, giving effects on skeli warriors seems op, especially if you get crushing blow.
Lower resist, and poison skills could be a good synergy option. For fire golem too. Maybe they should change elemental damages(fire, cold, lightning) to magic dmg, and then bone skills like teeth, Bone spear, and Bone spirit could buff their dmg. There are lots of possibilities.
Oh, sure. There are as many ways to make ranged skelis useful as there are players.
It just hurts that this skill is currently, just not useful. They can’t tank (because they are weak and keep range) and can’t do reasonable damage. Just pointless at the moment.
Making them magic will probably be a little OP, but vengeace like relationship with the regular skelis would synergize both, giving you a reason to invest in them while (may be) not making them blatantly OP.
You pick what you want them to use .for example 3 effects. Depends on summom as these bonuses are not limitless. So you cant add like 20 things there. Just few.
But there is special file monprop.txt, there you can mod additional effects on monsters. I for example used it to add amplify dmg curse chance on attack for Ravens.
I’ll say it again: there’s a youtube video of a guy testing the skeletons magi. In two words: even if they were twice as powerfull, they won’t be as strong as skeletons…
I, presonally, I’m not convinced we’re gonna even see a 2.6 patch. If we do, it doesn’t mean they are going to improve sleleton magi. If they do, it doesn’t mean it’s gonna be a good job.
There is multiple ways how you can add stuff on monsters via modding, you can give them skills, you can give them passive stats, you can give them stuff directly via monprop.txt which is great for some when hit or on attack effects for monsters.
And yes you can for example add idk open wounds to Summon Dire wolf based on your equip. Its working as passive stat: here is example:
If I have items with 40% open wounds chance, my dire wolves have also 40%.
My spirit wolves also gain -% enemy cold res and +% cold damage from equip I have on myself as druid
The only issue I have with mages is the damage output. The fact that they can’t tank is a good thing IMO as it makes you have to consider your summons getting flanked and consider your positioning. Synergizing is not really an issue IMO as well as Skellies don’t synergies either and they are great.
Root of the problem:
Skellies and Mages do roughly the same base damage. It’s that base damage that’s the key and where the devs run into balancing issues. Skellies then get the benefit of Amp removing all the physical resistance, essentially doubling their damage. On top of that, every Summoner uses a might merc that increases their damage. lvl 20 might increases damage by 230%.
For physical damage you have a double effect, dropping the resists with Amp and then increasing the damage with might. For elemental damage the only way to increase their damage is to use Lower resists or Conviction. Both of these options lower the resists of the target. There is no mechanism in the game to increase the mages damage. The only thing that would do that is masteries, but they do not have that.
My solution: Give the mages mastery similar to the Sorc’s mastery starting at lvl 21. At lvl 21 they recieve mastery lvl 1, at every additional level it goes up. This restricts the damage boost to higher level mages. Ideally it would be a ‘reworked mastery’ increasing the cold damage and also giving a poison mastery.
