=( This is a skill Id love to see buffed. Skeleton mages look too cool - it’s tragic.
I used to run The Lord of Mages build back in the day - really powerful build but it required teleport which either has to be on a item with charges, or Enigma which will be hard to get, and a green conviction stick on merc.
Im torn as I really like the Necro but with season being shorter I think Im going to roll a sorc to start then maybe a barb and time willing a necro…
Depends on how I am feeling. If I go pure exactly how I want:
20: Summon Resist
12: Iron Golem
20: Skeleton Mage
10: Corpse Explosion
If I want to go a bit more min/max then:
+CE
+CG
+Revive
(-) Skeletal Mages
(-) Iron Golem
The wildcard is the curses. I also “1pt hero” Amp and Decrepify (some times will drop Decrepify on a respec); however, there are other times I do the confuse/attract fun as well.
They trash. Damage is beyond pathetic compared to warriors. This is well documented. Anyone who uses them needs to L2Necro.
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Cold and Poison provide some utility but, yes, they’re not very good. Honestly though your options at the end are basically increasing radius on Corpse Explosion, making the golems slightly better, and/or Revive Army which is the best min/max way to go but… ehhh… the amount of improvement isn’t giant.
No. Wrong on all counts. They provide no utility whatsoever. They only exist to give you the one point to get to revive.
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Cold = Slow… especially if you don’t use Clay Golem which you can make an argument for Iron Golem if you use good enough items and choose to babysit the Iron Golem some (despawn >.>)
Poison stops regen I’m fairly certain. Minimal benefit but is something.
Fire and Lightning do nothing.
They do some damage, they also are for utility, if you don’t recognize that well…enjoy. the key as I pointed out above is in relation to skelly’s they are a fraction of that damage. They do a lot better when you get the big stick.
What I am really asking is if you don’t use them what do you spend your 20 pts on? A summoner that stops with just skellys uses all of 40 pts to be done with that build. Mages would be an additional 20 pt investment. You can get a decent bone spear to keep your self busy or pnova, or big fat CE, max Dim, chunky golems, pDagger to stab things with…There are a ton of options as a strictly skelly army only needs 20 in skelly and 20 in mastery. The build is done before you are lvl 50.
So…what are you spending your pts on?
make irion golm from non eth infy and or mage.s owns all lol -_-
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It’s a bummer in D2R that the skel mage’s projectiles almost never reach the target because they disappear too quickly.
mages are near useless in lod. better off going for warriors, mastery and revives. having a bunch of urdars is more useful than a bunch of mages whose low damage is made even worse with everything in hell being highly resistant or immune. you can use lower resist but that only benefits your mages. amp dmg works for warriors and revives. you get more than twice as many minions.
Ran in my first lobby last night in act 1, one of the guys had the SM and it does look really cool.
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In the past I would max mages and use LR on physical immune which seemed to work better than amp and warriors. A benefit I don’t think was mentioned above is just having a bigger army which allows for more survivability. With enigma there is very little upkeep (nobody wondering off and disappearing). I used to go with 1 point in revive just for some extra crushing blow for ubers.
I’m curious how 20 points in mages would stack up against 20 in fire golem specifically for dealing with physical immune.
Skeleton Mages are really cool, I’ll give them that.
But outside maxing them in Normal, their damage is non-existent. They are more of a liability in terms of blocking other summons or disappearing randomly, which contradicts the entire concept of investing points into a skill in order to improve it.
Even in Project Diablo 2 they massively buffed their damage, missile speed, and gave them pierce. They still don’t do much damage due to monster resistances (but they also nerfed Lower Resist). Skele Mages need much better scaling to be able to hold their own and actually contribute damage worth a 20 hard point investment.
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The norm is more or less to max skellies, max ce, 1 point wonders in the rest. What’s there to boost your damage after that?
That’s right - the mages. They suck but it’s better than nothing 
As for Infinity? Sure it helps your mages slightly but your merc does better damage with Obedience - the most underestimated rune word in the game!
As for Beast on the necromancer. I’m not sold on it but it also depends on what you want. But you’re giving up at least +3 to skills from HOTO and the defense bonuses it comes with. Further - to maintain the 75+ FCR for that breakpoint you’d most likely give up a SOJ also.
In the end it’s a VERY small buff to your skelly and you loose some from mages. And I loose like 300-400 life buffed and a 200-ish mana. Yeah to maintain my FCR I 2-20 circlet which is a lot less life/mana from Shako.
The big kicker here though is Emilio. And that’s the thing - his damage is HUGE.
If I do Baal with my HOTO setup he dies in 20-30 secs. With my Beast setup it’s 10-15 so almost twice as fast - all depending on the amount and the timing of crushing blows. On the other hand - clearing cows I do prefer the added CE range of the +3 from HOTO and +1 from the extra SOJ
Obedience is good, but merc with infinity is better for necro imo. While they have kinda similar dmg output cas of while obedience have higher ed infinity has higher -defence so they do similar dmg but infinity has also -res which helps ce and mages.
As for beast vs hoto. With beast your minions kill faster, noticeably faster when we talk about white mob and difference in seconds when we talk about bosses. Even though yes you lose +3 all skills, and survivability i personally prefer beast because those +3 skills dont really matter cas i ress skellies with leoric so skellies are same levelled regardless if i use hoto or beast, but then when i equip beast and they get that aura i sometimes dont even bother using ce at all cas skellies + merc kill almost faster than hoto + ce. It sometimes seems like with beast they kill almost twice faster than with hoto.
So those +3skills dont really matter ce and amplify radiuses cover whole screen so that +3 skills radius dont change anything for me. Sure i can ress 1 skelly less, but that is not a gamechanger.
And yeah i lose resistances and some survivability, but i havent started dying any more with beast than i was with hoto.
I also dont understand why you would have to give away soj if you use beast?
spirit shield 35fcr
trang oul gloves 20 fcr
arachnid belt 20fcr
All together 75%fcr
Summon:
20 RS
20 SM
1 Clay
1 GM
1 SR
PnB:
1 teeth
1 CE
20 Pdagger
1 Pexpl
20 Pnova
Curses:
1 amp
1 weaken
1 terror
1 decrep
1 Imaiden
1 Ltap
1 LR
Any extra goes into Pexpl bc of Pnova
Theres enough points for 20 in skeletons, 20 in mages, 20 in skel mastery (60) plus 10+ hard in revives, 1 in clay golem, golem mastery and summonm resist, 6 or so in Dim, one in all the other curses, and a goodly dollop of CE.
I like the mages if for anything as meat shields. I just did my respec in NM and didn’t put any points in SM and somehow I think I’m a little weaker because of it. It seems I clear areas a little slower. I still have 10 points left and thinking of dumping them back into SM.
Plus as everyone says they just look cool.
Aren’t the mages getting a damage buff in 2.4?