So Haunted Visions disables Skeletal Mage for Sims (why? Is that skill more powerful w/ sims than other secondaries?) and enables GS.
So in order to generate essence, I attack w/ GS. But do GS attacks of the sims also generate essence?
If not, why not use a ranged generator instead?
Mini-rant:
What a weird build. One spams an incredibly long-ranged skill in BS. But in order to get the most out of it (and generate essence), on has to go mêlée (GS) and into close combat (for Bone Armour). To me, that kinda feels weird / not really well thought thru.
Is that a me thing or do others feel the same?
I’m guessing but, maybe because balance reasons? It separates Skeletal Mage specs from others but also come with a cost of draining life where you can find yourself to struggle if you ever to ignore life recovery.
They attack with you to copy your moves but I doubt they can generate extra Essence for you.
I use Masquerade for T16 content. The Dark Reaping passive gives some essence for kills. But it doesn’t seem to be enough. So I have tried with Reaper’s Wraps in cube which can work to give essence. Lately I have been using the Devour aura instead of Frailty aura where corpses supply essence (and thus not using Reaper’s Wraps) . And then you can easily use Bone Armor because you’ll often come into close contact with monsters also. Maxroll has it as an S tier solo build but I haven’t tried it in greater rifts.
The TL;DR version of the story is that some very vocal parts of the community (IIRC it included a popular streamer, possibly Raxx?) really, really hated how popular “Rat Mage” was for grouped experience farming. You basically had the necro spamming GS with Sims up to quickly reach max essence (because the sims do yield extra essence gain when their GS’s hit), then dump it into Mages, which the sims would also replicate. With permanent sims, the streamer and those alligned with him feared Rat Mage would be even more OP/mandatory for group farming than it already was.
It’s somewhat clunky from a mechanics perspective, but from a flavor/lore perspective it makes perfect sense. Necros are supposed to be somewhat of a hybrid class, neither truly ranged nor truly melee. Cursing enemies, harvesting blood, ripping bones from flesh to fashion into weapons and armor. Resurrecting undead servants to do their bidding. To them, life and death form a cycle, which they strive to keep in a state of balance.
So to balance melee and ranged within a single build, cycling between the two, is rather thematically appropriate. But I do agree it’s cumbersome to play it well.
There was a weird multiplication going on with the skeletal mages and simulacrums. All Necro builds are weird. Bone armor is the biggest culprit because the range is so short. It gets tricky fast to get it going without getting obliterated before the cast.