I was running a shadow minion necro build with skele mage focus, but decided to swap to a golem focus, mainly for the golems active ability. Lots of guides/streamer say to swap from 1h + focus to 2h if you’re swapping to golem focus, but I’m not seeing the benefit.
I hit the target dummy with my only my golem using the weapon set ups (1h + focus and 2h) that had the exact same dps. With the 2h I get a little more crit dmg, with the 1h + focus, I get an extra codex power, more CDR and crit chance that i rolled.
My results were that the active tooltip for my blood golem read almost the same for both scenarios (higher with the 1h + focus due to slightly higher golem rolls), and my golem did roughly the same dmg numbers on melee hits, except it hit much faster with the 1h + focus set up.
Unless I’m completely missing something, it seems like the golems damage (melee and active) is scaled off of attack power/dps rather than top weapon dmg of the 2H, as has been stated by others. If this is the case, then wouldn’t you always want the 1h+ focus for the faster attack speed (with same melee hit as 2h), extra codex power, and other stats?
Can someone with 2 weapon sets please check me on this?
So I just discovered that my 2H had +golem dmg tempered while my 1h+focus had both +summoning dmg. Apparently +golem dmg does NOT reflect on the tooltip for the active golem ability. I don’t know if this is a bug or intended.
I swapped to summon dmg on the 2H and the tooltip now reads a little higher; however, it’s still very close in damage range (82.8k-101.3k for 1H/Focus vs 100.1k-122.4k for the 2H). Seems like with the same +summon dmg the 2h might win out on the active.
I still don’t understand why the +golem dmg doesn’t affect the tooltip though. Any idea if it still affects the damage of the active despite?
As far as I could tell from testing each minion individually over a week ago they have baked in attack rates but those do get modified by weapon attack rates. I seem to recall it being claimed this was not the case in prior seasons. Yet, when testing it the observations dispute that claim. At least for season 4.
Assuming this is true, and someone else can feel free to confirm/deny it with testing, then yes, in theory any weapon setup would yield similar value over time if all else was equal.
I would point out Blighted aspect gets doubled by a 2her, however. If it’s getting good up-time you’re probably not replacing that value via two 1h aspects. 2hers also arguably favor an approach oriented around burst damage. Conversely, a 1h+focus affords more flexibility for aspects and affixes. If these are desired a given build may benefit more from running the faster weapon setup.
I’m not entirely sure what the deal would be with the golem active tooltip. I don’t trust tooltips as far as I can throw them and ignore most though.
2h weapons have higher base damage (scythe being the highest) and aspects get x2.
If you need aspects (which Minion Necro need) you are in most cases better off with 1h weapons for the extra aspect slot, you also attack faster and have extra useful stats on your focus.
The ONLY reason to run a 2h is for higher base damage and 2x on aspects.
Dont trust tooltips dont even look at them imo, look at the damage numbers in game, they dont lie.
minions do not benefit from weapon attack speed, they only benefit from your attack speed stats as modifiers on gear. Minions also scale directly from base damage on weapons, however I think its incredibly low like 0.21 or something (i cannot remember the exact number). Therefore, a 2handed scythe is the best way to scale minion damage as far as what kind of weapon to use. Because minions only care about the 100-200 damage range not the 150 dps number. This is why a 2hand sword is crap
HOWEVER… this is season 3 and before knowledge… did they change something with the huge overhaul in season 4? no idea mate
a secondary reason for using a 2handed scythe, whats better 2 good aspects ie. your best aspect, and your second best aspect? or getting your best aspect twice?
If the latter is the correct answer for your build, then a 2hander is for you, as you simply get twice the bonus from your best aspect. This is usually blighted aspect
The only reason I can see to run an offhand is due to your build requiring an additional aspect slot to function.
I appreciate all the replies. I hadnt considered the double blighted aspect and how powerful that would be.
Is it currently possible to get a blighted proc frequenly enough with the 2h to have it available for every single golem active, while still maintaining a super low CD on golem active?
I tested this by stripping a character of all gear, cutting out all attack speed bonuses and observing hit counts from a single minion of each type over 10s intervals. It easily took 10+ minutes per minion type. I wanted to begin the count right as their attack sequence was starting and establish consistency. So each test involved many iterations of watching individual minions hit the target dummy.
Initially it was done without a weapon equipped. Yes, Minions can attack when you have no weapon equipped. They just don’t do any damage. Then I re-ran all tests with a 2h sword, wand + focus and 2h scythe. Making absolutely certain no weapons used had attack speed bonuses on them.
The 2h sword, with a base attack speed of 1.0 per second, showed no difference vs no weapon. This is not surprising for obvious reasons. However, the wand + focus showed both sped up animations and yielded higher hit counts in all cases. Conversely, the 2h scythe involved slightly sluggish animations and fewer hit counts.
To provide some numbers, Blood Golem and Cold/Shadow Mages appeared to get 8 attacks per 10s interval without a weapon and a 2h sword equipped. With a wand + focus all of them got ~9.5 attacks per 10s. With a 2h scythe they had a hair over 7 hits per 10s. In these last two tests the animation partially completed before the time interval fully elapsed (could remove this concern by extending the test time interval).
If we were to plug in numbers for expected values if weapon rate was modifying their base rates…
0.8 x 1.2 x 10 = 0.96 x 10 = 9.6 per 10s
0.8 x 0.9 x 10 = 0.72 x 10 = 7.2 per 10s
Moving to Bone Golem. It had ~12 hits per 10s with no weapon and a 2h sword, ~14.5 hits per 10s with the wand + focus and a hair shy of 11 hits per 10s with a 2h scythe. Plugging in values…
1.2 x 1.2 x 10 = 1.44 x 10 = 14.4 per 10s
1.2 x 0.9 x 10 = 1.08 x 10 = 10.8 per 10s
Iron Golem appeared slightly slower vs Blood Golem at ~7 attacks per 10s with no weapon and a 2h sword, ~8.5 per 10s with a wand + focus, and a little over 6 per 10s with a 2h scythe. Plugging in values again here…
0.7 x 1.2 x 10 = 0.84 x 10 = 8.4 per 10s
0.7 x 0.9 x 10 = 0.63 x 10 = 6.3 per 10s
The approach used here isn’t the most precise, reliable or quickest but it felt like enough to spot a difference. The only variables were weapon setup changes and the potential for observational error. The latter could conceivably be reduced to zero with a better testing approach.
Eventually it was quite obvious the minions were attacking noticably faster or slower depending on weapon setup with a simple visual inspection. It’s most apparent with a 2h scythe vs wand + focus for Bone Golem because it’s one of the most coordinated and dexterous minions (the gap is larger because the base is faster).
Perhaps the numbers aren’t on the money but it seems clear weapon rates modify minion attack rates for S4. I’d be open to being convinced otherwise though.
Generally Blighted can get solid up-time. Even picking up Aphotic aspect, for warriors, and running Shadow Mages is enough by itself to get good up-time on it if you keep your warriors on targets. Slotting BCE or Blight and using them makes it more reliable. Bone Storm could conceivably be paired with Ultimate Shadow aspect. There are many options. They all boil down to pushing shadow damage sources.
The double bolt cast from Shadow Mages also appears to increase shadowblight stack generation, for whatever that is worth (I did verify both this and Aphotic work). The temper option giving Shadow Mages a chance for a double cast should as well but I haven’t fully verified it.
As previously mentioned you can’t really compete with Blighted using two 1h valued aspects either. It’s too big. Not if it’s getting solid up-time anyway. Not to mention the passive shadowblight proc damage going out.
It does have a wind-up, which is the only drawback. So, early into a pull it takes a bit to build.
Personally, I don’t usually hold golem actives for buff windows. Due to various forms of CDR, the potency of those actives and the duration of the main buff windows at ~6s. If you constantly hold back golem actives odds are you’re just losing some. Plus, you’re probably only fitting 1-3 into those 6s windows, depending on Decrepify CDR triggers and golem active CDR (this is a deceptively powerful temper choice).
I will delay CD’s like AoTD for a bit until Blighted activates. Otherwise it’s more like an attempt is made to sync buff activation with the golem active. Not the other way around. If that makes sense.
To add more complication to this subject 1 build guide recommends “crit strike damage” while the other states “damage” using a 2H scythe. I have both weapons up to lvl 8 masterwork but really cannot distinguish and difference. Test dummies are useless as is the attack power statistic. Attack power stat is way higher with “damage” but golem damage remains pretty much the same. The guide that recommends “damage” is coming from a well known streamer so no idea what is best.
my test was: remove all attack speed except the 10% from paragon.
equip a scythe with no attack speed, start a stop watch with its first swing, count 40 swings, and end the stop watch on the 40th swing, result 45.3 seconds.
do the same with a wand with no attack speed on it, and the result was 36.16 seconds.
obviously the highest number of attacks one counts the bigger this gap will be.
Now the issue is which does more DPS, one would assume you can just judge this now by the DPS number on the weapon itself rather then needing to go by the base damage. Also how does this interact with attack speed? does that mean you need less attack speed to hit the cap with a wand? or does it mean you can get more attacks per second with a wand and 100% attack speed then you can with a scythe and 100% attack speed?
Thanks for that. It implies it wasn’t all in my head. :).
DPS won’t matter because the weapons end up in the same ballpark there. 1,838 average for 1hers, 3,678 for 2h swords and 3,677 for 2h Scythes. Two 1hers doubles it for 3,676. These numbers are so close together it doesn’t really matter. I assume that’s why the values are set as they are for each weapon. It’s to normalize their DPS.
I wouldn’t expect anything with attack speed bonuses to matter either. A 100% attack speed bonus essentially doubles your DPS.
The only exception would be if there was some weird upper limit on attack rate we don’t know about (if it gets too fast the attack animations explode? I don’t know…). I’m pretty sure I’ve seen some guide builders bring this up in passing. I have no idea whether they’ve explored that rabbit hole or not. I certainly haven’t.
The main takeaway is there is no need to insist on using a big slow weapon with minions. Over time it’ll average out to the same with any weapon setup. The decision would be governed by stuff like higher burst vs a steadier stream of damage and aspect value.
this would be an issue for golem builds as its all about that single hit, so i would assume a 2hand scythe is best here. but for shadow mages, i think it comes down to what you want more a 2x blighted aspect or +1 aspect slot. In addition, rerolling extra projectiles is probably more straightforward on a 2hander, but yeah its 6 and 2*3’s with that second reason.
this was valid when weapon attack speed had no impact on minion attack speed, testing this is proving to no longer be the case in season 4. Therefore weapon DPS does matter, outside of some niche situations like blood golem active ability.
because damage range only matters on individual hits, not on overall damage output. Therefore given that golem builds use a single individual hit (active ability) to do their damage, a scythe is still better then a sword.
Go test it. do what Iridium31 did, I was unsure myself so I tested it too. read my previous comment for how I tested it.
A little late to the party here. But something specifically for shadow minions to consider is that aphotic is currently bugged with decrepify and reducing cooldowns at much higher than normal rates. So to take advantage of great accelerated cooldowns, the fastest attack rate possible is worth considering.
I haven’t done any testing, but for those with time and patience to do it, I would be really interested in how that affected total damage done over say a 2 minute period with 2h scythe vs wand or 1h scythe.
Some updates after season halfway in. AOTD necro is very durable built (providing you have shako ). This built is good at everything but master at none - you will see serious bottle neck with this built performance once you cross the line of Pit 100 (and given fact that elixir of holy bolts was … say “corrected”) you will have go all way for golem damage/active golem uptime if you don’t do that fights against bosses will be painful to the extreme. Now when it comes to choice between 2H Sword, 2H Scythe or Grandfather - it will be hard choice. I like sword a bit better due to extra pitch with critical damage (and you DO rely on it a lot) but in the end you are talking about like 10% base damage +229 life per hit vs. 17.5% more for crit damage and 10% faster attack … touch choice. What I did found thou, using elixir of advantage 15% attack speed, attack speed better investment than base damage (even with golem)
). This built is good at everything but master at none - you will see serious bottle neck with this built performance once you cross the line of Pit 100 (and given fact that elixir of holy bolts was … say “corrected”) you will have go all way for golem damage/active golem uptime if you don’t do that fights against bosses will be painful to the extreme. Now when it comes to choice between 2H Sword, 2H Scythe or Grandfather - it will be hard choice. I like sword a bit better due to extra pitch with critical damage (and you DO rely on it a lot) but in the end you are talking about like 10% base damage +229 life per hit vs. 17.5% more for crit damage and 10% faster attack … touch choice. What I did found thou, using elixir of advantage 15% attack speed, attack speed better investment than base damage (even with golem)