They modified the Ring of Mendeln and Xfal’s. I told you before they have to get rid of overpowered powers of Ring of Mendeln to make the minions very powerful or players would abuse using them both.
The damage of Mendeln is still Physical just like before. But the amplification might still be coming from Necromancer. I wanna try it with monster stats Summoner not with a sissy Summoner.
Xfal would be shadow damage from Blights. It would still inherit the full power of the Necromancer. I wanna try it too with monster stats Summoner not with a sissy Summoner.
Nothing is wrong with me trying it myself. I am just a Casual player anyway. For now for what I have, everything melts in leveling. Yup my Summoner is at 36k Attack Power and I will try to improve it further.
you can try, but unfortunately your mages will then hit like “sissy’s” which is not great this season as minions are so powerful compared to necromancer core skills. Next season though, the meta will probably be bone spirit which might scale better with mendeln.
But I encourage you to experiment! no harm in that!
My theory is base on 100% of Necromancer stats being inherited by the minions. How could my Mages have sissy damage if they inherit the monster stats of their Master Necromancer? Maybe the multiplier of Summoning Finesse tempering towards minions is higher than inherited multipliers from Natural Finesse tempering. But I dont think you would call my Mages damage sissy damage. I think they would balance out when Mendeln and Xfal damage combine with it. We will see.
Please try it. Its possible people missed something when trying to make it work. If you get good success, definitely let us know. I know I’d be interested in seeing it and trying it myself.
The biggest obstacle I’ve run into is that there aren’t enough large scalars for the necros own damage to get it there.
I’ve also thought to going to 200% attack speed in 12/12 GA atk gear - easy enough to do, but then I’m dropping at least 1 good modifier for the minion attack speed aspect and kalan’s edict (which doesn’t scale anything).
Basically, you need them to attack at least twice as fast to get good amounts of procs from the ring. You could try skimishers, but then you are forced into AotD to get them back due to lack of corpses. Either that or you spec heavily into lucky hit to go with hewed flesh and bone spear to generate corpses. Corpse golem could get you 5 back, but thats not the most helpful thing when you have 11 you need to bring back after a death.
It’s a lot to consider, but who knows, maybe there is an avenue I haven’t considered?
as you progress, you will have lots of choices where you have to pick “my damage” or “minion damage”, even with minions inheriting 100% of your stats, you still need to boost them to get them to do significant damage.
A good example is a single weapon temper which can increase their damage by nearly 90%x which is definitely not a good temper for your damage, then there are new stats like skeletal mage mastery, aspects and legendary paragon nodes like cult leader.
But I think you know this stuff anyway.
3 rules of any ARPG.
always hit caps
diversify your defenses (layering defenses like life/damage reduction/armour/resist)
specialize/narrow your offenses (add multiplier on top of multiplier on a single spell/ability)
I am more into… My damage is being 100% inherited by my Minions.
If I use Summoning Finesse Tempers, I have to focus either on Mage or Golem. Let’s say, I choose Mages on all Summoning Finesse, what happens to Golems? Lesser Golem damage. If I choose the Golem, what happens to Mages. Lesser Mage damage.
If I use Natural Finesse “Damage” tempers, all of them… both Mages and Golem gets them. Add the Xfal and Mendeln damage. Mobs are getting hit hard by Golem, Mages and Me (explosions from the Rings plus Shadow damages). Whereas on your Summoner, you either go with all Mages or Golem damage.
Oh, that’s another changes. You could trade Uniques that are not modified. I am gonna check out my more active friend if he has spare Mendeln and Xfal. And ilevel 925 Sacrilegious Ring.
An update… I just reached level 99 and I’ve beaten Pit 61 without death and have beaten it with too much time left… maybe becoz of my previous Season experience. I have been using Ring of Mendeln since Pit 35’s which my friend gave me. He never stopped playing D4.
The Ring of Mendeln is now lackluster becoz its explosions are no longer multiplicative like as before. Also Xfal’s explosions lose its multiplicative properties. I cant multiply it into million/billion damage anymore. I have never look its damage numbers yet. I should be able to feel it during the game. I didnt feel it’s damage.
Well, at least I could eat Pit 61 for breakfast. Never seen my ceiling yet. But I felt the danger of those mobs that they could kill me if I am not careful. I just abuse the mechanics… I cc them all, not giving them chance to strike me. I only have 4x level 15 glyphs, the rest are level 1’s lol. And I havent got the Final rewards from Iron Wolves.
There’s tons of room for improvement. I can go beyond high Pit.
Let’s see how far I would go. I might not reach Pit 100 with Ring of Mendeln but I feel I could get to Pit 100+ regardless. If my friend can reach Pit 115, I am confident I could do the same like how I fare against him on previous Seasons.
a good benchmark to aim for is, pit 100 can be farmed easily and safely, all tormented bosses are killed extremely fast, and uber lilith can be killed. If it can do that, its a solid build. But you have a long way to go with building your char as you only just started.
Climbing with shadow mage minions is harder then with golem, i think the highest shadow mage is about 140 maybe higher now, I stopped trying as I would need to invest to much at 132. With golem you can go a lot higher from what I have heard.
I just know from my own testing, ring of mendeln is just a worse ring then any alternative. If you go player damage or minion.
A day after my last post, I reached level 100 and I have beaten Pit 87 right away… it was okay. I have 2 deaths from Boss but reaching the Boss was fairly easy as everything is CC’d with Sacrilegious Ring.
Also killed Tormented Varshan and Tormented Zir. But I have to get rid of Sacrilegious Ring which is pointless on Bosses. But my Mendeln was still there.
I am still playing it around. I’ve beaten Pit 91 this morning with just 4x 8/12 and the rest at 4/12 Masterworking. Long way to go but in the right direction. If Mendeln wont work when I upgrade it to 12/12, I have alternate rings that can be leveled up in Masterworking. But I freakingly frustrated when I bricked a GA Ring. It is suppose to be Mage Temper… it became a Golem Temper. I am not into Golems right now.
I am not into 132 or 140. Just being able to beat Pit 101 over and over, I would be happy. Hope I wont lose interest on this game this time around until I destroyed Uber Lilith.
Tormented Duriel is okay to solo now on me. Tormented Andariel is quite hard becoz I have to bring in my Mages inside the Suppressor shield. I have to ask my friend to help me kill Andariel becoz of this. I am working on getting an Uber Unique from the alchemist. I have 3x sparks right now. I just need a 4th spark plus 50 Million gold which I am almost on it.
The RIng of Mendeln is inferior. This Season, they made regular Uniques garbage. It is a bad design. It’s okay becoz it’s not that super rare anymore. It’s raining regular uniques on Tormented Boss kills. What RIng of Mendeln made me is… get to Pit 87 from where I would get tons of goodies that would lead me to kill more Tormented Bosses. I am just trying to hang out with it… maybe up to Pit 101. But I should have an alternate tempered GA ring by then.
Hope I should not get bored. I have just beaten the FInal Chapter of the Season Journey… I am now a Destroyer. But I have to kill Uber Lilith first and I need to have an Uber Unique but my issue is that I dont have much play time. I am about to reach my ceiling. GG.
I have just beaten Pit100 without death with 8:33 left on timer. I have a video if you want. I was using 8/12 on all slots including the Ring of Mendeln and Sacrilegious Ring.
It’s not top damage but still decent enough for my taste. With AoTD and Tendril Crit, the damage was going as high as 8M. The Sacrilegious Ring is not garbage as it gives me free tendril every 8 seconds. If I follow up with another tendril after the first one lapsed, it’s like perma stun. Elites and mobs die before they even start to attack me. The setup is perfect allowing me to have less or no death until I reach the Boss. Sacrilegious seems has disadvantage on Boss fight. Getting to the Boss is more important.
I strongly believe I would still improve further when I get all slots to 12/12 and when I get Tyrael’s Might.
There’s not much to do now on this toon becoz I have completed the Season journey. But I still have Uber Lilith on my To-do-list. Uber Lilith has a script where she flies at 50%. I havent mastered yet the dance routine. I never tried much. I feel I want to do all 12/12 on all my slots first.
And still need to spend all my Stygian Stones for possible Uber Unique drop.
Got a Tyrael’s Might. Excellent chest for survivability but horrible for me as i am using a golem build. Have +5 to golem mastery on my chest. Surprised you got to pit level 100 with those 2 Unique rings, found both pretty useless on boss fights. Think for my build the only unique that “maybe” be useful is shako but once again that is debatable.
Useless when you use the Meta setup where your weapon are the minions leaving your actual Necro Summoner weak. Using Mendeln, you have to set it up that your Necro is a weapon too… not a sissy. The Sacrilegious ring, I use it as cheat… abuse it. Making all mobs perma stunned from my tendrils… I have 2 tendrils instead of one. Elites/mobs die before they could hit me. It’s also abusing the Grasping Veins buff… allowing me to have longer high Crit chance buff (from 2 tendrils). I dont think you guys have Grasping Veins… Take note I am buffing my Necro too not just the minions. But I agree Sacrilegious is somewhat little useless on Boss fights. Mendeln is every 6th attack, minion explodes… allowing decent damage from melee skellies. Unlike Golem build and Mage builds, their melee skellies hits like a sissy too… pretty much useless.
I can go beyond Pit 100. It’s just pointless to me to go beyond it as I am just Casual. I just eat Pit 101 for breakfast… to improve my gear to be able to destroy Tormented Bosses which I did already. I just need to have play time to learn Uber Lilith’s dance mechanics. I put her to hp = 1 many times on the last stage. I just cant have enough playtime to practice on how to learn to run like fast chicken. The mechanics is killing me but I still have few more days/week to put her down. I have no Uber unique btw … very casual.
Just an update. I was able to kill Uber Lilith with Mendeln Ring. No Sacrilegious Ring on Uber Bosses. I only use the Sacrilegious Ring when clearing the whole Dungeon like on NM dungeons and Pit.
I just realized that I would have better DPS on Lilith when I bring all my minions near Lilith where she could get hit by all minions explosions including the Mages. I positioned the Mages just next to her.
Took me a while to learn how to do quick Nukes with my build. Also took me awhile how to dance and how to run properly without getting hit on the 2nd stage.
It’s my first Uber Lilith kill… without any Uber Unique. Just abuse the Tempering and Masterworking mechanics. This time, I didnt get bored grinding from NM dungeons, Pit and Helltide.
BTW, I just got for my 4th Resplendent Spark after Uber Lilith kill. But I have no use for Uber Unique. There’s no more Bosses to kill. All of them dead to me. Higher Pit to me is not a good goal for Casuals like me. Destroying Pit 101 over and over to get 12/12 on Masterworking so I could kill Tormented Bosses and Uber Lilith… That’s what I did. I love playing out of the meta. I might not be the best DPS’er but I have a build enough to complete all Seasonal Objectives. GG.