So I’ve had a pet mendeln build I’ve been trying to get gear for. Finally got a usable leg last night and put it together today. I’ve so far pulled off a T6 with VERY suboptimal gear. The good news is it only takes one mythic unique - Tyraels Might. If I can ever get anything like what’s in the planner link below, I can see where it can do a T7 reliably. The T6 felt pretty good, especially when I managed to get bosses close enough that the proc from the ring could hit them.
The question of the build was - how to scale mendeln damage?
I identified a few ways:
Multipliers - there are actually quite a few in the paragon board that work for this.
Critical strike damage - this is really easy to stack to ~1800 before multipliers kick in.
The build in ideal form will get you to ~1800-1900 critical strike damage. This also applies to your minions, so they actually do significant damage as well since you are hitting 100% attack speed and nearly 100% critical strike chance.
Stack that with an 80x multiplier from grasping veins and another 22x from essence and you can see where its going to hurt things. (For those that like numbers - that gives you ~3900 critical strike damage bonus at minimum numbers for mendeln damage, and ~2200 for your minions because of essence)
So having said all that. Here is the planner. I’m very open to suggestions on how to improve it. It’s still very much a WIP.
The problem with the ring is that it does not scale with ANY minions stats, when building a minion build you usually get a lot of “Minions damage” that is basically useless for the rings damage, a minion build without the ring is and will be better than with it unfortunately…
This has been the case since the ring got released and its still so weird that basically the only Minion Unique doesnt scale with any minion damage.
yea keep saying that and ignore other multipliers that scale BOTH. to name a few:
fueled by death
amplify damage
amplify glyph
corporeal
essence
dominate
exploit
grave keeping
revenge
flesh eater
scent of death
blood begets blood
grasping veins
while it doesn’t scale with minion stuff, it benefits from the above where many are included in a minion build anyway.
the issue of mendeln as of now is tempering. running active golem needs the cdr on the ring. running mages also needs the ultimate cdr on the ring.
so it’s not about not having buffs, it’s about the tempering
sadly that doesnt matter, because it gets nothing from my:
23/3 skeletal mage mastery (460%x)
Aspect of reanimation 40%x
Unyielding commander 100%x (this is multiplicative, the tooltip is wrong)
10/3 hellbent commander 100%x
Skeletal priest 30%x
Shadow mage first upgrade 18%x
Cult leader 150%x
Great Feast 90%x (on my weapon, I don’t actually know how this works as it may be a generic modifier, but I assume its only a generic if you have no minions - not tested)
Skeletal Mage damage 650%+
Summoning damage 85%+
it also doesn’t trigger from anything that doesn’t explicitly say “attacks”, so “99% chance for your skeletal mages attacks to cast twice” doesn’t work as its a second cast not a second attack, also book of the dead second upgrade on shadow mages does not count either.
Sadly these multipliers absolutely dwarf everything you mentioned, especially given that you cannot get all of the list you made due to quite a lot of build restrictions. Now sure this is based on my build and you can make other minion focused builds.
But unfortunately when it comes down to maximizing your minion damage, you will end up with almost no meaningful multipliers for the mendeln proc.
Its a really sad state, and a trap for many new players. I am however using it… but not for the proc, just for the attack speed and +6 to minion mastery, its also a 3GA ring which helps it beat out its competition for the slot.
i didn’t say mendeln is powerful to be a must have in a minion build. i’m saying it’s not nothing; it still benefits from many of the buffs.
considering pit push is a long fight, over this long period, mendeln can contribute part of it. oh, it’s aoe as well which is not shadow mages can do. so if u use corpse tendrils to pull enemies, mendeln proc, despite being “dwarfed”, hits multiple targets.
as i said the main issue i personally don’t consider using it is the lack of cdr tempering for aotd or active golem
The problem is, with a fully decked out Skeletal mage summoner its hitting for under 1 million damage, and your mages are hitting for anywhere between 20-50million damage. so its contribution is irrelevant, in fact it probably does less damage then the divine barrage on my tyreal’s might, which has no purpose other then assisting in extremely easy open world content.
The length of the fight doesn’t increase the percent at which it helps, I would say its contribution is probably somewhere around 1-3% of my damage. Its just immeasurably small and insignificant. My golem with its 8/3 mastery and benefitting from far more modifiers does absolutely no damage… its just their for the 30% DR.
its area of effect is so small it cannot hit 2 target dummies at the same time in the training dummy cellar. Shadow mages pierce, which gives them insane AoE, especially since every attack is doubled with a good weapon. AoE is not a skeletal mage summoners main problem, its only an issue with 2-5 spread out targets where they all attack different enemies, mendeln doesn’t help with that either.
sadly enemies need to be pixel pulled, and even then the AoE is yet again dwarfed by that of skeletal mages.
There is literally no redeeming feature to the proc… its just bad no matter what you do. I wish I was wrong, but reality doesn’t care what I wish for lol.
This wasn’t meant to be a mendeln is great build. It was only a ‘how to make mendeln functional’ build. With my gear still quite off, and saccing the golem to make up for the missing crit damage. I’ve seen it hit for 22 to 25m a shot when everything lines up.
The problems, as has been pointed out, are the long delay between procs, the poor aoe range and the complete lack of synergy with minions.
I am in no way saying this build will give you even an easy T7 run. With the gear near perfect, it might give you T7…
Again, it might give a T7 finish.
I’ve done T6 runs and until my my gear is at least 8/12 in the correct affixes, even that is not what I would call easy.
The minion modifiers left on the gear were there just for some supplemental damage since there is really nothing else to put in place.
just to be clear we were more pointing out the lack of synergy it has with minion builds as there is some misconception that it will somehow do damage with the generic modifiers one takes with a minion focused build.
I am sure it can be scaled to a couple of million if you focus on “player damage”, but that will leave your minions doing next to no damage.
I will add, its attack speed bonus is basically a GA as its value is that of a GA but only for minions. Given it can then be a GA on top of that, and with MW crits it can offer something like 33% minion attack speed which is crazy high. Also its mastery bonuses is huge in early end game, and is still quite strong if triple MW critted in endgame with +6.
On my minions focused build. I actually use it specifically because of the mastery and atk speed bonuses. It allows me to put TM on and still get a good bonus for the golem to pop the warts with its special attack since that’s really the only way to remove them.
But in a minions focused build, it still stings to see that damage and not be able to scale it for anything. Then there is knowing that aoe can only hopefully hit things that are tightly grouped.
yeah I use it in my skele mage build for the exact same reasons. But the ring still makes me feel like a noob knowing the proc is tickling the enemies.
At least in your build it sounds like you are getting more out of the proc by having more generic multipliers then me, like your grasping veins, stacking crit damage rather then a minion specific additive modifier on your tempering etc.
I use the ring because of the mastery ranks, which helped my golem thorns build to kill T8 bosses under 7min (I know it is far from satisfactory compared to other builds). As others have pointed out, the unique effect has minimal contribution to a minion build.
I am curious what would be the result if they modified some Paragon nodes and Glyphs for some Minion crit multipliers and for example give Mendeln a Minion Crit Damage affix as well.
On my mediocre S4 Gear, the Mendeln procs are about 3-6x the damage while using Grandpapa.
With high points in the masteries, the hits should be like up to 100M each. Than I guess, the hardest content would be manageable in time.
One or two additional aspects would help - for example letting you equip those onto the Minions in the Book of the Dead, so you could for example have Grandpapa and 200% AotD Damage with you’re Reapers at the same time.
Would be nice in general if we could have at least A-Tier Minion Builds if you set things right and S-Tier if everything is perfect with GAs and Triple Crit MW,…no S-Tier by default needed, but maybe options to make it so with couple of hundreds(+) hours investment in Grinding, RNG and so on.
I am also curious if maybe in 2026 with the second Addon they bring back for example belts and/or shoulder plates. That would help especially Minion Necros a lot. Guess by then they will add T5 and T6 and 900iL Gear, too.
Hopefully synegies like bigger Auras or DoTs will be working a lot better for and with Minions in Time, but I guess that could at least take one or two years on top, if Blizz considers some buffs that alike.
You probably didnt read through the topic before posting…
They dont need to give any paragon nodes or multipliers, they need to fix the ring to scale with minion modifiers.
Minions gain 100% of your stats, that means your crit and multis as well.
Giving Mendeln a “minion crit damage affix” will not help increase the damage of the ring, since it does not scale with ANY minion modifiers.
The ring doesnt scale with masteries. Literally NOTHING that is for minions scale with this ring, and thats the problem with the ring.
It ONLY scales from your damage and your multiplers so any example Golem damage, Summoning damage, or minion aspects doesnt work to scale the damage of the ring.
Minions are A-tier.
I recommend you reading through the topic if you are more interested in the ring and minions.
Okay, thanks to point that out detailed - I rushed a bit throug this at a short break at work.
That was the reason, the proc is much bigger when using GF, because it is a big win for player’s crit -
or things like Fueled by Death, Flesh Eater or Blood Getters aspect.
They need to make it inherit both stats - player’s and minion’s.
Then they better fix this illogical behaviour in future.
I don’t think things will change soon. Maybe between S7 and S9.
I’ve said this before, but the real way to fix mendeln, is to make the damage it does on proc based on a % of the damage the minion does on attack, which would instantly fix it to scale with all proper minion stats and specs, because it would then simply be based on the damage the minions do. That’s all that needs to be done rather than to try to build in all the tags and markers to make every booster work on it and such which we know they won’t do, so instead the real fix is to simply make it a % of minion hit damage.
Where and when? whispered into your pillow in the dead of night?!
I have never heard this suggestion before! and you are right!
This is a really simple fix, just a % of the damage that proc’ed it. Balance for this ring can be achieved by either reducing the hits needed to proc it or changing the % that it takes from the hit that proc’ed it.
Every 6th attack from each Minion is empowered, explodeing for x-y Physical damage.
Should be:
Every 6th hit(this way it will work with chance for skeletal mages to cast extra projectiles) from each Minion is empowered, explodeing for x-y% of Minion damage(or Summoning damage?) as Physical damage.
“Every 6th hit for each minion is empowered, exploding for x% of that hits damage.”
like you said “hit” not “attack” so extra attack weapon tempers boost it, along with reaper and golem cleave, extra projectile upgrades in book of the dead, coldbringers aspect etc etc. The balance would just be to reduce the % that the ring hits for.
I think it ashould be more specified, for better understanding. It also could say: exploding for x-y damage, this amount gets increased by y%(x) form summoning damage and minion damage bonuses. Just to be more clear, that those stats take effect on the explosion damage.
