I need someone who understands the math better than me to explain why I should be investing in mage damage instead of golem damage with this build. I’m using the Maxroll version. I’ve seen a million variations of these minion builds, but the best seem to be the shadow minion versions. I am just not fully understanding why stacking mage damage is better. In practice on higher level nightmare dungeons and pit, the gameplay turns into corpse tendril, blight and golem active ability, which clears most of the room. I feel like that combo would be even better with more golem damage. I essentially can’t tell how my mages are really making my life easier at this point. Is there something I’m not getting?
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Assuming I did not fat finger any numbers, the short answer is in the current Shadow Summoner build guide on Maxroll the Mages deal ~22.6% more damage per salvo compared to the Golem standard hit and the Golem active is ~48.9% more damage compared to Mages per salvo.
Fully evaluating this gets tricky due to the Golem active CD, with CDR in the mix (Decrepify, Hulking aspect by default and some CDR in this case), and Shadowblight generation from Shadow Mages (damage from Shadowblight procs and Blighted up-time considerations). Both of these are difficult to quantify.
It is running the damage vs cursed temper option, which is a sensible choice if you can get it to roll. I don’t chase this temper in my own setup because Profane Finesse tome has 4 options and 3 of them are in sorta kinda bricked temper territory. It’s probably optimal for absolute output but elevates the risk for blown tempers, basically.
In my opinion a Golem focus favors setting up the big dunk, so to speak, while a Mage focus is more productive for sustained, distributed damage. Mages also tend to handle rapidly changing circumstances better. Both have their pros and cons. You could go with either one.
To answer your question, a big draw to Mages is their flexibility. Fully leveraging a Golem focused approach requires quite a bit of work in the setup stage to maximize your damage dumps. Mages are considerably easier to work with in this regard. In all cases you’d be doing a bit of both.
The biggest difference for higher end content is the changing circumstances bit alluded to earlier. For higher tier Pit, some tormented bosses and Uber Lilith it comes up. All of these can put a real hamper on fully leveraging your Golem. Mages are better able to handle those scenarios when they come up. The relevance of this is going to depend heavily on your play and the content.
What about tempering summoning damage to improve the warriors, mages, and golem?
The difference those make is they shift your additive bucket around.
Typically I reduce everything to three numbers. Weapon damage, the minion damage coefficients (S4 minion mega guide thread has these listed, good stuff in there…) and every other bonus expressed as a merged multiplier (or two, one for highly conditional stuff and the other for the virtually always on stuff).
The golem active could be simplified by saying it fires every 10 seconds without influencing normal hits. In which case that number could be divided by 10 and added to the standard hit. This is a huge over-simplification but it’s something to go with.
In this particular case with the golem simplification noted above it works out like so, assuming no mistakes were made (steps omitted to save forum space…).
Damage to Cursed Affix Average Damage
Shadow Mage Average Damage (per salvo): 109,557,059
Blood Golem Average Damage: 105,659,405
Total: 215,216,464
Summoning Affix Average Damage
Shadow Mages (per salvo): 101,451,310
Blood Golem: 98,520,031
Total: 199,971,341
Mage Affix Average Damage
Shadow Mages (per salvo): 127,770,459
Blood Golem: 59,432,721
Total: 187,203,180
Golem Affix Average Damage
Shadow Mages (per salvo): 56,853,623
Blood Golem Standard: 134,219,688
Total: 191,073,311
These numbers do assume literally every applicable bonus is active for each minion (Mages get Gloom, Terror, Mage Mastery, Golem gets Golem Mastery, Hulking Monstrosity, Golem glyph, the rest are applied to both). So these are peak damage averages. Odds are this will not happen routinely in practice.
As can be seen, damage to cursed gives the highest absolute value on paper because it elevates output for all minions and outpaces summoning damage roll ranges (reason Maxroll uses it).
In practice I’d expect golem damage to be higher here via CDR giving more actives. This likely shifts the real world values more toward favoring the golem in many cases. Especially with plentiful targets since the Blood Golem active is an AoE. This ignores the earlier mentioned Shadowblight consideration, however.
The golem active CD reduction temper can provide significant increases here. As a side benefit it heals the golem and your character with the second upgrade. Spamming actives frequently can provide a deceptively huge amount of healing this way. That can allow for much more aggressive play with sufficient survivability to eat/trade hits (almost need to do so once Pit tiers get high enough).
I assume the Maxroll setup runs Ultimate CDR because it’s using Bone Storm + Shielding Storm. With this combination you’re probably trying to leverage the shielding as much as possible. Doing so requires having Bone Storm active. Incidentally, it’s pushing Ultimate CDR to raise the up-time.
I’d note, other variables are in the mix and this is, again, a very rough approximation. One sore thumb example would be the Mage double cast temper. That’d provide a significant boon to Mage output. You could even run the 2nd Shadow Mage upgrade for double bolt casts. I believe it may even be optimal if you’re focusing everything toward Mages.
For most content you’re probably dishing out so much damage you could pick whatever floats your boat. The values are so high outside high tier Pit, certain Tormented Echo bosses and Uber Lilith you’re going to destroy the screen with any of the options above. Both setups can light up the Echo Bosses and Uber Lilith if you manage your damage dumps properly.
You got a link to the mega thread? I’ve been absent for a bit.
More info is always appreciated when it comes to building 
(They still haven’t fixed reaps attack speed bug either 
)
Should be here. Bactyrael coming to the rescue of all the Necro’s.
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Legend cheers bud!