Lord of Mages, to faq or not to faq? [Archive]

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rickcarson

15-05-2004, 14:46

Ola!

Intro:

I've been looking through the various guides and so forth, looking to see if anyone else has done a big writeup on the old Lord of the Mages build updated for 1.10.

Lots of people seem to be using Overlord, but from what I can gather that has the emphasis on Iron Golem, not the Mages. The link to Aesir's guide was broken for me, so I'm not sure how much overlap there is between what I'm thinking when I say LotM, and Overlord. I'd guess that a modern Overlord would also be into Raise Skeleton more than Skeletal Mage?

Anyways, I'll follow this preamble with the proper preamble for what I'm thinking of contributing.. Props and slops welcome. (Well, props at least ;-)

I'm not claiming to be the inventor of this, or the world's greatest expert, I'm just someone having fun running around HC without a bone shield :-D

As always, any skills or gears not mentioned by me, are because they are teh suxxors and anyone using them is a nu0blar... No wait, that's not quite right... how does it go again?

rickcarson

15-05-2004, 14:53

Lord of The Mages
Draft Guide

Motivation:
-----------
Why bother? Because I like doing things differently. I am deeply contrarian in both my playing style, and pretty much everything else in life :-)
Why bother with mages? After all, everyone knows they are 'teh suxors' in Hell, right?

I've played about a dozen different Necromancers in 1.10, mostly revolving around Skeletons, though with a few Bonemancers and Cursebiotches thrown in with the mix. My main softcore MF character is a Necromancer with lots (for me) of +skills gear, and max Raise Skeleton and Skeleton Mastery, with near max Skeletal Mage. What got me started on the track of the Lord of the Mages, was that I noticed during a particularly long and fruitless session of Hell Countess rune finding runs (you know the game is mocking you when she drops an entire runeword, but its 'Malice') that even when I wasn't casting Amplify Damage on the physical immune ghosts, they were still dying fairly quickly. My Skeletal Mages (which I'd assumed were purely decorative) were actually doing damage!

However the more I experimented with Skeletal Mages as support for my other minions, the more frustrated I got. There is something twisted and Diabolical in the coding of the game... whether by malice or chance combination of detection ranges, line of sight code, and the algorithm that determines how Skeletal Mages orbit around you... they seem to have an uncanny knack for parking their skinny butts in *exactly* the perfect spot to block off the rest of your army while they toss off their little balls of snot! Aaarrggh!!! So frustrating!

Recently I had quite a large paradigm shift. I'd started a Hardcore Ladder account to try out different strategies in preparation for the next Ladder season. I chose to build a Skeleton based Summoner as my Hardcore Ladder Hell Durimule, and while I was levelling him up and thinking about what to do once I'd spent my first 43 skill points (max Skeleton Mastery and Raise Skeleton, one point in Clay Decoy (sorry, Clay Golem), one point in Bone Armour, one point in Amplify Damage)? Why not put points into Skeletal Mages? Because they suck as support minions... ...but what if they weren't the suppot minions, what if they were the main minions?

NB: this is a crucial paradigm shift required to make this build work. The temptation to dump points into Raise Skeleton and other skills like Amplify Damage is quite strong, but must be resisted!

Two things struck me at that point:
(1) I was finally bored of 'cookie cutter' Necromancers (after loving them since 1.0 this is fairly disturbing)
(2) This was the perfect time to also start a Lord of the Mages, because I could compare their effectiveness vs Skeleton based Summoners since I'd be playing them both at the same time and could alternate back and forth between them.

I confess it was not a fair test. Since I didn't really believe the Lord of the Mages would work, I gave the Skeleton based Summoner the 'first pick' of other Necromancer gear which my other characters found. The Lord of the Mages only got hand me downs (and mostly not even that). This is how bad the gear situation was for the Lord of the Mages - at one point he was actually using *Weaken* as his curse because it was the only free curse on his gear! ...I'm still shocked and appalled by this myself... I feel... tainted... violated... ;-)

Note that both builds are Hardcore Ladder with little or no twinking and no rushing (Durimule's employed to avoid Maggot Lair and collecting Khalim's icky bits). Basically full solo clears, including bosses.

Executive Summary:
------------------
So far I'm having lots of fun and the Lord of the Mages is killing faster and more safely than the Skeleton based Summoner. In fact, I haven't even bothered sticking the 'mandatory' one point into Bone Armour yet as the Lord of the Mages! The hardest part of the game is the level 3 durance, as the meteors and hydras are death on a stick (death on two sticks even!) for the Mages. Much like any other build with reliance on minions, this build has some difficulty with Act Bosses (Duriel is easy, Meph, Diablo, and Baal moderately hard but still a lot easier than council + vampires).

Comparison of 1.10 with 1.09:
-----------------------------
In order to understand how a Lord of the Mages works in 1.10, its useful to consider the differences between 1.10 and 1.09. I'm certainly not the first one to think of this build, and even though I'm standing on the shoulders of giants, I'm not convinced that I'm seeing further than them! So please refer to pre 1.10 guides for better ideas on how this build works. (Particularly if you want to build a Lord of the Mages and have limitless resources (Windforces flying out of your butt etc)) When considering the differences between versions, it might pay to keep in mind the following (+/- is for whether the change is good or bad for Necromancers)

General
- Minion life no longer scales with more players
- Monsters have more hitpoints
- Monsters deal additional elemental damage
+ Synergies introduced to even playing field (makes Normal & Nightmare much easier than 1.09)
- Semi random 'guest monsters' in Act 5
- Missile enemies much more powerful (eg guest monsters with piercing)
- Several new one hit kill combos (eg fire enchanted bosses, gloams)
+ Several boss powers toned down (eg lightning enchanted not quite as scary as it used to be)
+ Can buy mana potions

Note that neither of the pluses here is particularly newsworthy for Lord of the Mages, the only new summoning synergy of note boosts Raise Skeleton (in effect it is self synergising off itself *and* Skeleton Mastery), and they were never really scared of Lightning Enchanted bosses anyway (that is what minions are for, to soak up the stray lightning).

Necromancer Specific
+ Raise Skeleton damage dramatically increased
- Quantity of skeletal minions dramatically reduced
- Durability of minions dramatically reduced
+ Synergies for Raise Skeleton, Golems, Poison, Bone Skills
+ Minions and Bone Barriers no longer enemies
- Monster bonus elemental damage pierces (bypasses) Bone Armour (can occur even at low levels eg Duriel's bonus damage from his (un)Holy Freeze Aura)
+ Clay Golem (Clay Decoy) dramatically improved defensively
- Resurrected monsters less powerful (? or just less of a brick)
- Increased mana cost of minions at higher skill levels.

Again, none of these really has much effect on a Lord of the Mages. Clay Golem helps a little if you spam it against Act Bosses, my expectation is that based on the above list that a Lord of the Mages will play pretty much like it did in 1.09, until you get to Hell, where it will be about 1/6th as effective as it was in 1.09 (Mages will kill at half speed because of doubled monster hit points, and you will have 1/3rd of the number of Mages that you would have had in 1.09).

Also compared to the amazing tankage that minions had under 1.09 (where they scaled with the number of players), your minions will be like unto tissue paper in 1.10.

Also 1.10 is a lot more dangerous for a character that is expecting their minions to keep the damage away from them. Piercing missile attacks will go straight through your minions and hand out the hurting when they get to you.

With that in mind, the next step is to consider the three different minion skills which are linked to Skeleton Mastery. We'll briefly consider their good points, and their downside, and then compare them with each other.

What is wrong with Mages:
-------------------------
The most common complaint is that in areas of restricted terrain the mages often get in the way of the Skeletons, eg forming blockages in doorways, stairs and narrow corridors and tunnels.
Skeletal Mages also frequently get killed by the smallest, most trivial monsters - the Mage 'spots' a Fallen through a wall (you've cleared out every other monster and it got raised by a Shaman or something), you blithely carry on your merry way but the Mages stick to that area because they are 'in combat'. When you get far enough away to trigger the teleport, the game checks to see whether they are 'in combat', and if they are it kills them.
You also cannot perform the 'Diablo shuffle' to recall your Mages. If your merc is doing something silly you can get them to 'heel' by hopping from one foot to the other, they will run back to where you are, then redecide what to do (usually they choose to head back into the fray). To a lesser extent this works with Skeletons and Golems, but not with Mages, who tend to just keep attacking their original target.
Also as someone pointed out in the forum, although Poison damage goes up, so does duration - so in effect the Poison Mages are not much better at level 50 (1/2 point of damage per second) than they are at level 1 (1/3 point of damage per second). Feel free to unsummon your Poison Mages - I will not be offended!
Ice Skeletal Mages can also slow down attackers, which makes up a bit for their ow defensive value, but they have a much lower damage than Fire or Lightning.
You can try to micromanage your Mages damage types, but I find its not worth the effort.

Whats wrong with Revives:
-------------------------
Interestingly with the cost to summon other minions raised at high levels, Revived monsters are comparatively cheaper than they were in 1.09 they also give you the ability to turn the 1.10 monsters strengths against themselves, eg by raising your own ranged attacking piercing guest monsters. They are also the only minion for the Necromancer whose summonable quantity scales on a one for one ratio with your skill points.
Revived monsters will not teleport to your position, if you run too far ahead they all fall over dead.
However, they are even more likely to die to the repositioning problem than the Mages are. In fact, with Revived monsters you do not even need to have an enemy present. It is quite annoying to pop through a waypoint, Revive some monsters, pop back throught the waypoint, go to Malah to get your mana back... only to discover that half your zoo has died!
Revives are much more likely to die to these problems than they are to be killed in action or timeout.
I personally find these faults rather annoying, so with my Lord of the Mages I only put a single point into Revive, and let bonus skills do the rest (My zoo consists of 3 monsters which are there purely in a support capacity as decoys for the Mages, though if I find good ranged attackers I will raise them)
it was actually a fairly tough call whether to stick the point in or try to pick it up as a bonus skill on Necromancer specific equipment. A wand with +1 to Lower Resist and Revive will save 10-11 skill points(!)

What is wrong with Skeletons:
-----------------------------
Where Skeletons are good: open terrain areas where you are fighting on multiple fronts. The key is to get all of your Skeletons involved in the combat. However even some outdoors areas (such as the Act 3 Jungles) have terrain that forms choke points (eg the log bridges), which limit your Raised Skeletons ability to all be participating in the combat.
Where Skeletons are bad: restricted terrain areas that mean only one or two of your minions can attack. This is particularly bad if one of those minions attacking is your Clay Decoy (hint: resummon him on the other side of the fight, preferably next to some ranged attackers). Also if your merc is unable to get to the fight (a well equipped mercenary can deal a lot more damage than a Skeleton).
When fighting only one group of monsters, if you hang back from the combat you will often find that half your army is wandering around on the other side of you from the combat. When that happens you have to employ 'tactical movement', circling around the combat to try to get the troops into the action.
Tactical Movement is quite a gamble however for the following reasons. Firstly, you are out there on your own - all the closest troops will already be fighting some other monsters, so none will come to your aid should you get in trouble. Secondly, if you wake up a group of say Gloams, or other ranged guest monsters with piercing, even casting a quick Clay Decoy is not going to save you.
An interesting implication of this is that a good way to get your Skeletons involved in the action might be to use Poison Dagger and get involved in the ombat yourself.

Doors:
------
Possibly the greatest bane of a Skeleton Necromancer is however, the humble door. Doors form choke points which are bad for your army, and often even if there is no pileup at the dorrway, it is hard to convince the Skeletons to proceed through the door, without going through first yourself. Of course, that will activate the monsters in the next room, and any of these which don't target you will target the Skeletons coming through the door, leading to a situation where you are surrounded by one group of monsters, and another group of monsters is blocking your troops from coming to your rescue.
It is worth contrasting this situation with a Lord of the Mages, who is quite happy for there to be a pile up at a door - for the simple reason that virtually all of the Mages will be firing missiles at the targets in the doorway, and only a few of the monsters are able to attack. The worst case for Skeletons turns out to be just about the best case for Mages.

Why Mages:
----------
This is a question we see frequently in the forums. And it is a valid point, given that there are minions as good as Skeletons, why would you bother with Mages?
As noted above, Mages and Skeletons are at their best and worst in completely different environments. About the only place where they are both bad is the maggot lair (particularly the twisty bits, a long corridor is fine for the Mages because they do not block each others fire). If you hate the Arcane Sanctuary as a Skeleton based Summoner, you may love it as a Mage based Summoner.

Inevitably, any discussion of this nature though will turn to the question:
"which does more damage, Mages or Skeletons?"

Comparison of Skeleton and Mage based Summoners:
------------------------------------------------
This section starts by comparing how well these two skills integrate with the rest of your build, then considers the tactical implications of the skills, and finally brings it all together with some 'paper napkin' rough calculations.

Auxiliary Skills: Curses
-------------------------
Conventional Wisdom has it that Amplify Damage for Skeletons is better than Lower Resist for Mages. A quick check of the numbers and I think its reasonable to say that in this case, conventional wisdom is right. Not only is Amplify Damage a lot cheaper (only one skill point spent as compared to seven for Lower Resist), but it also conveys a larger bonus at level 1 than Lower Resist does even at level 20!
(We will put aside the otherwise intriguing question of which curses a Mage based Summoner could be using instead of lower Resist...)
Advantage: Skeletons

No other Necromancer skills favour one build over the other to any large degree.
(Amplify Damage also works better with Corpse Explosion, but the Mages benefit more from other minions than the Skeletons do, so I judge that an even contest)
Advantage: Neither

Auxiliary Minions: Mercenary
----------------------------
As a Skeleton based Summoner you have two main choices. A Might mercenary (for more offense), or a Holy Freeze mercenary (for more defense). Some people have reported significant success with a Blessed Aim mercenary, though consensus opinion seems to favour Might over Blessed Aim (I think it is worth investigating - note that the most significant factor that determines whether you hit (and whether you are hit) is your level compared to the monsters level, and your minions (other than the mercenary) use your level in that calculation. If you are a high enough level for the area you are in, your Skeletons will hit, otherwise they will miss frequently. As a Skeleton based Summoner on Hell difficulty, I found that a good time to start progressing through Act 1 is about level 67-73.)
The Holy Freeze mercenary emphasises defense, but Skeletons in large numbers used properly are generally quite strong enough not to need the extra defense. Really the main time Holy Freeze is stronger than Might is against the various Prime Evils, particularly when combined with Decrepify and Clay Golem, you can significantly slow them down, otherwise you may find their area effect attacks wipe out your army too easily.
But... Might combines better with Amplify Damage than Holy Freeze, so your Skeletons general 'killing speed' will be a lot faster with Might.
Since Mages get no real benefit from any of the mercenaries, this category is fairly clearly in favour of Skeletons.
Advantage: Skeletons

Attacking Characteristics of Minions: Attacks per second
--------------------------------------------------------
Mages seem to launch their bolts approximately as often as Skeletons swing to attack.
Advantage: Neither

Attacking Characteristics of Minions: Time spent launching attacks
------------------------------------------------------------------
Skeletons need to move to attack, whereas Mages usually just switch to the next target without repositioning themselves. For any given combat, therefore the Mages will usually spend more time attacking than the Skeletons.
Advantage: Mages

Attacking Characteristics of Minions: Attack Rating
---------------------------------------------------
Skeletons may miss because of attack rating, whereas Mages do not have an attack rating listed on the Arreat Summit, and by implication do not need attack rating and will not miss because of a lack of it.
Advantage: Mages (unconfirmed)

Attacking Characteristics of Minions: Blocked Attacks
-----------------------------------------------------
Presumably attack from Skeletons may be blocked. I have not observed the Mages bolts being blocked, though it is hard to say whether this is the case.
Advantage: Mages (unconfirmed)

Attacking Characteristics of Minions: Missed attacks because monster is no longer there
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Skeleton's attacks are sometimes wasted because one of their buddies kills the monster while they are in mid swing, or the monster is moving somewhere, whereas the bolts of Mages just keep going and will often hit another target (given a reasonably sized combat).
Advantage: Mages

Attacking Characteristics of Minions: Number of Attackers that can attack a single target (eg against a tough boss)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mage's bolts can pass through friendly units, so there is no practical limit to the number of Mages that can attack a single target. Whereas there is a limit to the number of Skeletons that can engage a single target in melee. Additionally in order to reach that limit you often need to employ tactical movement. For most practical purposes it is unusual to get more than half a dozen melee units attacking a single target.
Advantage: Mages

Attacking Characteristics of Minions: Range of Attacks
------------------------------------------------------
One of the largest advantages that Mages have over Skeletons is that their attacks are ranged. Against bosses with Holy Freeze or other dangerous auras they may be able to engage from outside of the range of that aura. They can also attack over barriers that would block or impede Skeletons.
Advantage: Mages

Attacking Characteristics of Minions: Effect of +skills gear
------------------------------------------------------------
A simple rule of thumb is that for Skeletons a level of Raise Skeleton increases their damage by the same amount as two levels of Skeleton Mastery. Whereas for Mages, every two levels of Raise Mage is only as effective as one level of Skeleton Mastery. What this means is that each +1 to skills is worth 3X for Skeletons, but only 1.5X for Mages, where X is 'effective levels of Skeleton Mastery'. So Skeletons get double the benefit from +skills that Mages do.
Advantage: Skeletons

While I'm not trying to convince the 'great unwashed' that Mages are better than Skeletons, I am hoping to have at least shown some 'fellow contrarians' that it is not entirely one sided in favour of the Skeletons.

Damage Calculations:
--------------------
The appeal of Skeletons is that it is relatively easy to specialise in Physical Damage, and push it to the limit (some call this Mini-maxing, though technically it is not. (Mini-maxing is where you maximise your payoff in the worst case, whereas maximixing your payoff in the best case is Maxi-maxing)). If you do that your Skeletons could easily be doing over 1000 points of damage per successful hit.
The calculation is (very roughly) a base of ~250 damage at skill level 30/30, doubled for Amplify Damage, doubled again for the mercenary Might aura (NB: a level 17 might aura *triples* the damage, not doubles). (Plus the extra damage the Might mercenary gets from the Ampify Damage... the whole is definitely greater than the sum of the parts)
At around the same level (30/30) your Mages will have a missile level of 45 (its actually missile level 44, so you'd have to use 31 Mastery to get these numbers, not 30) and do the following damage; 152.5 cold, 267 fire, 232 lightning. Or roughly 220 average. Call it 350 after Lower Resist...

It seems unlikely that the disadvantages listed above for Skeletons (time spent repositioning, wasted attacks due to target movement, target defense, target dying and target blocking) will fully compensate for the ~3.5:1 difference in raw damage at high levels... at low levels (20 Raise Skeleton, 20 Skeleton Mastery) however the difference is somewhat lower:
Base Skeleton damage ~ 120 x 2 x 1.5 (a more modest boost from the might merc) = 360
Base Mage Damage ~ 110 x 1.3 = 143
Which is only a 2.5:1 advantage.

At even lower levels, you might not have the Might mercenary yet, so that would make it ~240:140, or 24:14 or 12:7 (quite a difference!). Of course, at such low levels you might not have lower Resist yet or be able to afford frequent castings even if you do have it, so the ratio is more like 24:11.

In the 'ideal' environment, the Skeletons have a large advantage in raw damage. However when in terrain that limits their effectiveness (doors, bridges, barricades, stairs, narrow walkways) the raw damage does not tell the whole story. This is where the ranged advantage comes in and really shines, and the larger your pack of Mages, the larger the advantage is. In a situation where only two minions can melee (ie a fight in a doorway or in the Arcane Sanctuary), if you have 8 Mages (available from skill level 18), that is a 4:1 advantage in favour of the Mages (!!!!) which will more than cancel out the difference in raw damage. (Actually, if you happen to have a couple of semi-decent melee minions, then it is 5:1 or more (when the Might merc can't get into the combat) in favour of the Lord of the Mages.)

This is why subjectively I felt that with proper support for the Mages, my *untwinked* Lord of the Mages was more effective in most situations than my *twinked* Skeleton based Summoner.

Key Idea: swap the support and killing roles of Mages and Skeletons
-------------------------------------------------------------------
As noted above, Mages are quite poor at supporting Skeletons.
However, if you swap the roles, a few Skeletons are very good at supporting a larger corpus of Mages. You will have to summon them a lot more often, because there will be fewer of them absorbing roughly the same amount of damage (maybe slightly less if the monsters are chilled by the Ice Mages), but if you view them as little more than decoys or 'bricks' then this is not worrying. Also, by not investing in Raise Skeleton, they are quite cheap to summon.

With a single skill point in each of Raise Skeleton, Revive and the Golem of your choice, with at least +2 to summoning skills from equipment, you have 7 tanks/decoys to support your Mages. (Astute readers will note that I have not included an Act 2 merc in those figures) Some may feel that because of this, this is not a 'pure' Lord of the Mages build, but note that the additional minions are intended purely to support the Mages, they have no other role in this build.

Mad Mantis

15-05-2004, 15:32

This is a very nice piece of FAQ. It should go a long way to helping people understand that Mages aren't as bad as they think.

rickcarson

15-05-2004, 16:13

This is a very nice piece of FAQ. It should go a long way to helping people understand that Mages aren't as bad as they think.

Well, its not really a Faq. A Faq on Mages would pretty much look like this:

Q: Do Mages really suck?
A: Yes, they really suck, because they get in the way of all your better minions.

But what I realised was that this presupposes the suckage of mages, because it assumes that the other minions are better.

Its really intended more as a guide, so the standard stuff about skills, playing style, levelling, gear etc will be forth coming (thought I'd put this preamble up to see if there were any bites, whether anyone was interested).

BTW: I noticed in some other posts you said you were kicking butt and taking names with your 'Overlord'. What's your take on the Overlord build under 1.10?

cheers

Rick

Mad Mantis

15-05-2004, 16:48

The Overlord hasn't changed a lot. He still uses all of his minions to kill for him. In the past I used maxed Skellies, Mages and Revives and then used IM or Amp in combination with a Thorns Merc. My IG was a real asset who could just keep on going.

IN 1.10 some things have changed. The Skellies are much more powerful as well as the Mages. I no longer use a Thorns Merc. Might is better. I use my Golem purely for distraction. Clay is the Golem of choice.

The play style has differed as well. Nowadays you use your minions to kill. So you have to assist them in certain ways. Mainly curse wise. In the past all you had to do was make sure that they got hit and just keep raising Skellies. The Overlord is a strong build who has to keep paying attention to which minions will be best in a certain area and react to that with a different play style. The managing of you troops has become more important. It is not a very challenging build and doesn’t require as much tactic as other builds, but a good Overlord knows what minions to use when.

rickcarson

15-05-2004, 19:04

Lord of The Mages
Draft Guide - part 2

Skills
------
Like most other builds, the Lord of the Mages realises that there are too many good skills, and not enough points to go around. In order to understand skill point placement for the Lord of the Mages, you need to understand something I call 'Missile Level'. Over at the Arreat Summit:

http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/skills/necromancer-summoning.shtml#skeletalmage

There is a discussion of Skeletal Mage, which I can only assume either displays deep insights which I am unable to comprehend, or was written back when Iron Maiden was non-sucktacular (I no longer remember when *that* was). Skipping past the 'wonders' of combining Skeletal Mages with Iron Maiden, we get to a section on numbers and how the Skeletal Mages missile damage is calculated.

Unlike the skill description, we shall assume that the numbers were published when the writers were sober. :-)

The basic concept is that for any given combination of Skeletal mage and Skeleton Mastery, you can apply a simple formula, to get your 'missile level', and then you can look that up in the second table to find the damage the various types of Mages do. Poison is easy, just assume damage = 0 and you will be right. (Note: I'm not sure how the Poison Mages would interact with other characters skills, if when stacking they used the Mages duration but their own damage / second, that would be sweet)

The formula to determine the missile level looks like this:

('Skeleton Mastery'.lvl) + ((lvl < 4) ? 0 : ((lvl-2)/2))

Decoded, it means that every additional level of Skeleton Mastery increases the missile level by one. That's pretty simple.

The second part of the formula says that every second level of Skeletal Mastery also adds one to the missile level.

There's a 'complicated' bit about not getting a bonus unless Skeletal Mage is at level 4. So in other words at level 2 it skips giving them a bonus.

So if you have level 24 Skeleton Mastery and Level 24 Skeletal Mage your missile level is:

24, plus half of 24, minus one.
Or 24 + (24/2) - 1.
Or 24 + 12 - 1.
Or 35.

Something I noticed looking at the damage table is that increasing your missile level by 50% approximately doubles the damage. (Except, of course for Poison Mages... whats that? Flogging a dead horse? But my dear, we're *Necromancers*, we're *all about* flogging dead things!)

Ahem.

So when we consider the extra effect that adding extra points of Skeletal Mage, we don't need to consider Skeleton Mastery, because the effect is 1:1 for Mastery, but only 1:2 for Skeletal Mage.

This has some interesting implications. For instance, we can see by comparing the columns for Skeletal Mage 4 and Skeletal Mage 5 that there is *no* increase in missile level! In fact, the only difference is that the mana cost goes up by one, and the defense goes up by ten. It is no great stretch of the imagination to decide to hold that skill point, and wait till you have two to spend and go straight from 4 to 6.

Because you get additional mages every third level, and you get increases to missile level every even (second) level, you could draw up a chart that looks like this:

Skeletal Mage Level
Level Good / Bad Why
1 good Extra Mage
2 good Extra Mage
3 good Extra Mage
4 good Missile Level Increase
5 bad no bonuses
6 really good Extra Mage & Missile Level Increase
7 bad no bonuses
8 good Missile Level Increase
9 good Extra Mage
10 good Missile Level Increase
11 bad no bonuses
12 really good Extra Mage & Missile Level Increase
13 bad no bonuses
14 good Missile Level Increase
15 good Extra Mage
16 good Missile Level Increase
17 bad no bonuses
18 really good Extra Mage & Missile Level Increase
19 bad no bonuses
20 good Missile Level Increase
21 good Extra Mage
22 good Missile Level Increase
23 bad no bonuses
24 really good Extra Mage & Missile Level Increase
25 bad no bonuses
26 good Missile Level Increase
27 good Extra Mage
28 good Missile Level Increase
29 bad no bonuses
30 really good Extra Mage & Missile Level Increase
31 bad no bonuses
32 good Missile Level Increase
33 good Extra Mage
34 good Missile Level Increase
35 bad no bonuses
36 really good Extra Mage & Missile Level Increase
37 bad no bonuses
38 good Missile Level Increase
39 good Extra Mage
40 good Missile Level Increase
41 bad no bonuses
42 really good Extra Mage & Missile Level Increase
43 bad no bonuses
... etc ...

This table is pretty easy to draw up since it repeats: every sixth level there is a 'double plus good' level; and on either side of it there is a 'bad' level; and all the others are good because they either give you an extra mage or more missile damage.

Now as you're levelling up you don't really need to worry about this, but because of it you might choose to not put 20 points into Skeletal Mage, but only put 19 points into it, depending on your intended gear and how many +skills items you will have.

For example, if I have +9 to skills, there is no gain between putting 19 points in (total of 28) and putting in 20 (total of 29).

Skill Point Allocation:
-----------------------
From the above we know that for a Lord of the Mages to get good missile levels, Skeleton Mastery is twice as important as Skeletal Mage. So we always want to maximise Skeleton Mastery, so 20 points here. We also know that we want to increase our Mages damage but not to overspend, so 19 to 20 points here.

Skeleton Mastery 20
Skeletal Mage 19-20
Raise Skeleton 1*
Revive 1*
Clay Golem 1
Blood Golem 1
Iron Golem 1
Golem Mastery 1
Summon Resist 1*
Total 46-47

*we will rely on skill bonuses to increase these. A moderate (+2) bonus is all that is required to get a sufficient number of minions to be decoys for the mages. Seven blockers (eight if you include a melee mercenary) is plenty.

Supplemental Skills
Bone Armour 1
Teeth 1
Corpse Explosion 1
Lower Resist 1 + 6 prerequisites

This is another 10 skill points. At that point you could be level 50, and considering what additional skill or skills to put points into to be effective in Hell.

Here are some ideas:
(1) Pump Iron Golem
(2) Poison Nova
(3) More points in Lower Resist and some other skills
(4) Pump Corpse Explosion (mungo make big boom)
(5) Pump Clay Golem for a better defense and Boss killing
(6) AI curses to shore up your defensive line
(7) Pump Bone Prison (so you can spam it)
(8) All of the above
(9) None of the above (there are no guarantees of effectiveness in Hell, sorry)

Apart from Poison Nova, I've tried all of the above with a Skelemancer or Bonemancer with varying degrees of success in Hell. Your mileage may vary.

Lower Resist and Corpse Explosion are very party friendly spells, the spellcasters will, as they say, 'love you long time'.

Levelling Up and Skill Point Placement:
---------------------------------------
Your primary goal is to maximise Skeleton Mastery and then Skeleton Mage, in that order. But you also need to keep up a defensive line so that the bad guys don't 'sack the quarterback'. One way to do this is to just keep spamming a low level summonable much like the way the Amazon skill Decoy can be used. Clay Golem is good for this, and if you have the corpses handy, so is Raise Skeleton.

A low level Iron Golem is much more robust than a low level Clay Golem, so can be a good way to shore up the defense.

As you are levelling up Skeleton Mastery, you are improving your Raise Skeletons, though not as much as you would be if you poured all the points into Raise Skeleton.

Lets compare a few scenarios. Assume our intrepid Necromancer has, at level 14, just given Radamant a dirt nap. With 15 points at his disposal, here are some different scenarios:

(1) The rabid Skelemancer
Raise Skeleton 14
Skeleton Mastery 1

(2) The rabid Lord of the Mages
Raise Skeleton 1
Skeleton Mastery 13
Skeletal Mage 1

(3) Skelemancer plus a Mage
Raise Skeleton 13
Skeleton Mastery 1
Skeletal Mage 1

(4) The untwinked Lord of the Mages
Raise Skeleton 1
Skeleton Mastery 11
Skeletal Mage 3

Scenario Skeleton Damage + Mage Damage = Total Damage
1a 19 x 6 + 0 x 0 = 114
2a 27 x 1 + 27 x 1 = 54
3a 17 x 6 + 3 x 1 = 105
4a 23 x 1 + 23 x 3 = 92

Isn't it interesting that on an individual basis the Lord of the Mages minions do the most damage. Of course the Skelemancer has the weight of numbers, but they must always be trying to bring those numbers to bear, otherwise their advantage is lost.

Now if we add into the mix a fairly low level set... the 'Infernal Tools', equipable at level 5, which gives +2 to necromancer skills...

Scenario Skeleton Damage + Mage Damage = Total Damage
1b 34 x 7 + 0 x 0 = 238
2b 31 x 3 + 33 x 3 = 192
3b 30 x 7 + 7 x 3 = 231
4b 27 x 3 + 29 x 3 = 168

A dramatic improvement from 2a to 2b! Note also that 4b suffers because its level of Skeletal Mage is now 5 - a 'bad' number. If they could get an extra point of Skeletal Mage from somwhere they'd look a lot better.

By looking at scenarios 1 and 3, its fairly easy to see why Skeletal Mages get a bad rep - to the unsuspecting Skelemancer it looks like their damage is 'teh sux' - they are 'better off' putting the points into Raise Skeleton and not bothering with Skeletal mages at all.

On the other hand, notice that by pumping Skeleton Mastery, we are getting a boost to both the Skeletons, and the Mages, and our problem then becomes somehow getting hold of some gear that increases our level of Raise Skeleton and/or Skeletal Mage so as to increase the size of the forces at our command.

Note that the absolute cheapest way to get +2 is to run out of town and tag a skills shrine! A +2 to Raise Skeleton Wand is fairly easy to shop for.

But wait... we *start* with a free +1 to Raise Skeleton Wand! So what happens to our first scenario (no other bonuses to skills) if we didn't throw that away?

Scenario Skeleton Damage Mage Damage Total Damage
1c 22 x 7 + 0 x 0 = 154
2c 27 x 2 + 27 x 1 = 81
3c 17 x 6 + 3 x 1 = 105
4c 23 x 2 + 23 x 3 = 115

Which is quite an improvement for 2c and 4c.

The point of this exercise was to show that once you include the effect of equipment it is very easy for the Lord of the Mages to close the gap with the Skelemancer *irrespective* of any other inherent advantages which Mages might offer over their melee compatriots.

For the Izual quest reward I put the points into getting level 1 Summon Resist, but did not notice any great leap in the survivability of the minions.

For one of the bosses I thought might be particularly hard I picked up Clay Golem to use as a decoy (I'd had it on gear, but had switched out for 'better' gear but no golem).

Attributes:
-----------
Naturally following the discussion on skills we consider allocation of attribute points.

In order to determine the way to spend attribute points you first start with your gear. The conventional wisdom is something like this:
Strength: enough for your gear
Dexterity: nothing
Vitality: everything else
Energy: nothing

I depart from this in that even in Hardcore (actually, especially in Hardcore) I have become quite fond of blocking. To me 75% blocking is just like taking my life total and multiplying it by four.

A lot of people writing guides about minion based builds talk about not needing blocking because 'nothing ever gets near you'.

I must be playing a different game than these people, because when I go to Act 5, or anywhere with lots of ranged attackers, on the higher difficulty levels, I find that lots of attacks go straight through my previously impervious defense.

I think this is because a lot of ranged attackers have been granted the Amazon skill 'Pierce', which gives them a decent chance to get their attack through to you and damage multiple targets.

Gear:
-----
Blah blah Shako blah blah Homo blah blah.

Oh wait - I *do* have something to contribute, that is different from all the other guides out there.

If you want to see a discussion of the relative merits of gear which has a cost on the scale of the GDP of a small nation, I suggest you look elsewhere (actually, my suggestion is much less polite, but could be paraphrased as "write your own smegging guide if you're that rich").

At the lower end of the scale, particularly when you're starting out, as noted above additional points in the skills you want add a lot to your effectiveness as a Lord of the Mages (or pretty much any kind of Necromancer for that matter).

The standard solutions to any problem is of course, to lie, cheat and steal (in this case: trading, twinking and shopping). You can shop for wands, but not fetishes.

As a Necromancer we have not one, but two little used (and cheap) cube recipes that can help us, by giving us a random chance for the skills we want.

They are from:

http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/items/cube.shtml

Recipe (1)
1 Magic Shield (any type) + 1 Spiked Club (any quality) + 2 Skulls (any quality) = Magic Shield of Spikes
ilvl=30. The shield will always have the "of Spikes" suffix (Attacker Takes Damage of 4-6) and has a chance at getting a prefix as well. The type of shield is retained, and any type of shield (including paladin shields and necromancer shrunken heads) works as input.

Note the iLvl=30... I think this means that any Necromancer skill might be rolled randomly on the head!

Recipe (2)
3 Chipped Gems + 1 Magic Weapon = Socketed Magic Weapon
This adds sockets to a magic weapon. The original magic weapon properties will be removed (rerolled) when the new weapon is created. If you use this formula with a weapon that is not normally socketed such as a Javelin, this recipe will create a new magical weapon without any sockets. ilvl=25 magic weapon with 1-2 sockets.

An oldie, but a goody. You can use it on Necromancer wands, and it will regenerate the random skills, give it random bonuses, and sockets too!

Even though the iLvl is only 25 I thought I'd seen some of the level 30 skills pop up on them... maybe I was mistaken and it tops out at the level 24 skills?

There are two more weapon recipes that do give an iLvl of 30, using higher grade gems.

This can also help your shopping, as you can turn cheap readily available ingredients into things which have a decent chance of topping out at the maximum sell value for your act.

To really get the benefit of this form of gambling, you need to have a variety of different types of low level necromancer, that way there is an excellent chance that at least one of your characters can use the item generated.

Ideally you would want to pick up some of the Supplemental Skills on gear, *and* get bonuses to Skeleton Mastery and one other of your minions, but the odds are not good for that.

But it is failry easy to get something useful, eg a curse, a golem, or corpse explosion. That was how I was using Weaken, it was the only curse on the gear I was wearing at that level.

Keep anything you cube or find which has a big bonus to Bone Spear, since that is one way to beat Act Bosses, by having a set of alternate gear with +5-6 Bone Spear you can spam your way to victory. (Some dodging required)

I found that I was chopping and changing the gear on my Lord of the Mages on a level by level basis, depending on the area and skills. I continually tweaked the 'formula' for how many melee minions I should have depending on how fast they were dying (which depended on how good at melee the monsters were).

rickcarson

15-05-2004, 19:09

Mad Mantis

15-05-2004, 19:18

That was some good solid information. You could use the code-commands to make the tables a little easier to read. It looks nicer as well.

So is an Overlord pretty much a Skelemancer + Mages?

Yeah. But he makes better use of Revives. You raise a few more. The Might Merc is something I use to benefit my Skellies more. I am experimenting with a Blessed Aim Merc and HF Merc.
But all it comes down to is deciding what would be better for all your Minions. Revives could do with a good Thorns Merc. Mages need more defense.

Originally CE is not a part of an Overlord. Here is were the Overlord differs from the Zookeeper, if I still have my builds straight.

Starcrunch

15-05-2004, 19:56

Very good guide...a few points.

Your mages never miss due to AR though I believe they have an AR of 7 (so that section is completely correct).

Poison mages still help fight monster regen.

Your rough calculation on skeleton melee damage is closer than you expect because the Might aura does not add as much damage as many people believe, as it is added to the %ED on the skeleton skill and then both are applied to the base damage which is lower than that listed on the skill screen. For the purposes of comparison Slvl 30/30 skeletons with Slvl 17 Might do 1046-1056 damage. This can be compared to Slvl 30/30 mages with LR which do the following:

Poison: 351 over 450 seconds
Cold: 237-241 (duration 44 second in normal)
Fire: 414-421
Lightning: 71-656

Another nice positive of mages is that they can kill everything since they have three types of elemental damage (poison doe not really count). There are monsters out there (stone skin ghost bosses) that you skeletons can beat all day long and never scratch but mages can kill easily.

With judisous use of curses and at low players settings mages kill quite well in hell with LR. The thing most people overlook with mages is that no matter how good your gear is they cannot solo high players hell whereas with skeleton and the right gear you can...so people say mages suck.

Attract can save your mages from getting creamed.

Just an aside that has little to due with mages...use terror to clear doorways and allow your minions to flood the rooms ahead of them (not for LoM but great for a true Overlord).

And there are a few Revives out there that are better than any of your other minions (blunderbores, heirophants, dark lords). Blunderbores have crushing blow and can devestate bosses, heirophants and dark lords can rain death from above int he form of bizzard and meteor. Even with my Overlord I switch to LR when Meteors start to fall from dark lords I have revived.

Edit: When I started wrote this reply only the first part had been posted... The second part is very good two and covers some of the stuff I mentioned. Keep up the good work.

-Starcrunch

Starcrunch

15-05-2004, 20:02

The zookeeper focuses on revives (the zoo) and ignores the weaker (in 1.09) minions. Overlords use all minions and invest heavily only in the summoning tree.

The Zookeeper and Overlord can both use CE but the Overlord puts only 1 point in it whereas the Zookeeper (who has more points to spare) can max it. Some purists would say that the Overlord cannot invest in the P&B tree and hence not get CE.

-Starcrunch

rickcarson

16-05-2004, 15:13

Very good guide...a few points.

Thanks! And thanks for the additional information!

Your mages never miss due to AR though I believe they have an AR of 7 (so that section is completely correct).

Interesting. I wonder why they have AR?

Poison mages still help fight monster regen.

I've read in another thread that Poison does not stop regeneration, but acts as 'negative regeneration', so very low amounts of damage, or poison damage spread out over a long period of time does not 'stop' regeneration.

Or maybe I'm confused with Open Wounds?

Your rough calculation on skeleton melee damage is closer than you expect because the Might aura does not add as much damage as many people believe, as it is added to the %ED on the skeleton skill

Interesting. I've got a spreadsheet lying around from when I was trying to figure out how the number I was seeing on my Skelemancer were actually worked out.

So I could put in the effect of the might, and get exact numbers, but of course the effect of the Amplify Damage depends entirely on the amount of damage resistance the monster has. I note that even though Blizzard said that they removed the 'global' 50% resistance in Hell, they then went back through and whacked it in on a monster by monster basis (not always 50%, some more, some less, probably averages about 50%). So you could make the argument that Amplify Damage is actually tripling (or thereabouts) the damage for the Skeletons.

I don't want to go down that path, because then i'd have to consider what happens when you cast lower resist on monsters, and what effect double immunities has... etc etc.

So 'paper napkin' (or 'ballpark') maths is good enough for me there.

and then both are applied to the base damage which is lower than that listed on the skill screen. For the purposes of comparison Slvl 30/30 skeletons with Slvl 17 Might do 1046-1056 damage.

Is that before or after the Amplify Damage!?! Ouchies!

My spreadsheet tells me that the damage is only 488 (max), assuming that the might adds 300%, and not including the bonus damage from Amplify.

I guess I should verify it out beyond the 20/20 range some more.

Oh, and it occurs to me that an advantage that Skeletons have which Mages don't is that they can be enchanted(!)

With a high enough level enchant, it would be worthwhile the Skelemancer casting Lower Resist instead of Amplify Damage! Now that would be ironic! :-)

This can be compared to Slvl 30/30 mages with LR which do the following:

Poison: 351 over 450 seconds
Cold: 237-241 (duration 44 second in normal)
Fire: 414-421
Lightning: 71-656

Doesn't Poison Resistance effect the duration as well? So with a lower resist which dropped the resistance from 0 to -62%, the actual damage would be 350/450 per second, for 450 * 1.62, or 569 damage over 729 seconds. (12 minutes and 9 seconds)

Another nice positive of mages is that they can kill everything since they have three types of elemental damage (poison doe not really count). There are monsters out there (stone skin ghost bosses) that you skeletons can beat all day long and never scratch but mages can kill easily.

That is something I should bring out better in the maxi-maxing vs mini-maxing section. The best case scenario for a Skelemancer is a nice open area, with largish clumps of non physical immune monsters. (Perhaps they aren't the ultimate cow mincing machine in bovine level because the packs are a little too large???). And they maximise their effectiveness for that scenario.

Whereas as you point out, the Skelemancers have a really bad worst case scenario, a boss with more than 120% physical resistance, and in that case they can't do anything!

I don't recall ever seeing a triple immune monster, though I have seen double immune bosses which were also enchanted for the third element! I'd have assumed they were triple immune and the game just can't display the third immunity?

With judisous use of curses and at low players settings mages kill quite well in hell with LR. The thing most people overlook with mages is that no matter how good your gear is they cannot solo high players hell whereas with skeleton and the right gear you can...so people say mages suck.

Interesting that for a given constant damage output, if it takes several hits to bring down a monster then players 1 is in fact the best ratio for rewards over time. Higher player settings are good only when you do a lot of overkill (ie more than enough damage to kill the monster, the extra damage is wasted), or when someone else is in your party in your area and then you get the benefit of shared experience.

Unless your skeletons are doing like 10k per hit, there's not much point in being a Skelemancer at player settings higher than 1 (in Hell) anyway, you'd kill a lot more, and thus get more drops and xp per unit of time at players 1.

(With a FishyMancer I guess you'd want to crank up the Players setting when you are going to pull out the crushing blow, but other than that it seems pointless)

Attract can save your mages from getting creamed.

This is a good point, and deserves its own section, on possible defenses for your Mages.

Skeletons + Golem is not the only way to go.
You could also use AI disruption - imagine the effect of a large number of Mages , plus a large (20+) level Dim Vision, you'd slaughter and maim without taking any shots in return! In this case you might choose Clay Golem to distract Bosses.
Or you could use the Bone Barrier spells to slow down or halt the baddies entirely. (have to do some research on that one, last time I checked this I thought that the Mages missiles were stopping at the Bone Prison and not penetrating it - but my understanding is that this should be fixed for 1.10??

Just an aside that has little to due with mages...use terror to clear doorways and allow your minions to flood the rooms ahead of them (not for LoM but great for a true Overlord).

I tried this for a while. It has a similar problem to the use of Dim Vision in the same situation, which is that Doors majorly futz up line of sight. Sometimes I have to search around for ages before I can cast spells in the area through the door. The tragic part is when I can get the monster's health bar, but it still won't let me cast a spell at it! Very annoying.

And there are a few Revives out there that are better than any of your other minions (blunderbores, heirophants, dark lords). Blunderbores have crushing blow and can devestate bosses, heirophants and dark lords can rain death from above int he form of bizzard and meteor. Even with my Overlord I switch to LR when Meteors start to fall from dark lords I have revived.

All of them are slow moving and prone to getting snagged on corners and disappearing.

True story: earlier in the weekend I was doing (normal) Baal runs to level up my Merc. I've lost most of my defensive lineup in the last scrap with Lister, and I go looking for some more Skeletons and Revives. It's a pretty easy choice: Succubi = Raise Skeleton, Ogres = Revive. So I get into the left hand corner room and finally build up my pack to full strength. I have three Revives. I go back to the empty area where you engage Baal's Minions. Before I can enter that room - I'm back down to 1 revive. With no monsters to distract them, and even with me moving slowly, they could not even get halfway across one of the smallest levels in the game!!!

Conclusion: Revives blow big chunks.

Edit: When I started wrote this reply only the first part had been posted... The second part is very good two and covers some of the stuff I mentioned. Keep up the good work.

-Starcrunch

Cheers!

rickcarson

16-05-2004, 15:29

That was some good solid information. You could use the code-commands to make the tables a little easier to read. It looks nicer as well.

There are some editorial changes I want to make, as well as formatting. Adding colour to titles is better than the ----- things, and tables would be nice (I can do HTML tables).

Like I said this is a draft, not a finished version, so I appreciate your suggestions to help improve it. Keep em coming!

Yeah. But he makes better use of Revives. You raise a few more. The Might Merc is something I use to benefit my Skellies more. I am experimenting with a Blessed Aim Merc and HF Merc.

I experimented with Decrepify + HF + cold mages + Clay Golem + Slows Target gear on the merc.. It's pretty good for boss killing, and you hardly ever lose any troops. But losing troops isn't that big a deal. Just raise another one! Slug back a few blues every now and again if you really must. HF gives you crowd control, but then so does having your own crowd! So Might is probably better.

But all it comes down to is deciding what would be better for all your Minions. Revives could do with a good Thorns Merc. Mages need more defense.

I'm surprised by how little defense the Mages are needing. Even one point in Raise Skeleton and Revive is giving me 7+ defenders, which is plenty. With that many units as a Skelemancer I find its difficult to get them all engaged at the same time - even with Tactical Running.

I confess, in a fit of stupidity, I went for an Act 3 Cold Mercenary. He has given truly excellent crowd control (better than any I ever got out of any of my many Holy Freeze mercs), but he really does make it hard to get an army together past Normal. That boy just doesn't leave corses behind. HF only shatters about 25% of corpses, he is more like 95% and up.

Originally CE is not a part of an Overlord. Here is were the Overlord differs from the Zookeeper, if I still have my builds straight.

It sounds to me like an Overlord is more a 'pick and choose' - a Swiss Army Necromancer.

I find Revives far too frustrating to even be tempted by the Zoomancer.

Mad Mantis

16-05-2004, 15:50

I mean that mages need to have their defense rating improved. It is far lower than that of Skellies. Coupled with lower life this leads to more fragile Mages. A Defiance Merc really helps.

Starcrunch

16-05-2004, 20:35

Is that before or after the Amplify Damage!?! Ouchies!

After, assuming 0% physical resist.

Edit: About poison: I have not decided whether it actually stops regen or works as negative regen, I have seen people claim both. I have noticed poison immune monsters life bar increasing while I cannot recall noticing it for no poison immune enemies...this is not that easy to test but I will try tonight after my merc dies (or maybe just unequip his weapon) by taking a poison mage and having them nail the enemy and let skeletons whak it down a bit in life, then I can unsummon all minions and watch the enemy regen.

-Starcrunch

Mad Mantis

16-05-2004, 20:58

About poison: I have not decided whether it actually stops regen or works as negative regen, I have seen people claim both.

Poison damage is just that, damage inflicted by poison damage. The regen of the monster still works. You only stop monster regen if your damage per frame is higher that the regen per frame.
The only thing that gives negative regen is OW. If poison were a form of negative regen than LR wouldn’t work with it.

rickcarson

17-05-2004, 00:50

Poison damage is just that, damage inflicted by poison damage. The regen of the monster still works. You only stop monster regen if your damage per frame is higher that the regen per frame.
The only thing that gives negative regen is OW. If poison were a form of negative regen than LR wouldn’t work with it.

So the 1/2 pt of damage per second from the Poison Mages really is pointless.

But wait - does anyone know how it interracts with other Poison Sources?

I'm thinking like an Assassin with Venom - take the damage per second from that, and combine it with the duration of the necromage?

Ie one hit from Assy, one snotbolt from mage, come back ten minutes later and DClone is dead? ;-) (Oh wait, he has big resistances, some other big nasty then)

Lostprophet

17-05-2004, 07:25

rickcarson

18-05-2004, 16:44

You know what'd make my day? If you told me you used a Pus Spitter. It wouldn't even have to be true; I'd just love to think that Pus Spitter would work well within the boundaries of this particular build (with LR already being used anyway, and the ranged nature of your approach).

:buddies:

Heh, yeah, that would be cute.

Sadly, no, its a new Ladder/HC account. I think I managed to put together a set of Isenharts, and give it to my act 3 merc though...

-----

Yea, though I walk through the valley of pits, I shall get no good drops.