Fishymancer Questions

[scarred_life]

Just wondering if skelly mages are worth the investment. Why or why not? Also, where should I put those points towards? Curses or Poison and Bone?

[Crazy Runner Guy]

Nope. Your points are better spent in amp damage or some other crowd control skill.

crg

[Summoned]

Skeleton magi aren't worth it.

a) You can only support either physical or elemental damage with curses, not both, and without lower resist, their damage is... low.

b) They have the tendency to block your skeleton warriors from swarming an enemy, which results in less damage output.

As for curses, most people would settle on 1 point in each of them, lower resist might be useful in multiplayer games. Your best bet for the rest of the points is corpse explosion, but if you want to, 20 points in bone spear and bone spirit would add some back-up damage against physical immunes (remember, even with amplify damage, they will still have 80% resistance) or shamans constantly reviving their minions.

[Chimaira]

I have a summon/venommancer who has 1 point in skeletons.. and yes it's not worth it for their damage and yes they sometimes block your way.. Still I think they are kind of usefull, with only 1 point you get an additional 6 meatshields, and they have both cold/poison attack which can be very nice.. Still I wouldn't go for it unless you really lilke minions like me..

[Nightfish]

No, not worth it. Where to put extra points? I think I listed everything I could possibly think of in teh guide. ^_-

[DeathMaster]

No, they are not worth the skill points. The only reason you will have to put on their is Pre-req.

There has only one use (for fishy): get the cold one, and use it to slow act boss a bit more on top of decrp/clay golem, which you will find not needed anyway.

[ChubbyHubby]

I think the question depends on what "it" means. I took it to mean "is Raise Skeleton Mage worth the single point investment on the way to Summon Revive?" I said "yes." With some +skills I can raise at least 5 mages, which despite their low damage is still free damage as far as I am concerned. My maxed out Skeletons are the bulk of my army, anything to support them won't hurt in my opinion.

[piscene]

Since you already have the point, I think its worth it to use them. Extra meat shields can buy your skeletons and revives more time to do their damage. I haven't put any extra points there, but I use what I've got.

[LprMan]

They are worth the points...in some situations. And no, I don't mean any weirdo build now :)

My summoner necro has maxed skelly mages, their damage isn't high but every little bit helps. And with their help (and LR) I can kill quite easily those bosses who have unbreakable physical immunity...and they are helpful against monsters with high resistance to physical damage (mainly those who were PI but Amp broke the immunity). It is true, sometimes mages block melee skellies from attacking enemies, but its not a big problem imho. Usually mages stay behind the other skellies/golem/merc. Im much more worried about melee skellies blocking my merc. The slow effect from cold mages is sometimes very nice

But I wouldn't recommend mages unless you will invest more points to them or you have lots of skillbonuses, low lvl skelly mages are worthless in most cases

[HBeachBabe]

my overlord, with 1 point and +to skills, could get up to 7 mages which as far as I'm concerned is 7 more meat shield and free damage. nothing wrong with that. damage is damage regardless of how low. and poison & cold always helps.

[Pico Dynamite]

I'd say not, I tried using skele mages with my first 1.10 character and it wasn't good. But skele mages are worth style points defenitely :)

[farting bob]

Im gunna say yes, its worth investing.
I have 2 patted fishys that dont use them, and 1 that does. Ive done some testing, by swapping over the gear between a non mage build and a mage build, then done a P1 hell baal run. the standard fishy did it in about 8 minutes, and the mage in about 8 1/2 minutes. So not much difference, but there are areas where its better. normal and nm where immunties dont play a role (bar a few superuniques) i find having another 8-10 minions really helps, especially in open areas. yes, they can be a hinderense in tight dungeons, but then you can easily unsummon them.
Anyway, i dont like using revives, so would rather use mages on any day of the week.