Max Skellie Mages or max Golem Mastery?

[LordCinos]

Being a level 80 skelliemancer, I have a problem.

Every skill I want is maxed or has enough points. Yet, I will get 19 points more.

I could either max Raise Mage, or max Golem Mastery, in which I already have 4 points and put the rest into clay, fire or iron. Neither would really be that useful.

But what to choose? :undecided:

[High Priest]

MAGES!!!!! There a nice add to group. + they'll lag everybody who's in your group. Also If you PvP a bit you can tele stack them on people, tele stacking is also good thing for PvM. Your clay shoul dnever die anyway just with one point in him.

Just so you know you will never get a good idea from the people here on mages or no mages. For the simple reason some like them and some don't. It's really up to you if you want to use them or not.

Priest

[LordCinos]

I can imagine cramped spaces like the maggot lair are complete hell if you use mages... but then again one could always "disassemble" them in that case.

Let's say you got wide space - how much more effective do things get with mages?

[LordCinos]

I've tried mages a bit, with the free 5 my equipment gives me, and they're completely worthless. :(

Golem mastery it is.

[chaos_masterzz]

dude mages own -_- if u have nigma none of the cramping thing matters that much, and golems aren't ment to be damage dealers they are only tanks, and with one point in to clay and g mastery, it never dies any way, max mages you won't be disapointed, i wasn't :)

[LordCinos]

Right. I have 4 points in golem mastery and gumby lasts longer than... well, longer than quite a lot.

I don't know. Heck, I'll bet on the mages... it's not like those points will be useful anyway. :undecided:

[MalVeauX]

Mages are terrible. I can't get over them. Maybe I'm an idiot and can't grasp their shocking numbers, but truly, using them just makes no difference in my games. But maybe it's me.

Note: I'm talkin about Mages from level 20 to 30. At these levels, the following holds true. However, after level 30, upwards of 35+ and higher, they can actually deal very minor amounts of damage. So keep that in mind.

1 - They do rotten damage; even with lower res curse. And I'm not talking about elite super high "OMFGBBQ" damage, I'm talking about just average normal levels of damage that you can expect on an untwinked level in Hell; meaning, low! Mages are lower than low. They just don't do anything at all to monsters.

2 - If you cannot teleport, they're just dead. They wander around and get wacked way too easily; and you resummon them constantly; which means less corpses to explode. Honestly, Warriors don't die. Skeleton Warriors are beef sticks with 20/20 skills for mastery and skellies respectively. But Mages just die when something sneezes and don't dish out damage. Granted, that's damage you didn't have to take yourself, but if your'e a smarty pants and stay behind the Warriors, or have Max Block, you can do without spending those 20 points on the little Magi skellies.

3 - Golem mastery is a waste as well honestly. He can be recast, so he doesn't need godly life amounts. Just invest 40 mana into him a few times and he never goes away.

Personally, I remade my Skeleton Lord simply because I went with Warriors & Mages. I hate the mages, they're worthless. That's one less body to explode with corpse explode and they never survive the slow walk to the Pits for me; which I can't stand.

I remade and I played more with Warriors & good use of Curses. Some say that dumping points into curses is a waste of points because +skills can raise it and that only one point is needed, but I find having a few points in my main curses are well worth it, because I tend to use skill branch +skill items and charms, not "all skills" which means I don't get all those buffs to curses.

I really like Confuse & Amp damage.

I keep Amp low, because the radius is low--and the duration is low. I don't need duration because the monsters will die shortly after I amp them the way I play. I simply amp the monsters that my largest group of minions are fighting. I don't need to amp everyone else.

I confuse the entire screen. I love this skill. It finally works correctly. While the monsters beat on each other, I selectively amp the ones that my skeletons are going to engage. I control the flow of the battle quite easily and I terror anything that comes to close to me, then confuse it next to something else.

Once enough bodies are made for me, I amp around and I corpse explode for the grande finale.

I love this way more than playing with the Skeleton Mages.

Anyhow, just a heads up. Play what you enjoy. I suggest trying things first though.

Cheers!

[AnimeCraze]

I've tried mages a bit, with the free 5 my equipment gives me, and they're completely worthless. :(

Golem mastery it is.Eh......, try lvl 1 skeles in hell, and see how useless those would be. Anyways, mages are sort of useless, but golem mastery is VERY useless, so mages it is. Yes, they do block doors and all, but you can unsummon them. They do die more often, but hey, 1 more hit on them is usually 1 less hit on you.

[LordCinos]

1) Wouldn't Golem Mastery be useful is you summon Irons from good equipment?

and 2) What other skill is there? I mean... I could max revives, but it'd be useless. I could max Bone Armor... but it'd be useless. I could max a curse, but... you get the point. Perhaps I'll just distribute the points between Decrepify, Dim Vision and Summon Resist. :undecided:

[Mad Mantis]

1) Wouldn't Golem Mastery be useful is you summon Irons from good equipment?

More useful, but still not fantastic.

[the boss]

1 point gumby 1 point golem mastery = 10k life earth golem
max mages, laggs more lol

One point reminder, if you don't max block, bone armor synergy like bone wall or prison is good to max, but if you max block, the bone armor thing is kinda redundant, but I'd pvp sometimes so I max block and max bone prison for the synergy.

[chaos_masterzz]

well my mages are lvl 40+ so yea they rock :)

[wromania]

if i sumon skellies and then i switch weapons they ill keep the + skills from first weapon ?
Also nobody answer a precedent guestion, iron golem can be "high" if i sumon it from a good item?

[Mad Mantis]

if i sumon skellies and then i switch weapons they ill keep the + skills from first weapon ?

The Skellies will keep the higher stats, but you might not keep all the Skellies. If the +skills from your first weapon allow you to summon an additional Skellie it will vanish when you switch. The remaining skellies do keep the higher stats.


Also nobody answer a precedent guestion, iron golem can be "high" if i sumon it from a good item?

What do you mean with that?

[Rabbitz]

What do you mean with that?

he probably means that if u summon an Iron Golem from a good item if it would benefit from the bonusses :D

[wromania]

sry my english is bad, i dont want to say the golem is high or drunk hehe

[Invertedpanda]

I don't use my mages to do damage; I use them to take care of bosses. I try and get a few cold, and a few poison mages, before going into a boss battle. Cold, + gumby, + decrep means a quick and easy fight. They can take enough damage to stay alive while I wait to CE around them, too, usually.

Heck, just the fact that they hang back is useful in larger areas where you might get surrounded. I wouldn't recommend using them indoors unless it's a boss fight, but that is a given (in areas like Maggot Lair or Arcane Sanctuary, I just use a few skellies and my merc, plus whatever revives I can summon that don't take up space).

[sequoia]

try out maybe one point in pnova to nullify monster regen, which is usually the main reason people get mages

if you were had spent only on skels/mastery you could have made a strong poisonmancer on top of your warriors

[leddan]

Gumby has enough life & durability off 1 point & decent + skills. Plus he only costs you a little mana to make a new one in the rare occasion that he might die. So why not use those points in mages for backup for your skeletons. with the way bnet has been lately, a little more protection for you wouldn't be a bad idea, especially if you're playing hardcore.

[LordCinos]

I find that Lister & Company kill Gumby pretty easily, which is why I put a total of four into Golem Mastery. It's also good to let that Iron Golem hurt enemies a bit as you assemble your army.

Anyway. More than 4 points would seem to be an absolute waste... right now I have 6 points spare.

Damnit, the leveling REALLY slows once you're past 80. :cry:

[NorrYtt]

Personally, I get a bit of everything with these remaining points. Lower Resist has a few minor applications on very Physical Immune/Stone Skin uniques. A Poison skelemage and Cold skelemage are good to have up. A low mana 1 point Poison Nova gives you something to do that nullifies all monster regen. This is a very handy skill against Frenzytaurs that are immune to physical because if they are bosses or champs, you want to Decrep them because they can kill skeles, but you need to poison them so you can actually kill them. I use Lifetap on the last mob in a room to give some health back to my team. One point in Revive lets you experiment with them but I use them only for fun because they have extremely stupid AI. I usually revive casters like Vampires (cast Meteors and Fireballs) or Cantors (cast Lightning and Blizzards) because it adds pretty special effects to the screen. For practical purposes, Urdars and Frenzytaurs hit *very* hard.

All these precautions keep me from ever losing a skele, which is a big pain because I have lots of prebuff gear in my stash that I hate having to refit into just to remake one skele. The difference between lazy skelemancering and good Skelemancering is huge; I can really tell a difference in my army when I keep the prebuffed skeles alive, use teleport to focus my damage, Confuse or Dim Vision the archers, and Amp everything before chain CE. I probably drink more mana pots than most Skelemancers but I probably play more actively then most, as well.

[LordCinos]

Well, I've decided that I won't need the damned mages... I can run Baal on hell without even a merc, much less mages glogging up.

So it'll be mostly golem mastery, perhaps a little poison nova, and the rest in revives/decrepify.

[Sszark]

My summoner is not conventional in that his mercenary uses thorns so the monsters kill themselves on my minions.

In this context mages are very useful. It's true that they die easily, but each one is still one more target for my stupid opponents to batter themselves to death on.

More mages also mean more skeletons to follow you (ignorant revives go in whichever direction they please). There have been many times when I've run through a narrow corridor in Durance2 only to be ambushed by Stygian Dolls, when bam, a mage gets between them and me in the nick of time.

I would think with their low damage mages would be bad for duels since even a small amount of absorb would cause them to help the enemy. I am one of the six remaining people on battlenet without Enigma, so I can't say for sure.

[UncleSporky]

My summoner is not conventional in that his mercenary uses thorns so the monsters kill themselves on my minions.

In this context mages are very useful. It's true that they die easily, but each one is still one more target for my stupid opponents to batter themselves to death on.

More mages also mean more skeletons to follow you (ignorant revives go in whichever direction they please). There have been many times when I've run through a narrow corridor in Durance2 only to be ambushed by Stygian Dolls, when bam, a mage gets between them and me in the nick of time.

I would think with their low damage mages would be bad for duels since even a small amount of absorb would cause them to help the enemy. I am one of the six remaining people on battlenet without Enigma, so I can't say for sure.
I'm one of those six too! :tongue:

Yeah, my necros each hold the Edge bow for a long chunk of the game for the 15 Thorns aura, that way I can have a more useful aura merc and really tear stuff up. Like you said, more skellies = more chances for enemies to kill themselves, and having those mages standing around between me and the hits is a lifesaver. The skellies are all too busy fighting to protect me, but the mages form a shield around me that, when maxed, is actually pretty effective. I have to resummon them sometimes, sure, but it's a small price to pay. The biggest thing: I've got mastery maxed, so why not exploit that to its fullest?

[LordRigorMortis]

1) Wouldn't Golem Mastery be useful is you summon Irons from good equipment?

and 2) What other skill is there? I mean... I could max revives, but it'd be useless. I could max Bone Armor... but it'd be useless. I could max a curse, but... you get the point. Perhaps I'll just distribute the points between Decrepify, Dim Vision and Summon Resist. :undecided:

I would go Iron golem with the mastry to match, that way they are a tank that hurts when you punch it (if you get what I mean) It's best with Iron maiden since they stack, but its probably a bit late for that.
I'd go mastery

[ll MasterKill ll]

Most People dont understand mages. There point is the elemental value poisin lets you sit back and let them die and ice slow them down alot and fire and lightning not to much use but there still a nice wall and with like 10 of them you get a nice rate of fire

[Diabro]

I maxed mages. And if I make another necro, I'm still maxing mages. It makes full use of the skeleton mastery skill at worst. I've noticed how effective they are against physical immunes and bosses, and they greatly increase killing speed especially with lower resist/conviction. The poison/freeze durations are ridiculously long at high levels.

[Samsung]

dude mages own -_- if u have nigma none of the cramping thing matters that much, and golems aren't ment to be damage dealers they are only tanks, and with one point in to clay and g mastery, it never dies any way, max mages you won't be disapointed, i wasn't :)

Mages do horrible damage, and die to often. It's not worth recasting skeleton mages over and over until you get the only useful element they have - cold.

[ll MasterKill ll]

Mages do horrible damage, and die to often. It's not worth recasting skeleton mages over and over until you get the only useful element they have - cold.

If you max Skeleton Mastery Misewell just get all the use out of it

[Tankmobile]

ive had about 6 summoners, all with different distributions, but by the time you have end game equip with +all skills, puttin more points in curses is a waste. The mages, ok die quickly, but take eldritch for eg. the warriors walk up to him, and mages open fire it works quite well with lower resist and i can survive hell baal with just my 17 mages. Golems dont die, so there's really no point addin there. Only probs with the mages is the daft way they croud doorways, so if u dont plan on enni, dont go into maggot lair with them. :D

[harley98]

i got an army of skel, mages, and gumby that really work good in hell. i use a prayer merc to maintain a full healthy army, that way i dont lose the mages very often. mages work the best when you have a lot of plus skills. they are not that great at lvl 20 but if you get them around lvl 30 they really shine.

[Kirah]

Well just to add my 2 cents into the mix. This arguement is similar to the arguement in the Druid Forum about which is better Oak Sage or Heart of Wolverine. It really comes down to playing style.
I happen to play a summoner who unfortunatly due to poorness hasn't gotten the Enigma to go blob mode. But I still like my skellie mages. Wierdly enough you can have massive thorns if you're using a Act 1 merc with bramble and edge. Having extra mages for the enemy to kill themselves is kinda nice. Even if I didn't have that thorns thing going, the mages I feel add additional ranged firepower and I love seeing my gumby, cold mages, merc (who has slow enemy on weapon) hit a boss and the boss goes into super slow mode.
Since I'm usually walking, I find the mages with their range effect useful for attacking those hard to reach places with those pesky ranged enemy hiding in the corners behind terrain. (dim vision works well also). I figure the more skellies the better off I am even if they aren't the strongest things in the universe. Strangely, I found mages useful at all stages of the game even when they weren't maxxed out. I still haven't figured out what to blow excess points on now that I'm 80th level and have like 10 extra skill points left. It's too few to make a decent poisoner, but too many to waste on any of the one point wonders. Many tell me to use the excess points on CE, but my CE range is fine so why bother? Gumby doesn't die much, so extra points into Golem Master doesn't seem to make much sense. Guess I'll just leave the extra points there for now. Anyone find one point into bone wall or bone prison useful?

good luck and good hunting!
Kirah

[Billweed]

The no pointer bone marrows builds are long gone and as someone that played through all the "Nercos are crap days" and "Necro's are Bugged how you do that" days all I will say is 1 point with what your final gear does :-) - but collect the Rare/Crafted/Runes as it's all about skills. 1 point is rarely a waste and flexibility/synergy's is key if your going to build more than a PVP CC build and get a Necro that can really clear everything the way only a Necro can.
This is now the most Keyboard pushing build (IE skills) as the Archangel Sorc is gone now as a style.

[Billweed]

The Skellies will keep the higher stats, but you might not keep all the Skellies. If the +skills from your first weapon allow you to summon an additional Skellie it will vanish when you switch. The remaining skellies do keep the higher stats

"Also nobody answer a precedent guestion, iron golem can be "high" if i sumon it from a good item?"

What do you mean with that?

What you summon him from adds its mods to him (use life leach or Crushing blow for example) and yes it stays over multi games regardless of switches if you keep him up (FYI he goes game to game with you like a merc)

[Billweed]

Being a level 80 skelliemancer, I have a problem.

Every skill I want is maxed or has enough points. Yet, I will get 19 points more.

I could either max Raise Mage, or max Golem Mastery, in which I already have 4 points and put the rest into clay, fire or iron. Neither would really be that useful.

But what to choose? :undecided:
Necros have lots of choices, hold a few points for the next change in the game if you want, its a balance question. PSN is not a killer (unless you go whole hog on synergy's) but very useful to keep them from healing, Bone is hurt that can't be hurt Physical/Elemental and Defense so go strong here, Gumby is multy damage (and special effects) as are skellmages - Teleport is needed (A army travels on a teleport or gets lost) but ammys etc are a choice not everyone has to have enigma I have Pyromancers/Vamps with Tele ammys etc.
1 point is seldom a waste (unless you can get it with your perm gear).
Flexibility is key when you have lost most to a surprise MOB and need to regroup but knowing what your facing.
lastly I read and replied to this thread late at night sorry if I seem to have spammed it. - I read a lot and rarely post not a expert on how to do this and a dyslexic typer that at least uses spell check OK?

[Josiphos]

I personally maxed skel mastery and mages. 1 pt in revive, 20 points in poison nova and 10 in a synergy. Lower resist 1 pt (-60% after skills)

I'm putting all remaining points (l85 now) into normal skells...I have 8 of them with +skills. They are pretty tough as well.

I dont know what people are talking about with mages dying...mine hardly ever die...I mean I have 13 of them and after every battle, the same 13. Every once in awhile I will look up and see a 12 there...

I like them because they have a high elemental resistance. Hell baal can kill them though...but what Boss cant with that 10x damage thing?

I use a defiance merc...just to be different. It seems to help, but I was thinking of switching to a thorns merc with infinity :evil: