golem or skeleton

[toprak]

i am working on a summoner and i put points in golem skills (fire and iron) rather than skeletons, is that wrong? most people's advice is to max skellies but they are way too weak to do any harm. why not max golems?

[Muzzy Roberto]

Because Golems don't deal damage, they take hits, and Clay golem (and mastery and resist) only need 1point to be effective.

And if you think maxed Skeletons don't do any damage, wait until you see how useless a golem is for dealing damage.

The key to skeletons is that there's a lot of the bony bastards running around, taking hits and dealing acceptable damage. If a monster starts something with a skeleton, he's got to deal with a whole boneyard of skeletons, leaving you free to curse, explode poison or what-have-you. If a skeleton 'dies' you can raise a new one, and the boneyard is whole again. Skeletons might not SEEM to do much damage, but remeber with RS maxed, you can have up to 8 of the loveable, huggable bones. That's 8 skeletons to attack, draw attention, take hits, sheild you from arrows, distract gloams, the list goes on and on.

A golem, however, is only ONE target. A target with a great deal of life, yes, but it's still ONE target. it's not going to hold back mobs of enemies like a skeleton army. 4 or 5 enemies will attack it at once, and then it dies, and if you're using Fire Golem, or Iron golem, making new golems doesn't come cheap. A high end Fire golem is costly mana-wise, and an Iron Golem needs an item to be re-cast. Clay Golem can be resummon for free ('side from Mana) but a maxxxed clay golem doesn't do great damage. Neither does a maxxed out Iron Golem. A fire Golem does mostly fire damage, making FI's a real pain in Hell.

In short: Skeletons keep you ALIVE. THAT'S why everyone maxes them.

[Shrouds]

Ok, to be honest, I made a Golem-mancer, and all I can say, is that it is REALLY REALLY WEAK. If you want your golem to be effective, you're going to have to make it out of a really powerful weapon and max out just about all the syns just so that weapon doesn't go to waste (I mean, would you trust a EBOTD Iron Golem with only 2k life? No, you're going to need syns to keep him combative and have tons of life). And even if you pull this off, if you die at any point, you can kiss that golem goodbye.

Not to mention, you're going to have a hard time fighting since...well...it's 1 VS all. Try this: Go to Act 1 Norm, start from Rogue Camp and walk (Not run past enemies) to Outer Cloister, using only your Clay Golem and without assisting your golem in fighting, just cursing (Like most summoners do, they sit back and curse). It'll be a miracle if you can even make it past Cold Plains without those shamans reviving each monster you kill.

Now this is just Norm A1. The other acts, you'll have monsters hitting you from all angles and you having to do a Rain Dance :jig: around your Golem, trying to make all the enemies surround him instead of you.

Skellys start off really weak if played by someone who's new to summoners so if you're new, dont worry, it's always hard. But the end result is that, skellies can be very very powerful and can provide one of the best meat shields in this game. It's like having 15+ Druid Wolves running around. Now if you dont have beast, your A2 Nightmare MIGHT merc is HIGHLY NEEDED for damage. Your damage will be very crappy without him, especially in later Hell Acts.


Overall:
If you're in Hell and you notice weak skellies, either get a A2 Might Merc or try to improve your skills. You'll need well over 30 in both Mastery and Raise for them to be pretty effective. For Golems, I don't suggest more than 1 point. I accidently put 2 points into Clay Golem (Minor slipup), but it's actually helping so Im not worried too much about it.

Do not go Golems, unless 1) You have a good weapon to make him out of. 2) You plan on going pure Golem 3) You just want to have a fun character, not something that's godly powerful in PvM.

I mean, if you could summon more than 1 golem, yeah, that would own. But until that time, stick with power + numbers instead of something that can just stand there and hold ground (Unless you're going to find a way to actually fight with your golem ie. bone spirits, spears ).

[Ltqi]

If u only put 1 point into skele.. they rlly suk. But so far, i've never had one that has died. My raise skele and my skele mastery are just maxed and they pwn. Unlike my 1 point into golem which dies in one hit.
Skele's also look cool the more skele mastery u put into, they get armor and sabres=)

[toprak]

The key to skeletons is that there's a lot of the bony bastards running around, taking hits and dealing acceptable damage. If a monster starts something with a skeleton, he's got to deal with a whole boneyard of skeletons, leaving you free to curse, explode poison or what-have-you. If a skeleton 'dies' you can raise a new one, and the boneyard is whole again. Skeletons might not SEEM to do much damage, but remeber with RS maxed, you can have up to 8 of the loveable, huggable bones. That's 8 skeletons to attack, draw attention, take hits, sheild you from arrows, distract gloams, the list goes on and on.

Well, my concern about the skeletons is when you're out of corpses or in areas like duriel and baal you are helpless. How about this:
+20 Skeleton Mastery
+20 Raise Skel
+20 Raise mag
+4 to each Golem (1 point for each)
+20 to Golem Mastery
that leaves me with 16 points to spare on curses/corpse exp. and bone spirit and summon resist (which they say is okay to just spare 1 point with +skill gear)
Or is it wiser to put +10 or +15 to Golem Mastery and spend more on curses?

[leddan]

Out or corpses? If you're killing, then you won't be out of corpses. Plus you can walk into the portal next to Anya & there are plenty of bodies laying right there on the ground for you to raise skeletons out of with no killing required.

If you're in another area or no Anya portal yet, then just make a tp, go back to act 1 in Cold Plains & kill a few monsters to build your army back up, then go back to where you was fighting in the first place.

Just do 1 point in your clay golem & 1 in golem mastery. If you have decent + skills, it will make it high enough. Plus you can always recast one for just a little bit of mana if it does die.

Forget bone spirit & the other curses. Just 1 point in amplify damage & maybe down to 1 in decrepify.

Also, make sure you have a good might mercenary (Act 2 offensive merc from Nightmare difficulty) & equip him well.

[Growlor]

by putting more than 1 into golems (I actually recommend only 1 into clay and 1 in GM) as long as you have a decent level of + skills items. My main necro has a lvl 40 Blood Golem (he is REALLY old - created in Dec of 2000) because I loved Blood Golems (not for killing power- just because I thought the idea of them was cool) and I can honestly say that ever since the (I think it was 1.09) patch that "corrected" their healing calculations he is pretty useless. As for iron, ever since LoD came out damage return builds have been mostly an exercise for those looking for a challenge. Fire has always been pathetically underpowered (I mean this is your highest level skill in golems - a creature made of fire or lava) and my only use for them is to boost em to decent levels with + skills, then romp through act1 in normal difficulty and laugh when they all die from his fire aura.
So this leaves you with an odd situation: your most useful golem is the clay since he can help slow down dangerous monsters with his slow aura and he is great if you "throw him at" (cast right next to) a group of shooters your other minions can't get at. Combine this with dim visions and those pesky gloams are much less dangerous.

Growlor

[AnimeCraze]

People tend to underestimate curses, probably because they have all these uber l33t equipments that they don't need to use them. However, almost all curses are useful in some way, and it doesn't hurt to put 1 point into every one of them. This is expecially true when you don't have pride/beast/bramble/etc.

[Muzzy Roberto]

Hear hear! The curse Dim Vision is pulling my undead *** through hell.

[nNemethon]

Mmmmm skells....

This link is excellent for drooling purposes: http://tph.tuwien.ac.at/~gottwald/necro_pet_calculator.html

My Skel dmg:
Skelly Skill: 20
Skel Mast: 20
--------------
Nmbr of Skels: 15
Base Life: 6649
Base AR: 1211
FPA: 18
Base dmg: 599-603
Total average DPS: 6833

Add lev 9 Fanat Aura
Add lev 18 Might Aura
---------------------
Enhanced AR: 2179
FPA: 14
Enhanced dmg: 1105-1112
Total average DPS: 14338

And that's weak compared to most summoners out there :)
The lev 9 Fanat comes from beast and the 18 might from lev 89 merc (ungeared). Add to that say a pride polearm and well, ouch! :P

And a life regen of 162 p/sec, they take a whomping. Very rarely do I lose one (except to IM and Nihl's snakes grrr).

...and I am a BIG fan of dim vis, partic in baals. :)