Merits of Magi in Fishymancer build?

[Imperator Mortis]

when i first made the skelemancer on my return to Diablo2 i enjoyed tearing through the game without the use of uber items... in fact this build was so easy i could slice through the game using only maxed skele mastery, skeleton, and corpse explode while using the Might merc and amp damage...

The thing is, the build is SO good that one can get by without spending skillpoints beyond level leve 65 or so...

I checked the fishymancer guide it looks like magi dont really do much damage, and they are considerably more fragile than skele-warriors. Whatsmore, they stay in place when going through corridors which screws up the rest of my army (too poor for Nigma).

but then again, nothing else seems to work well either. Bone and poison doesnt work well unless fully synergized, and im not investing any strong item for Iron Golem, so Golem-Mastery is out...
Plus, when i looked at Arreat Summit, skele-magi with levels ranging in the 50-60 range (mastery plus level of mage itself) seem to do "decent" damage, all ranging from 200-600 damage each... multiply it by 13 magi, it doesnt seem THAT bad...


What do you all think?:scratch:

[FrostBurn]

If you have a source of teleport (e.g. tele ammy, Naj's Puzzler), max Magi.

An alternative is 1 point Bone Armour and max either Bone Wall or Bone Prison.

[FooSoft]

Mages are excellent support minions. The ice ones will do a great job of slowing down bosses (in addition to decrep and gumby), poison ones will stop monster life regen for about 10 minutes (wow), and they all allow you to kill hard phys immunes, in addition to being meat shields. Once you get them to level 30+, they will hardly ever die too.

[Mad Mantis]

Mages are great for damage protection and helping your Skellies. They have caster AI and so tend to stay in one place surrounding you. Great as a moving Bone Wall. They are more fragile than the Skellies, but can still take a few punches. I like ‘em.

[Encrypted]

I think it must be personal preferance: I hate mages. Only have one point so I could get revive. They always seem to be in the way, half the time they are standing around doing nothing when they are NOT in the way and the few that are firing usually are doing cold damage, which stinks because there goes my corpses for CE.

Plus they seem to be made of paper as they never last, even with maxed mastery and a few points in summon resist.

[tiong]

its always good to have extra meatshields

[Thyiad]

Mine are about as much use as a chocolate teapot. As above "personal preferance"; personally I think I wasted three points.

[Jackson]

I think with your current build, you'll have lots of points left over. So mages wouldn't be such a bad idea... unless you're thinking of going with another attacking skill and really need to save the points for it.

[Yokomohoyo]

its always good to have extra meatshields
meatshields?:shocked: more like cartilage shields

[ll MasterKill ll]

Mages are great against bosses just make them till you get at least 5 cold and 5 poisin would be nice along with a ice weapon for the merc and clay golem you make them so slow they cant get off a hit be fore your 10 skeles take them out with added decripify

[Hipknowsis]

You can use a few Cold Magi and Poison Magi without investing multiple skill points. Really, there's no point to ANYTHING you max after the three main skills. I'd rather just save it all for when there's a new patch or something where something is changed/improved.

[Diabro]

The fire/lightning magi actually do a decent amount of damage too. I think of magi as tacked-on elemental damage and extra meat shields. The main source of damage is still going to be from your merc/skellies, but magi give you that extra edge.

[davel]

With teleport mages are good. Without teleport they aren't worth it. With teleport and infinity Mages are awesome. The big thing is you need to be able to focus their attacks...

[jeeperscreepers]

you guys invest 1-5 points huh...how do you think your skellies would do if you invested 1-5 points in them in Hell with 8 players with only + skills to help them out?

[Jbyrdo]

Mages are helpful and honestly, what else are you going to put the 20 points into? They should be used not only because its an added damage, but because your not going to get anything nearly as helpful with that 20 points.

[garion]

i don't use mages much (just 1 pt) but i always make sure i have the max amount of them that i can get....they are another level of dmg and protection...i notice how my army is doing by seeing how they are holding up...i think of them as my canary (if im a miner) =)....

and if i was doing a pure summoner..i would max mages (who would need maxed revives?...they'll start poofing before i have 20-30 of them lol)...id also consider maxing CE too..and use an act 2 infinity merc with bramble....