Something New

[Clayton]

I'm a returning player to D2 and want to build something besides the overloard builds I usually go with. That build looks like:
20 Skeleton Mastery
20 Raise Skeleton
20 Raise Skeleton Mages
20 Corpse Explosion
1 in clay golem
1 in every curse
1 in revive
1 in summon resists
1 in all preq's

The build I want to go with is the lord of mages theme build. Now I found an incredible guide at http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=240626 that has really sparked my interest, but I have a couple questions concerning the mechanics and viability of this build in hell. First I'd like to outline the build I had in mind, then a varient I also had in mind.

Build # 2

1) LOM's with Fire Golem
20 Skeleton Mastery
20 Raise Mage
20 Fire Golem
20 Golem Mastery
1 revive
1 summon resists
1 in every curse
rest in preq's

* The idea here is to do as much elemental damage as possible and have a single powerful tank for your mages. Mercenery should be the cold arrow rogue from act one. Lower resist's should be on everything you fight (besides maybe decrep for bosses), augumenting your mages as well as your fire golem's fire damage. I have 2 questions concerning this build:
1) Do fire golems do entirely fire damage? I know they have a fiery aura that deals fire dmg but do their regular hits do this type of damage as well?
2) I've always thought of the fire golem as the golem with the highest dmg output, but will he be an effective tank? One that can take all the dmg so your mages don't have to?

Build #2

The exact same build as above except instead of having 20 Fire golem and 20 golem mastery, put those points in Posion Nova and one of it's synergy's. Here are my questions.

1) Does posion nova with only 1 synergy maxed (or being maxed) do enough damage in hell to be viable?
2) Without a strong fire golem clay golem will be used. Will a single point in clay golem and golem mastery be enough to keep an army off my mages with plus to skills?
3) If number 2 is no, could I make up for this weakness with a strong melee mercenary, such as an act 5 barbarian.
4) Last question, how does an act 5 mercenary fair against a boss in hell? The reason I wouldn't go with a melee mercenary in build #1 is because the fire golem acts as the tank, and if it dies it can be quickly and easially resummoned. Can a barbarian mercenary hold it's own against, say hell diablo, or will it be a 1 hit death senerio?

Thank you for any replies and feel free to use positive critism just please don't flame me because I'm not using the standard Nightfish 20 skeleton warrior 20 skeleton mastery build. As I stated before, this is a build to try something different purely for fun but I am concerned about whether it will work at later stages of the game.

[HYKO]

I'm a returning player to D2 and want to build something besides the overloard builds I usually go with. That build looks like:
20 Skeleton Mastery
20 Raise Skeleton
20 Raise Skeleton Mages
20 Corpse Explosion
1 in clay golem
1 in every curse
1 in revive
1 in summon resists
1 in all preq's

The build I want to go with is the lord of mages theme build. Now I found an incredible guide at http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=240626 that has really sparked my interest, but I have a couple questions concerning the mechanics and viability of this build in hell. First I'd like to outline the build I had in mind, then a varient I also had in mind.

Build # 2

1) LOM's with Fire Golem
20 Skeleton Mastery
20 Raise Mage
20 Fire Golem
20 Golem Mastery
1 revive
1 summon resists
1 in every curse
rest in preq's

* The idea here is to do as much elemental damage as possible and have a single powerful tank for your mages. Mercenery should be the cold arrow rogue from act one. Lower resist's should be on everything you fight (besides maybe decrep for bosses), augumenting your mages as well as your fire golem's fire damage. I have 2 questions concerning this build:
1) Do fire golems do entirely fire damage? I know they have a fiery aura that deals fire dmg but do their regular hits do this type of damage as well?
2) I've always thought of the fire golem as the golem with the highest dmg output, but will he be an effective tank? One that can take all the dmg so your mages don't have to?

Build #2

The exact same build as above except instead of having 20 Fire golem and 20 golem mastery, put those points in Posion Nova and one of it's synergy's. Here are my questions.

1) Does posion nova with only 1 synergy maxed (or being maxed) do enough damage in hell to be viable?
2) Without a strong fire golem clay golem will be used. Will a single point in clay golem and golem mastery be enough to keep an army off my mages with plus to skills?
3) If number 2 is no, could I make up for this weakness with a strong melee mercenary, such as an act 5 barbarian.
4) Last question, how does an act 5 mercenary fair against a boss in hell? The reason I wouldn't go with a melee mercenary in build #1 is because the fire golem acts as the tank, and if it dies it can be quickly and easially resummoned. Can a barbarian mercenary hold it's own against, say hell diablo, or will it be a 1 hit death senerio?

Thank you for any replies and feel free to use positive critism just please don't flame me because I'm not using the standard Nightfish 20 skeleton warrior 20 skeleton mastery build. As I stated before, this is a build to try something different purely for fun but I am concerned about whether it will work at later stages of the game.

if u r to use elemental damage, it maybe a good idea to use infinity merc
with the -85 + somewat -62 resiset from lr on lv 19
u get total of -147 resist
thats quite alot of damage.
as for fire golem.. i duno if it would be a good idea to pump it for damage
as the damage would only be around 1 k.
u will get a extreamly duriable fire golem though..
imo fire golem really is jsut a meat shield the holy fire is good to attract nearby enermies
it does take off some heat off ur merc and mage.
i still use it except on boss

about the pnova... i dun think ti would do much damage to monster in hell
and yes clay is very strong, it almost won't die.
act 5 merc will survive boss, just cast decpfy from time to time
however i still think act 2 is most viable one for necro.
my 2 cents

[Lord Nyax]

Okay, I can't even read what the guy above me posted, so I won't try (well, I can read that he thinks that the -% Lightning Res on the Infinity helps your minions. He's wrong, only the conviction would help).

I actually recently (as in today) remade my necro into a Lichmancer. Level 50 Mages, level 50 Skellie Mastery (soon to be 52 at level 89). The damage...is less than I expected. One note, the damage for the Mages depends almost entirely on Skellie Mastery, so don't expect them to do crap until you max that. Also, another little known fact: Mages' attack rate is based on %ias, so Fanat would make them attack faster.

I haven't really gotten my Merc up to speed, so I haven't been using Infinity much. I'm not sure how much that would help. I think that the best idea would be to get as many +skills as possible, summon up the Mages, get Infinity on the Merc, and use Beast on yourself to increase the attack speed. That's the biggest problem I've found. The damage is kinda low...but it's acceptable. The attack rate though...very slow. If you could get that up with Fanat, it might help.

I'm starting to lose track of what I've said, so I'll just stop now. I hope I helped a bit.

EDIT:

After read the guy above me...again, I've decided to clear some stuff up. 1. No mods that work for you work for your minions. Thus, +skill mods for you don't work for your minions. -% enemy res that works for you doesn't work for minions. +% elemental damage doesn't affect minions. I could go on, but I don't want to.

Only the Clay Golem's health increases with levels. All other golems' life stay the same as they go up in level. Thus, pumping Fire Golem will only increase his fire absorb%, fire damage, and holy fire radius. Golem Mastery is the only way to increase their life.

[HYKO]

Okay, I can't even read what the guy above me posted, so I won't try (well, I can read that he thinks that the -% Lightning Res on the Infinity helps your minions. He's wrong, only the conviction would help).

I actually recently (as in today) remade my necro into a Lichmancer. Level 50 Mages, level 50 Skellie Mastery (soon to be 52 at level 89). The damage...is less than I expected. One note, the damage for the Mages depends almost entirely on Skellie Mastery, so don't expect them to do crap until you max that. Also, another little known fact: Mages' attack rate is based on %ias, so Fanat would make them attack faster.

I haven't really gotten my Merc up to speed, so I haven't been using Infinity much. I'm not sure how much that would help. I think that the best idea would be to get as many +skills as possible, summon up the Mages, get Infinity on the Merc, and use Beast on yourself to increase the attack speed. That's the biggest problem I've found. The damage is kinda low...but it's acceptable. The attack rate though...very slow. If you could get that up with Fanat, it might help.

I'm starting to lose track of what I've said, so I'll just stop now. I hope I helped a bit.

EDIT:

After read the guy above me...again, I've decided to clear some stuff up. 1. No mods that work for you work for your minions. Thus, +skill mods for you don't work for your minions. -% enemy res that works for you doesn't work for minions. +% elemental damage doesn't affect minions. I could go on, but I don't want to.

Only the Clay Golem's health increases with levels. All other golems' life stay the same as they go up in level. Thus, pumping Fire Golem will only increase his fire absorb%, fire damage, and holy fire radius. Golem Mastery is the only way to increase their life.

i should make myself clear

-85 resist is from the conviction
-62 resist is from the lower resist

all together u hv -147 resist
i havn't talked about anything about - lightengin resist...
didni't know it would be that confusing

my bad about fire golem though.. hehe

[Lord Nyax]

The main problem is that you don't take time to type. You just press keys and hope it comes out right. Look at what I've typed. Notice that all the grammar is relatively readable, the spelling is mostly right. Then look at what you type. You don't capitalize the beginning of sentences, you don't use punctuation, you don't...write out words (for example, you use "u" instead of "you").

If you took some time to write out a thoughtful reply, in English it would not only make you look much smarter, it'd make your reply more helpful.

I want to make it clear that I appreciate the sentiment. Apathy is by far the most horrid of all emotions. You try, and that's good. Just attempt to make it easier to understand what you are trying to communicate.

[Enilias]

I had no problems at all understanding Hyko, but let's not talk about some random forum-poster's english skill and get back on topic.

For me, the skeletal mages do nice damage especially with the conviction from my merc, but even then without my normal skeletons the killing is just so much slower. No doubt it would be possible, but their life in hell is a lot less then that from the skeletal warriors. So be prepared to raise a lot of them while you're fighting.

I've never actually put a point in firegolem, but from what I've seen 2 fire mages together do more damage then the golem does even when it is level 45. I'm just not sure that it would be anything but a nice tank.

[Mad Mantis]

1) Do fire golems do entirely fire damage? I know they have a fiery aura that deals fire dmg but do their regular hits do this type of damage as well?

Welcome Newcomer to The Darkness. Grab a brew (http://www.holland-at-home.nl/images/bier.jpg) and feel free to raise some corpses.

No, FG deals a little bit of Physical damage as well.




2) I've always thought of the fire golem as the golem with the highest dmg output, but will he be an effective tank? One that can take all the dmg so your mages don't have to?

FG can tank well. Might not have the highest life of all, but nothing to be worried about.




1) Does posion nova with only 1 synergy maxed (or being maxed) do enough damage in hell to be viable?

Depends on what you mean with viable. It will take a few blasts to kill things. You'll need some good gear to do things reasonably quick, but it can work.




2) Without a strong fire golem clay golem will be used. Will a single point in clay golem and golem mastery be enough to keep an army off my mages with plus to skills?

Yes.




3) If number 2 is no, could I make up for this weakness with a strong melee mercenary, such as an act 5 barbarian.

Act II mercenaries can have more useful auras for your party.

[thefranklin]

I will add my favorite spin off of the build. I use the first setup wtih skellies and mages, and I load my extra points into golem mastery for an ... iron golem!

Sounds stupid, but it lets me have insight and infinity (making the golem fromt he insight of course).

Having infinity does load up on mages damage. Actually, I am going to get on now and see what my lvl 43 skelly mastery and lvl 41 mages do without skellies.

Edit: With BO, I have lvl 44 sm and lvl 42 rm (15 mages). With only the mages, an insight golem, and an infinity merc (and casing lower resist), I don't quite tear through as fast as I usually do. I cleard out the left side of the river of flame with about 4-5 people in the game. It took too long to get the first body to drop, so speed is drastically cut because I have nothing to CE. There are also too many immunites that do not break (lvl 12 conv, lvl 17 lower resist), so 1/4 of your skellies don't do damage to half the monsters or so. I also did not weed out psn and cold mages.

With skellies, they dropped fast and then CE hits harder because I am casting amp. I guess if I cared enough I could switch to lower resist for PI"s for better effect, but amp usually breaks the PI anyway. If I tele on someone with skellies, they die before I can cast amp. The same did not happen with just mages.

I now dropped all of the mages, so I only had skellies. Tele'ing onto monsters still killed them as fast, but overall killing speed still went down. The mages really put the hurt on monsters before the skellies run over there. I don't have vigor handy, but I can imagine your skellies will do more damage with vigor because they will run to the next victim quicker.

Wow, that was a worthless rant, I guess I want you to do everything just like I do. Do what you like, and not what people tell you. Otherwise, it is no fun.