Pride for skelliemancer...

[Arkonc]

Is a Pride polearm a good choise for a skelliemancer?
It seems to me that skellies + might + conc = mundo damage, yet I've never seen anyone even mention pride in skelliemancer guides...

Any thoughts?

[Arkardo]

That's because Infinity is generally better; the defense and fire resist penalties help your skeletons hit more often and make your CE that much more powerful. Pride is nice, but it freezes monsters and can let them shatter, leaving you with no corpse to explode.

[Arkonc]

Right, I missed the whole freezing mod...
I'll pass on pride then... :-)

[RealmOftheWolf]

Pride and infinity are both excellent weapons for a summon merc. Yes the initial summoning is a pain in the *** sometimes because of the shattering but once you have 1 or 2 skeletons up its no problem getting the rest. After i get the full army up and not many corpses are shattered normally a skele has killed it.

I mean look at it the merc has a 1/16 chance of landing the killing blow.
Not mentioning mages . I normally have lots of corpses to explode when i choose to use CE. I find that i kill just as fast with or without it. Apart from throne.

of course the initial summoning problem is solved by a trip to pindle or outside act 5.

This is from hours of playin around .

Skeles have quite high ar and even more with beast

Conclusion:Its all personal preferance. I still switch between

[Arkardo]

I mean look at it the merc has a 1/16 chance of landing the killing blow.

It's a lot higher in my experience, especially if you're using an ethereal elite polearm. It's not like skellies do 1 hit kills all the time, you know ^^. But as you said, it all comes down to preference.

Oh, Beast doesn't add to AR, by the way. :wink3:

[RealmOftheWolf]

It's a lot higher in my experience, especially if you're using an ethereal elite polearm. It's not like skellies do 1 hit kills all the time, you know ^^. But as you said, it all comes down to preference.

Oh, Beast doesn't add to AR, by the way. :wink3:

Check Arreat summit dude attack %
http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/skills/paladin-offense.shtml
Further proof turn fant off with ure zealer notice the ar go down :P
More
http://tph.tuwien.ac.at/~gottwald/necro_pet_calculator.html Play around with it. it will be useful

I use eth elite pride and infinity and more often than not its normally merc gets one hit in and the rest have already killed 2 or 3 more. more weaker hits in larger numbers. Damage over time type thing with a merc. lol All from experience . My merc infinty does 1000+ max so its high ed

But i do have high level skeles so merc prolly does more kills with lower level skeles

[Arkardo]

You're right! Damn, I thought only Concentrate and Blessed Aimed added AR. It doesn't really make sence to me that Concentrate doesn't add AR and Fanatism does... oh well.

Well, you know, I'd say that Pride definately is better than Infinity in Uber Tristram (even though it lacks CB, the Revives should have plenty of it. I'm not sure about magic finding; higher damage = faster kills, but it also makes less usable corpses (chilled/frozen monsters have a chance to shatter, indepenant whether the attacker has cold damage, right?). Infinity has CB, but, as said before, Revives can provide that, too, and even Hell Baal is too easy with high skeleton levels, so you really don't need it. However, it's still useful for Diabo Clone. And Infinity has Conviction, really increasing CE damage and therefore your killing speed, especially combined with high levels of CE. And mages will do some damage as well, even though you'll not need it and they'll only let more corpses shatter...

You really got me doubting about which is superior.

[Arkonc]

Hmmm, makes me wish I had the wealth and time to try both setups to see which does better...
But I guess I'll have to stick to the theoretical comparisons...

Edit: Actually, that way I see it now, if I want to make the PD of my army better, I should go pride...
But adding infinity would make mages a good option to add and would make CE better...
One is more of a specialist while the other is more all around, am I right?

[Arkardo]

Don't forget that Infinity lowers the defense of enemies. Then again, it might not be needed, because your skeletons already have a very good AR and it's boosted even further by Beast (thanks to RealmOftheWolf for enlightening me about that).

[Arkonc]

All right, I think I'm going to go with pride...
Here's my reasoning assuming lvl 80:
The merc has lvl 16 might: +190% skellie damage
He's got Pride: +285-345% skellie damage
I've got Beast: +93% skellie damage, increased skellie attack speed and to hit...
So with the worst pride and +13 skills, my skellies would be doing around 1100 per hit...
This doesn't incluse any increase due to amp and getting the first skellie may be difficult...

[RealmOftheWolf]

All right, I think I'm going to go with pride...
Here's my reasoning assuming lvl 80:
The merc has lvl 16 might: +190% skellie damage
He's got Pride: +285-345% skellie damage
I've got Beast: +93% skellie damage, increased skellie attack speed and to hit...
So with the worst pride and +13 skills, my skellies would be doing around 1100 per hit...
This doesn't incluse any increase due to amp and getting the first skellie may be difficult...

Aint difficult if u just go to act 5 or swipe a cold immune lol. I guess the calculater came in useful

[Arkonc]

Aint difficult if u just go to act 5 or swipe a cold immune lol. I guess the calculater came in useful

Did that show? No... I mean... I did it all in my head... The logarithms threw me off a little that's why it took so long... :-)
Yeah, thanks for that link...

[RealmOftheWolf]

Did that show? No... I mean... I did it all in my head... The logarithms threw me off a little that's why it took so long... :-)
Yeah, thanks for that link...

:afro:

lol nice

[Eilo Rytyj]

I like to make my merc on a Summoner necro more of a Crushing Blow totem, because as a Summoner, that's what you lack. Skeletons make up the bulk of your physical damage output, Mages add some elemental support, as well as cold-slowing and poison-PMH. You need some Crushing Blow in there, and reviving Gorebellys/Maulers/Urdars is unreliable due to the 3 minute timer and the fact that they only have 25% chance of CB. Even with slvl 40+ minions, bosses will take their sweet time dying, and that's where CB comes in.

Infinity, Guillaume's Face, and CoH is what I'd use on an ideal Summoner merc. He'll have a whopping 75% CB, as well as maxed resists, DR% and life leech from CoH, and a little DS for good measure. And like Arkardo said, everything your merc attacks will be at 95% chance to hit too.

[Arkonc]

Infinity, Guillaume's Face, and CoH is what I'd use on an ideal Summoner merc. He'll have a whopping 75% CB, as well as maxed resists, DR% and life leech from CoH, and a little DS for good measure. And like Arkardo said, everything your merc attacks will be at 95% chance to hit too.

But then your merc doesn't have LL, I find my mercs always die if they don't have LL, how do you keep yours alive?

Edit: Right CoH... nvm...
I shouldn't even be posting here while I'm "working"...

[RealmOftheWolf]

I like to make my merc on a Summoner necro more of a Crushing Blow totem, because as a Summoner, that's what you lack. Skeletons make up the bulk of your physical damage output, Mages add some elemental support, as well as cold-slowing and poison-PMH. You need some Crushing Blow in there, and reviving Gorebellys/Maulers/Urdars is unreliable due to the 3 minute timer and the fact that they only have 25% chance of CB. Even with slvl 40+ minions, bosses will take their sweet time dying, and that's where CB comes in.

Infinity, Guillaume's Face, and CoH is what I'd use on an ideal Summoner merc. He'll have a whopping 75% CB, as well as maxed resists, DR% and life leech from CoH, and a little DS for good measure. And like Arkardo said, everything your merc attacks will be at 95% chance to hit too.

ye they have 95% but chance of skele getting the killing blow is more likely because of number. 14 skeles easly attainable. so more chance that the 14 skeles will get the kill imo .

Level 83 merc
50 base res

Res aint that hard to get max of , And there are ALot of really good gear combinations that can equal your merc set up.

Mine

gullames with 15 ias other mod jewel
Coh
Pride

Pride decent cb and 8 fps attack max res life leech from COH
skills from coh. 35% is still a good amount

[batuchka]

Infinity, Guillaume's Face, and CoH is what I'd use on an ideal Summoner merc. He'll have a whopping 75% CB, as well as maxed resists, DR% and life leech from CoH, and a little DS for good measure. And like Arkardo said, everything your merc attacks will be at 95% chance to hit too.

Agree and that is my exact set up with my summon mf necro :P

Eth Infinity Thresher
Scarab Husk COH
Guil Face

Also i maxed mages and it's a lot of fun with Infinity as it 'amps' elemental damage from mages and fire damage component from CE. You ought to wait a few milisecs for the crowd to have that green conviction aura on them and CE away - they really drop like flies :P Note i have an Insight Halberd iron golem tagging along hehe Skeletons and melee revives hit more often with that -%def from conviction too. Lastly this topic was discussed earlier here:

http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=536014

[franzjosef]

I just made a Pride out of an ethereal CV and I haven't had a chance to run far with it, but I could see immediately about the problems in making an army --and since I no longer have the Red Door, I have to go outside Act V to quick-start. Alternatively, I switch out the old pokeystick until the merc scores a few kills and then I put Pride back on.

Lvl 90 merc:
Eth CV Pride
Andy's (forget if/what socketed)
Eth Loricated Fortitude

[KavikKang]

Is a Pride polearm a good choise for a skelliemancer?
It seems to me that skellies + might + conc = mundo damage, yet I've never seen anyone even mention pride in skelliemancer guides...

Any thoughts?

Somewhere buried deep in this message area is my guide for "The Uber Reaper" which really should have been stickied. You might find that thread and read the Uber Reaper guide. To keep it short... what's even better is having both Pride and Infinity:-)

[franzjosef]

Somewhere buried deep in this message area is my guide for "The Uber Reaper" which really should have been stickied. You might find that thread and read the Uber Reaper guide. To keep it short... what's even better is having both Pride and Infinity:-)

Pray, sir, would you be nice enough to link it for us? I wish muchly to see this guide.

[Delreich]

http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=521999

Hint: "View profile" -> "Find all threads started by..." -> teh win!

[AnimeCraze]

Aint difficult if u just go to act 5 or swipe a cold immune lol.Eldtrich and pack is always cold immune anyways, provided your merc doesn't get killed first.

[RealmOftheWolf]

Eldtrich and pack is always cold immune anyways, provided your merc doesn't get killed first.

everyone of my mercs can take whole lot out with out a scratch.

Airocs needle/shaft non eth or up and tals mask is cheapest merc ive killed em with lol

[AnimeCraze]

everyone of my mercs can take whole lot out with out a scratch.

Airocs needle/shaft non eth or up and tals mask is cheapest merc ive killed em with lolDepends on their mods. Extra fast + extra strong + fanaticism.

[yuqing]

life tap ftw

[RealmOftheWolf]

fant is np there qwuite weak. between gumby and merc they dont hurt much