The summoner dilemma..

[ulmeda]

Hey all,

I've been concentrating on sorcs recently for running places. But ever since my roomie made a paladin I thought a summoner would be fairly awesome.

Trying to put together a few bits, so far its up to +6 skills (gravenspine, trang boots, a skiller ammy and good ol' sigons) but this will rise as I get more stuff from runs etc. Skills are as follows:

Summoning, 20RS,SM. 1Mages, 1 to all preqs for revive and of course 1 in each of summon resist and golem mastery.

Curses, one in each of them because its nice to have a little diversity.

Now at 69 and probably maxing at 85, I've got about 20 points built up and haven't yet done the skills quests. Call it 15 to spend after I max CE perhaps.

What should I do with the points? A skeletal mage army seems logical (since its not worth maintaining an army of 30 revives) but then again a bit of protection from bone-wall/prison synergised shield would also help I think.

Raising a second tree at this stage isn't worth it, since I already have a good poison/summoner NL and of course the roomie can take care of dirty work.

Any input would be appreciated, since otherwise I'll probably just have a few beers and dump all the points in something impulsive.

Cheers,

[Mikk0]

i'dd go mages and maxed out ce.

then you can bump up revives and 1 pt in every golem since they all have their uses.

in previous ladder i had like 7 unused skill points when my summoner hit 95, didint even go for bone armor since it seemed to be useless

[prion]

I kinda like this option:


Any input would be appreciated, since otherwise I'll probably just have a few beers and dump all the points in something impulsive.



let us know how it turns out :cool:

[DeathSpawn]

max CE, max Mages, then golem mastery, 1 point in revive is enough

[NecromanSassin]

I never liked mages, and I never maxed CE, even when I'm untwinked. Since the build rocks with all of what you have already, 10-15 points in CE is plenty. I prefer having a couple of extra points in Clay Golem or even Amp because I find it tedious to have to use a ton of Amps then spam CE. I'd rather cast one Amp then spam CE.

It doesn't matter which way you go really. They are both strong and kill at almost the same speed. It honestly comes down to the annoying lag with magi and the repetitive casting of Amp in my opinion.

[sequoia]

when you're mf'ing you dont really need mages... summoning them might slow you down instead of just ce'ing corpses

there's really no AWESOME choice, i just saved my points in case i got an infinity or something so i could max GM and make an insight IG or osmethin

[SocraticB]

Just responded to a similar question. I agree that mages are more a PITA than they are worth. Link below.

http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=579722

*SocraticB

[Josiphos]

Well, I never max CE. I get it to about 10 yards (with gear) and thats plenty.

I maxed Mages (never looked back...they rule) and started putting points in revive (i have like 5 hard points now)...20 urdars are awesome and its really not that hard to maintain them.

one point in bone armor is cool, gives like 120 life more, and I'm really finding one point in bone wall to be awesome for walling off archer packs, succubus, stopping monsters who like to run, generally being annoying, etc...

[OsTo]

MAX CE!!!!!!!
more the better, these guys played evean d2? CE does 80% of all killing so its your primary skill.
and for mathematical perception
lets say that every skill point does +1 yard/meter to radius of CE.
lets say u have good gear and got lvl 10 CE with only one point
so u got radius of 10yards and area dmg of 314
u put +1 point u get 11yards and area dmg of 380
difference of that one point is 380-314 = 66

now lets say u do as i sayed and put 19 hard points and got +10 from equip.
u will have 29yards and thats area = 2640
u put that last hard point in it so its 30 thats area dmg of 2826
so that last point give you bonus of 2826-2640 = 186

so more u invest, more u get back, thats the realy good deal, and i think only one of its kind in diablo 2. all other aspects of this game have linear or diminishing return.

if u did not get it look at some CD or DVD and the last inch of diameter covered much more area then first inch at the centre of disc.

MAX SKELLIE
MAX MASTERY

one in irong golem
at least 10 in golem MAstery (insight iron golem is realy nice and with good mastery it got awesome life) i put 20 in this

u can max mages its not a sin, i dont like em but whatever.

rest points i put in amplify... i use it more then CE so why nit make it extra comfortable...

[Smackin]

CE doesnt get a damage increase with more points in it, it just gets a bigger radius which means when maxed and good + skill u can kill monsters off the screen.

[xelnanga]

No offense, but there are no trang boots. :p