Any thoughts on Maxing Skellie Damage

**marknorris** · 12-02-2012, 22:32

I have not made a summoner in quite a while and I recently switched from pbn to summon for old times sake and I was wondering other than using a beast zerk and having a might merc what can bring up my skellie damage. I do not have mages right now because I am just experimenting with different builds and a ton of summons lags me up so bad it's not even worth playing. Ideally I would like to have 20 or less summons. I have an infinity and an obedience pole for my merc and I was thinking about trading for a pride so I have lvl 19 concentration but the damage is really low on pride even with the conviction. I have one token right now and I don't feel like running for essences again so before I re spec again I was hoping for some input. Infinity with mages or skellies or both, pride with skellies, or skip the aura weapon all together and use obedience for resists and cb and if so which summons?

**hubb** · 13-02-2012, 05:09

The damage gained by your skeletons is outweighed by the damage your merc loses when he wears Pride, so that's out. Infinity and Obedience have good damage and CB, but Infi's Conviction increases minion chance to hit and most importantly increases CE damage quite a bit. Mages don't do much at all.

**magicrectangle** · 13-02-2012, 06:37

As hubb said, definitely use infinity if you have it. If you're confident in your ability to keep your IG alive, you can use a pride IG, but personally I never really thought it was worth it. Insight IG is cheap so you don't care if it occasionally dies, and infinite mana is nice anyway.

**HuggaBear** · 13-02-2012, 18:17

I once made a build to try and max skellie damage, I can't remember the exact setup but it was high skiller swap to a Faith bow (high fanaticism aura, 14 in my case, decent roll...). Merc was might with pride pole and an infinity IG. The turnout wasn't spectacular, even with maxed skellies/mages and revives thrown in their damage wasn't that impressive really. I mean relatively, they still tore through monsters but CE and decent skellies without the auras was significantly faster and a lot cheaper to boot.

Realistically I maintain the best setup as Infinity on merc for the lower defence and, crucially, lower resist for CE. Might is a good aura for the merc, boosts damage all round. Insight IG is cheap and the mana is fantastic imo, lets you spam CE without any regard and if you get an eni it makes tele basically free too!
Beast zerk or Faith bow is a good boost to damage too but tbh I've always found them a little expensive for the benefit they give, good +skillers seem to work out just as well, particularly with CE being the big killer but if you do want the aura then that is your choice, tbh I've never crunched the numbers but I'd wager they come out pretty close in efficacy.

**magicrectangle** · 13-02-2012, 18:46

Originally Posted by HuggaBear

Merc was might with pride pole and an infinity IG.

This is precisely the reverse of what you want to do. Merc does massively more damage than IG, so put the good polearm on him. Pride's damage is garbage, and it has no crushing. Infinity's damage is good, and it has crushing, so it goes on the merc, and pride goes on the golem. Merc is a huge part of a skellemancer's damage, especially against bosses. Gimping him with a pride pole is a big mistake.

**HuggaBear** · 14-02-2012, 15:11

Originally Posted by magicrectangle

This is precisely the reverse of what you want to do. Merc does massively more damage than IG, so put the good polearm on him. Pride's damage is garbage, and it has no crushing. Infinity's damage is good, and it has crushing, so it goes on the merc, and pride goes on the golem. Merc is a huge part of a skellemancer's damage, especially against bosses. Gimping him with a pride pole is a big mistake.

Skellie damage, I didn't care about the merc. The build was solely built around giving the skellies as much damage as I could, I wanted to gimp the merc to see if they could still do the damage. They did in the end but it wasn't worthwhile, hence the second part of my post.

**Pyrotechnician** · 13-02-2012, 19:00

Either way, pride and infinity are not cheap to replace so I rather not risk losing them on something that could potentially disappear on a whim. For normal PVM all of the aura stacking is really not necessary, so if you had to choose between all of them go with infinity on the merc and an insight golem. Also as far as normal party play goes (if you play with others for leveling), the chances of having a hammerdin in most chaos and baal runs is pretty high, so you may even have the concentration and meditation aura provided to you free of charge.

**magicrectangle** · 13-02-2012, 19:13

Originally Posted by Pyrotechnician

For normal PVM all of the aura stacking is really not necessary, so if you had to choose between all of them go with infinity on the merc and an insight golem.

I absolutely agree, but the title of the thread is maxing skellie damage, so...