Pride or Doom for Summonancer?

I'm trying to decide what Auras would be best for a Summon Necromancer.



Heres what I have so far:



Fanatsim ('Beast' on Necro)

Thorns ('Bramble' on merc)

Might (A2 NM merc)



Then either



Conviction ('Pride' Ethereal Cryptic Axe)

or

Holy Freeze ('Doom' Ethereal Cryptic Axe)

or

Conviction ('Infinity' Ethereal Thresher)



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I was also curious as to your thought on Skill point allocation. I'm going to Respec because its not very well arranged (just threw points in random parts I felt like) I'm going to level him to ~85 (giving 97 skill points)

I want a big army, so 20 Raise Skelly, 20 Skelly master, 20 Raise Skelly Mage. I don't know wether to max Clay Golem and put extras into its mastery, or to max the mastery and put extras into the golem.

I'll have 1 point into revive (looking at ~18 points to the summon tree from gear and GCs)

What curses should have a point? Amplify damage seems good, but any others?

Thanks for the help!|||IMO dont use Bramble on your merc, in hell, the monster's health is much more than the damage they dealt, plus many of the deadly monsters don't use melee attacks.

To your question, I would choose "Infinity" for the Conviction aura on the merc. (It lowers the monster's def. so it's almost like an autohit for your skelles, plus the conviction lower the resist of the monsters as well, making it awesome for corpse explosion.)

Use amp curse for the normal monster (higher kill speed) and use decrep curse on those you have trouble with.|||Forgot about 'Infinity' It would help my Skeletal Mages too, but is it better than having all the monsters slowed (holy freeze) or the damage boost from Conviction?



I've always thought 'Bramble' would be of help. The plate I have it in has ~2k def, so I'm not sacrificing much defense there (unless I put a fortitude on him, which I wasn't planning on) With massive damage returns, its got to help with killing speed (especially in places like Chaos Sanctuary)|||yeah.. fort is the standard merc armor option, merc kills much faster than all summons combined so it makes sense to get his damage up|||Your army isn't gonna die without holy freeze, skeles are just too strong (and they regenerate their health WAY too quickly) when their level is high enough. IMO holy freeze for a summoner is almost useless, so stick with Infinity instead.

And really trust me, the thorn aura won't be doing much. Like I said the dmg return looks good on paper, but it isn't really that great due to the low dmg that monster deals compare to the amount of their health.|||Infy seconded|||Infinity it is. Think I'm taking Bramble off too, I keep crashing games lol.|||Hey there!

Personally i think you should go with Infinity as well, seeing as you're going for the big army. It will help both your melee skellies and your mages a lot. Alternatively you could choose a more conventional build with less mages, in which case i'd pick Pride..

Also be careful with putting Bramble on your merc. For some reason, when you have more than two different active auras on them at a time, they tend to bug and disable for no apparent reason. If you wanna keep the thorns you can wear it yourself, which would work well if you do some sort of poisonmancer hybrid. The +% poison damage (or is it lower resist..? i don't recall) does wonders.

I'm just throwing in some ideas! |||Hmm... Never read a poisonmancer guide. I'll have to check that out. Maybe I'll throw some points into it, Its kinda boring just sitting there watching skellies do all the work anyways.



Curse.

Sit.

Teleport forward.



Repeat.|||I prefer infinity. Its more well rounded off than the other weapons.