I'm making a goldfinding skellymancer and I'm having trouble deciding what golem to use and what weapon to use on my merc. I was thinking about using insight to make an iron golem. I saw a few people suggested pride but I'd think my merc would be my fastest killer and with freezes enemy on pride wouldn't that shatter every corpse? Would I be better off with infinity to boost CE a little more?
I was also wondering if its worth putting any extra points into golem mastery if you're making an iron golem out of insight or if I should just leave them both at 1.
Thanks|||Well, you only need to max skeleton/mastery, and 1 point in curses and revive. You probably would max CE or half, that leaves alot open to choose from.
Personally I don't like having to depend on a non-fool-proof golem that you'd have to keep alive.|||I always stick with clay colem for summon necro. Yes infinity is better for ce I never prefer using pride.|||Infinity is also better for Skeletons. In addition to the -Resists is a -Defense which makes your skeletons hit much more often. I'd say that it's actually better than Pride for damage output.
That said, I prefer neither of the above. I like an A1 Cold Merc with a Faith bow. Doesn't hit as hard, but deals substantial Cold damage (which neither you nor your skeletons can do). The -Defense from Inner Sight and +Atr from Faith's Fanat aura combine to be on par with Infinity's Defense reduction and the +damage and +attack speed are about on par with a mercenary's Might aura. The only thing missing is the -resist, which I don't think is all that important for skellymancers (mine in particular). I also gain the benefit of a Merc that stays out of the way of the monsters and generally lets the Skeletons tank, so I don't have to worry about her dying and losing the Fanat aura.|||To make it easy:
Clay golem - 1 point. Anything else is a toy.
Insight - you can make one yourself
Once the character is done, infinity is irrelevant unless you run ubers. All that matters is some CB on your merc (Guillaume), and meditation aura with teleport.
If its important to you to have the best, then use infinity and still use clay golem and drink a lot of mana potions.|||Quote:
That said, I prefer neither of the above. I like an A1 Cold Merc with a Faith bow.
Interesting. I guess my question here would be whether or not the fanaticism aura from the faith bow is as beneficial to the skeletons as the might aura from an Act 2 merc at the upper levels?|||Quote:
Interesting. I guess my question here would be whether or not the fanaticism aura from the faith bow is as beneficial to the skeletons as the might aura from an Act 2 merc at the upper levels?
Almost, but not quite. Like I said, it's more a versatility/consistency thing than a power thing. If you're not teleporting around and dragging your rogue to the front line, it should have better survivability than an A2 merc. Further, Cold rogues bring a serious damage type you can't get with your skeletons or CE.
That said, I'm actually planning on changing my style for the necro I have leveled up now. On him I'll likely change off to a typical A2 Might with Infinity, although there are still a couple of pure summoning builds I would use A1 mercs with.|||If you're serious about goldfinding, make a leaper barb. It's much more efficient than the best GF necro and it's stupid-cheap. If you can afford Pride, you can afford all this:
Barb: IK helm, teleport amulet, 2 Ali Babas, Wealth, Chance Guards, 2 Dwarf Stars, Goldwrap, Infernostride, 6 Lem, Echoing swap
Inventory: Greedy charms, Gheed's, crap btorch, anni (unnecessary)
Merc: Crown of Thieves, Wealth, the best pole you can afford (Insight, eth bonehew, eBotD Giant Thresher in order of effectiveness)
Max Leap, BO and Find Item, then boost Natural Resistance & Increased Speed to taste. Run up to the council, tele to place your merc and shift-leap to keep everything in stunlock until it's all dead. Rinse & repeat until you're full (3,450,000 @ l95). That takes me 4-7 runs (I pull 5-7k per run, perhaps 4 minutes each, but you wouldn't want 'em much faster or you'd RD). You also have a decent bit of MF so interesting things pop regularly. Rare amulets, belts and boots can be better than the listed stuff and you could buy a Jeweler's Diadem of Wealth for 230 GF up top. 6-Lem blades have higher GF but I prefer a MF/GF hybrid.
OT: An Insight IG frees up Faith, Pride or Infinity (assuming a mana-intensive playstyle), so unless you have one of those, just put Insight on your merc. If you do go with an IG, then yes, boosting Golem Mastery is necessary.
Assuming this is correct, Pride is the most sensible merc option for everything except the Ubers and dedicated boss running (where Infinity's CB and -def is useful). Might + Concentration is much better than the best possible Faith. It works out 1156 average damage with 4684ar & 20% uninterruptable vs 681 adam w/ 9836ar (ias factored into adam). The Might and Concentration can be considerably higher � I used the lowest Pride roll and a level 79 Might merc.
Infinity would boost the fire half of your CE and knock lotsa defense off things, but my skellies never have trouble hitting non-Ubers anyway. Maxed mages do piddly damage even with Infinity, especially compared to your warriors. It's a no-brainer; if you're area-clearing or Council-running for gold: Insight IG + Might/Pride merc. Also, given Pindle's Playground you won't need your merc to kill anything, so the freeze on Pride is irrelevant.
*shrug* The numbers don't lie, but ultimately it's matter of taste. If you're awash in wealth anyway, why not try both and decide for yourself?|||Hmm, one of two things is happening.
1) I'm using numbers from an old version of D2.
2) I'm using the Normal numbers where the Hell numbers are appropriate.
That said, skeleton AR is still not high enough to tag the -def from Infinity as useless for anything other than Ubers/Boss Running (Ubers and Bosses actually don't have significantly higher defense than other monsters, a few hundred more at most). The -def will take the ~70% hitrate to 95%, meaning it's still about 35% more damage, and Pride is still about 50% more damage. Both weapons also do comparable damage on the Mercenary (although I'm willing to bet that Infinity has an edge here)
Second, adam with Pride may be ~1200 and adam with Faith ~700, but with Pride, skeletons hit ~70% of the time. With Faith & Inner Sight, they hit 95% of the time, so A2 Might + Pride ends up being only about 150 dps higher than A1 Faith. Then there's the benefit that an A1 Merc can actually do something against the odd Fire/Physical Immune boss. Uninterruptible will never come into play because the skeletons just have so many HP. The only attacks that will send them into hit recovery are stun attacks.
Also, while I'm not talking about mages it's not because they're useless. Remember, AR doesn't factor into Mage damage. If you don't use ED auras like Might, Concentration, etc. then the damage of fire/light mages is right there with normal skeletons, plus you gain the utility of a few cold/poison mages. You also earn a lot of consistency because you have LR dropping all of the enemy's resists (especially ones they're not immune to) instead of Amp doing very little vs. Physical Immunes (not to mention that most monsters in hell have moderate-to-high Phsyical resistance).
Don't get too hung up on number crunching. I think the name of the game in Diablo is versatility, not leveling a barbarian to the 80's so you can bounce around and farm gold.|||The name of the game in Diablo is doing whatever you want. I prefer to crunch the numbers. As I said, it's ultimately a matter of taste. In my experience area running with a Fishy, using a warrior army with a Pride Might merc & Insight Iron Golem, amping everything and moving past the unbreakables > splitting the difference between mages & warriors.
I've tested Faith and Infinity setups and maxed mages all as a matter of course and found that no setup is more efficient or fun than the full-on physical route (lest you ignore me again, taste surely factors in here as well). The number of unbreakable physical immunes in D2 is exceedingly small, and there are no monsters that remain so fast after Decrepify that chilling is helpful, and no monsters regen fast enough to make poison worthwhile.
If you're talking straight DPS, with a level 90 necro and +22 to summoning (which is easily doable), a level 90 Might Merc + 19 (average) Pride, it works out to 19864dps with 4864ar. A perfect Faith produces 13257dps with 10214ar. This dps assumes all attacks hit, though.
Let's be generous and say 2000 is the average defense of a normal Hell monster (it's likely much lower) and the average level is 85 (assuming an area runner).
100 * AR / (AR + DR) * 2 * alvl / (alvl + dlvl)
100 * 4864 / (4864 + 2000) * 2 * 90 / (90 + 85)
100 * 4864 / 6864 * 180 / 175
73%
100 * 10214 / (10214 + 2000) * 2 * 90 / (90 + 85)
100 * 10214 / 12214 * 180 / 175
86%
Meh. You've got 14 warriors running around either way; either 10 of them hit every attack frame or 12 do. Pride's benefit is probably negligible, but I don't have the patience to sit around while an A1 merc lobs cold arrows at a physical immune, so that "benefit" would only end up annoying me. A twinked Fishy should be played fast! Were I anal about physical immunes I'd just boost mages and use Infinity.
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