Skeletons have pretty low defense anyway, even with skeleton mastery maxed out.

You fail to account for the global picture. Sure, one monster is not going to hit 35 skeletons as once. But it is going to target one and its chance to hit are very, very high. Therefore the returned damage will apply.

As such, what is important when using Thorns + AD?

* that your summons have a healthy life pool (skeleton mastery, raise skeleton -- aura: Thorns, curse: AD);
* that they deal more damage and hit more often (raise skeleton, skeleton mastery -- curse: AD).

Let's face it: skeleton defense is pretty weak; that makes them a pretty easy to hit target. That makes Thorns/AD all the more effective. And then, fire breath: you have summon resist for that. One point into it plus bonus points and you're basically set.

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I have still to verify your claim that Thorns from Edge and Bramble stack, as far as I recall they are not (reason: they are the same aura stacked onto the same element NOT BEING the element wearing both auras); I'll check again the litterature for that, but I'm pretty sure I'm right.

Let me try to explain it for your brain to be able to understand. The reason I am stating fire breath isn't because it kills skeleton, it's because it's not reflected by thorns. The person I was replying to made it sound like the damage returned is multiplied by the number of skeleton, but since each monster attack 1 monster, you would need 35 monsters attacking and even then, they won't all use a physical attack. So the damage/second isn't as good as he tries to make it sound like. And you're wrong about auras, this is very easy to verify. Don't you use the basin wiki? Almost everything is explained there

Let me explain this so that your brain will understand: the person you were replying to never thought that the fire breath would be reflected by Thorns. He knows too much about the game to fall into such a trap.

And by the way, this is why he maxes out the damage of his revives/skeletons so much. Now however, AD has another use apart from summons' own damage thanks to Thorns.

And it is a damage source that is criminally underestimated, especially in Hell difficulty.

I never implied that he thought fire was reflected. I'm saying he didn't take into account that monsters don't always use physical attacks, making the damage returned globally less since when they use fire attacks nothing is returned. Did you even go to school? Your reading comprehension is really weak, no wonder you have trouble understanding how auras work.

Hello? Someone up there?

Read again my previous post.

thanks for proving me right , keep digging your own grave

Famous last words, buddy!

Re-read again. I hope your shovel won't break after all the work you've put it through!

The monsters melee often enough. On players 8 when my summons hit like marshmallows, they are taking several minutes to clear out a mob so its not like theyre never getting melee'd.

Damage is damage and theres not a lot else i can do to squeeze out more dps with the garbage I have. I wouldnt bother using it with a decked out necro with level 50 skeletons, beast, infinity, etc. After trying it with a poverty necro, yeah I can say its effective for my level of geared. 3 socket bow can be bought from charsi and tir tal amn is a joke to find.

You bring up defense on minions, which sure, the monsters have to hit to reflect the damage back so the shittier your summons are, the more effective thorns is. With a teleport or two to reposition and a clay golem in the middle of the mob to aggro as much as possible, its not hard to spread out the damage. The players 8 monsters have like 50k health so my skeletons that do 300 damage per second with 4k attack rating arent exactly mowing them down, theyre going to get hit lol. When the oblivion knights decrep my minions or spawn with fanaticism its pretty obvious that the thorns aura is doing work because the skeletons sure arent when theyre dropping like flies and swinging every 36 frames.

If you wear bramble and edge or your merc does, the auras add together so it would be level 36 thorns with perfect gear. If you use thorns act 2 merc and he wears bramble, the higher aura wins so it doesnt add that way.

If you can afford bramble though its not worth going for edge bow bramble rogue merc because then youre losing might and conviction on act 2 merc. It might be worth putting bramble on act 2 merc for some situations.

It also wouldnt be worth wearing the bramble and edge bow yourself because you'd be giving up enigma which is undisputed best armor in the game for summon necro.

OK, so that's what I've understood about aura stacking and I was misguided upon; when a single element of a party wears gears which both provide the same aura, it is not that they are stacking each other, their _level_ is added together and that's quite different. And for many elements wielding the same aura, the highest level aura wins overall.

I would however dispute the claim that Enigma is the go to armor for a summon necro when it comes to survival, which is ultimately my goal Give me Chains of Honor instead.

Ohwell, the day when I get a hand on one, I may try a build around it and see...