Hi,

i'm wondering if its worth going 20 in mage skeletons ? are they realy usefull?

(I spend my time keeping my 30 monsters up and corps explode...)

if they are not usefull do you guys advice any + skill for better dps ?

thanks in advance,

Hi,
in my opinion it's not worth at all. The damage is just too awful*. However, since you have at least 1 point in it, and some +skills from your items, it's nice to summon a few, just to have more minions that take enemy aggro.

I'd recommend to go 20 skells + 20 skell mastery, at least 1 in every important skill like the curses, and 20 into clay golem. The slow works on top of the slow from decrepify, so bosses should basically not be able to move against you.
Then 20 into CE, and in case you will reach the 90's, the last points into amplify damage. Only 1 or a few into revive, cause reviving 20+ monsters every 3 min is kind of annoying. I think 5-10 summons should do the trick. Of course, you can max this instead of clay golem if you like mass summons.
BTW: +skills are always strong/important for the necro


*in theory you could boost their low damage by giving your merc infinity and using lower resist on enemies, but since the skel mages have slow cast rate and no strong spells, it should still be way too weak compared to the melee skels. I have not tested this version, though; Maybe someone else has?


edit:
wait a sec.. doesn't CE do 50% fire dmg?
My idea was, that ele res are sort of high in hell ( and many imunes ), but I guess with lvl 12 conv and lower resist you could actually do more fire dmg with CE than you can deal phys dmg with it. -85% from conv and -50 to -60% from lower res are way stronger than the -100% from amp.

And, as eric said, the single target dmg gets way better. Probably rly worth to try

This post was edited by Axel420 on Mar 6 2022 09:31am

Maxing Mages adds like 5k elemental damage to single targets. Also adds bodies to protect you if you do ubers.

Imo it's worth it, but to some people they don't think it's worth. At level 90 you've got around 100 skill points to spend, and you'll easily have 30-40 skillpoints left over depending on what you choose to max.

This post was edited by eric1014153 on Mar 6 2022 09:21am

At level 90, here's an idea of how 100 skillpoints can be spent. The idea is that you can spend 56 skillpoints to have max Skeleton, Skeletal Mastery, and 1 point to all the other Skillpoints you will ever need in a Summoner Build. That gives you 44 points to decide what to you want to max.

Now for maxing CE, at first it seems like 1 point is too low, but with end game gear, you can easily reach 12-15 points. That is already plenty, and maxing it just vastly increases your mana consumption. Same with Revives. With 1 point, you can revive 20-25 monsters using full inventory charms.

That's 42 skillpoints. Add 20 into Mages, you still have 22 left.

22 still leaves with you the option to max CE, split 11 each between Revives and CE, Max Golem Mastery for a tanky IG, or split it 3 ways to balance it out.

I prefer to balance out a beefier Insight IG (still really high given all charms and CTA), extra radius on CE without consuming too much mana, and to bump my Revive count to around 30 (anymore than that you start to lose effectiveness due to the 3 minute Revive timer count). That gives me plenty of Revives, over 20 total points to CE, and a stronger IG for insight while maxing Mages. Infinity also complements both CE and Mages, so your boss run damage is higher since CE does nothing against Diablo and Baal.

If you wanna get an idea of how much max mages with full gear and charms can actually do, put in about 45 to Skeletal Mage and Skele Mastery in the calculator. Ignore Poison since it effectively does no damage (though it stops Monster Heal). So about 12 Mages averaging about 350 or so elemental damage before negative resistances from conviction (-80+ res). Let's assume that conviction and hell resistances cancel out to 0. That gives about 4200 extra single target damage minimum, plus no monster heal.

http://tph.tuwien.ac.at/~gottwald/necro_pet_calculator.html

This post was edited by eric1014153 on Mar 6 2022 10:05am

So heres my skill setup at 97.5
Im in hardcore mind you

Raise skeleton, skeleton mastery, iron golem, golem mastery, corpse explosion, these are maxed
1into bone armor, 1 into summon resist, 1 into dim vision, 1 into amp damage, 1 into raise mage and at 98 i can have 1 into revive
My iron golem is made from a near perfect eth thresher insight and doesnt die, freeing my merc up to now use a gg eth cv infinity with 329%ed and he hits hard as fuck, hes the pro dominant force is slaying bosses when corpse explosion cannot be used
But to be fair and back on subject with mages, theyre trash
Before i respec’d and respec’d and respec’d, one of my first builds had mages maxed, they need a buff

This post was edited by Property_Damage on Mar 6 2022 03:37pm

So what it boils down to is purpose and preference. If you're MFing with a Necro, you're not gonna stack 8 grand charms, so Mages won't have the same scaling. Still, between that and Revives, those are your two options to increase your single target damage scaling.

Cows and Chaos? CE takes priority, Mages not needed. You'll clear the area before you have a chance to even raise bodies.

Uber Tristram/DClone: imo, Mages are strongly recommended. More bodies the better, and chances are your IG and Merc will die at least with UT. Don't invest too much into IGs if you're planning to do Ubers.

Bosses and leveling? Baal Runs you'll benefit off of Mages and Vives because CE, again, has no benefit on single targets. IG may be good to keep alive, but ironically your peak highest potential damage against single targets comes with the inclusion of Mages. IG doesn't even come close.

Hardcore? Honestly, Vives and Mages. More bodies, more ways to protect the main character (you). 30 vives, 16 Skeletons, 16 mages vs 16 skeletons/20 vives/0 mages. Matter of preference, I prefer Mages. Your IG will still have thousands of HP after gear and CTA, the difference between 1 and max isn't as high as you think.

This post was edited by eric1014153 on Mar 6 2022 07:42pm

Personally i wouldn’t spend points to Mages, maxing CE and Amp is more important imo.

Here is guide for Summoner : https://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=48460552

One point in mages is fine. They don't really do damage, even with an inventory full of summon GCs. I usually don't bother using them since they do cold damage, which messes with your actual primary skill, corpse explosion. You can dump extra points into bone wall to buff your bone armor.

1 point only. Corpse explosion is mucho better!