03-31-2003, 11:50 AM
For the zookeeper aspect of your Necro, you may want to move some skill points around. Although pretty much any distribution to summons is effective in early parts of the game, not being careful as to what points go where can produce un-effective minions (and a lot of wasted skill points) in the end game - especially in late nightmare and hell difficulties (I assume when talking about maxing all those skills you are interested in this).
Skeleton mages: You may want to consider revives, if that suits your style. Although lugging around 15 or more revives can be tiresome, even a couple of them can be of great assistance in many situations. As for skeletal mages go, I have found from experience that they are not too effective (again, in late nightmare and hell). Being a clvl 6 skill, they can be effective early on, but their damage bonuses with increasing points just don't cut it in the long run. Also, their hit points and defense rating are small wherein they will die within two or three hits in the late game. A few mages can, however, be an excelent compliment to your army. The cold mages are the most useful, if ever facing very difficult enemies, as they will be able to slow them down without having to use decrepify.
Skeleton Mastery: I would suggest not maxing skeleton mastery. Each additional point increases its effectiveness by litle (i.e. increases damage bonus from 14% to 16%). The difference between the levels of 15 and 20 are hardly noticeable, and one might argue that 10 points in this skill are plenty. This is especially true of you plan not to rely on normal skeletons. Revives also recieve a 200% life bonus from that skill itself, if you plan on using them. Keeping this skill lower than max will also free up skill points that can be of more value elsewhere.
Fire golem: This is direct from experience in act 5/ hell with my zookeeper. Golems just don't do enough damage. At skill level 20, a fire golem does 155-406 in hell difficulty. Ignoring enemy resistances even, this is very low damage - especially considering the golem's attack speed, which is pityful. They just can't put out the damage/time that will cut it. Again, this is just my opinion, but ideally I would suggest putting no more than 1 point into each golem, only adding a a point or two when you need it (or a few in fire golem to improve its fire absorbing abilities). I would save some of those points for golem mastery. A golem works much better as a tank with a great amount of life. A golem is usually best to just sit there and take hits, all the while keeping enemies off of your back.
Saving some skill points on key skills like these can allow some points into golem mastery, summon resists, and some key curses. Its also possible to dab into some poison/bone skills such as corpse explosion if you like.
A small note on attract: From what I have noticed, casting attract on a few enemies in a group will cause the group to polarize into two factions, the attracted and the normal enemies. It seems that the two groups will attack each other, but not their own "side", i.e. two cursed monsters would rather attack the normal monsters than each other. Furthermore, it sometimes appears that normal monsters will go out of their way even to to attacked the attracted ones. Even when your minions are all around the outside of the pack, the attracted monsters will attack normal enemies, and vice versa. Of course, this all depends on how many minions you have, how many you have cursed, and how many monsters remain, but for the most part this is what I have noticed. (For the same reasons a group of confused monsters tends to attack a group of normal monsters as a pack, but confusing every monster on the screen has litle effect).
Have fun with your Summoning necro no matter what path you choose with him.
Skeleton mages: You may want to consider revives, if that suits your style. Although lugging around 15 or more revives can be tiresome, even a couple of them can be of great assistance in many situations. As for skeletal mages go, I have found from experience that they are not too effective (again, in late nightmare and hell). Being a clvl 6 skill, they can be effective early on, but their damage bonuses with increasing points just don't cut it in the long run. Also, their hit points and defense rating are small wherein they will die within two or three hits in the late game. A few mages can, however, be an excelent compliment to your army. The cold mages are the most useful, if ever facing very difficult enemies, as they will be able to slow them down without having to use decrepify.
Skeleton Mastery: I would suggest not maxing skeleton mastery. Each additional point increases its effectiveness by litle (i.e. increases damage bonus from 14% to 16%). The difference between the levels of 15 and 20 are hardly noticeable, and one might argue that 10 points in this skill are plenty. This is especially true of you plan not to rely on normal skeletons. Revives also recieve a 200% life bonus from that skill itself, if you plan on using them. Keeping this skill lower than max will also free up skill points that can be of more value elsewhere.
Fire golem: This is direct from experience in act 5/ hell with my zookeeper. Golems just don't do enough damage. At skill level 20, a fire golem does 155-406 in hell difficulty. Ignoring enemy resistances even, this is very low damage - especially considering the golem's attack speed, which is pityful. They just can't put out the damage/time that will cut it. Again, this is just my opinion, but ideally I would suggest putting no more than 1 point into each golem, only adding a a point or two when you need it (or a few in fire golem to improve its fire absorbing abilities). I would save some of those points for golem mastery. A golem works much better as a tank with a great amount of life. A golem is usually best to just sit there and take hits, all the while keeping enemies off of your back.
Saving some skill points on key skills like these can allow some points into golem mastery, summon resists, and some key curses. Its also possible to dab into some poison/bone skills such as corpse explosion if you like.
A small note on attract: From what I have noticed, casting attract on a few enemies in a group will cause the group to polarize into two factions, the attracted and the normal enemies. It seems that the two groups will attack each other, but not their own "side", i.e. two cursed monsters would rather attack the normal monsters than each other. Furthermore, it sometimes appears that normal monsters will go out of their way even to to attacked the attracted ones. Even when your minions are all around the outside of the pack, the attracted monsters will attack normal enemies, and vice versa. Of course, this all depends on how many minions you have, how many you have cursed, and how many monsters remain, but for the most part this is what I have noticed. (For the same reasons a group of confused monsters tends to attack a group of normal monsters as a pack, but confusing every monster on the screen has litle effect).
Have fun with your Summoning necro no matter what path you choose with him.