Technical questions surrounding a build

[Crystalion]

This is a workshop post, so its purpose is to raise a bunch of questions. However I should take a moment to give the overview (which is more like an Armory post)...

In v1.10 (beta) it looks very attractive, due to changes in the class skills, to build a Necro using CE, Raise Skeleton, and Bone Armor (bumped by Bone Prison synergy). Dim Vision, Decrepify, etc. etc. remain very attractive of course.

A Corpse Exploding Necro needs a couple of corpses, preferably either ASAP or reasonably soon with high safety in the meantime (excellent crowd control/defang skills). This poses the classic Necro problem--Necros aren't too hot on highly focused high speed damage output to a single target (by, say, act 5 hell standards).

My v1.10 "solution" to this problem is to consider using a helping Enchantress (100s to even 1000s of +fire) for the Necro's hireling, golem, (normal) skelies. The classic problem with such an army is that they get in each others' way and don't focus all their efforts on one target at a time (both because of monster regen and because one or two corpses is often all that is needed for CE to handle everything else).

If we "solve" this problem by teleporting into a monster's face, which focuses our whole army's damage output, then we generate some subproblems to solve, most of which are technical, not tactical, in nature.

Thus this post.

If I were to outline all the technical considerations I'm aware of, this would be a very long post indeed. Please forgive me for simplifying and generally only bringing up details I'm not sure about. However, aside from the above, keep in mind that we will generally avoid "difficult" monsters/areas, and that we will generally have things "under control", by, for example, blinding and bone prisoning. Additionally you should know that, post teleport, I can walk slightly away, and my army will stay concentrated at a single point as long as they are engaged.

So here are some "open" technical questions...

?#1: which act2 merc aura? Might is clearly better than Thorns, for this Necro's M.O. However it seems to me, given enough +fire, that Blessed Aim is the best choice.

?#2: when one teleports all of one's army to a single point they stay in place to attack an in-range monster, thus until you move, you are overlapped with your army... does the "threat" level or locational stacking of your army result in poor enemy AI choices for which of your army/you for them to attack?

?#3: if ?#2's answer is that they attack you, then we have to ask if our Bone Armor will prevent us from being stunned (i.e. put into hit recovery)... if not, then we really must first cast a Clay Golem into the face of our teleport target (for distraction and because when they are hit, they slow their attacker), then Decrepify the target (only if this doesn't take the blind off of other monsters that are nearby, that is), then teleport in the army (which might not be a bad idea anyway).

?#4: another thought on 1..3 would be to ask, if we consider using a Holy Freeze merc: 4a: does teleport trigger an immediate pulse?; 4b: how many corpses, v1.10, shatter due to HF?

?#5: apparently an act2 merc jabs twice, with the timing of the second part of the jab being independent of the weapon speed, but the delay in getting the first part of the jab being affected? Certainly, upon teleport, it is good to have our merc get in the first blow (compared to a hopefully delayed response from the target monster).

?#6: is it technically/techniquely a good idea for the merc to have knockback on his weapon, to, by striking quicky, force a HR interuption of the targeted monster (and thus to keep me and mine from harm) or does this knock the monster back out of range of the my army who were all in process of swinging at the target? (i.e. does a target being knocked back, in practice, cause my minions to miss their in-progress attack?)

?#7: does teleporting act like using town portal or like walking/running vis a vis monsters "resetting" (I suspect the latter, to wit, I think the monsters just keep tracking you, whereas if you go to town and back, they reset--if you read the tale of Maldar the Magnificent this was the key to his trick of fooling certain monsters into engaging their bone prisons).

?#8: Assuming Blessed Aim (merc) will my hire, golem, skelies and revives be likely enough to hit or need I consider: Inner Sight, Cloak of Shadows, Battle Cry, or -X monster defense on my hireling's weapon?

?#9: I know that Act Bosses get a bonus vs. my army and that 3 Prime Evils have AoE attacks... are they likely to hit *all* of my concentrated force at once (and poof!)? (One "solution" to this is to wait until the boss is engaged in an action, teleport you and your army next to him, then run around to his other side so his attacks hit you (ouch ouch) but not your army).

?#10: Dim Vision will stop inferno dudes (unless they are immune to DV) from their new uber v1.10 fire breath, etc. etc. Aside from these (DVable) cases, are there "normal" monsters to be wary of that have a special attack that could zap my whole stack effectively?

?#11: The general "solution" to a LEB is to bone prison him, kill everything else, and then CE or poison him to death (or ignore him and leave). Town Portal is the answer when the LEB can (initially) ignore bone prisons. Am I missing some problem or clever finesse here?

?#12: If I'm using a Blessed Aim merc and Enchantment, then if I can't crack fire immunity on a monster I pretty much have to leave them alone (as Ruvanal's discovery of psuedo-healing absorbtion will negate my lower physical damage effectiveness). If I don't have the Sorc Enchant my hireling, then I can always resummon golem/skelies/revives to "remove" enchantment (I'm not really found of the revives anyway, due to their timer being only 3 minutes whereas enchant can be 10+ minutes). So, if v1.10s is properly balanced and goes to release that way, how much skill do I need in skel mastery and skelies to get decent damage out of them, and is their to-hit good enough that a Might merc is a better idea overall anyway?

?#13: I'm focused on the Necro here, as he natively gets CE, minions and crowd control, and needs only to be granted teleport to make this work (with Enchant blessing being a big help, but optional). But other classes, given the key equipment, might be able to pull much the same stunt... which classes/equipment might be viable? (largely a question of numbers, then a question to test in practice) Cross class haters who have made it this far might want to ignore this question lest it "make their blood boil".

[Pren]

The only teleport amulet I've ever gambled was a rare that cost me 6507gp per charge. Without Enigma (or perhap's Nja's Staff of Screwing Over your Necromancer Skill Levels, if it's cheaper to recharge), the build is going to probably run into money issues, and having to constantly recharge in town will suck. Pretty much a build centered around an Enigma, I imagine. Which, is yet another item that turns an already strong skill into a godlike engine of destruction (see: bramble as another example.) There's no question that teleporting a single merc on top of something is an extremely effective killer, teleporting 20 minions or more on top of something should wreck it.

If you want skeletons to deal physical damage, i'd think that no less than max is required. Also, consider that everything will target lock on the thing you teleport by... and think of what that means when it comes to skeleton mage focus fire. Ranged Skeletons naturally turn and run when a foe approaches them (about half the time), but they might not do that in this case. Being able to turn 10 necrowarriors and 10 necromages all onto the same monster is gonna be like attacking with Vengeance. In fact, I really want somebody to test this. That'd be a really cool thing if it works.

As minions can't walk through eachother, I'd speculate a knockback weapon being very detrimental. Druid grizzlies push high life creatures across the entire map, and though hireling knockback would be less effective, it seems like trying to have your fingers in too many niceities... everything will be blind and or imprisoned, then slowed by decrepify and holy freeze, Is knockback really necessary? 99% likely they'll all de-stack and then select other targets or clump up trying to get to it.


edit: I don't see any other class pulling it off. 3 dire wolves do less damage than a grizzly, and no other class than those two get more than one combat minion+merc.

Hey, what happens if a paladin teleports with converts? Assassins don't teleport their mind blasted creatures with them when they dragon flight, so I'm guessing nothing.

And, naturally teleporting does not wipe you from npc aggression, it's just like walking as you speculated.

[Pren]

Also, you can just stick a Doom polearm on your might merc, and wield a Beast weapon yourself.

This gives them a double damage bonus, double AR bonus, increased attack speed, and you have a smaller radius holy freeze. The character is designed around an Enigma, adding two more exceptional items isn't really that far fetched.

[Snorelax]

I think I accidentally cancelled my reply. Ooops :-/

Anyways

#1: Might would be far superior to Blessed Aim. Most of the To-Hit equation is clvl/mlvl, so as long as you aren't roaming far outside the curve you'll be fine. Plus, mercs are ITD so the aura wouldn't help one of your hardest hitting minions.

#2: The AI will hit whatever it was targetting once, and then target whatever has the highest threat level in your stack. So if you were on the front line, I think it would hit you once, and then target a skeleton or the golem or your merc

#4b: It was ~20% in 1.09, I don't see why that number would be changed.

#5: Both the monster and the merc will react instantly to your teleportation.

#6: As Pren said, knockback is pretty crappy for your setup as all your minions would have to relocate to get their next attack in.

#7: Teleport doesn't make the monster make a new decision

#8: Hirelings won't use charges or skills granted by items at all (Minus the ones that emit auras). Plus, hirelings are ITD so -monster def wouldn't help them at all.

#9: There are three attacks I can think of offhand that would be problematic. Baal's ice wedge and fire ring and Diablo's ring of fire. With the current (bugged?) skeleton regen rates, they can survive this quite easily. If the regen rates are changed (fixed?) however, these attacks may become problematic.

#10: Glooms would also be able to run through your army and will ignore bone prisons (they pierce, guess it doesn't matter). Confuse and Attract might also be viable ways of dealing with these monsters, as they'd be using the infernos/Lightnings on each other instead of you.

#11: LEs in 1.10 are much much less of a problem. You could do what you've described, or you could lifetap the LE and watch your minions roll over him.

#12: Remember that in 1.10 (at the moment, could change), RS is vastly superior to Skeleton Mastery. Maxing RS and then SM would be the best path if you have the points.

#13: A melee sorceress would work with this I think, even with the masteries not pumping elemental damage anymore. Her huge enchant bonus coupled with frost nova and static would make her quite effective. Plus you'd need no cross class skills to make her effective (Zeal would be nice, but not necessary). A shockbear could also be effective. I dunno, I'm not sure what the focus of the build is :P If you like CE a lot, I guess you could use Corpsemourne on any character and get the same kind of effect.

You also might want to get a rogue merc if you're concerned about AR problems. Not only will Inner Sight give more of a benefit to to-hit than Blessed Aim, she won't have to be in the front lines so she won't impede your minions.

I also don't recommend putting points in either revives or SM in 1.10's current condition, as they are greatly weaker than your golem, your skeletons, and your merc.

[Ferengi]

An Opera crash ate my long reply, now I merely add to the above.

Forget DV, Confuse is far superior now. Think of it as an instant army of unlimited size. Why disable that wonderful new fire attack when it can work for you instead.

I tried a Trang necro with max Confuse, BP and BW and could solo if I wanted the work load. I added an HF merc, wore Bramble and tossed in a FG. I had the same freedom of movement as when leading a mob without the mob management. I didn't need Skellies or Teleport to roll over Foothills or Plateau. I had planned on the Teleport armor, but the play was too easy for my patience to level up (I started with the mid-level chars in CubeMod).

Meteror and BP handled most problems, I later added one point to CE, so that with +skills I could eliminate pockets of resistance fast (no AD employed). Lacking Trangs, CE will do fine. Being a vampire had advantages in foot speed, but had slow cast rates, so a thoughtful weapons switch is required. And +1 CE is enough with the necros usual +skills, and I say that as someone who maxed CE in 1.09 to outduel Nilathak.

I gave up Revives and Skellie mobs when going for Baal in 1.09. Diablo was a bit of a problem, but IM and recast BG were able to survive after the other minion burned up. Baal simply wiped out the army too fast (it was the one time I was actually concerned about the BG HP loss). With the Trang test, and the synergies to Spirit, I found that slow but sure Spirits would destroy anthing in a Prison. Since I never got Teleport, I never ran the Baal test, but I'm pretty sure that my sweet spot of Guided Arrow will work fine with Spirit now. Getting close to Baal will require that the necro give up some skills in order to survive the elemental attacks. I don't think it's worth that.

As for airborne LEM, the only good answer is airborne revives and distance (or a sweet spot between the CB). Confused minions are likely to to solve the problem for you in 1.10

[Crystalion]

The only teleport amulet I've ever gambled was a rare that cost me 6507gp per charge.

My recollection is that charges on a staff of teleport are much cheaper than that to repair (checked: v1.10s repair of v1.09 staff is 2110 gold per charge of level 2 teleport--I don't recall and can't easily test what that was in v1.09).

having to constantly recharge in town will suck.

A staff has quite a few charges (30 to 50ish) and is only used, theoretically, a couple of times per CE/CE wipeout of all monsters on screen. This is neither expensive or tedious.

If you want skeletons to deal physical damage, i'd think that no less than max is required. Also, consider that everything will target lock on the thing you teleport by... and think of what that means when it comes to skeleton mage focus fire.

In v1.10s there is a *huge* difference with damage output possible using Enchant (vs. non-fire immunes) vs. skel/skelmage/revive normal damage output. It does not require uber gear at all to have a Sorc built as an Enchantress add ~1000 +fire to each minion. Skel Mages do not benefit from this. The conception/hope is to teleport and have one of the CE-required corpses available as a result in a second or less. In act 5 hell. (If the math works out that you can *only* do this in Players 1, then it is still very significant).

a really cool thing if it works.

I think so. That's another reason I've shared the idea.

As minions can't walk through eachother, I'd speculate a knockback weapon being very detrimental.

I'd agree out of hand, except that I suspect the kill will only take a second, such that the knockback will possibly *not* affect the initial, i.e. killing, attack of the minions. However--and this is the key point--if the knockback is delivered faster than the monster can swing at *me* then he can be interrupted, and my fragile hide saved wear and tear. The question is posed partly because I've noticed that my Assassin doing Dragon Flight (teleport) knocking back the monster does not prevent my hireling and shadow from also getting off an initial hit.

I don't see any other class pulling it off

Druids aren't the only candidate... the Eternity runeword has charges of level 8 Revive.

[Crystalion]

#1: Might would be far superior to Blessed Aim. Most of the To-Hit equation is clvl/mlvl, so as long as you aren't roaming far outside the curve you'll be fine.

As I noted before, ~1000 +fire is huge. Ergo Might and the physical damage it is enhancing must be very large to compete with the benefit of greater to-hit chance. The to-hit equation is equally balanced in importance between lvl vs. mlvl and AR vs. DR factors. Unless actual numbers are crunched, I think this is a very open question.

mercs are ITD

Hmm. I see my mercs miss quite a lot. Are you saying they only miss due to blocking? I certainly don't recall seeing any thread documenting mercs ignoring DR.

#2: The AI will hit whatever it was targetting once, and then target whatever has the highest threat level in your stack.

Yes, this would be a rationale for throwing a Clay Golem in a monster's blinded face just before teleporting in (i.e. the monster might *never* target me at all).

#4b: It was ~20% in 1.09, I don't see why that number would be changed.

If safety can be achieved without the use of a HF merc, then it seems pointless to use any HF or chill effect that might rob us of the primary goal: CE-able corpses.

#5: Both the monster and the merc will react instantly to your teleportation.

In practice this isn't true. As I've seen in Dragon Flight attacks, if the monster is engaged in doing something that isn't an "attack on me" then the monster clearly doesn't win the "teleport" quick draw contest (at least not that I've ever seen). Again, this suggests utility in putting a Clay Golem in the blinded monster's face before warping in, unless the monster is already slow (such as decrepified) and not going to get a hit off. In any event, having good bone armor is a possible answer if the monster sometimes gets a hit off.

hirelings are ITD so -monster def wouldn't help them at all

-X monster defense on my hireling's weapon, such as via Malice, supposedly lows the DR of a monster, per hit, over time. Since I don't expect the battle to last any length of time, I was just citing the effect for completeness. It is far more pragmatic to consider me or an ally using the other charges listed to lower the target's DR before the teleport (they are just standing there, blinded, after all). I'm sorry if my sentence structure fooled you into thinking I was suggesting that the hireling would be casting these things (although a Rogue hireling would helpfully cast Inner Sight, potentially--if you were getting Blessed Aim some other way this could be quite good).

With the current (bugged?) skeleton regen rates, they can survive this quite easily

Act Bosses get bonuses vs. minions, iirc, and tear through them like wet newspaper. Still, if the skelies aren't bugged, I'd love to hear they can survive. The whole tactic is to get corpses for CE for fast kills, so act bosses are a bit off focus, necessarily.

#10: Glooms...

If monsters are immune to Dim Vision or immune to fire, then this whole scheme is not well suited to them. This isn't one of those: do this and the *whole* game will bow to your might type ideas. Are Glooms immune to DV?

#11: LEs in 1.10 are much much less of a problem.

Well, I'm proposing being in the face of a monster that is getting hit several times a second. I don't think much of my chances, without uber lightning absorb gear, if that monster is a LEB, even with v1.10s making LEBs more reasonable. Call me paranoid.

RS is vastly superior to Skeleton Mastery

I want a lot of "swingers" and I want them to hit (because of the Enchant factor). This suggests skelies and revives over mastery. So I'm glad to hear the current wisdom is in that direction anyway.

I also don't recommend putting points in either revives

Again, Enchant is so uber, I just want as many bodies as possible to deliver it. I'm not super pleased with revives, but they do fit the bill... Imagine a mod where you could enchant a druid's flock of ravens. Now that would be nasty. :rolleyes:

[Crystalion]

Forget DV, Confuse is far superior now.  Think of it as an instant army of unlimited size.

I understand the point. Indeed a comparision listing which monsters are immune to blind vs. which are immune to confuse would be useful.

Why disable that wonderful new fire attack when it can work for you instead.

Because, unlike converts, confused monsters can, even if only inadvertently, hurt you--for example by arrows shooting all over the place vs. DV which silences them. While you are correct that the army is working for you, this is not very important in hell difficulty, where the ratio of the monsters HPs to damage output has become, as of v1.10, very large. If, OTOH, you are slumming, such as to level up a hireling, then in normal (where it doesn't really matter much) confuse will get monster deaths. Another interesting question raised by your thought is whether confuse, unlike DV, can actually activate more stuff off screen (beyond the confused--i.e. uncursed monsters engaging the cursed ones). An additional point would be that confuse therefore potentially "confuses" enemies that it doesn't (or even can't) confuse, because they might attack their confused comrades (e.g. Oblivion Knights are immune, but might get caught up in the general chaos and thus be rendered harmless nonetheless). Interesting considerations. Since Confuse can be acquired by proc (Delirium) there is also some potential for putting it on your merc and not having to cast it very often yourself.

+1 CE is enough with the necros usual +skills

Well, the thinking in this build would be to maximize kill speed, and unlike the post where I suggested a Barb can lure and stun monsters to group them tightly for CE, it is less demanding and quicker to assume you have the CE radius necessary to have "I see it, I CE it, I saw it (bye bye)".

Diablo was a bit of a problem, but IM and recast BG were able to survive

I'm under the impression from posts and the patch message that BGs no longer get the leech effect from IM. Something to double check.

Getting close to Baal will require

I'm not at all sure this build concept can be made to work well vs. act bosses or fire immunes. That still leaves a lot of territory, if the concept works well.

[Zath]

Snorelax:

... hirelings are ITD...

Could you possibly reference a source for this? The MPQ files indicate that all hirelings still have an AR stat, and it would be quite a waste of space if that wasn't utilized in some fashion.

Crystalion:

Enchant would already grant a substantial AR bonus to your skeletons, so I don't think Blessed Aim would be necessary if you can get a Sorceress to help out. Your skeletons will gain 15 AR per level of Raise Skeleton and Skeleton Mastery. Since you know the to hit formulas, you can do a case by case comparison if needed. The new v1.10s hirelings will max out L18 Blessed Aim at merc level 75 and L20 Might at merc level 96.

Something to consider when using Teleport is not to target a monster directly, but try to land yourself just outside of that monster's attack range (holding down Alt key may help some), yet close enough that all your minions will acquire the same target and swarm it.

[Snorelax]

The rogue mercs don't have any AR, so I guess I assumed all mercs were ITD as it'd be weird if they just made them ITD and the town guards have to make an AR check. Plus it wouldn't be the first time Blizzard had a column in the MPQ files that turned out to not do anything.

I'd check the basin - as that's where I recall reading a thread that stated that - but it's currently down. It would be easy enough to test, though.

EDIT: Tested with Act II merc in Normal (Level 12 against level 12 zombie with 1000 AC), act II mercs are not ITD. Sorry for the confusion :(

Also checked with an Act I merc. They have no listed AR, yet they don't seem to ignore target defense either. Not really sure how their to-hit is determined then.

[Crystalion]

Enchant would already grant a substantial AR bonus to your skeletons, so I don't think Blessed Aim would be necessary if you can get a Sorceress to help out. Your skeletons will gain 15 AR per level of Raise Skeleton and Skeleton Mastery.

Yes, I saw that in skills.txt. However, based on all the threads puzzling over skelie life, the actual stats for these skelies in practice may not be so simple to derive from a glance at skills.txt. For example, surely a level 99 Necro raising a level 99 skelie with only 1 pt in SM and RS doesn't get a skelie with only 30 AR? I rather suspect that such a skelie is scaled by the game code to have baseline stats reflecting being level 99 and the skills.txt stuff is a bonus (not an override). I suppose I'll get around to a -act5 Necro and do a rough PvP sanity check on this sometime soon.

If 40 skill points are needed to get just 600 AR, then these skelies can really still use a whole lot of bonus AR% help from both Enchant and Blessed Aim as they would be attacking things with 1000-2000 DR not uncommonly (act 5 hell). Another factor to consider is that, even if Might slightly "won" the damage output race, the probability distribution would be more spread out (due to lower to-hit) resulting potentially in more occurances of failure to kill and of overkill, neither of which are desirable cases.

Something to consider when using Teleport is not to target a monster directly, but try to land yourself just outside of that monster's attack range (holding down Alt key may help some), yet close enough that all your minions will acquire the same target and swarm it.

A likely problem with this is that we want to have *lots* of minions attacking, if possible, and so they will get in each others way in a big way, once they move. I don't know though, it might work in practice for a number of reasons. Good thing to experiment with.

BTW, I'm not picking nits with all your (everyone's) comments to be stubborn--I appreciate the info and thoughts, thank you all--but rather in the "interests of science". Devil's advocate, push and pull, etc., etc. :)

[Snorelax]

Assuming clvl 80 and mlvl 85, 600 AR, slvl 20 enchant, and slvl 18 Blessed Aim and To-hit = AR / (AR + DR) * clvl / (clvl + mlvl) *2

To hit on a monster with 1000DR without Blessed Aim:
AR = 1746
To-Hit = .6166

To Hit on a monster with 1000 DR with Blessed Aim:
AR = 3546
To-Hit = .7564

The higher the level of Enchant, the less Blessed Aim becomes effective. At slvl 35 enchant...
AR = 2556
To Hit = .6970

w/ Blessed Aim:
AR = 4356
To-Hit = .7886

The increase there is less than 10%. The to-hit on Death Lords in Hell would be 0.5267/0.6492 with/without Blessed Aim, a modest 12% increase. With an increase in SM/RS, you also see a decrease in the effectiveness of Blessed Aim.

Perhaps neither might nor blessed aim would be useful for your army. Due to your high elemental damage with the enchant, might would only be contributing a fraction of the total damage. Perhaps prayer might be a better choice, as it would extend the life of your army, reducing the number of corpses you need to raise skeletons. Fewer corpses for skeletons means more corpses for corpse explosion. Now that the pulses come much faster, prayer might make a bigger difference, especially if skeleton life regeneration is greatly reduced in the final version of 1.10.

[Snorelax]

This no longer seems to be true. Act bosses still get bonuses to minions, yes, but with the new skeleton life and regen (mages and revives not included), skeletons can kill act bosses with few, if any, losses.

[Pren]

I was thinking of teleporting around to do attacks as your main attack, instead of CE. CE's a pretty cheese skill that blankets over everything else for the most part and the concept of this build by itself is so cool, so I preferred to see the reason behind the build instead of CE carrying it. 50 charges for 2000 each is a lot easier than 22 charges for 6500 each.

Your entire build requires having a second person around to enchant for you, and is 'conceptually worthless' against fire immunes. Adding skeleton mages, on paper gives you a great spectrum of elemental damage. And since you only need a couple of corpses, might work. But I also think it would be super cool to see how 10-12 skeleton mages (with major+skills) would fare teleporting onto something. Elemental damage from skeleton mages with proper skill points adds up to several thousand per volley. Focused on one thing, it should only take a couple of seconds to work. Added to skeleton physical damage (unfortunately not possible with enchant due to the damage calcs), it could conceivably take down fire immunes. Then, depending on how the physical portion of CE treats fire immunes, you might be able to level crowds of them.

I think eternity is a pipedream. It's Revive, and I'm confused by people here advocating it, because a month ago everyone could only manage to say it sucked. You get at best 8 revives out of it, and have to resummon and reenchant them every 3 minutes. Actually, I suppose a sorceress wielding eternity could try it, if the recharge cost is very cheap. Cut out the middle man necro and just apply enchant to your own minions.

[Obi2Kenobi]

?#12: If I'm using a Blessed Aim merc and Enchantment, then if I can't crack fire immunity on a monster I pretty much have to leave them alone (as Ruvanal's discovery of psuedo-healing absorbtion will negate my lower physical damage effectiveness). If I don't have the Sorc Enchant my hireling, then I can always resummon golem/skelies/revives to "remove" enchantment (I'm not really found of the revives anyway, due to their timer being only 3 minutes whereas enchant can be 10+ minutes). So, if v1.10s is properly balanced and goes to release that way, how much skill do I need in skel mastery and skelies to get decent damage out of them, and is their to-hit good enough that a Might merc is a better idea overall anyway?

Well, you could just have the sorc get a skill like chain lightning or nova to deal with them, no?

[Ferengi]

confused monsters can, even if only inadvertently, hurt you

Never noticed a problem, but then I never needed to get close. I was casting near the edge of screen, so mainly there were bodies left or weakened monsters that could be BP and Meteored. When curses are your main attack, you need to be aware of overwriting problems and equip the merc appropriately.

ou have the CE radius necessary

I had a max CorpsePopper, lots of fun for certain areas, but no corpse no bang and you are purposely needing corpses for your army. Bone Spirit is a better answer when you have some other mass area attack (in my case, Confuse), and can be used against Bosses.

[Ruvanal]

Some miscellaneous comments from different posts. Along the line of 'in the "interests of science", Devil's advocate, push and pull, etc., etc.'

?#2: when one teleports all of one's army to a single point they stay in place to attack an in-range monster, thus until you move, you are overlapped with your army... does the "threat" level or locational stacking of your army result in poor enemy AI choices for which of your army/you for them to attack?

What needs to be looked at here are the relative "threat" levels involved. I am unsure on the players themselves because I have not actually sat down to test it, but the players appear to be a 9 or 10 (I expect that it will be 10 when it actually does get looked up). Here is a list of some of the other threat values as they pertain to this discussion.
10 rogue mercenary
11 other mercenaries
10 necroskeletons and necro mages
11 necro golems
01 Bone Wall and Bone Prisons
11 valkyrie
14 dopplezon (decoy)
10 druid summoned wolves
11 Grizzly
08 druid spirits
00 druid vines
11 shadowwarrior/shadowmaster

I have regularly been able to use the golems to draw off the attention of the monsters away from my skeletons with this technique. It can work somewhat well against the prime evils if the golem has any lasting power. So you should be able to use casting a clay golem to good effect, even after doing a teleport if needed.

?#5: apparently an act2 merc jabs twice, with the timing of the second part of the jab being independent of the weapon speed, but the delay in getting the first part of the jab being affected? Certainly, upon teleport, it is good to have our merc get in the first blow (compared to a hopefully delayed response from the target monster).

They use two type of attack. The default is a 'normal' attack (A1) which is 16 frames long with the hit occurring on the 12th frame (normal AnimationSpeed of 256). The Jab attack uses a sequenced animation that can be found in monseq.txt as the sequence seq_act2guardjab. This is 14 frames long and the hits will occur on the 6th and 10th frames. The AnimationSpeed should also be at the normal rate and WSM and IAS modifiers should adjust these in the same manner that they would a normal type of attack as for when they will actually end up occurring at.

Look for some of the other discussions on these forums concerning the druid attack speeds for more details on how to look at this.

?#9: I know that Act Bosses get a bonus vs. my army and that 3 Prime Evils have AoE attacks... are they likely to hit *all* of my concentrated force at once (and poof!)? (One "solution" to this is to wait until the boss is engaged in an action, teleport you and your army next to him, then run around to his other side so his attacks hit you (ouch ouch) but not your army).

Yes an AoE attack can be devastating to a tightly bunched group. That is why I like a quickly cast Clay Golem to provide short distractions and give the army some time to regenerate. This can even work against the prime evils in the middle of the combat due the golems higher threat level.

?#10: Dim Vision will stop inferno dudes (unless they are immune to DV) from their new uber v1.10 fire breath, etc. etc. Aside from these (DVable) cases, are there "normal" monsters to be wary of that have a special attack that could zap my whole stack effectively?

The mass area poison attacks could pose some problem to the skeletons. They are not poison immune so the effect would temporarily stop their regeneration while damaging them. They would then be more susceptible to being taken out by other attacks. Any attack that can hit several players together simultaneously could be a problem if the damage levels are high enough (Gloam attacks for one, death explosions from some boss types, etc.).

... So, if v1.10s is properly balanced and goes to release that way, how much skill do I need in skel mastery and skelies to get decent damage out of them, and is their to-hit good enough that a Might merc is a better idea overall anyway?

From some of the other responses in this thread it looks like some need to reference this spreadsheet on the necro skeletons (made by SerraAngel)
http://home1.tiscalinet.de/shadowgate/imag...ySerraAngel.xls

You can check to see just what the stats of the skeletons are with different levels of SM and RS. Note that there is a listing showing the actual HP of the skeletons versus what the game will erroneously display on the skill description. A pure investment in Raise Skeleton that some are recommending may not really be the ideal route to go.

As some have pointed out the real problem with hitting is similar to that of the other classes that are based on actually hitting their target (typical melee build). This is the clvl-mlvl factor in the to-hit equation. If the clvl is too far below the mlvl then it may be too hard to make up the difference with +AR/+AR% no matter what you do. For the purposes of this the skeletons are the level of the caster at the time that they are created. A minor point to consider at the beginning to the characters leveling in the game.

Snorelax:

...Plus, mercs are ITD so the aura wouldn't help one of your hardest hitting minions.

People are disremembering what Jarulf had noted about this. The mercs are not ITD. What is going on is the that the game code has a mercenary skipping the code section that applies the ITD effect when processing the mercs chance to hit. It is useless to give a mercenary an ITD item because the game would skip applying the effect for them at all (this is as of the v1.08 game engine and good chance that it has not been fixed since then either). Took me some digging through old notes to see where this mistake must have come from.

Plus, hirelings are ITD so -monster def wouldn't help them at all.

No, see the comment above. The hireling are very dependent on the to-hit chance formula just as the monsters are.

#9: There are three attacks I can think of offhand that would be problematic. Baal's ice wedge and fire ring and Diablo's ring of fire. With the current (bugged?) skeleton regen rates, they can survive this quite easily. If the regen rates are changed (fixed?) however, these attacks may become problematic

The problem is just what is the bug? The actual life of the skeletons or the displayed value on the skill description. Off hand the skill description is bugged because it is using the wrong formula for what to display. But that is more of a matter of what the design team had intended. The final solution should probably be some where in between along with a fix of the formula for doing the display. The regeneration rate itself does not appear to be a bug because it is the same as most of the hireables and some of the other pets (DamageRegen=4). Variations on this are the act5 mercs (DamageRegen=10), Grizzly (DamageRegen=5), valkyrie (DamageRegen=12), decoy (DamageRegen=15). So their value for regenerating is not all that out of place. The HP that the skeletons can get to in normal difficulty and the early part of the game is somewhat out of place, but starts leveling out by hell difficulty. Lowering it too much overall would probably stop the build even being functional in hell difficulty.

#12: Remember that in 1.10 (at the moment, could change), RS is vastly superior to Skeleton Mastery. Maxing RS and then SM would be the best path if you have the points.

That can depend on what you really need. Use the calculator that I listed above to compare what you will get with 21 split between the two skills for a sampling of what the results are. SM=20, RS=1 will yield a damage of 41-42 with only 1 skeleton and life=181. SM=1, RS=20 will give 41-43 damage with 8 skeletons and a life=275. SM=10, RS=11 will give 37-39 damage with 5 skeletons and a life=505. It will depend on if numbers are more important than the durability of the skeletons themselves. Since Crystalion was planning on using Enchant to help boost the damage a lot, the actual damage that they do can be moot, but having to arrange to keep reapplying it to skeletons that do not survive long could pose some problems.

My recollection is that charges on a staff of teleport are much cheaper than that to repair (checked: v1.10s repair of v1.09 staff is 2110 gold per charge of level 2 teleport--I don't recall and can't easily test what that was in v1.09).

The base parameters for this (staff cost, cost mult and cost add of teleport skill) are all still the same, so the cost should still be the same.

The rogue mercs don't have any AR, so I guess I assumed all mercs were ITD as it'd be weird if they just made them ITD and the town guards have to make an AR check. Plus it wouldn't be the first time Blizzard had a column in the MPQ files that turned out to not do anything.
...snip...
Also checked with an Act I merc. They have no listed AR, yet they don't seem to ignore target defense either. Not really sure how their to-hit is determined then.

The AR parameters for the mercs are in hireling.txt not the monstats.txt file. It is calculated from the AR and AR/Lvl columns. They can get quite a bit from this. They should also be getting some from their dexterity rating also.

For example, surely a level 99 Necro raising a level 99 skelie with only 1 pt in SM and RS doesn't get a skelie with only 30 AR? I rather suspect that such a skelie is scaled by the game code to have baseline stats reflecting being level 99 and the skills.txt stuff is a bonus (not an override). I suppose I'll get around to a -act5 Necro and do a rough PvP sanity check on this sometime soon.

No scaling like you are describing, the noRatio=1 parameter is for stopping this. The AR would be low. The calculator is missing the inclusion of the base AR from the monstats.txt file, but is not much (+5/+4/+6 in norm/NM/hell). The biggest help in this case would be that the skeleton is level 99 as far as the to-hit equation is concerned. That can help a lot against lower level opponents.

...Perhaps prayer might be a better choice, as it would extend the life of your army, reducing the number of corpses you need to raise skeletons. Fewer corpses for skeletons means more corpses for corpse explosion. Now that the pulses come much faster, prayer might make a bigger difference, especially if skeleton life regeneration is greatly reduced in the final version of 1.10.

Prayer would be doubtful in its use after about normal difficulty. A hell skeleton with SM=20, RS=20 would have a life=1919. The regeneration rate would result in 1.87 life per frame recovery or 93.7 life every 2 seconds (pulse period). A level 20 Prayer would only be 25 points per pulse; about 1/4 the amount. Better to get a merc that can either provide a different type of damage (cold or lightning IW) or enhance the damage or to-hit values of the skeletons. Another possibility might be thorns, but that may represent too much of slow down for what Crystalion is looking for.

[Crystalion]

Some miscellaneous comments

Very informative stuff, thank you.

I've not gotten around to testing the build yet, but I have finally concocted the Enchantress (a twinked -act 5 clvl 33 Sorc then rapid leveled at 100x bonus via trivial experience.txt tweak to clvl 67 while doing the act quests to get to nm). In playing her I rapidly gained a huge (unfair) clvl vs. mlvl advantage over the monsters, but my act 1 rogue hireling was always at a hlvl vs. mlvl disadvantage. So, starting in act 4, I (went back to normal xp gain and) stopped fighting (had been using kuko bow) and let my rogue do most of the work...

Frequent tactical teleporting of a heavily enchanted rogue multiplies her effectiveness *hugely*. Though I did use another character to give me waypoints in acts 4 and 5 (then back to players 1), it would be fair to say, aside from the use of some Hydras for time efficiency and laid-back play, that my rogue did Hephasto, the Chaos Sanctuary, the seal bosses and Diablo, act 5 misc., Eldritch, Shenk & co., the Ancients, Baal & co. all by herself.

By the time she had completed this for me, she was only hlvl 23 (so, of course, I thanked her for her services and hired a nm replacement at clvl 40--who I then gave my kuko).

FYI, I'm using max warmth, enchant, fire mastery, with plus 10 (fire or all skills). So I'm getting over 12 minutes per enchant and 1400+ fire damage. The plus 10 isn't particularly hard to achieve, which is why I settled on twinking to that level. As per comments I've made, I've taken only a few utility skills (telekinesis, teleport, hydra all one point each) and now that I've completed the build I've just dumped remaining points into Static Field (and I have enough there now to qualify as an SF twinker for rushee assistance). In using Hydra for convenience and looking at the numbers I conclude that some people making a Enchantress (perhaps in Hardcore) might wish throw surplus points in that direction, as there is some efficiency in overlapping the two builds if you actually want to tag along with a party instead of just enchanting them in town every ten minutes or so. Those of you who don't follow obscure skill guides mind need to know this: Hydra can pound stuff off-screen (and sometimes, by trick, through doors) without exposing you to activation/risk. As such it falls into a "slow but sure" category, if you have enough damage with them or otherwise overcome monster regen (such as by extreme range plague javalins).

Because the enchant lasts over four times as long as revives do, using an enchantress as a bot (as opposed to having one tag along in your party) suggests a convenience bias towards pumping skelies (with one point in revive and plus skills).

As a side note for your consideration, having an enchant blessed party with multiple multishot bowazons with rogue hirelings using kukos seems to me to be unlikely to be even remotely fair to the monsters (unless they are fire immune, of course). If the 'zons don't wish to pay teleport charges' charges they are probably still fine, using instead their valks and decoys to distract the mobs. If the valks are pumped, then they certainly deserve to be enchanted as well, of course, as of v1.10.

No scaling like you are describing, the noRatio=1 parameter is for stopping this.  The AR would be low.

Ah. That does suggest a bias toward Blessed Aim over Might, if you are investing points for quantity of skelies for use with enchant. Thanks for the excel link... I'll look at some actual numbers and play with the build a bit soon.

Prayer would be doubtful

I have seen so many posters praising Prayer I have to keep from screaming whenever I see it mentioned. My feeling, in a nutshell, is that anyone whose pace of play is slow enough to truly benefit from Prayer should instead consider using the town portal spell for complete heals from time to time (and thus saving the points to invest in some other skill). If you really like healing, try shift clicking potions to your hireling or perhaps put those prayer points instead into Holy Bolt and Blessed Hammer for some three way utility (as of v1.10). /Rant

[Crystalion]

11 necro golems

Hmm. While Converts can't be Enchanted (I double checked, in case it had changed) there are still some interesting games here...

If the Enchantress blessing the Necro follows him into the field and a Fire Golem would be a priority target, it might be interesting to have the Enchantress' (own) enchanted (fire arrow) rogue hireling shooting the FG (i.e. yet another interesting use of "asymmetric hostility"; the sorc is "hostile" to the necro, but not visa versa). The sorc can teleport to keep herself and the rogue in ideal position: out of harm's way, but with a clear shot to the Fire Golem.

This is the same trick, but possibly less work and therefore more effective, as using the Sorc to directly pump fire damage into a FG. I imagine we might get 1000+ HP/sec. healing for the Golem out of this, under ideal circumstances. This rivals the "proper" way of doing it--by Holy Bolt (prayer synergy) Paladin effort--without having to overly tie up the actions of a Player. No, the Sorc isn't completely tied up, as she can be casting Static Fields (or even Frost Novas) for their assistive value.

Naturally, if the Fire Golem is tanking an act boss, and therefore staying in one spot, firewall is going to be a much better healing force. But enchanted attack vs. FG is an interesting thought. Of course the question of whether Summon Resist cuts down on a FG healing (absorbing) from fire is not one I know the (current) answer to.

I know the game has "attacker takes (physical) damage of X" and "attacker takes lightning damage of X" but I've not gotten around to testing if "attacker takes fire damage of X" exists and if Enchantment affects it.

My recollection from long ago (pre-v1.10beta) is that Enchantment helps Fists of Fire (splash and ground burning too, iirc) so that's another thing that needs testing.

[Crystalion]

You can check to see just what the stats of the skeletons are with different levels of SM and RS.

Well, I looked at the spreadsheet and ran the test I can do now (my Necro is clvl 26, untwinked, and only has 13 skill points to test with).

The following tests done under slvl 30 enchant (1400+ fire and ~+290% AR, iirc)...

Putting one point into SM and 3 into RS generated skelies that helped, if I tanked (teleported into thick of enemies and didn't move) because either myself (ouch, ouch) or my hireling or clay golem took the heat. As the battle thinned and my skelies moved around I lost them (testing vs. Eldritch & co.).

I bumped up RS to 12, for 6 skelies. (new game, both games players 1 as Sorc left after blessing). These were sturdier, as I killed Eldritch & Co. and then Shenk & Co. without tanking and while losing only one skelie. So I waypointed into Durance. I lost skelies in encounters with the ghoul lords (I'm assuming the firewalls got em) and the same plus Council members on Durance 3. By time I got to Mephisto I had one skelie left. I threw a (slvl 6) clay golem into Meph's face and teleported in after. The Clay Golem vanished almost instantly, but I saw my skelie was still alive and swinging so I cursored Meph (being very nervous that at any moment he'd nuke me, as I have only ~136 HPs--a consequence of having 102 undistributed stat points and not being a twink)... Meph was, a couple seconds into the battle, down to ~10% of his HPs left. He died a moment later and I goofed by not already being in transit to town, as my poisoned skelie collapsed before I could make it through (I'd also wasted precious time drinking an antidote potion from inventory myself--doh!).

The merc is an act 2 Blessed Aim and I think he's nearly my level (forgot to check). I've given him a Partizan (cube recipe, after a bunch of attempts) so his damage is pretty good, relatively speaking that is, before the enchant. I'd have to say, at only 1 SM and 12 RS that the skelies are a little too fragile for level appropriate hunting whereas my merc is solid enough to carry the day with appropriate crowd control/distraction.

My conclusion is that the build should be started as a summoner, without pumping CE and DV (as I have), if you're going to have the services of an Enchantress starting at 24 (when you can first use charges of teleport on a staff), so that you have enough points to have the skelies generally last through typical battles (and of course they regen after or you can hit town).

My next test is likely to be to location rush a new -act 5 clvl 33 necro to act 5 and try again with a fresh point distribution. I rather expect his skelies will be studly enough for him to breeze through everything in act 5 except fire immunes and Baal & co. (That is, I don't think the ancients have the HPs to be much of a problem--after all, in the prior test, Shenk and Mephesto go down so fast you'd better not sneeze, or you'll miss it). I think I'll probably twink only +1 net necro skills (since that's all I can conveniently--remember my hands will be full with a staff, so I can't use the rod/shield slots to help) so I can get slvl 21 for RS (a multiple of 3 for the extra skelie at 21). Certainly any reasonable untwinked character that has gotten an OrtSol or gambled will likely have, at clvl 33, +1 from Lore or Circlet or Amulet, eh? (I'm only interested in the +1 to summoning tree, of course).

Dim Vision still seems like a great idea--I'll see. CE doesn't seem necessary until late enough in the game that the Skelies don't survive drawn out battles (so you need to assassinate and then CEnd them quickly).

More info when I've tried it...