Skeletal Magi
#1
Ive heard so much about how skeleton warriors are incredible tanks and is almost impossible to kill now. But what about the magi? Have they gotten improved in ability too?

Ive seen some calculations at the amazon basin about how magi ramps up in power at lvl 30, compared to lvl 20. Less 1.10 magi doing more damage than a larger amount of 1.09 magi.

And im thinking of this for a party oriented build. He needs others to tank for him and provide the corpses. But he will be an invaluable team player.
Lvl 20 skeleton mastery, Lvl 20 skeletal magi, Lvl 20 summon resist and Lvl 20 lower resists. Others may suggest bonespells, but i simply dont feel it worthwhile, because you have to pump so much else to get them to usefull levels. Better take something and be good at it, and rely on your party to assist, instead of doing everything yourself. And with a party, you dont need a golem either to tank, whom also will be of pretty low ability, because you are not a golemlord. I think a townguard with holy freeze would complement this well, slowing critters down to get extra hits on them.


Addendum: I just spotted this interesting tidbit on the arreat summit.
Skeletal Mages have a high resistance to Magical Attacks, especially when they have the same elemental attack as the monster or player attacking them.

Anyone know just how much this bonus entails to? For if pressed together with highend summon resist, you could have your magi imune to certain elemental attacks, if they have a high enough resistance. Ive heard that summons do not have a resistance cap like players. So if a friendly paladin uses salvation maxed, you could have elementally imune minions, because their resistances is pushed to 100%, meaning imunity.
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#2
Summon Resist uses a diminishing return formula for the amount of resistance that it grants. Here are a few data points
slvl %resist
1 28
5 47 (+19 from slvl 1)
10 57 (+10 from slvl 5)
15 62 (+5 from slvl 10)
20 66 (+4 from slvl 15)

Just use 4 to 6 points in it and get the rest from skill adders. Use the skill points saved for Raise Skeleton instead and have your own tanks.
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#3
Thats not what i asked about, i know it have diminishing returns, but i would like to get my skellies built properly. And as i said, he is a team player. He doesnt use a melee curse or have a merc that works well with skele warriors like might. And needing other players to make corpses. What i could like to know is how much resistances elemental skeleton magi have, and if its possible to make them imune with enough summon resistance.
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#4
LucianDK,Jul 26 2003, 01:31 PM Wrote:Addendum: I just spotted this interesting tidbit on the arreat summit.
Skeletal Mages have a high resistance to Magical Attacks, especially when they have the same elemental attack as the monster or player attacking them.
I like this change, because it adds a bit of strategy to being a pure summoner. Ex. unsummoning as needed to get all fire mages in act 4.
I Demand Pie.
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#5
Quote:Addendum: I just spotted this interesting tidbit on the arreat summit.
Skeletal Mages have a high resistance to Magical Attacks, especially when they have the same elemental attack as the monster or player attacking them.

Anyone know just how much this bonus entails to? For if pressed together with highend summon resist, you could have your magi imune to certain elemental attacks, if they have a high enough resistance. Ive heard that summons do not have a resistance cap like players. So if a friendly paladin uses salvation maxed, you could have elementally imune minions, because their resistances is pushed to 100%, meaning imunity.

The AS data for the game is more erroneous at times than the Lying Character Screen. This is yet another of them. In 1.10beta there is no bonus to the Skeletal Mages resistance except what is granted by the Summon Resistance skill. You will not ever get them to an immunity level and will be limited to what ever you have from the SR skill. And yes, I tested by making them immune in a modded game and then stepping the resistance back; there is no hidden resistance boost.

For the mages the biggest boost is to their elemental skills damage as outlined in the thread that you are referring to. Their life is also not correctly displayed as is also the case with the regular skeletons. They however do not have as much of a boost to their life as the regular skeletons do and will end up being somewhat more fragile.
for SM levels 4+
SM life=(base+8*skeletonmastery.lvl)*(100+(7*(lvl-3))/100
base is
61 normal
88 nightmare
123 hell
A 20/20 skeletal mage in hell would have 619 life compared to the 1919 life that a 20/20 necroskeleton will end up with in hell.
A 30/30 SM would have 1049 in hell.
A 40/40 Sm would have 1590 in hell; still not up to where the regular skeletons would have been at 20/20.
The mages do not get the defense rating boost that the regular skeletons get and therefore will be rapidly destryed if they are not well screened. Remember that their AI is not going to keep them out of melee range very well.

Their rate of fire is about once per second. Are the other players going to want to be providing that kind of tanking protection for these things when a sorc player can more quickly and easily out do them for the damage? If the other players are not going to do all the tanking for them, then you will be spending a lot of the time resummoning them to cover the losses.

As they stand now, the Skeltal Mages are a good bonus to an established tank line (the normal Raise Skelteon) providing elemental and ranged attacks that can make up for the physically resistant monsters. But without the proper screening they will make a poor combat line of their own.

Even if you do not put many points into the regular skeletons, it would still be better to not bother trying to max the Summon Resist and instead spend the points on some of the AI effecting curses to make up for the lack of a regular screening line.
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