So only use it as a leveling skill and dump it after 80? That is horrible. what is considered high level mono? Anything under 400 is low, 650ish is mid then above that is getting into high level, they just pop at that level and cant keep damage up. Since you went with 1 you lost all of your shred /bleed/poison/ ignite again… a massive nerf, they also lost effective health pool of meat shields as your now at 1 x 300% vs 5 x 100%
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That will change with 1.0. The devs’ goal is that 300 corruption will be the guideline for high corruption.
Please don’t move goalposts, if 300 will be high corruption then they will just be either making content harder or making players weaker. My point still stands but instead of 400 it will be what? 150 and they are trash? maybe at the start of corruption of 100? Gampie said 80+ so level 80 at the moment, so they are only good till 60 after patch? 70?
Non decay minions will hit a wall, and because people will scream at me about totem version of wraiths, i will say it again NON DECAY minions hit a wall. Skeletons just end up being popcorn. Archers are meh damage with horrible survival, rogues are trash low survival, mediocre damage combined with dead minion AI and warriors are at best meh and a meh buff for other minions. Your best bet at the moment swap them to fire with archers and use all the +fire minion level items but eventually at above level 30 on the skill you run out of things to make them better. Mages are only in a slightly better spot and only because you can have 5 of them, anything less is like cutting yourself off at the kneecaps just to spite someone saying you would fight worse without feet.
I’m not moving goalposts. That’s just what Mike said about the new corruption formula coming for 1.0.
If we go by that criteria, then playing skeleton mages itself, is not viable.
But to your point, mono skelly make, can farm 500+ corruption, and can even be somewhat speedier in mono farming compared to a multi skeleton build, due to how damn tanky the mage is, and how stacked you make him compared to how stacked you can make multiple skeletons.
You also save out on a LOT of affixes on geare, that are then used on other valuable affixes.
Due to how tanky and its dmg output in one source, speeding medium to high monos, goes faster than a mage army.
To go back to my fist part, going by your logic, playing anything other than min maxed wraiths, is non-viable if we realy want to bring the complete min-max potential and dmg output in to the mix. As playing mages compared to wraiths, is such a higher cealing, that the difference between army mages vs mono mage, is so minescule, that is has no matter on the subject, as wraiths are so vastly outpreforming mages, that given perfect conditions for bouth builds on a dummy, the difference of army vs mono mage, will be 0.001% dmg in relation to wraiths (if we are being fececious)
The devs goal is for all builds to be able to do 300 corruption. That doesn’t mean they think that 300 is the start of “high corruption”.
The problem is, if you give it scaling potential based on skeleton lost, it just becomes the defacto way to play skeletons as well.
Solo minion dreadshade is just currently far too strong. Its a huge part of why stuff like abomination and bone golem work. it is also the lynchpin of the archmage build.
So lets say it gives you 50% more per minion lost, and say 50% more health per minion past the first. so at 5 skeletons you get 200% more damage, and 200% more health, well its honestly just better then 5 skeletons at that point because now you get to use 60% more in dreadshade.
That is 1(base) * 3(more) * 1.6 = 4.8, its damn near as strong as 5 skeletons just in damage, you need to spend 0 affixes on crit, and your skeletons is unkillable because it has a massive lifepool and heals % of its hp on crit, which is every hit.
Current archmage is 3.68 or equal to 3.68 skeletons in damage, but it auto crits and cant die.
ill also just point out, other then shred which is a valid point, ailments on minions are worthless filler stats. Minion ailments are disgustingly weak currently on skeletons and the best id say is like bleed from blood wraiths, but I think even those are built around hit damage.
I still think the passive has its place, and I personally always play archmage over normal skeletons any day of the week. I much prefer a minion which basically never dies to managing 5 small ones that die to a sneeze.
I can see by this you are either not understanding what i am saying or are purposely being intellectually dishonest.
Archmage is a net negative for DPS, Survivability, Utility.
1 x 300% for a single bigger mage is less than 5 mages doing 100% damage or 5 x 100% for damage, so your TTK (time to kill) is MUCH slower so you move through map slower and boss slower
1 x 300% hp is less meat shield than 5 mages at 100% survivability by 200%, in addition it takes a moment for mobs or bosses to target different minions one after another (exception for massive aoe attacks) so you can summon more while the others are up vs resummon the only one you have and wait for it to draw aggro from you.
1 x ANY effect (ignite poison armor shred etc) vs 5x effects is again a no brainer.
You are not saving out on ANY affixes as those would already be used for either a single mage vs many mages, you want both to be strong and tanky.
I am saying that those skills, as they stand right now are a horrible trap, they reduce damage, reduce survivability, reduce everything to just make less screen clutter. and you know damn well unless you are being disingenuous that it is a much larger number than .001%
With all due respect, I’m not having that same experience with it. I have played many multiple minion builds with the necromancer and am currently playing 1 archmage and its survivability is off-the-charts (it almost never dies) and does plenty of damage that only the high-health enemies don’t die too quick to watch, and my map clear speed is definitely not lacking. Bosses take much less time to kill than any multiple minion build I have tried.
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somewhat, but you are still making a massive sacrifice to get more minions period, so you are nerfing yourself per minion to force more minions to force a better effect when you cut those minions in half. you can have at most 12 skeletons i believe, thats using 2 horrible rings ever node in skilltree, every node in skill itself. you are nerfing your minions badly by using those rings so just go with 10, but you are still making sacrifices to get more minions so are you really gaining 50% more per minion lost ? more like gaining 20%-30% per minion lost vs what you could pump into them if you had not tried to go max # of minions. You need to add in what you have to sacrifice to get there in the first place, not just do a pure cut number in half and add damage. in addition you still lose all the stacks from ignite and other things your minions would have done so its not even a pure 200% damage increase as you were trying to come up with
Minion ailments dont do damage, sorry. I can have 300% ignite chance and my ignites from minions will basically be nothing compared to the hit damage. So that can be ignored imo.
Im just speaking on archmage, which is mages. which are limited to 5, currently you get +1 mage for being a necromancer, which means a minimum of 2 mages, if you have only 2 mages, then archmage at 130% more, is a damage buff, you are going from 2x damage to 2.3x damage. if you wanted to keep damage comparable it would need to give 100% more damage per minion lost which would be insane as if you use a single minion, dreadshade gives you 60% more damage. if you account for dreadshade, then it sucks if you dont use dreadshade, and if you ignore dreadshade and balance it to be equal without, then solo is the defacto way to play, as its 60% more damage.
Dread phalanx has different problems, and Ill agree with you is actually just bad. if it enhanced their health as well, it would be worth it for the same reasons as archmage to a lesser extent. which is sacrificing top end damage for ease of use.
Though because skeletons unlike mages dont have a passive that restores large % of hp on crit, cutting them in half isnt so useful even if they did get extra hp. But either way you could atleast sorta make an argument if you wanted to hit the summon button less.
You gotta remember, many passives are designed for the “lazies” as the devs would say. The auto node on enchant weapon purposely costs you extra points and nothing burger stats. its a cost sink as payment for you getting to turn your brain off. The “summon extra skeletons per cast” node gives you +1 skeleton per cast, at 110% of the mana cost. Meaning its negative efficiency mana wise. But, its for quick dirty summoning, thats the cost you pay for laziness/qol.
Archmage instead of having its downside be extra mana per summon or something, you squish the minions into one with a one time rate regardless of number its downside is less top end damage. its upside is less minion management.
The reason archmage is designed the way it is, is exactly by design. Which is for people who are lazy and dont want to put in the work to make their small skeletons not die or resummon/manage them. And it has a cost associated with it. Its not like the devs didnt think about it, they simply understand that sometimes builds exist that are not for the top end and there for the noobies/lazies.
That being said, I wouldnt say no to buffs on it, but we should start off slow, 130% more to say 150% or 170% and see where people feel about it etc.
This is most likely because archmage gets a decent chunk of its stats just from levels/passives and needs less gear.
Crit is a huge factor in damage dealt. Necromancer has a massive 70% extra crit multiplier for minions in its tree, and to get use out of that you need to be critting. Think of it this way, if you do 170% more damage when you crit, and you only crit 10% of the time, you are doing 17% more damage on average, if you crit 100% of the time, you are doing 170% more damage.
So if your crit rate on your normal skeletons is say 20%, you do 34% more damage thanks to crit multiplier, that ends up being a total damage multiplier of 5(mage count) * 1.34 = 6.7 on average.
With archmage, you have 3.68 when you account for the bonus from dreadshade, and always crit. so its 3.68 * 2.7 = 9.93, which is ~48% more damage then having 5 small mages at 20% crit.
And if my math is correct, you need about 58% crit on your non archmage mages to equal that. Which means after you hit 100% crit on non archmage mages, you will do much more damage. but this will require some minmaxed idols/affixes. And at any point after 58% crit its just more damage. edit: This might be wrong but you get the general idea. Gear = smaller mages better, no gear = archmage is better.
Archmage has a much lower ceiling, but a much greater floor. Which is perfect for most players just starting to farm.
You can also consider that you need less specific rare affixes and thus are free to use different unique options which opens of gearing path. But thats a bit into the weeds.
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At least we can agree that Phalanx just sucks, the problem is both of the skills ONLY benefit non necromancers (minionmancer) like a lich. The skill should NEVER be balanced around another skill, thats not how the other classes work, especially for a skill that is not being used inside the first skills tree (like most of druid procs other druid skills) If the problem is dread shade get rid of the damn thing and make the minions not trash without it, forcing them to be trash unless you use another skill and then making them “passable” is horrible game design. Taking your own logic the defacto way to play any necro build is being forced to use dreadshade period end of story. I didnt even say a 100% more per minion lost but it needs to give it a scaling from how many you lose, you are making the sacrifice of putting points into more minions then why do i not get any benefit from it? You still lose out on armor shred and the other debuffs that they put on things either way.
Generally all your casters are going to be in the small circle so the only buff you get is All for One but that ends up being a 4% damage loss as compared to 5 mages. 300% from dread shade + 60 % damage from dread shade. Your mages should either always crit to at least 70%+ chance.
I do agree archmage has a much lower ceiling and a larger floor, but the fact of where it is in the tree and its not hard to get the gear makes that ceiling stop off at about waste height. It should not be only usefull at under lvl 80 then get rid of it. that is a horrible way to make a skill. If it scaled then it would be usefull the entire time.
Well, welcome to necro in a nutshell imo lol. we can make entire threads about dreadshade and why its bad. But thats just how she goes currently.
Like I said, you dont spend points on extra mages if you have archlich, so you actually are saving some passive points because you dont need to spend them, they do nothing.
I can see the argument of making it scale with minion count, but they would need to be extremely careful with the numbers. Right now there is very clear trade offs, the reason I used 50% per minion past the first, is that means at 4 mages you get 150% more, which is only 20% more then you currently get. if you spend the extra point in the mage tree, it takes it up to 200% which is 70% more then currently. But at 70% more then current, it starts to get real close to just being straight up better then normal mages in all regards. So you would have to cut it back to potentially like 40%, which would be 160% more which is only 30% more then currently but requires some extra skill tree sink and passive sink on tree.
Again it def scales past 80, I have taken solo archmage to 250, and im pretty sure with actual gear it can go well into 300+ meaning its a perfectly viable build. it really is just a lazy mans build and I think its okay to leave it where it is.
if you let it scale on minion count, it would be either slightly stronger, or significantly stronger depending on the values you gave it. like for example if you gave me 100% per minion lost after the first, I could do crazy corruption with it. I could do 300 naked.
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did you have litch’s scorn on your last archlich build? It is probably the only one piece of geare you need to go 500+
atleast from my experiance.
Oh, and ofc 40+ int
It would only go up a small amount as you are making huge sacrifices to get more of the skele minions, especially with the devs hard on for making all the minions sacrificial.
Because there is skills that interact with number of minions summoned. So having a buff to minions is a gain, while reducing max minions doesnt harm you. Why are you so triggered about this? Take 3 minutes and look through the skills.
I am “triggered” as you say because you have to waste a point for the privilege of making yourself weaker. I have looked through the skills quite a bit. Dread phalanx is a horrible ability and is just a trap numerically. You pay a point to lower you damage by on average 5-20% lower debuff stacks your minions inflict by 50% lower your meat shield pool by 40% and force your minions to be larger making it harder for them to get to enemies. I am annoyed the fact that it is even included as a point for non decay minions to suffer even more when you have stuff like a wraithlord that 1 shots entire echos but is considered “fine”. It needs to be better, not a trap skill point. The only thing the skill does is lower screen clutter, at the cost of literally everything else while throwing away a precious skill point. If it had a scaling effect per minion sacrificed then it would be decent, at the moment the ONLY time this is a benefit is if you have exactly 5 minions, and thats only for a slight less than 5% damage increase while still sacrificing debuff stacks and minion health pool. Permanent necro minions are at the moment bad compared to the alternatives and skeletons end up doing low damage and being popcorn. The devs seem to only want you to waste a slot on them to buff other skills or items “aarons will, mage sacrifice, wraithlord”. The entire skill needs a massive buff/overhaul to make it competitive and a good way of helping would be to stop making so many trap points in it.
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Are you a bot or did you literally ignore what i wrote?
Again, there is multiple interactions with specific minion count.
If you reply again start with “123” so i know youre human.
you mean the abomination skills to make a trash abom? or the 3 minion skill hungering souls that you would not use normal skelies for? I had already talked about the skele rogues, and even they are a dps loss. Instead of trying to say well i feel or but but but the interactions… give me a good argument. Show me a way that the skill is not absolute trash and not a trap. As of right now, I, and a lot of people are convinced it is there as a trap from the devs because they do not like non decay minions.
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