Poisonmancer Question

So I've been running Poisonmancer for quite some time an adore it.
My Raise Skeleton maxed out, feels pretty weak.

My question is... would i suffer very much by turning skeletons into a one point wonder and bumping up my IG?
At this point of progression theres not much use for my Skeles... but.. without being maxed are they going to crumble to one hit? That would be a pain to raise them every few seconds to get my shield of skeletons back.

Im sitting on +18 Skills right now without any GCs for summoning.


Is there a way to further optimize the Poisonmancer for a true "GG-Endgame" build? Or is maxed Raise Skeleton already it?

I'm certainly not a theorycrafting guru, but I play my poison necro to Death and have a few thoughts just from fiddling with his gear/build over time.

Skellies with 1 hard point into both Raise Skeleton and Skeleton Mastery and +18 to skills gives you 530 hp skeletons, 378 from Raise and +152 from mastery. You're also looking at 8 of those skeletons. For perspective, I guess, Hell P1 Diablo's red Lightning hose does at least 594 base damage per second, before resistances apply.

Putting the full 20 points into Raise Skeleton with 1 hard into mastery and +18 skills gives you 929 health skeletons, 777 from raise, and again 152 from mastery. You also get 14 of them. That's a pretty huge difference, especially if you're using CTA to buff the horde.

Now, true, IG also gets buffer from investing point into his synergies, but you only get 1 of him, and bosses do a lot of bonus damage to him. The 'only having 1 of him' point is the one I would personally make my decision off, though.

I notice while playing my necro that basically the only work my minions are doing is soaking projectiles for me and clogging hallways. Slow melee enemies I can Teleport away or just kill them before they can act, bosses I stomp with Urdars/Merc anyway. But projectiles and speedy jerks? Spells, Oblivion Knight Bolts, storm caster little Ground fire things, archers, archers, archers, undead soul killers, etc...they're my only threat. And having 14 skellies that can take a beating and be fine and also clog an entire tunnel is a much more comfortable way of addressing those then having 1 big dumb lug that takes 14 frames to even decide to do his job surrounded by a bunch of tissue paper. (Poor IG. I do love him though). Another argument related to this is the IG's life, actually. With 14 high hp skellies running around, its rare for anyone to actually target the IG, and if he does get targeted, one Teleport to reset aggro and he's probably fine. Even with only 1 hard point into IG and Mastery he'll have somewhere around 4.8k health pre CTA. That's a lot of life for him only taking an odd hit now and again. Meanwhile, in rough fights, weak skellies will crumble, and then he's going to get beat up. So, I'd argue that the IG is actually safer with the higher level skellies around.

But those are just some ideas. Your playstyle/areas you farm/people you farm with and whatnot may change how valuable tanky skeletons are. There's also possibly an in-between build that buffs the golem without losing out on so much skelly shield.

disclaimer: The way I play poison necro is just farming pits, cows and other dense areas. I do not go for bosses

With poisonmancer skeletons are imo just a meat shield to protect you while teleporting, so I don't think you will suffer much anyway. You can just have a few of them, so they will sink some damage.

Regarding golems, I think you could be better off by putting some points into Golem Mastery instead. IG does not get more HP from investing points directly into it and it won't do much damage anyway. If you improve it's HP then you can make an Insight (or some other runeword) IG and it will rarely die, so you can offload that from your merc. I like this option much more myself than investing into skellies (I have a mule with just Insight polearms xD). Then your merc can either use Infinity (it does not help poison, but it helps Corpse Explosion - I personally do not like this option, I think that's an overkill, but it's a thing some people like to do) or something else that is hard hitting, so you can get that first kill faster

If you don't like skeletons and other summons you can also consider Bone Wall to protect yourself from damage that way.

The gg endgame poisonmancer is Enigma + Death's Web + 125 FCR, it does not need skeletons that much. I think skills beside Poison Nova (and it's synergies) and Corpse Explosion are secondary, you can try to mix and match without losing (or gaining ) much strength. Skeletons start to become really effective when you have Beast, Call To Arms, something like Pride on merc and >12 of them. You can't have that on poisonmancer, so they will just remain a meatshield no matter how many points you invest.

I get it, I mean they're a total meat shield, and will always squeeze more dps than golems... but my idea here isnt min maxing as opposed to... Comfort?

I also have a ton of Insight's for IG, and i run Obedience on my merc.
also using Death's Web working my way to Enigma.. its honestly the final piece that would make me "Bis" I think... could use a better roll on my Mara and such or.. a 3/20FCR ammy and Circ.. but in scope of reality.. its basically bis but...

keeping IG going and smacking stuff as often as long as I can.. is the idea here...

But as you all said, my biggest fear is losing that damage sponge of my Bone army...

lots to be thought about here hahaha