Raise Skeleton x Skeleton Mastery - which do I max when i don't have enough extra points to max both

Hi

I'm thinking on spent the remainer skill points of my

Poison Nova Necro on skeletons (instead of the normal choice of invest in

Bone Armor synergies)

Without enough points to max both

Raise Skeleton and

Skeleton Mastery which one should I max? (Or the better is to keep them at the same level?)

I'll go with a mix of them, the skeleton numbers and life and damage.
When you have the last points to spare see when the number of skeletons goes up. You can check it with Battle Orders and Skill Shrine. I think the number goes up with one skelie at every two poins invested. If you remain with insufficient skill points to gain another skelie put them on mastery.
I played summoner and I've maxed both.

About number of skeletons:

Raise Skeleton L 1 to 3: # skeletons = level

Raise Skeleton L 6+: # skeletons =
floor (level / 3) + 2
(1 extra skeleton for each 3 levels)

Depending on the points you have, mastery also affects

Revive quite nicely, and with

Revive, you get another summon for every point.
Worth considering at least.

This calculator is for LoD http://tph.tuwien.ac.at/~gottwald/necro ... lator.html
Mages have been buffed in D2R, but even so, I would only consider skele master over skele if I also had full mages and revives.
I don't think I've ever math'ed out a situation where skele master was the better of the two options.

Have you already locked the 9x 1 point wonder of the tree ? Revives especially are very good with Urdars to deal with

Uber Tristram.

If you're left with some points, I'd rather go for Raise skeletons first, as far as I remember, that's worth more in terms of dps... but overall the dps will be very low if not specialized 20/20 in hell, they are more here to tank for you than to make actual damage.

Cool, this is exactly what my Poisonmancer build looks like.

I have maxed Skeletons over Mastery just to have more minions.

I don't know if this is mathematically the better way, but it works quite well.

And I put one point into

Blood Golem for some additional health recovery, since as a Poisonmancer I am quite exposed to the baddies. For bosses I switch to

Clay Golem.

Are you going full poison damage with Bramble or do you use Enigma?

What Merc?

Enigma
Act 2 Merc with Infinity
(I will respec my Summoner)

I hope you remember that

Conviction aura of Infi does not impact Poison damage ? It will help with enemy defence for your skellies though (and mages, 1 point wonder of course).

I assume you use Death Web as a weapon... most summon builds prefer Fanat aura so you may want to consider Pride on a2 or Mist or Faith on a1 mercs.

And

Conviction help with

Corpse Explosion (50% fire) too.

Necrarch wrote: 9 months ago

I hope you remember that

Conviction aura of Infi does not impact Poison damage ? It will help with enemy defence for your skellies though (and mages, 1 point wonder of course).

this is something that i also need help knowing the optimal levels for starting out.

I wear Bramble and have a Harmony Rogue. Because I hate Enigma and I don't like CE, it's just too cheesy. Harmony makes my skeletons very aggressive, I love that. Najs staff on swap for occasional teleports.

My Summoner has a Faith Rogue with Bramble and Cure, Pride golem and is wielding a Last Wish.

But I am known for running unconventional setups, so don't stick to me.

Infinity and Enigma is surely BiS for both builds.

fredkid wrote: 9 months ago

I'm thinking on spent the remainer skill points of my

Poison Nova Necro on skeletons (instead of the normal choice of invest in

Bone Armor synergies)

Without enough points to max both

Raise Skeleton and

Skeleton Mastery which one should I max? (Or the better is to keep them at the same level?)

Consider spending none (besides 1 in

Raise Skeleton as a pre-req for

Revive - for UT - and

Skeleton Mastery as a one-point wonder). Poison damage still seems to be bugged:

I started with a summoner (always a big fan of a Necromancer with an horde of undeads - I loved the first versions of D2 where we have 1 skeleton per point in

Raise Skeleton/

Raise Skeleton mage )
But in practice in endgame, at least for me...or I let the horde do the job and play a very very slow game , or the minions are mainly "human shields" and

Corpse Explosion do most/all the job
So.. I was thinking in respec to a more pro-active build... but still wanted to carry a little horde (just for fun )

Trang Oul wrote: 9 months ago

fredkid wrote: 9 months ago

I'm thinking on spent the remainer skill points of my

Poison Nova Necro on skeletons (instead of the normal choice of invest in

Bone Armor synergies)

Without enough points to max both

Raise Skeleton and

Skeleton Mastery which one should I max? (Or the better is to keep them at the same level?)

Consider spending none (besides 1 in

Raise Skeleton as a pre-req for

Revive - for UT - and

Skeleton Mastery as a one-point wonder). Poison damage still seems to be bugged: