Skeletal Mage
Necromancer Skill
Requires level: 12
Skill tree: Summoning Spells
Raises a Skeletal Mage that fights for you with an elemental attack.
Prerequisites:
Raise SkeletonSynergies:
Skeleton MasterySummon Resist
Cast on the corpse of a slain monster, this raises a Skeleton Mage that fights for you.
You cannot set what type of elemental attack a Skeletal Mage will have. You can keep raising a new Skeletal Mage until you get the type of Mage you want. Skeletal Mages have a high resistance to Magical Attacks, especially when they have the same elemental attack as the monster or player attacking them.
Skeletal Magi are useful throughout the game on all difficulty levels. At the minimum, they provide additional targets for monsters to attack. This is good because you want the monsters to attack your Minions instead of yourself. Skeletal Magi work great with Iron Maiden because melee monsters kill themselves on the Skeletal Magi.
Skeletal Magi are also helpful in "breaking in" to a new area, such as when you first join the game. For those Necromancers that specialize in Revive, their goal is to get together a group of Revived Monsters so that they can start to do damage, take them elsewhere, or feel more secure. At first, you will have your Golem and you'll either have to kill the monsters to create bodies yourself or use your Golem (a Curse helps too), to get some good Revive candidates created. Once a body is created, make a Skeletal Mage if the body can't be Revived such as Leapers in the Outer Steppes of Act IV. Next cast Iron Maiden on the monsters. They will kill themselves on your Skeletal Mages allowing you to create more Skeletal Mages or Revive those monsters. Skeletal Magi are very helpful in this situation, especially in the first area of the Outer Steppes.
Cold Damage Skeletal Magi can be a pain. Monsters, when chilled, may explode leaving no corpse. Necromancers need corpses for Corpse Explosion and for creating Minions. But, Cold Damage Skeletal Magi can be very helpful also if you don't wish to have monsters leave a corpse. While you can't decide what Skeletal Magi elemental type is used, you can Unsummon those offending Skeletal Magi when you see them.
Skeleton Mastery can raise the damage of their attack.
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