Best iron golem base(s)?

Hey y’all, after using

Clay Golem basically exclusively since starting d2r, I’ve transitioned to the

Iron Golem for my bowamancer/poison necro builds.

I know this is about as subjective as questions go, but is there any consensus on what are the ideal bases for your IG? Or maybe what are the better principles to consider when choosing a base?

I also would break it down by “use” if the ig to the following situations, with what I think are good options:

General leveling (from like 30-85) - probably any elite unique
General pve tanking (players 1-3) - probably any rare you find along the way, or spare unique/runeword
High level pve tanking (p3-7 in lvl 85 areas) - probably a 4 pdiamond shield with high block?
General dps - probably something with ias, crushing blow and elemental dmg?
General support - I’d classify the insights here, or other rune words with auras/procing that don’t use high end rune words
High end support (character level 90+ with all the end game gear) - probably still Insight?

Any other recommendations? Is there a specific unique / set / rume word that is just the best that most people don’t know about? Also anything I should just stay away from?

Thanks for your advice!

Consensus implies quantity/"crowd experience". And considering that a bow necro is about as unicorn as it gets, I highly doubt you'll find any sort of consensus as to what the ideal IG base is for it.

That having been said, some principles still apply.
Most commonly, your IG becomes an aura dummy because even if you used some high dps weapon or high crushing, their attack speed is just sad, making it hardly worth it (if at all).
As a result, the question is usually "what auras do I want and how can I best distribute them?". A simple example would be a summoner wanting might, conc and fana while sacrificing as little as possible for it. Plotting that out, you tend to come to the conclusion that Pride on a2 might merc > a1 Faith for that purpose, leaving you with yourself and your IG to get fana. Either one could use Beast to provide it. The necro loses skill points for it, the IG makes you waste nothing. As a result, Beast IG it is.
Now, if you really want to go into full overdrive, you'd actually want

Conviction as well cuz..well, more is more! Or less is more, more specifically, seeing how less def from conv = baller for summons. At that point, the necro would lose 2 slots for Infinity but only 1 for Beast, moving Beast back onto the necro and giving you an Infinity

Iron Golem, along with some really, really happy summons.

That's a bit of an extreme example I suppose since for most folks, that'll just be so far beyond budget that it isn't even worth reading about but the Principle holds in that no matter what aura combination you are looking for, some you can get on your merc, some you can get on yourself, some you can get on the IG and some you can get on multiple or all of the above, leaving you with the simple question of "which combination comes with the least

Sacrifice?".

In other cases, it becomes a lot simpler (read: cheaper) in that you may only really want one item aura. A dedicated poison necro for example doesn't gain anything from phys auras himself. He also doesn't gain anything from

Conviction as that doesn't buff poison. So really, Insight provides one of the few useful auras for him. Using that on a merc gives you a completely useless

Iron Golem as you get nothing off him. Using that for your IG however leaves you with a merc whom you can now focus on all-out damage, rather than on him merely making your mana not go empty all the time.

Just keep in mind that every time you manage to get your IG to die or to despawn (rare as it is nowadays), you will need to re-summon him with a fresh item. So if you're actually looking for something like an Infinity golem..you better have the rune stash to go with it.

As for your specific case..really not sure what your build ultimately looks like but I would guesstimate that you'd ideally want fana and

Conviction (assuming you have the runes to blow). Fana because a bow necro is bound to have attack speed problems (educated guess - didn't actually doublecheck that) and

Conviction to get rid of defense so you can actually hit stuff. That'd ideally leave you with an A1 Faith merc and an Infinity

Iron Golem. Unless you yourself are using Faith already of course. But again, no idea what your build looks like or even what skills you use for it so...might be completely off here.

Haven't played with IG yet myself, so dunno really, but I'd mostly play such a build to fool around and have fun. To that end, I would be looking into some uniques like

Windhammer or

Stormlash; and as for runewords, Insight or Obedience are easily replacable.

Similar to Schnorki, my perspective is that the maximally optimal

Iron Golem is hard to say.
Technically the answer is clear, but so expensive that it is not reasonable, because who has the resources lying around for an Infinity

Iron Golem? And at the point that you're making more budget Iron Golems, Insight usually wins out unless you're looking for something specific.

But before I say more, can you explain a bit about your bowmancer? What bow are you using, specifically?

So currently my necro is using a perfect Harmony in a

Great Bow, mostly just for decent damage, fair amount of elemental added damage, the vigour aura (so useful) and valk. he’s also wearing a Wisdom

Helm, highlords, Treachery, razor tail, war Travs,

Lava Gout, an soj and dual leach ring with ar and all res. Cta and Spirit on switch. I’m running an act 1 Faith merc with a fort and Flickering Flame. Bit of a mesh-mash I know.

The skills are maxed ce, about 15 into amp damage, 1 into decrep, maxed

Golem Mastery and pouring spare points now into

Blood Golem to up the IG life. I also randomly put a point into Bone armour and a few into

Bone Wall when really early in the leveling. I do have 1 Into

Summon Resist


In all honesty I was just going to use the bow set-up to play through the game and was planning to switch to pure

Poison Nova once I got bored, but damn … it’s actually fun and is having a much easier time than I thought, normally difficult things on a play through like trav and the ancients weren’t that bad.

He shoots

Arrows damn fast, but yea the game play is more ig and valk tank, I cast amp damage, merc (or less often) me kill 1-2 guys, then ce and move on. I’m not running Enigma so I can keep the ias from the Treachery.

Comparatively speaking too’ the build is just missing Brand, the ideal weapon - which I do have the runes for, and they are probably more easy to replace than waiting out for a deaths web to drop.

But I digress, the ig just dies every now and then, mostly due to get dog-piled by the blunderbores and those

Frenzy guys in act 5, or gloams/succubusses… always those damn things.

So I guess I could either try a

Diamond shield - heard they were good (Could the ig still get the +45 all res from a pally shield? ) or switch to Insight but toss the Treachery for Enigma

i use a Brand bow necro with Fortitude guillaumes face highlords gores and some crafted

Blood Gloves with a inventory full of max dmg charms. using act one Faith mercenary he stays alive for the most part. Insight or Obedience igs tend to die way too quickly so i found using a

Stormshield ig works the best for me. but you might be able to find other shields to do the same thing i just got tired of him falling apart when getting surrounded by frenzied Death lords. using

Attract along with

Amplify Damage really helps keep the monsters fighting each other,

Dim Vision on the ranged attackers to nullify their attacks and

Bone Wall to keep everything at bay

Alright, got me curious..did some charting.

The IAS

Cap is surprisingly easy to reach with just Beast for fana, instead of an A1 Faith merc (highlords + 1 jewel = done).
So IGing a Beast would have you covered there and would allow you to then use an A2 might merc for more dmg but more importantly to give him an Infinity to (massively!) buff your hit chance. After all, even if you do have Brand, ITD doesn't work on bosses and such so you still need some way to hit stuff.

That having been said, fully stacked...it is genuinely surprising just how well that build is able to perform. Plus you're running around with a might fana amp'd Infinity merc which is kind of a Beast in and by itself.

Ah the

Stormshield seems like a good idea! Whenever i find it It’s always too good to leave on the Ground but not quiet good enough to use on most characters.

I did make a Beast for my

Frenzy barb and I wasn’t super impressed, but damn idk if I’m ready to ig it yet. Maybe once I level up and I find some more runes!

And yea for the attack speed it’s funny because I’ll usually start my sessions wearing Peace until the lvl 15 valk pops out, then in act 5 I was like “Treachery is faster, but not by much” , plus the valk started losing her tankiness against the big crowds, so depending on the areas I was just keeping it on without that much difference in clear speed.

My attack rating isn’t that bad with

Enchant from

Lava Gout, which I’ll probably swap that for maybe some

Blood Gloves or loh when I grab my

Demon Limb off my mule, and the fanatasism does help. I really went heavy on the dex, so the necro is very squishy but has ~75% chance to hit most things.

Well, Beast on a

Frenzy barb is bound to disappoint as they really don't need fana to hit their IAS breakpoints which is the main benefit of it.
SS I don't get. The whole point of an IG (imo) is to get an extra aura. Offensively/for dmg, they'll always kind of disappoint. And if you go purely for a tank (which would be the point of SS for example), you're better off just using a

Clay Golem instead because in addition to the golem sturdiness, that slow is just bonkers.

Moving into an actual experiment here though... Why does this handle P8 so well?! That's just wrong! (And yeah..I say that despite actually having forgotten to amp diablo.. ^^)
Still nothing I would ever really play myself as I find the "shoot boring individual

Arrows" approach beyond annoying half a clear in at the latest. But performance wise..I am genuinely surprised. Had to TP-save (no Enigma) the IG once because he charged into a triple-champ-back and got himself surrounded by a bunch of extra fast double-aura'd elites and whatnot before the merc or I had moved to it but other than that, no issues whatsoever.

Oh yea! And with a fully synergized

Bone Spear every attack… just bananas crazy.

I’m convinced Brand was made purely with a necro in mind. It may even be better than a javazon for cow runs

I’ve also been kicking around the idea of self wielding Infinity and maxing

Lower Resist to give the

Fire Arrow merc unrestricted killing power (both together should break most fire immunes right?)

Nate wrote: 1 year ago

It may even be better than a javazon for cow runs

I’ve also been kicking around the idea of self wielding Infinity and maxing

Lower Resist to give the

Fire Arrow merc unrestricted killing power (both together should break most fire immunes right?)

Wouldn't go that far (not even close), simply because the radius isn't high enough. Javas annihilate an entire screen in a throw. The necro still has to go after them in smaller groups/one by one before you get corpses to blow up (which isn't as good on P8 comparatively on top of it).

Infinity + lower res would break all but I believe 4 base immune mobs. Though if you're supporting your merc, you're limited in terms of how much -res she can stack beyond that so it probably won't be all too great in the end.

If you end up using Beast, it's just a shame not to have a few skellies (few points but you see to have some extras) and revives (1 point with + skills). They make meat shield avec with Beast they'll be even stronger.

I see that the discussion of what runeword to use for the

Iron Golem is going on swimmingly, but I would like to throw this out there, in agreement with Necrarch:

I have never experienced a truly tanky

Iron Golem. Even with high synergies, a tough base item, they're always vulnerable. Unless you plan on always avoiding zones with Urdars,

Succubus, Moon Lords, etc, Golems are going to die. Even more so without

Teleport. Considering that Iron Golems are really only useful as stat sticks for auras, making one out of a defensive item like a socketed shield or

Stormshield or something like that is just not a good use of resources. A

Clay Golem would be better, as Schnorki says.

In my experience, the best way to get a tanky

Iron Golem that maintains usefulness is NOT actually to invest skill points into your golem. It is instead to build up an alternate meat shield of skeletons and revives. Your rapid killing speed means that so long as the golem doesn't get instantly dogpiled by anything, you win, and even if your skellies are fairly weak and die in the fight, they buy your golem that precious time.

To notice, most summon necro would use Beast in their hand (typically in a

Double Axe) and Insight on the golem if they don't want to risk too high on the golem loss. Merc has usually Infinity + Might with that

Yea it all makes sense, I was just wondering if there was some unique that performed crazy well like a storm spire or a Treachery in a metal amour, actually a Treachery sounds good, maybe I’ll try that one. Anyways I went down the ig path when my necro was rocking an Edge runeword and wanted to maximize the

Thorns damage - which it was for a while, things were dying just by looking at my guys and I weird, but then when I outgrew the Edge I was still fairly well invested in ig and had a decent number of uniques just taking up space. So it seemed like a good idea at the time

You can do like Cooley and do IG battles if you want

As far as I remember Malice and eBotD were the latest champions. Fortitude was strong too. ^^

But for efficiency, aura carrier romains their best use and if you're not really rich in runes, anything above Insight will be really painful to lose (Beast, Pride, Faith, Infinity...
). But that's a poor man's view, try it and see !

Fair enough Nate. I certainly don't want to try and put any 'meta' pressure on you.

I did just have two thoughts to consider, perhaps. They're not fleshed out, though, so be warned!

First,

Iron Golem +Enhanced Damage from

Fire Golem skill applies after base weapon damage + base golem damage is calculated, if made out of a weapon.

That leads me to believe that the +% Life from

Blood Golem levels and such also applies after Base Life + Extra Life is calculated.

If all you're after is a tank, you might just try making an

Iron Golem out of something with a TON of extra life on it. He's already got 980 life on Hell Difficulty. If you manage to get that base up, then your skills points into

Blood Golem and

Golem Mastery are going to give you a lot more bang per buck. Then, if you're running CTA, he'll get EVEN MORE. That's potentially a ton of life. Urdars' crushing blow will still be a problem, but that might deal with some of his other issues.

Second is a warning/note about something that I know this used to be true, and IDK if they changed it in D2R. Someone PLEASE check me, buuuuut....

In D2, joining/creating a game counts as 'resummoning' your

Iron Golem from the same item. Meaning, your golem's stats are based on the skill levels you have upon joining/creating a game, NOT the skill levels you had when initially creating the golem in the first place. Normally, on a necro, I doubt this would matter much, since normal necro builds run around with a bunch of +skills.

However, since you're not a normal necro build, you may not be running many +skills in your normal setup. This means that even if you summon your golem with tons of +skills, if you next enter a game with your normal kit equipped, he'll drop down in strength to the +skills of said normal kit. This is potentially robbing him of a lot of life via

Golem Mastery, resistances via

Summon Resist, and

Thorns damage, inasmuch as that matters. If you're wanting him to be a tank, losing life and resistances each time you leave/join a game is a bummer.

I have some weird questions about

Iron Golem and didn't want to open a new thread just because you guys talked about lot of stuff in here anyway...

So my question is:
If you would make a HoJ in a

Scepter and then make IG out of it, does it also inherit the +

Holy Fire Pala skill if the

Scepter base had it which then increases it's aura or just doesn't matter?

I was wondering if someone is going for the fire-theme based Necro build could you run with the

Holy Fire IG instead of pretty useless FG?
EDIT: -Tested this on maxroll just now and it turns out it doesn't matter, at least that's what it says on that site (the +HF inherit thing) and also no matter what base of weapon you use general dmg is lower on HoJ IG than it is for just simply a

Fire Golem.



Another question (something I just thought of) is: If you have your IG proc

Valkyrie does she stays alive (aka does it counts as an active skill) or she dies in all cases except when you yourself are a Zon?



3rd question: If you would make IG out of Principle which procs

Holy Bolt 100% of the time, wouldn't he just essentially become a beacon of party healing (well at least for you and the Merc since the original spell doesn't heal undead pets)? Or does the healing part of HB only works for Paladin casting it?

TheDoo wrote: 9 months ago

If you would make a HoJ in a

Scepter and then make IG out of it, does it also inherit the +

Holy Fire Pala skill if the

Scepter base had it which then increases it's aura or just doesn't matter?

Lvl 16

Holy Fire from HoJ deals 20-60 fire dmg, lvl 16 FG (1+ soft points from gear) deals 42-110. Soft points from

Scepter won't be added to HoJ's aura.

TheDoo wrote: 9 months ago

Another question (something I just thought of) is: If you have your IG proc

Valkyrie does she stays alive (aka does it counts as an active skill) or she dies in all cases except when you yourself are a Zon?

Mercs or summons can't have their own summons.

Hi people. Any tips for making an

Iron Golem from

Metalgrid have more survivability? Wanna use on a Bowazon, dont know if

Teleport or Call To Arms on Weapon Swap would help more with this. Thanks.