Plague as donor weapon for Iron Golem?

I'm not saying I'd go out of my way to craft one, but since there will be a lot of crappy Plague weapons flying around due to the amount of important variable stats, what do you think of using one for an Iron Golem instead of Insight?

Open Wounds, Cleansing with a chance to cast Lower Resist (which we have but does take points to spec into)

Yes/No?

Why?

Slightly redundant due to Necs already having access to Lower Res. But if you plan to replace your LR with the proc, then it does save you a few skill points.

That having been said, it doesn't replace the need (or..want) for Insight.

Because of that, personally, I'd rather look into an Insight golem and an act 5 Frenzy merc with a Plague.

That does a few things:
- It still gives you both, Insight and Plague.
- It leaves your golem nice and cheap, just in case it dies/despawns/you respec/...
- A5 mercs are mindless zergs. Because of that, they tend to Charge in and get hit a lot quicker/more often than your Iron Golem does, resulting in more reliable LR procs. Even more so with Frenzy..they start moving on to the next pack extremely fast with some stacks up.
- Throw on a Grief or similar in the other hand and your merc's damage actually becomes quite respectable.

The lvl 12 lower res is actually pretty solid as is, due to mediocre scaling of LR at higher levels. 12 leaves you at -57 res. So between that and a mediocre Death's Web, you're already beyond -100, meaning most normal (non-resistant) mobs are -res capped. Because of that, completely replacing your own LR with a Plague should actually be a fairly viable strategy. Even more so because as a poison necro, your dmg does take a bit of time so even if the LR doesn't proc right away, you don't lose the benefit on all of your dmg but only on the first bit of the duration.

Schnorki wrote: 4 years ago

Slightly redundant due to Necs already having access to Lower Res. But if you plan to replace your LR with the proc, then it does save you a few skill points.

That having been said, it doesn't replace the need (or..want) for Insight.

Because of that, personally, I'd rather look into an Insight golem and an act 5 Frenzy merc with a Plague.

That does a few things:
- It still gives you both, Insight and Plague.
- It leaves your golem nice and cheap, just in case it dies/despawns/you respec/...
- A5 mercs are mindless zergs. Because of that, they tend to Charge in and get hit a lot quicker/more often than your Iron Golem does, resulting in more reliable LR procs.
- Throw on a Grief or similar in the other hand and your merc's damage actually becomes quite respectable.

The lvl 12 lower res is actually pretty solid as is, due to mediocre scaling of LR at higher levels. 12 leaves you at -57 res. So between that and a mediocre Death's Web, you're already beyond -100, meaning most normal (non-resistant) mobs are -res capped. Because of that, completely replacing your own LR with a Plague should actually be a fairly viable strategy. Even more so because as a poison necro, your dmg does take a bit of time so even if the LR doesn't proc right away, you don't lose the benefit on all of your dmg but only on the first bit of the duration.

Interesting take on it. Although I think LR applies when poison damage is initially applied and not as it ticks. (I don't think it changes after initial calculation, so you may need to re-apply PN)

My initial idea was to have a summoner enchanted by a dedicated sorc (level 30+ with maxed synergies). I'm not sure if LR or AD would be better for enchanted minions, but in the case where LR were to be triggered by the IG, it wouldn't be horrible. What I liked best was the idea of having Cleansing for a hardcore character. My theorycrafting includes an Act 1 Faith Merc with fire skills running max IAS (8 frame) enchanted attacks. Figured, with all the minions damage on paper might be lower, but pumping out all those Arrows without needing to get around minions, might end up being more damage than a melee merc. But that Frenzy merc is pretty damn fast, so maybe your idea is better.

Also, does your IG survive respeccing if you have an item with + Iron Golem on it?
Edit: Found the answer elsewhere; IG dies and there's nothing that can be done.

Katonda wrote: 4 years ago

Interesting take on it. Although I think LR applies when poison damage is initially applied and not as it ticks. (I don't think it changes after initial calculation, so you may need to re-apply PN)

That's...an interesting point. Must admit, I never actually thought about that or looked into it. I kind of just assumed it happens as damage is taken which may or may not be accurate in that case, now that I think about it.

For the Frenzy merc with Plague + Grief, what base would you choose for Plague?

Phase Blade for speed so the merc cycles Grief as much as possible? Or something slower like an ethereal Mythical Sword, to work in the on weapon enhanced damage?

Guillaume's Face + Chains of Honor for Crushing Blow and Life Stolen per Hit?

Did a bit of playing around with Plague on the original PTR, with the 2h merc and at least for that, it performed significantly better with faster attack speed. Not so much for the attack itself (tends to be a minor difference there anyways) but because the extra triggers of the Poison Nova really started stacking up. Turns out lvl 15 isn't all that bad when it happens often enough.

So personally, yeah, I'd go with a phase.

A Grief Frenzy merc can utterly destroy things, based on latest PTR. I wouldn't even bother with Guillaume's for CB. Get Fortitude instead to pump up the raw damage and you're golden. Leaves all the flexibility needed for an Arreat's for leech and even more dmg (and AR..the one true problem they have) . Or CoT if you're just horking Trav with it.

Though you would possibly notice the missing CB on bosses. Depending on how quickly (or..not) you're killing them as is.