Pride for summonmancer merc. Is it worth it?

Hello,
I would like to hear the opinion/experience by someone who tried Pride as merc weapon for a summoner necro. I am currently very happy with my Obedience and frankly i wouldn't change it, but Pride is often defined as BiS for this build so i am curious about it. I'd stick with Obedience because it has an awesome damage and the crushing blow chance is very useful to obliterate bosses very quickly, and my skellies are alredy buffed by merc's might aura and my Beast's

Fanaticism. So it seems to me that the bonus granted by that

Concentration aura wouldn't be enough to make up for the loss of my only CB/very high damage source, being Emilio's Obedience.
But i'd love to hear some opinion on that.
Thanks for your feedback.

Steccothal wrote: 2 years ago

Hello,
I would like to hear the opinion/experience by someone who tried Pride as merc weapon for a summoner necro. I am currently very happy with my Obedience and frankly i wouldn't change it, but Pride is often defined as BiS for this build so i am curious about it. I'd stick with Obedience because it has an awesome damage and the crushing blow chance is very useful to obliterate bosses very quickly, and my skellies are alredy buffed by merc's might aura and my Beast's

Fanaticism. So it seems to me that the bonus granted by that

Concentration aura wouldn't be enough to make up for the loss of my only CB/very high damage source, being Emilio's Obedience.
But i'd love to hear some opinion on that.
Thanks for your feedback.

Let's assume you're a fully geared summoner necro. That leaves you with lvl 50 skeletons (+/-, depending on gear choice) and generally 18 of those. One of those skeletons has right around 600dps base. Might bumps that to about 920. Pride to about 1402. So Pride makes a difference of (1402-920)*18 = 8676 dps.

Now, using that same Pride, your merc will have somewhere around 7.35k dps (give or take,

Jab frequency and all that jazz). Obedience bumps that closer to 13k or in other words adds right around 6k.

So in that particular comparison, Pride wins out in terms of raw damage by somewhere in the ballpark of 2.5k dps. Though things shift a bit (in favor of Obedience) if you yourself use Beast, due to the merc's Obedience being further buffed by fana.

That's a very baseline comparison though and actual results will differ due to skeletons and your merc having a different hit chance. It also doesn't consider your golem choice yet which would also be buffed by Pride.

Personally, I would wager an educated guess and say that evened out across normal farming routes, including bosses, Pride will win out in damage but not by a massive margin. At the same time, you do lose merc survivability because his own crap damage will make his leech suck.

Also keep in mind that Obedience is far from your top choice. If you give your merc an

Eth

War Pike BoTD for example, his DPS shoots up to right around 19.5k in the same baseline scenario which eclipses anything a Pride adds to your skeletons by a good margin.

TLDR:
Pride should beat Obedience but not by enough to make it an essential upgrade as your merc is typically still a very significant source of your overall damage. Personally, I would go for an

Eth BoTD

War Pike instead and let your merc go to town. Pride on skeletons should not be able to really compete with that.



Disclaimer:
I pulled some base numbers for all of this from maxroll for the sake of a quick rough comparison, rather than doing my own full math, so the whole comparison is dependent on them not being completely wrong.

If you have Enigma, make a Pride IG and problem solved! (Assuming you are Richie Rich)

Joke besides, I have such fantasy.

I'd argue you're right to stick with Obedience over Pride.

In my experience, most Summonmancer damage is

Corpse Explosion, and to start using CE, you just need 1 or 2 bodies. The merc is the best source of those bodies. Skelly damage is nice, to whittle people down a bit and make CE more consistent, but they're meat shields as much as anything. Merc damage is #1.

The problem with Pride is that it makes a weaker, less reliable merc. The merc's damage is lower to start. Then, Pride has Freezes Target, meaning the merc can shatter bodies, making them unusable. Pride's target blinding effect will also overwrite your

Amplify Damage, further lowering merc damage. Losing Crushing Blow on top of that is a huge blow. That Pride is expensive makes it all the worse. If you're going to spend HRs on a Summon Merc weapon, I'd say a Breath of the Dying for super damage or Infinity to buff CE is better.

basicnecromancy wrote: 2 years ago

If you have Enigma, make a Pride IG and problem solved! (Assuming you are Richie Rich)

Joke besides, I have such fantasy.

I have Enigma but i frankly can t see why it copes that well with Pride

Steccothal wrote: 2 years ago

basicnecromancy wrote: 2 years ago

If you have Enigma, make a Pride IG and problem solved! (Assuming you are Richie Rich)

Joke besides, I have such fantasy.

I have Enigma but i frankly can t see why it copes that well with Pride

As I understand the idea, they're referring to the fact that Iron Golems can die easy if you don't have

Teleport to babysit them/keep them from getting stuck and despawning. If you have Enigma, though, it's really hard to lose a golem. So, you can make an IG out of Pride to give your army the buff aura without castrating your merc, even better since you're giving your merc the aura, and avoid wasting the runes by keeping him alive with Enigma. Still seems risky to me, but it's at least plausible that way.

Winterkill wrote: 2 years ago

As I understand the idea, they're referring to the fact that Iron Golems can die easy if you don't have

Teleport to babysit them/keep them from getting stuck and despawning. If you have Enigma, though, it's really hard to lose a golem. So, you can make an IG out of Pride to give your army the buff aura without castrating your merc, even better since you're giving your merc the aura, and avoid wasting the runes by keeping him alive with Enigma. Still seems risky to me, but it's at least plausible that way.

In that case, which merc to be used?

Winterkill wrote: 2 years ago

I'd argue you're right to stick with Obedience over Pride.

In my experience, most Summonmancer damage is

Corpse Explosion, and to start using CE, you just need 1 or 2 bodies. The merc is the best source of those bodies. Skelly damage is nice, to whittle people down a bit and make CE more consistent, but they're meat shields as much as anything. Merc damage is #1.

The problem with Pride is that it makes a weaker, less reliable merc. The merc's damage is lower to start. Then, Pride has Freezes Target, meaning the merc can shatter bodies, making them unusable. Pride's target blinding effect will also overwrite your

Amplify Damage, further lowering merc damage. Losing Crushing Blow on top of that is a huge blow. That Pride is expensive makes it all the worse. If you're going to spend HRs on a Summon Merc weapon, I'd say a Breath of the Dying for super damage or Infinity to buff CE is better.

Yes i think i won t go for Pride after all. First i can t afford it right now, then i love Obedience so much, it is stupidly cheap and for the price it gives you more than everything you need. I love ebotd so much, i equip it (coupled with edeath) on my

Frenzy axeman barb all my life over Grief, but lacking CB i still prefer Obedience for my necro merc. It might not be the optimal choice in terms of standard damage but for that i am more than satisfied with what i have now, on the other hand running ubers or simply dclone or hell

Baal with 0 CB in all my army (i use Insight

Iron Golem) is so painfully long.
About CE, it is quite hard to use it now that you have to exactly target corpses among all the drops and living monster, but since i got my Beast i barely use it to mow down mobs, summons are really doing the job quickly.

Winterkill wrote: 2 years ago

Steccothal wrote: 2 years ago

basicnecromancy wrote: 2 years ago

If you have Enigma, make a Pride IG and problem solved! (Assuming you are Richie Rich)

Joke besides, I have such fantasy.

I have Enigma but i frankly can t see why it copes that well with Pride

As I understand the idea, they're referring to the fact that Iron Golems can die easy if you don't have

Teleport to babysit them/keep them from getting stuck and despawning. If you have Enigma, though, it's really hard to lose a golem. So, you can make an IG out of Pride to give your army the buff aura without castrating your merc, even better since you're giving your merc the aura, and avoid wasting the runes by keeping him alive with Enigma. Still seems risky to me, but it's at least plausible that way.

Ah. That's way too ritchie rich for my means, i almost cry when i loose an Insight

Iron Golem, can't even think about loosing a

Cham-

Sur-

Io-

Lo golem. And i would still need inifinte mana to spam

Teleport every fraction of second

Steccothal wrote: 2 years ago

About CE, it is quite hard to use it now that you have to exactly target corpses among all the drops and living monster, but since i got my Beast i barely use it to mow down mobs, summons are really doing the job quickly.

There's a workaround to this on PC . Hold SHIFT while using CE and it'll grab nearest corpse like the old functionality. Allows you to spam and bypass the surgical precision crap required since 2.4.

Winterkill wrote: 2 years ago

Steccothal wrote: 2 years ago

About CE, it is quite hard to use it now that you have to exactly target corpses among all the drops and living monster, but since i got my Beast i barely use it to mow down mobs, summons are really doing the job quickly.

There's a workaround to this on PC . Hold SHIFT while using CE and it'll grab nearest corpse like the old functionality. Allows you to spam and bypass the surgical precision crap required since 2.4.

Well THANK YOU SIR! this is really golden information
Playing d2 is getting almost like playing a piano tho

Winterkill wrote: 2 years ago

Steccothal wrote: 2 years ago

About CE, it is quite hard to use it now that you have to exactly target corpses among all the drops and living monster, but since i got my Beast i barely use it to mow down mobs, summons are really doing the job quickly.

There's a workaround to this on PC . Hold SHIFT while using CE and it'll grab nearest corpse like the old functionality. Allows you to spam and bypass the surgical precision crap required since 2.4.

Holy crap, thank you so much, Winterkill!

Winterkill wrote: 2 years ago

Steccothal wrote: 2 years ago

basicnecromancy wrote: 2 years ago

If you have Enigma, make a Pride IG and problem solved! (Assuming you are Richie Rich)

Joke besides, I have such fantasy.

I have Enigma but i frankly can t see why it copes that well with Pride

As I understand the idea, they're referring to the fact that Iron Golems can die easy if you don't have

Teleport to babysit them/keep them from getting stuck and despawning. If you have Enigma, though, it's really hard to lose a golem. So, you can make an IG out of Pride to give your army the buff aura without castrating your merc, even better since you're giving your merc the aura, and avoid wasting the runes by keeping him alive with Enigma. Still seems risky to me, but it's at least plausible that way.

Yes, this is exactly what I meant. Of course, too risky since it's quite expensive but I can say that after making Enigma I never lost a single IG. However, making an expensive IG means no respec chance without accepting the lose of IG.

And I should add that currently I'm too using Insight IG and by the help of the Beast it doesn't get a scratch even doing Ubers. And yeah, Obedience rules. Just a tip: After merc procs

Fade from Treachery, swap it with Duress if you do it with Necro. However, even if I heard how easy it is with a Smiter, I couldn't have understand before I made one. Now I use Necro to farm dangerous areas and Ubers with only FoH-Smiter.

Infinity (which has 40% cb and high damage as Obedience), indirectly increase Minions' damage as

Conviction decreases monster defense which increase hit chance
When I calculated the increase in damage from Skeletons using Infinity + Beast for my Necro, the major part of damage increase came from Infinity's

Conviction increase on hit chance and not from Beast's

Fanaticism speed and damage bonus

I tried different combinations for my summon Necro including Beast and it is actually more effective with HotO, especially if you play mostly P1. I made IG from Hustle weapon so I have

Fanaticism aura even if it is only lvl1.

Tip:

Conviction is not only indirectly increase skellie damage, but also add some significant fire damage raise since CE damage is half fire.

I will probably never use anything other than Obedience or

The Reaper's Toll on my merc. My barb's merc kinda needs Reaper's Toll. For my summon necro, I feel like his merc is his main character. Obedience gives him huge resistances, a chunk of +defense (which is really good for him on my pally since I use

Defiance aura on his merc) and huge crushing blow and damage.

Obedience with Treachery and

Vampire Gaze has been the best combo for his survival for me (he didn't come close to dying on my ubers run). That gives him double the physical damage reduction with

Fade and

Vampire Gaze too. The other best setup for me has been

Kira's Guardian,

Guardian Angel, and Reaper's Toll. I would think Obedience in this setup would be amazing too with the added resistances against any

Conviction aura, but you're missing Treachery's

Fade so I'm not sure. I haven't tried Obedience with kira's and GA yet.

edit: for ubers with summon necro the merc probably does need Duress swapped in after getting the

Fade proc from Treachery, but I feel like he absolutely needs Obedience against ubers when running it as a summon necro.