Skill census/analysis of the SPF Mat/Pat/Guardian build compilation

[Swamigoon]

Poison Creeper


I really like the concept of "carnivorous pet weeds." The developers at Blizzard North designed and implemented three interesting "intelligent plant" minions, which burrow underground and attack enemies from below. Only one vine may be summoned at a time, so summoning another causes the previous vine to instantly die, with a really cool "screaming plant" sound effect.

Poison Creeper is the only weed that actually causes damage. The creeper itself doesn't cause the damage; rather, it sprouts a stationary mat of greenery that covers a plot of ground (3x3 tiles) under a monster. The sprouted mat causes the poison damage. It isn't much - the poison duration is just four seconds, and the damage is about one per second at skill level 1, or 21 per second at skill level 20 - but every monster that walks over the sprouts gets poisoned. The toxic mats persist for a while longer, so monsters could get re-poisoned again and again by the same sprouts. I believe the mat duration is about 4 seconds at skill level 1, and another second per skill level after that - 23 seconds at skill level 20. With luck and enough nearby enemies, the creeper will seek out another foe that's not yet poisoned, and sprout another mat under that monster as well. A clever player can sometimes maneuver many monsters to poison themselves over multiple green carpets. I recently played a berzerker barbarian who summoned level 21 Poison Creepers using charges on a Carrion Wind unique ring. Those weeds worked very well, not just to distract monsters, but also to briefly arrest unique and champion monsters from replenishing their hit points during battles.

All three weeds are difficult to harm while they remain slinking underground. When the Poison Creeper comes above ground, it is very vulnerable, and only has 42-58 hit points at skill level one, 241-333 hit points at level 20.

Most of our SPF heroes that maxed Poison Creeper were the Rabies werewolves discussed previously, who wanted the poison damage synergy. But there were a few other distinctive max-PC builds: Alfonso the Great's Schrute, bcoe's Corvus_Corax, Solar Ice's Lycander, @TopHatCat64 's Dendron, and Dezrok's Kodi.

Carrion Vine


The other two weeds don't attack monsters, but instead are utility corpse eaters. Whenever the druid's life bulb is even one point below his maximum life, Carrion Vine will seek out and consume a corpse, after which the druid regains health. At skill level one, each corpse replenishes 4%, and the percentage rises at certain skill level thresholds (5% at level two, 6% at three, 7% at 5, 8% at 7, 9% at 10, 10% at 15, 11% at 26). For a severely injured druid with only one hit point left, a level one CV could heal him fully by eating 25 corpses; a level 15 CV swallowing just ten could fully heal. Personally, I would like to test this some more. For a wereform with high Lycanthropy, I expect that a Carrion Vine might actually heal a druid at faster rate than drinking super healing potions.

A CV is a little more durable during battles than the Poison Creeper: 80-110 life at skill level one, 460-632 life at level 20.

We don't have any guardians nor patriarchs that maxed Carrion Vine. The heaviest investor was Liquid_Evil's Trifecta, who put fourteen hard skill points into his CV. He shared several opinions about it in his write-up: "I wanted a change of pace on a PvM Druid and thought it would offer me a bit more survivability on a character that had so few hit points. After Fury, Werewolf, Lycanthropy, and a spirit are maxed, there aren't many options left for a werewolf that doesn't want attacking summons. The vine didn't appear to be a bad investment, though I don't see any real reason for more than 15 points in it after +skills (and that's me being generous). So yeah, depending on your play style, a Carrion Vine might deserve some future love."

Solar Creeper


The Solar Creeper is the most durable of all three vines: 138-192 life at skill level one, 662-921 at skill level 20. This one regenerates the druid's mana. Its thresholds are: two percent at skill level one, 3% at level three, 4% at 4, 5% at 7, 6% at 12, 7% at 22. A Solar Creeper is a great corpse disposal tool. For example, when a devilkin shaman threatens to raise slain devilkins, or a greater mummy threatens to raise skeletons, just spend some mana by casting any spell, and the SC will then seek out and eliminate the nearest corpse to regenerate some of that spent mana.

Mana regenerates by itself over time. Regeneration is pretty slow for the typical druid that keeps his base energy stat. It isn't much faster if he has higher energy, or wears equipment with "+mana" or "regenerate mana" mods. For a mana-burned druid, it's quite nice when a Solar Creeper quickly restores enough mana to cast another spell; that's another reason why almost all of my druids have this vine follow them around. Usually I get my Solar Creeper from a pelt's staffmods, but other times I happily invest the three necessary skill points to get one. So far, it appears my fellow SPFers seem to have a similar attitude. I could only find ten "one-point-wonder" investments for Solar Creeper in the entire Mat/Pat/Guardian compilation. Only three of them had any remarks about SC in their write-ups: jiansonz's Burt, Stephan's Shib, and @maareek 's Fruor.

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That's the last of the druid's skills. There are many popular projects in the compilation that use druid shapeshifting abilities with other classes: barbarians that become werewolves using a Wolfhowl unique helmet, and runewords that let any class transform into a werebear. They are pretty easy to find and explore - just scan for "bear" among the compilation links. I choose to discuss cross-class werebears in the respective individual class skill reviews rather than here, but I felt that the deep creativity I found among those builds is still remarkable and worth mentioning.

Next up, I plan to explore the skill placements of our necromancers, beginning with the mastery skills in the left column of the summoning skill tree.

 

[Swamigoon]

Skeleton Mastery

Wow, one hundred twenty seven patriarchs/guardians maxed Skeleton Mastery. It adds life and damage to any minion summoned from a corpse - that is, by either Raise Skeleton, Raise Skeleton Mage, or Revive. Here are three interesting representatives (one of each):

Maxing Raise Skeleton and Skeleton Mastery is a cornerstone of a build frequently called "fishymancer" here in the SPF. In honor of its author, Nightfish, a link to his guardian Sessarioth seems appropriate. Those two skills make a very effective combination; I have successfully patted four such necroskeleton summoner "skellymancers." (Many-many more of these are found in the compilation. I'm sure I'll post links to them soon... )

I have seen the appellation "Lord of Magi" used for builds with Skeleton Mastery and Raise Skeleton Mage both maxed. I found nineteen of these in the compilation, including Vulpine's Ghana_II, a "Lichlord" werebear leading a small army of necromagi.

There were also a couple of necromancers that maxed Revive and Skeleton Mastery, which together at least treble revived monsters' damage and quadruple their hit points. Patriarch NoMoreSorrow by @Neksja chose this skill combination.

Golem Mastery


A necromancer doesn't need a corpse to summon his golem minion. Golem Mastery adds life, run/walk speed, and attack rating to that golem.

These necromancers only put one or two skill points into their chosen golem summoning skills, but then maxed Golem Mastery to beef up their low-point-wonder golems: level 99 heroes Ric by @ffs and Raising_dead by @Cyrax ; Caly's "dark ranger" missile weapon user named Dark_Cloud; and summoners Brand and Seven by scrcrw, Thanatos by @PhineasB , BarroomHero by Skinhead On The MBTA, Imhotep by zaphodbrx, Minime by @OldSoldier , Daemian by Starcrunch, Ghana_II by Vulpine, and Skelemancer by WailingDoom.

Summon Resist


Summon Resist suffers from tightly diminishing returns on investment; I believe that's why we haven't yet seen any build in the compilation max it. Only skeletons, skeleton magi, and golems benefit from SR - not revives nor other classes' summoned minions.

Our heaviest Summon Resist investor so far is guardian Filip by sequana, an untwinked successful tournament competitor that put fourteen hard skill points into summon resist, enough to add 62% fire, lightning, cold, and poison resistance to his skeletons and clay golem. (Interesting trivia: since a clay golem already gets 20% LR and 50% CR. Filip's golem actually had 82% LR, and was immune to cold damage!)

The next highest investor was also a tournament guardian, @Grisu 's Poison_Dexter, with eleven hard points in SR. With his gear, that was enough to give his skeletons 60% resistances.

The third highest investor was BioWerm by YoungDbl. Ten hard SR skill points were enough to give his skeletons 57% resistances, but then 9 more from equipment edged that number up to 65%.

The fourth highest investor was Colorless Green's Klaatu - nine in SR, and then twenty more skills from equipment, for a total of 29 levels in summon resist: +70% resistances for Klaatu's iron golem! (More interesting trivia: an iron golem already gets poison immunity and 50% LR, so Klaatu's golem was also lightning immune, and unbreakably so - even around uniques with conviction auras.)

 

[Swamigoon]

Clay Golem


The Clay Golem's unique feature is it's slow effect (11% at skill level one, 63% at level 20). The slow effect happens both "on striking" and "when struck." (In other words, an enemy is slowed when the Clay Golem successfully hits it, and conversely, a melee-attacking enemy is also slowed when it strikes the Clay Golem.) It also gets a good attack rating bonus that scales with skill level (twenty AR per level). Furthermore, that bonus is shared as a synergy to the other three golems, to boost their AR as well.

Clay Golem's life also scales with skill level (100 hit points at level 1, 765 at level 20). Golem Mastery magnifies CG's life (20% per level), and so do synergy points in Blood Golem (5% per invested skill point). @LozHinge the Unhinged 's untwinked GumbyBalboa used maxed Clay Golem with maxed GM and twenty points in BG. Without +skills equipment, his CG would have had 4,590 hit points. With the +skills gear he collected and equipped, his CG had over eight thousand hit points. (GumbyBalboa usually summoned iron golems, but at times he used clay for an alternative minion.)

Clay Golem's physical damage also grows with skill level, but its damage remains pretty small (2-5 at skill level one, 15-28 at level 20). That damage can be increased by a synergy (6% per point in Fire Golem) and by difficulty (a few points in nightmare, a few more points in hell difficulty). However, even with the damage synergy maxed, CG's maximum damage is still just 61, and another dozen +skills on equipment still won't be high enough to give it a three-digit maximum damage number. So most successful heroes use CG for its enemy slowing, attack rating, and life - not so much for damage. Regardless, two Clay Golem users maxed the Fire Golem synergy anyway: War by Brak and LegionMaster by Arfurala.

The mana required to summon a Clay Golem also increases with skill levels - fifteen at skill level one, 72 at level 20.

A maxed Clay Golem skill featured prominently in a few Patriarch/Guardian write-ups:

• Tra-Sung by Cormallon wrote: "the golem has 8888 life and 67% slow. Fighting [Baal] and Lister is a piece of cake with this setup."
• Werebear necromancer Tuurngasuk by Cygnus: "Gumby was a great tank. He better be, with 10000 life."
• IndianaBones by RadTang: "14,000+ life on CG ! He's pretty much immortal. Thick as a brick."
• Fishymancer Patton by Shagsbeard: "I like this build, but it doesn't kill fast. Baal took about 5 minutes to fall in the end, but the battle was without risk or incident."

Nonohara by NagisaFurukawa (@Nagisa ?) showed a rather interesting themed build. He cursed normal Diablo with Iron Maiden, and then repeatedly recast Clay Golem beside the act boss, toward which Big-D proceeded to injure himself. Another inspring build was @TheNix 's Hugh_Encry, a "slow-mo-mancer" who profited from combined slowing effects of Clay Golem and a Decrepify curse.

Blood Golem


The Blood Golem's distinct feature is its life-stealing and life-sharing ability. As noted above, GumbyBalboa was the patriarch that maxed BG for its life synergy to other golems. There was another SPF project, @Vang 's Corruption, whose ten-point Blood Golem was a core component. "Blood Golem isn't that bad. He lasted quite a while and rarely died actually. He only had 2300 life and 70-190damage w/ 136% returned. Using Potions to heal me and him also was fun, and saved him a couple of times. Overall he performed well above what I expected and really took a pounding."

I was already aware, when a hero fights with "life stolen per hit" gear or a Life Tap curse, that "life leech" also heals a Blood Golem. I was also aware that a BG's "life leech" also heals the hero. But I did not know that drinking red potions would also heal a BG. (I do remember that in software patches before 1.13, this skill also carried a damage-sharing curse: when the necromancer was hurt, so was the Blood Golem, and vice-versa.)

A Blood Golem's damage, life stolen per hit, and mana cost increase with skill level. Examples: in normal difficulty, these are 6-16 damage / 86% stolen / 25 mana at level one, 45-122 / 138% / 101 mana at level 20. (BG's base damage numbers get rebalanced a little higher in nightmare and hell difficulties.)

Iron Golem


Iron Golem requires a suitable metal item on the ground before it will actually create a minion. The IG inherits that item's mods. At a minimum, an IG produced from a normal (not magic) weapon will do more damage, and an IG created from a normal armor piece will have more defense. Magic, rare, gemmed, etc. items can make some very interesting Iron Golems. (There are a few exceptions - for example, magical properties such as "+mana" or "indestructible" won't have any effect.) The IG also carries its own Thorns effect, returning melee damage back to enemies. The thorns improve with skill level: 150% damage reflected at skill level one, 435% at level 20. Its defense bonus also increases with skill levels: 140 at level one, 35 more per higher level - 805 at skill level 20. (This defense bonus is also shared as a synergy to the other Golem skills.)

Since thorns and defense are the only things that improve with more points in Iron Golem, the majority of SPFers that use it choose to leave IG at one or a few points, create the golem from a nice weapon or armor, then pump synergy/mastery skills to beef it up in other ways. Here are several such builds:

• GumbyBalboa, by @LozHinge the Unhinged, recommended Malice runeword golems.
• Frodo by @PhineasB : "I used up lots of 2H weapons with crushing blow for the golem."
• Precious by PhineasB: "The golem generally was a random weapon that had dropped."
• SummonMaster by domac: "Right before ancients I searched for a skill [shrine] and once I found it I raised my iron golem from IK maul (socketed the IK maul with 2xETH runes) and went to the summit. Boy I was suprised how fast the ancients fell."
• Minime by @OldSoldier was a tournament entry. He used Steel and Malice runewords for open wounds, and Strength runewords for crushing blows.

I found two that maxed Iron Golem. @Miron 's Kel-Thuzad also maxed Golem Mastery and put twelve synergy points in each of the other golems. He liked Iron Golem for almost all monsters, but strongly recommended using Clay Golem instead at the ends of acts 4 and 5 for Diablo and Baal. The other was Solar Ice's Voorhees, who transformed Obedience runeword cryptic axes into effective Iron Golems. Solar Ice also warned that expensive golems can disappear due to lag, and recommended using teleport to keep the Iron Golem nearby. But he really liked his synergized IG: "It is an incredibly strong tank, the best in the game with the right gear. It has excellent damage even on higher player settings, resists in the 90s or even immunity, good HP, and is quite unkillable under most circumstances. It's AI is good and it has good speed."

Fire Golem


Summoning a Fire Golem requires a lot of mana: fifty at skill level one, ten more per skill level after that - 240 mana at level 20. Without mana boosting gear, a necromancer would need to do something almost unthinkable in order to summon a high level FG: spend stat points in energy! Yeah, seems like a pretty blasphemous idea, doesn't it? Just wear the mana boosting equipment instead.

At skill level one, a Fire Golem causes 66-50 fire damage; at level 20, 401-449 fire damage. It is also surrounded by a "holy fire" aura which adds to its fire damage, and also periodically pulses fire damage at enemies which are close enough (4-6 fire damage within 8 yards at level one, 34-36 fire damage within 21 yards at level 20). It can also absorb fire damage to heal itself (36% fire absorb at level one, 88% at level 20). When killed or unsummoned, a Fire Golem causes a small amount of explosion damage to enemies up to four yards away.

Two SPFers used Fire Golem prominently in their build and questing: FireMage by EasyG, and Precious by PhineasB. But the most common reason for Fire Golem investment was the 6% per point damage synergy it gives to one of the other golems. In practice, that's almost always an Iron Golem, such as those listed above, as well as @DaveWThe2nd 's LittleSucka and Nightfish's Dalariath.

 

[Swamigoon]

Raise Skeleton


Raise Skeleton is the most common skill found among our SPF Pat/Guardian necromancers. It converts a corpse into a "necroskeleton" melee-fighting minion. At skill level 2 up to two skeletons may be raised, then three at skill level 3, and another skeleton every three levels after that - four at level 6, five at level 9, and so forth. Higher skill levels also give necroskeletons more hit points, and let them do more physical damage. At skill level one, the lonely minion has 21 life and does 1-2 damage, but at level 20, up to eight skeletons may each have 199 hit points and do 37-41 damage, and higher skill levels continue to increase life, damage, and number of skeletons. Skill levels in Skeleton Mastery also augment their life and damage, making them much more durable and powerful. With enough Skeleton Mastery, a small squad of eight or more skeletons are capable of taking on almost any group of monsters in any difficulty level. Skill levels in Summon Resist make them even more durable around elemental or poison attacks, and there's also a built-in boost to necroskeletons' base life in nightmare and hell difficulties.

The maxed skills in a standard "fishy" skeleton summoner build are Raise Skeleton, Skeleton Mastery, and Corpse Explosion. More than a hundred of the patriarchs and guardians followed this pattern; forgive me for not linking them all here. Here are some of them, associated by other skills that were chosen to supplement their sixty-skill-point "fishy" basis:

• Revive examples: Romanov by Steven Q Urkel, and theGuardian by Mr Teach.
• Raise Skeleton Mage examples: Crucifer by muzzz, Skeletor by janooo.
• Curses:
  • Decrepify example: @Grisu 's Poison_Dexter.
  • Amplify Damage examples: Fishy by Sir Lister of Smeg and Infernal by @D2DC .
  • Dim Vision examples: guardians Dead Drunk by Road Ratt, Hedenius-III by winmar, Golumn by xduckster, and and an interesting no-equipment guardian named Nekkidromancer by BongoFury.
  • Unrsrvd's Maendon put multiple points in each of those three curses.
• Golem examples: Thanatos and Precious by @PhineasB and Undertaker by Sparks.
• Bone Spirit example: Murmandamus by Milamber.

Some players put fewer points in Corpse Explosion. A smaller CE radius required they rely more on their skeletons and other skills to clean up leftover enemies that remained outside of their explosions' range. Examples: GrrBag by Norcim105, Xaviar by XaviarGangrel, Peeter by Tanksaabas, and bone/summon hybrids Me-undead by Online, Flood by @TopHatCat64 , and Conjuratus by @D2DC . PhineasB's Stinger almost maxed CE, but rather elected to max Poison Dagger and engage in melee fighting right beside his skeletons.

Maxed Raise Skeleton was popular among many poison necromancers, particularly those wearing Trang-Oul's set pieces. Here are some that maxed three poison skills and Raise Skeleton, after which they were unable to put as many points in Skeleton Mastery: Faffenoiby by SkaMan, Karrn by Low Key, Milenko by Rummski, Bao-Dur by Darkoooo, Dracula by zaphodbrx, Mandragoran by Aylear, who pondered a lot about his skill options in his write-up, and Jagreen_Lern by @maxicek , who reported that his necroskeletons "were very robust and didn't need re-summoning often, even with only 1 point into mastery." Here are some others that maxed Raise Skeleton and Skeleton Mastery, after which they were only able to fully max one or two poison skills: FredOfErik by @Kitteh , Gargoth by sorcererbob, PhineasB's Trang, and Andreich by Enrico.

Coming soon: the last two summoning skills.

[edit: grammar]​

 

[Swamigoon]

Raise Skeleton Mage


This skill turns a corpse into a "necromage" ranged spellcaster, which uses one of four possible missile attacks: a fire bolt, ice bolt, charged bolt, or a poison bolt. Some players like to unsummon necromages with less desirable elemental attacks, and then summon others, hoping to get lucky with a more desirable attack. One reason for micromanaging mage minions might be to prepare for a particular battle against resistant or immune enemies. Another reason is to unsummon ice bolt attackers, because they sometimes shatter corpses that would have been put to better use.

There are some nice tables at the Arreat Summit and the A.B. wiki which detail the effective elemental/poison damage that each type of necromage can inflict depending on Skeleton Mastery and Raise Skeletal Mage skill levels. The LCS ("lying character and skill screens") only calculate necromages' life based on Skeleton Mastery level, but happily, they also get more hit points with each Raise Skeleton Mage level as well, although it isn't shown in the LCS. Regardless, they are still comparatively fragile compared to raised melee skeletons, because a leveled necroskeleton will still have many more hit points than its necromage peer.

Many interesting necromage specialists: patriarchs Colorless Green's Zarathustra, @queenEm 's DeadLarry (she wasn't as happy with her necromages), Stax's Tichondrius, @T72on1 's WrathOfMages, zaphodbrx's KelThuzad and Duran, Cygnus' Dante, Kimppi's SweetDreams, and guardians @Cyrax 's GiveMeThyLife, Jason Maher's Deeds, Mursilis' Bob, Nightfish's Fetharioth, @OldSoldier 's Tribble, StarCrunch's Daemian, and skunkbelly's OneTrickSkunk.

(Also, just last week, @PhineasB finished maxed Raise Skeletal Mage patriarch Alastor, proving that the spreadsheets I compiled will always be out of date without continued maintenance.)

Revive


When cast on a monster's corpse, Revive temporarily (for three minutes) summons a dark shade of that monster. Each Revive skill level adds one to the number of monster minions the caster can simultaneously summon. There are a few monsters (such as leapers, oblivion knights, and unique or champion monsters) whose corpses cannot be revived.

Because of the time limit on revived minions, a player may consider this skill "maxed" even without a full twenty-point investment. For example: suppose a player has an average revive rate of about one monster every ten seconds. After that player achieves approximately eighteen revives, the earliest revived conscript will expire, having reached its three-minute "deadline." This timered attrition will continue to limit the effective size of the revived army. So if that player equips gear that adds a total of +9 to Revive, then with only nine hard skill points invested, the skill would be effectively maxed in this situation. On the other hand, suppose another player can manage "six seconds per revive" on average. That player could theoretically maintain an army of up to thirty minions before timered attrition kicks in.

Three necromancers put twenty points into Revive. One of them was @Maltatai's Thant, who wasn't overly impressed with his experimental build. Another was @Neksja's NoMoreSorrow, who took advantage of the Enigma runeword's teleport 0skill to keep the revived army close to the action instead of wandering away. (More recently, @Pb_pal's Black also enjoyed 20 Revive points, proving that the spreadsheets I compiled will always be out of date without continued maintenance.) Other necromancers with lots of points invested in the Revive skill: @maxicek 's themed-hero Corum, Suiling's fishymancer Archimonde, Elfie's Trang-Oul vampire Mr.Foo, and Lacerta's Immortal King wearer GummyFish.

[edit: corrections]​