Is it viable? probably not because of the crappy cd(cooldown) on golems huh?

if they are what would they be able to do?

Any suggestions on how to build em?

Golems take forever to cast, so if one or more die you're going to take a long ass time rebuilding your army. They seem to die more frequently than my skeletons, as well.

well not saying this will work but you cant compare apples to oranges ... meaning a skele summoner obv didnt max golems he maxed skeles so true the skeles will and should last longer. if you were to max golem then i would hope they would outlast a 1pt skele.

doubt the golems would do enough damage before they die but might be a decent build if you used like life tap or something.

what do i know though

A high level clay golem + decrep can max slow on a boss, by level 25 on golems and mastery (which is easily reachable) both force and iron golems will have around 10k damage, and force will have frenzy, you should get fanta to help with AR and speed, but it won't do much to damage cause it will ad up along with the mastery which is what gives the big boost.

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In terms of maxed masteries 1 pt dk/skele in comparison to maxed master 1pt golems, the skeletons tank far better. Blades are better against bosses than both of them, though if I had to choose skeletons once again take the cake. They can't be resummoned, but I've seen them tank full boss fights before.

Golems should always have one point, so clay/decrep should always be an option.

Should be viable. I built a pure golemmancer probably 4 or 5 seasons ago before they were buffed. Back then you could only summon one Golem at a time and I was able to take him all the way to A3 Hell in Hardcore before I got hosed by the pack of fanat ghosts on the second platform in Acrane.

He was great as a boss support character as I had strong curses and a really strong tank. My golems would stay up pretty well except against Diablo, he would crush mine every time even the force golem which rather surprised me.

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i trust purerage lol. but i know that every char takes an amount of skill and planning. my low lvl chars are still in the planning phase. =p

I didn't post in this thread

Golemancers work just the same as a skelemancer. Its refreshing to be able to use golems to hold bosses though.
I made one last season and he worked pretty well. The going was slowish but still alot of fun. I found the most effective way of killing bosses alone was to use iron golem and amp. It took time and patience but it worked.

For that reason I maxed golem mastery first then maxed iron golem after that. Obviously get one in all curses up to lower res so you are flexible in diff partys.

I added 1 to raise skele and 1 to skele mastery + DK. th + skills from equip were enough to make the skeles last against trash. I then had some strong summons for bosses that could be pulled from thin air and deal some ok damage. Force Golem after iron, then clay golem and finally blood golem. You will only really use the golem thats strong against the upcoming elements bosses use. EG. my 1 point clay golem held up better against duriel than my 3 point iron golem.
The basic principle for soloing bosses was to cast decrep right away to let the golems close in. If for example I was going up against ardual, I would decrep him, then get clay golem to land a hit. Thn I would focus on kping blood golem up and dealing damage. Once clay had landed a hit I switch to amp.

Once I had iron golem I would make clay land a hit, then use 2 golems. ! coresponding to the bosses element and iron golem to dal the damage. Against diablo etc its very harsh and the force golem wont last in his heavier attacks. If he did use flamewave etc. I would step back a half screen so My cooldown timer would let me cast another force golem. I would decrep his as soon as all my golems went down. Then repeat again, let force tank, cast clay, cast iron then switch to amp.

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well i started one. i also think i should max golem mastery first. 1 pt in each golem in the beginning. i'm also contemplating putting more pts into spirit blades.maybe even maxing.. then spread the remaning pts among the golems.

skeles are iffy... i decided not to put any pts in it, but i'm reviewing my build and there arent too many downsides to skeles.

dunno what do you guys think?

a2 might merc with defiance +fanat from faith rw to buff golems power, use a perfect construct forge armor, etc etc gear with +skill for your golems... or just be a noob with enigma armor and a1 merc and tele-rape the game.

id max force, iron, blood, mastery, 10pt clay(maybe), 10pts ce, and 1pt wonders(blades, curses etc)... maybe 50 str base to play cheesy and care a shit about str bugging gear. also get summon gcs.
id be pleased to see a pure golemmancer on realm... and not "just another summon necro" with teleport and a1 merc.

yeah thats my plan... no nigma no a1 merc.. maybe a a3 merc or a thorns merc

o yeah i heard golems do elemental dmg, so amp doesnt work too well for them. is that true?

they deal physical damage s far as I know, the spells they cast on death are elemental. Ie. the clay golem has a 100% ctc frost nova on death, blood golem has a ctc charged bolt when hit, Iron golem is Poison enchanted so it poisons things that get close, the fire golem is fire enchanted so deals a fire splash kinda thing on death. Same as fire enchanted monsters.
The attacks are physical and if you are gonna maximise thorns output amp is a must later on.

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99% sure that is untrue. Amp was the curse of choice for my Iron Golem.

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I'll take that 1% as a valid resource to begin my argument
-Clay golem freezes enemies when it lands a hit
-Take a look at force golem animation when it lands a hit: you will see and hear that "little fire explosion", the same one as when you wear a charm with added fire dmg and you hit.
-Same happens with the blood golem: you hear and see the "little spark animation", as when you have added lightning dmg on your weapons
-And although its difficult to check if iron golem deals psn damage coz it psns every thing non-immune around, I did a test myself minutes ago:

Enemy: Death Berserker from act5
Hits from IG needed to kill it ( tested 5 times ):
with no curse: 3
with amp: 2
with LR: 2
.....
I also checked clay and blood's rating... I desisted to do force golem test, because its a pain to distinguish how much frenzy charges is he using atm, so I cant fix the real dmg he's dealing >.<

Enemy: Death berserker from act5
Hits from BloodG needed to kill it ( tested 6 times ):
with no curse: 8 - 9 ( varies, due to the healing rate )
with amp: 4 - 5 ( varies, due to the healing rate )
with LR: 6 -7 ( varies, due to the healing rate )
.....
Enemy: Slayer from act5
Hits from ClayG needed to kill it ( tested
w/ no curse: 8 - 9 hits ( varies, due to the healing rate )
with amp 4 - 6 hits ( varies, due to the healing rate )
with LR: 6 - 7 ( varies, due to the healing rate )

My own conclusion: Each golem adds some dmg of his own element to its melee attack, I dont know the rate, though I suppose its something like "converts 33% dmg into elemental damage"
Brevan should know that

♥

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the fire thing showing is from holy fire aura, the cold effect is due to a Hit freezes target mod.
the light is a ctc when struck

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I didn't know it, but I looked it up in via Skills.txt (sumumod column) which redirected me to monumod.txt (mods applicable to named critters and Champs).

The necro golems have the same enchantments as named critters, i.e. FireEnchanted, ColdEnchanted, PoisEnchanted, LightningEnchanted. This means that they get an extra +50% min dmg and +75% max dmg applied as elemental.

Considering that Golem Mastery already gives someting like +1000% ED for golems, I wouldn't think that +50-75% would be noticeable. Since it was noticed in Tony's test, I can only assume that it's applied after GMastery (i.e. it is not applied to the golem's base damage). The enchantments should have appeared to give the golems about +62% elemental damage, meaning that about 38% of their total damage is elemental. That almost exactly matches Tony's results where Amp helped golems more than LowerRes, but not much.

so, it adds fire dmg to melee


Should also add some cold dmg, coz it killed thigs slightly faster when LRed


Appart of that, he strikes with lightning... Its just about seeing the attack sprites when he lands a hit... thats not ctc when struck.

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Sorry, I am reading the post a little more clearly now compared to my superficial skim previously.

Golems do indeed do a component of elemental damage in their attacks (except for Iron, I think he is all physical, but not sure on that). What I am quite confident of is that amp is generally the best bet for a Golemmancer. I tried taking advantage of the Force Golem's elemental dmg by using Lower Resist several patches ago and gave up in frustration. Would be cool if he was buffed more now, but I kinda doubt he was. The bottom line was that I was getting the most done when I was using Amp. The amp also helped to boost my CE dmg and merc, so double boost there.

I also think that the slow attack speed of golems was coming in to play here. An Iron Golem has the benefit of delivering dmg passively, which helps to counter the crazy slow attack speed he has.

I like your approach to the problem though, always good to question the conventional wisdom with some on hand testing. Who knows - maybe lower resist would have been a much more effective curse.

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Wow i cant believe i caused brevan to learn something. that made my day

Thanks for that guys, very much appreciated.

Next question.

What might be a fun merc to play with this? I was thinking Thorns at first, but i dont wanna run into that bug where a boss dies by thorns and no one gets q. I was thinking poison/cold a3. I might wanna try a tank merc.

Until i get to nightmare i might just stick with psn merc.

does psn merc get +skills with the +PnB mod?

No, mercs don't benefit from +SkillTab(class only) mods.

In my experience with Poizon&Bone mercs, stick with Normal difficulty mercs. Although those mercs have an aura that reduces poison resistance, they don't really do any poison damage. In NM and Hell, they gain Poison Nova, but they don't have any of it's synergies or a Mastery like the other A3 mercs, so their damage is quite low. If you stick with the normal merc, they'll cast Teeth and BoneSpear a little more often, and they won't waste their attacks by casting PNova.

I recently had a lvl 86 P&B merc take 2 hits from NM dury without dieing, I'm pretty sure it was because of their nice BoneArmor skill. P&Bone mercs are relatively durable, but do less damage then the other A3 mercs due to lack of Mastery.

So should i focus on getting -magic res for my merc? even though i can only get that by 4 socket diamond weapon right?

I'll be doing research... ideas for gear would be useful also =P

Magic facets and Wisp aswell.

hmm what about cold merc? it does great dmg and it slows pretty well.

i can tell im going need something with a bit more dmg already lol.

i just dont wanna end up a amp/tele/bowa nec =/

EDIT: and i meant gear for my nec. LoL.

Should my golems seriously be doing 10k?

My force and iron are at 31 and my mastery is at 36. They hit for about 2.5-5k in NM.