Summon Skeletons

I enjoy the skeletons very much. I use them for crowd control when monsters are flanking my zombies. I use them for additional damage on bosses. I use them to attack archers and casters.

They're not a replacement for zombies and people who use them like zombies will b disappointed.

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Asphilenos wrote:

I enjoy the skeletons very much. I use them for crowd control when monsters are flanking my zombies. I use them for additional damage on bosses. I use them to attack archers and casters.

They're not a replacement for zombies and people who use them like zombies will b disappointed.

Really? I've been using them like zombies in normal mode and they seem to work just the same if not better. You get three per cast so they deal tons of explosion damage while at the same time doing quite a lot of damage from their attacks.

I use to spam Skeletons by Bosses and looks like they do nice dmg to them if they are killed, cause of Minion Instability, also melee Bosses are easy to kill whit exploding skeletons but they die too fast if i use them for that Act 1 Boss, Zombies are much better:).

It would be cool if we could have another Skeleton spell that needs Corpses, something like Skeleton Mages (like my fav spell in D2) they can have lower hp than Zombies but whit a shield and random Elemental Magic and cause of corpse they don´t fade over time like these other Skeletons this would be nice:).

Didn't have time to read all the posts, but I'd say that, with the most recent patch, they seemed to have gone from being almost a little too good to largely useless. Granted, I'm only around level 13 and have put a few points in the minion improvement nodes on the skill tree, but enemies like Merveil, or the spawn that use cold damage (can't recall their name right now, sorry) seem to be able to kill them as fast as I summon them. Maybe later they'll be more useful, I don't know. In any case, they're a key skill to summoners since there are times when there aren't enemies with which to create zombies, thereby rendering a lot of summoners' skills useless.

I'm at a point where i can summon a max of 10 skeletons and believe me, they are deadly.
I'm taking every node that empowers minions, included minion instability, wich basically converts skeletons into fireballs if used right. The fight agains marveil was challenging but fun, having me deplying skeletons in her face so every spell was blocked by them, and the damage from death was good enough to take her down. Also they are the only minions that you can summon without corpses so they are invaluable in some areas where there's only the boss.

I play a raw summon witch with no other attack spells. I roll with Wrath and Hatred up (because tempest shield doesn't work grumble). When the skeleton AIs function properly, they are absolutely perfect. Being able to drop a pair behind an archer and just nuke him is awesome. When the proceed to literally turn around and walk off screen, though, it sucks.

Summary: When the AI is fixed, this skill should work great.

Edited.

I agree with the above poster. I am a pure summon witch, with all the passives(except a few life nodes due to my lvl). I have no problems at all, and I kill decently fast, just not enough for chaos yet.

Lvl 55, use anger/wrath, blood magic'd discipline, and have no problems with mana. My gear is pure mf, as I only have around 1200 es.

The only gripe I have with this skill is the dumb AI. I cast them right on top of enemies, and they...wander off? It feels like there's a 50/50 chance of them attacking, or not. I don't really care if they wander off; I just recast them.

Summon skeletons linked with speed, damage, and reduced cost.

I would be very happy if they would tweak the AI to be more aggressive. I've got 13 skeletons and only 6-9 or so actively fight. I'm stuck at lvl 44 in ruthless because my skeletons won't attack Merveil quickly. One of them MIGHT wander in her direction but most of them stand there until they're killed. There's a few seconds where they could get in if they acted a little quicker after summoning.

When playing in multilayer with friends, my friends find my summon skeletons difficult to play with as they look so similar to the enemies some of the time. So when versing other similar looking skeletons it's a clusterf#%*. Currently I use hexes to "mark" the enemy. But with all the auras we have active the screen is full of color. It would be nice to have skins that look very distinct from the enemy. The zombies (although ugly) are discernibly different.