Dead Reckoning and Skeletal Mages...

So, apparently they do not use "Casting" wording, and instead use Attack. What other stuff do they use, or not use?
Elemental damage? Attack speed? Melee, Projectile, Ranged?
I was quite sure they were casting spells, but apparently they don't, so how do they work really?
Also, them not using "Casting" means that they cannot use Spell Echo and Faster Casting, meaning there is little reason to use them... : (

EDIT: We have response from Chris about this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/3zxple/ggg_can_we_have_this_qol_please/cyqcl0q

OK, so, for the record...


GMP DOES NOT WORK FOR SKELETAL MAGES.

Chain does not work, neither.
Multistrike does not work.
Spell Echo does not work.

??????????????????????????????????????????????????????

So their attack aren't Projectiles, the aren't melee, nor spells...
Can somebody tell me what the f they are attacking with?

Then again, nobody gives a flying f, because nobody is playing this god forsaken build. : /

I find this to be quite disappointing, as Femurs of the Saints looks awesome.
Having a few skeletal mages in the mix could have really brought back the Diablo 2 Necromancer in full force.

Unfortunate...

I reckon this jewel is dead.

bump. Anything, anyone? GGG?

Extremely disappointing oversight. I really hope this is a bug as vaal summon skeleton benifits from GMP if I recall correctly.

:(

Any comment from GGG would be highly appreciated.

anyone tried similar ranged Animate weapon thingy?

when using spell totem dead reckoning makes all skellys into mages ;)
>no gems boost them
at least since they are not effected by cast speed they don't attack slower from being in on a totem ;)

The Skeleton Mages definitely use projectile spells. They never miss due to evasion and spell echo does work, which is most noticable when they waste a repeated cast on a target that's already dead.

Spell echo also affected raise skeletons before the threshold jewel was added though, which suggest that the reason projectile modifying supports currently don't work is simply that GGG forgot or couldn't find a clever way in time to enable them supporting summon skeletons once one or more dead reckoning jewels were in effect.

Why spell totems summon nothing but skeleton mages I have no idea.. But this jewel certainly requires some attention from GGG rofl.

It's two weeks later, has there been any word on this? Threshold jewels are meant to make the underused skills viable, so I have to believe not being able to scale these guys must be a bug. The number of large and hard-to-miss bugs in the talisman update is a bit alarming, but clarification at least would be nice.