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Necromancer Summons Calculations

+ Important Information

Damage Increase Auras & Summons

  • Summons such as Skeletons, Revived, & Blood Golem have Enhanced Damage (%) calculated into their tooltip Damage. This Enhanced Damage (%) value is Additive with Aura Damage Increases and needs to be considered when calculating Summon Damage. Essentially, most summons WON'T recieve a direct damage increase.
  • The Enhanced Damage % of The Raise Skeleton & Revive Skill can be seen on the skill tooltip
  • Blood Golem DOES NOT gain increases in base damage when increasing the skill. Instead, Blood Golem gets Enhanced Damage % increases with each skill point. This means that the effects of Damage Increase Auras and the Fire Golem Synergy have little effect on Blood Golem's Damage (due to its low base Damage).
  • The Enhanced Damage % increase from the Fire Golem Synergy is Additive with Damage Aura Increases

Curses & Summons

  • Curses such as Amplify Damage & Decrepify reduce Enemy Physical Resistance. This means that their effects are Multiplicative with other damage sources, which is a powerful increase. Additionally, Physical reduction curses do not suffer the 20% effectiveness when breaking reistances, which works well with Physical Sunders against otherwise physically immune monsters.
  • Life Tap is extremely effective at keeping summons and physical damaging mercs alive. Monster Drain effectiveness and difficulty penalties do not apply to the Life stolen provided by Life Tap. 50% of the Final Physical Damage taken by the target is returned to the attacker as life.
+ Summons & Thorns

Favourable Arguments for Thorns:

  • Especially for early under geared/under leveled Necromancers, the damage output from Thorns will likely and significantly outperform any gains from Might in addition to still having attacking summons.
  • Unique Monsters with the Cursed and Aura Enhanced property are much easier to deal with. This is because each of those properties increase the damage that your minions take, which is multiplicatively applied back to those enemies as Physical Damage by Thorns (and multiplied again if those enemies are cursed with Decrepify or Amplify Damage).
  • Choke points and areas with a lot of doors are traversed much more easily. Instead of relying on a single skeleton to power through a doorway or chokepoint (or using high level gear like Enigma), all the enemies physically attacking the skeleton will be taking damage, essentially providing some Area of Effect to the Skeleton's Damage output.
  • Enemies that Stun Lock Summons like Urdars and The Minions of Destruction are much easier to manage with Thorns since these enemies can be defeated without any of your summons actually getting hits in.
  • Almost all Bosses are much more easily defeated with Thorns. This is because Bosses and unique monsters do 5x the damage to your minions. EXAMPLE: Diablo does about 225 damage on average with his melee attacks in Hell. This is 1,125 damage to a Skeleton or a Golem. With a Level 25 Thorns, 13.10x damage taken is returned as physical + 216 raw Physical Damage (Attacker takes damage of). If Diablo is suffering from Amplify Damage, then his Physical Resistance in Hell is -55%. So we can calculate the return damage as: (1,125 x 13.10) + 216 = 14,953. Then considering Amplify Damage, we get: 14,953 x 1.55 (-55% Physical Resistance from Amp) = 23,177. This is approximately 20% of Diablo's Base Hit points lost everytime Diablo successfully hits a Summon with a Melee attack. Bosses such as Duriel who spam quick and powerful melee attacks are completely trivialized with Thorns, gimping themsleves in a few seconds.
  • In multiplayer games or using the players command in Single Player, Enemy Hit Points and Damage are increased. This means that the effectiveness of Thorns increases with more Players whereas damage Auras such as Might recieve no player bonus.

Disadvantages of Thorns:

  • The main Disadvantage is that not all enemies use physical melee attacks. Your Necromancer's output will be less against Archers and Mages using Thorns instead of Might. This is also true with some bosses such as Andariel and Baal who tend to spam elemental moves even when in melee range.
  • High level Skeletons actually have decent defense. If the Necromancer level is also high, then enemies might have a reduced chance to hit Skeletons and other Summons, reducing the effectiveness of Thorns. High Level Skeletons also have decent base damage and can reach 15-16 Skeletons summoned at any given time. In such cases, Might may be a more effective option.
  • Alot of guides recommend using Revive monsters such as Urdars because of their powerful Crushing Blow. However, some of these monsters can reduce the effectiveness of Thorns because of their Stun Attacks preventing enemy Monsters from attacking.
+ References

References

General Notes

  • The Amazon Basin uses data from MonStats.txt and the skill level of the particular summon for a variety of stats like Defense & Attack Rating. This isn't reflected in other sources, but is used here in the calculator.

NecroMage Notes

  • It is important to note that there are many contradictory accounts pertaining to Necromancer Summoning Skills. For example, the Diablo Wiki claims that Necro Mages resist the specific element they use; however, this isn't supported by the D2R files or specific other sources like the Amazon Basin.
  • MaxRoll values for Necro Mage Damages are exactly 1 level higher than this calculator's values. The values above are based on the D2R data files. Since the D2R patch notes stated that there were no increases to Fire Necro Mage damages, the above calculator used that as a reference when doing the calculations. The calculator returns the same damage for Fire Necro Mages as other necromancer calculators, which suggests that Max Roll may be slightly off.
  • The patch notes state that Necro Mage life was improved. Looking at the D2R file formulas, it seems that the %HP modifer was adjusted to be the same as Necro Skeletons. Assuming no other changes, this results in a massive improvement to Necro Mage Life. This may or may not be correct as the in game tooltip does not correctly display the Life Value.

NecroSkele Notes

  • Necro Skeles recieve an attack rating bonus based on the caster's character level but it isn't clear where this is handled in the game files. At the time of this writing, MaxRoll's value for this was always based on a character level of 99. The above calculator scales this value according to the caster's level and the formula presented in Sympathy For The Devil

Iron Golem Notes

  • Iron Golem has a Base Damage value that is used when it is created from armor. This Base Damage Value is added to the weapon damage if Iron Golem is made from a One-Handed Weapon but not a Two-Handed Weapon. It is unclear where in the damage formula Iron Golem's base damage is added, but the calculator treats it as an Added Damage source where the weapon's enhanced damage value does not apply, but damage boosts from Fire Golem Synergy & Auras do apply.