Summon Skeletons

I like skeletons. Tbh what I like most about them is that they don't react to what you are attacking like zombies do, meaning that you can simply drop off skeletons somewhere, and they will start clearing while you attack something else.

Also I find them very useful to spawn on remote totems and necromancers if enemies are in the way. Also, they're very nice to put down around a strongbox before opening it :D

Tbh they have a million uses. I have 14 skeletons with the gem on a +1 minion level headpiece, and I don't regret it.

Can anybody clarify the new "50% of added damage" mechanics? Does it work on gems, like added cold/fire damage or aura's damage only? Added Chaos damage gem's effect is reduced too? What about extra damage from "Phys to Lightning"?

auras flat damage and support flat damage are halved on skeletons. but converted damage (like phsy to lightning) or elemental damage like the keystone minion instability, is full amount.

not sure about added damage such as hatred, added fire, or cold to fire. those should be half as effective but can't test... tool tips don't display differences and there's no damage numbers flying around.

The recent change only made skeletons more viable as... suicide bombers.
Switching from 50% Reduced Elemental Damage to 50% Reduced Added Damage, made Added Chaos Damage not a good choice anymore, but made MI "viable".

I leveled up my Skeleton Scion with Army of Bones jewels, and here is some feedback:

- As always, socket starvation to the max. It is similar to SRS, but additionally, you MUST use Minion speed. Skeletons are simply WAY too slow, and there are very few effective ways to make them fast enough. I'm using haste totem with aura effectiveness, Flesh offering AND Minion speed. Skeletons still move kind of slow.
- They are quite squishy, even with lots of investment put into them. They have nearly not enough chaos res. I'm running 3 purities, gave them resistances from tree, but they still fell apart when there is some mob of ranged monsters.
- Their cast time is too high - you either use Spell Echo or never have any up. Considering the socket starvation, it does not help a lot.
- There are almost no auras that you can use with Skeletons. The only one that really helps them out to the fullest is Haste. Everything else is either reduced by their 50% Reduced Added Damage (Hatred, Wrath, Anger) or simply do not affect them enough to be considered a effective choice (Grace, Determination, Clarity, Discipline, Vitality). I'm running 3 purities already, so the only thing I could add on my second totem would be Purity of Elements, which doesn't help all that much anyways. (also, why does Generosity not work with totems?)


- Given the cast speed and their movement speed, even with 6-link and cast/movement speed auras and active skills, clear speed is really mediocre. The longer duration Skeletons have in comparison to SRS, do not help all that much, because they have quite low aggro range, meaning that even if you summon them somewhere, and they are done killing, they are pretty much gone anyways, because they do not move or aggro far enough.

To be honest, the movement speed and some cast time reduction would make them much better. They do enough damage (but being able to tinker with other damage auras would be cool too. Also being able to tinker with stuff like weapon elemental damage, and so on), and even their squishiness in not as bad as their terrible movement.

Waaaait a minute. Skill doesn't say 50% less added damage anymore. Was it changed? :X

Qute from the Wiki:

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2.0.0 - No longer deals less elemental damage but now has a new stat which reduces Minions Added Damage by 50%

Shouldn't this be displayed in the gem discription? If we have a look at SRS:

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Minions deal 70% of Added Damage

Most unfortunate but this skill seems dead (pun?) ...
I just cannot make it work (and I know of no one else who really could). They are too slow and are kinda boring compared to other choices.

I think vaal summon skeletons shows a good example as to how one could improve this one. A more varied skeleton army would make things interesting. Perhaps, let the first 50% of summons be warriors, followed by 30% archers and 20% mages until it starts creating warriors again ? Would be quite rewarding investing heavily into +skeletons with such skill.

Or, add summon Skeleton Archer/Mage gems. They could receive bonuses depending on how many skeletons of different types are on the field to encourage mixing them.

Further, I feel like Warriors could use something to rush into close combat. I envision a skeleton desintegrating itself -> flying its bones into the target location -> (damaging) re-assembly + attack... obviously with a cooldown.


Well, one can dream.

Summoned some skelly mages with the new Jewel, seems that GMP and Spell Echo don't work ond them? Is that working as intendet?

Skeletons are just so bad. Super low, low damage and low health. Only decent factor is using minion instability to get some damage in from their certain death.

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cirf wrote:

Summoned some skelly mages with the new Jewel, seems that GMP and Spell Echo don't work ond them? Is that working as intendet?

Don't think it is intended. I got response, that it has been passed to QA, but there are other things that are "higher on priority list". Really wish they held back with this Jewel until these "higher priority" things were solved, and added it properly, instead of wasting peoples time. My whole build for this league was about this Jewel, and I ended up with mess of a build.
It even got highlighted by someone from GGG - whole post about the Jewel and shit, and in the end it doesn't even work properly...

Left a really bad taste my mouth, making me not want to play PoE atm at all. The most annoying thing is that they hotfix shit that is popular on Reddit, and almost absolutely ignore some "smaller", yet build-breaking bugs/issues, because they are not as popular. I had to report my own post to get the response from GGG... :-/