What is your experience when it comes to skeleton durability?
I’m wondering because I’m trying to determine how squish they really are. I can’t trust a handful of comments found by googling it. Because I read so many times that skeletons drop off in elite, and die to anything super-quick in ultimate. And being borderline useless late-endgame.
Here’s the thing. When I made a cabalist and ran raise skeletons. I didn’t really struggle to keep them alive. Not on elite, and not on ultimate. Sure - from time to time - but very rarely - I had to resummon because one or two died. However - they were not nearly as brittle as many people claimed.
So I’d rather hoped I could get some personal experiences with them shared instead if anyone is willing to pitch in on this.
I actually have to say something on the matter of comments in my thread…
That those are vastly outdated by this point.
The latest patch did wonders for Skeletons and it shows. I can even keep them alive vs Callagadra now on ultimate for a good duration.
Skeletons went from one of my most hated pets (due to their fragility) to one of my most beloved. At this point, I can say that I prefer them over everything that is not Familiar or Reap Spirit.
EDIT:
Nvm, derped a bit and only just read that you meant during leveling and stuff. That… I cannot speak for others, but from personal experience, it was more about how they fared in comparison to other pets.
I don’t move my pets away from AoE or bother with farming pet gear while leveling. So, skeletons die by the hordes compared to say Familiar which can just pew-pew away from range, especially when you don’t bother getting resistances and such for pets.
I have leveled once with Skeletons but it was long time ago. At first ~40 levels they were really good but after that they start dying constantly. Basically they were cannon fodder or even scape goats. I throw them at enemies and they go there and die… I mean again. With new gear support, guess they will be more adequate but in best case scenario one who levels with them will need good enough gear to stay on top.
I’ve levelled with them once or twice, though both were several weeks/months ago so my memory isn’t as accurate so take what I say with a grain of salt. With that said, If i consider the full experience I don’t recall having too many issues with them provided you try to seek out pet resistances where possible (devotion, mastery skills, equipment and especially components/armour augments) - for reference I would recommend reading this post for some places to look.
Finding a suitable way of patching them up between fights like Blood of Dreeg or a way of keeping them consistently healed during a fight like Wendigo Totem is just as important as well to avoid them dying as much as possible. Between these, Wendigo Totem is far stronger for staying power via health recovery in my experience but Occultist offers more damage potential.
One of these occasions I levelled them was before the buffs that made Maya love them - i can’t stress how much you need to think about resistances and sustain for them just like a standard player and the further you go up the difficulties and into more pressing fights, the more demanding they become if you want to avoid frequent wipes + resummons.
The exception is Darius Cronley, expect that fight to be worse than hell on all 3 difficulties, struggle through it and don’t look back.
another thing that really helps is +summons affixes to be able to summon them all simultaneously, when this is the case durability doesn’t need to be so good, you can just throw them at your enemies like wind devils.
