Curses, bows, and more...

[Aqo]

I started leveling a necro (another one >.>) on bnet and was using a bow; I thought about what kind of skills should I choose -> skeletons are out of the questions, they bore me.
So I was wondering, how exactly does Life Tap work? I never used it before so I'm clueless... Does it return 50% of all damage? aka- does it return health from damage with bows? What about elemental damage? Golem damage? etc.

If it does work with bows and elemental damage, here is what I aim at as my build -
Life Tap 20
Bone Armor 1
Bone Prison 20
Golem Mastery 20
Blood Golem 20
Summon Resist 1
and the rest of the points to requirements and corpse explosion.

[Giantfish]

lifetap essentially gives you, party members, and minions 50% life steal. As with regular life steal, it only works for physical damage.

With the exception of the fire golem (which does mostly fire and a bit of melee), golems do physical damage (the iron golem might inherit mods though... anyone sure?)

[Neo]

IG inherits mods from whatever item is used to create it -- though only certain mods. Though I don't remember all the safe ones off the top of my head. You can however do something like use 6 amns to create an IG who then would get upwards of like 92% life steal or something like that (although marginal in the long run, since IG doesn't do all the damage in the first place).

You should look into curses such as Decrepify (to slow enemies down), Amplify Damage (to deal more damage), or into the AI cuses, such as Attract/Terror/Confuse.

Be warned however, your build will not get very far with only a Golem as a minion.

-Kupa

[Aqo]

I guess I won't need Life Tap than, hmm :\

Anyway, thanks for the warning, but I'm less worried about not having the little undead cannonfodders and more about my damage output. What kind of damages can a bow get to in hell, with either Amp Damage or Lower Res?
I'm getting figures like 800-900 over 7 seconds with poison gems from my calculator but I never used bows before so I've no clue whether this true or even close.

[Giantfish]

If you get a faith runeworded hydra bow that gave you level 15 fanaticism and then got a act 2 merc with a pride runeworded spear that had level 20 concentration. You should be able to do a minimum of 563 damage and a maximum of 3833 damage (not including the +120 fire damage, the effects of amplify damage, and the 50% physical resist that monsters get in hell difficulty).

I'd be worried about your attack rating and lack of crowd control though...

*edit* Nevermind the attack rating bit... faith gives you ignore targets defense... Crowd control is still an issue though

[WimzWaben]

*edit* Nevermind the attack rating bit... faith gives you ignore targets defense... Crowd control is still an issue though

ITD only works on normal monsters- not in pvp or against bosses, so at one point or another it would matter.

[SirAlexxCorvin]

thanx for the info friends

[Neo]

Faith is better on a GMB or MB =/

-Neo