Necromancer Golem Guide, Baddass Guide to the golems Options

[Flayerofgods]

Some guy on the diabloii newb forums acually made a really informative guild to golems here.


Clay Golem (aka Gumby, Muddy, Lumpy)
Pros-
*Toughest, most durable golem on the block, no question.
*All monsters that hit on poor little Lumpy get slowed. Slow monsters = good.

Cons-
*Won't ever deal anything remotely resembling damage.
*No real cons, but he also doesn't have any other pros going for him, outside of the fact that he's just a gigantic damage sponge.

Blood Golem (aka Drippy, Icky, Squishy)
Pros-
*Can provide huge amounts of leech for the necro whose orb is constantly dipping.

Cons-
*Can't really provide anything else at all.
*You take 1/10th of the damage he takes, so if he gets 10,000 life and bites the dust, you'll notice.

Iron Golem (aka Rusty, Spiky, Iggy)
Pros-
*A real chameleon. Anything you want, Rusty can provide. He can deal the best damage of any golem, if you want. He can become elementally immune. He can provide an aura. He can become a huge monster magnet. Anything you want, you got it.

Cons-
*You have to burn an item to get it, which means good Iggies are expensive. It also means that you can't resummon Rusty in a hurry if he bites it.

Fire Golem (aka Sparky)
Pros-
*He has a holy fire aura, which drives monsters NUTS. He is constantly pinging them, so they really swarm around him and ignore everything else more than against any other golem (unless you want to waste a Dream or Dragon or Phoenix or something on an Iron Golem).

Cons-
*High mana cost at high levels means he's not the most resummonable of pals.
*If his Holy Fire gets too high of a level, it'll be drawing monsters from WAY off screen, which can get you swarmed in a hurry.


Analysis:
First off, against bosses, 90% of the time you're going to be using Lumpy, whose slow and huge HP pool are tremendously useful. 9.99% of the time, you're going to be using Rusty. You'll stick with Rusty either because you already had him and he's too expensive to replace with a Gumby just for one boss battle, or because you made him out of a Crushing Blow weapon (Crushing Blow weapons make great Rusties for bosses, really helps take the bosses down quicker). The other .01% of the time you'll use Blood Golem or Fire Golem- basically, they're total deviants. I only ever had one Necro who used either against a boss, and that's because he wanted the leech from Drippy (which was a bad idea, in retrospect, because bosses deal extra damage against minions, which means he ripped Drippy- and by extension my red orb- to shreds in no time flat).

For general PvM, though, the answer is going to be a lot more varied. Lots of summoners use Lumpy, just because he's cheap. Others use Rusty made out of an aura-granting item, to buff their Skellies way up. Bonemancers and Meleemancers really benefit from Sparky, because his monster magnetism makes up for the fact that he's the ONLY minion they have. Some deviant meleemancers like Drippy just because he keeps their red orb pretty well topped off, but if you have Drippy out, be ready to unsummon him in a hurry if he gets overwhelmed.