Normal Mage Summon Necromancer Guided Playthrough Diablo 2 Resurrected

hanhthien2948: NO (my answer for the thumbnail)
lolwhatidk: before watching, i'm gonna guess no, skeletal mages aren't okay now
Randomorph: Already watched the live. They're a lot better than people think, even before the buffs. It's one of the highest damage increases for only 20 points after you max Skeletons, Mastery, and CE, since unsynergized poison and bone are both weak and drain mana like crazy. They synergize with thorns and fanaticism. If you're running Thorns merc over Might merc, they're especially not bad. The problem is they have very few ways to scale, skills does a lot, but otherwise just Conviction (expensive) and Lower Resists (Amp damage is objectively better), compared to the Skeletons which have so many ways and scale better.

Realistically though, there's not a lot of places worth putting your points. 20-35 points for Poison Nova does nearly no single target DPS and costs tons of mana, similar for Bone Spirit/Spear. One other unconventional option, especially for Act Bosses or Ubers is to use a Malice with Poison Dagger to apply Open Wounds and the -100 defense on hit (which lets your Skellies hit more often), although the Poison Dagger skills aren't really needed, they just speed things up. Revives and most curses also don't really need more than 1 hard point.

Basically your only real options 20 Golem Mastery for a strong Iron Golem with a decent item, (eg Hustle Weapon, Insight, etc), 20 Mages, or dumping your remaining points into Bone Armor / Synergies or defensive Curses like Dim Vision (on hardcore especially). If you like to use one or more other Golems (eg Clay for safety vs dangerous boss packs and Act Bosses, Fire for screen wide aggro better thorns vs Act Bosses) then you don't really need Golem Mastery. Mages are also somewhat defensive (poison for stopping healing, cold for slowing monsters) as they cluster around you and absorb aggro and stray non-piercing shots, and Dim Vision can still work as a one point wonder skill. Bone Armor with an extra 20 points you'd spend on Mages would have an extra 300 health vs physical. So it becomes is an extra 300 health on my physical shield, or an extra 8 meat shields dealing between about 1-3k total dps (depending on gear) better value.
eddienash2095: D2R would lose 90% of its players if PD2 could get the graphics for D2R
scottsurvival6960: Give it another 25 years and Blizzard will buff the mages to the point they will be viable. Just you wait.
gokhun: They should replace mages with archers
JJ-qo7th: That D4 footage does not make it look fun to play. How am I supposed to see what I'm doing under a cloud of yellow numbers?
guilhermefratin9532: Unless you are using poison nova, the necromancer is balanced to kill one monster slowly and everything else fast with corpse explosion. Thats why the strongest bone skill is single target and the summons act more like tanks vs groups than damage dealers.
c3n5i: posion still sux and scaling is lackluster . . who would have thought
elevenknives0: i bought D4 with the expansion and was ready to quit just after few hours. its just too MMO style game than good ol diablo 1 & 2 might be just that im not the target audience.
Leaked_Dudes: Buy another loaf of bread, m'dude. Thanks for the countless hours of content
shawntropilis4558: It would be cool to see a collab with the d2r streamers next reset where you get 2 teams together (randomly/round robin pick) to race to finish Ubers
FieldMarshall3: They should let us select which element to summon and also give Mages a % chance per level to have their projectiles explode into a nova/fireball
mvargasmoran: Please Do a "Proc to level 5 Nova" Build, I'm running solo self found that build and it's great fun, not being OP is great fun.
and you get to see a ton of novas going off, with 20points in static and the same for mastery, it actually wipes everything in the radius.
TheKobool: give us a runeword or something that turns the mages into archers. so we can scale phys dmg on them.
mewtwo239: Are they good now with the normal skeletons ? And did they get a buff or something
peterman7000: hospitals are pricy, if they have to save your life. yes.
baltom4559: $2.5K/month healthcare? how does America still exist?
BradW-xw1se: Do you realize Diablo 2 is considered evil because it uses the same philosophy as gambling in a video game. Thats why they wont remake it