Clay Golem

Creates a golem from the earth to fight by your side.

Clay Golem is a level 6 Necromancer spell (Summoning tree, no prerequisite; it unlocks Golem Mastery and Blood Golem). It summons a single ClayGolem melee pet, needs no corpse, and can be cast in town (InTown 1). Only one golem of any kind can exist at a time. Three numbers decide it: +35% life and +35% damage a level past the first, +20 attack rating a level, and a slow it lays on every monster it strikes and every monster that strikes it in melee, 11% at level 1, 63% at level 20, towards a cap of 75%. Mana is 15 at level 1 and 72 at level 20.

The numbers

• Slows Enemies is the diminishing curve dm34 between Param3 0 ("Slow % Min") and Param4 75 ("Slow % Max"), which the Basin writes as min(75 × (110 × level ÷ (level + 6)) ÷ 100, 75): 11% at level 1, 51% at level 10, 63% at level 20, 68% at level 30. The curve flattens fast; the last 12 points to the cap take forty more levels.
• Attack Rating is Param8 20 a level, "Clay Golem Attack Rating synergy": +20 at level 1, +400 at level 20. The tooltip's full attack-rating line adds a base of 40 and Golem Mastery's bonus (its ln56, 25 a level).
• Life is calc1, "HP % Modifier", given below: Param1 35 is the "HP % per level", and it multiplies with Golem Mastery and the Blood Golem synergy rather than adding to them. At level 20 alone that is +665%; with Golem Mastery 20 it is (765 × 500 ÷ 100) − 100 = +3,725%. The base is the golem's own, which the Basin gives as 100 life in Normal, 175 in Nightmare and 275 in Hell.
• Damage is passivecalc3: Param2 35 ("Damage % per level") times the level minus one, plus 6% per hard point in Fire Golem: +665% at level 20. The base is 2–5 in Normal, 2–6 in Nightmare and 3–7 in Hell (the Basin).
• Defense is 100 plus 35 per hard point in Iron Golem (passivecalc4 reads IronGolem.blvl × its Param8 35), plus the monster level in the Basin's table. Clay Golem's own level adds nothing to it.
• Mana is 12 + 3 a level (mana 15, lvlmana 3): 15 at level 1, 72 at level 20, 102 at level 30.

life bonus % = (100 + 35 × (level − 1)) × (100 + 20 × Golem Mastery level + 5 × Blood Golem hard points) ÷ 100 − 100

Golem Mastery's share is its ln12, 20% a level, and Blood Golem's is its Param8 5 per hard point. The slow, the attack rating, the life percentage and the damage percentage read the golem's full level (lvl), and Golem Mastery is read at its full level too; the three golem cross-synergies read hard points (blvl).

How it works

The golem is a golem pet with a melee attack that rolls Chance to Hit like a monster. The Basin's rules:

• One golem at a time: summoning a Clay, Blood, Iron or Fire Golem dispels the one you have.
• The level used in chance to hit and in its attack and defense rating is the caster's level at casting, and all its stats are set at the point of casting.
• Golem Mastery and Summon Resist apply. Golem Mastery's +% life is added to the Blood Golem synergy before the multiplication above; +% maximum life from Battle Orders and Oak Sage is applied afterwards.
• The slow is applied on striking and when struck by a melee attack (auraevent "damagedinmelee"), as a Slows Target effect.
• It has 25% physical, 20% lightning and 50% cold resistance, cannot be put into hit recovery or knocked back, and can open doors.
• In Resurrected the caster's Monster Physical Immunity is Sundered is applied to its hits (passivecalc5).

The slow is the golem's job. A level 1 golem already slows by 11%, and a level 20 one by 63%, which is why a one-point Clay Golem fed by +skills is a common tank even on builds that never attack with it.

Synergies and +skills

Three tooltip lines name the other golems, each read as hard points:

• Blood Golem: +5% Life per Level (BloodGolem Param8 5, inside the multiplication above)
• Iron Golem: +35 Defense per Level (IronGolem Param8 35)
• Fire Golem: +6% Damage per Level (FireGolem Param8 6)

In return Clay Golem's own Param8 20 is +20 attack rating per hard point to Blood Golem, Iron Golem and Fire Golem. Golem Mastery is read at full level, so +skills raise the life, speed and attack rating it lends; the cross-synergies only move with hard points. The Basin lists the Stone runeword's level 16 charges as a source of the skill without points.

Against players

The Necromancer casts nothing on a player with this skill. The golem's hits on a player are physical melee hits cut to 17% by the player-versus-player rule, and its slow follows its hits and the hits it takes as above; the Basin's page records no other player-versus-player rule. See Player versus Player.

Build notes

• Level 20 is +665% life and damage, +400 attack rating and a 63% slow for 72 mana; the slow at level 30 is 68%, so the last levels buy life and damage, not slow.
• Golem Mastery multiplies: 20 levels of it turn +665% life into +3,725%, which is worth more than any number of points in the golem itself.
• A +skill is worth a hard point on every line of the golem's own; only Blood, Iron and Fire Golem hard points feed its life, defense and damage from outside.