Skeleton Mastery

Passive: increases life and damage of raised skeletons and revived creatures.

Skeleton Mastery is a level 1 Necromancer passive (Summoning tree, requires Raise Skeleton; it unlocks nothing). It costs no mana and casts nothing: it is a set of four numbers that the three minion skills read when they raise something. Each level gives +8 life to every skeleton and skeletal mage and +2 damage to every skeleton, and +5% life and +10% damage to every revived monster. At level 20 that is +160 life and +40 damage on a skeleton, +160 life on a mage, and +100% life and +200% damage on a revive.

The numbers

• Skeletons: Life is Param1 8, "HP per level", times the level: +8 at level 1, +160 at level 20, +240 at level

1. The same line serves the skeletal mages ("Magi: Life"); both read Param1.

• Skeletons: Damage is Param2 2, "Damage per level": +2 at level 1, +40 at level 20, +60 at level 30. It is a flat addition to the skeleton's physical damage, not a percentage. Mages do not get it.
• Monsters: Life is Param3 5, "Revive Synergy HP % per level", and Monsters: Damage is Param4 10, "Revive Synergy Damage % per level": +5% and +10% a level for revived monsters, +100% and +200% at level 20. These are percentages of the revived monster's own base.
• Mana is 0; the skill is passive and the tooltip has no cost line worth a column.

Every line reads lvl, so +skills from items count in full: a +1 from a wand is worth exactly one hard point here.

How it works

Skeleton Mastery is a passive state (passivestate "skel_mastery") with no cast. Its four Params are read by the minion skills' own columns, not by the mastery itself:

• Raise Skeleton reads it in passivecalc1 for life (Skeleton Mastery level × Param1 × 256) and in passivecalc2 for damage (Skeleton Mastery level × Param2 added to the skeleton's base damage), and adds the mastery's level to its own in the skeleton's attack rating and defense calcs.
• Raise Skeletal Mage reads it for life the same way.
• Revive reads Param3 and Param4 as percentages of the revived monster's life and damage.

The Basin states the one rule that matters in play: the bonuses are applied at the time of summoning. A skeleton raised at Skeleton Mastery 20 keeps its +160 life and +40 damage if you then take off the wand that gave the levels, and a skeleton raised at level 0 gains nothing when you put it on. Only a fresh raise reads the new number. The Basin's Raise Skeleton page adds that the mastery's +life is applied before Raise Skeleton's own +% life, so the two multiply; it warns that the in-game tooltip adds them in the wrong order and understates the total.

The mastery does nothing for the golems. Golem Mastery is their equivalent, and Summon Resist covers all of them; a skeleton build and a golem build spend their passive points in different places.

Synergies and +skills

No synergies of its own: Skeleton Mastery has no dsc3 lines and no …SymPerCalc column. It is itself the synergy: Raise Skeleton, Raise Skeletal Mage and Revive each carry a tooltip line that names it. Every one of those reads the mastery's full level (skill('Skeleton Mastery'.lvl)), not its hard points, so +skills from items feed the minions just as hard points do. The Basin lists Marrowwalk, Undead Crown, Arm of King Leoric and the White runeword as sources of +Skeleton Mastery.

Against players

Skeleton Mastery never touches a player. What it changes is the life and damage of the minions, and those minions' hits on a player are cut to 17% by the player-versus-player rule as any hit is; see Player versus Player.

Build notes

• Twenty points are +160 life and +40 damage on every skeleton and +100% life / +200% damage on every revive; a level 30 mastery from +10 skills is +240 and +60.
• Because every minion line reads lvl, a +skill is worth exactly one hard point here, which is not true of the four golems' cross-synergies, which read each other's hard points (blvl).
• Raise your minions after you put on your +skills gear, and again after any change to it: the bonus is set when the corpse rises.