Pale Master DPS, how to deal with iron golems?

[Peter_Principle]

Running solo as a pale master, I find that I can deal adequately with most creature types. Constructs, however, are always a pain, especially the iron golem type of enemy, even moreso if it's red named and can't be insta-killed.

Some constructs, like robobeetles in Sharn, robodogs and warforged are vulnerable to negative damage; these are no problem, just blast as normal. Some constructs are immune to negative damage, but take normal damage from elemental attacks, like shield guardians, scarecrows or security drones. These are only mildly annoying, and readily fall to DBB, chain lightning, acid well and meteorswarm.

But those iron golems. Ugh. Immune to negative, healed by fire, and only yellow numbers from acid, cold and lightning. They take orange damage from disintigrate and cyclonic blast, but I can't seem to get a lot of DPS out of these. So I swap between cyclonic, disintegrate, and my various harder hitting cold and acid spells and it just takes forever to kill these yoyos.

So maybe there's something I'm missing. What's a good technique for dealing with iron golems?

[peng]

There are no great options.

Golems usually take full untyped damage from spells, but resist or are immune to all other forms of spell dmg as far as I know. So ruins, cyclonic, disintegrate, and the untyped parts of meteor swarm (be careful vs iron golems as the fire will heal) and ice storm.

If they're not rednamed, mass frog, everything is nothing, and prismatic (sp)ray.

Your other options are to just eat the resistance (wiki says they actually have 50% absorption, not resistance, so spells that split their damage into dots or separate rays should be just as (in)effective as ones that deal dmg all in one chunk), pull out a weapon and melee, or let your party-members deal with golems.

[AlmGhandi]

Kite in small circles whilst letting your skeletal knight and/or summons beat it up? Use your necro spells/bursts to keep Knight healed.

Works for me.

[Xgya]

Not red-named?
Cast Prismatic Spray until the golem vanishes to another plane of existence.

Red-named? You're in for the long haul.
Disintegrate barely helps, so does Cyclonic blast.
The other option is casting spells that normally take hours to work, because it just so happens you've got hours to spend on that robot.
Eladar's Electric Surge and Niac's Biting Cold come to mind.
They're not great spells normally, but they also do some of the highest damage total per MP spent, so even halving that, you're coming out ahead. It'll take time, but it'll also take less of a chunk out of your blue bar.
If you're epic-powered, Ruin (and its bigger brother)'s your bestest friend.

[Hobgoblin]

doesnt the level 9 neg energy dot make them lose neg energy resistance?

ignore the above - cant u use unholy avatar?

[Enoach]

Couple things to point out with Cyclonic Blast and Disintegrate

Cyclonic Blast is a Reflex save for 1/2
Evocation Spell
Untyped Damage

Disintegrate Fortitude save for partial (3d6+12)
Transmutation Spell
Untyped Damage

The above is important in gearing. One of the benefits of a Wizard is being flexible in spell selection. However, that means you also have to have the gear to support that flexibility.

The first thing to look at is if they are "Saving".
If you are seeing that they are saving often then you have two areas you can work on to improve this.
1. Your DCs - likely by having a specialized item that pumps up the appropriate schools. It might not be the ideal item to have on all the time but something you switch in where appropriate
2. Debuffs - Look for Debuffs that reduce saves. In this case Reflex and Fortitude. Don't limit yourself to spell options, sometimes the approach requires a little hands on of hitting/throwing something at it

If saves are not the big lose of damage then next is looking at Spell Power
1. What is boosting your Untyped damage?
2. critical chance/multiplier?

[Montegue]

Disintegrate needs to be a much stronger spell than it is. I think I have something like 4 full Wizard lives and a handful of Epic wizard lives, and it's one of the spells so useless and underpowered that I typically don't even scribe it anymore. It's a huge waste of SP.

[Kinerd]

ice storm is my go to while leveling

i've also gotten a lot of mileage out of putting enough points into eldritch knight to get spellsword, 6 AP for 6d6 elemental damage for 0 MP is still no picnic but it's a big improvement

[Zretch]

Running solo as a pale master, I find that I can deal adequately with most creature types. Constructs, however, are always a pain, especially the iron golem type of enemy, even moreso if it's red named and can't be insta-killed.

Some constructs, like robobeetles in Sharn, robodogs and warforged are vulnerable to negative damage; these are no problem, just blast as normal. Some constructs are immune to negative damage, but take normal damage from elemental attacks, like shield guardians, scarecrows or security drones. These are only mildly annoying, and readily fall to DBB, chain lightning, acid well and meteorswarm.

But those iron golems. Ugh. Immune to negative, healed by fire, and only yellow numbers from acid, cold and lightning. They take orange damage from disintigrate and cyclonic blast, but I can't seem to get a lot of DPS out of these. So I swap between cyclonic, disintegrate, and my various harder hitting cold and acid spells and it just takes forever to kill these yoyos.

So maybe there's something I'm missing. What's a good technique for dealing with iron golems?

Make sure you're putting points into the EK tree for just this type of mob. Grab an adamantine weapon, take SWF/ISWF as feats (you have plenty of feats as a wizard), and melee down iron golems as your death auras heal you. Yea, they're a pain, but EK can help you with mobs that have troublesome immunities (like the Doomsphere in Ghosts of Perdition who is cold/lightning immune) or mobs that are still alive after your primary spell rotation (that one mob with evasion that's still alive after everything else is dead) without having to blow additional mana.

[Carpone]

Bringing a friend is the simplest solution to deal with the handful of mobs that are problematic. I get that the OP said soloing, but changing your build around just to deal with a few red names isn't the way to go. I disagree with meleeing constructs, even with 25 AP invested in EK and using Dreadkeeper medium armor. If you're spending feats on meleeing, then you aren't maxing out your DCs by taking Great Intelligence. DCs > everything else on a Pale Master especially for Sharn content. And you aren't tanky enough to be meleeing long in high skulls.

[HungarianRhapsody]

Make sure you're putting points into the EK tree for just this type of mob. Grab an adamantine weapon, take SWF/ISWF as feats (you have plenty of feats as a wizard), and melee down iron golems as your death auras heal you. Yea, they're a pain, but EK can help you with mobs that have troublesome immunities (like the Doomsphere in Ghosts of Perdition who is cold/lightning immune) or mobs that are still alive after your primary spell rotation (that one mob with evasion that's still alive after everything else is dead) without having to blow additional mana.

That advice works super great on Heroic Elite or lower.

[Alled78]

Running solo as a pale master, I find that I can deal adequately with most creature types. Constructs, however, are always a pain, especially the iron golem type of enemy, even moreso if it's red named and can't be insta-killed.

Some constructs, like robobeetles in Sharn, robodogs and warforged are vulnerable to negative damage; these are no problem, just blast as normal. Some constructs are immune to negative damage, but take normal damage from elemental attacks, like shield guardians, scarecrows or security drones. These are only mildly annoying, and readily fall to DBB, chain lightning, acid well and meteorswarm.

But those iron golems. Ugh. Immune to negative, healed by fire, and only yellow numbers from acid, cold and lightning. They take orange damage from disintigrate and cyclonic blast, but I can't seem to get a lot of DPS out of these. So I swap between cyclonic, disintegrate, and my various harder hitting cold and acid spells and it just takes forever to kill these yoyos.

So maybe there's something I'm missing. What's a good technique for dealing with iron golems?

U can t
Find help for these quest with a group. Or avoid them. Or go casual diff.

Not sure ruin and great ruin are sustainable...

[Kinerd]

Bringing a friend is the simplest solution to deal with the handful of mobs that are problematic. I get that the OP said soloing, but changing your build around just to deal with a few red names isn't the way to go. I disagree with meleeing constructs, even with 25 AP invested in EK and using Dreadkeeper medium armor. If you're spending feats on meleeing, then you aren't maxing out your DCs by taking Great Intelligence. DCs > everything else on a Pale Master especially for Sharn content. And you aren't tanky enough to be meleeing long in high skulls.

trick question, nobody's tanky enough to be meleeing long in high skulls ;D

as this thread alone shows there's a range of EK options though - personally i don't spend feats on it and find 6 AP is plenty for these issues, some people might go harder. i think the point is to consider the options in the first place

[Varr]

Not that there is a very good answer to be had, a semi unique weakness for pale masters.

Epics allow for the below at least:

With the Magister rework I have slotted only 4 int points and tree points 21-24 were spent on Master of Necro (+3 necro level and DC) and the last pt, 24th was on the cheap Arcane Tempest.

10 seconds every 30 of pretty fancy untyped damage. Throw in an Acid Burst or two, with some Ice Storm and Ada weapon damage of your choice and your pretty well as good as you can get. Sitting at 32 pts in EK after 40 in Pale Master, so do a couple hundred points of acid damage per swing. All adds up to a slow grind of a Red named iron golem.

Arcane Tempest and Acid Burst twist every 30 seconds are pretty nice dps for all situations though for nasty's that wont behave and just fall over dead at your will.

[Carpone]

trick question, nobody's tanky enough to be meleeing long in high skulls ;D

Find better people to play with - they're out there.

[HungarianRhapsody]

Fireball, Delayed Blast Fireball, and Wall of Fire

[ChemE]

It will take a minute but your skeletal knight will beat one down as well.

[Peter_Principle]

Thanks everyone for all the suggestions.

I tried melee and pumping force spell power. Melee damage is trivial on my build, and using a adamantine weapon doesn't help. That red bar just doesn't move. Using a Borderlands force stick didn't change much, either. Invitation and Raven at the Door were still tedious

The one good thing I noticed was that the iron golems in Reach for the Sky can be prismatic'd.

Still need to play around with Arcane Tempest...

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

Aren't there items with construct bane or something like that ? They are rare in random loot, but they do exist. Plus, that can be crafted, if I remember that correctly.

I'm not sure whether golems are considered as constructs, though.

https://ddowiki.com/page/Weaken_Construct
https://ddowiki.com/page/Category:We...onstruct_items

[SuperNiCd]

This obviously applies only to high epic levels but I’ve been liking Arcane Pulse for the immune/resistant to most everything mobs. Keep 5 stacks going in addition to whatever else you’re throwing at it. Speeds it up quite a bit.