Lich: Death Touch vs Bonesword, Skellingtons vs Zombies

[NearNihil]

Anyway, I have a Lich-in-training, and while alchemy is a decent XP generator, he's been the slowest to level out of the three. The upside of this is that I have a lot of time to tinker with the build before settling on something, avoiding buying back skills. This post assumes the build is at level 30 with a handful of exploration badges, so CP isn't so plentiful one can simply take all options simultaneously.

But, as the title implies, there are some decisions to be made. The Bonesword seems like such a fun utility weapon, but its 8 damage and +10% to-hit doesn't hold a candle to 15 damage of Death Touch (2 base damage + 1 Boxing + 12 through Lich CP, at level 30 without ranks) despite its lack of a to-hit bonus. The MP on a hit is just a cherry on top. In contrast, having a mob of skellingtons around (or zombies, but if you're raising skellingtons it makes sense to invest in those) means you're far less likely to get the last hit on a target to raise a new skellington with the sword. All this combined is probably why I see so few Liches with Bonesword. Am I missing something or is the Bonesword just not that good in comparison? Would a 5-minute status effect of "your corpse will be raised as a skellington if you die" applied on a hit make the Bonesword more viable, or would it need more to be competitive with Death Touch?

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Then there's the Skellington vs Zombie discussion. Skellingtons have better offensive stats, but the Zombie horde grows as they take targets down. Corpses can be "stored" as Bone Trinkets (with the skill of the same name) for use as stationary skellingtons later while defense goes up by up to 20% with a zombie horde (Simulacrum). Folks on Discord have pointed out that you'll usually summon a horde of either anyway, so making it grow "organically" is more convenient. Especially since - apparently - Bone Trinkets have a chance to break on death, which is very close to a dealbreaker for me. And lastly, a giant skellington/zombie is the choice between something that starts out okay and grows to be pretty formidable (the Necrophage) and something that's pretty good overall but doesn't "grow" (Fossil Monstrosity). That's really whatever to me, I know I get too invested into things that grow over time but have a chance of being lost (see also, bone trinkets) but it does look pretty dope.

The complete picture of which pet to pick I'm pretty torn on: I really want to like the skellingtons, but while having Bone Trinkets sounds amazing, having the one thing they do -- spend AP/MP now to have a stationary skellington later -- be partially negated by simply dying sounds really frustrating. They're not easy to procure either, specifically needing a corpse not from a graveyard. In contrast, raiding (or successfully defending against a raid) with zombies makes the blob grow larger and faster. Pets are lost on death anyway so you reach your natural equilibrium of pets way easier, which combined with the 20% defense against all attacks makes you less likely to die and lose all of them in the first place. Given the limits of the Bone Trinkets (2 AP, 10 MP to make one, presumably 1 AP to deploy them; there can only exists (Lich level) number of trinkets at a time), would exempting them from breaking on death make the whole thing more attractive (I know it would for me)?

[Southall]

On Death Touch vs Bonesword, I'd agree - death touch is just plain better.

"Would a 5-minute status effect of "your corpse will be raised as a skellington if you die" applied on a hit make the Bonesword more viable, or would it need more to be competitive with Death Touch?" - this would probably help, but tbh, death touch also needs to be tuned down as well.

On skeletons vs ghouls - there IS significant value in having skeletons offensively. They hit much harder than ghouls, and pass several thresholds for offensive raiding that makes up for having no ghouls.

In addition, the value of bone trinket is that you get to "stockpile" a larger army without worrying about upkeep. Bone trinket loss on death is a little bit cruel, but in my experience, you don't lose too many of them every time you die (I lose about 3 or 4 with a full stack of bone trinkets at the worst of times, and often get away with losing none of them.)

I'd agree that necrophage/simulacrum > bone trinket on the whole.

Ghouls begetting more ghouls used to be VERY strong, but is more balanced now, imo. The existence of auras and extremely tanky targets puts a huge damper on ghoul efficiency, and factions being smaller than they used to be means there's a hard cap on ghoul balling. The exception to this is if you're a feral lich hunting a lot of soft targets - in which case ghouls definitely come out ahead.

On balance, for a CP-starved lich which can only get one pet tree, I'd make the decision based on my faction size and alignment.

A smaller faction? I'd go with ghouls, as I'm likely to be securing a lot of last hits, as there'll be less factionmates competing for killing blows.

A larger faction, or an evil faction? More people will be competing with ghouls for last hits (so I'd get less new ghouls generated), and I'm likely to be hitting harder targets, so I'd go with skeletons instead.

[Klapaucius]

I think the real value of bone trinkets is making anyone in your faction a mini petmaster. This is particularly nice if you don't already have many other pet masters in your faction, since it means they can take trinkets into enemy SHs and drop them for very efficient clears even if you're not able to make it.

Caveat: it's a bit awkward using them this way. If there's already pets on raids, a couple of pocket skeletons won't help much.

Skelton damage and accuracy is amazing. I'd say the main down side of skeleton is their low HP, not the duplication property. You want your necrophage to get the kills if possible, anyway!

edit: I meant the real value of making skeleton trinkets

[RKBBQ]

This is all from B4 experiences, so take it with some salt, but I had a skellies/bonesword/wights lich (no necros then, so you had to go skellies for lich titans). Let pets do most fighting because boneswording couldn't compete with enchanted weapons then, just like it can't compare to death touch now.

My B4 Corruptor also was a much better lich - grab 4 titans or judgies, then steal a ghoul with your last pet slot and then ghoul-ball from there.

Even if ghouls/necros have more preptime necessary to hit big numbers compared to the plug-and-play nature of skellies, ghoul/necro tree just has so many more interesting synergies to keep you going at low ghoulball levels and better top line stats.