How do I scale my golem damage?

I am playing an elementalist and I just want my golems to hurt, but besides golems I don't use any other minions. I want to scale golem damage, but it seem on the passive tree every minion node is tide to skeletons / zombies / spectres, and it feels like a waste to take those if I won't be using any of them. Any other way to scale just the golem damage?

Do you intend golems to be your main source of damage? If not, just buff them with support gems. I have this setup on my elementalist:

The minion and totem elemental resistance support also has a damage modifier now:

However, if you have Liege of the Primordial, your golems are already immune to elemental damage so the resistance part of the gem is wasted.

If you are primarily using golems, the minion nodes are worth it. There's a total of 90% increased damage, which is a significant amount.

Sidhebreath gives some minion bonuses and can be good especially early on:


The new bone helmet base type gives increased minion damage:


Vis Mortis gives a bit of increased minion damage, at the expense of life:

I do not use golems as my main source of damage, and I currently did this:


What I also wonder though is - I currently have 0% increased minion damage, which means I would have absolutely no diminishing returns right now, do I understand correct that every +15% damage node or that helmet base or other buffs would work almost like a MORE multiplier for me right now?

Yes, any single increased modifier you get now will act the same way as a more modifier of the same percentage. I think the helmet has the highest single percentage available (it goes up to 40%).

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databeaver wrote:

Yes, any single increased modifier you get now will act the same way as a more modifier of the same percentage. I think the helmet has the highest single percentage available (it goes up to 40%).

As my secondary source of damage, what would be your recommended good amount of increased % to invest into golem damage? I dare say even with these three gems they hurt quite a bit, I mostly use them to help me dps on bosses as my primary damaging spells clears out trash mobs very easily and doesn't require help from golems.

Personally, I find that non-primary golems are mostly useful for distracting enemies and buffing my own damage. They die rather easily to map bosses so I want the life support there. Spreading out into too many different things tends to make the build weaker overall. The bone helmet though is hardly a tradeoff at all so why not. It's insanely hard to get a good helmet enchantment from the labyrinth. If you are right next to some of the minion damage nodes you could try those, but I honestly don't know if they are worth it.

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databeaver wrote:

Personally, I find that non-primary golems are mostly useful for distracting enemies and buffing my own damage. They die rather easily to map bosses so I want the life support there.

I mean I have the primordial buff so they are immune to elemental damage and I can totally put in an increased life gem. I also have 2 six links waiting in the chest once the character gets leveled, so I have the primary skill in the first and I want to put something into the other one.

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databeaver wrote:

Spreading out into too many different things tends to make the build weaker overall. The bone helmet though is hardly a tradeoff at all so why not. It's insanely hard to get a good helmet enchantment from the labyrinth. If you are right next to some of the minion damage nodes you could try those, but I honestly don't know if they are worth it.

Yes, but as I understand it this game has a bunch of diminishing returns everywhere. If I can have 500% increased damage in the primary skill and 0% in golems, or I could have 400% increased in the primary and 100% in golems, wouldn't the latter be overall better?

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Kadajko wrote:

Yes, but as I understand it this game has a bunch of diminishing returns everywhere. If I can have 500% increased damage in the primary skill and 0% in golems, or I could have 400% increased in the primary and 100% in golems, wouldn't the latter be overall better?

It depends on the sum of other multipliers and/or the base damage. You see, x% increased has linear constant returns technically, which translates to diminishing proportional returns. But if you have two different damage sources, you don't care about the proportion; the two different damage sources are summed up, which means the constant returns are more relevant than the diminishing proportions.

Tl;dr if your main skill has 500 base damage and your golem has 400, then you still want 500% increased main and 0% increased golem; 400% increased main and 100% increased golem would be net lower DPS there.

I haven't crunched the numbers, but I suspect that golem base damage is fairly low.

However, the opportunity cost of certain sources of minion damage is fairly low (if you aren't super rich, a nice Bone Helmet gives a "free" increased damage there), so that the analogy might better be 500% main 0% golem vs 490% main and 50% golem, which makes things more complicated.

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adghar wrote:

I haven't crunched the numbers, but I suspect that golem base damage is fairly low.

Four 6L golems. I actually think they might be close to my own dps, if we do not count any % increases. If we count MORE multipliers, they would have the same amount as my primary skill.

By far the most important factor is linked sockets. There is a pretty low ceiling to the use of a golem when limited to a 4-link, once you have a six-link available for your primary attack skill that gorge only gets bigger.

If you are using a 2-handed weapon there is a better argument for splitting focus between them, as was mentioned above there are a number of fairly low-opportunity cost ways to boost their effectiveness, even if by only a little. At that point the only ceiling is your number of golems, which again has a large buy not insurmountable opportunity cost to get +2 (jewels), a maybe fairly low cost if you're already an elementalist for +1, and then an incredibly steep cost for an additional +2 (clayshapers not only cost you your held slots but also preclude the possibility of having good golems AND main skill due to the aforementioned six-link limitation).