Skeleton Mages? Check. Now what?

[Brouhaha]

So I've got a lich with 34 out of 36 points in skeleton mages. Yay me! Before starting this character I thought I would couple lich with the poisonous horseman path both for the extra aura and the swordsman stuff. I would swing a blade, carry a shield, and act as the tank/point for my mages.

Turns out liches are paper thin and Khloros (that's the name!) offers damn little beyond physical/poison resist to keep me alive or make me a Mind/Berserker/Sekmet level fighter/tank. Also, nearly instant death by fire.

So now my skeleton mages are looking at me and wondering just what the hell I've got to offer them.

The Tank Hybrids -
Berserker: be a crazy tank for my mages, one rune with heal/temp buff
Mind: great stats, could go archery or enjoy the safety of a shield while cranking out some damage, no buffs for the skeletons, but I could mind control them some friends
Sekhmet: shield master and I could pick a weapon tree to add damage, no extra buffs for for the mages

The Caster Hybrids -
Venefici: personal defense, spell power to rival the bones I run with
Dokkaebi: chaos storm would be the perfect environment for the pets to work in

Pure Pet-o-Mancers -
Just Lich: build up some skeleton fighters, crank the aura, become a lich and enjoy some immunities, learn unholy blast to support my undead army
Khloros: ignore the sword, work on defensive buffs/aura, cower behind my now-uber skeleton mages

I Think Not -
Tartarus: not unless somebody convinces me otherwise
Poseidon: lots of spells and no mana, not a great hybrid choice

The great thing about Paths, is that most of these would work, even the two that seem least likely. It's all about personal play style. So which path would you choose and why?

- Brouhaha!

[ShadowLAnce]

Personally I love Lich+Dokkaebi, for exactly the reason you said as well as others. Chaos Storm is incredibly disruptive and the hordes of skeletons tend to clean up everything within. Other reasons I like Dokkaebi is with very few points invested you can get quite a lot of survivability. Confuse/fear type effects mean that enemy deals zero damage to you, so disrupting a whole horde of enemies is a ton of damage mitigation. Additionally, the 1 point stances are amazing. Only issues I can think of you may run into are single very tough enemies, or enemies that cause a lot of AoE crumpling your skeletons.

[manushkalimbas]

Well I personally chose the Poseidon path,and besides the fact that i have only about 450 usable mana(after all tha buffs) I have incredibly fastregen rate of mana.So when I cast down my two bony mages, combined with my Poluphemus I dont worry about tanking.I just sit back and kill everithing if neccesary wit the falling star.BTW a maxed polyphemus + pet gear equals something that can possibly even kill the first telkine by itself.Skeleton mages are going to be useless in the late game,so everyone take this into consideration.

[ShadowLAnce]

Nice, that was indeed the purpose behind polyphemus. He's literally a boss resurrected to fight for you (the cyclops from greece). I'm not certain that skele mages become useless, their aoe damage is insane if you need that.

[JoshBakker]

I agree with teh Lance. choas storm is a great ability for pets. it alows them to do all their damage with out having to worry about to much retaliation.

[flix]

I've paired Lich with both Tartarus (Infernalist) and Khloros (Decayer).

The only main penalty to a caster Infernalist (taking only the Studies of Hexes, Destruction, and Summoning) is the experience and health reduction. But with the powerful Tartarus summons (and the less-powerful-but-more-numerous Lich summons) you have a good army. Not to mention the offensive fire spells of Tartarus are devastating.

I played the Decayer as a caster/melee hybrid. There's just so much synergy and power with all the offensive spells, the pets and buffs/debuffs. The only main penalty? Run speed is crazy slow, so you can't kite, which is why I built a melee aspect in.