flesh golems?

so ive been reading through all the topics on the mm heros, and ive noticed that very few of the builds include the elite skill, animate flesh golem. why is this? while the skill does have a longer recharge time compared to the rest, i would think it would be vital for a mm build, as flesh golems really are the cream of the crop so to speak. whats up with that?

Flesh Golems are inferior for several reasons.

They are nothing but giant tanks. This is fine except for the fact that they are sitting in a mob of 9 other minions, often leaving thier primary purpose "hanging".

Flesh Golems also have lower DPS than thier non-elite friends, the bone fiends.

Thus, they can't tank effectively and have small DPS for an elite. It's not worth it to use it!

kaida summed it up rather well. flesh golem is the fools gold of the mm. they are just big old meat shields, except sitting in a mob of other meat shields. and their dmg is outclassed by a simple fiend. it just ends up being a wasted elite.

they do make a great noob indicator. when you see a mm standing around in town advertising "pro mm lfg! i got fleshie!", you know right away to look somewhere else. id take a martyr mm before i took a fleshie mm; least i know they are getting some use out of their elite.

Personally, as Death Magic elites in an MM build I prefer Jagged Bones or Aura of the Lich.

I find Golems do massive damage compared to the lower lvl minions, but i find the recent Necro changes Jagged bones works as a better Elite although i often cant cast it fast enough to keep up Heroes do an amazing job at using it. I find Golems + Fiends a good combo in the average area and Vampiric + Shamling + jagged bones a good combo in harder areas

i'll be honest, i take flesh golem simply because i don't have a better elite. i never really went out and capped any of the better ones simply for lack of effort. its ok as far as elites go, nothing great. other ones still outshine it, but if its what you have, might as well use it.

i use jagged bones on my heroes, they spam it like death nova, and if you cast it on a shambling horror you get 2 jagged horrors when it dies.

Because Fiends deal more damage.

I usually end up using tainted flesh or some elite i know i am going to need in that exact mission or area.

Jagged bones + Hero MM = Amazing results

Enough said

i'm not really sure if the damage was changed or if pve is different than pvp but in alliance battles, golems would hit me for about 10 times the damage of horrors. fiends are my favorite but the recast and energy cost are pretty high to rely on them as the mainstay.

the fact that the golem is like lvl24 or something affects the damage too (higher level critters get a damage bonus on things lower level than them and also get a damage reduction bonus from received damage)

i generally use all minions as defense anyway so all of them end up tanking. i tried [skill]Aura of the Lich[/skill] for a while (right after release) because i didn't like how often they would recast [skill]Animate Flesh Golem[/skill] but that seemed to change (plus i just made sure olias had 3 other animate skills).

i remember back in the day people would laugh at a mesmer in pvp that used [skill]Backfire[/skill] but it seems to do the job pretty well in ab.

i'll have to check out [skill]Jagged Bones[/skill], that sounds like a great idea.

I never really played the necro very much so I just threw flesh golem on my MM when there's only one in my party. When I have 2 I use AotL so their BotM heals aren't as painful. I'll have to look into Jagged Bones though.