Hello all. Coming back to playing after many years, used to play a lot really. I used to play a summon necro pretty exclusively and I remember a lot of the necessities for items and such to make that killer Summoner. It'll be a long time before I have the runewords for that but I noticed some changes to CE, PN, and no more Iron Maiden(thank god).

Looking at this for a build(http://www.diablofans.com/page/tools/skill/d2-Necromancer.html&build=kk1111110111910k00k01011101015l0l0l0l0l0lal00

20 Summon Mastery
20 Summon Skele
and only 1 point in the rest of the Summon Tree as Mages blow and the amount of plus skills should give me enough of them for fodder and revives.

Picking up the curses down to Lower Resist, 1 in each, and 5 in Lower Resist(why in a sec).

1 Bone Armor
1 CE
20 Poison Nova
20 Poison Expl
9 Poison Dagger, dumped the rest here for synergies to the new poison nova.

Idea of a Hybrid poison Necro and Summon Necro, gives me a way to really take care of the Phyical Immunes and help with bosses really. At some point when I get the runewords for the merc Conviction may be an option, so I could maybe move points from Lower Resist.

Looking for some advice though, really whether I go this way or go full summoner it probably won't be really hard to farm, it never was before.

Also any rush help would be cool =), I literally am like level 4 atm.

Thanks in advance for any advice, help, whatever....its great to be back. I love this game and really can't wait for D3 as I'm sure we all are.

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Q u o t e:

Idea of a Hybrid poison Necro and Summon Necro, gives me a way to really take care of the Phyical Immunes and help with bosses really. At some point when I get the runewords for the merc Conviction may be an option, so I could maybe move points from Lower Resist.

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Conviction does lower monsters defence and their fire cold and lightning resistances. It has no effect on their poison resistance rendering Conviction useless for a poison user.

While it seems logical to go Summon/Poison to fight PI's it's - beside being stylish - a waste of skill points. Your summons are melee skeletons so beef up their damage with either Amplify Damage or Decrepify. Both curses can remove the physical immunity of most PI's, even bosses. To help your summons with such monsters get CE and Amp to a nice range.

I'm not sure how much +skills you're going to get, but you could probably add 5-10 points in Clay Golem and its synergies as it can take considerably more damage and slow down other monsters. The mages might not be great, but having 3-5 of them as elemental damage dealers makes a difference with Physical Immunes that you can't break. That's where the Lower Resist would come in. Or maybe summoning a Fire Golem when you're in a situation like that.

1 point in all your curses (although I usually don't go any farther than Dim Vision in that tree, it's useful for those camping wisps in the Worldstone Keep). Unless you plan to solo the entire game, even then I find them all useful. Five points in Lower Resist should be fine.

Corpse explosion deals 50% fire damage. Coupled with either Lower Resist or Amplify Damage, it's quite lethal. Most folks put 20 in their Corpse Explosion, I've only got 10 and it works okay for me.

I forgot about conviction not affecting poison resist. Also I meant one in each curse in requirement down to Lower Resist, no more than that.

Honestly before I never needed more than CE, Merc, and melee Skeles/Revives(if that) to kill anything really. The build I came up with still gave me Amp, Decripify, CE and Skeles. I just wanted to add the poison nova to have something I could contribute. I really don't want to put many points in CE or Amp damage as all it does is increase the radius. I never did before, and when you have enough + skills the radius is usually of a nice size anyway, at most a couple in it I suppose.

If no poison nova, not sure what to beef up, I really dislike the mages as they usually turned into nothing more than fodder.

Most choose Bone Spear or Spirit, if one prefers offense. Bone Armor with synergy points in Bone Wall/Prison if you prefer defensive as the synergy bonus is better than the hard points. I have 14 unused points myself and can't figure where I want to spend them.

Poison as a hybrid would be quite novel, but there are perks to the bone skills.

Shoggothrancher, there is a frenzytaur called a Blood Lord that can spawn in the Crystalline Passage or Abbadon. I usually hope I don't find one of those where I can't break their Immunity because they can occasionally outlast revives or a volley of corpse explosions, then heal up and hack their way through my minions. I still have to learn that just because a monster like that is tough, doesn't mean that I'll automatically get a better drop for my troubles than any other boss.

um. As stated above, skeletons combined with amplify damage curse can take down nearly every enemy you can encounter in any gamemode. those few enemies they can't can be beaten with one point in lower resist and CE. You really don't NEED anything outside of those skills.

My own build looks like that:
Dim Vision 20
CE 20
Every other non-ai-curse at 1
Skeletons 20
Skeleton Mastery 20
Every other summon skill except fire golem at 1

that is 95 skillpoints, the rest tend to go into teeth for some light...
equip brings +5 all, +6 summon, +6 skeletons at the moment...

They are pretty?
:P

I find Max Skele mastery, Max Skeleton, Max Golem Mastery, Max Corpse Explosion combined with blessed aim + conviction + amp dmg and a good deal of revived urdars, necros kill everything instantly including bosses. (even ubers can be killed in under 15 seconds of entering uber trist with a well built summoner

On the 1.12 ladder, I made a level 88 hybrid skelemancer/bonemancer.

20 Raise Skeleton
20 Skeleton Mastery
1 Summon Resist
1 Revive
20 Bone Spear
20 Bone Prison
1 Decrepify
1 all prerequisites

156 strength (for Monarch shield)
all other points in vitality

I had an Arm of King Leoric (best summoner wand), Bone runeword armor (+2 Necromancer skills, ~100 mana, +30 all resists), +2 necromancer skill head, summon grand charm, Lore helm, +1 Necromancer skills amulet, White runeword wand (which already had +3 Bone Spear), 4 Perfect Diamond Monarch shield and some other equipment that gave me good resists in Hell (75 fire, 71 cold, 75 lightning, 71 poison). I could raise level 32 skeletons. My might merc had an Insight polearm.

I was helping two other lower level characters kill the Hell Ancients. I had 10 skeletons, 4 mages, a level 10 Clay Golem, and 6 Frenzytaur revives. The combination of a Clay Golem and Decrepify caused maximum slowing (85%). The ancients died well before my revives expired (3 minutes).