Summoner Necromancer Build Skills for Diablo 2 Resurrected

1. 1 point to all prerequisites
2. 20 points to Raise Skeleton — Max immediately, required
3. 20 points to Skeleton Mastery — 1 point immediately, then max after Raise Skeleton, required
4. 1 point to Clay Golem — 1 point immediately, required
5. 1+ points to Corpse Explosion — Area of effect damage to support your Minions, required
6. 1 point to Summon Resist — Resistances for Minions, can respec out of points later on, required
7. 1 point to Amplify Damage — Main damage curse for your Minions, required
8. 1 point to Decrepify — Main survivability curse for your Minions, required
9. 1+ points to Revive — Supplemental Minion, optional
10. 1 point to Iron Maiden — Useful for killing Bosses in normal, optional
11. 1 point to Life Tap — Improves survivability for Minions and melee party members, optional
12. 1 point to Bone Armor — Can be helpful to have a little extra physical Damage armor, optional

Raise Skeleton is the core skill of the Summon Necromancer. Individually weak, Necroskeletons find both strength and safety in numbers. As such, your most important task is to ensure that you always raise as many Necroskeletons as allowed by the skill. Even in large numbers, however, unsupported Necroskeletons are rarely effective; as their master, you must assist them in combat through various offensive and defensive spells, which will be discussed below. Ensuring their survival — generally achieved by killing quickly rather than protecting them — is particularly important against Bosses and other difficult monsters, as Necroskeletons can only be raised from fresh corpses. Losing all Necroskeletons in an area with no corpses will leave the Summoner with little hope of progressing. In such situations, you can always use a Scroll of Town Portal and a Waypoint back to an easy area so as to raise new Necroskeletons from weak enemies, but this process is time-consuming.

Amplify Damage, Decrepify, and Corpse Explosion are your main support skills for your Necroskeletons, to be used when you do not need to raise new ones.

Amplify Damage is a powerful offensive debuff that doubles the amount of Physical damage taken by all enemies in a very large area of effect. It is generally used against hordes of weaker monsters to improve the killing speed of your Necroskeletons and Revives. Allied players, too, benefit greatly from this Curse. Note that Amplify Damage is only 20% effective against monsters who are Immune to Physical damage; this is generally enough to break their Immunity to allow your Necroskeletons to deal damage.

Decrepify is a slightly more defensive debuff that reduces the Physical damage and Resistance, movement speed, and attack speed of all enemies in a very small area of effect. Due to its limited area of effect and short duration, it is generally reserved for Unique monsters with powerful Physical attacks to protect Necroskeletons. Decrepify and Amplify Damage cannot be used simultaneously, and casting one over the other will override the oldest Curse.

Corpse Explosion is a "filler" spell that exploits a fresh corpse to deal damage in a large area of effect based on a percentage of the Life of the detonated corpse. Since this percent-based damage does not increase with additional skill levels, Corpse Explosion it is an excellent skill that can be used by any Necromancer with the investment of a single skill point. Summoners typically cast Corpse Explosion after Amplify Damage or Decrepify as the Physical half of its damage benefits from these Curses. The other half is dealt as Fire damage, which is useful against monsters who are Immune or or otherwise resistant to Physical damage. Before casting Corpse Explosion, make sure that you will not need the corpses in the near future to raise new Necroskeletons.

Although the weakest Golem at first glance from a raw statistical perspective, the Clay Golem is prised not for its power, but for its ability to Slow enemies on hit, which reduces their global speed much like Decrepify. As both effects do stack, a single hit from a Clay Golem against a Decrepified target is an effective way to control it. The other Golems — Blood Golem, Iron Golem, and Fire Golem carry particular effects that are not nearly as useful, even if they are more powerful in general. Note that you may only summon one Golem, which is why you must choose.

Although they may seem like a natural addition to a summoned army, Raise Skeletal Mages are actually significantly weaker than their Raise Skeleton counterparts. Their Life, in particular, is so low that they must constantly be replaced. Their damage, too, is limited, and their elemental attacks do not benefit from Amplify Damage or Decrepify.

Revive temporarily raises a slain monster and provides it with a stat increase. Unlike Raise Skeleton, the revived monster does not turn into a Necroskeleton, instead keeping the form it had in life. Revive may be treated as a filler skill, much like Corpse Explosion, that should however be used on powerful monsters. Ranged casters are particularly good targets for Revive as they will not compete with your melee Necroskeletons for space in combat. Further, reviving Minions, Champions, or Unique monsters retains some of their special bonuses, making them a priority to Revive.

Enigma is a key item for the Summoner due to the Teleport skill it provides. When teleporting, all Minions are instantly moved to the location of the caster. This is extremely useful offensively and defensively to reposition Minions instantly to better attack enemies or keep them out of danger.

Since Auras such as Might affect Minions, Summoners will find any item that carries a permanent Aura on equip valuable. Desert Guard Mercenaries hired in Act 2, too, carry Auras, making them a natural choice for such Necromancers.

The following section discusses how many attribute points should be allocated to each of the primary stats.

Enough for gear — For a Summoner using a Spirit Monarch, this will be 156 Strength as that is usually the highest Strength requirement for commonly used gear. If choosing to use another shield with lower Strength requirements, then just adjust your Strength to that value. This number always changes based on the gear you are using, though, so make sure to always double check the requirements for each piece of gear you have as well as how much Strength each piece will provide once equipped.

Enough for Gear — Dexterity is great for increasing Block Chance, particularly with Homunculus, but if you are not planning on investing points to max that out, it is often not worth taking any additional Dexterity, as the return on Defense is very low.

Everything else into Vitality — 250+ points. Every excess attribute point should be allocated to Vitality, as long as you can meet the Strength and Dexterity requirements of your items by the time you wish to equip them. Not only does this increase your Life total, but this also increases the chance for Healing Potions to crit, doubling their healing output. Further, additional Life reduces the chance that you will be put into hit recovery.

Nothing — Allocating attribute points to Energy in a final build is universally considered sub-par for almost every character due to the widespread availability of Mana Potions. While leveling, if you find yourself struggling with Mana you can allocate a few points to Energy that you can then remove with a respec later on.