Version 1.01
Written for Diablo II Patch 1.03

This strategy no longer applies to the latest version of Diablo II. It remains here for archival use only.

Index - Page One

Abstract

Planning the Necromancer
  Attribute Distribution
  Equipment
  Mana Management
  Multiplayer Tactics
  Player vs. Player
  Introduction to Playing Styles

The Summoning Tree
  Raise Skeleton
  Skeleton Mastery
  Clay Golem
  Golem Mastery
  Skeleton Mage
  Blood Golem
  Summon Resist
  Iron Golem
  Fire Golem
  Revive

I. Abstract

This is not a how-to guide.

If you want one, here it is: max iron maiden (IM), max bone spirit (BS), and get as many revives as you need. Throw IM on everything that moves, and revive anything that doesn't. When this doesn't work, spam BS. If you want to be fancy, you can use poison nova to stop monster regen, bone wall against ranged attackers, and TP to town constantly to heal so that you can shoot BS all day. Do this long enough, and you'll be on the ladder. Then you'll assume you have the game completely figured out, get bored, and leave. Good. Good-bye.

My goal in this guide is to provide information for the rest of us: to detail how skills work so that the player is free to make decisions on his own, and create his own way of playing (i.e. his own "playing style"). I make no attempt to be complete or exhaustive: I named this guide the Basic Necro Guide because I believe it is a foundation for understanding necromancers, and nothing more. I've written this guide as a basic reference for to all necromancers, to use in writing guides about or playing characters that are not so basic. This is why I've left the decisions completely up to the players.

When it comes to guides, newbies are usually the ones who need them the most. I've attempted to accommodate newbies by making hopefully helpful commentaries along with my analyses and providing links where they can find additional information. In particular, this guide is meant to supplement, and not replace, the Chaos Sanctuary. If you are new to necros, you'll want to read the necromancer information in there first before reading this guide.

Good luck with your necromancer.

II. Planning the Necromancer

A. Attribute Distribution
B. Equipment
C. Mana Management
D. Multiplayer Tactics
E. Player vs. Player
F. Introduction to Playing Styles

Note that this is a strategy and tactics guide, not a statistics compendium. For basic necromancer stats, please refer to the Chaos Sanctuary.

A. Attribute Distribution

1. Strength:

Other than combat necros, the necromancer needs strength solely to meet the requirements on various items. How many attribute points one invests into strength is purely a matter of personal preference; however, since necromancers have no DR enhancing skills and since direct combat is unnecessary for (and in fact avoided by) the typical necro, increasing one's strength solely for the sake of maximizing one's DR via more heavily armored equipment is not the most efficient way to increase a necro's defensive capabilities. To boost his defenses, a necro should instead divert the extra strength points to vitality, and/or focus on using equipment to increase his hp, blocking percentage, and resistances. Without DR enhancing skills, the necro is simply unable to reach the high levels of DR needed to compensate for the 4x monster AR and the inaccurate (and misleading) monster hit percentage on the character screen.

However, strength is still extremely important to a necromancer for wearing certain equipment, especially in the case of uniques. Some common "strength landmark" items for which necros will increase their strength to wear include Frostburn (60 str), Sigon's Guard and/or triple-diamond tower shield (75 str), Goldskin (80 str), and Silks of the Victor (100 str). Note that wearing any and all of these listed items are strictly optional and their bonuses can range from somewhat helpful to extremely helpful depending on your setup, so you should by no means automatically set yourself upon attaining enough strength to wear these items. Also, there are many extremely useful items that require much less strength than the ones listed here, and the list above only serves to describe the strength requirements on some the more common necromancer equipment. It can be helpful to consult the unique item list at the Chaos Sanctuary and the necromancer equipment page at the Chaos Sanctuary in deciding how much strength your necromancer needs for his equipment. Remember that although the Chaos Sanctuary is the official Diablo 2 strategy site from Blizzard, their equipment suggestions are only suggestions, and you should feel free to deviate from their advice based on your own judgment for your final decision. I personally don't agree with their recommendations myself in many cases, and you should feel free to form your own opinions on this subject.

Since strength is necessary for proper equipping of items, it is prudent to have enough unmodified (i.e. while naked) strength to fully equip anything you wear to prevent complications in equipping your items during corpse retrievals.

My Slant: If you're unsure with where to start from in terms of strength, 60 will allow you to wear a wide variety of items, while 75 allows your necromancer to wear tower shields for a significant boost to his blocking. Feel free to pump it higher if you find something really tasty for your necro to wear, but keep in mind that strength investment is permanent, so you might regret it later. When in doubt, your necromancer should have less strength than he needs, since it's always possible to add more to strength with a later level-up, but any points already put into strength have been irreversibly allocated. Keep in mind, however, that using modified strength to wear equipment can result in complications during corpse retrievals, although this can be somewhat mitigated by clearing as much space as possible from your inventory during corpse retrieval runs, especially by storing your potions in a backup belt. Putting massive points into strength to raise your necro's DR with the best exceptional items is a pure waste of points, since he'll benefit much more defensively from the additional hp with those same points into vitality.

2. Dexterity:

Other than in the case of combat necros, dexterity is completely unneeded for the necromancer. The DR increase for dexterity is even less efficient than the possible DR increase from armors with higher strength, and the AR increase from additional dexterity goes unused by the typical spell-casting necromancer. Although it may be tempting to increase dexterity for the sake of wearing certain uniques (most notably Culwen's Point and Spectral Shard), necromancer wands can eventually have qualities which far exceed those found on these items, without requiring unnecessary attribute investment into dexterity.

My Slant: Unless you have a very, very good reason to increase your dexterity, it's best to allocate nothing here and leave it at its starting value.

3. Vitality:

Of all 5 classes, the necromancer has the highest chance of survival with a minimal amount of vitality, thanks to his many minions. Contrary to popular belief, however, this does not automatically make vitality worthless for a necro. It is true that along with sorceresses, necromancers gain the least amount of hp per point of vitality (2 points), although they do receive a free stamina boost (1 point). However, this is the same amount of mana a necro gains per point of energy (2 points) without a free stamina bonus. Also, equipment will give better bonuses for mana (2 sets of affixes and percentage multipliers on certain uniques) than for hp (1 set of affixes), so it usually is easier to raise hp with vitality than to raise mana with energy. Hence, while vitality is not the most important attribute for the typical necro, points into vitality are certainly not a complete waste as some are inclined to believe, although it is certainly not wise to simply sacrifice energy for vitality.

Monsters and characters become hit-stunned (that is, enter their extended "hit" animations) by physical attacks which deal more than 1/12 of their maximum health. This is factored in before damage is reduced by energy shield (so energy shield will not reduce stun), although necros do not have the luxury of that spell. Hence, a high vitality value can be useful for bolstering hp high enough to avoid hit-stun earlier in the game, and against the weakest denizens of Hell difficulty later on.

The vitality of a character determines his chance of receiving double healing from a health potion. This chance of "critial heal" is approximately Vit/4 for vitality less than 200. For more information, refer to the Chaos Sanctuary.

My Slant: Unless they are being saved for some reason, it's a good idea to dump any otherwise unused attribute points into vitality. The less hp your necromancer has, the better the chance that each additional point into vitality will give him enough hp to survive another hit. However, do not allocate points into vitality when the attribute points are needed elsewhere, notably for strength (to wear equipment) and energy (when mana reserves are constantly being depleted). Simply put, your necro can have too much strength and energy--anything that goes unused is wasted--but there's no such thing as too much vitality. This is not a license to madly pump vitality, since your necro will need a significant pool of mana: this is assurance that it's fine to add points to vitality to prolong your necro's life when you see fit, without feeling obligated to devote every single point into energy. Also, consider that a character with 200 Vit and 200 Nrg makes better use of health and mana potions than a character with 50 Vit and 350 Nrg, due to the diminishing returns for critical healing for values over 200.

4. Energy:

As a spell-caster, energy is rightfully the necromancer's most important attribute. Points into energy to boost a necro's mana supply are especially important since mana regeneration is based directly on his maximum mana, and this factor is compounded by his lack of the sorceress' warmth to help his regenerative abilities. It is important early on to increase your necro's mana pool to a reasonable size by devoting enough points into energy so that he can cast enough spells to be effective and to improve his mana regeneration in order to decrease his reliance on mana potions. However, additional points into energy may or may not be needed later on (depending on your playing style), due to varying degrees of mana-effective use of minions and curses, the sum of mana from high number of level-ups (2 mana per level), and the abundance of mana bonuses on powerful items, especially the percentage-based mana bonuses on certain uniques. Blindly dumping points into energy is as great of a sin as not allocating enough points here, although it is important to always keep in mind that energy is the most important attribute for the typical necromancer.

The energy of a character determines his chance of receiving double healing from a mana potion. This chance of "critical heal" is approximately Nrg/4 for energy less than 200. For more information, refer to the Chaos Sanctuary.

My Slant: In the early going, increasing energy is crucial since each additional point of mana corresponds to a relatively high percentage increase. However, energy investment at higher clvls (character levels) should be tailored according to need. If your necromancer is constantly running low on mana, then you obviously need to continuing pumping points into his energy. If your necro never runs out of mana though, then it's much more effective to spend the attribute points elsewhere (on strength or vitality), especially since he will still gain 2 points of mana per level-up. Observe your necro's mana expenditure carefully to determine how many more points into energy he needs, and keep in mind the effects that Frostburn, Stones of Jordan, and/or items with a Wyrm's modifier can have on his mana pool. There is no numerical "best" value for all necros in all situations (even infinite mana is useless if your necro is dead), so use your best judgment in your necro's attribute allocations--but never forget that necromancers need mana to fight and survive, and yours will likely require a substantial amount to do so.

Novice spellcasters can find additional discussion of attribute distribution in VenomousVixen's Complete Sorceress Guide.

B. Equipment

Much of the specific equipment choices and tradeoffs I leave for your own personal preference, since it's impossible to make judgments on which items are best for all characters. In my opinion, your actual item choices are much less interesting and relevant than the reasoning behind these choices. Although there are accepted "sets" of useful items for necromancers, consider carefully the choices involved, since I personally don't agree with conventional wisdom in many cases. In considering equipment modifiers, the most important equipment modifiers typically for a necro are: +to all skills, +hp, +mana, and +resistances. These are usually the modifiers that should be weighed most heavily in evaluating your necro's equipment, whether they are magical, rare, set, or unique. Depending on your setup, other modifiers such as +casting rate and DR may also be helpful.

For a list of items and item modifiers to consider, the following pages from the Chaos Sanctuary contain useful references:

Items (General)  Items (Prefixes)  Items (Suffixes)  Items (Uniques)  Necromancer Items

Remember when gambling for uniques with a Realm character to do so only in a private passworded game, to absolutely eliminate the unique exclusion factor. This only works when your character does not already possess the unique he is gambling for.

For necromancers, wands with +skills (specific skills) can be useful to test out various spells without spending any skill points on the spell itself or on its prerequisites. It is preferable to make actual skill investments to long-term skills, however, to allow for greater flexibility with equipment.

It is important to keep in mind the opportunity cost of your necro's equipment selection. While +1 to all skills is an obviously extremely powerful modifier, consider the hp, mana, and resists (as well as other modifiers) which your necro might be giving up in that equipment slot by wearing it. For example, a Summoner's amulet is not automatically better than a rare amulet with the Wyrm's, Amber's, of the Colossus, and of the Apprentice affixes; the opportunity cost between the two amulets must be considered even though the +1 to all skills is generally considered the "best" modifier out of this group. This concept applies even to the special modifiers found only on uniques.

Novice spellcasters can find additional discussion of equipment in VenomousVixen's Complete Sorceress Guide.

My Slant: The "value" of the equipment modifiers is highly dependent on your necro's current stats. A Wyrm's item is obviously more important for a necro with 100 mana than a necro with 900 mana, and +1 to all skills is more important to someone without any than someone who already has +7 to all skills total. Even though the item modifiers themselves do not change as your necromancer grows (except for percentage-based ones), how valuable and necessary they are to your necro does change depending on your necro's shifting strengths and weaknesses compared to his surroundings. Because of this, a large boost to help patch your necromancer's weaknesses is generally better than a relatively slight bonus to his strengths. This is especially true in the case of "less important" necro stats such as hp and resistances: even though it would be foolhardy to sacrifice everything to maximize these values, it is equally so to completely disregard them. This is why it is important to look for at least some hp and resistances in your necro's equipment, since necromancers typically are really hurting in these categories and it doesn't take much to raise them to more reasonable values. Just because necros need hp and resistances less than any other class (due to their minions) doesn't mean they don't need them at all--they obey the same basic rules of combat in terms of hp and resistances as everyone else. In other words, getting as many +1 skills at all costs isn't a very good idea: it works in theory, but lag happens, and believing that defenses don't matter since "if monsters hit me I'll die anyways" is a completely self-fulfilling prophecy.

C. Mana Management

Mana works much the same with necromancers as it does with other classes. The main differences are that necromancers gain more mana per level-up and per point of energy than most classes; necromancers tend to cast more spells than all classes other than the sorceress; and unlike the sorceress, necromancers do not have the warmth skill to directly affect their mana regeneration using skill points. (They can, however, moderate their mana usage through tactical skill selection and usage.) There are two related components to the amount of mana available to any character: maximum mana and mana regeneration. Maximum mana is accurately displayed on your character screen, but the actual values for mana regeneration are not given and must be calculated by the player. If you do not wish to follow the more detailed discussion below, simply keep this concept in mind:

• The more maximum mana a character has, the faster it regenerates.

However, what exactly are the relationships between maximum mana and mana regeneration?

The base mana regeneration rate is calculated from the value for the maximum mana. In other words, increasing maximum mana will proportionally increase the mana regeneration rate. Hence, the best way to increase overall mana supply is by increasing max mana, especially by using uniques with a percentage-based modifier ("maximum mana xx%" found on Frostburn gauntlets and Stone of Jordan ring), since this increases both your necro's max mana and the effective mana/second regeneration rate by the same percentage (but this does not affect how fast the relative rate at which the entire mana ball fills). This can also be accomplished to a lesser degree by using +mana items and by adding more points into energy, and doing so will amplify the effects of the percentage-based maximum mana modifiers. The alternate way of increasing a character's mana regeneration rate (and hence the supply of available mana) is to increase the rate at which the whole mana ball refills ("mana regeneration xx%" modifier), which can be found on Heavenly Garb (light plate), Magefist (light gauntlets), Lenmyo (sash), and Skull Splitter (military pick). The relationships governing mana regeneration can be approximated by the following equation:

max_mana * [ ( 100 + "+%mana_regen" ) /100 ] /120

The results are expressed in terms of mana per second. For example, with 1200 maximum mana and +50% mana regeneration, the equation above gives us the following value for mana regeneration:

1200 * [ (100+50) /100 ] /120 = 15 mana/sec

Use this equation to calculate a very close approximation as to precisely how much the different combinations of equipment changes will affect your character's mana regeneration. For computational ease, the equation has been simplified from the full equation to ignore the way truncating and framerate affects the actual regeneration rate, which results in a very small error. The actual equation can be found on the Chaos Sanctuary. Feel free to use that equation instead if a very high degree of precision is needed for a specific reason.

As a footnote, the equation for how fast the entire mana ball refills is roughly the following:

120 / [ ( 100 + "+%mana_regen" ) /100 ]

The answer is expressed in seconds. Hence, with a 20% mana regeneration, the time it takes for the mana ball to refill to full from completely empty is:

120 / [ (100+20) /100 ] = 100 sec

With no mana regeneration bonus, it takes 120 seconds to fully regenerate the mana ball, regardless of the max mana value. At extremely low clvls (character levels), this value will be off due to truncated numbers. Note that each successive percentage point of mana regeneration bonus from items and from warmth has a diminishing effect on how effective it is in lowering the time it takes to refill the mana ball, even though it continues to increase the actual mana per second regeneration rate linearly.

Lastly, remember that when mana regeneration becomes high enough so that most of the mana ball constantly remains unused, this is a sign that mana and energy have been emphasized too much in equipment and attribute distribution, respectively. This is also a sign that your character needs less +mana regeneration items (and less warmth, in the case of the sorceress) than he or she already has at the moment.

Novice spellcasters can find additional discussion of mana and mana regeneration in VenomousVixen's Complete Sorceress Guide. Also, mana regeneration values can be quickly calculated using AEnigma's Mana Calculator at the Lurker Lounge.

My Slant: Obviously, Frostburn and Stone(s) of Jordan are the best items for both mana and mana regen at the higher levels.

D. Multiplayer Tactics

The wide variety of skills in the necromancer's arsenal adapt themselves well to multiplayer, especially those found in the Summoning tree and the Curses tree. There are far, far too many skill combinations across the five classes to be adequately covered within the scope of the BNG, and their use is limited only by playing experience, creativity, and effectiveness of cooperation between the players. Considering the quirky programming nature of Diablo 1, it is safe to assume that in Diablo 2, there will be at least a similar amount of strangely and/or overwhelmingly effective combinations being discovered as time goes on. My main focus here will be to cover how necromancer skills can be used independently and with other necro skills; I leave the possibility of using skills between multiple characters to you as the player to explore.

My Slant: Finding "good" multiplayer skill combinations is extremely easy since the diversification of classes allows for easily complementary skills, and multiplayer skill combinations can come without active planning in most cases. Finding the "best" combinations, however, is a completely different story. Have fun experimenting!

E. Player vs. Player

While Player vs. Player combat (PvP) can be an amusing diversion, it will not be covered in the BNG.

My Slant: Diablo 2 character skills are clearly written with the intent of Player vs. Monster combat (PvM) and are not balanced for PvP. This is obvious from the many skills which don't work for PvP at all, and various ways Blizzard has altered the other skills to try to make them somewhat less ridiculous for PvP, such as decreasing thorns and iron maiden damage to 1/10 of their original value and by decreasing weapons damage to 1/2. Trying to fight "fairly" in PvP using a PvM system is ultimately futile. Note that I didn't say PvP doesn't require any skill: I said that PvP is an inaccurate and therefore worthless test of skill due to the inherently flawed (that is, PvM) system. On a somewhat off-topic note: if you like Blizzard games, I'd turn to Starcraft for this type of competitive gaming. Otherwise, I'd look at Quake 3 or Unreal Tournament for head-to-head combat instead of trying to fight "duels" on Diablo 2. Of the two, Q3 has a more balanced weapons system and greater consideration for one-on-one fighting in their map design, although less-demanding gamers (read as: less anal) will find UT to have a higher overall "fun factor" in its play. There are many other games and mods out there, ranging from the Tekken series of games to the Rocket Arena series of mods and the games in many other genres, that are all designed specifically for one-on-one fighting. Diablo 2 isn't one of them, so it's a waste of time trying to prove anything by "dueling" using a fundamentally PvM system for this type of combat.

F. Introduction to Playing Styles

A "playing style" is a descriptive name given to a specific method of planning and playing a character, especially with consideration to strategy, tactics, and role-playing elements. As for the role-playing aspect of developing a playing style, I will be leaving this to the creativity of the individual players; the focus of this guide is on the strategic and tactical aspect of a necromancer character.

The strategic aspect of developing a playing style lies in the planning of attribute distribution, skill choices, and equipment tradeoffs. The tactical aspect of the playing style comes from which skills are actually used, and the methodology surrounding their execution, both of which are heavily influenced by personal preferences and playing skill. The strategic and tactical aspects of one's playing style are interdependent: consider which skills your necro will choose to utilize and the role he will take in combat when making decisions in his character building.

My Slant: Because different people play necros differently (and in fact, skilled necro players can play a wide variety of different necros), there is no single "best" skill distribution or item set for all necros. For example, a Stone of Jordan isn't going to be the best ring for a combat necro, and Summoners are more likely to wear Silks of the Victor over Goldskin compared to other necros since they have a much lesser need for resistances with all their minions. Despite these tradeoffs, some methods of playing necromancers are obviously much easier than other ways, of course; however, true effectiveness is highly situational and dependent on proper execution anyways, and just because something works doesn't automatically make it the absolute best and only way to do things. Therefore, feel free to mix the strategic concepts above with some of the tactical ideas given in the next sections to come up with something you enjoy; some examples of how these concepts merge into discrete playing styles will be given towards the end.

III. The Summoning Tree

This tree is the most popular and oft-used tree among necromancers. For basic statistics and information on the skills in the Summoning Tree, refer to the Chaos Sanctuary. My commentary will assume familiarity with the information presented therein.

Necromancers have a unique intrinsic skill called unsummon, which they can use to instantly destroy any of their own summoned minions should they interfere with his (and his groupmates') mobility.

Keep in mind that golems are mutually exclusive: summoning a new golem of any type will cause the death of the existing one. This can be useful to reposition or heal golems by simply creating them again.

The four bosses at the end of each Act will inflict 10x their physical and poison damage to minions. This includes skeletons, skeletal mages, golems, revives, and hirelings.

A. Raise Skeleton

This is the first spell necromancers have access to, thanks to the wand they all start out with. Suitably enough, the skeleton created using this spell is extremely weak, and will become insufficient even before the end of Act 1 in Normal difficulty unless they've been bolstered using skeleton mastery. As the first minions available to the necromancer they will be of great use in the earliest part of his journeys, but they have one of the highest rates of obsolescence out of any skill in the game.

Despite their glaring weakness, however, there are some useful late-game tactics with skeletons. The most popular one is to use them as a cheap way of rendering corpses unrevivable; in this regard, a low slvl (spell level) raise skeleton is second only to the barbarian's find potion in terms of mana efficiency. They can also be used as cheap extra bodies to help a golem in triggering the iron maiden curse against groups of melee-only monsters in situations before revives are available, especially for necros without bone wall and bone prison in these situations, and can even be used to supplement revives later on for very little mana. Finally, skeletons give monsters additional targets to waste time on while the level is loading in situations like facing Duriel and the stair traps in Act 3. The abundance of +skill levels items later in the game makes using skeletons as level-loading decoys even more effective.

Skeletons have 100% resistance to poison, which is capped at 75% unless otherwise modified. They do not regenerate.

My Slant: A single point here is useful early on, and can be recycled in specific situations later on, especially for low-summoning necros. There's no need to put more than 1 point here; it's much better in the long run to try to augment the spell with wands instead of wasting precious skill points this early on with a spell that has such a high obsolescence factor.

B. Skeleton Mastery

Many necros erroneously believe that skeleton mastery should be quickly maxed since its passive benefits apply not just to skeletons and skeletal mages, but extends to revives as well. Since revives no long gain extra hp per slvl into revive after v1.03, they're even more inclined to spout this as gospel, especially in guides which feature their name. This is utterly unnecessary: although skeletons benefit dramatically from skeleton mastery and skeletal mages somewhat less so, revives improve marginally at best per skill point into this skill. An impossibly strong revive which inflicts 200 damage per attack would only gain 4 more points of damage per slvl into skeleton mastery. Similarly, since revives almost always expire from time limit rather than from hp depletion anyways, expending large numbers of skill points into skeleton mastery to bolster revive hp is not as useful as it appears on paper. Hence, while skeleton mastery does indeed increase the damage and hp of revives by a scalable percentage, it remains an inefficient way of doing so with respect to skill points simply because of its miniscule increases to damage and limited usefulness of additional revive hp compared to time constraints.

Skeleton mastery is much more successful at improving skeletons and skeletal mages, however. The point-based increases in skeleton strength significantly improves upon the puny base numbers of the skeleton and the skeletal mage.

My Slant: One point here is nice for boosting skeletons very early on, and allows for necros to take advantage of +all skills equipment to multiply the effectiveness of this single skill point. Low or non-summoning necros can very easily do without any skill points here at all, since this skill is nothing more than a small passive bonus; conversely, extremely high-level Summoners without better skills to build up are likely to eventually make some investment here as well. Necros who do not plan to venture out of Normal difficulty should feel free to invest here as they see fit, but they are likely to find themselves short on skill points in the later difficulties if they choose to continue in this way. This is not a skill to brainlessly pump: even though it does give some concrete (if limited) benefits, chances are that the same skill points applied elsewhere will have better long-term uses. Put multiple points here only when you have a good reason to.

C. Clay Golem

The basic golem, clay golems are cheap, weak, and made obsolete by the availability of later golems. Since it is the only golem to gain additional hp with each slvl into the skill, some have speculated that it is possible to create a "supergolem" by supplementing its hp at higher slvls with golem mastery; however, the bonus for golem mastery is based only on the clay golem's base hp (100 hp) and does not apply to its hp bonus per slvl (+35 hp). Hence, an slvl 20 clay golem with slvl 20 golem mastery is only 1165 hp, instead of 3825 hp.

However, the low cost of clay golems can be taken advantage of in certain late-game situations involving iron maiden. For low-summoning necros without heavy investment into golem mastery, clay golems are more mana-effective for repeated resummons to retrigger iron maiden in situations where bosses (such as Act Bosses or Quest Uniques like Hephasto) can one-hit kill any golem, although fire golems are preferable for this if mana allows. Similarly, for a necro who has chosen not to delve deeply into the Summoning tree, a simple clay golem provides more hp for less mana than either bone wall or bone prison (except at high slvls). Finally, clay golems are a cheap and risk-free way to quickly summon a target to a specific location in difficult-to-maneuver terrain, such as in the Maggot Lair or in the Arcane Sanctuary.

My Slant: Like many other early skills, clay golems are quickly made obsolete for general use once later golem skills come into play. Thus, most necros will only want a single point invested here as a prerequisite. Since there is a considerable stretch between clvl 6 for clay golem and clvl 18 for blood golem, however, it can be especially helpful here to supplement clay golem (and/or golem mastery) in these levels with a wand and resist the temptation to squander any more points here. The various uses for clay golems in the later difficulties revolve around their cheap cost anyways, so it's best to simply leave it at slvl 1.

D. Golem Mastery:

A favorite passive skill among Summoners, golem mastery is the only way to boost hp for non-clay golems (although it boosts the clay golem's hp as well). Since golems are typically more useful for their hp than for the damage they actually inflict, this is the best way to increase the usefulness of individual golems in most cases.

Although there is little debate on whether or not golem mastery is useful, what is less clear is exactly how useful this skill is in terms of the skill points invested. Since golems are often resummoned to reposition them in certain terrain or to quickly use them as an animated shield for the necro, it may not be necessary to absolutely maximize each golem's effectiveness at the cost of skill points. Golem mastery is best thought of as a mana-saving and time-saving skill at the cost of skill points: outside of the reagent cost of iron golems, points into golem mastery simply reduces the need to recast golems. In considering the tradeoffs between time, mana, and skill points involved with investing into this skill, it is important to consider that golem hp scales up proportionally to number of people in the game.

My Slant: Summoners who have set aside skill points specifically towards summoning will probably spend at least some of them here to reduce the mana and casting time cost involved in resummoning golems, although this is much less necessary in multiplayer than in single player from the hp scaling. Low or non-summoning necros can do easily without this skill entirely, depending on how they choose to use their golems. For any golem-using necromancer, however, I think it's a good idea to put a single point into it to get the large boost from +all skills items, and more points can be added later on if there are spare points lying around.

E. Skeletal Mage

For Summoners who don't play to leave Normal difficulty, skeletal mages will form the backbone of their army. Some believe that since skeletal mages have ranged attacks, they will stay viable across all three difficulties as long as they are kept out of melee combat. However, the damage inflicted by skeletal mages becomes minimal compared to monster hp and increased resistances in later difficulties, especially in multiplayer games. Hence, like skeleton mastery, skeletal mages later on in the game are theoretically useful but practically inefficient. Certainly, skeletal mages are useful for the entire game in that investing points into and using skeletal mages is better than not using these points at all; however, with most playing styles these skill points can be used more effectively when applied elsewhere in late-game situations.

Skeletal mages have the following stats:
 
Fire: 2-6 damage, +2/level of skeleton mastery
Cold: 1-4 damage, +1/level
Lightning: 1-7 damage, +1/level
Poison: 6-6 damage, +1/level
 
For the cold skeletal mage, chill length starts at 1 second and increases 1 second per level.

Skeleton mastery and lower resist can dramatically improve the effectiveness of skeletal mages. It is best to combine them with a strong golem to draw melee attention away from them, although combat necros can use themselves as decoys for their mages. Dim vision will also allow skeletal mages to fire freely at monsters from a safe distance. Combining skeletal mages with revives results in the revives doing the vast majority of the damage as the game progresses.

Skeletal mages have 100% resistance to poison, which is capped at 75% unless otherwise modified. They do not regenerate.

My Slant: I've found that running a horde of skeletal mages across Normal difficulty is one of the most fun ways to play a Summoner, since their ranged attack proves brutal in large numbers. Having said that, however, monster hp rises so dramatically later on that skeletal mages are just much too slow in taking them down (and they have to be protected by other minions and/or curses the whole time, since their hp doesn't increase with any skill). For Summoners intending to delve into Hell, a single point as a prerequisite to revive is the optimal long-term investment, and this should be augmented by wands when necessary. Low or no minion necros will have little reason to invest anything here other than as a prerequisite to revive, if they choose to travel this far down this tree.

F. Blood Golem

Blood golem and its life stealing works in unexpected (and quite possibly bugged) ways. For an explanation, refer to the Chaos Sanctuary.

As a much-needed upgrade to the clay golem, blood golems deal out appreciably more melee damage to make them useful early on. The hp loss from damage taken by the blood golem cannot be prevented, although this can only reduce the necro's hp down to 1 and cannot be directly lethal (obviously, this is very indirectly lethal). Although its life stealing ability makes the blood golem useful one-on-one, its continuous life loss against a group of monster turns into a serious liability later on against overwhelmingly superior monsters. Therefore, in the later difficulties, it is far safer to use the later golems available to the necromancer, the iron or the fire golem. Because of this, the necromancer should generally avoid having its blood golem fight unassisted against large groups of strong monsters.

The exception to this, of course, is the widely-known BG/IM (blood golem and iron maiden) bug. The ability of the blood golem to steal life from reflected damage is clearly an unintentional side effect, since players cannot steal life from thorns or iron maiden regardless of how much life and mana steal equipment they are using. A mod maker may be able to fix this bug by changing thorns and iron maiden to magical damage (if it isn't already) since life and mana steal only works with physical damage, although this is purely speculation on my part. In any case, there are many strategic and tactical ways to improve upon the standard BG/IM model to make it more effective, but these will not be discussed since they clearly lie in the realm of bug exploitation.

Blizzard has acknowledged the existence of this "unintended feature" [sic], although it remains to be seen whether they will actually fix such a widely-exploited bug despite months of rumors suggesting its inevitability.

Blood golems have 50% resistance to poison. They regenerate much, much slower compared to the other golems (which all regenerate normally), and effectively does not regenerate at all.

For a commentary on the BG/IM bug, refer to the Appendix.

My Slant: Outside of by exploiting the aforementioned bug, blood golem is generally made obsolete by fire golem, especially with the attack power of monsters in later difficulties. Hence, there's very little reason to invest any more than a single point here if your necro will be continuing on long enough to acquire the later golems. The increased life stealing has considerably diminishing returns to discourage heavy investment here. A low or non-summoning necro has little reason to upgrade to blood golem other than as a prerequisite, since the clay golem's cheap cost and risk-free deployment is preferred in almost all situations later in the game.

G. Summon Resist

This is a generally useful passive to have, but its diminishing returns discourages high investment into this skill. This will improve the fire, ice, lightning, and poison resistances of the necromancer's summoned minions.

When considering how much investment into summon resist is necessary, keep in mind that a necro's minions do not suffer the same resistance penalties as the necro himself does at the later difficulty levels.

Summon resist will proportionally decrease a fire golem's ability to heal itself from hostile fire attacks.

My Slant: Summon resist is a useful but not terribly exciting or interesting passive for the necro. A single point will work well with +all skills equipment for Summoners, although low or non-summoning necros might skip this skill altogether. I wouldn't add more than one point here, since late-game necro minions typically do not have too many problems with longevity with respect to enemy damage. With only very few exceptions, losing too many minions to elemental damage is usually due to a tactical error that needs to be identified, rather than compensated for by trying to wastefully travel too far up a diminishing returns skill.

H. Iron Golem

When creating iron golems, it is important to note that all non-magical properties of the item used are ignored, including base item type and item quality. Hence, powerful magical, rare, and unique modifiers on an otherwise worthless base item make excellent iron golem components. Along the same vein, cracked and superior items result in the same golem, regardless of base item type. Certain modifiers work especially well with the iron golem: for example, the iron golem created from an Iceblink (splint mail) will freeze enemies with every attack. Some modifiers, such as +% chance to finding magical items, will not be carried over onto the iron golem.

Note that these modifiers are built upon the iron golem's base stats, and not the base stats of the item. An iron golem made from a Merciless ancient sword, for example, will not inflict 34-81 damage per attack like the original sword, but 13-36 instead (from 7-19 base damage).

The barbarian's find item skill is useful for providing the necromancer with enough resources for an almost endless supply of non-enhanced iron golems from non-magical items.

Necromancers intending to make heavy use of iron golems may wish to carry a ready supply of daggers as spell components, due to their small size. They can be dropped on the ground in preparation for large battles, so that new iron golems can be created immediately.

Iron golems do not return the same amount of damage if the target of their returned damage is a player. While they return 150% + 15%/slvl against monsters, they return 20% + 2%/slvl against players. This is farther halved for PvP. The damage returned by iron golem is considered physical damage, and will be modified by physical resistance.

My Slant: For necromancers who wish to utilize a wide variety of curses in combat, the iron golem's strong melee abilities can be useful in allowing the necro not to be forced to constantly support him with certain curses. Although the increase per slvl on the damage returned is lower than either thorns or iron maiden, it makes iron golem the most worthwhile of the 4 golems to invest heavily into. For most necros, fire golem will be a better all-around choice (not including a certain bug) due to its versatility and ease of summoning; however, the iron golem can still be useful in the right situations, and improves dramatically with specialization. Note that it is fairly easy to reach slvl 2 with +skills equipment for the damage reflecting ability, so it can still be quite useful with only a single point spent in learning the skill.

I. Fire Golem

Of all the golems, the fire golem has the most dramatic mana increase per slvl. So why would anyone put additional points into it? Those who do so for the increased melee damage are newbies for the most part, since the fire golem deals fairly insignificant damage compared to skills like corpse explosion, bone spirit, and iron maiden. However, what is important is that the radius of the fire golem's holy fire ability increases by slvls (the damage increase is even more irrelevant); enemies hit by the holy fire will attack the fire golem unless they happen to run across another minion or party member first. Thus, additional skill points into fire golem makes it more effective at tanking because it becomes better at drawing enemy attention towards itself, and hence away from the necromancer. This is exactly what a tank should do.

A lesser-known ability of the fire golem is that it will explode in a fireball-type explosion whenever it is destroyed. Note that this occurs not only when it has taken lethal damage, but also when it has been unsummoned or replaced by another golem, and thus chain-casting fire golems will create a series of explosions as each golem is replaced. An exploding fire golem deals 200 damage, regardless of the slvl of fire golem or golem mastery, as well as the clvl of the necromancer or the difficulty of the game. Half of this damage (100 points) is dealt as physical damage, while the other half (100 damage) is dealt as fire damage. Therefore, it can be helpful to think of the fire golem as a walking, tanking, healing, and fighting fireball--one which can be detonated at command.

My Slant: Fire golems are the most useful and versatile golems in the hands of a skilled necromancer. (This is without factoring in a certain bug, of course.) Notice that I didn't say "best": the best golem is the right golem in the right situation. A cheap clay golem is the best golem to trigger iron maidens when all the golems are being one-shot killed, for example. However, the fire golem has more potential uses than other golems, simply because it has many more abilities. It's a good idea to spend one point here to use fire golem as the default "summon anywhere" golem (unless you have no qualms with blood golem and bug exploitation), but it's important to note the steeply rising mana cost before blinding pumping fire golem higher. Fire golems are invaluable to those playing an Arty because of their tanking ability (from holy fire), and also due to the fact that an Arty typically has enough mana both to invest into this golem (despite the mana cost) and to cast it as often as necessary.

J. Revive

Quite simply, revive is the ultimate summoning spell. It is one of the two Uberspells for the necromancer--the other being iron maiden--and the fact that these two spells complement each other so well only magnifies their power even more. Revive has already been nerfed twice: the mana cost decrease per slvl was removed in v1.01, and the additional hp per slvl was removed in v1.03. Nevertheless, this skill is still strong enough that the most popular necro playing style (Summoner) is based largely on the merits of this skill.

The Chaos Sanctuary has fairly extensive information on revive; I would recommend carefully reading over the description there on revive. Revives are actually too smart compared to the necromancer's other minions; unlike skeletons and golems, they don't simply march toward the enemy and begin to melee, but instead they execute the same behavioral commands as when they were living (except for certain things like reviving corpses). Having their revives hang back to cast spells, roaming around for corpses to devour, and fleeing when injured has annoyed countless novice necromancers about how "dumb" revives are and how they don't immediately charge into the fray as a supposedly enlightened minion should. Hence, for "smart" revives which will brainlessly march into combat, a necro should revive simple melee attackers (without behavioral commands) with high movement rates. For example, specters make excellent revives in the Arcane Sanctuary because their movement rate is not hindered by terrain; however, fetishes are less useful as revives despite their high speed since they will employ hit-and-run behavior instead of simply standing there to fight. The case of "smart" revives versus "dumb" revives is a matter of choice on the necromancer's part. Revives are only as smart as the necro who chose to revive them instead of other corpses, and just because a necro can revive a corpse doesn't mean he'll know what to do with the revive.

Also note that it can be effective to match revives with a specific necromancer's strengths. For example, a necromancer which has invested into lower resist may want to focus on reviving spellcasting monsters.

Similar to raise skeleton and raise skeletal mage, additional slvls of revive allows for the control of more revives. Unlike the earlier skills, however, revive does not increase in mana cost with higher slvls, thus allowing for some Summoners to bolster the slvl of their revive to extremely high levels in order to easily and effortlessly revive every single corpse which falls. Mod makers may wish to add a mana penalty per slvl to bring it in line with the other two corpse-raising skills to discourage mass pumping of revive, such as 5 mana/slvl. Making hp and/or duration based on a combination of slvl, level difference, and random chance may help as well, although this will probably require more than simple MPQ editing.

My Slant: I think Blizzard's history of nerfing revive says everything about how strong this skill is. How many points should be devoted here is decided purely by taste, but keep in mind that each +all skills item will allow for the control of another revive. For example, a low-summoning Arty might build up the prerequisites to get a single point into revive, then let his +all skills items take care of the rest. Typically, Summoners will have at least a few points into this skill, and some go as far as pumping revive to the max. Given the scalability of this skill and the high stats of monsters in Hell difficulty, it's not too hard to figure out that being able to fully convert these monster for 3 minutes is extremely powerful (considering that paladin conversions do not follow the group and are risky to execute). This is definitely a skill that any necromancer would need a good reason to completely omit.