Necromancer Q's

[Archon_Wing]

Thanks Archon_Wing! This is actually exactly the kind of information I was looking for, although everyone was very helpful in this thread. I'm tempted to go with max mages, amp, and corpse explosion. I'll prolly max Amp and CE first and foremost. As for Decrepify and Iron Maiden, I can't seem to find any uses for them; maybe in Hell difficulty, IDK. When I get to Nightmare, I'm going with a Thorns merc and I already have an Insight polearm for him; I'm going to cast Amp on everything and CE bodies for maximum damage. Sounds good in theory, but we will see. I hope I can eventually get a Beast for my necro so he can also have a Grissly.

You don't need to max out amp. I personally found it ok with 1 point and plus skills, and adding a few points gives you a pretty big radius already. Decrep is useful against bosses. Since you're playing hardcore, you'll need it for ancients in nightmare and hell.

Might or blessed aim is better than thorns imo since monsters do little damage compared to their health, and of course damage return only works for physical attacks.

Beast would definitely give you a huge damage boost, but it is quite expensive and I'm not sure you trust pubbies with trading that kind of stuff.