I’m sure somebody out there tried something similar to anything I can think of at some point, but there’s plenty of things left to experiment with. Some general necro tips to give ideas:
Most necro builds need only worry about resists and + skills. Only bone-focused need FCR. Only wacky fringe melee builds need worry about anything else.
1 skeleton Mastery, 20 skeletons is pretty damned good by itself. You’ll want more mastery to kill fast with skeletons but for hybrid builds, that’s a lot of bouncers that will kill mobs with enough + skills and amp damage. 40 in skeletons leaves a perfectly powerful source of physical damage with tons of room for hybridization. Add 3 to both for Summon Resists though. That’s important.
Mages need max mastery and max core skill to do decent damage (both skills matter - in-game doesn’t document this well). Poison mages are redundant when firing on the same target so trim when like half your mages are poison. Mages are a big help in Hell where the variety comes in handy, but they also kill pretty fast when you can focus fire by repositioning with Enigma’s teleport.
1-hit wonders: Every curse, CG/GM, corpse explode, Bone Armor (even if all it’s good for is negating that first melee hit as you run)
Consider item sources for higher level curses - few builds need/use all or even half of the curses. Sometimes an item source of a curse can save you a bunch of prereqs.
Crowd control curses - Of confuse, Dim Vision, and Attract, I like attract the best with some + skills, even though it doesn’t have as much reach (you can recast on more than one enemy). DV doesn’t affect all monster types. Confuse gives less control over where they go (but does have a big radius). Terror is great for avoiding enemies altogether or clearing tougher enemies of supporting mobs.
Amp damage is huge if you’re dealing physical damage in any form (or are in a group that is). It’s the only thing that can break physical immunes. Lower Resist is similar for elemental but Paladins can also break immunes with conviction.
Decrepify, clay golem and ice aura merc or mages (aura is stronger at slow) render bosses near-completely helpless. Only half the -res of amp damage but always use this on bosses that are a threat. CG can be replaced with strong slow weapons like Kelpie Snare on a merc.
% to cast on strike skills get boosted by synergies. I have my eye on a Bone RW armor, Bonehew, with skeletons melee build once I get some better overall gear together.
Corpse Explode is the most powerful 1-pointer in the game and it does half fire/half physical. Try LR instead of amp damage on enemies that are physical immunes. Conventional thinking is to only give it 1 point and let skillers boost the radius but a truly huge radius on CE is no joke in big open areas with large groups of mobs.
Bone is pure magic damage. Very few immunes.
Thorns auras and iron maiden curse are largely considered not great in Hell because as difficulty increases the bigger the gap becomes between enemy damage output and their total hitpoints. Where players gain a metric-butt-ton of damage output and a little bit more HP over time, monsters gain a bit more damage and a metric butt-ton of HP and much higher resists all around for the most part. So even super high damage returns end up not being as good as stripping resists and boosting you vs monster damage.
Fully synergized poison nova with Death’s Web (very expensive unique) and 3-piece Trang’s -res/+25% damage (see also Bramble rw for potentially a ton more bonus damage) is one of the more obscenely deadly mass damage attacks in the game and it doesn’t even require FCR (repeat poison only resets the counter). With only 60 poison skills total, it leaves a lot of room for hybrid experiments.
Finally, check out all items with sources of paladin auras (mostly rune words). Pride on a might merc is a big damage boost to melee minions.
