So, I got over this with the skeleton mages disappearing, but…
Golems randomly despawn too, which makes what is normally a very interesting skill, Iron Golem…and makes it almost useless. In fact, the stronger the item I use to make the golem, the faster the thing seems to suddenly vanish. I’ve even had this happen while sitting in town, so I know it’s not being killed…They are just randomly disappearing.
This same issue plagues both Skeleton Mages and Revives. Revives will magically vanish less than 60 seconds after being spawned quite frequently.
Blizzard, please fix this issue, it is quite frustrating and makes the summoning skills for a necromancer less enjoyable (and some like the Iron Golem near useless). I understand that proximity disappearances was part of the old game but it feels like summons disappear so much easier in D2: R.
Also, the problem with the Iron Golem is specific to that spell. I fear to use the ability on decent items because the Iron Golem would randomly disappear. I.E. I entered the Den of Evil and it would be gone. This has also happened on the stairway from The Pandemonium Fortress to the Outer Steps. I could actually see the Iron Golem standing on the steps but it wasn’t in my party as soon as I switched zones.
The Revive spell is also greatly affected by the distance which causes them to de-spawn much sooner than the time limit. This spell has also become less significant due to this issue.
Please look into the Iron Golem and minion de-spawning issues. These would be wonderful quality of life improvements for anyone using summon skills for Necromancers.
Same problem was trying to use my necro to farm for D Keys and the skellies and revives all get stuck on the walls not very far away and all despawn while trying to move between the 4 directions and I tend to just use a TP every screen length to regroup them all. Plenty of times the army will have minions just going wrong directions and standing around not attacking when the screen is filled full of mobs to kill. The AI on the merc is whacky too where it will tend to go the opposite direction than you want most of the time like one time I was playing my hammerdin threw on vigor to sprint between mobs and my merc went the exact opposite direction at full sprint at took like 30 seconds to teleport back to me.
This bug was in Legacy D2 as well.
Work around was to buy an amulet with teleport charges.
While I am aware that you are correct that there was def weird pathing in the original I don’t know that it is the exact same thing in this one, I would assume they just reused code but at the same time when I hit G to switch to classic mode I was playing my hammerdin on cows last night and it made it MUCH EASIER and the merc behaved much more rationally so I think maybe there is something going on with the expansion of screen real estate when it comes to pets and mercs.