So yeah, i recently started up on the ladder with my memomancer summoner build.
so far i’ve had great success… played 2 days and i’m currently about to kill Andariel in act 1 nightmare, its been pretty viablo so far, to my great surprise.
but let me get straight to the point;
There’s a lot of runewords ‘info’ out there, both true and false… i came across a runeword from a supposed diablo wiki, claiming i could use just a Tal+Thul rune to make what looks like an incredibly strong shrunken head runeword for my (currently) lvl 40 necromancer.
lo and behold. it didn’t bloody work… honestly don’t know how sites like that get away with their crimes.
upon further investigation, from what i gathered, this was runewords for some stupid modded version of the game, which was kind of infuriating because the site didn’t go out of its way to say so.
its no big deal, i mean its just a tal and thul rune after all, i got plenty more of those, but i hate wasting materials with a passion.
so here’s the TL;DR question;
What runewords actually work for shrunken heads (and which ‘shield’ runewords DOESN’T?)
if someone knows a reliable site which include runewords both old and new (as of current patch) i would love to know which.
alternatively, you can just name the working runewords here, and i’ll look them up myself.
Thanks in advance!
umm there are no tal thul runewords… soo idk what site you saw.
Only two runewords work for shrunken heads, Rhyme (Shael Eth) and Splendor (Eth Lum). Rhyme is generally preferred as you get Can not be Frozen , +25 Resists and some magic/gold find. Splendor is worth the mention for the +1 to skills but you give up the resists which is generally the only real thing a necy does need aside from + to skills.
In a perfect world you find a +3 Skelly +3 mastery shrunked head and make a Rhyme in it.
The old but true and completely out of date Arreat Summit is still my favorite site…https://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/items/runewords.shtml
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@SwiftKitten like i said, i realized that after it was too late 
i haven’t played d2 in years so i just assumed that this site, presenting itself as a diablo wiki site, was including some new(er) runewords that weren’t in the game when i last played it like 6-7 years ago.
@Rondel thanks for the tips and the info bro, truly appreciate that 
i guess i’ll aim to make a Rhyme at this point since i have no Lum runes and since you seem to imply that its better overall.
a matter of taste i suppose, but i know resistances are going to become super relevant in late Nightmare and Hell, so probably worth the sacrifice of the +1 skills by a long shot.
I would argue that Splendor is the better choice for a 3/3 skele head. As I would use it with Leoric only to summon the skellies and immediately swap out.
i have my “summon” weapons on the weapon swap.
save for the sheer number of skeletons, they maintain the stat benefits from your current gear as long as you have it on before raising them.
once you have summoned all your skellies and golem, you can swap back to your “dps” weapons and they’ll still be as good as if you had the “summoner” weapons equipped, as long as they stay alive.
skelly mastery is therefore slightly preferred (by me) over more points in raise skeleton since you get more bonuses per point, but yes, having both with 3/3 is definitely the ideal for a summoner swap regardless of preference, since they both provide basic stat boosts to skeletons.
as a matter of fact, i plan to get a whole set of gear solely focused on summoning+ bonuses that i can put on, go outside to like cold plains or stony field, grab a skill shrine, summon all my minions, then head back to base and swap back to my dps gear.
minions will be as strong as if i was wearing my summoner gear, and i get to do extra dps.
While pre-buffing summons works just fine, I find it too tedious to deal with. Until Enigma my weapon swap is a telly staff, after Enimga you generally want CTA/Spirit on swap, as you can generally afford that if you can afford Enigma.
When using a telly staff I lose 2-3 skellies per weapon swap which I need to re-summon. After a few tellies all that pre-buffing is wasted, thus I am just happy with my standard running gear.
i’m used to tediousness, its not a big deal to me 
each to their own, of course.