Title says it all. Even with tremendous dmg boost these things suck. Both ice and poison mages are not helpful as shattering prevents CE, and the poison does too low of dmg.
A suggestion: allow the player to toggle the type of elemental mage they would like to summon.
Can we also get a tooltip on their dmg?
These things need to be 10x stronger to be viable, especially in Hell where there’s a lot of immunes.
I haven’t tried them, but are they actually that bad even with a more mage-focused build aka using Lower Resist curse? I do remember reading the changes and being underwhelmed by the numbers I was seeing, and I agree Fire and Lightning are generally the best ones, but I’m sure the poison ones are still okay to have a couple around too for PMH if needed. Lower Resist also affects the Fire aspect of Corpse Explosion also, so it’s not like you’re losing much compared with Amp in that regard. Idk though, I haven’t tried them so I can’t say. They probably do still need some more buffs
IF THEY DONT FIX SKELETON MAGES IN THE NEXT PATCH
i will quit this game, and you can take that to the bank, blizzard.
So at the best case scenario, we’re talking stars and planets aligning perfectly, with a level 48 Skeleton Mage, you can’t really get it higher, and a level 19 lower resist (-62% all), and a max conviction to lower mob resist to -100, the absolute best damage your Skeleton Mage can do it this.
NecromageMissile – Level 74
Poison Skill - Damage: 914–919 over 4 seconds
Cold Skill - Damage: 1010–1014
Fire Skill - Damage: 1052–1060
Lightning Skill - Damage: 148–1928
THAT’S IT. YES IT’S OKAY TO LAUGH.
Do you want to laugh harder???
This is the damage a level 20 skeleton mage with level 20 mastery does.
NecromageMissile – Level 29
Poison Skill - Damage: 230–235 over 4 seconds
Cold Skill - Damage: 200–204
Fire Skill - Damage: 242–250
Lightning Skill - Damage: 58–398
It’s not funny, stop laughing.
This is the damage a lightning sorc does to the same target
Lightning Damage per Second: 94,058
Chain Lightning Damage per Second: 32,809 to Each 14 targets 459,326 total
Skeleton mages need a triple damage buff to be viable, wont even be close to meta or compete with physical skeletons, but they could be playable and not a meme.
If I recall correctly people wanted minor buffs, not meta changing. The mages are a little better than they were before.
ok well we’re still waiting for them
I think you meant to say it is what they asked for. Anyway, as a software designer myself, I can say that you listen to what the people say, but you don’t give them what they ask for - you give them what they want. 
they should allow you to summon skeleton mages without bodies, and buff the damage of the skelton mages by 4x and put in skeleton mastery also makes them do - percent to enemey resist it will scale at the same rate as summon resist.
This is what Hydra does at the same level against the same mob.
Hydra – Level 47
Damage: 9845–10,869
Cast Rate: 8 frames (3.13 casts per second)
Max 6 Hydras
Damage per Second: 699,074
Hydra was “buffed”, Fire is still the worst skill tree for Sorcs, but Hydra is viable now.
WHY CAN’T SKELETON MAGES DO THIS? Hydra is still bad, but usable. Skeleton Mages are a gosh darn joke. I HATE THIS GAME
Skeleton mages should cast level 60 blizzard all over the screen.
Skeleton Archers might be cool like in ProjectDiablo
yes.
stick it between mages and revive
Wow… Your first quiting post here, or was there ones before this? Every one knows you’re just blowing hot air by now. You’re not going anywhere. 
i’ve got a question to someone who used mages on a playthrough.
If you start maxing mages as soon as you can, you can have them and mastery maxed around level 40. That is late act 1 or act 2 nightmare. How good are they at that point in the game?
Yeah was never all that into the Necro class however I could and did play it for a while in DII, in DIII however I found the class unplayable, At least the other classes worked somewhat however DIII’s Necro is complete trash which does make sense being DIII is trash too
I tried once (after synergies were added) but their survivability is even worse than skeletons. One fire nova from Diablo in normal difficulty wiped them out before they could deal any damage to him 
I was able to beat act 4 normal with just skeletons (while town portaling back to act 1 to get a new army about 5 times, so the fight took about half an hour). No such success with the mages.
When you do damage with any Summon you have to factor that its per skelly you can have 12-13 made up and with that your doing 13-16k per shot plus the damage of the warriors revives and golem
Buff them only with synergies (not from warriors), because both is too op.
I don’t think skele mages were ever meant to be usefull on their own, as much as skele warriors.
My two suggestions on the topic are:
Related to this, I think a Synergy between Fire Golem and Corpse Explosion (FG → +1% Fire Damage to CE, CE +20% damage to FG) would allow an elemental Necro to be decent since we already know that a Phys necro is very very good.