Right now I’m using Hoto and Infinity on Merc and a Iron Golem made from Insight. Still finishing leveling and Hell at level 81. But doing pretty solid.
I would like to go for a crazy setup of Infinity on Merc for Conviction, Beast on Necro, and Iron Golem made out of Pride. Seems crazy and cool.
But how annoying is it not having Insight, and wearing Beast over Hoto also hurts for the loss of resists and +skills.
I would not commit to using Pride, or any other expensive runeword/item, on Iron Golem until they have 100% patched the bugginess of summons.
Isn’t this sort of a non-issue if you have Enigma? I’ve heard of Iron Golem randomly despawning if he’s left behind for too long, but is there other issues I’m not aware of?
Hey if you’re confident that your teleporting will keep him leashed appropriately, then go for it. I was just sharing my own concerns/paranoia.
Fair enough. But what about the lack of Insight. How much of a pain is that? I’ve never played Necro Summoner before so most of this is new to me.
Summon necro is not a mana expensive build, so go for it.
You can find yourself goin a bit oom, if you corpse explosion a lot with curses. It probably depends on how many points you have in it, and how much mana you have from gear though. You don’t have to use CE a ton, but it speeds up clearing through super mob dense places, like cows, by a lot. Also if you play in games with more players, it takes more corpse explosions to finish things off apparently, which could be a mana drain. You could also just use mana pots, lol.
I mean at high levels you probably have just enough to drop Insight. And yes there’s always mana posts if you’re in a pickle. 
You can drop insight if you don’t need to CE every corpse you see. The only time I’m doing that is around fallen.
IG’s can still get melted to gloams and other nastily ranges monsters fairly easily so I would not make one out of an expensive item you don’t want to see Big D Melt with a lit-hose.
If you intend to use beast get an arm of King Leoric to summon your boys with, then switch to beast. Skellys stay the lvl they were summoned at and AOKL gives the best buff for that.
Skellys can only start an attack animation after 15 frames from the last one
With beast, the swing will be faster but the void between attacks would still be hard caped
Pride adds cold damage… uwant b4 pride enigma
Why do you have a Infinity on a summoning necro? For your mages and/or revives? Could you not get the rogue and build the bow that offers the aura you’re looking for?
It gives a massive dps increase to your Merc, as well as increasing the fire damage on Corpse Explosion. It’s part of the tri-fecta of auras to have on a summonmancer. Conviction, Fanaticism, and Concentration.
Conviction lowers the Defense and resists of all effected. Most people miss the defense side of that. Assuming you are not using mages you skellies will hit a lot more with infinity and CE will get a boost from the lower fire resists.
To really get the benefit from Infinity you do want mages as it will jump their damage quite a bit. It’s still 1/3rd of the damage your skellies are pumping out, but at least it’s no longer 1/6th the damage the skellies are doing.
Without mages there are other options that may be better.
I think my level 70 summon necro does better than my level 90 hammerdin on bnet.
Of course Enigma makes a huge difference.
But it’s all about that corpse explosion. Uses all my mana to clear a screen. but that’s because I haven’t put a single point into energy.
Using HOTO , CTA, Spirit Monarch shields. Enigma and Shako. Act 2 Merc with insight and Might.
Way faster then hammers.
Would I need to put a full 20 points into Skeleton Mages to do that? I’d like to but not sure where the points could come from lol. Already put 10 into Golem Mastery to help keep IG alive.
I’m level 88 so I have a few more easy points to play around with, but somehow I’m betting it’s not that easy, one point into Mages won’t be enough. I was planning on putting the last ones into Bone Prison/Wall and maybe a few more into IG.
Yes, mages are max or ignore. I put only 1 pt in the golems after lvl 88 when I’ve maxed my 4 skills I dump pts into golem mastery. For my play style I use fire and clay golems the most. I haven’t found investing into IGs will keep them alive no matter what. That is about lvl 24 golem/mastery after skills.
From my numbers with high end gear the mages are pushing out 5k damage thought infinity, almost 10k dps with infinity. This is compared to 30k dps on the skellies. That is without concentration.
I was following d2.maxroll. gg guide for the skill points, except I took 10 points from CE with the logic being that with super buffed minions I wouldn’t need as many points in it, and put them into Golem Mastery. So far, that seems to work nicely, CE is still doing work.
You can max 4 skills with 1 pt in all curses and summons by lvl 88. Those skills are always skellies, mastery and CE on just about every ‘build’ out there. This leaves 20 more pts to spend by lvl 88. As people hate mages due to the 1/6th the damage of skellies, many builds come up with ‘different’ hints to pt those pts in. What’s the fourth in your build?
I’ve been following this, and funnily enough I’m at level 88 right now.
Put 1 Point into each of the following Skills:
Then max out the following in order.
I suppose the answer is obvious, they’re dumping points into Bone Prison/Bone Wall for max damage absorb and tankiness, so I could put those into Skeleton Mage instead, but that does seem like it could hurt my ability to survive lol.
Problem though…I need to be able to make another Pride before I can respec if I do. Sucks, that I can’t preserve IG if I respec, but making use of Skeleton Mages really does seem like a good idea with Infinity. I was feeling like I was lacking a bit in ranged damage.