My second char in 20 yrs was a minion necro. I was really worried about the ancients but they were cake with decrep and a large swarm. Overall very enjoyable but the necro does kil at a slower pace. Something in me loves a big swarm of minions, and D2 is the first/only game that ever really let me scratch that itch.
I ended up at lvl 81, with maxed skellies, 5 in summon resist (for boss tanking), +3 skills (spirit and +1 blue easy to farm gambling amulet), also had 8 in revive (+3 was 11 total).
So I ended up with 9 skellies, 6 skelly mages, and 11 revives, and about 18 pts in corpse explosion. That pretty made the entire game easy, but a little slow. Hardest zone was frozen river in HM with all the ranged harpies that my minions had a hard time reaching, and maggot lair was a bit of a chore too, took just the merc and a teleport amulet (farmed by gambling) to make it tolerable.
I tried all the curses, but only amp damage and decrep made it as mainstays. Amp breaks immune to phys but decrep does not, learned that the hard way.
With high summon resist all the act bosses died easish from the minions. The high revive count allowed me to bring in more helpers to speed things up. Oddly the normal mode boss fights were the hardest as the swarm wasn’t fully built, had to pop out and grab a new swarm a few times, diablo took 3 I think.
The necro actually felt stronger in hell mode than in NM, the sorc sure didn’t feel that way. I think it’s mostly cuz I added more revives and more skelly mages.
Probably should mention that maxing resists helped a lot, had to farm gear from vendors, and used all the runes I had. Triple socket helmets and armors with resist runes, triple perfect diamond shield + rings and things did the trick. In NM everything was double socket, in normal I just maxed the ones each boss used if I was having trouble (lightning and fire for meph, diablo, and baal).
Definitely a nice playthrough, the summon necro is nicely balanced, easy but not too easy.