I like Skeletal Mage, and I love the Flesh Golem and Corpse Lance and that stuff. I want Bones of Rathma but that only benefits the catagory Skeletal Mage is in, is that my best bet or should I do something else?
Bones of Rathma is, as of season 21, a useless set.
You should aim for Legacy Of Dreams builds (no set bonus, all ancient items, Gem Legacy Of Dreams at level 99). You will make way more damage. this Gem -at level 99- buffs all your damage output, whatever the skill is, whatever the distance is, by 9750% increased damage.
The hard part is you need ancient items everywhere.
Unfortunately for Necro, all the sets are weaker than their Legacy of Dreams version (the new set doesn’t have a LoD version). Skeletal Mages is best run as LoD but Rathma and Trag’Oul Mage builds are functional for T10 to T13. Corpse Lance builds and Corpse Explosion builds based off of Inarius or Pestilence or Trag’Oul are good for T10 to T13 like the mage builds, but again, LoD just does it better. Blood Nova builds can be Trag’Oul or Inarius but LoD does it better (seeing a pattern?). I used the new Masquerade of the Burning Carnival set this season to complete Guardian and then switched over to HC Monk. The set works fine and I could speed through T13 to T16 with few ancients and no augments (just 1 for the season journey). It is a pretty fun build and reminiscent of a D2 Necro Spear build.
Since you enjoy Skeletal Mage and Corpse Lance builds (Golem is not essential), I’d look towards getting Legacy of Dreams up and running. Some of the pieces are used in both builds so that makes it easier to gear up 2 different builds at the same time. As Isend stated, Bones of Rathma set is extremely weak compared to other options. Remember that you don’t NEED to have the Legacy of Dreams gem at rank 99 or have all ancient gear to “play” the build. The LoD gem at rank 50 is half the bonus of it at rank 99 so that is about 5 GR’s lower in power. If you have all non-ancient gear that is also half the power which is also about 5 GR’s lower in power. What that means is that just using the correct gear and cube items, you should have plenty of power to grind your gems to higher and higher levels while looking for ancient items to replace your non-ancients (via shards and rare upgrades or reforges in the cube).
I don’t see your profile on any of the 4 servers, so I’d assume you are a console player. If you were on the American server, I’d offer to run some GR’s with you to help get you geared up. Good luck getting geared up, it’s pretty easy. If you are not playing season, I’d suggest it since you get handed a free six piece set (Inarius this season for Necro) to help get you started until you can get whatever set you are looking for.
You can take a look at my skelly build, I’ve cleared 117 and can go higher and for T16 rifts I just switch to avarice band and boon of the hoarder w a goldwrap for the extra speed and invincibility. LoD is definitely the way to go though. Just make sure to get ancients of all your legs
Oh I already have Legacy of Dreams, and the highest Torment I have rifted is 15 and i had a dude power level me so i wasnt killing anything, i could probably beat T4 Rifts on a good day as i run T1.
The new set is a lot of fun. It’s by far and away the best necro set. It doesn’t have golems or mages, but its centered around simulacrums. They do 90% of your damage. They absorb damage for you and you get all of the curses. No corpse lance, but you have bone spear. It’s very easy to use and gear for. I’ve done a GR122 with it.
Skeletal mages can be played with Rathma and Trag’oul. Corpse lance can be played with Pestilence and Trag’oul. And Inarius can be played with anything you like as long as you are in melee range and hitting everything with bone armor. However, as other stated, these sets are significantly less powerful that their legacy of dreams counterparts. The new set (masquerade) which supports the bone spear - a d2 classic necromancer build - doesn’t have a viable lod version, so it is unique in that sense, fun to play too. There is also the jesseth set with a scythe and a shield that you can mix it with another main set but it is still going to be left in the dust by the lod. Personally I don’t see any reason to stick to a set and not go lod, but that is your decision.
As for skills, keep in mind, that in most cases in d3, a build is meant to be played around one spell that is used as a damage dealer, and the other 5 you have on your bar are just for utility, mobility, buffs and some others that are used to enable a set bonus. So it is hard to find something to fit more than one damage dealing spell. I don’t think there is any viable build that uses both corpse lance and skeletal mages for high torment and high rifts. Although, if you like the golem, you can fit it in a lot of LoD builds if you wear the golemskin breeches, as it provides you with damage reduction just by having the golem and as a bonus you can use the golem actively to group up enemies, stun them or create corpses for other spells to follow. Again, to emphasize, the golem is purely for utility here and don’t expect it to do any damage in high torments. It is not as essential as bone armor, for example, which is like a no-brainer for every necro, but it still is a decent spell to have in many cases.