I have tried two times now to make a minion necromancer.
But upon enter wt 3 my minions are dead most of the time.
Specially helltide just melt my minions in seconds.
I have spec into all defensive stuff to minions.
And i know they get some of the necro stats as well. But i got minion life on both rings and chest armor.
The rest of the stats just suck. Because of the bad affixes on gear.
I just wonder how players say minions are great now.
I do not see dead minions as great. So i ended up just delete it again around 60 both times.
If anyone can tell me the secret on how to make them survive, if i at some
point wanna try again. I know there is the defensive paragon board. But did not get that far before i gave up.
I could not keep all skeletons up at one time on wt 3.
I had 3 point in all 3 minion type passive. And did run a corpse explosion, tendril build.
But it was not fun i could barely get the first corpse to tendril before all minions were dead.
I would really like a level 100 necromancer and love minions.
But it do not work for me at all.
I am doing a blood surge minion mancer right now. No issues at all in WT3 melting things into bloody bits. My minions very rarely die and even then, my corpse generation skills let me replace them fast.
I do have items with Minion health, minion defense, points into skills that buff my minions surviveability. I am also having a lot of fun with the affix that gives mage minions Blizzard. Stuff is so often crowd controlled and easily dead.
Maxroll has some good guides although I don’t follow them exactly.
When done with the leveling guide switch to the early and later end game guides. Those eventually sacrifice the minions I think. I am not there yet. Still enjoying mine at lvl 64.
I will not play without minions, I want a minions build all the way.
But I did also run the blizzard thing damage reduction for minions aspect. But nothing helped them stay alive for me.
Maybe I should try make one on eternal realm where I have the gold and materials to try get decent gear for it.
Overall i am very unlucky with gear this season, it’s all trash affixes all the time. I haven’t found one piece with 3 stats i want on yet.
I really hope they look at some of the idea i have been posting to them regarding affixes, but I seriously doubt it.
You simply can´t. It´s just resummon after resummon. Gets annoying fast.
A combo of paragon, skill pts, and aspects and those bastards can live through almost anything
The first five or so levels might be rough, but once you get some gear upgrades and paragon points spent WT3 smooths out.
Don’t discount increasing your pets’ damage over increasing their defenses either. Because a dead mob deals no damage.
What worked for me, might not work for you, however.
Warriors- defender w the 6 second damage ignored- tend to live longer.
Mages- cold- freezes things in place- very important (blizzard cast is very nice to have), I’d also +2 or +3 the mages over warriors.
Golem- blood golem- 15% damage reduction for caster, heals itself when you use its ability.
Reap- acolytes reap (if you want to get close to the action), otherwise the other one.
Blight- legendary power on an item to pull enemies into the blight- ensures mage blizzard hits.
If you can drop one (or both), bloodless scream scythe and frost burn.
What’s frozen, cannot hurt you or your minions (except bosses. And the butcher).
I tried all the summoner guides I could find. My favorite so far is made by GhazzyTV on icy-veins, Summoner Endgame Necromancer Build. The minions almost never die even in WT4.
How much do you get paid by blizzard to be so biased and not objective about the negative aspects of the game?
You don’t, they’re still garbage.
She doesn’t.
She doesn’t administrate or represent any one of us in the forums, and has been on occasion quite critical of some of the choices blizzard have followed.
Might wish to have a quiet moment of contemplation before launching accusations at forum users.
I played this build last season (well my version using these skills), when people said the same about not being able to keep minions up.
And they made it easier by moving Death’s Defense passive and Blood Transfusion passive to general abilities for Minions now so you you don’t need to pick them. Transfusion was really important, and if people don’t go the blood route they never see its value.
The one thing you do lose from last season is the auto corpse heart where you could just put your raise minion all the way to the left so even if something died it was back up instantly.
Enjoy the build it is so much fun. I won’t give input on this as I am a season removed…but it looked like they made it easier to keep them alive.
do you summon skeleton priests to keep them healthy and buff them?
I mean, minions can and are supposed to die, its not an autofarmer lol. however, they shouldnt die every mobb
not sure if army of the dead is still used, its been a bit i played summoner necro. But yea, as with all builds, it sounds like you might be missing some resistances.
I’m still only in T3, but my pure summoner build just melts everything. Who knows how it’ll be later on, but for now it’s so easy it’s almost boring.
I’ll try to remember what i have quick.
Use defenders with the 6 second damage absorb upgrade.
Cold mages with the gives mana on hit upgrade.
Blood Golem with the damage reduction / damage increase upgrade.
Sever… iwith upgrade that increases damage by number of pets.
Iron maiden, we (pets and me) do 12% more damage to cursed mobs (passive in tree), gives essence back and heals me when a cursed mob dies, which is often.
Army of the dead ult because will replace ALL of your pets, even if there are no corpses, good for bosses, gives all your pets back every min or so.
Aspect that increases amount of mages, put it in neck or a 2h and you get 3 instead of 2.
Aspect that increases amount of warriors, in neck or 2h if you can, but mages take priority.
Any aspect that increases pet damage reduction or attack speed.
Covens fangs vamp power cuz your mages CC everything.
The mages are really your bread and butter. They chill mobs and often freeze them, and chill counts as crowd control so that triggers any affixes or other passives that require CC further increasing damage. Each time they hit you get 2 ess back, i have six of them and they attack very quickly (because you build them to).
I can literally just stand there and spam sever almost without pause. most packs and elites die before i ever run out of mana.
Also don’t neglect yourself, remember they get a % of your stats.
This is a work in progress, and i’m sure far from perfect build, but thus far it’s fun and melts everything i’ve come across in T3.
Personally? Both pre-S1 and now in S2 (before I quit a week ago) my necro doesn’t use a basic attack…all I do is spender + summon skeleton.
Getting that Skelly priest big heal constantly queuing + summoning new skellies constantly makes it possible…except against things 10-15 levels higher than me and certain mobs.
After you get paragon nodes, good gear and the like it’s not as much of a problem. Corpse explosion uses your corpses as well, so it’s iffy to use before then IMO.
All the above advice is good. I was running a T4 Necro (who got to level 87) with all his buddies and most of the time none died in combat and when they did, it was only one or two. In dungeons I would concentrate on the main target in a room and let my minions handle all the rest. The main key is what Paragon choices you make. Do the skeleton warrior, skeleton mage and golem grids, and hit all the yellow boxes with surrounding blue boxes. You will have an army that can pretty much go toe to toe with anyone, including dungeon bosses. Of course, if I died they all did too.
One of the things that was fun to watch was my cold mages casting blizzard every 15 seconds, they would frequently clear a room before I got there.
It’s not like I want to argue on semantic but…
You can’t really, skeleton are already dead, almost by definition!
You should ask, how to keep your friends alive before they turn into skeleton! 
It’s all about the paragon deal. And giving them the skills. In wt3 mine have no issues usually. But in 4 I think even if you go heavy in the paragon board you’re out of luck. Right away my guys just imploded on themselves.
They’re doing better now, because I’m doing better. But they still just die if I’m not paying attention. I don’t think the priest is worth it honestly. Better to put those points elsewhere. I’ve had it all the way up and off and I can’t see a change.
When I hear their screams I start tapping that button.i was putting all points into the mages but then the warriors croak. Again, they all die but you have a unlimited supply of them.
I haven’t used Maxroll. I usually go with Icy Veins, that has a pretty good minion build that I’m using right now. Things melt pretty decently until I hit some of the higher teir NMDs n WT3. Of course, between me and my wife(HOTA Barb) we melt things pretty well at all but 20 right now.
You either stack minion HP on a few parts of gear plus paragon tree or you run CD build to spam Army of the dead. Poison on high tier dungeons still melt them no matter what.
Last season we had auto cast with heart so anything dead are recasted automatically hence minion survivability hasn’t been looked into, Devs in this game simply can’t make minions good without a few more seasons. 