well i mean there is already 1 issue there…, you need an malignant heart…, thats great and all but ehm…, thats gone in season 2, unless they bring the exact same stuff back or something other that works…
so ye…, thats eh…, not rlly useful…, but blood build you say? blood build isnt minions focused at all, so i dont see where you’re going with this…
Have you tried that? 
Mechanics not THAT much different from shadow with some caviar. You need death speaker pendant and at minimum +2 skel warrior and second wave blood surge aspect. To add more speed toss here razor tail. Pendant give you base 500-600 blood nova casts from every single skell when you cast nova (2 nova per cast effectively). W/o much efforts in terms of boosting blood/physical damage your skels will pop 10+10k damage in AOE damage EACH. Interestingly enough because of 30% rule your skeletons will receive ~3500-4000 damage in thorn every time they got hit. With 6-7 melee skeleton you will always produce at least some corpses hence you won’t have any skeleton population depletion at all. Side effect of this built in essence refresh you rely not on CE or bone prison but on blood orbs which will also fortify you and if you have another very common unique (pants) will provide you with infinitive barrier, not to saying that blood surge and CT produce those blood orbs en-mass (so if you got crowed = you become immortal). The only problem are single targets with fire/poison attack - you can roll in and have to rely on pets … its safe … but take time lol
hmm yes…, i forgot this one for a second since i have not touched the game for a bit…,
i believe i have partly tried this one but i can’t be 100% sure, so i can’t properly respond to this one…
but i remember having about 10 of this unique amulet lol compared to 0 of the unique ring
i don’t fully remember it to be honest, so i won’t judge on this as it won’t be fair.
but in the end its another unique, from a standpoint as you said it doesnt do millions of damage (isnt necessary) imo, as long as it does enough damage to “for endgame” cursh everything cuz you wanna feel strong not weak at level 80-100 that wouldnt make any sense…
so if it works then i suppose its okay, but i remember seeing one of the streamers ive watched play the bloodbuild with minions and while his dps was decent his NMD wasn’t to high so im not sure how this would workout in endgame…
Let say at level 90 you can push around NM70 (if you want) with this built w/o optimization. I envision to respec into shadow-summon after I hit level 100. This blood-summon while doesn’t have sky high splash do damage have extreme high AoE damage - thus High Tides/Legions event rather fun to do
Perhaps in the future when blood builds get a buff, since my experience with bloodbuilds wasnt in endgame as i didnt have the fully equipment as of yet…
but as mentioned i saw a streamer who was further then me (buildwise) not level wise, and he while doing decent ish damage he wasnt to far into NMD levels…, compared to ring of mendeln shadow damage build on corpse exploision (corpse tendrils + bone prinso + aspect “spawns pool of blight in bone prison”) that combination is soooo much stronger then bloodbuild that i personally…, don’t really see a reason to go for blood build tbh but that’s just my take so far…
perhaps everything (hopefully for the better) may change with target farming uniques in season 2 PLS let this fix the unique drop chance beeing horrible for some people… as i still dont have ring of mendeln 
Blood is about “tankage” with unique pants (which are extremely common) and CT producing blood orbs at nearly insane rate you running literally 100% of time with barrier (there is an aspect that boost your damage +30% on that), with barrier you are artificially boost “lucky hit chance” in a sense you can have nearly every hit as a lucky hit (native blood lucky hit chance is 20% while for shadow 40% but blood built allow you generate and keep barrier 100% of time). Barrier actually have few interesting but undocumented features like barrier creation works all or none (in other words anything that bring you health above 100% will generate full size barrier - like 1 kill with life on kill +60-100% health, or 1 blood orb or 1 vial of health). On top of that barrier purge all negative effects related to DOTs). Damage “could” be a problem if target can produce to much damage in single hit that capable of doing ~30k unsuppressed damage on your char) if you can survive 1-2 hits you can tank almost everything with reapers and hewed corpse producing enough corpses for generation blood orb)… but you right killing can take long time 
Blizzard hears you, but you are not allowed to have fun. They will need Barb next patch
Minions need to reward summoners for investment, Do not improve minion damage out of the box. Improve the glyphs, the rare and magic nodes, the aspects and the item bonuses. We want reward for investment. If you invest in minions, minions should slap regardless of uniques.
couldn’t agree more!
Agreed, but i still feel like Minions as in Path of Exile, should level with themselves per level.
Minions in PoE are coming from a Gem, which have their own level system, and each level (starting from 1) the gemlevel improves by
etc…
personally i really really like this way, cuz scaling from level 1 in diablo to level 100 does not exist for minions, meaning we would need a MASSIVE increase in damage for endgame if we dont wanna have to do 1 bossfight for 5-10minutes, while Rogues,Druids clear it in 5-10seconds.
Minions can’t slap if they are dumb, see how smart the butcher is ?
I want to take a moment and agree with you. Minions are the CORE concept of a Necromancer in almost every fantasy setting. This whole death mage thing is a cope. Name me one story where a Necro is slinging around bone bullets and blood explosions. Its all cool supplemental stuff, and its cool if it in itself could be viable. But first and foremost minions need to be the focus.
I could not agree more…,
while dark magic has it’s own nice tone to it, minions/summoning the undead is the main focus of every Necromancer.
“Some” abilities in diablo 4 do buff minions with abilities like shadow damage over corsple explosion but only with paragon board (and the correct nodes), but i still feel like the focus should be a LOT more on minions.
Cuz without ring of mendeln build Bone spear is still the strongest build - shooting a spear what a joke
Lets just imagine this happening to sorcerer, a sorcerer not using elemental magics 
I’ve already pointed this out but here goes again.
People buy a Diablo game and expect the Necromancer not to be a Diablo Necromancer, really? In every Diablo game there’s been ways to focus your character outside of Minions.
I’m not arguing that Minions aren’t part of what a Necromancer can do, but it isn’t a focus for the class in Diablo Games. Just like any other class in the game, there are build options. In other words, in Diablo games you can definitely focus on Minions if you want. But you can also take your character into doing other things. In Diablo 2, there were tons of builds that focused on bone skills only, with “Teeth” or Bone Spear doing your damage and this was good because there weren’t many monsters that had Magic Resist or Immunities. But there were also builds that focused on Curses and only ran with the Mercenary and you just hung back cursing stuff until your Merc killed something and you could start a chain reaction of Corpse Explosions.
So if you’re going to be focusing on what a “Necromancer should do” you have to keep in mind the Series you’re playing in. And in the Diablo Universe, Summons are something you can do, but it’s not the end all be all of the class.
And again, in the Diablo Universe, you have to build your character with items, looking for specific items including Uniques isn’t new to this game.
So again, I say, if you expect to play a Necromancer that you don’t have to find items for in order to play the build you want then you’ve picked up the wrong game and series and that’s not the game’s fault.
Edit:
I’ll even go farther since you guys are focused on what a “Necromancer should be” and going back to D2. In D2 there was a set that turned your Necromancer into “Vampire” that cast Fireball and Meteor and Fire Wall. Yeah, those are definitely Necromancer abilities /sarcasm.
Point is, the Necromancer is different in Diablo games than you’d find in just any run of the mill fantasy game. And again even in “run of the mill” fantasy games like D&D, the Necromancer wasn’t a “Summoner”. I mean, they had many more spells that did stuff like adding conditions to the monster, or buff your allies, or drained damage and healed your character, or large AoE effects and what not than they did that actually created summons.
So I don’t really know what you guys are on about “The Necromancer is a Summoner and that should be the focus” because it never has been even going back to very beginning of RPG’s before video games became a thing.
Would a necromancer be a necromancer without corpse explosion?
Would a necromancer be a necromancer without blood nova?
Would a necromancer be a necromancer without bone spear?
Would a necromancer be a necromancer without without curses?
Would a necromancer be a necromancer without raise skeleton?
If I am behind honest, a character type that has bone spear, does not make it a necro on its own. its a piece of the puzzle, but it could still be some other type evil warlock or something.
A character type that raises the corpses of its enemies into skeletal minions, is by definition a necromancer in my view of video game archetypes.
I am trying my hardest to see this different, but I just cant.
One final tangent point.
We have a big bashy weapon char (barb), we have a sneaky and agile small weapon char (rogue), we have a spell caster (mage), we have a shape shifting char (druid) and finally we have a NO NOT A SUMMONER A DARK MAGE!!
I don’t know, seems like the 5th obvious choice would be a summoner, whether we call it a witch doctor or a necro, its a pretty clear 5th option. Unless we went holy warrior (paladin), which clearly the d4 necro is not.
It probably won’t sway any opinions but…
In Diablo the original Necromancer was Rathma. This prompted the birth of the Priests of Rathma. Both are based on a guiding set of principles. A larger philosophy related to life, death and “balance”. That philosophical construct is the core of the class. Everything else, including how a Necromancer operates, is derivative of it.
The concern is the inevitable conclusion of this insistence on Necromancer = Summoner is the class ends up cornered into a tiny, narrow box. All because some people want an entire class dedicated to a summoner playstyle.
A much better solution would be to elevate the potential contributions from Minions. Properly address their shortcomings and provide incentives for players to bring them along. Instead of the easy/lazy solution where everything is funneled toward a single unique ring (it’s why it’s there, in case anyone was wondering).
Sadly, this would likely involve an overhaul. Addressing skills, paragon and aspects. Frankly, I have very little belief in Blizzard doing this. Even if they did the expectation is they’d screw it up. That may sound harsh but… brutal honesty is brutal honesty.
The Necromancer is a spell caster that CAN Summon Undead but also does all those other things you mentioned and again, in the Diablo Universe, that’s what a Necromancer has always been. It’s a players choice to play it as a pure Summoner. And in the Diablo games to build a character that focuses on Summoning you need items to facilitate that playstyle, just like you need items to facilitate a Barbarian that Whirlwinds all the time, or Rogue that shoots arrows all the time, or a Mage that just focuses on Fire or Lightning, or Cold.
Why should the Necromancer be different? Tell me that, and I’ll buy this whole, “Being a Summoner shouldn’t have to have specific items to make it possible.”
I mean, would it be better if the item to make it possible was a pair of gloves, or a breast plate? Would it be better that you had to find a whole set of items to make it possible? Or would it be better that all you need to make a Summoner was boot up the game and never ever need to find a item to make your character work thus removing the item hunt completely and defeat the purpose of looting monsters at all?
In other words, it’s completely nonsensical to whine that “my character needs a ring to play the way I want to play” while other classes and builds have to meet the same requirements. I mean, you can’t exactly play a corpse explosion build unless you have the gloves that make your corpses get up and run toward the mobs before exploding. They added a shield to the Unique List for the bonespear build that makes the build much tougher than it would otherwise be at the time that it facilitates throwing another bone skill, Bone Storm, at your enemies. The Blood skills don’t have a Unique (yet) that lets their abilities have special powers and so is pretty weak comparatively speaking to the other builds available and as such do you think the people that like those abilities would die for something like a Unique Ring or some other item that would boost their abilities? I say, yes.
But no, according to you folks, it’s just too much to ask for your own particular build to have to find an item in an item hunting game. Yeah, makes a lot of sense.
Edit:
As an example, my other class I play a lot is the Rogue. With the Rogue there’s a unique dagger that makes your other “core” abilities deal more damage after casting a basic attack making builds that focus on melee play much better but you don’t see Rogues saying “Hey, I shouldn’t have to have a specific dagger to make a “Flurry” build work better. It should just come out of the box dealing the same damage whether I have the dagger or not.”
It’s just stupid to argue that a build shouldn’t have to have an item to make a build work in a loot hunting game.
If you ask me, anything else then summoning the undead towards a as some others call it here a “Necromancer, that doesn’t summon the dead” that’s just a Witch,
it’s simply a person/character using dark magic without looking at the summoner aspect, the moment we look into summoning of any kind of Dark/Black magic, you’re a Necromancer it’s that simple really.
It’s an unnecessary long debate with some people here (not you), but others…
Fun fact really… in PoE you have the basic skill tree where you don’t have minions instantly, you need a Gem to be able to summon minions (as a witch), while later on (your awakening magic), then you can choose rather you wanna go for
When you choose Necromancer awakening, you fullly 100% focus on Summoning of the undead with litearlly every single skill…
When you don’t choose the Necromancer awakening, you don’t have acces to anything related of SUmmong the undead related skills.
which literally shows (even though its another game) it’s simply how a summoner of the undead logic goes…
the moment you’re going for the Summong of the Undead, you’re a necromancer.
when you go for anything else unrelated to Summoning of the Undead, you’re a Witch / Dark magic user.
i have been thinking about this same topic for the last few days. For oure minion builds and not affecting any others, i think they would have to double or triple the mage and warrior paragon glyphs per level bonus and possibly the paragon boards cult leader and such or make the minion damage multiplicative and not addative. i hate how squishy my necro is at higher levels because the ttk is too high for pure minion builds
A combination of dreadful points and logical fallacies that I just cant be bothered with. And anyway, Blizzard will do blizzard either way.
Oh, and don’t accuse others of “whining” its unbecoming.