my suggestion:

i have an act1 rogue merc with faith
has lvl 15 fana, so i think its the best choise, it works fine with me

as weapon i use hoto now, i like the +3 and some res

maxing revives is pointless. 1 hard point should give u 20+revives anyways. more points dont make them any better and u cant really have more than 20 up at a time anyways. the ones you revived at the beginning will run out by the time u get to like the 25th. I would put the rest of the points into CE. Max CE + amp clears rooms full of monsters insanely fast. and dumping the rest of your points into bone armor is kinda dumb as well :/ bone armor will be next to useless b/c you have none of its synergies. id dump the rest of the points into lower resist. o yea and thorns is pretty much useless in hell, monsters have so many HP compared to their damage especially in big games. id chuck the bramble and put a coh fort nigma or guardian angel on him.

This post was edited by johnbshin on Oct 27 2006 01:58pm

I also agree that use a blessaim merc with beast will be more efficient
or blessaim merc with infinity


may be might merc with beast is also good
but I believe attack rating is much more important.

I prefer summon resist...
get bonus for summon skills

if i may add, i use a summon necro with the following setup:
20 raise skeleton
20 skeleton mastery
13+ corpse explosion
13+ bone armor
13+ bone wall
1 revive

str: none
dex: enough for max block with homunculus
vita: all
energy: none

i use enigma mp and a +3 summon 96llife amulet, arm of king leoric wand, trang gloves+belt, marrowwalk (anni+torch ofc).
with my 75%block and nice bone armor, its a very safe character, i just tele on top of monsters, and my summons hit them all at once, killing them under 1 second. with amplify dmg curse and corpse explosion, i can kill huge mobs in seconds ^^
also, confuse is sometimes useful, to draw the attension from myself.

Couple of things: first i must agree with johnbshin and with lost_cause about the corpse explotion, its one of the best skills a necro has. Its also very nice for getting the first bodies: ampl when first two bodies arives ce it and you got a nice number of bodies laying on the ground.
Also you suggest to put the remaining points into bone armour this is stupid. Bone amour only gets 10 points per lvl while a syn like bone wall and prison gives 15 points to bone armour.
The amount of points in revive is absurd you wont manage to maintain youre army with lets say 45+revives.
The downside of pride is that it has freeze its really nasty to get the initial body for ce with pride merc(i take nihla portal easy and fast), i had a lvl 19 pride on my necro and besides that fact i loved it.Ive seen a couple of necro's whos merc was wielding infinity and i heard it was good for lowering the defence and the -resist for ce (i even read some guides who swore infi+lower resist was better then pride+amply i dunno if thats true) but if youre rich make a very low dm infi for ig and put some points into gollem mastery-> conv conc fana might you gotta love that.
Some pple say use a faithmerc but thats not the best merc choise, imo its the might merc with pride. Btw you also could make a ig from insight for the mana reg. if you tele a lot and dont want to use blue pots.
That where my 2 bits

I made a summon necro of Escl, and it maxed raise skele, skele mastery, skele mage and courpse explosion, it killed every monster in sight -.-

I'm not a fan of revives, but I'm sure it's all about how you play.

I'm currently making a summon necro on HC, it's doing well atm, and I'm hoping it won't die ^^

TBH, Max block isn't needed, but max res sure would be nice to have, and lots of life ^^

Mana = nn, can drink pots

rev sux and so do mages as was said in a previous post, also, bramble is virtually useless, the thorns really doesnt make much difference when my skeletons are fighting. Points in corpse explosion are key. My ce stretches the whole screen and kills waves of monsters in nanoseconds. As for wep, why not go with a +3 summoning +2 raise skeleton wand. after all, you can put beast on your merc...

id give it a 9/10.. i see one flaw.

why not use hoto instead of beast? or doom, w/e it was the axe.

get a rogue merc w/ faith so you get lvl 15 fanat... gg.

just a suggestion, lmk what you think.

hey guys im not an expert of necros but check out this summoner he solo ubered man this is sick
http://youtube.com/watch?v=B1tPFaNJDZI&mode=related&search=