Been toying with the idea of making a summon nec

Can this character kill efficiently in hell?

I remember back when I used to play it was pretty fun but the bosses would always destroy my summons super easy

Is there something I was missing or ehat is the key to success here?

Planning on a standard p8 walkthrough

Yea, they are one of the safest builds that you can make. Obviously, there are a good amount of builds that can run Hell very effectively but they all require pretty good gear that requires moderate grinding; summonmancer is no exception to this. You will need +Skill gear as well as Corpse Explosion (1 point usually suffices). Just rule of thumb, put skills in all skelly skills and choose either Revive or Golems. Don't spread yourself too thin. Typically Clay Golem (slows bosses) is all you need and you can focus on Revive but Iron Golems can be incredibly OP. Lastly, your merc should be either an Act 2 merc or a godly-geared Act 1 rogue. Since I doubt you will have top-tier gear for your merc day 1, I suggest the Act 2 merc. You can go with a multitude of choices for auras. Defense, Thorns, Holy Freeze, and Might (typically the most popular choice) are all good.

As long as you have enough skill points in your summons and 1 or so point(s) in Corpse Explosion (and 1 point in Amplify never hurts), then you will be golden for Hell. Summons provide a looooot bulky defense and CE is deadly in NM, and gets even deadlier in Hell.

This post was edited by JammyJams on Nov 2 2020 08:31pm

Thank you! Great advice

They don't require much to work. Make yourself a Lore, a Spirit Sword and look for a nice necro head with +skills or +summoning skills. You can gamble or find amulets with +summoning skills. Even if you can't find other +skills gear, the mentioned should be good enough to slowly carry you through hell. For skill i would go for:


20 Raise Skeletons
20 Skeleton Mastery
1 Skeletal Mages - they're useless, don't develop them
1 Revive - use it for extra meat on the battlefield
1 Clay Golem (he'll be very squishy, until you get +skills gear)
1 Golem Mastery
5 Summon Resist

1 Teeth
10-20 Corpse Explosion - this is the skill that will carry you. It works with 1 point and +skills gear, but the range is not as good. This skill should be a second priority, keep it with 1 point and start bumping more points in it when your skeleton skills are maxed

1 Amplify Damage - use it on everything
1 Decrepify - for act bosses
1 Dim Vision - for dangerous ranged attackers

The rest is up to you, some people like to put 1 point in all curses, you can do it too if you think it will help you. And yes, don't forget to get a nightmare act 2 mercenary with might aura. Give him a Lore or anything with +skills you can find.

This post was edited by KillingIsMyBusiness on Nov 3 2020 08:34am

Summon necromancer is probably the easier char for a walkthrough.
The only problem is normal Diablo, if you reach him too fast with skeletons not strong enough.