my hardcore summoner is level 70, and level 24 skeles, 24 skeleton mastery, decent merk and amp damage.

i tried going into an empty game and making hell cows.

is this not really a build that can do that? my skeles do like NO damage to the cows. When my merc kills a cow i can corpse explode the entire pack, but it seems my skeles dont do any damage, even with might aura..

is there any difference between me being level 70 with 24/24 skeles or being level 80 with 24/24 skeles? or do they hit the same?

skellies are just meat shields. merc does the dmg and you clear with ce.

Correct

Let's say you can push skeleton mastery and raise skeleton to about 40.

Now they do 599 - 603 damage.

Act 2 might aura = 180% ed
Act 2 merc with pride runeword giving level 18 (16-20) concentration aura = 315% ed
Necro wearing beast runeword giving level 9 fanaticism aura = +93% ed

= 588% ed

= 599 + 588% = 3522
= 603 + 588% = 3546

3522 - 3546 damage

Hell cows have about 9000-15000 hit points, and they also have 50% damage reduction. So that means every skeleton deals about 1767 damage each swing.

Even with that kind of skill boost, and not knowing if i am missing out on any damage enhancing factors, it would take them about 5-9 swings to kill each cow. And we are not taking attack rating into consideration.

It seems a difficult task to get them to be as efficient as they should.

I forgot about amplify damage, so that would again make it easier for them. 3-6 attacks each perhaps. Casting the level 23 enchant charges from demon limb would increase the skeletons' attack rating by a great deal, i predict they would hit about 80% of the time with that. Although it would be a bit costly.

Your level does not affect skeleton dmg.

+4 skills is rather weak for a summoner. Should really prioritize +skills in gear choice. Even still, be sure to use amp vs decrip. CE is your main DPS as stated above. 10-15 pts

Just remember if something has 50% dr and you amplify damage on it, it triples

was playing summoner until respecing to poison nova at lvl 85 and skellies are really just for your protection and taking aggro from merc, after merc kills one cow amp dmg the rest and blow them all up