I’ve always played the poisonmancer. Even played a boner for pvp for quite some time. But now i wish to overwhelm the masses with an undead legion.
I can’t seem to find anything thorough enough in the stickies or through googling guides for a summon mancer to satisfy my curiosity.

I’d ask questions but there are simply too many that I’m sure have been answered; so i am merely here looking for guidance in the right direction. Some links to posts on jsp (or wherever) from someone who’s dove deeply into being king of the undead.

Thanks for any help 💀

I can paste a hardcore summoner guide i have for myself, semi-budget setup:

A decent pvm budget build with expensive options:

Max raise skeleton
Max skeleton mastery
Some points in revive
Some points in clay golem

Max corpse explosion

Some points in amplify damage
Some points in decrepify



Weapon: Arm of king leoric for budget option, or beast runeword in a low req axe for level 9 fanaticism for your skeletons.
Armor: Full trang oul's set for budget choice. Enigma is the expensive best armor option.
Helmet: Harlequin crest helmet, or a good rare circlet.
Gloves: Magefist or frostburn, or good rare gloves with resists.
Shield: Homunculus or +3 skills boneflame. Spirit is a good budget option, but has high strength requirement.
Rings: Soj or bk is the optimal choice because of the +1 skills, but they are expensive. Otherwise, anything can be used for the situation. For example nature's peace for nihlathak.
Amulet: Mara's kaleidoscope, but it can be expensive. Seraph's hymn is a cheap +2 skill booster, but has no other stats for necro. Eye of etlich and highlord's wrath both has +1 skills. Otherwise, use what you need, a good rare amulet perhaps.
Boots: Marrowwalks can boost skeleton mastery by +2, but any boots that boosts whatever you are lacking is a good choice.

+1 Summon skills grand charms
Whatever you need for small charms; Life, fr/w, resists.

Can use call to arms on switch if you don't mind recasting all the time. Otherwise, keep a gull and magic find shield (milabrega's orb or rhyme runeword) to boost magic find at boss battles.


Merc; Might merc is the obvious choice.

Weapon: I have read that conviction aura from infinity is the best, because it lowers enemy defense by a huge lot, making your skeletons hit every time. But i have not tried it myself. Otherwise, pride boosts damage a lot through concentration.
Armor: Fortitude or treachery
Helmet: Life leech helmet, like andariel's visage, vampire gaze, or crown of thieves.


I personally do not use corpse explosion, but it is obviously a very powerful skill. Use amplify damage first, to boost the 50% physical damage. Use decrepify at bosses in combination with clay golem to slow them down to a near stop.

It also lowers resists for mages although minimal, but corpse explosions fire side of damage

/Infinity that is

This post was edited by Haseo on Dec 15 2021 11:31pm

Ask any question you want.

I strongly advocate for the following build, which will allow you to defeat everything D2R throws at you in terms of pvm.

Skills:
Summon Tree

Max Raise Skeleton
Max Skeleton Mastery
1 Point into Clay Golem,Blood Golem, Iron Golem, Summon Resist and Revive
As far as Skeleton Mages are concerned - they are not worth it unless you roll infinity on your merc and even then they won't contribute significantly. But as you want to have a legion of skellies you can max it.

Curses

1 point into Amplify Damage, Weaken, Terror and Decrepify

Poison&Bone

1 point into Teeth and Bone Armor
Max Corpse Explosion if you haven't put points into mages

Gear:

Beast in double axe, caduceus or similar weapon with low str req
Shako um'd/jah'd
Maras
Eni
Spirit Monarch 35FCR
Trang Gloves
SOJ/BK or SOJ/SOJ or 2x BK
Arachs
Sandstorm Treks or solid 30frw/10fhr/tri-res boots (if you don't really like these two you can go with Marrowwalks, WWs or Aldurs but be sure to get one skiller or small charm with FHR on it)

Cta and lidless on switch

Inventory

Torch, Anni and a pack of summon skillers/ life-res or life-mana scs.

Mercenary:
A2 nightmare offensive
Infinity in eth tresher
Treachery
Andy's with 15ias/30 fire res jewel in it

Now we have two options for the golem creation - if you gonna do ubers with your nec I'd suggest creating iron golem out of random insight (it will die 9 out of 10 times). Should you opt not to go for UT you can create IG out of pride for extra punch.

The above build is not the most efficient in terms of clear speed, but it is the "legion" build you wanted. Cheers!

Prob of summoner in general pvm is that, aside specific diablo (aka bosses speed) if u run p8 cs a lot, it holds basically no benefit.

- any mancer in pve is a CE mancer after 1 body dies, since all your real DPS is CE -> losing infinity for CE fire side is annoying, since corpse explosion is the best way to farm anything in pvm and is your "real" DPS spell.

- losing insight on golem, while not mandatory, is annoying. Necro is basically a slower teleporter soso at end game (similar playstile/clearspeed) with the plus of never ending regen // better utility toolbox (thx from 1 extra RW aura for "free", up to 25ish LAEK of enigma/DW, trash tank summon and amp/ll curses that allows a DPS centric merc)

- poison does let u basically max out the not "garbage" summon skills tree for general tanking and telestomp anyway (so you can play the standard suicide infinity/treachery merc with amp/leech curses) -> revive is useless in general MF and mages are a meme.


other minor problems are no P&B skillers (poison dmg but mainly ce radious for "free" compared to summon skillers) and slower start at game resets. You need to summon stuff, while with nova u can do 1st few mobs with merc faster and you summon in the meanwhile.

If you REALLY want to try:

75fcr breakpoint, mara shako 2x bk 3ll arach -> "all skill" hit summon trees, p&b (ce radious) and bo buffer, Then as above suggested, u basically drop DW for beast. if you really want to drop insight from golem, use sojs over bk.

This post was edited by Banjoco on Dec 16 2021 06:51am

I think CE can hold its own on P3 farming with end game gear, due to how CE can go quite a bit above 100% P1 health with Amp damage.

Are mages bad? I don't think they are as bad as people make it out to be. They kill more hell monsters than Revives do with end gear, due to how high the Hp to damage conversion is. Revives also scale a lot better with +skills, so you don't need to max it.

You can max Skele, Mastery, CE, Mages, dump a bit into Summon Resist and Revives, have all the basic curses/other 1 point wonders, and still leave room from spending points into Golem Mastery for HP. Trash Insights on a 5k hp Golem is pretty easy to keep alive, but that comes when you have all the other gear pieces too.

https://d2.maxroll.gg/d2planner/m90106ff

21 skelies/19 mages/32 revives/IG/merc/75fcr/86fhr/max res/max block/15lvl fana/conviction

good luck lol

This post was edited by Wbeard on Dec 16 2021 10:57am

That wand and shrunken head literally can't exist in LoD or D2R.