Building a necro summoner.
If I have hoto as my main wep and summon all my skeles then switch to beast for offhand does my skele lvl drop and I lose skeles or is it locked in from when I summon with hoto?

Level, damage and other stats remain, but number of skeletons may drop and will disappear. I.e. if you go from 12 to 10, you will lose 2 skeletons. But i think it's worth it, since 10 skeletons dealing 93% more damage and hitting probably 1 more ias bp, along with 80% more attack rating resultiing in probablyt 5-6% more chance to hit, is worth it over having 2 extra skeletons dealing 350-352 damage each. Or so i would think. Merc gets a good boost too.

Beast is a good addition to your army, but is not gamechanger as infinity. I make my skeletons at anya red portal with king leoric wand and then swap to beast.

How does beast go with not having fcr or resistances?
Is it harder to tele around and do you get hammered because of low res or have you picked them up elsewhere?

You can get max res and 125 fcr with good items. You need 20fcr circlet, 20fcr amulet, trang gloves, arach, 35spirit and a 10fcr ring.

Yeah ok so probably a little bit more pricey getting that good ammy and circlet. Is there a noticeable difference in dmg output as id be dropping a lot of skills? Hoto has 3 plus sojs that’s 5 and depending what ammy and circlet I could get as well.

About skill points, i use red portal near to anya with kings leoric arm to get my army of skeletons, then change to beast. They never die so you don't have to recast them. 125fcr helps to tele, cast curses and corpse explosion faster if you have the items, but you are good enough with 75fcr.

I recently faced this issue deciding between hoto and beast

It makes no difference for the most part but the hoto/sojs +5 skills gives me 2 more skeletons, more mana, 2 more mages, +5 to curses, and +5 to corpse explosion, so I went with that.

This post was edited by tugofpeace on Aug 27 2022 01:19am

So no cta then for offhand either, do you use the werebear at all from beast or is it useless for a necro?

No, i use cta. Just change leoric for beast. Take a look: