Understandably you get all the skills from hoto, but 2 to pnb is only 1 skill different than 3 to all. So apart from curses, you still get 5 to skeleton, 5 to skeleton mastery, and 4 to mages. If you're doing CE necro, hoto is probably better. If you're doing summons for skeleton and mage damage, beast > @.

Make Iron Golem out of Eth Beastz

Use Hoto

Problem Solived, imo if you not using Iron golem as a summoner, you ain't playin it right.

You don't hit the fcr bp with leoric
CE does more damage than all of your summons combined why wouldnt you use it
not to mention the dps between hoto and beast is almost identical (meaning the difference between hoto and leoric is also almost identical)

Unless the only thing you ever do with your necro is uber trist hoto is always better than beast or leoric

This post was edited by Worrywart on Aug 17 2018 02:34pm

i was oldschool when i played - i used carin shard as something different. than most others

Conversely, if your necro is only running 1 player hell cows or chaos runs, then yes CE is only thing you need. If you want to actually kill bosses at decent speed, CE won't do anything and neither will your summons if there's nothing to target around them. If you want your summons to actually do damage, then use Beast, Pride, Might Act 2 Merc with Infinity.

a Necro using a 35 fcr spirit on offhand can still reach the breakpoint fairly easily without many compromising skillpoints (2 fcr rings as opposed to 2 sojs). If you really want to use corpse explosions and summons, use a bone necro with 10-20 pts into CE (subtracting points from either the wall or prison synergy) and an 8 spear 1 revive wand. At this point, your bone skills from gear would synergize would your CE ,and your spear damage would be higher than the summons in a CE summoner build. Even still, you'd be able to target bosses yourself and play hell games with more than 1 player.

This post was edited by eric1014153 on Aug 17 2018 04:01pm

By using spirit in the offhand you give up any skill point advantage leoric had over hoto and still don't hit the fcr bp unless your necro is using 2x fcr rings (which means hoto would have added more +summon skills than your leoric build)

I'm still not seeing your argument

My argument is that even with the skillpoint advantage with hoto, Beast still is a better option than either Leoric or Hoto (disregarding cost) if you want your summons themselves to use damage. Second point was that using 8 Spear White with 1 Revive with hybrid bone necro is better than using summons if corpse explosion is your main purpose of going summoner since your summons won't do enough damage to actually kill anything. It then becomes the point where summons are then a distraction and are thus a waste of skillpoints.

This post was edited by eric1014153 on Aug 17 2018 05:11pm

Ah yes, I remember the classic Carin Shard vs. Leoric. I personally still prefer the latter. Go to Pindle’s garden and summon up your army with Leoric, then switch to Beast axe, or whatever... think I used Wizzy or Gull on switch. If I could afford a Pride golem I’d have used one

https://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=48460552&f=87&o=0
Read this carefully, beast isnt the best option in all situations

you can argue all you want.. but a summoner with no beast using or iron golem. sux. thats my opinion.
and.. i would use leoric over hoto for sum nec any day.. cuz as summoner..(pvm) he is not lack of resist and fcr... well, 125 is not needed either.. 75 is fine in pvm.
dmg over fcr any day
as for pvp.. all well most of us agree that 125fcr is must
them its hard to make 125 with no hoto..anyway. im out