There are tonnes of guides for summonmancers. I want a guide the will produce the maximum amount of damage. The last time I built a necro was in 1.09 so I'm rusty so I need help so far this is what I got:

Stats:
Str: Enough for gear
Dex: Base (Don't plan on getting hit)
Vit: Rest
Ene: None

Skills:
Max Raise Skele
Max Skele Mastery
The rest I need help on!

Gear:
Weap: Arm of King Leoric(Not Sure, HELP PLZ)
Shield: Homonculus(Not Sure, HELP PLZ)
Armor: Enigma
Helm: Shako
Gloves: Frostburns (Not Sure, HELP PLZ)
Rings: 1 Bk / 1 SoJ (Not Sure, HELP PLZ)
Ammy: Maras
Boots: Marrowalks
Belt: Spider

I need a gear list badly, I don't know. I can afford pretty much anything but if you could put cheaper alternatives with the list as well that would help.

Thanks guys.

Not sure, but here's what I can tell ya...

The King Leoric Arm would be my choice for sure.
Frostburns might be your best bet.
Shouldn't need much strength if you use a Mage Enigma. Pretty sure marrows give some str...not sure about the rest.

Use 2x SoJ.
I'm not sure what skill tree a Darkforce gives to...Curses maybe...either way, check the stats on one - might be better than a Homo. Although homo is a lot cheaper (on NL anyway).



Max Skele Mage.
Since you're going for the most damage you can get, max Amplify Damage.
1 Clay Golem (Pre-requisite).
1 Golem Mastery (Pre-requisite).
Not sure if you want Revives or pure Skelly's....so either Max Revive or drop some more points in a golem. Make your Clay Golem better, or go for a Fire Golem.
Max Summon Resist. Max this last, after you decide your golem.

One thing you left out, a merc. You have many choices here, I'll attempt to list some of them...

First off, to get it out of the way; an Act 3 merc.
Now if you don't know about them, you may be asking "What? Act 3 mercs suck balls!". Well, they can wield (equip) shields. What gear would it use? Dream helm, Dream shield, and an eth archon Bramble. Also I should add right now, no matter what merc you decide upon, PUT AN ETH BRAMBLE ON HIM/HER.

The nice things about this merc.
Dream helm+shield = Nice holy shock aura, not only for you and your merc - but also on your summons :).
In my opinion, Bramble is a necessity to ANY summoner. Thorns help more than you think .


Another choice, Act 1 Cold Arrow Rogue (aka bow merc).
Use an eth Ice bow. I just thought of something... If you put your Ice in a GMB (Grand Matron Bow), do the +skills from the gmb add to the skills that Ice give you? Find out about that. If they do, use an eth +3 GMB (probably hard to find =/) to make your Ice. If not, just find an eth bow that has nice damage. I would say use the fastest bow you can get, but you're going for the best damage you can get :P. For the helm...well, if you find out that the +skills from your mercs other items DO add to the skills Ice gives her, use an eth Valk Wing. If not, get an eth Vampire Gaze. For the stats on the gaze, if you can't or don't want to get a perfect one - get a "half perfect" one. What I mean by that is; Either get one with perfect DR, or one with perfect LL. Gotta go one way or the other. Socket your helm with a 40ed/Lifer. I don't know how much life you can get on a 40ed jewel, I found a 40ed/7lifer last week...if you can't get any higher than 20 life with 40ed, just get a 40/15max. For the armor, as always, eth bramble.

Nice things about this merc:
Holy Freeze aura. On you, on your merc, and best of all - on your summons.
Cold Arrow. Slow down the beefier enemies so your summons can pwn that much easier.


Act 2 mercs.
Since there are a lot of combos you can make here, I'm not going to go too deep into discussion (at least not tonight). I'll just list some gear combos, and if you have questions I'll answer them tomorrow or sometime soon.

Combo 1
Pride
Bramble
Dream

Combo 2
Infinity
Bramble
Dream
There's more but I'm hella tired and still hungover from this weekend...maybe I'll post more tomorrow.


EDIT: Damn that was a long post.

there are no such things as ethereal bows

Wrong. Ever heard of an eBoTD Hydra bow? In fact, a couple weeks ago I found a 6socket eth bow. Didn't keep it because there are much better and cheaper alternatives to an ebotd bow.

I thought skele mages suck? and i dont think I should max amp damage, with +skills it should be good enough shouldnt it?

they do...only newbs max mages and/or amp

Use 2 sojs instead of 1bk and 1 soj because your skeletons are going to attack and tank.

So if I'm not maxing amp or mages, where are all my skills going to be put? help plz.

Place a single point in all curses, personally I don't put any points into confuse or attract (Other people do use these curses however.) and I'm inclined to put a couple points into dim vision (yet another plug for dim from me) to get that range a bit higher. This skill works well in hell when you can cast a very large area ahead of where you can't see. Keeps ranged baddies from rocking your shit in hell.

clay golem/golem master deserve at least a point. If you are going to give your golem more hit points then add more to mastery, but out of personal experience I've only used it fighting bosses (it's slow is ***ly) in conjunction with decrep, and when the golem dies its easy just to recast, with +skills from your gear it should have enough life anyways. Summon resist deserves some points, I put six in it myself becuase once it goes past six it's only increasing 2 resists per level and i've never had too much of a problem with skellise dying vs elemental attacks.

I suppose that is the deal with summon necros, you have all the skills you will really need pretty early and all the extras can never really pump up skills to a useful level. If anything i'd put more into your fav curse, maybe a few more in CE if you really want the range. If you want bone armor put a single point in it, and raise it's abosrb by adding to bone prision and bone wall.

u must be crazy, there is no such thing as a LEGIT ethreal bow, it can never drop. in 09 their used to be the Bugged Zephyr, but that was it
Why do u think people use faith or Wf if they could make EBOTD out of a hydra? i dont see why anyone would.

if u find another ethreal bow, keep it and show it to some1 on realms

The dilemma with a summon necro and my gear setup is that u get so many +skills that theres not muhc point in putting more than 1 into a curse since plus skills makes radius adequate. Also everyone says dont max mages or revives and its pointless to max skills like summon resist so my dilemma is I'm left with a hell of a lot of extra skills with no real truely effective/efficient place to put them.

True true, if you are really hurting for more skellies then max mages (make sure you can max them). Two reasons having mages are cold mages obvious slow enemies, and poision mages keep monsters from healing.

But normally I never do this. I usually dump a few more into summon resist and different curses, namely dim vision, decrep, amp, and lower resist (LR is great for parties, it's always appreciated in baal runs)

The only aura you MUST use is the "iron...something" the one that says Returns damages to attackers when they attack you or your summons.

???

Your merc should be migh merc, and if you want the thorns aura then equip him with 'bramble' runeword for a high lvl of thorns aura. Thorns works in conjunction with Iron Maiden, so damages will stack (but i've never seen exactly how well this works).

But personally I stick with an eFort and ebotz merc for killing.

Bows can't be eth b/c they don't have durability. Same as PB. So stop talking shit.

Skeles don't lag too much, its the 40+ revives you can get that do, and revives aren't effective for me.

Ok heres mine:

Stats
All into Vitality, use enigma to wear things.

Gear
Shako

Maras or crafted ammy

BP Nigma

Homuncolus

Beast twin axe

Arach

Marrows help but dont put much into str if you cant use it, im not sure about the str ordeal and i cant check right now. Silkweaves are very good in my opinion, i run out of mana fast.

soj's

Magefists, chancies or Frosts are good depending on what you want.

Skills

Max Skele/Mage/Mast
1 into clay golem
1 into summon res and and golem mastery
1 into amp
Max Bone sheild
Rest into bone sheild synergys

Screw bone spear, your skeles do the damage. Summon clay golem, put on bone sheild, and let your merc kill to get skeles, I use doom when i have my summons but i use bonehew to kill for the corpses. Might mercenary, bramble for the thorns (not sure if thats it, i haven't played in a while) and doom for holy freeze.

More into BS so if you get caught in a bad situation, it'll take a hit or two, enough to tele away.

Took me 45 mins to write this, damn broken collar bone...

Additional Comment:
Dont use iron maiden, you kill fast enough for the bosses and it has too low radius to be effective to minions or other ugly things.

Read the guide i made!!! it might clear up some major details

I would Take Hoto instead of Arm of leoric

Also for the BK/soj take to sojs if u are going to put the rest into life why
would u need the bk i would stick with 2x sojs

Yes stick with hommy

and im not sure mayb some1 posted all this already but ...

screw hoto screw arm of leoric its all about a low str beast axe max skellies max mastery go str8 up physical dmg and using amp dmg for ur curse with takes off physical iummunities about 95% of the time, and the lvl 9 fanata helps so much more then the three to skills just have a cta on switch to boost there life up.

i used to make ***ly as hell summoners so this should help.

Gear:
Weap: HOTO
Shield: Homonculus/Spirit
Armor: Enigma
Helm: Shako
Gloves: Frostburns (i've never used frostburns for summoners i've always gone with trangs.

Rings: 1 Bk / Raven
Ammy: Maras/Good Hacked Nec Ammy
Boots: Marrowalks
Belt: Spider? (if you mean arach say so next time please.)

Additional Comment:
sorry i had to leave quick so i'll finish here.

You should really put some points into Amp dammage and lower resist for your skeles to do major dammage. i would also suggest that you get a shocke merc to go with the skeles to kill everything. you could really own all together even in PvP if you do it right. your probably going to have to go thru some major tryal and error in order to get it perfect. i suggest if you can one day or somthing to get a second necro to get rushed or whatever so that if you mess up anything than you can still redo it. so i hope things work out for you if you have any other questionss just PM me.