Yeah, I'm working on a necro right now, and I can't decide on how to make him. I'm leaning either to a summoner necro, or a summon/other hybrid. His name is Ruin-Tumult if you ever seen him, and his skill points so far are 1 in raise skeleton, and 8 in skeleton mastery. he is a level 9 necro, and I play in the USEast region. Any ideas?

Summon is a good choice especially if you don't have a lot of good gear to use. I would recommend you put a point into amplify damage to give your skeles more stomping power. A clay golem can be a good way to add to your horde of minions too. He slows enemies and is a good tank in the earlier difficulties. Also you would be well advised to go through some of the other guides in the necro section of this forum, lot's of good information to be had here.

amplify damage, huh? i thought about placing a pont in that, but i heard that the damage increase is far too little to bother. I'm a bit iffy with the golems, but i have a shrunken-head that gives me 3 to clay golem, so i think that covers it. i checked the other guides, and bloody's looked alright, and AlmostDeadly's did too, but both guides seemed to fit the rich man, and i prefer standing in the reasonable. I am not rich, but i want to have a view on something i can reach.

You can make a reliable skelemancer if you know where to put the points. Only put one in mage and thats just to try and get a cold one. Otherwise they're useless. I suggest only put one in amp and all the other skills, especially decrep and lower resist. I think you should do fire/clay duo if only just put one point in both, cause while clays a good tanker, you need a damage doer so you can get your skeles up, and clay wont do that. Besides, when you have 15skeles running around, whats the chance the golems going to be hit if its doing next to nothing.

Last of all, get an act2 off or combat, cant remember which, but make sure it's from normal diff.

I was able to get a pretty good mancer while staying poor.

i took your advice with the amplify damage, and it works great with my skeletons, of which i can summon 2 skeletons at level 10 eachm and i have a level 3 clay golem with the help of my shrunken head. I notice i don't do much with this build though, besides spamming amp damage whenever possible, and its starting to lean towards pvm. oh well. thanks for the help, i kind of see where this build is going to go. any other sugesstions are nice, but its not necessary now. thanks again.