Guide:Starter Summon Necromancer Skeleton Mages + Revives
Viability / Purpose of the Build
Pretty much the easiest and best starter necromancer summoner with little to no gear requirements.
Can do Uber Trist/Uber ancients but not other bosses.
Necromancer Mages Normal difficulty video
Necromancer Mages Farm video
Necromancer Trang-Ouls Ubers, Dclone and Uber Ancients video
Skills
Max mastery until you can start mages then max those. Curses after and then Revives.
Rest of the skills can be put into Bloodwarp, Lower Resist and even Golems.
Attributes
Get as much str/dex as you need for gear, the rest into vitality. You can prepare the stats for the Grim's Burning Dead, get 70str/70dex. Marrowwalk require 118 str, so if you want both go for 118str/70 dex.
Gear
For summons its basically all about the +skills so get as many as you can.
Early Game Gear
Shop for +3 summon wand, gamble for +3 summon amulet, find a +3 summon necro head. Can also make a splendor in necro head with +3 mages.
Make a Lore helmet for another +1 and start gambling circlets for +3.
Late Game Gear
Then farm until you can afford (or find) a Grim's Burning Dead for 6 extra Skeleton mages. This makes the build ready for pretty much everything.
Other gear to lookout for, cheap but good are Gravepalm, Marrowwalk, Trangs armor.
Mercenary
For merc get an A3 cold merc with a spirit paladin shield, some fcr weapon(can be spirit sword), stealth runeword armor and random 10fcr belt/gloves to at least hit 86fcr on him.
Leveling
Get a dagger with poison strike and stab things until level 12 while putting points into Skeleton Mastery until level 12, start maxing Skeleton mages after that and let them do the work.
This build works for SC and HC, for HC it's recommend going the Blood Golem route instead of Revives.
Farming
You can farm Pits, Stony Tomb, Arcane, Chaos and Shenk & Eldritch, get that Grims Burning Scythe asap.
While farming look out for gear that makes faster builds possible, Bonespear for Chaos or Corpse Explosion in T1 maps.
Tips
For revives, there are a few options but the easiest one is to go to the A3 Travi WP .. cast desecrate and get the vampire lords. They shoot Fireballs and Meteors, keep them at a distance and they will be good.
Patch Notes/Changelog
Removed scepter insight suggestion as insight can no longer be made in scepters in S11.
Updated for Season 11+ and added 2 video links.
Acknowledgments
TDL and XeNoN, Ewmy put it together