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. After campaign you can farm all the usual areas.

Necromancer Mages Normal difficulty video - Nothing in this video has changed for S12

Necromancer Mages Farm video - Nothing in this video has changed for S12

Skills

Max Skeleton Mastery until you can start Skeletal Mages then max those. Put 10 points into Curse Mastery and 1 point in the Curses as show below, then max Revives.
Rest of the skills can be put into Blood Warp, Lower Resist or Blood 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. Season 12 added FCR on Large Charms, use these to get the needed FCR breakpoints early.

+3 Summoning Skills (Golemlord’s) Items can be shopped and at level 60. Gambling +3 skill items can be done starting level 65 (because of the possible -5 ilevel).

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.
Best spots to find these bases is big density areas like cows or flayer jungle. Preferably no MF and a low filter strictness.

Check out THIS LINK for the early game skills and gear.

Mid 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.

Check out THIS LINK for the mid game skills and gear. +1 all skills are obviously what you want here, but sockets are usable as well.

Mercenary

For merc get an A3 cold merc with a Spirit paladin shield and Spirit sword, or Neophyte scepter, 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, Bone Spear 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

Updated for Season 12
Removed scepter insight suggestion as insight can no longer be made in scepters in S11
Updated for Season 11 and added 2 video links
Created for Season 10

Acknowledgments

TDL and XeNoN, Ewmy put it together