Thinking about taking the dive...

[librarian]

Heiho,

Until you spend some time fiddling with the build in practice there are some things about the build that are easily overlooked. IM works better with a Merc than Amp damage because every monster that attacks becomes injured, rather than every monster that the Merc attacks.

I don't want to sound like a nitpicker, but this is just plain wrong. I know what you want to say, but still you're ignoring phys resi, not to mention elemental/ranged attackers.
And you ignore HP scaling in Multiplayer. Your hireling (most probably your IG also) will be long dead before even one enemy falls if you use IM that way in MP.
Some minus on style points for mentioning fire resi as a drawback to CE and still ignoring phys resi as a major drawback to IM ;-)


Basically I can just quote myself:

I don't doubt it works, but only under certain conditions regarding
- your equipment (on sLvl40 even Teeth can deal damage ...)
- map's population
- player count

But for this build (which I do believe extends to all Necs using CE as the main killing skill) the extra range each point gives to CE is important. It's far more bang for the buck. It damages more monsters, and more importantly draws more of them towards the necromancer. The more monsters you can draw in, the more dead bodies for the CE chain effect to keep happening.

I don't understand you here :-(
Of course each point invested into CE will increase its AoE. But it will increase only the radius (hah, diameter, blizz coders are even more noobish than me when it comes to maths ^^ ), not the damage itself.
So what I said is, if you're going the CE route and play from scratch, you spend your 20 points into CE and care about getting a first corpse. sLvl20 CE will do.
If you want to increase overall damage by affecting more monsters you use either Attract, Confuse, or in special cases Bone Wall or Bone Prison. You'll draw most of two screen distance's monster population to you, and when the chain is ongoing, you'll have insta-cleared next two screens. Maybe some Sand Maggots or other units with slow AI are left ...
Needs a bit of experience, because the unawarely player may get in deep trouble this way, if he didn't expect the swarming.
This needs not a single item, just spending skill points in the appropriate skills.
Of course it won't hurt (to be precise, it won't hurt _you_ ^^ ) to have some extra points from equip.

IM has no appeal effect whatsoever.

If you still hate it, I concede its tomay-to tomah-to and your mileage may vary. But I promise that its far from feeling like a decreped old news build:)

oh, come on, 'hate' is such a strong word ... :-)
I don't like it when I see a mixup of personal experience based on a certain build and a generalized recommendation. The few times I joined bnet in last half year there were still Necros around just casting IM everywhere without thinking, upon Bone Archers, upon Specters, heck, even upon Gloams.
I heavily doubt they had your experience or even your IM sLvl, and certainly, my own ones aside, I didn't meet anyone with an IG.