Necromancer Q's

[Archon_Wing]

What about Amplify Damage? More than 1-point, or will +skill items make a big difference? I'm level 22 right now and getting totally owned in Act 3 and it seems like my skeletons are dying faster than I can revive them.

If your minions are falling apart too fast, you can always use life tap. And make sure your golem is in the front. Recast him frequently. Do not be cheap with mana potions.
Your merc will be very important for getting the first kill, especially in nightmare and hell. Fortunately, an exceptional insight weapon will work for initial kills even in hell, so I wouldn't worry even if you lack an elite polearm. For normal mode, just buy him any old pike, maybe reroll the vendor a few times, or socket one with 3 topazes. I recommend a blessed aim merc for normal because skeletons have terrible attack rating. But honestly, some pike of the leech will take you through normal if you use your curses well. Stealth breast plate and Lore helm can do for now, or you can just stick rubies in a grey helm and armor.

If all fails, you can still run over and whack them for some more damage. (Have a gemmed crystal sword on switch) With a point in bone armor, you can still melee ok for the first part of act 3 normal. This would be typical of most spellcasters who haven't developed their skills yet or can't maintain heavy mana usage.

I only recommend 1 point in mages, revive, and summon resist. As you may have noticed, mages are pretty bad and may actually hinder you in crowded places. Summon resist has miserable diminishing returns, a good amount of + skills will be good enough. And as for revive, they don't really do much damage with the exceptions of frenzytaurs and urdars. Mostly meat shields. Your main killing skill is gonna be CE, everything else is just a way to get a few corpses going. I do have a friend that went all out on minions, and that was sorta intresting. Pretty good tank I must say, although that's a bit extreme. We're talking about over 70 minions.:P

Anyhow I recommend this
20 Skeleton (the backbone, they take the hits and keep going)
20 Skeleton Mastery
20 CE (kill stuff)
1-20 dim vision (This is really nice against those annoying gloams and also any monsters that can revive others)
1 clay golem, mastery
- The other golems aren't really very useful to me and can't beat clay golem's slow. Iron golem can be decent but can't be recasted easily and that may be the difference between life and death
one in mages, revive, summon resist, and each curse (optional-- confuse and attract aren't necessary but have their own uses. You will need decrep though)

Anyhow, to me a summoner is the easiest character if you know what you are doing (especially in hardcore) Up until the end of nightmare my necro was still using a wand and head that he found in act 1 of normal. Naturally when he actually found something, it was a blast. Boss battles in normal are annoying, but the decrep+golem (or actually iron madin+golem, if you're getting IM) does the job