Summon Resists and Fire Golem

[gekko]

I am talking about the occasional boss pack that is so big and ugly that your fire golem wets itself, extinguishing its own fires, cowers, gets beheaded in 1-2 hits, fails to muster its normal death explosion because it is no longer burning, and leave a pile of soggy ashes which the boss pack steps in and tracks straight toward your current position, all before you can get of more than a single bone spirit off.

My last necromancer had a fire golem with high level golem mastery (~slvl 28 or so, IIRC). I virtually never had problems with my golem dying. True, you're worried about the super nasty boss combos, but with max mastery you'll normally be ok. If you're not planning on using any revives/mages/skells, I would put no points in summon resist. That's the route I took. While your fire golem will be weaker against LEB's and a few of the elemental attackers, the worst elemental attacks usually are fire based; and it's so much fun watching your golem bathe in Diablo's flame river and have his life skyrocket back to full :).

For emergency situations, consider a point in bone wall. Sure, if a boss can chew through your goem in one hit, a bone wall ain't gonna do much better. However, you can rapidly put up a half dozen or so between you and the danger and run the other way. On the few occasions my golem has been slain too quickly for me to recast, this has saved my butt.

In short, points are better spent on golem mastery than in summon resist, particularly if you have only a fire golem (merc doesn't count). As was mentioned before, it's usually not the LEB's or the other elemental attacks that hurt: it's the souped up physical damage boss packs. Summon resist is good in some situations, bad in others; more life for your golem is never a plus (barring the overflow, of course).

gekko