In a tightly packed area, you might want to stick with CE, getting the most "bang for your buck," so to speak rather than going with PE. The reasoning I'm using is that CE is what I call "quick n' dirty" damage, while PE is more of a "get in line, your ass is next" sort of damage. PE is nice, but PN still does the same job - massive poison damage - without having to waste a corpse or be aimed. It might not do as much damage as PE or last as long (which is a good thing, IMHO), but as everyone else has said, PN hits just about everything on the screen, which is a fair tradeoff when facing tons of ranged attackers in hell, and requires no corpse (which is desperately needed for CE).
As for a hell-viable build, IM is no longer a consideration for me since it no longer works with BG and a thorns merc (or the ultra-rare Bramble rune word armor) is a much more viable solution. At level 20, IM returns 650% damage; a level 15-21 Thorns (what's available on Bramble or an A2NM Thorns merc smart enough to keep itself alive) returns 810-1050% damage and it can be combined with AD, multiplying the damage again (am I sure about this particular cheese surviving v1.10? Not really, but the efficiency of Thorns is still illustrated). More suitable curses for me include Lower Resist, Decripify, and Attract.
As for minions, the beefing up of the necro's skeletons deserves a lot of attention. In fact, I give more preference to these boneheads now than I ever have - my golems are now all one-point wonders.
As for a hell-viable build, IM is no longer a consideration for me since it no longer works with BG and a thorns merc (or the ultra-rare Bramble rune word armor) is a much more viable solution. At level 20, IM returns 650% damage; a level 15-21 Thorns (what's available on Bramble or an A2NM Thorns merc smart enough to keep itself alive) returns 810-1050% damage and it can be combined with AD, multiplying the damage again (am I sure about this particular cheese surviving v1.10? Not really, but the efficiency of Thorns is still illustrated). More suitable curses for me include Lower Resist, Decripify, and Attract.
As for minions, the beefing up of the necro's skeletons deserves a lot of attention. In fact, I give more preference to these boneheads now than I ever have - my golems are now all one-point wonders.