I will type up all of the things my summon necro has. He fares well in Hell by himself so if you do what I say, you should be good.
Gear:
Full Trangs
Arm of King Leoric Tomb Wand
Golemlord's Amulet
2 Nagelrings but I suppose it would be better with 2 SOJ's
I don't currently have any good boots but mine are Tearhaunch Greaves
Also get as many +to summon skills charms as possible and a hellfire torch
Stats (At lvl 76 no gear):
115 strength-stop at this
25 Dex-No points into Dex at all
290 Vitality-never stop putting into vitality
25 Energy-No points into this at all
What I did was alternate putting 5 into str and 5 into vit untill 115 str then just put all future points into vit
Skills:
I know this will sound weird but my necro rocks and this is how I did it.
Alternate between putting a point into Raise Skelle and Skelle Mastery untill they are maxed out. Next, max out Raise Skelle Mage. There you go! After you are done maxing those out, put some points into stuff so you can do Summon Resist. With all my armor on and charms, this is up to 18. This is plenty b/c after that, the bonus gets so small each point it isn't worth it. If you are going to put any points into curses, put a few into Amplify Damage. You would be surprised at how much more your skelles murder with this in effect. You can do what you want with the rest of the skill points.
All together, my necro has the following with all his gear on:
Skills:
37 skelle mastery and raise
36 Raise mage
I have just played around a bit and have a +14 to all summon skills so the others I have just put 1 or 2 skill points into.
15 Amplify Damage
And I never bothered with poison and bone.
Stats:
158 str
58 dex
303 vit
38 energy
I have 819 health and 592 mana. While it does take a few mana pots to get all my guys summoned, my recharge rate is high enough that if I kill a few guys, I don't need to pot.
Good luck with your runeword free Necro!
(There is a reason why this is a skelle necro, in case you didn't notice, I fucus on skellies)
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That build lacks in comparison to a fishymancer. Drop the skeletal mages and get corpse explosion instead. Skeletal mages are pretty horrible unless you've got the build to support them. Usually, that means something like lower resist and a merc with that one runeword that has conviction. Also, enigma is almost required to make a necro with skeletal mages work.
Corpse explosion synergizes better with skeletons because you use amplify damage, increasing the damage of both your skeletons and your corpse explosion.
Try playing your necro sometime without summoning the mages, and you'll see that there's hardly an improvement when you use them. Then try doing the same thing, except dont summon your skeletons, and only summon your skeletal mages. You'll see that they just do nothing and get their asses kicked in the process.
To effectively play a "skeletal mage" necro (usually called a lich,) you need to also recast your skeletons until you get the best ones you can. For instance, if half of your skeletons are poison casters, you're going to do horribly. The only use of poison casters is to prevent monster healing, and you only need one to do that. Just the same, cold casters can be pretty bad as well, since they freeze enemies, destroying the bodies. Having one cold caster to slow enemies is good, but more than that is only annoying. Therefore, you're constantly having to not only make sure all of your skeletons are alive, but you have to keep recasting them to get the right ones. Much too high-maintenance.
The fishymancer wins on every front. The skeletons rarely ever die, and serve their purpose as a meat-shield to keep you alive. Once they (or your merc) get one monster down, you take out ALL of them with corpse explosion, creating a chain-reaction of CARNAGE. There's hardly any maintenance necessary, so you don't have to spend time resummoning shit.
Don't get me wrong, a lich necro is a force to be reckoned with. However, this "skellymancer" people go on about is just a bastard child of the two, and it's pretty rubbish compared to either of them.
BTW, you can make a killer fishymancer without any gear requirements. It's the build that people claim can "solo hell naked." I've heard of people playing solo all of the way through normal, nightmare, and hell, without any gear. What this means is that you can essentially wear as much MF as you can possibly get without worrying about it gimping your character. You can have a 900+ MF fishymancer soloing WSK and baal in hell. If you want a build just let me know, it's a really simple one.