Looking for some build advice (summoner)

[Proven Paradox]

---tl;dr version---
(I don't blame you, this ended up pretty long.)
Primarily a summoner with heavy focus in skeleton warriors and a bit of revive. Mages can rot. Remaining skill points: poison nova, bone spear, bone spirit, or golem mastery?

---Full version---
So, I'm playing a summoner necromancer for the first time since something like 1.06. At that point skeletons were so pathetic and internet connections were sufficiently unrelaible that the ubild was almost universally reviled, but Revive was badass and it was fun in the end. Clearly things have changed significantly since then, as I find myself relying more on my skeletons than my revives.

I've reached Act 4 Hell mostly on my own (having had a bit of help from a friend to get through normal where my summons were weakest). Things are still moving forward, but I'm starting to see things slow down a bit. I suspect a respec is in order, but before I do that I'd like some advice from folks here.

First of all, the intention here is to build a character that can farm for runes and general MF in areas my sorceress has trouble with. She can do act bosses with no problems, but my attempts at rune farming and the like by clearing the River of Flame and the Worldstone Keep didn't go so well. Ideally I'd like this necromancer to be able to farm such places reliably.

---Current setup---
Level 76
-Skills-
Poison/Bone:
1 teeth, 1 bone armor, 7 CE (and skill points gained from here on out are getting put into CE)

Curses:
1 amp, 1 weaken, 1 terror, 1 decrep, 1 dim vision, 1 confuse

Summoning:
20 raise skeleton, 15 raise mage, 12 revive
1 clay golem, 1 blood golem, 1 iron golem
20 skeleton mastery, 1 golem mastery, 1 summon resist

-Stats-
Strength 156 (no prizes for guessing why)
Dex base
Vit <however many stat points I've gotten + base vit- (156-base str)>
Energy base

-Items-
Spirit broad sword
Spirit monarch - Hopefully to be replaced with a PDiamond Homonculus soon, but the guy I was trying to trade with hasn't responded to me yet.
Harlequin Crest (PTopaz)
Skin of the Vipermagi (34 resists, PTopaz)
Chance Guards (29 MF)
Rare battle boots (18 MF, 40 LR, not much else)
2x Nagelring (30, 27 MF)
Goldwrap (upped to Battle Belt)
Mara's Kaleidoscope (30 res--just found that tonight, couldn't be happier about it)
Secondary weapons - storage for some items I want to keep around for another character.

-Merc-
Act 2 NM Offensive (might aura)
Insight Cryptic Axe (16 med, 260 ED)
Duriel's Shell (197 ED)
For now, Stealskull. Once I find one of my Tal Rasha masks I intend to switch that out.

---What I'm observing---
First of all, between amplify damage and the might aura, my standard skeletons are beasts. This blows my damn mind: I still have memories of the old skeletons and how crap they were so I'm just not able to really process this right now. They also seem pretty sturdy: right now I'm more likely to lose them because I screw up and get killed myself.

The mages, on the other hand, seem pretty wimpy. They die easily and I spend a lot of effort replacing them. Even after that, they don't seem to be doing much damage. Plus, the frost ones deny me corpses that I'd really rather be using to revive or start a CE chain. Perhaps if I invested in Lower Resists it'd be one thing, but unlike Amp, LE isn't doing its maximum damage boost with just one point. Furthermore, I don't like the idea of having to choose between amp/decrep or LE.

The Revives would be awesome if I could keep them with me. But I can't. They wander off and their pathfinding is crap so I'll lose whole groups of revives behind a wall. With +skills I'm currently looking at 21 revives at once, and while I can get there, I can't stay there.

I use a clay golem for the slowdown and a bit of tanking. Once I'm heartier myself (my resists are currently too low to reliably survive: burning souls ruin me) I'll make one of the normal-quality Insights I used to level into an iron golem and hand my merc an Obedience thresher I have waiting in the wings.

And a minor note. I don't like Confusion. Haven't tried Attract yet, but it seems that in any situation I need control I'm better served by Dim Vision's superior radius or, any situation I need damage I'm better served by Amplify Damage's better effect and radius. (And of course, Decrepify ruins act bosses.)

---What I'm considering---
First of all, those mages are gonna go. They're not doing much for me (cold ones are messing up corpses too) and there's a lot of points tied up in them. CE is going to get the points saved there. This is pretty much set in stone unless someone makes a compelling argument to keep the mages around.

Next, I'm going to put fewer points into Revive. I'm still going to get Revive, but it'll probably be a one point wonder: +skill items do a LOT for it and generally ~10 is a good number of revives that I can reliably keep around.

Where the points saved on Revive go is where I'm not sure what to do. My first instinct is go move toward a hybrid build; there are situations where the skeletons are bottlenecked to a point where only one or two are attacking the target at once, and it takes a long time to get anything done. I'm strongly considering picking up either Poison Nova, Bone Spear, or Bone Spirit to handle these situations. Just speed things up a little, get that CE chain beatdown faster and more reliably.

Alternatively, maybe I should put points in Golem Mastery? I'm aware that damage-wise all of the golems are basically crap, but it'd be a pain in the neck if my Insight IG doesn't hold up for long.

Before I commit to this, I was hoping to get some input from more experienced Necromancer players. Any advice would be appreciated. Especially on that last bit, but on anything. I'm open to gear suggestions too. (Yes, I know, Marrowalks, I'll use them when I get them)

[Skai]

Definitely get that CE up to 20. Every time I start d2 again, I always end up going fishymancer, by far my favorite class even though boring at times, it is really safe for MF (not very fast, but whatever).
After you get 20 in CE, RS, and SM, you're pretty much free to do whatever as your build is done there. I've done max mages and max revives, neither of which I liked much. Mages are up in the air, revives are pretty damn decent though when you get Ulgars (or whatever they're called;the big knockback things in River of Flame hell diff.). But again, they're kind of a pain to keep 'stocked up' and never really absolutely needed them.

I personally wouldn't go hybrid. You wouldn't be doing nearly enough damage to be of any help to your minions (I've tried this for places like Hell Sanctuary and Maggot Lair; just didn't work haha).
Like I said though, you're done at 60 points, so you can't really go wrong. Summon Resist is helpful, albeit just a little, so I usually dump the rest of my points in that and call it a day. *shrug* haha

[magicrectangle]

Okay, first of all, obligatory Fishymancer guide link.

Revives are pretty balls unless you have teleport (doesn't have to be 'nigma, can be naj's puzzler on switch). If you have teleport they are good, but you still don't need more than 1 point. Plus skills will take your revive count more than high enough.

On to the specific question, in my view, once you've maxed CE, there are a few good options on where to put points. I am not at all a fan of hybrid, your personal DPS will just be too balls to even matter. I like the following, in no particular order:

1) Golem mastery. I like this particularly if you intend to use insight iron golem, to help keep it alive. If you use a clay it is probably not needed.

2) Max amp. What can I say, I'm lazy, I like to cast amp once and have things a screen away get amped. It can actually speed up a run more than you'd think to be able to fire and forget with amp, allowing you to spend all your active time casting corpse explosions.

3) Max dim vision. The hardcore choice, or the choice if your gear is bad. Max dim will let you be super super safe from ranged attackers like gloams and spearcats, you can dim them from two screens away.

Also get a single point in attract. Most of the time your army tanks fine, but sometimes you run into something particularly nasty, and being able to simply force it to tank itself is very handy. I most commonly use attract to stop unique packs of the physical immune witches in WSK3 from raping my merc/IG. This is better than dim vision because you can keep the rest amp'd (and thus not physical immune) while the attracted one tanks.

[Gillsing]

I've read that the Iron Golem can vanish into thin air, and that you might need to teleport in order to ensure that it doesn't poof. I've only had that happen with a Grizzly, and then it happened every time my druid went down the stairs from the Pandemonium Fortress, as the bear inevitably got stuck up there. It probably tried to teleport down to the druid, who was at the time on the stairs, with plenty of open air around him. So my guess is that the bear tries to teleport to a random location near its summoner, and if that location happens to be disallowed/blocked, then it vanishes. Might be worth it to experiment with an Iron Golem to make sure that won't be a problem.

[magicrectangle]

I've never had that problem, but anyway insight is cheap.

[porkdinner]

i had similar build until i read about fishymancer ... put my extra points into bone spear though.

[Zarniwoop]

Here's my thoughts.

http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/s...tions-Answered

[wickedswami]

respec, drop the mages, max CE

Next: the beauty about attract is that it only curses 1 unit, and it can't be overridden. So, you can attract a dude and Amp all the others in the pack. That way, you can attack them, amped, while they attack the attracted dude, giving you free play. There is no better combination, except for gloams, you want to dim gloams.