The Summonmancer provides an excellent meat shield. Using a good blocking shield with high dexterity is recommended - the percentage-based block chance scales naturally, unlike skills such as Bone Armor. Decrepify is a great curse for a summoning necromancer when fighting Act bosses because it decreases the boss' damage output by slowing them down and in some cases, allow their attacks to be interrupted. In Hell mode Act V, the minions die from enemies, so skeleton mastery and items that give +skill are needed to keep them alive. Even though the Iron Maiden curse might seem good for this build, it will not make his minions last long. This build can generally get away with no energy, so points will go towards enough strength to use equipment, enough dexterity to use Homunculus for max block (roughly 193), with all remaining points spent on vitality. The Summonmancer had certain complimentary skills. It is even able to last until Hell in Act V, although Hell is generally the point at which having optimized equipment becomes necessary. With an Act II Offensive mercenary from Nightmare giving an aura, the skeleton army became quite powerful. Since version 1.10, skeletons and skeleton magi became much more effective.

If there were eight players, the summoned monster's life would be eight times greater. The Summonmancer frequently relied on revive monster skill because the monster's life scaled with the amount of players in the map. Prior to this patch, maxed out skeletons were weak.

The Summonmancer build is quite effective thanks to the synergies added in Patch 1.10. When partying with other players, the Summonmancer enhances their strengths by casting appropriate curses on enemies and distracting foes with his minions. The role of the player in this build is to support his army by inflicting enemies with curses, replacing fallen minions and by casting Corpse Explosion. Zookeeper, Overlord, Skelemancer, Skeletor, Lord of Mages, Summoner) is a build for the Necromancer that relies on a large number of minions to overwhelm and deal damage to enemies.

Diablo 2 summon necro build 1.14