YASD: Ghoul Necromancer, level 47 (Insane/RL)

[Effigy]

Character vault

This was a minion-focused Necro build and overall it was working really well. I'm usually not that fond of minion builds, but this was pretty enjoyable because the minions don't have to be constantly resummoned. You're able to just give them some buffs and spend the rest of your turns debuffing enemies and using attack spells. I had just cleared the Room of Death without breaking a sweat, wherein I found the Sceptre of the Archlich and Worm Nest. I swapped out some higher-armor items to accomodate the new ones, which might have been a mistake in hindsight. I then immediately got ambushed by an orc patrol and ultimately died to over 900 damage in one turn. I think this character probably would have won otherwise.

Having previously won with a pure caster Lich Necro, I'm not sure which build I prefer. The Lich felt stronger in a straight-up fight, but the minion build is able to let its army kill a lot of threats off-screen, so it's potentially safer for an avoidant playstyle. The minion build had okay-ish direct damage while the minions are dead, but my next category unlock was going to be Age of Dusk, which would have improved my direct damage significantly. My category unlock order for this character was +1 inscription, Master Necromancer, then Eradication. For prodigies, I got Adept first to take advantage of the points spread, then Blighted Summoning second.

Ghoul is a good fit for a minion-focused Necro in my opinion. The most obvious synergy is ghoul resilience with reduced max life from Blurred Mortality. I was using The Untouchable since the middle of Dreadfell and it seemed to be working well. I ended up swapping it out for Worm Nest because after some gear swaps my max life was significantly higher than my negative life, but if you can keep your max life low and stack negative life, Untouchable is probably ideal. The second synergy is that Retch will heal your minions once you get Surge of Undeath, and of course your ghoul minions can also heal you with their Retch. Finally, Ghoulish Leap is a targeted teleport that can be used even while silenced, and is just nice to have alongside Ghost Walk for all kinds of situations. If you're not going Lich, I feel like Ghoul might be the strongest option for a minion Necro, especially since Necrosis incentivizes using runes instead of infusions. The global speed penalty may have contributed to my death in the end, but in general it can be mitigated by using Retch and/or Ghoulish Leap.

Cornac/Lich seems like a really strong option for a hybrid caster/minion build, but you'd have to give up either Adept or Blighted Summoning for the Lich prodigy. The other option that I'd strongly consider is Drem, since several of the core talents have long cooldowns. Call of the Crypt is particularly annoying because it can only summon 2-3 skeletons per cast and has 14 cooldown, so if your minions get killed it can be hard to resummon them during combat.