Bonemancer Necromancer Guide - Diablo 2
Most Important Stats: High FCR Breakpoint, FHR Breakpoint and FBR Breakpoint, Strength to wear a larger belt & gear - rest into Vitality
Good Gear: Heart of the Oak Rune Word or White Rune Word (better for pure damage). Insight Rune Word for Mercenary. Enigma Rune Word is the most recommended chest armor and Lore Rune Word for helms until you get a Harlequin Crest Shako. Spirit Rune Word is the best to put in your shield.
1 Clay Golem
1 Golem Mastery (Only really useful with +Skills)
1 Summon Resist (Only really useful with +Skills)
1 Skeletal Mastery (Only really useful with +Skills)
1 Raise Skeleton (Only really useful with +Skills)
1 Raise Skeletal Mage (Only really useful with +Skills)
1 Revive (Only really useful with +Skills)
1 Bone Armor
(+) 10 Bone Wall
(+) 20 Bone Prison
1 Amplify Damage
1 Corpse Explosion
(+) 10 Teeth
(+) 20 Bone Spear
(+) 10 Bone Spirit
(+) = Good spot to place additional Skill Points
Bonemancers are the highest damage Necromancer build in the game and also one of the few builds in the game that uses primarily Magic damage. This build can be played a few different ways, if you want to go full out max damage then you'll typically want to max out Bone Spear as well as every synergy for it. That means Bone Wall, Bone Prison, Bone Spirit and Teeth.
Since Bone Spear has so many synergies you'll pretty much have nothing else to spend points on if you go this route. An alternative route for Bonemancers who would like some extra survivability is to put a single point into a few different skills in their Summoning Tree. Clay Golem, Golem Mastery, Summon Resist, Skeleton Mastery, Raise Skeletal Mage and Revive is the combination a lot of people use when they want to pair the high damage of Bonemancer with a good amount of survivability too.
If you go this route you only want to put a single point into all of these skills. The idea is to use the +Skills on your gear to carry the weight of your Summons. During Hell your Clay Golem will be mostly useless (except for bosses, the Slow on hit is still amazing for them) and your Skeletons will be little more than a paper wall that momentarily stops enemies from advancing toward you. For the most part I don't even recommend you use the Skeletons, although Skeletal Mages have their uses if you can get a Cold one for bosses. Their chill affect is great, especially when paired with a Clay Golem.
Revives will be your bread and butter since they're basically just resurrecting an enemy that you've previously fought. For this reason they're much more powerful than your other Summons. Keep in mind that since this ability resurrects a fallen foe it's not useful for all enemies. Some enemies like Zombies aren't worth even resurrecting since they're so slow. Try to resurrect the most powerful enemies you can find for the best Revives.
Below you'll find a list of the main abilities that you'll be using on a Bonemancer and a little bit of information about each one.
Bone Spear: Your primary attack, it pierces through all enemies in a straight line.
Corpse Explosion: Great skill for enemies like Fallen that constantly revive; also a great skill when you get frustrated and just want to kill everything in a small radius. I like to trap a bunch of enemies in a Bone Prison, take out a few with Bone Spear then Corpse Explosion the rest.
Clay Golem: A feeble tank that gets better the more +Skills you have
Raise Skeleton: Useful for dungeons like Durance of Hate or Throne of Destruction where you have Undead Stygian Dolls that explode on death. The Skeletons help create a buffer between you and enemies like these which will help keep you alive.
Raise Skeletal Mage: Aside from getting a Cold Skeleton this is pretty useless. Cold Skeletons can inflict Chill on bosses which slows them down. They're very squishy though and will usually die after one or two AoE abilities from the boss.
Revive: For survivability this skill is your bread and butter.
Bone Prisoning many enemies at once.