Build Objective: Raise the best Skeleton Army imaginable!
Sources of RR:
Guardian of Death’s Gate - 25 flat RR
Frailty - 30 Vitality RR
Spectral Wrath - 35 Vitality RR
Rattosh - 25 Vitality RR
Total RR - 115 Vitality RR
Featuring the most ever amount of skeletons in this build - 32 Skeletons + 1 Blood Golem!
Getting Skeletons to work in FG is not an easy task, and even harder when you have 2 classes of Skeletons and neither of them have decent pet Health, Resistances, or pet Healing (at least with this set-up). Combine that with the most heavily resisted damage type in the game and it’s a wonder I was able to have this work at all. Thankfully, the D3 mod has provided numerous Skeleton-based equipment that allows me to fully cap Command Skeletons at 26/16, leaving me the rest of the slots to focus on vanilla Necromancer’s Raise Skeletons and keeping my pets healthy.
Sadly, I’m not able to use Time Dilation to provide a more reasonable upkeep for Call of the Grave + Frenzy, as you need the Empiryon Constellation just to give yourself enough resistances to survive the onslaught. It’s definitely worth it, though, as you need your Skeletons to survive long enough that you only need the occasional re-summon to keep your army in fighting shape. Similarly, investing in further RR is more important than investing in Shephard’s Crook, especially as between Call of the Grave and Frenzy, you will raise your pet stats to the point where more pet damage will result in diminishing returns and raising RR - especially against heavily resistant Nemeses - is more worth it.
Instead of taking Commander of the Risen Dead and focusing on Aether damage, we instead take Guardian of Death’s Gate + Master of Death to give our pets 100% Physical to Vitality conversion, with 2X Spiritbinder Glyphs giving us 100% Elemental to Vitality so we can use Skeleton Archers as well. Damage-wise, this build best benefits from Command Skeletons with Aetherfire bound to them, as it’s the only devotion left that doesn’t have a cooldown, so you have 13 Skeletons stacking up Aetherfire pools for good damage. Skeleton Archers take the Bat devotion, as they are less sturdy than Command Skeletons and I find myself having to resummon these Skeletons the most. Raise Skeletons takes up the Rattosh devotion, ensuring that the RR stays on the enemy for the whole fight.
To keep the Skeletons alive, I provide 2 sources of healing: Tree of Life devotion, and Bysmiel’s Authority gives us an on-command heal while giving pets flat RR on hit. Combined with Necromancer’s Spectral Wrath and Skeleton’s Rattosh devotion, and you have nearly 100% maximum RR working at all times, having only to cast Frailty to get the rest of it going. You can’t really do anything about the lack of pet Pierce Resistance, meaning Fabius is going to be a pain for this build. Outside of that, you have 80-85% resistances all around, meaning that as long as you’re careful about pulling bosses, you can even survive Shattered Realms without frantically resummoning your Skeletons all the time.