I started the game one week ago, and my first character was a conjurer (occultist/shaman) and I liked so much the pets (although I felt the expansion waaaay harder than the base game).

After clearing it, I just tested the necromancer class, and...it felt kinda biased, when compared to my conjurer. I liked the fact that we can summon more than one skeleton per time, but we can't see their life (well, they seem to have low def, so they die quickly anyway...), but worse of all, we can't controll their behaviour (aggressive, defensive or balanced), and I don't really understand how the increased summon limit works: is it just me or, do we need to cast the "raise skeleton" skill a second time, in order to respawn all of the skeletons +1?

Their damage is great though, so i can't lament on that.

As far as I know, there are some changes to skeleton AI planned for next update.
As for increased summon limit - you can get +7 from overcapped undead legion +2 from weapon for total 12 skellies, so expect 3-4 casts to raise them all.
Personally, for me skellies felt weak in poison heavy environments like The Sentinel battle in Hidden Path and swamps in addon since it is really hard to find this resist at low level. Just checked item database, there is one item at level 30, the rest are 65+, and augments are for 90.
You can control them with damage spells, they prioritize your target. Bone harvest is nice with maxed Soul harvest.

Changes? I'm curious about them. I don't feel them too much stupid, but they seems to not get any kind of aggro at all, as enemies-especially bosses, go directly on me, uncaring on the damage dealt by my minions.

Skelly are indeed weak (def wise) and prone to die, but their damage output is incredible. I maxed them out (i already maxed out the skeleton tree, and they are simply one shotting things all the way). I fear about the poison swamps on the expansion too though, as they are just too weak.

About control: but you can already control them with the pet attack command, right? As already a conjurer user, it felt natural to use it as right mouse click button.

Out of curiosity, did you ever use Drain essence? I like the idea to hold the skill button to drain the enemy's health (it could leada to some nice proc with devotions too) but the damage is abysmal and it can be hectic at times to focus on one mob which is moving left and right.

It's mostly related to them following you far behind. Familliar and briarthorn predict where you would be in a second while maintaining direction. Wouldn't say "weak", "thin" is more appropriate.
Considering that aspect of the guardian in Occultist mastery gives poison resist, I would prioritize it after completing skelly line. Should be good at level ~55, this is approximately completing normal game+1 act in elite. Conjurer is really lazy build, necro should be more invested. No, I went necrosumonner.
This skill suffers from the same problems like Albrecht's Aether Ray - no %weapon damage component, need to be stationary, and adds its own - damage type.
Grim Dawn devs disliked Titan Quest Necroshotgunner, which had -100% vitailty resist aura + triple shot of %hp damage staff. It could kill every boss in the game regardless of boss stats in 3-4 hits.
To make it impossible to build %hp reduction monster, every boss got huge resist against vitality damage and debuffs for it are scarce.
Add on top big resistances undead and chtonics have against vitality damage and you get a skill which isn't suitable even for trash clearing.

You can focus on vitality damage as petmancer, there are really good items which converse random pet damage types into vitality.

If I ever consider Occ/Necro caster, I would do poison or cold since you can reduce them with Curse of Frailty.
Chaos is out of the equation since it doesn't get reduced by CoF and whole faction resists it.

I see. Sigh, I already gone the poison way with the conjurer, it would be boring to do it again. Guess I'll try something else.

As I said - cold. Bone harvest, there are good twohanders for it.

Yeah, guess so. Thanks for the tips :) .

I am playing occultist/necromancer and it is insanely strong against mobs. You have to have the right gear for your pets though. All my gears have augmentation to the pets and the constalation as well. I just basically walk through the expansion at veteran without much difficulty. Now at elite and it is equally easy, hardly any boss fights make me sweat :)
Agree with you that it would be nice to be able to see the hit points or the potrait of the skele we summon. Perhaps something like POE did, just the potrait and the number of skele left standing, at least then we know we need to resummon and do not need to count them on screen :D.
For the skele limit, yes you need to recast the spell to be able to have more than 3 skele on the field

IIRC game shows number of skellies on "Skeleton face" buff in your buff row.

my bad eyesight! thanks for pointing that out :).

The problem is that i'm pretty much playing in the same fashion as my previous conjurer...XD

With that said, I like the necromancer in generale, but I would like to try and put more damage by myself too (although this breaks the pet build itself, as pet builds focus on pet bonuses granted by gear).

But more importantly, my necromancer is just too much squishy :/

I do like the necro very much. In some ways feels alot like the old D2 Summoner and then it has some more complex things to think of.

Playing a Cabalist petmancer without doing much myself and so far no real problems in campaign in every difficulty.

For "optimized builds, you can always take a look at grimdawn.com forums:

The Night King is a petmancer, that fights alot and is quite strong, yet tooo much action for my playstyle, The Unimaginative Skelemancer Cabalist is more like mine and shows how a comfort build plays well.

Yet the necromancer, even the Cabalist, offers totally different playstyles without pets, too. I still prefer pets and have my fun with them :)

haha :), i had the same question myself, is there a different way of having pets and at the same time having a bit more action myself. Wonder what would happen if we combine aether ray build with pet? Just a thought :D