I played a melee necro till 51.....soloing mostly....and it is powerful, very powerful. I could outtank my pet easily the entire time (by far).
1 ) Focus on AC items, as much AC as you can. Rings, 12 ac mask, everything. The goal is to maximize your damage mitigation as much as possible.
2 ) Focus on Dex items 2nd. Vampiric embrace for necros is much stronger than SKs. Having high dex and access to other proc weapons (such as staff of undead legion, 600 undead dd) is powerful.
3 ) Get a good melee weapon! I eventually gave my necro a heavy velium brawl stick....which actually does some decent damage.
When things hurt too much, just back up a second and cast your lifetap (since you are primarily focused on using mana to self-heal and damage with lifetaps, you won't have much agro and pets can get it off of you at any time).
With screaming terror you can solo 2 or 3 dark blues at level 50 without trouble. Pet + Necro melee = pretty nice.
The problem I found was after 50 my ability to tank started to wane. Stuff was just hitting for a lot more. Then again, a lot of my armor is getting dated....so I think if I were able to find a good jump in AC again I could manage it.
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