Unfortunately i played too long on the necromancer to get a refund, but anyway…
If you are looking to be creative with your build as well as find a unique play style as the necromancer, then sorry! that is not entirely possible.
I myself have played a good portion of the current season (season 19) as the Necro, expecting to have fun collecting gear and improving my stats, whether it be changing out gems or maybe swapping runes to the selected stats that i felt comfortable using… buuuut nothing i did felt viable, i recorded some footage of doing some neph/greater rifts and found that no matter what my toughness was, majority of the time i would just get 1 shot by almost every enemy on my screen.
One thing i encountered too often was our under designed cheat death, all minions/pets get sacrificed and you are healed 10% of your life for each one that was consumed. most of the time i was left with no essence so i felt the best option was to just let the enemy kill me anyway and re spawn with full essence and try again.
Enough about my god awful experience playing this class… Anyway my point is, the only way to get up there in the rankings or to at least push decent greater rift levels is to just basically follow the build everyone else is using.
(please let me know if the class itself is still in early access, as it sure feels that way, and i will remove this post)