[STRATEGY] Torchlight Alchemist Summoner build

The amount of information out there on Torchlight is depressingly low. The Torchlight wiki is sparse at best, which I'd attribute to it being a single player game (and thus collaboration isn't as encouraged).

However, I'll share my current build which has served me well into the end game of my first playthrough. I'm level 25 and on level 31 on hard mode, and the first 60% of the game for me was a cakewalk and even until dungeon levels 26+ I was breezing through most guys.

Quick summary of my Alchemist Summoner strat:

Pros-

• Very easy on your wrist relative to practically any other build. There just isn't as much clicking with this build (most of your damage will come from your minions).
• Fairly high margin of error, since you can run into a whole pack of guys and have plenty of warning to back off when you see your minions dropping like flies.
• Against any mob that doesn't do AOE damage, I doubt any non-end game build can outdamage you. Six nether imps + 2 golems + pet + buffs + your spells hitting one target = instant death.
• You can clear most rooms very, very quickly. That's probably the second best pro for this build besides it being easy on your wrist.
• You can let your personal gear slide and not have to worry about survival since you'll rarely get hit.
  

Cons-

• Don't do this with an imaginary pet. My pet does about 3x as much base damage as I do with our normal attacks, and the Burning Bind doubles its damage. Often when fighting really strong bosses your pet's the only guy left alive. Plus, its spells are super useful.
• You will need to spam buffs a lot. It gets better as you level up since the durations increase, but it's still kind of obnoxious.
• You have poor individual monster killing ability in the late game. Your spells are AOE focused and your regular attack tends to suck. If a couple monsters sneak around your minions and start attacking you, it's time for some kiting.
• You're very susceptible to AOE damage. This is especially bad when it's elemental damage (i.e. spells) since your minions have virtually no resists against that. Physical damage isn't quite so bad.
• You need to watch your minion count and constantly raise nether imps. The interface sucks for keeping track of your minions, so you need to visually do so.
• Some of the end game traps are really annoying (particularly the flaming grates and the triggered/timed spike traps)
• The gear you need tends to be stuff with very specific attributes, almost always uniques and rares.
• In the end game you can get two or three shotted by monsters.

Build (as of level ~25):
Nether imp - 10
Pet Mastery- 10
Thorned minions - 7
Burning Bind - 5
Frailty- 4
Alchemical Golem - 1
Beam Golem - 1

Ice shock -1
Ember Lightning - 1
Ember Lance - 1

Pet build:
Summon Archers (spell)
Heal All (spell)
Rings/necklace - +strength/+defense/+elemental resistance

Ok, so how do the summoning skills synergize?

Burning bind + minions = ridiculous damage output. Once my minions get into melee range they do ~2200 dps without me ever pushing a button other than buffing them.

Unfortunately, the buffs are crucial. Thorned minions is crucial to keeping them alive and increasing dps (reflects damage). Burning bind speeds up their attack speed and gives them a LOT more damage. Frailty severely weakens the enemy, which I only use for bosses or especially strong creatures (constructs and trolls, for example). You have to level up the buffs just as much for their % bonuses as for their duration increases. Until level 16 or so I was casting buffs nonstop, and only around level 20 did I actually have time to cast a bunch of spells inbetween buffs.

What are your arcane spells?
Ice shock was super useful early for clearing mobs. Lightning was similar- it did good damage for a long time. It also scales well since it receives 100% bonus from your magic attribute.

Ember lance appears to be the best arcane spell for dps. It does aoe damage in a line and there's no cooldown.

So what's with the pet choices?
The +stats on the items should be obvious. The spells are chosen specifically- summon archers, for ranged dps (the melee area is crowded enough from 6 imps, 2 golems and my pet), and heal all to heal all my minions, the pet, and myself at the same time.

There are a lot of extra points that you didn't list.
Feel free to allocate them where you wish. This was only a description of the core skills needed to make this work.

Adventurer is a great choice if you're planning on the long haul. Treasure hunter is the same deal. You can stack the arcane skills with some points if you want more damage out of them.