Adam Warlock: I see what you mean by spell absorption is annoying not being able to summon things. My main point in getting spell absorption over magic resistance was so you could save a few perks from putting into magic resist where they could be used elsewhere useful instead of being redundant since having 100% absorption will negate all damage anyway. This would especially be useful with a low leveled character of say 34 because of the limited perks. I also presented the idea that spell absorption can actually give back more magicka than originally casted from the absorbed summons.
This is annoying if you want to use summons but the circumstances you presented (Sovngarde & Apocrypha) are far and few between. You don't even need thralls in Sovngarde because the only thing you fight is Alduin and even then you've got 3 heroes fighting by your side. For Apocrypha, I see that it would be annoying to fight the Seekers/Lurkers by yourself if you're a necromancer then you could just keep trying to cast summons w/the Atronach Stone imbued Aetherial Crown unequipped for a 62% or 70% chanto summon things. All the missed summons might actually benefit you with more magicka regained and if you want the Seekers/Lurkers off your back while you're trying to summon things, then summon an Ash Guardian since that isn't affected by spell absorption. Also conjurers are different from necromancers in that they summon things while necromancers raise the dead, not summon them. You might as well call yourself a conjurer/summoner instead of a necromancer. Now I know there's no widely used definition for what a necromancer really is but that is just my opinion, take it as you will.
@Irishloot the invisible Dawnstar w/o increasing Speech. Loot chest, find Ahkari, hit till aggressive, reload, rinse and repeat.
Trickstar: Yes, the Unofficial Skyrim Patch does fix the spell absorption bug, but I actually use the bug to my advantage to regain more magicka back from trying to summon things with 100% spell absorb since I am trying to become a pure necromancer not summoning things for quick defense and refuge. I go out to find bodies then raise them which I find more challenging. At low levels, enemies are just not strong enough to get you to run away from them to summon things. If there are no dead bodies to raise, rely on your other skills and staves/magic. Alternatively, Ash Guardians can still be summoned and Arvak can be summoned outside.
You'll find most of the users on this thread are most likely on Xbox 360/PS3 instead of PC as no one really talks about mods or console commands. I don't really use any mods because I want to feel as close to the consoles as possible so that any mod conflicts will not affect my game making it seem like I made new discoveries that I present here for console players but only to find out it's because of a mod or mod conflict that messed up my game. The only reason why I don't use the Unofficial Skyrim Patch is because they make dead bodies that were originally permanent disappear. For example, Velehk Sain, a really cool thrall although he sucks, was always permanent in all of my playthroughs. I was so angry of losing him after installing the Unofficial Patch. Not even anchoring him worked. I also found the Old Orc to be unanchorable, disappearing like any normal random encounter would after I fast traveled to and fro a far away location. I always loved the perma corpses because they were so easy to watch over and I didn't have to worry about them disappearing which gave me a lot less stress and a lot of relief. Also, a corpse that I made perma w/o the Unoffical Patch, Susanna the Wicked, did not become perma w/ the Patch the same way a glitched the quest. I don't want to have to worry about losing such great perma corpses as Arondil, Sild, Kornalus, Umana, Sulla etc. because they might be unanchorable.
There is almost nothing you can't fix with console commands. Feel free to talk about spell mods and others because I once used a great necromancy mod called Undeath where at the end you could turn into a lich. One of the Active Effects you could gain from the mod was you'd be able to raise up to 5 corpses with the tradeoff of never being able to summon things for like 3 days.
Again, I don't know the true definition of a necromancer, but I generally think of them as only raising the dead not summoning things otherwise that's a conjurer which is whole different class.