The Necromancer class in Diablo 4 offers a variety of builds that players can choose from depending on their playstyle and preferred skills. In this guide, we will provide an overview of some popular Necromancer builds and their key skills.
- Corpse Explosion Build: The Corpse Explosion Necromancer Build centers around the skill of Corpse Explosion, which allows the Necromancer to unleash devastating damage by utilizing the corpses of defeated enemies. When an enemy dies, their corpse becomes an explosive resource that can be detonated, causing chain reactions of explosions and dealing damage to nearby foes. To maximize the effectiveness of this build, the Necromancer relies on skills and passive abilities that enhance Corpse Explosion’s damage potential. Skills such as Raise Skeleton and Raise Zombie are utilized to summon minions that can engage enemies and create more corpses for the Necromancer to detonate. Additionally, the passive skill, Blight, can be chosen to increase the radius and damage of Corpse Explosion, amplifying its destructive capabilities. Timing and positioning are crucial aspects of this build. The Necromancer strategically positions themselves to ensure that when enemies fall, their corpses are within range for detonation. By carefully choosing targets and effectively utilizing Corpse Explosion, the Necromancer can clear large groups of enemies swiftly and efficiently. Furthermore, synergistic skills and upgrades can be employed to enhance the build’s overall effectiveness. For example, the skill Bone Spear can be utilized to pierce through enemies and generate additional corpses for detonation. The passive skill, Fueled by Death, can be chosen to increase the Necromancer’s movement speed, allowing for quicker corpse gathering and detonation. The Corpse Explosion Necromancer Build excels in situations where enemies are densely packed, as it can create devastating chain reactions that quickly decimate entire groups. It offers a unique playstyle that capitalizes on the Necromancer’s mastery over death and manipulation of corpses, providing a satisfying and explosive experience on the battlefield.
- The Necromancer is the chosen class for this build, with a focus on Intelligence and Dexterity as primary stats. The active skills selected for this build include Reap, Bone Spear, Corpse Explosion, Blood Mist, Raise Skeleton, and Golem. These skills offer a combination of offensive and supportive abilities to maximize the Necromancer’s effectiveness on the battlefield.
- The passive skills chosen are Grim Harvest, Fueled by Death, and Necrotic Carapace. These passives provide additional benefits such as increased resource generation, improved movement speed, and enhanced defensive capabilities.
- The Book of the Dead plays a vital role in this build, with upgrades selected for Skeletal Warriors – Reapers (2nd Upgrade), Skeletal Mages – Cold (Sacrifice), and Golem – Bone (1st Upgrade). These upgrades enhance the effectiveness and versatility of the summoned minions, adding to the Necromancer’s arsenal.
- When it comes to weapons and armor, the focus is on obtaining the highest DPS two-handed weapon with desirable bonuses and the highest armor with beneficial attributes. This ensures that the Necromancer can deal optimal damage and withstand enemy attacks.
- Specific bonuses desired for the build include Intelligence, Vulnerable Damage, Core Skill Damage, as well as obtaining +1 Rank of Bone Spear and +1 Rank of Corpse Explosion. These bonuses enhance the effectiveness and power of the core skills used in the build.
- The Legendary Aspects, obtained through the Codex of Power, include Aspect of Explosive Mist, Blood-Soaked Aspect, Splintering Aspect, and Blood Getter’s Aspect. These aspects provide unique enhancements and augmentations to the Necromancer’s abilities, further enhancing their combat prowess.
The Corpse Explosion Necromancer build is all about utilizing the power of corpses to deal devastating damage to enemies. The key skill in this build is Corpse Explosion, which allows you to detonate corpses and cause chain reactions of explosions. By combining it with the Blood Mist skill and the Aspect of Explosive Mist legendary aspect, you can automatically detonate corpses rapidly while in Blood Mist form, leading to massive damage output. To maximize the effectiveness of Corpse Explosion, it’s crucial to upgrade the skill for increased damage and radius. The more upgraded it is, the more destructive your explosions will be. Additionally, Bone Spear plays a vital role in this build, as it passes through enemies and makes them Vulnerable, especially when paired with the Splintering Aspect. This synergy allows you to hit multiple enemies with one cast and maximize the damage potential of Corpse Explosion. Your Skeleton Warriors should be set to Reapers, as they can create corpses with their attacks, ensuring a steady supply for your explosive chain reactions. Having the Golem with the ability to create corpses is also beneficial, particularly during boss fights where there might be fewer minion deaths. Blood Getter’s Aspect provides you with additional Skeleton Warriors, further enhancing corpse generation. While sacrificing the Cold Mages in favor of more Vulnerability Damage, you increase the effectiveness of Bone Spear and Corpse Explosion against Vulnerable enemies. Reap can be used early on to generate a fresh corpse with a single swing, providing an initial boost to get your build going. To fortify yourself and your minions, the Necrotic Carapace passive skill comes into play. It grants protection and fortification with each kill, allowing you to withstand enemy attacks and maintain your offensive capabilities. By combining these skills, upgrades, and aspects, the Corpse Explosion Necromancer build becomes a formidable force, obliterating enemies with explosive chain reactions and capitalizing on the power of corpses.
- Blood Necromancer Build: The Blood Necromancer is a build that focuses on stealing HP from enemies and using Corpse Explosion to unleash devastating attacks. By draining the life force of foes, the Necromancer can sustain themselves while dealing explosive damage by detonating corpses.
- Class: Necromancer
- Primary Stats: Intelligence
- Active Skills: Hemorrhage, Blood Surge, Bone Spear, Corpse Explosion, Decrepify
- Passive Skills: Hewed Flesh, Grim Harvest
- Book of the Dead: Skeletal Warriors – Reapers (2nd Upgrade), Skeletal Mages – Cold (2nd Upgrade), Golem – Bone (1st Upgrade)
- Weapons: Highest DPS Two-Handed Weapon with Best Bonuses
- Armor: Highest Armor with Best Bonuses
- Bonuses Wanted: Intelligence, Core Skill Damage, +1 Rank of Blood Surge, +1 Rank of Corpse Explosion, Vulnerable Damage Bonus, Damage to Crowd Controlled Enemies, Damage to Slowed Enemies, Essence Cost Reduction
- Legendary Aspects: Aspect of the Expectant, Aspect of Might, Blood-bathed Aspect, Blood Getter’s Aspect
In the Blood Burst Build, the strategy revolves around inflicting Slow on enemies using Decrepify to gain control on the battlefield. Bone Spear is then used to pierce through multiple targets while utilizing Blood Surge to deal significant damage and drain the enemy’s blood for increased health sustain. To generate Essence for Blood Surge and Bone Spear, Hemorrhage is employed, reducing damage taken and providing resource generation. Corpse Explosion becomes a crucial skill, triggered by available corpses on the ground, ensuring a constant supply for explosive damage. Against Elites and Bosses, the same strategies apply, with an emphasis on generating more corpses to maximize the impact of Corpse Explosion paired with Blood Surge, delivering devastating damage while maintaining resilience throughout the encounter.
Active Skills:- Hemorrhage: By default, this Skill generates Essence, allowing you to deal some damage, and potentially form a Blood Orb. These are then used to restore your Health. With Enhanced Hemorrhage, every time you pick up a Blood Orb, you gain extra Essence. The final upgrade you’ll invest in is the Initiate’s Hemorrhage, which grants additional Fortify when you attack an enemy.
- Bone Spear: This is a useful Skill due to the huge amount of damage you deal against multiple enemies in combination with Enhanced Bone Spear. Although it won’t take center stage with this Diablo IV Build for the Necromancer Class, you can still use it to kill them efficiently and generate Corpses. Next, you’ll want to unlock Supernatural Bone Spear, which allows you to inflict Vulnerable against the first enemy you hit. This is especially effective against Bosses as making them Vulnerable considerably amplifies the damage you and your Minions deal.
- Blood Surge: This is an amazing offensive and defensive Skill rolled into one for this D4 Build. Blood Surge makes it so that you get to steal the life off of enemies. The more blood you drain, the greater the damage you’ll inflict so it’s very effective against mobs. You’ll then want to invest in Enhanced Blood Surge and Supernatural Blood Surge. Enhanced Blood Surge converts the blood you’ve stolen to heal a portion of your Maximum Life. Even against Bosses and Elites, this won’t be an issue since there’s Supernatural Blood Surge. This modifier grants Fortify so you take in less damage and live through difficult encounters.
- Decrepify: This is a Skill that lets you Slow down enemies in addition to reducing their overall damage. As mentioned earlier, this is how you’ll engage in fights so that right from the start, your targets are already incapacitated. Note that you won’t need to unlock Decrepify’s upgrades since these won’t significantly improve your Blood Burst Necromancer D4 Build.
- Corpse Explosion: Once you have enough corpses and you’re running out of Essence to fuel Blood Surge, it’s time to blast away with Corpse Explosion. This lets you deal huge explosive damage in a larger AoE thanks to Enhanced Corpse Explosion. You’re better off choosing the Plagued Corpse Explosion, especially since you’ll face Slowed and Vulnerable enemies after casting Decrepify and Bone Spear, respectively. As such, your Corpse Explosion considerably deals greater damage. It’s worth noting that even in the Server Slam, this continues to be a lethal and valuable Skill. As such, any D4 Necromancer Build using Corpse Explosion is considered the most OP Builds for this Class.
Passive Skills:- Hewed Flesh: Grants a 12% chance to summon a Corpse when attacking regular enemies, which increases to 24% when attacking Bosses. This provides a steady supply of corpses for your skills.
- Grim Harvest: Allows you to gain extra Essence, enabling more frequent use of your abilities.
Book of the Dead: - Skeletal Warriors: Choose the passive that allows you to carve flesh from enemies, generating fresh corpses by hitting them. This is especially useful against Bosses with fewer mobs.
- Skeletal Mages: Choose the passive that inflicts Vulnerable, synergizing with Bone Spear to increase damage against Bosses.
- Golem: Select the passive that generates a corpse whenever the Golem’s Maximum Life is reduced by 20%. Take advantage of this constant occurrence to maintain a good supply of corpses.
Aspects & Combos:- Aspect of the Expectant: This aspect boosts the damage of Blood Surge or Bone Spear immediately after using Hemorrhage.
- Aspect of Might: This aspect provides damage reduction each time Hemorrhage is activated.
- Blood-bathed Aspect: This aspect enables an additional nova explosion from Blood Surge, increasing overall damage output.
- Blood Getter’s Aspect: This aspect increases the maximum number of Skeleton Warriors you can summon, ensuring a sufficient supply of corpses for your abilities.
- Blight Necromancer Build: This Necromancer Build focuses on utilizing synergistic combos to maximize damage over time and control over enemy groups. The core strategy involves combining skills and abilities to apply persistent damage effects and create hazardous zones on the battlefield. The build begins by activating skills with damage over time components, such as poison or fire-based attacks, to steadily wear down enemy health. Additionally, specific skills are used to create damage pools or zones that further augment control. These hazardous areas inflict ongoing damage to enemies within them, serving as both damage over time and crowd control tools. Strategic positioning and timing of combos are key elements of this build. By grouping enemies together, either through skill effects or crowd control abilities, you can efficiently dispatch multiple foes at once. This enables you to maintain control over the battlefield and deal with enemies more effectively.
- Class: Necromancer
- Primary Stats: Intelligence
- Active Skills: Bone Splinters, Blight, Corpse Explosion, Army of the Dead, Corpse Tendrils (Optional)
- Passive Skills: Hewed Flesh, Skeletal Warrior Mastery, Skeletal Mage Mastery
- Book of the Dead: Skeletal Warriors – Skirmishers (1st Upgrade) Skeletal Mages – Cold (1st Upgrade), Golem – Bone (Sacrifice)
- Weapons: Bonescale Shield of the Void
- Armor: Viscous Adventurer’s Helm, Attack Spine, Blood Getter’s Adventurer’s Boots
- Bonuses Wanted: Damage to Crowd Controlled Enemies, Damage to Slowed Enemies, Vulnerable Damage,
- Legendary Aspects: Viscous Aspect, Blood Getter’s Aspect, Aspect of the Void
Active Skills:- Bone Splinters, upgraded to Initiate’s Bone Splinters, provides a 20% chance to inflict Vulnerability on enemies with each hit, serving as a primary Essence generation skill.
- Blight fully leveled with Enhanced Blight and Supernatural Blight, slows enemies by 25% and increases the damage they take within the Blight area by 15%. This synergizes well with the build’s focus on damage over time effects.
- Corpse Explosion is another crucial skill that is fully upgraded with Enhanced Corpse Explosion and Blighted Corpse Explosion. These upgrades increase the skill’s radius by 10% and enhance its damage over time capabilities, respectively.
- Corpse Tendrils allows you to pull enemies towards you, complementing the build’s emphasis on damage over time and crowd control.
- The chosen Ultimate skill is Army of the Dead, with at least a point invested in Prime Army of the Dead. This upgrade increases the chance of Volatile Skeletons leaving behind a corpse, which serves as a resource to fuel other abilities within the build.
Passive Skills:- Hewed Flesh, with 3 points invested. This skill grants a 12% chance (24% against bosses) to create a pool when dealing damage with a Lucky Hit. Notably, this includes damage over time effects inflicted by abilities like Blight. This ensures a consistent supply of corpses for casting Corpse Explosion, allowing for continuous explosive damage output.
- The Skeletal Warrior Mastery and Skeletal Mage Mastery are also vital upgrades in this build. These upgrades enhance the power and life of your Skeletal Warriors and Skeletal Mages, respectively. Strengthening your minion army enhances their overall effectiveness in combat, providing additional damage, support, and durability.
Book of the Dead:- In the Necromancer Build, it is recommended to select the Skirmishers upgrade for Skeletal Warriors. This upgrade enables you to summon up to 5 Skeletal Warriors, increasing your minion count and bolstering your offensive capabilities.
- For Skeletal Mages, choosing the Cold upgrade is advisable. This upgrade grants you 2 Essence each time your Cold Mages deal damage with their primary attack. This Essence gain is particularly useful for sustainability since abilities like Blight can drain your Essence reserves.
- When it comes to the Golem, either upgrade can be chosen, but the one that allows a corpse to drop when hit by a large attack is ideal for this build. By selecting this upgrade, you can benefit from the additional Corpses generated by the Golem, which can be used for abilities like Corpse Explosion.
Gameplay: - The recommended strategy is to initiate your attacks with Blight, creating a pool of decay that inflicts damage over time (DOT) on enemies. It’s important to keep your enemies within the Blight pool for maximum effectiveness. If necessary, you can use Corpse Tendrils to pull enemies into the pool and maintain their presence.
- Another key aspect is utilizing Blighted Corpse Explosion, which not only deals explosive damage but also creates additional pools of decay. These pools stack with the DOT effect of Blight, increasing overall damage output.
- It’s crucial to leverage your undead army to your advantage and maintain a safe distance from enemies. Your summoned Skeletal Warriors and Mages will support you in battle, providing additional damage and crowd control.
- Since the Ultimate ability, Army of the Dead, has a long cooldown, it’s wise to save it for strategic moments such as challenging encounters or when facing powerful Bosses. Timing its usage effectively can greatly enhance your chances of success.
- By following this approach, you can effectively utilize Blight and Corpse-based abilities while relying on your minions and choosing opportune moments to unleash the devastating power of Army of the Dead.
Each build has its own strengths and weaknesses, and players should choose the build that best fits their playstyle. Experimentation with different skills and combinations is encouraged to find the build that works best for each player.