When it comes to using the dead to your advantage, Necromancer is the best class to do that, and in Diablo 4 numerous builds support that. Much like every other class in Diablo 4, Necromancer also supports unique builds, thanks to its extensive skill tree. In today’s guide, we will explore two such builds, to understand the hype around the beloved Necromancer class in the game.
Necromancer Blood Surge Build in Diablo 4
Do you love blood? Ever had the mood of playing as a vampire that utilizes blood to do damage? Blood Surge is one such build that solely relies on blood magic and shows just how much Necromancer, and by extension, the classes in Diablo 4 have variety in terms of character building.
Blood Surge utilizes the blood properties in Necromancer’s skill tree to annihilate hoards of enemies. This build can also be used to level up your character in the game.
Basic Skill
- Skill To Pick: Hemorrhage
- Level: Five
- Supporting Skills: Enhanced Hemorrhage, Acolyte’s Hemorrhage
The first skill we will pick is Hemorrhage. This skill allows Necromancer to burst the enemy’s blood, dealing damage, making this an essential skill in this Diablo 4 build.
Additionally, pick up Enhanced Hemorrhage and Acolyte’s Hemorrhage. Enhanced Hemorrhage deals an AOE damage around your target if you pick up a blood orb. Similarly, Acolyte’s Hemorrhage gains an additional +20% attack speed.
Core Skill
- Skill To Pick: Blood Surge, Blood Lance
- Level: Five
- Supporting Skills: Enhanced Blood Surge, Acolyte’s Blood Surge, Enhanced Blood Lance, Paranormal Blood Lance.
Onto the core skills for this Diablo 4 Necromancer build, we will pick up Blood Surge and Blood Lance. Blood Surge allows Necromancer to draw blood from the enemies, dealing damage, and expel a blood nova in the process, dealing further damage. Pick up Enhanced Blood Surge and Paranormal Blood Surge. Enhanced Blood Surge heals us, which doubles if we draw blood from four or more enemies. Paranormal Blood Surge provides us with one stack of overwhelming blood.
As for Blood Lance, it allows Necromancer to throw a lance made out of the blood at the enemy, dealing damage by lingering inside them. Pick up Enhanced Blood Lance and Paranormal Blood Lance. Both of these skills, while providing reduced damage, will make it up with attack speed.
Corpse & Macabre Skill
- Skill To Pick: Blood Mist
- Level: Five
- Supporting Skills: Enhanced Blood Mist
For the next skill, we will pick up Blood Mist. This skill allows us to become immune for a few seconds. While our movement speed drops down, we periodically deal damage to enemies and heal at the same time.
To make this better, pick up Enhanced Blood Mist. This skill will reduce the cooldown of Blood Mist if we cast a skill that overpowers it.
Curse Skill
- Skill To Pick: Decrepify
- Level: Five
- Supporting Skills: Enhanced Decrepify, Abhorrent Decrepify
Decrepify curses in the target area. Enemies afflicted by it are slowed down and deal less damage for a while. To amplify the skill, we will pick Enhanced Decrepify and Abhorrent Decrepify. Enhanced Decrepify helps in stunning enemies already afflicted by Decrepify. Similarly, Abhorrent Decrepify has up to a 15% chance to reduce our active cooldown.
Ultimate
- Skill To Pick: Blood Wave
- Level: One
- Supporting Skills: Prime Blood Wave, Supreme Blood Wave
For the ultimate, we will pick Blood Wave. This skill conjures a tidal wave of blood that deals 90% damage, knocking back enemies. Pick up Primal Blood Wave and Supreme Blood Wave to further improve this skill. These two skills not only slow down enemies but also leaves back three blood orbs for Necromancer in Diablo 4 to use, effectively making this build better.
Key Passive
- Skill To Pick: Rathma’s Vigor
- Level: 1
- Supporting Skills: Nil
To ensure that the blood damage in this build for Necromancer in Diablo 4 is viable, we will pick Rathma’s Vigor. This skill helps in increasing our maximum life by 10%. Furthermore, after becoming healthy, our next blood skill overpowers.
Passives
- Skills To Pick: Death’s Embrace under Curse Skill, Gruesome Mending, Coalesced Blood, Tides of Blood, Drain Vitality under Summoning Skill, Stand Alone under Ultimate Skill.
- Level: Three for every single one of them.
- Supporting Skills: Nil
To enhance the properties of this build, we will pick some passives. Under Curse Skill, pick Death’s Embrace. This skill ensures that Necromancer damages enemies closer to them more while taking less damage.
We then move on to Summoning Skills, where we pick Gruesome Mending, Coalesced Blood, Tides of Blood, and Drain Vitality. These four skills ensure Necromancer regains vitality, blood skills deal increased damage, and fortify them.
Finally, under Ultimate, pick up Stand Alone. This improves damage reduction, as long as you have active minions.
Book of the Dead
Under the Book of the Dead in Diablo 4, which is exclusive to the Necromancer class, we will pick the following properties to suit this build:
- For Melee Skeletons, we will sacrifice them in favor of non-physical resistance. Our goal here is to make the character tanky.
- For Mage Skeletons, we will sacrifice them to increase our overpower damage.
- For Golem, we will sacrifice them in exchange for a health buff.
Necromancer Shadow Blight Build in Diablo 4
Another build inspired by the nice people at Icy Veins, Shadow Blight build utilizes the minions of Book of the Dead to fare against the bosses in the game, especially the world bosses. This build utilizes the properties of the Shadowblight skill and builds around it properly.
Basic Skill
- Skill To Pick: Reap
- Level: One
- Supporting Skills: Enhanced and Acolyte’s Reap
The first skill we will pick for this particular Necromancer build in Diablo 4 is Reap. This skill allows Necromancers to sweep a scythe in front of them, dealing damage and reducing damage reduction.
To improve it, pick up Enhanced Reap and Acolyte’s Reap. Enhanced Reap gives us attack speed if an enemy dies from the skill. Acolyte’s Reap creates a corpse under the first enemy hit. This only happens every five seconds.
Core Skill
- Skills To Pick: Sever and Blight
- Level: Five for Sever, One for Blight
- Supporting Skills: Enhanced and Paranormal Sever, Enhanced and Paranormal Blight.
Under Core Skill, we will pick up Sever and Blight. Sever sends a specter of Necromancers forward, attacking with their scythe, then returns and attacks again for lesser damage. To improve this skill, pick up Enhanced Sever and Paranormal Sever. Enhanced Sever damages enemies along its path, and Paranormal Sever helps to make enemies vulnerable with every fourth cast.
On the other hand, Blight launches a concentrated blight that deals damage, leaving an AOE area, which keeps dealing damage for six seconds. Pick up Enhanced Blight and Paranormal Blight. Enhanced Blight helps slow down enemies, whereas Paranormal Blight can sometimes help immobilize enemies on hit.
Corpse & Macabre Skill
- Skill To Pick: Corpse Explosion
- Level: Five
- Supporting Skills: Enhanced and Blighted Corpse Explosion
To make this build hit hard, we will pick up Corpse Explosion. One of the go-to skills for Necromancer during the open betas, this skill detonates a laying corpse on the ground, dealing damage to the surrounding enemies.
Pick Enhanced Corpse Explosion and Blighted Corpse Explosion to improve this kill. Enhanced Corpse Explosion increases the radius of the skill, while Blighted Corpse Explosion transforms this skill into a darkness skill, releasing a vile miasma in place of exploding.
Curse Skills
- Skill To Pick: Decrepify
- Level: One
- Supporting Skills: Enhanced Decrepify
Decrepify returns from the previous build. Enemies afflicted by it are slowed down and deal less damage for a while. To amplify the skill, we will pick Enhanced Decrepify. Enhanced Decrepify helps in stunning enemies already afflicted by Decrepify.
Key Passive
- Skill To Pick: Shadowblight
- Level: One
- Supporting Skills: Nil
To end the build, we will pick Shadowblight as our key passive. It helps in infecting enemies with shadow damage, Necromancers and their minions deal a 10% increase, and every 10th damage they take while affected by shadowblight further injures them for an additional 20%.
Passives
- Skill To Pick: Hewed Flesh under Core Skills, Grim Harvest, Fueled by Death under Corpse & Macabre skills, Reaper’s Pursuit, Crippling Darkness, Terror, Gloom, and Necrotic Carapace under Summoning skills, Stand Alone under Ultimate.
- Level: Two for Gloom, One for Reaper’s Pursuit, Rest Five.
- Supporting Skills: Nil
As for passives, we will pick the following skills.
Under Core Skill, pick up Hewed Flesh. This skill enables Necromancer to randomly damage and create corpses. The chance doubles when it is against a boss.
On to the Corpse and Macabre skills, we will pick Grim Harvest and Fueled By Death. These two skills help in essence generation and increased damage.
Next, under the summoning skills, we will pick five whole skills. Reaper’s Pursuit, Crippling Darkness, Terror, and Gloom are the first bunch of skills we shall pick. These four skills give Necromancer better movement speed, shadow damage, and the ability to stun enemies. Then, pick up Necrotic Carapace, which fortifies Necromancer when a corpse is created.
Finally, pick Stand Alone under the Ultimate. This helps in increasing damage reduction, which further increases if we have active minions.
The Book of the Dead
Just like the previous build, we will opt to sacrifice our minions for better damage.
- Reaper skeletons will be sacrificed to gain increased shadow damage dealt.
- Cold skeletons will be sacrificed to gain the ability to deal additional damage against vulnerable enemies.
- The Bone Golem gets sacrificed to gain higher damage output.
