Best Bloodless Scream Necromancer build in Diablo 4

As each class in Diablo 4 has several unique skills, equipment, and Legendary Aspects, there are so many builds you can try or play around with, including for the Necromancer. The Necromancer build, Bloodless Scream, is one of the more unique builds for this class, as it revolves around your skills and a particular weapon. 

Here’s everything you need to know about the Bloodless Scream build for Necromancers, including best skills, weapons and gear, leveling guide and skill point assignment, Legendary Aspects, gems, and Book of the Dead summons.

Diablo 4: Best leveling Bloodless Scream build for Necromancers

Best Bloodless Scream Necromancer Build: Level one to 50 skills and passives

The Bloodless Scream Necromancer build is very similar to the Sever Shadow, or Sever Blight builds, making it an excellent choice to try something new. This particular build focuses on skills with Shadow damage from your core and basic skills, physical damage from your Corpse and Macabre skills, and takes the key passive, Shadowblight, which offers an incredible boost to your Shadow damage.

After the Diablo 4 patch 1.0.2d, the Necromancer’s skeletons and Shadowblight were buffed, giving Skeletal Warriors and Shadowblight more damage—which are essential to this build. 

But these are all your basic, core, Corpse and Macabre, Ultimate skills, and passives for the Bloodless Scream Necromancer build in Diablo 4. 

Basic

• Decompose: Tears the flesh from an enemy dealing damage and creating a corpse every few seconds.
  • Enhanced Decompose: You’ll gain 10 Essence if an enemy dies when they’re Decomposed.

You could take Bone Splinters instead of Decompose if you wanted damage and Essence Regeneration. However, the benefits of Decompose, including the Corpse and Shadow damage, synchronize incredibly well with the key passive, Shadowblight. 

And you will also get Essence Regeneration from Enhanced Decompose. So, it’s entirely up to you, but I love Decompose and how everything synergizes so well together. 

Core

• Blight: Blight deals damage and leaves behind an area that has been defiled, which deals additional damage for up to six seconds.
  • Enhanced Blight: Slows enemies by 25 percent.
    • Supernatural Blight: You and your minions will do more damage to Blighted enemies.
• Hewed Flesh (Passive): When you damage an enemy, there’s a higher chance they’ll drop a Corpse at their location. 

Corpse and Macabre (first one)

• Blood Mist: In your mist form, you become Immune, occasionally damage your enemies, your speed is reduced, and you’ll heal for a small amount of your total base health. 
• Corpse Explosion: Detonates a Corpse and damages enemies around it.
  • Enhanced Corpse Explosion: Corpse Explosion’s radius is increased by 15 percent.
    • Blighted Corpse Explosion: Your Corpse Explosion will no longer explode Corpses—they’ll do Shadow damage through a miasma for six seconds. 
• Grim Harvest (Passive): You’ll generate more Essence when you consume a Corpse.
  • Fueled by Death: After consuming a Corpse, you’ll deal more damage for six seconds. 
• Skeletal Warrior Mastery: Their life and damage increase. 

Curse

• Skeletal Mage Mastery (Passive): Increases their life and damage. 

Corpse and Macabre (second one)

• Corpse Tendrils: They burst from a Corpse, draw enemies in, Stuns them for a few seconds, and damage them.
  • Enhanced Corpse Tendrils: Those in range of the Corpse Tendrils will be slowed and pulled to the Corpse.
    • Plagued Corpse Tendrils: For three seconds, enemies damaged by Corpse Tendrils become Vulnerable.
• Reaper’s Pursuit (Passive): You gain 15 percent movement speed for three seconds, but only if you damage an enemy with a Darkness Skill.
  • Gloom (Passive): If enemies take Darkness damage, you and your minions’ Darkness damage increases. However, it only stacks a couple of times.
    • Terror (Passive): Your Stunned, Slowed, or Immobilized enemies will take more damage if you use your Darkness skills against them. This stacks and also applies to your minion’s damage.
      • Crippling Darkness (Passive): There’s an increased chance to stun enemies for one second if you use your Darkness Skills against an enemy. 
• Necrotic Carapace (Passive): If you create a Corpse, whether through skills or minions, you become Forgitified for a portion of your base health, which means you’ll take less damage. 

Ultimate

• Inspiring Leader (Passive): If you’re healthy (meaning your health is over 80 percent) for over four seconds, you’ll get extra attack speed hacks, as do your minions.
  • Hellbent Commander: If you’re close to your minions, they’ll do more damage. 
• Bonded in Essence: Your Skeletal Priests will heal your minions for an additional portion of their base health every five seconds.
  • Death’s Defense: From a single damage instance, your minions won’t be able to take more than 30 percent. 

Key passives

‍Shadowblight: If you deal Shadow damage to an enemy, they get Shadowblighted for a few seconds, meaning you and your minions will do more damage to them. And every 10th time an enemy gets Shadow damage, they get Shadowblight. However, they’ll receive even more Shadow damage.

Best Bloodless Scream Necromancer Build: Level one to 50 skills point assignment

If you’re more of a visual person, you can also see the Skill point assignment through this Necromancer Skill tree calculator. 

Besides your level skill points, there are also 10 skill points you can earn through Renown. As soon as you do, you can either put them towards your level one to 50 skill point assignments to level it up faster or to the following passives: 

• Inspiring Leader (maxed)
• Hellbent Commander (maxed)
• Bonded in Essence (maxed)
• Death’s Defense (maxed)
• Nacrotic Carapace (maxed)

Best Bloodless Scream Necromancer Build: Book of the Dead Summons

You’ll notice from the Bloodless Scream Necromancer Build Skill assignment that we’re keeping most of our minions and buffing them. By level 25, you will have Skeletal Reapers, Cold Skeletal Mages, and a Sacrified Bone Golem.

If you find you’re not doing enough damage, you can also Sacrifice your Reapers for additional Shadow damage. However, you won’t be able to use your Skeletal Warriors anymore and won’t have a frontline defense. 

In addition, you’d want to refund the Skill points you’ve assigned into Skeletal Warrior Mastery and place them into another skill or passive like Gloom and Hewed Flesh. 

While Vulnerability is crucial as it means your enemies take more damage, if you find you’re not doing enough damage, you can switch from the Cold Mage to the Shadow Mage for additional Shadow damage, and it ties in nicely with all of your Shadow passives. 

But once you can get your hands on Bloodless Scream, you should immediately change back to the Cold Mage because of the weapon’s buffs against Chilled and Frozen enemies. 

Best Bloodless Scream Necromancer Build: Gear, stats, and gems 

Best weapons

As you’re leveling, you can’t get the scythe, Bloodless Scream, just yet. Until you can, the best weapon for the Necromancer is the Two-handed Scythe for the Life on Kill bonus. But the two-handed sword is another excellent option, as you’ll gain critical strike damage.

From here, you’ll want to get these weapons with stats that either increase your core skills, the damage you do to Vulnerable, crowd-controlled, or stunned enemies, or increase all your stats. 

As Bloodless Scream is the center of this build, you may be wondering how to get it—but there’s a catch.

How to get Bloodless Scream in Diablo 4

Bloodless Scream can’t be obtained until you’ve hit level 50, completed the capstone dungeon, and unlocked World Tier Three.

On top of this, it’s not a weapon you can buy—it’s one you can only get through drops from dungeons, Elites, or chests. The moment you unlock World Tier Three, start hitting dungeons, killing bosses, and hope that luck is on your side. 

This weapon is so powerful, especially when combined with this build, because it offers life on kills, increased damage to chilled and frozen enemies, increased Darkness damage (the spell category for your Shadow damage skills), and increased cold resistance. 

In addition, your Darkness skills have up to a 40-percent chance to chill enemies and up to a 100-percent chance to regenerate up to five extra Essence against frozen enemies. 

So, this scythe, along with your skills, makes for a deadly combination, and it’s the core piece of your build you will need to get.

Best jewelry

Jewelry, which is your amulet and rings, provides incredible Offensive and Defensive stats. For both types, you want them to have stats like resistance to all elements. You will also want increased damage, movement speed, and damage reduction for the Amulet.

And for rngs, you want stats like increased damage to Vulnerable or crowd-controlled enemies or an increase to your minion’s base health.

Best armor

On the other hand, armor offers utility and defensive stats, except for gloves, which are offensive.

As Necromancers are incredibly slow, you want boots that provide mobility, movement speed, or anything to do with increasing the number of Evade charges or Foritify Regeneration. And as this build doesn’t have many points in Corpse Tendrils, getting boots that offer additional ranks for Corpse Tendrils would be icing on the cake. 

For your pants and chest armor, you want stats that increase your maximum health, movement speed, minion life, and damage and also increase your damage reduction. 

Your helm should have stats that increase the duration of your crowd control skills, resistance, and life, and your gloves should increase your damage, attack speed, and Blight ranks.

Best gems 

One of the best gems for Necromancers is the Diamond when slotted into your jewelry as it increases your resistance to all elements, rather than just a single one.

The Sapphire is the best gem for your armor as it increases damage reduction while Fortified, and you’ll socket your weapon with ‍Amethyst for increased damage over time. 

Best Legendary Aspects for the Bloodless Scream Necromancer Build

There are dozens of Legendary Aspects for Necromancers in Diablo 4, with many being ones that are guaranteed from dungeons and those that only appear on equipment via drops. 

Related: All Necromancer Legendary Aspects in Diablo 4 and where to find them

These are the best three dungeon-based Legendary Aspects that everyone can get, so long as you complete the required dungeon. 

And if you’re willing to gamble from drops and at the Purveyor of Curiosities, some of the best drop-based Legendary Aspects for this build include Aspect of Explosive Mist, Coldbringer’s Aspect, Aspect of Hardened Bones, and Aspect of Frenzied Dead. 

As this is a leveling or early-game build, it doesn’t cover late-game content besides how to get Bloodless Scream. But once you hit level 50, you can start assigning your Paragon points to your Paragon board and enhance your build further. And enjoy more end-game content, like Helltide Tortured Gift Mystery Chests.

However, we will update this with the end-game Bloodless Scream build for Necromancers soon.