Best Necromancer build in Diablo 4

Diablo 4 has five playable classes, including the Necromancer, one of the most nostalgic and well-known classes in the whole Diablo series.

As there are quite a few different Basic, Core, Passive, Ultimate, and Corpse and Macabre skills you can choose from when playing as a Necromancer, building your character for the first time can be time-consuming and challenging—especially seeing as there are different builds for leveling and late-game content.

Best Necromancer builds in Diablo 4

Although the Corpse Explosion Necromancer build from the beta was nerfed, there is still a viable Necromancer option—Bone Spear Necromancer. With this build, you can still explode corpses, but it’s not as powerful as it once was.

What’s great about this build is it’s great for leveling and end-game content, so you don’t have to worry all too much about switching from your soon-to-be-favorite build.

If you do want something different, however, you can switch up your late-game build and go the Bone Spirit route. So, I’ve included that late-game option here too. Both versions of the Bone Necromancer in the end game are S-tier in Diablo 4, meaning you aren’t going to suffer by keeping the Bone Spear build or switching to Bone Spirit.

Related: Which class should you choose in Diablo 4?

As the leveling and end-game build for the Bone Spear Necromancer are slightly different, I’ve broken them into parts: Early Game and Late Game, with the additional Bone Spirit Late Game build. The late-game content will be added shortly.

As Diablo 4 receives updates, which often include nice buffs, and not-so-nice nerfs, specific builds become more viable, or fun, options you can play. 

One such build is the Sever Shadow Necromancer Build. It focuses on Shadow damage, Minions, which got buffed in Diablo 4’s Patch 1.0.2d, and my favorite combination—Corpse Tendrils and Corpse Explosion.

This build is for if you’re playing solo as you have incredible AoE damage, and you can take down Bosses reasonably quickly—and stay out of their way by using Sever. But the problem is it relies on the crowd control from Corpse Tendrils, so you must ensure you nail your combos. 

And you lack mobility, like all Necromancers, so you do have to be mindful of your positioning and use your dash to get away from the enemy. Otherwise, it’s a fun build, and you feel like a Grim Reaper whacking away with your Scythe. So, that makes up for the negatives. 

Although each build offers something unique and suited to different play styles, they’re similar. So, it won’t be too jarring if you switch from the Sever build to Bone Spear or back again. 

Both late-game builds for Bone Spear and Sever Shadow will be added later. 

Early Game Bone Spear Necromancer Build

Bone Spear Necromancer level one to 50 skills and passives

The primary Bone Spear Necromancer skills you’ll focus on revolve around bone skills, Essence, and damage and crit damage. This build doesn’t rely so much on minions, as you will be sacrificing them for bonuses, which is for the best, as they aren’t as strong as they were in the early Diablo 4 beta test runs.

You’ll need to be mindful of your positioning in fights and ensure you’re keeping a reasonable distance from your enemies because you won’t always have your minions to help tank and take the brunt of the incoming damage. 

Here’s your Basic, Core, Corpse and Macabre, Ultimate skills and passives you’ll be building.

Basic

• Bone Splinters: Fires three bone splinters that deal eight percent damage, and when an enemy is hit, you gain one Essence.
  • Enhanced Bone Splinters: Bone Splinters have an increased chance of firing additional splinters. 

Core

• Bone Spear: Conjures a Bone Spear from the ground and damages enemies.
  • Enhanced Bone Spear: When destroyed, the Bone Spear breaks into three shards and deals additional damage.
  • Supernatural Bone Spear: The first enemy hit with Bone Spear becomes Vulnerable for three seconds. Vulnerable means that enemies will take more damage.
  • Hewed Flesh: Your damage can create a corpse at the target’s location.
  • Unliving Energy: Your maximum Essence is increased.
    • Imperfectly Balanced: Your Core skills cost more Essence; however, they’ll do more damage.

Corpse and Macabre (first one)

• Blood Mist: Disperses a bloody mist that allows you to become Immune for three seconds, your movement speed is slowed, you regularly deal a small percentage of damage to your enemies, and you heal for a tiny percentage of your maximum health. 
• Corpse Explosion: Detonates a corpse and does damage to surrounding enemies.
  • Enhanced Corpse Explosion: Increases the radius of Corpse Explosion.
  • Plagued Corpse Explosion: Corpse Explosion does more damage to enemies that are Vulnerable, Slowed, or Stunned, and this bonus can stack. 
• Grim Harvest: Consumes a corpse and generates Essence.

Corpse and Macabre (second one)

• Corpse Tendrils: Veins burst from a corpse, pull enemies in, Stuns them for a few seconds, and deal damage to them.
  • Enhanced Corpse Tendrils: Enemies in the tendrils’ range are slowed and pulled in. 
  • Plagued Corpse Tendrils: Enemies damaged by these tendrils become Vulnerable for three seconds.
• Serration: Your bone skills have an increased crit chance for each set of Essence you have when you cast your skills
  • Compound Fracture: When your bone skills have critically struck for a specified amount, you will do more damage for a limited time. 
  • Evulsion: Your bone skills do increased crit damage to Vulnerable enemies.
• Necrotic Carapace: When you form a corpse via skills or minions, you’ll be Fortified for a percentage of your base health. Fortified means that you’ll take less damage.

Ultimate

• Stand Alone: Increases damage reduction, which is reduced for each active minion.
  • Memento Mori: You’ll increase their Sacrifice bonus by sacrificing your skeletal warriors and mages. 
• Bone Storm: A swirl of bones around you and your golem, and they deal a certain amount of damage for a limited time.
  • Prime Bone Storm: Your damage reduction is increased for a certain amount while Bone Storm is active.
    • Supreme Bone Storm: Your crit chance is increased when Bone Storm is active.

Key Passives

• ‍Ossified Essence: Your bone skills get increased damage for every point of Essence you have above 50 at the time of casting. 

This can look quite daunting at a glance, but once you start assigning your skill points with every level, you’ll truly be able to see every flesh out—literally.

Bone Spear Necromancer level one to 50 skills point assignment

At each level, you’ll gain skill points you can assign to enhance, modify, or unlock a skill. One of the key skills for the Bone Spear Necromancer is at the very end of the tree under “Key Passives,” called Ossified Essence. You’ll need to get that passive quite quickly to maximize your damage. 

Below is a table you can follow that showcases which skill you need to unlock or enhance at each level.

You can view the complete early game leveling build on the build calculator, as well, if you prefer more of a visual guide.

There are also Renown skill points you can spend on each character, which are earned by increasing your reputation within the region. You can do this by completing side quests, strongholds, or attaining the Altars of Lilith.

When you receive these skill points, you should assign them as follows:

• Renown one: Necrotic Carapace—Corpse and Macabre (second one)
• Renown two: Necrotic Carapace—Corpse and Macabre (second one)
• Renown three: Fueled by Death—Corpse and Macabre (first one)
• Renown four: Fueled by Death—Corpse and Macabre (first one)
• Renown five: Fueled by Death—Corpse and Macabre (first one)
• Renown six: Unliving Energy—Core
• Renown seven: Unliving Energy—Core
• Renown eight: Stand Alone—Ultimate
• Renown nine: Stand Alone—Ultimate
• Renown 10: Death’s Reach—Curse

As part of this build, you may have noticed we will use our Skeleton minions as a sacrifice. So, we’ll also need to focus on the Book of the Dead.

Bone Spear Necromancer Book of the Dead 

Although minions aren’t as tanky as they were in the beta, they still have their uses—as sacrifices. With each minion sacrifice, you’ll get unique bonuses, which the Bone Spear Necromancer needs.

You won’t be sacrificing them immediately because you must level up first. But you’ll start to once you unlock the Book of the Dead and each of the different types of minions.

You must select the correct minion type from the Book of the Dead, as they have different Sacrifical Bonuses. For this build, we want to do more crit damage, more damage to Vulnerable enemies, and increase our crit chance.

Best Bone Spear Necromancer gear, stats, and gems for leveling

Like most games, we will equip whatever drops—especially in the beginning. Or we can try for Legendary gear from the Purveyor of Curiosities. But nothing is guaranteed, and we may waste more Murmuring Obols than we’d like.

As most of the gear you’ll wear will be from drops, you’ll find that you’ll get better gear as you progress. There’s no real need for you to upgrade them until you get the right Legendary equipment later on.

While leveling, you need a few stats, gear, and gems for the Bone Spear Necromancer build.

Best gear and stats for the Bone Spear Necromancer

As with all classes, there are specific Legendary Aspects we’re looking for with this Bone Spear Necromancer build and stats. You can guess what stat that will be—critical strikes and damage.

You want to use a two-handed sword over a scythe for weapons as it gives you crit damage. From there, you’ll want stats that increase the damage based on the passives and modifiers from the skill tree. So, you’ll want stats that increase your core skills, crit damage, or the damage you do to Slow, Stunned, or Vulnerable enemies. This will give your Necromancer skills that much-needed boost in power.

You’ll get most of your offensive stats from Jewelry, which includes Amulets and Rings, and your defense stats from Armor, which includes Helm, Boots, Pants, and Armor. But the exception is Gloves, as they offer offensive stats. 

So, you must tailor your Armor towards your skills like Bone Spear and Corpse Tendril for Boots and anything that will increase your health, resistances, damage reduction, or movement speed. The exception is for Gloves, as you want to increase your crit strike chance, damage, and speed.

For Jewelry, you want to boost all your stats, damage, Bone Spear skill ranks, crit strike chance and damage, and other forms of damage. 

Best gems for the Bone Spear Necromancer

Because you can get increased crit strike damage to Vulnerable enemies by slotting an Emerald into your weapon, this is the best one for weapons in the Bone Spear build. In terms of Armor, you want to slot them with Rubies, as it will help increase your health, and your Jewelry should be slotted with diamonds to increase your resistance to elements.

Best Bone Spear Necromancer Aspects from the Codex of Power

The Codex of Power can be confusing. In short, it offers aspects you can find on items. However, these aspects aren’t guaranteed on all Legendary items, and we may not even get the necessary aspects.

To obtain the aspect you want, you’ll need to complete the specific dungeon, which is different for every aspect. But for the Bone Spear Necromancer, there are a few aspects and dungeons that you’ll need to complete. They’ll be listed on your Diablo 4 map as “Necromancer Only,” so get that out and make a note of their locations.

While there are quite a few, these are the ones you should try to get first—my favorites are Splintering Offensive Aspect and Resource Aspect of Torment because Essence regeneration is crucial. Getting to the Dry Steppes may take a little time, however.

Related: Here are all the Diablo 4 classes and abilities

Season one Best Caged Hearts for the Bone Spear Necromancer

While hunting Malignant Monsters in Diablo 4’s season one, there are a few caged hearts you’ll want to get, including:

1. ‍Caged Heart of the Prudent Heart – You become immune for a few seconds after you lose 20 percent of your Life, but you’ll lose Essence.
2. ‍Caged Heart of Tempting Fate – You’ll gain critical strike damage, but your non-critical strike abilities will do less damage
3. Caged Heart of the Great Feast – Your minions will drain Essence but deal more damage. If you don’t have minions, the bonus applies to you.

But these might change depending on how they perform once season one is live and underway.

It may seem like a lot, and it is, but this is everything you need to know about the early game and leveling your Bone Spear Necromancer in Diablo 4.

Early-game Sever Shadow Necromancer build

Sever Shadow Necromancer level one to 50 skills and passives

For the Sever Shadow Necromancer, you’ll focus on the Sever Skill, skills that offer Shadow damage and Physical damage. So, many of the passive you’ll want to select will focus on enhancing these damage forms.

Unlike the Bone Spear build, you will be using one minion variant. However, we will also be sacrificing some variants because their sacrificial bonuses are worth sacrificing them for. 

Leveling this particular build in the beginning can be slightly painful as Reap, your Basic Skill, doesn’t do much damage, so clearing dungeons and progressing through the story can feel tedious. In the beginning, you have two choices—use another Basic skill, like Bone Splinters from our Bone Spear guide. When you have around 24 Skill points, you can refund Bone Splinters and unlock Reap. 

Or, for simplicity’s sake, you can just use Reap, be mindful of your positioning, let your minions tank as much damage as possible, and equip gear that gives your Basic skills attack speed or increased damage. That way, Reap won’t feel too poor as you unlock and enhance your essential skills. 

But these are your Basic, Core, Corpse, and Macabre, Ultimate skills and passives you’ll be building, with a focus on Reap and a heavy focus on Shadow damage and passives that increase your Shadow damage.

Basic

• Reap: Generates four Essence for every enemy you hit, and you have a Lucky Hit Chance of 16 percent. Reap causes a scythe to swing out in front of you, causing damage to your enemies. And by hitting enemies with Reap, you’ll get 15 percent reduced damage for two seconds.
  • Enhanced Reap: If any enemy hit with Reap dies within two seconds, you’ll gain 30 percent attack speed for three seconds. 
  • Acolyte’s Reap: Using Reap causes a Corpse to form under the first enemy hit by Reap. But it can only happen once every five seconds. 

Core

• Sever: A ghost of you runs forward and damages an enemy with its Scythe. It then returns to you and makes one last damaging attack.
  • Enhanced Sever: Enemies along Sever’s path will receive 25 percent of their original damage
  • Paranormal Sever: Every fourth cast of Sever causes enemies to become Vulnerable for two seconds. Vulnerable means that enemies will take 20 percent more damage, so it’s an excellent status debuff to place on them.
• Unliving Energy (Passive): Your max Essence increases by three.
  • Imperfectly Balanced: Your Core Skill will cost more Essence to cast, but they’ll do more damage.
• Hewed Flesh (Passive): When you damage a foe, there’s an increased chance they’ll drop a Corpse at the enemy’s location. And this is enhanced further if it’s a Boss.

Corpse and Macabre (first one)

• Blood Mist: You become an Immune mist for three seconds. While in mist form, your movement is slowed, but you’ll occasionally do damage to enemies and heal for a minuscule percentage of your maximum health. 
• Corpse Explosion: You’ll detonate a Corpse and damages the enemies around it.
  • Enhanced Corpse Explosion: This increases the Corpse Explosion radius by 15 percent.
  • Blighted Corpse Explosion: Your Corpse Explosion no longer explodes. Instead, it releases a miasma that deals Shadow damage over six seconds. 
• Grim Harvest (Passive): By consuming a Corpse, you’ll generate additional Essence.
  • Fueled by Death: You’ll deal more damage for six seconds after consuming a Corpse. 

Curse

• Death’s Embrace (Passive): Enemies close to you receive more damage, and they’ll do less damage to you. 
• Death’s Reach (Passive): You’ll do more damage to enemies that are Distant. 
• Skeletal Mage Mastery (Passive): This increases the life and damage of just your Skeletal Mages, which is essential as they’re the ones we’ll be keeping alive—sort of. 

Corpse and Macabre (second one)

• Corpse Tendrils: Tendrils erupt from a corpse and pull enemies in. It will then Stun them for a few seconds and damage them.
  • Enhanced Corpse Tendrils: Enemies within the range of the tendrils are slowed and pulled in. 
  • Plagued Corpse Tendrils: Enemies damaged by the tendrils become Vulnerable for three seconds.
• Reaper’s Pursuit (Passive): You’ll gain 15 percent movement speed for three seconds when you damage an enemy with a Darkness Skill.
  • Gloom (Passive): When enemies take Darkness damage, it increases your and your minion’s Darkness damage. But this can only stack a few times. 
  • Terror (Passive): Your Darkness Skills damage Slowed, Stunned, or Immobilized enemies more. These bonuses can stack and apply to your minions that do Shadow damage. 
  • Crippling Darkness (Passive): Darkness Skills have an increased chance to Stun enemies for one second. 
• Necrotic Carapace (Passive): When a Corpse forms through Skills or minions, you’ll become Fortified for a percentage of your base life. And if you’re not sure, Fortified means that you’ll take less damage.

Ultimate

• Inspiring Leader (Passive): You’ll get additional attack speed when you’re Healthy for over four seconds. And so do your minions. Healthy means that your life is above 80 percent.

Key Passives

• ‍Shadowblight: When you deal Shadow damage to an enemy, they’ll get Shadowblight for two seconds. This means you and your minions will do 10 percent more damage to Shadowblighted enemies. And every tenth time an enemy receives Shadow damage, they are Shadowblighted. But this time, you and your minions can deal 22 percent more Shadow damage to them. 

Shadow Sever Necromancer level one to 50 skills point assignment

As you gain a Skill point, you can assign it to either unlock or enhance a skill or passive. As each Skill point allocation is essential, you’ll want to follow the table below to ensure you’re maximizing your Sever Shadow Necromancer Build and not wasting your time or gold by having to refund your Skills. 

You can view the complete early game Sever Shadow leveling build on the build calculator, as well, if you prefer more of a visual guide of what your Skill tree should look like once you level to Paragon.

As you increase your Renown in each region, which you can earn by doing dungeons, obtaining the Altars of Lilith, or completing side quests, you’ll also gain a few Skill points. 

When you receive these skill points, you should assign them to the following skills:

• Necrotic Carapace (maxed)
• Inspiring Leader (maxed)
• Death’s Embrace (maxed)
• Death’s Reach (maxed)

But as you’re leveling, you may sometimes forget about using your Renown points for these additional boosts and bonuses—and that’s okay. You can always level or unlock these skills as your character levels up.

Best Sever Shadow Necromancer Book of the Dead 

As mentioned earlier, while we won’t be keeping all of our minions, we won’t be sacrificing all of them right away. When you start your character, you’ll already have access to the skill Raise Skeleton, which you can use immediately. 

With each level, you’ll gain access to new minions and variants of these minions. And each variant has unique upgrade bonuses. While some of these will sync well with the Sever Shadow Necromancer, not all do—unless they’re sacrificed.

In the table below, you’ll see which minions you’ll unlock at what level when to switch variants, and when you’ll want to sacrifice them. 

Best Sever Shadow Necromancer gear, stats, and gems for leveling

While you’re leveling, you’ll equip whichever gear is better—in terms of power, stats, and buffs. Depending on your World Tier, the drops you receive will vary greatly, meaning you’ll get better gear in the more difficult tiers. So, they are great in that regard, but they’re more challenging. 

You can also use your Murmuring Obols at the Purveyor of Curiosities in an attempt to get Legendary gear, or rare gear, with specific traits or Aspects. But as nothing is guaranteed, neither this method nor the drops will give you what you’re after as it’s luck-based.

If you can, there are a few stats and gear types you should equip for your Sever Shadow Necromancer, along with gems that synergize well with this particular build. 

Best gear and stats for the Sever Shadow Necromancer 

Weapons

Like the Bone Spear Necromancer, the Sever Shadow Necromancer benefits the most from two-handed swords as they offer the most critical strike damage.

If you can, you’ll also want to equip weapons that buff your Core Skill damage, CC’d enemies, and all Stats.

Jewelry

Jewelry comes in two forms, Amulets and Rings, and they’re often categorized with more offensive stats. For Amulets, you’ll want ones that increase your stats, offer movement speed, and increase or decrease your incoming damage.

You will need rings that increase your damage in any form, like Shadow damage, general damage, damage to CC’d enemies, or Vulnerable damage. All of these are the types of damage you’ll be doing with this build. 

Armor

Armor is probably the most complicated, as they can give us utility, mobility, and defensive stats. The exception is Gloves, which are purely offensive. So, for Gloves, you’ll want anything that can increase your attract speed, damage, or preferably, Sever Ranks.

For your Helm, or headgear, and Armor, you’ll need boosts to your maximum life, armor, resistances, and damage reduction—which, from my experience, they generally have.

You’ll want similar boosts for your pants as your Helm, but you’ll also be looking for an increase in your Corpse Explosion ranks, if possible. And your Boots need to have a movement speed buff because, as a Necromancer, you’re slow. And if they can increase your Corpse Tendril ranks, it would be the icing on the cake.

Best gems for the Sever Shadow Necromancer

In terms of gems, you’ll find the Amethyst offers the best benefits for your weapon as you’ll gain additional damage over time, which is a nice boost, especially once you’ve leveled up and can unlock the higher-tier gems.

Amethysts will also be the gem that you socket into your Armor because you’ll receive a boost to the reduction of damage you take over time, which means you’ll receive a little less damage. This should also help increase your survivability.

And for jewelry, Diamonds are a Necromancer’s best friend because they grant resistance to all elements. 

Best Shadow Summoner Necromancer Aspects

Aspects are an incredible way to level up your gear and give you the boost you need. You can find them in Aspect dungeons and on gear from drops, but what Aspect you get from the gear in these drops isn’t guaranteed.

You’ll want to complete a few dungeons to get the Aspects you’ll need for this particular build, and thankfully, they’re easy to find. If you can only get one, I highly recommend the Blighted Aspect, as it boosts your damage.

You could also take Sacrificial Aspect, like the Bone Spear Necromancer, so your sacrifice bonuses are increased, or any of the general Legendary Aspects all classes can use that offer critical strike damage or chances.

Season one Best Caged Hearts for the Sever Shadow Necromancer

While hunting Malignant Monsters in Diablo 4’s season one, you’ll gain caged hearts that you can slot into your gear. And there are a few caged hearts you’ll want to get, including:

1. ‍The Malignant Pact – You’ll go through these bonuses for every 20 kills: you’ll gain attack speed, your core and basic skills have a chance to restore Essence, and every so often, you’ll gain a limited-time barrier.
2. Determination – Your resource-draining effects are less effective, and you’ll gain increased Resource Generation.
3. The Sacrilegious – Walking by a Corpse will activate any equipped Corpse Skill every second, but it will deal reduced damage.

However, these might change depending on how they perform once they’re live.

Related: All General Legendary Aspects in Diablo 4 and where to get them

As soon as you hit level 50, you’ll be able to move on to your Paragon board and your end-game build, which we’ll include soon.