The Necromancer’s approach to a battle is quite different from the rest of the classes we see in Diablo 4 (Diablo IV). While the others are more focused on attacking enemies directly, the Necromancer stays back and lets his minions do all the work.
They are known as the “Caster of Dark Arts” as they have the ability to manipulate bone and blood, summon the undead and curse enemies making them weak.
Not really considered the strongest of the classes but have the potential to become unbelievably powerful with the right build.
Skills & Abilities Needed for this Build:
This guide will help you with a Bone Build for the Necromancer that focuses on making targets Vulnerable and dealing Critical Damage. Collecting Essence will also be one of the focuses in the build.
When we talk about enemies being Vulnerable, we refer to a technical term that increases damage on the enemies by 20% (indicated by a purple glow on enemy Life bars)
If you merge up both Critical Damage along with the damage buff on Vulnerable enemies and your boost to Bone Skills, you get a ridiculous output that could clear hordes in seconds. Here are the skills you would need:
Basic Skills:
- Bone Splinters (Level 1)+ Enhanced+ Initiate’s – Firing 3 bone splinters that do 8% damage on hit. Also, you have a chance of collecting 1 Essence for each time an enemy is hit by the same cast. The Enhanced version would give you a 25% chance of casting 2 extra Bone Splinters while you have 50 or more Essence. The Initiate’s version grants you an 8% Critical Strike Chance for 4 seconds when you hit the same enemy 3 times with the same cast.
Core Skills:
- Bone Spear( Level 5)+ Enhanced+ Supernatural – You can conjure a Bone Spear that deals 119% Damage on level 5 and pierces through enemies. You also get a Lucky Hit chance of 50%. It is the main damage ability for our character. The Enhanced version breaks the spear into 3 shards that deal 35% damage each. The Supernatural upgrade makes the 1st enemy hit by the spear Vulnerable for 3 seconds. This is extremely important for this build.
- Unliving Energy (Level 1) – Maximum Essense is increased by 3.
- Imperfectly Balanced (Level 3) – Your Core Skills will consume 9% more Essence but deal 15% more damage. This upgrade is extremely important for increasing your overall damage output from the Bone Spear. Don’t worry about gaining Essence as we will be adding skills that would do that.
- Hewed Flesh (Level 3) – “Your damage has up to a 12% chance to create a Corpse at the target’s location”. The more minions, the better. The chance even doubles against bosses. A must-needed skill for our build.
Macabre Skills:
- Corpse Explosion( Level 1)+ Enhanced+ Blighted – You can explode a corpse that deals 50% damage to the surrounding enemies. The Enhanced version increases the radius of the explosion. The Blighted upgrade turns it into a Darkness Skill which releases a vile miasma instead of an explosion that does 109.8% Shadow Damage over 6 secs.
- Skeletal Mastery (Level 1) – This increases the Life and Damage of the Skeletal Warriors by 45%. Your minions survive longer and hit harder.
- Grim Harvest (Level 3) – You can now generate 9 Essence by just consuming a Corpse.
- Fueled by Death (Level 3) – You deal 9% increased damage for 6 seconds after consuming a Corpse. Extremely important for overall damage. You need to keep consuming whenever you can. This way you can stack up for damage.
Corruption Skills:
- Decrepify (Level 1)+ Enhanced+ Abhorrent – This allows you to curse an area where the enemies will get slower by 40% and deal 20% lesser damage. This would help you with overall defense. The Enhanced version will give a 10% chance of an enemy getting stunned for 2 seconds on hit in the area. Abhorrent Decrepify will give a 15% chance of reducing active Cooldowns by 1 second on hitting an enemy that is affected by Decrepify. This allows faster spellcasting.
- Skeletal Mage Mastery(Level 3) – Increases the Life and Damage of your Skeletal Mages by 60% on level 3 which is an amazing buff.
- Death’s Embrace(Level 3) – This will also add to your defense as close enemies will take 6% more damage and deal 9% lesser damage to you.
Summoning Skills:
- Serration(Level 3) – Your Bone Skills get a 1.5% Critical Strike Chance boost for each 10 Essence you have upon cast. So the more essence you have after you have cast the spell the more is your Critical Strike Chance.
- Rapid Ossification (Level 3) – For every 100 Essence you spend, you gain a Cooldown Reduction to your Bone Skills by 1.5 seconds. This will gain help you cast spells rapidly with the help of all the cooldown reductions we have in the overall build.
- Evulsion(Level 3) – Your Bone Skills will deal 18% more Critical Strike Damage to Vulnerable enemies. We are aiming at making enemies go vulnerable through this build. This passive greatly helps us with Critical Damage.
- Compound Fracture (Level 3) – After you have Critically struck enemies 10 times with Bone Skills, your Bone Skill damage increases by 15% for 5 seconds.
Ultimate Skills:
- Bone Storm+ Enhanced+ Supreme – This summons a swirling storm of bones around you and your golem. It deals 180% damage to surrounding enemies for 10 seconds. The Enhanced version increases Damage Reduction by 15% while the Bone Storm is active. The Supreme version increases your Critical Strike Chance by 20% while the storm is active. This is an incredible skill for crowd control.
- Inspiring Leader (Level 3) – If you manage to stay Healthy for 4 seconds, you and your minions receive an Attack Speed boost of 12%.
- Death’s Defense(Level 1) – Your minions would not lose more than 75% of their life from a single damage instance. This prevents your minions from going down on one hit. Very helpful around bosses and Elite enemies.
Key Passive Skill:
- Ossified Essence – Your Bone Skills will deal 1% more damage for each point of Essence you have above 50 upon cast. So if you have 52 Essence, your Bone Skills will deal 2% more damage to enemies when you cast it. It is an extremely useful passive that you can have for your Bone Build.
Book of the Dead:
- Skeletal Warriors(Reaper) – We are going with a double upgrade on Reaper as it gives a 15% chance to your skeletal warriors to “carve the flesh of enemies, forming a Corpse“. The more Corpse you can make, the better.
- Skeletal Mages(Cold) – Upgrade 1 is sufficient with cold mages. They will help you gain 2 Essence every time they damage an enemy with their primary attack.
- Golem(Iron+ Sacrifice) – This will help boost your Critical Strike Damage by 30% but at the cost of not summoning a Golem to the battlefield. This will greatly increase your overall Critical Damage.
Aspects:
- Splintering Aspect (Legendary) – Bone Spear would now make enemies that are hit beyond the first one Vulnerable for 1.5-2.5 seconds. The Bone Shards from the Bone Spear will also deal an additional 50%-100% damage on Vulnerable enemies and will Pierce them. This gives a huge buff to your overall damage through Bone Spear.
- Aspect of Torment(Legendary) – Critical Strikes with Bone Skill will increase your Essence Regeneration by 20-30% for 4 seconds.
If you look at the skills individually, the numbers might seem to be very weak. However, when you stack the skills up together, and consider the fact that you won’t just be facing a single enemy, the numbers crank up giving you an excellent damage boost.
You would need to be at Level 50 and Renown 10 to get this entire build done. I would recommend not ranking up the Passives immediately as you unlock them. Do it as you progress gradually.
The skills I have put together will work as a unit making your Necromancer a threat to anyone that crosses his path. All the skills are complementary to one another which proves that every skill will make every other skill even stronger.
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That is all you need to know about the best Necromancer Build for Diablo 4. I hope this guide was helpful. Please let us know in the comments section below.
Enjoy the game and become the strongest Necromancer out there. Keep an eye on Gamer Haul for more guides and updates related to Diablo 4 and other games that you love.