Diablo 4 - Best Necromancer Builds Guide

The Diablo 4 best Necromancer builds follow a certain trend: minions laying waste to foes. From there, we can think of various ideas depending on certain skill sets, such as Blood or Bone. Here's our guide to help you with the best Necromancer builds in Diablo 4.

Diablo 4 best Necromancer builds guide

Related Necromancer class guides

Before we discuss the Diablo 4 best Necromancer builds, do take note that we also have several guides that focus on everyone's favorite undead-raising, corpse-exploding class, as well as related topics:

• Skills and spells overview
• Talents and passives overview
• Book of the Dead class mechanic
• Best Legendary Aspects for the Necro
• Dungeon locations/Codex of Power
• Occultist mechanics: Imprinting and extracting

The Necro class itself tends to be one of the most powerful and beginner-friendly, primarily due to healing sources and having nearly a dozen minions at your beck and call. However, when considering Diablo 4 best Necromancer builds, it's worth adding that you're hampered by a limited selection of active skills, since your Raise Skeleton and Summon Golem abilities already take up two out of the six default slots.

Leveling build

Our Necromancer leveling build comes from the early access beta, where only Act 1 was playable and you can only reach level 25. The build relies on a select few Blood abilities, such as Hemorrhage and Blood Surge. Corpse Explosion, Decrepify, and Army of the Dead are also there for additional AoE damage, AoE debuffs, and long-cooldown nuking, respectively.

Active skills

• Hemorrhage: Enhanced - Initiate's
• Blood Surge (5): Enhanced - Paranormal
• Corpse Explosion: Enhanced - Plagued
• Decrepify: Enhanced - Horrid
• Army of the Dead: Prime - Supreme

Passive skills

• Hewed Flesh
• Skeletal Warrior Mastery
• Amplify Damage

Book of the Dead

• Skeletal Warriors: Reapers
• Skeletal Mages: Cold
• Golem: Bone

Hemo/Blood Nova Summoner Necro

For the Hemo and Blood Necromancer build in Diablo 4, we follow the template from our earlier leveling build, with some changes thanks to additional skill points. In any case, the Hemo/Blood Nova Necromancer build goes all-in on Blood skills. Hemo tends to be spammed, given its Fortify proc and Blood Orb generation. These will give you health boosts/replenishment, and a higher Overpower coefficient when using Blood Surge (aka. Blood Nova).

Meanwhile, your undead minions do a lot of heavy lifting. Not only do they chip away at the HP of hostiles, but they'll also manage to distract some of them, leaving you free to cast and blast. It's a bit like standing around and holding the A button until you get bored. However, bear in mind that further enhancing your capabilities depends on acquiring certain Legendary Aspects. Examples include those that boost Skeletal Warriors and Cold Skeletal Mages (via legendary item extraction), Blood-Bathed Aspect (an additional Blood Surge nova explosion), and Blood Mist's damage-over-time (also via legendary item extraction).

Gallery

Active skills

• Hemorrhage (1/5): Enhanced - Initiate's
• Blood Surge: Enhanced - Paranormal
• Blood Mist (1/5): Enhanced - Ghastly (corpse generation) or Dreadful (extra Fortify)
• Army of the Dead: Prime - Supreme

Passive skills

• Unliving Energy
• Perfectly Imbalanced
• Skeletal Warrior Mastery
• Skeletal Mage Mastery
• Death's Embrace
• Death's Reach
• Gruesome Mending
• Transfusion
• Coalesced Blood
• Tides of Blood
• Drain Vitality
• Golem Mastery
• Bonded in Essence
• Death's Defense
• Inspiring Leader
• Hellbent Commander
• Kalan's Edict

Book of the Dead

• Skeletal Warriors: Skirmishers - Choose the first perk if you want an extra Skeletal Warrior; choose the second once you've built up a lot of crit chance.
• Skeletal Mages: Cold - The second perk makes frozen enemies vulnerable, which is an exceptional choice once you have the Legendary Aspect that gives +2 Skeletal Mages and Cold Mages that cast Blizzard.
• Golem: Blood - The second perk is ideal due to how tanky the Blood Golem is, especially when you can regularly keep it in tip-top shape. That leads to consistent uptime for the buff.

Hemo/Bone Spear Summoner Necro

Another one of the best Necromancer builds in Diablo 4 relies more on Bone Spear to deal damage. This means replacing some of the previous Blood-based options. For this setup, we're keeping the Skeleton summons, but we're dropping the Golem to gain its Sacrifice bonus. Moreover, we also use another crowd control spell: Corpse Tendrils.

Active skills

• Hemorrhage (1/5): Enhanced - Initiate's
• Bone Spear: Enhanced - Paranormal
• Blood Mist (1/5): No upgrades
• Corpse Tendrils (1/5): Enhanced - Plagued
• Army of the Dead: Prime - Supreme

Passive skills

• Hewed Flesh
• Unliving Energy (1/3)
• Imperfectly Balanced
• Skeletal Warrior Mastery
• Grim Harvest (1/3)
• Fueled by Death
• Skeletal Mage Mastery
• Death's Embrace
• Death's Reach
• Serration (1/3)
• Compound Fracture
• Evulsion
• Bonded in Essence (1/3)
• Death's Defense
• Inspiring Leader
• Hellbent Commander
• Kalan's Edict

Book of the Dead

• Skeletal Warriors: Skirmishers - Perk 2 once you have high crit chance
• Skeletal Mages: Cold - Perk 2
• Golem: Iron - Sacrifice

Sacrificed Summons Bone Spear Necro

The third best Necromancer build in Diablo 4 focuses on Bone Skills in conjunction with Corpse Tendrils, as well as the Ossified Essence key passive. We also drop our minions to gain Sacrifice bonuses.

Active skills

• Bone Splinters (1/5): Enhanced - Acolyte's
• Bone Spear: Enhanced - Paranormal
• Blood Mist (1/5): No upgrades
• Corpse Explosion: Enhanced - Plagued
  • Alternative: Decrepify (1/5): Enhanced - Abhorrent
• Corpse Tendrils (1/5): Enhanced - Plagued
• Bone Storm: Prime - Supreme

Passive skills

• Hewed Flesh
• Unliving Energy (1/3)
• Imperfectly Balanced
• Grim Harvest
• Fueled by Death
• Death's Embrace
• Death's Reach
• Serration
• Compound Fracture
• Evulsion
• Ossified Essence

Book of the Dead

• Skeletal Warriors: Skirmishers - Sacrifice
• Skeletal Mages: Cold - Sacrifice
• Golem: Iron - Sacrifice

In any case, these are some of the Diablo 4 best Necromancer builds that we've tried during the beta and review stages of the game. We'll definitely add more as we continue to grind, loot, and progress once the game has officially launched.