Let’s get one thing out of the way: Diablo 4 can be rough for new players. This is especially the case for builds, as they can get very complicated, very quickly. Skills, Paragon points, Aspects, Stat priority, etc.
While complexity is an essential part of the Diablo experience, it can be intimidating. If you’re looking for a build guide that is simple yet effective, you’re in the right place.
A Necromancer leveling guide made easy
Are you new to the Necromancer Class? Or perhaps you are new to Diablo 4? Don’t worry; this guide was made to help you easily and quickly put together the best leveling build for one o the best Diablo 4 Classes this season. This guide will be much shorter and more straightforward than the average guide, but it will take you 99% of the way, which is more than enough for leveling purposes (from levels 1 to 50).
Best Season 2 Necromancer Leveling Build: Blood Surge
There are some capable Necromancer leveling builds out there, but Bone Spear is my favorite. It is easy to set up and can easily translate into one of the most potent endgame builds in the game. This build can carry you from level 1 to level 100.
Necromancer Build, Diablo 4
How it works
While the Necromancer fantasy is all about leading an army of undead minions, this build is about making your Bone Spear as strong as possible by increasing its damage and critical chance. This means you’ll have to sacrifice your minions to unlock its full potential. Your other skills will support that ranged playstyle by providing survivability and crowd control.
What Skills to Choose
If we distill this guide to its core, it needs Bone Spear as the core skill, Corpse Tendrils and Corpse Explosion to provide crowd control (and damage) to the build, Blood Mist to give you more survivability, and finally, Bone Storm round things up with on-demand protection and damage.
Skill Tree Points
Remember, one of the biggest mistakes when leveling is spending too much time thinking about how to spend your skills points. Instead, follow these principles and spend most of your time slaying and actually leveling up:
1 – Use your initial Skill Points to unlock new abilities first
Need Points to unlock new nodes?
- First, Enhance and Specialize your skills
- Then upgrade Skill ranks to unlock the next node
- Don’t upgrade more Skill ranks than needed
Skills to Unlock (in order):
- Bone Splinters (then Enhanced Bone Splinters, a Specialization won’t be needed here)
- Bone Spear (then Enhanced Bone Spear, then Supernatural Bone Spear, and finally upgrade to Rank 5 for max damage)
- Blood Mist (no further Upgrades will be needed here)
- Corpse Explosion (then Enhanced Corpse Explosion, then Blighted Corpse Explosion)
- Corpse Tendrils (then Enhanced Corpse Tendrils, then Plagued Corpse Tendrils)
- Bone Storm (then Supreme Bone Storm)
Necromancer Skills, Diablo 4
2 – Sacrifice your Minions
At level 5, your Book of the Dead will unlock and give you the ability to customize your Minions. There are three Book of the Dead customizations you’ll need to unlock and activate:
- At level 8: Sacrifice your Skeleton Warriors (and increase your Critical Strike Chance by 5%)
- At level 18: Sacrifice your Skeleton Mages (and deal 15% increased damage to Vulnerable enemies)
- At level 32: Sacrifice your Golem (and deal 30% Critical Strike damage)
You’ll want to sacrifice your Minions as soon as possible to strengthen your Bone Spear playstyle further.
3 – Build into your strengths with the right Passive Skills
Skills are essential, and in terms of damage and survivability, they are incredibly vital in the early game. But as you get more Skill Points, you’ll want to focus on Passive upgrades. These are the ones you should prioritize (in order), especially if you’re having Essence issues:
- Grim Harvest (all 3 ranks)
- Hewed Flesh (1 rank)
- Serration (all 3 ranks)
- Compound Fracture (all 3 ranks)
- Evulsion (all 3 ranks)
- Trap Mastery (all 3 ranks)
As you get closer to level 50 and look where to spend your points, you can go with:
- Stand Alone (all 3 ranks)
- Memento Mori (all 3 ranks)
- Unliving Energy (1 rank)
- Imperfectly Balanced (all 3 ranks)
4 -Unlock your Key Passive as soon as possible
A top priority is to unlock your Key Passive, Ossified Essense, as soon as the node is unlocked. This Key Passive is arguably one of the strongest in the entire game and will take the entire build up a notch.
Best-in-Class Malignant Hearts
Malignant Hearts are the core gameplay loop of Season of the Malignant, and trust me when I tell you; they are the real deal. Some Hearts are decent, others are gimmicky, but a few are absolutely busted, top-tier. You would be making a huge mistake by ignoring these.
These are the Malignant Hearts you should farm:
- Caged Heart of the Barber (Wrathful Heart): Critical Strikes and all subsequent damage within 2.0-4.0 seconds is absorbed by your target. Then, the absorbed damage erupts onto surrounding enemies. Stored damage is increased by 10% per second.
- Caged Heart of Revenge: 10-20% of incoming damage is instead suppressed. When you use a Defensive, Subterfuge, or Macabre skill, all suppressed damage is amplified by 250% and explodes, dealing up to 1360-2040 Fire damage to Nearby enemies.
- Caged Heart of the Decrepit Aura: When at least 4 enemies are near you, gain an aura that automatically curses surrounding enemies with Decepecy for [6-17] seconds.
These are stronger than most Aspects out there, do not pass on the opportunity to improve your build significantly.
Wrathful Heart farm, Diablo 4
Best Necromancer Aspects to chase
If you’ve followed so far, you should have a competent build in place. However, you’ll need the right Aspects to truly take it to the next level and slay everything in your path. There are many Aspects and Dungeons for Necromancers, but these are the best ones for this build:
| Dungeon | Region | - | Aspect | Class | Type | Specs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Champions Demise | Dry Steppes |  | Aspect of the Umbral |  General | Resource | Restore [1 – 4] of your Primary Resource when you Crowd Control an enemy. Slots: Ring |
The Splintering Aspect is particularly excellent and a must-have for this build. By the way, other builds often require much harder-to-quire ingredients (such as Uniques and Aspects). In this case, you just need to head to the relevant dungeon and complete it to unlock the best Aspect for this build!
🛑 Warning: You’ll be upgrading equipment so fast between levels 1 and 50 that you shouldn’t spend too many resources upgrading your gear.
The only exceptions are your Amulet and rings, as you can hold on to those for much longer. If you find a truly great 2-handed Swords, you might imprint the Splintering Aspect into it to get a bonus +100% effect. You can thank me later 😉
Gear
While some guides will spend entire paragraphs describing what stats and affixes to prioritize, the truth is these won’t matter that much while leveling your character. Why? Because you’ll be upgrading your gear so often, focusing on min-maxing your build at this stage is a waste of time.
Gear stats and affixes matter a lot in the endgame (from level 50 onwards), but for now, this is all you need to know:
- Upgrade to whatever has the highest Item Power and move on
- For Armor: Upgrade to whatever has the highest Item Power
- Upgrade with Ruby gems for the increased maximum life
- For Weapons: Upgrade to whatever has the highest Damage Per Second (that’s what counts for your abilities)
- Upgrade with Emeral gems for the extra Critical Strike Damage
While leveling in Diablo 4, you want to spend less time looking at your inventory and more time farming!
Perfecting your build
Technically speaking, once you hit level 50, you won’t need a leveling build anymore. Once you hit level 50 and/or World Tier 3, you should start building an endgame build and focus on your stats, affixes, Aspects, and Uniques.
We’ll put together an endgame Necromancer build soon, but in the meantime, these resources are here to help you:
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