In this Diablo 4 guide, we’ll showcase some of the best Necromancer leveling builds in the game.
The builds covered here are our best Necromancer leveling builds that we tested and played. This will grant you a faster leveling experience from level 1 to 50 and, we think, a more enjoyable one. Remember that our leveling builds do not include any Paragon boards set-up since they are unlocked past level 50.
If you want to learn more about the Necromancer class or the gameplay of Diablo 4, we recommend checking out our Diablo 4 Complete Guide. Let’s dive into our Diablo 4 Necromancer leveling builds.
Bone Spear Necromancer Build
The Bone Spear Necromancer build is probably the most powerful build for the Necro. It’s enjoyable, and it doesn’t rely on our Golem to complement your damage. As a matter of fact, we’re sacrificing the Golem for that extra x30% increased critical strike damage. Let’s dive into the main setup for the Bone Spear Necromancer leveling build.
Main Skills
The Book of the Dead
Legendary Aspects
- Splintering Aspect – Bone Spear’s primary attack makes enemies hit beyond the first Vulnerable for [1.5 – 2.5] seconds. Bone Shards from Bone Spear deal [50 – 100]% bonus damage to Vulnerable enemies and pierce them. This will go into the amulet for that 50% bonus. Progress the Campaign in Dry Steppes to unlock.
- Edgemaster’s Aspect – Skills deal up to [10 – 20]% increased damage based on your available Primary Resource when cast, receiving the maximum benefit while you have full Primary Resource. Unlocked by completing Oldstones in Scosglen
- Aspect of Torment – Critical Strikes with Bone Skills increase your Essence Regeneration by [20 – 30]% for [20 – 30] seconds. Unlocked by completing Black Asylum.
Gameplay
Since this build has Corpse Explosion as one of our main source of AoE damage, we’ll use Reap to generate Essence and create corpses once per 5 seconds on the first hit.
Bone Spear is an extremely powerful ability, especially when paired with the Splintering Aspect. This allows the Necromancer to apply Vulnerable to its enemies and to do increased damage to Vulnerable targets. While Bone Spear is a decent AoE ability, its single-target damage is extremely good.
As mentioned, this build utilizes Corpse Explosion as its main AoE damage ability. However, to make the spell more potent, we’re choosing the Blighted Corpse Explosion upgrade to apply 110% Shadow damage over 6 seconds as a dot. This turns the ability into a good single-target dps button as well.
Decrepify is both an offensive and defensive ability, slowing the enemies and rebuffing them for 20% less damage done. The ability also has a Stun component to it, further increasing the Necromancer’s survivability. Moreover, Decrepify has a 15% chance per enemy hit to reduce all cooldowns by 1 second.
We’re playing with Raise Skeleton, but we’re using the Skeletal Defenders to provide an additional layer of defense. We also found that the Defenders do not die as fast as the Skirmishers. Cold Mages are used as well for their freeze and Essence generation.
For our Ultimate, we’re using Bone Storm, for the extra AoE damage, mitigation, and critical strike chance increase.
As a Key Passve, being a Bone build, we’re rolling with Ossified Essence to get 1% increased damage for each point of Essence you have above 50.
Skill Tree
Below you’ll find the full Necromancer build and its associated Skill Tree. Click on the image to get to the build planner.
Blood Surge Necromancer Build
The Blood Surge Necro build is similar to our Bone Spear leveling build, with some key differences. First of all, we’re using Blood Surge as our Core ability. This ability has pretty good AoE damage and an Overpower component. We won’t sacrifice the Golem this time since it will complement our single target damage for this build. Let’s dive into this Necro build and see its full potential.
Main Skills
The Book of the Dead
Legendary Aspects
- Blood-bathed Aspect – Blood Surge’s nova echoes again after a short delay, dealing [60 – 70]% less damage. Imprint this on the amulet, for the 50% bonus. Unlocked by completing Hoarfrost Demise in Fractured Peaks
- Aspect of Reanimation – Your Skeletons gain increased damage while alive, up to [20 – 30]% after 10 seconds. Unlocked by completing Aldurwood in Scosglen.
- Aspect of Inner Calm – Deal [5.0 – 10.0]% increased damage for each second you stand still, up to 30%. Unlocked by completing Raethwind Wilds in Scosglen
Gameplay
This is a good starter build mainly because its key Aspect, Blood-bathed Aspect is found within Act 1 in Fractured Peaks. So, the build is pretty simple to comprehend; as usual, we’re generating Essence and Corpses with Reap. Corpse Explosion is used as our main AoE attack, but like in our Bone Spear build, we’re choosing the Blighted Corpse Explosion upgrade to apply 110% Shadow damage over 6 seconds as a dot.
Since this is a full Blood build, we picked all the relevant nodes from the Skill Tree to enhance the damage of our build.
As our minions, we’re using Skirmishers, Cold Mages and the Blood Golem. This grants us additional single target damage, critical strike and slow, from the Cold Mages.
We’re using Bone Storm as our offensive and defensive button, granting the Necromancer 180% damage to surrounding enemies, 20% critical strike, as well as a 15% damage reduction.
Finally, we’re going with Rathma’s Vigor for our Key Passive, which will grant another Overpower effect for our blood skills.
Skill Tree
For this full Diablo 4 Necromancer leveling build, click on the image below.
Blight Necromancer Build
The Blight Necro build is one of our favorite Diablo 4 builds for the Necromancer class. Blight has a unique mechanic that leaves a defiled area on the ground when attacking, which makes your minions do 15% increased damage. Needless to say, this is a full-on minion build that does very good damage. Once we get the main Aspect of this build, Blighted Aspect, the Necromancer’s DPS starts to ramp up pretty nicely. Let’s see the full setup of this build.
Main Skills
The Book of the Dead
Legendary Aspects
- Blighted Aspect – You deal [50 – 120]% increased damage for 6 seconds after the Shadowblight Key Passive damages enemies 10 times. Imprint this on your amulet, for 50% bonus. Unlocked by completing Akkhan’s Grasp in Hawezar.
- Aspect of the Umbral – Restore [1 – 4] of your Primary Resource when you Crowd Control an enemy. Unlocked by completing Champion’s Demise in Dry Steppes
- Edgemaster’s Aspect – Skills deal up to [10 – 20]% increased damage based on your available Primary Resource when cast, receiving the maximum benefit while you have full Primary Resource. Unlocked by completing Oldstones in Scosglen.
Gameplay
The core of this Necromancer leveling build is to empower your minions using Blight and the tree’s passives.
Reap is used as our Essence and Corpse generator. As you can probably imagine, being a full minion build, we need to have corpses around to re-summon them when they die and to buff them when needed. Hewed Flesh has a good synergy with this mechanic as well, spawning corpses when doing damage.
We’ll use Corpse Tendrils for this build for its crowd control and the Vulnerable application on the targets.
As always, Bone Storm is used as an offensive and defensive ability, granting the Necromancer 180% damage to surrounding enemies, 20% critical strike, and a 15% damage reduction.
Shadowblight is our Key Passive here, which further empowers your minion damage considerably. This passive works excellent with the Blighted Aspect, that’s why we’ve chosen this Aspect as our primary one.
Lastly, we’re using the Reapers Skeletal Warriors for that corpse generation. The Shadow Skeletal Mages are a good DPS source as well as bringing a Stun every 5 seconds. As for the big boys of the build, the Golems, we’ve chosen the Iron Golem with the 2nd upgrade, for applying Vulnerable to its targets. However, you can play with other types of Golems as well, depending on your playstyle or if you need more survivability.
Skill Tree
Below you can find the full leveling build for the Blight Necromancer. Just click on the image to see the full Skill Tree and build.
