Diablo 4: best Necromancer build guide

Use these skills to make the most of the Necromancer's life-bending skill set

Contents

1. Diablo 4: best Necromancer skills
2. Diablo 4: best Necromancer passive skills
3. Diablo 4: best Necromancer summons

The Necromancer class is one of the best classes in Diablo 4, just as it was in Diablo 3’s expansion. It plays a little bit like D3’s Necromancer, and a little bit like D3’s Witch Doctor too, making it a very satisfying class that focuses heavily on minions and lets players attack from afar.

In this guide, we’ll take you through what we think is a pretty solid build for Necromancers in Diablo 4, including the best level-up skills in each skill cluster, which summons to use, and more.

Be sure to check out our Diablo 4 tips and tricks for more handy pointers to make your time in Sanctuary a little bit easier, and read our Diablo 4 review if you’re still on the fence about jumping in. If you haven’t settled on a class yet, you can also check out or guide for the best starting class in Diablo 4.

Other build guides:

• Diablo 4: best Druid build guide
• Diablo 4: best Sorcerer build guide
• Diablo 4: best Rogue build guide
• Diablo 4: best Barbarian build guide

Diablo 4: best Necromancer skills

The Necromancer isn’t the most powerful mage class in Diablo 4 – that honor goes to a well-built Sorcerer – but it does afford a range of fantastic abilities and utility. The main draw of the Necromancer is that they can stay back and let minions do their bidding, which means they are more than capable of staying alive for a long time in some of the more difficult battles. We’ve gone with a blood magic-based set, but honestly most sets with the Necromancer will work just fine — it’s a very consistently good class.

Basic skill - Hemorrhage

Hemorrhage is a fantastic ability that will serve you well for the entirety of the game. Not only does it deal a pretty decent chunk of damage for a basic skill, and restore the most amount of Essence of any of the skills, it also drops blood orbs, which you can pick up to get a bit of healing. Given how precious potions are in Diablo 4, there’s really no better choice than this.

Core skill - Blood Surge

Blood Surge is another great skill that will likely stick with you for a good chunk of the main game. It’s a two-part attack that deals damage to specific enemies, then does a second small AOE wave of damage to surrounding enemies. Like Hemorrhage (and a lot of blood-based skills) it can also be upgraded to heal you, and as we know, more healing is always good.

Macabre skill - Blood mist

Blood Mist is a solid saving grace that is almost guaranteed to prevent your death multiple times throughout your run. It prevents you from taking damage for a short while, deals a little bit of damage, and heals you when you do. It’s an incredibly effective skill, and with upgrades you can reduce its cooldown, which makes you even more unkillable.

Curse skill - Decrepify

Curses aren’t the most effective skills available to Necromancers, and there’s a very real chance you’ll end up with none on your hotbar by the time you finish the game. Still, if you’re going to pick up a curse skill, we’d recommend Decrepify, which slows and weakens enemies who stand in the cursed field. As we said, not amazing, but it will do if you’re waiting to fill up your hotbar with more useful skills.

Corpse skill - Corpse Tendrils

Corpse Tendrils. It makes tendrils come out of corpses, which then do damage to surrounding enemies for a short while. You can upgrade it to drop blood orbs, giving you more healing, and it doesn’t destroy corpses, so you don’t have to worry about it.

Ultimate skill - Blood Wave

Blood Wave deals a truckload of damage to all nearby enemies and knocks them back so they can’t hurt you. If you upgrade it to Supreme Blood Wave, it’ll also leave behind blood orbs. Do you see why going down this path is so great? You basically get free healing for everything you do.

Key passive - Kalan’s edict

Kalan’s Edict buffs your minions’ attack speed if you haven’t taken damage in the last 3 seconds. That’s really good, because the whole point of the Necromancer is to stay back and let your minions take hits for you instead. None of the other key passives really do all that much for this set, though Rathma’s Vigor can be helpful in some situations too.

Diablo 4: best Necromancer passive skills

Throughout the skill tree, there are a number of passive skills that are worth picking up, and if you’re waiting to unlock the next branch of the tree, it’s worth picking up some of them to round out your skills a bit.

Here are the passives we suggest picking up when you can, along with brief descriptions:

• Unliving Energy - increases your essence – it’s not the best passive, but hey, it’s a little bit useful
• Spiked Armor - gives 50 thorns, just on the off chance you do get hit
• Death’s Reach - deal more damage to enemies that are far away
• Gruesome Mending - extra healing from all sources when below 50% health
• Golem Mastery - your golems do more damage and have more health

Diablo 4: best Necromancer summons

The Necromancer’s unique class skill is, of course, summoning skeletons from the ground using the Book of the Dead. You’ll need corpses to raise the dead, but there will almost always be plenty of corpses scattered around the battlefield. There are three types of summons for Necromancers, skeleton warriors, skeleton mages, and golems. The first are unlocked the moment you start the game, while the others are a little later in, at level 15 and 25. There are different types of skeletons and golems to pick from, so here’s what we think is the best choice:

Skeleton Warriors - Reapers

Reapers have slower attacks, but do more damage and can be used to reduce their own active cooldown with upgrades. They can also drop more corpses, which isn’t necessary, but can help with corpse explosions and raising more skeletons in a pinch.

Skeleton Mages - Shadow

Shadow Mages are the earliest you’ll unlock, and they’ll be useful for most of the game. While Cold Mages are also a very viable option, we think the upgraded Shadow Mages are probably the most bang for your buck, with the chance to stun or do extra damage.

Golem - Bone

Golems will unlock once you’ve completed the Necromancer’s priority quest, Call of the Underworld, at level 25. At first you’ll only have access to Bone Golems, but that’s okay, because they’re probably your best choice anyway. The Bone Golem taunts nearby enemies, which causes them to attack it instead of you, giving you a bunch of flexibility and longevity in large groups. They deal fantastic damage and can take a decent beating, so they’re a great all-rounder.