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Diablo 4 features some of the most influential classes from the Diablo series. Diablo 4 brings them back with new features, skills, and mechanics. Possibly the most popular class from Diablo’s history is the Necromancer, a bone-throwing, corpse-raising, poison-spewing spellcaster known for its high versatility and impressive skills. With all the new options available to Necromancers, players might be wondering how to get the most out of this powerhouse class. This guide outlines a build for the Necromancer that can carve through the beta efficiently while having a lot of fun along the way.
Best Necromancer Build for the Diablo 4 Beta
Necromancers excel at just about anything they put their points into. There are many potential builds that are all incredibly powerful. All in all, the Necromancer is the perfect class for players that like to agonize over every detail in their build.
After the player has reached level 25 and earned the extra Skill Points awarded by Renown Rewards, they’ll have a total of 26 Skill Points to use. The following build, titled “Death & Corpses,” uses those 26 points to craft a versatile Necromancer that deals monstrous amounts of damage. It’s based on a level 25 character. The exact numbers will vary based on gear.
| Death & Corpses | ||
|---|---|---|
| Skill | Description | Enhancements |
Reap (1/5) | Generate Essence: 4 per enemy hit Sweep an ethereal scythe in front of you, dealing 58 damage. Hitting an enemy with Reap increases your Damage Reduction by 15% for 2 seconds. | Enhanced Reap: If an enemy hit by Reap dies within 2 seconds, you gain 30% Attack Speed for 3 seconds. |
| Acolyte’s Reap: Reap forms a Corpse under the first enemy hit. Can only occur once every 5 seconds. | ||
Bone Spear(3/5) | Essence Cost: 24 Conjure a bone spear from the ground, dealing 439 damage and piercing through enemies. | Enhanced Bone Spear: Bone Spear breaks into 3 shards when it's destroyed, each dealing 43 damage. |
| Supernatural Bone Spear: Bone Spear makes the first enemy hit Vulnerable for 3 seconds. | ||
Hewed Flesh(3/3) | Lucky Hit: Your damage has up to a 12% chance to create a Corpse at the target’s location. This chance is doubled against bosses. | |
Corpse Explosion (3/5) | Detonate a Corpse, dealing 353 damage to surrounding enemies. | Enhanced Corpse Explosion: Corpse Explosion's radius is increased by 15%. |
| Plagued Corpse Explosion: Corpse Explosion deals 10% more damage to enemies that are Vulnerable, Stunned, or Slowed. These damage bonuses can stack. | ||
Grim Harvest (1/3) | Consuming a Corpse generates 3 essence. | |
Fueled by Death (3/3)  | You deal 12% increased damage after consuming a Corpse. | |
Corpse Tendrils (1/5) | Cooldown: 11 seconds Veins burst out of a Corpse, pulling in enemies, Stunning them for 3 seconds, and dealing 78 damage to them. Does not consume the Corpse. | Enhanced Corpse Tendrils: Enemies who are in range of Corpse Tendrils are Slowed by 50% before being pulled. |
| Plagued Corpse Tendrils: Enemies damaged by Corpse Tendrils are made Vulnerable for 3 seconds. | ||
Army of the Dead | Cooldown: 90 seconds Call forth the deep buried dead. Volatile Skeletons emerge over the next 7 seconds that explode when around enemies, dealing 117 damage. | Prime Army of the Dead: When Army of the Dead's Volatile Skeletons explode, they have a 15% chance to leave behind a Corpse. |
| Supreme Army of the Dead: Army of the Dead also raises your Skeletal Warriors and Skeletal Mages. | ||
| Book of the Dead | ||
Skeletal Reapers Wields a powerful scythe that has a special wind-up attack, dealing heavy damage every 10 seconds.Upgrade: Reapers have a 15% chance to carve the flesh off enemies, forming a Corpse | ||
Bone Mages Bone Mages use their own bodies as projectiles, dealing heavy damage at the cost of their own Life.Upgrade: Each time a Bone Mage dies from its own attack, they leave behind a Corpse and Fortify you for 11% of your Base Life. | ||
The Best Attack Pattern for Death & Corpses Necromancers
The Death & Corpses build focuses on inflicting status effects, forming Corpses, and blowing them up. Hewed Flesh is the star of the show. With it, every hit has a 12% chance to form a Corpse; that chance increases to 24% against bosses. To take advantage of that, this build focuses on scoring many hits quickly. The minions also create corpses, but the Bone Mages do require some to keep up. Even during one-on-one boss fights though, the Death & Corpses build forms more than enough Corpses to go around.
Here’s the best attack pattern to use with the Diablo 4 Necromancer:
- Fire a Bone Lance through as many enemies as possible to inflict Vulnerability and potentially form corpses.
- Swing with Reap to form at least one corpse and gain Damage Reduction. Wipe out an enemy within two seconds to gain a 30% increase to Attack Speed.
- Use Corpse Tendrils to draw everything in and inflict Vulnerability, Stun, and Slow.
- At this point, there should already be a few corpses on the ground. If not, fire another Bone Lance or swing with Reap again.
- Cast Corpse Explosion on every corpse, and continue casting it as new corpses are formed. It has no cooldown and costs no essence.
- Against elite enemies and bosses, end with Army of the Dead and then start the rotation over.
The Best Gear for Death & Corpses Necromancers
The bonuses given by gear in Diablo 4 are called affixes. They have names, and they appear randomly on gear. Finding just the right gear can be a hassle, but enchanting can help tie up any loose ends. A Necromancer using the Death & Corpses build should look out for these stats:
- Intelligence
- Ranks to All Corpse Skills
- Ranks to Corpse Explosion
- Ranks to Bone Spear
- Increased number of Skeletons
- Willpower
- Physical Damage
The best weapon for the Necromancer appears to be the Two-Handed Scythe. It generally offers the best stats for the Necromancer's skills. Players should also keep an eye out for Aspect of Reanimation, which increases Skeletons’ damage significantly. Aspect of the Embalmer gives a 25% chance to create Blood Orbs when consuming a corpse. There are other helpful aspects as well, and many stats that give smaller boosts too.
Necromancer players have a lot of fine-tuning available to them, so this is by no means the end of the journey. Players should spend time finding just the right balance of stats for their play style. Players can get a lot out of the Necromancer with as little or as much effort as they want to invest.
Diablo 4 launches June 6 on PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, and PS5.