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Conquer the world of Sanctuary with the best Necromancer solo build we’ve seen yet.
The Necromancer is weak early in Diablo 4, especially if you’re focusing on using what makes that class so special — skeleton minions. If you want to crush enemies and beat bosses with minimum effort using the Necromancer, you’ll want to aim for a very specific build. And it all comes down to Corpse Generation. The more Corpses you can Generate, the more damage you can deal to big bosses while keeping yourself safe.
This build is 100% built for clearing the campaign with the Necromancer, and more specifically, for defeating bosses on Tier 2 World Difficulty. If you’re really struggling to beat a specific boss fight, I recommend bumping down the difficulty to Tier 1. There’s no downside. You can swap world difficulty at any time at the main cities for each region. After lowering the difficulty and clearing a boss, you can always crank the challenge back up to earn more high-tier loot and rewards.
More Diablo 4 guides:
10 Beginner Tips | Class Overview | Barbarian Unconstrained Berserk Build | Golem Summoning | Rogue Twisted Poison Build | Accessibility Options To Change First | Potion Upgrades & Increase Max Capacity | Unlocking Horses | World Tier Unlocks | Silent Chests & Whispering Keys | Crushed Beast Bones Locations | Fiend Roses Locations | Secret of the Spring Quest Solution | Early Game Loot Farm | Endgame Unique & Sacred Farm | Level Up Faster Elixir
Necromancer Build | Shadow & Minions Abilities
To crush everything as a Necromancer, you’ll need corpses. Generating corpses is the most important part of being a Necromancer with minions. If you don’t have corpses, you don’t have minions to summon. They’ll die relatively quickly in combat, so we want to focus on creating more corpses and then utilizing those corpses to deal damage to enemies.
We’ll go through the Necromancer Build level-by-level, but here’s a quick overview of the skills you want to unlock.
- Decompose: Your standard attack that generates Essence.
- +Enhanced Decompose, Acolyte’s Decompose
- Blight: An area-of-effect that slows enemies and makes them vulnerable to extra damage.
- +Enhanced Blight, Paranormal Blight
- Corpse Explosion: A high-damage attack that explodes corpses. After summoning minions, use the extra to deal damage.
- +Enhanced Corpse Explosion, Blighted Corpse Explosion
- Skeleton Warrior (Reaper): Reapers are powerful skeletons that can also generate corpses through attacks. The more corpses you generate, the more skeletons you can summon during a tough fight.
- 2nd Upgrade: 15% chance to carve the flesh off enemies, forming a Corpse.
- Skeleton Mage (Bone): Bone Mages sacrifice themselves in combat but always generate a corpse, so you can resummon them infinitely.
- 2nd Upgrade: Leave behind a corpse and Fortify the player for 11% of your Base Life when dying.
- Hewed Flesh: Whenever you deal damage, there’s a small chance a Corpse will spawn. Incredibly useful for this build. We need more corpses to summon minions and explode!
- Grim Harvest + Fueled By Death: Generate Essence and increase damage whenever you consume a corpse. We’ll be doing that a lot.
- Skeletal Warrior Mastery: Simple. Makes your Reapers better. They’ll last longer and deal more damage.
- Corpse Tendrils: Pulls enemies close to corpses, slowing them, dealing damage and leaving them Vulnerable to damage. A great alternative to Corpse Explosion.
- +Enhanced Corpse Tendrils, Plagued Corpse Tendrils
- Army of the Dead: Summons an explosive army of skeletons. The ultimate skill every minion master must learn. With Supreme Army of the Dead, you’ll also generate even more corpses.
- +Prime Army of the Dead, Supreme Army of the Dead
- Shadowblight: The final and most important ability. At the bottom of the Ability menu, you’ll be able to unlock this Key Passive. Using Shadow, you will apply Shadowblight to enemies. Enemies with Shadowblight take +10% more damage from you and your minion. Very powerful.
Everything after the Ultimate is up to you. This build can be ideally created at around Level 26 — you’ll be able to unlock almost all the skills but won’t be able to put points into every ability.
Necromancer Ability Order | Shadowblight Build
Follow these steps generally. Increase your main skills (Decompose, Blight, Corpse Explosion, etc) as you level up.
- Book of the Dead:
- Skeleton Warrior (Reaper): Reapers have a 15% chance to carve the flesh off enemies, forming a Corpse.
- Skeleton Mage (Bone): Each time a Bone Mage dies from its own attack, they leave behind a Corpse and Fortify you for 11% of your Base Life.
- Ability Unlock Order:
- Decompose -> Enhanced Decompose -> Acolyte’s Decompose
- Blight -> Enhanced Blight -> Paranormal Blight
- Hewed Flesh
- Corpse Explosion -> Enhanced Corpse Explosion -> Blighted Corpse Explosion
- Skeleton Warrior Mastery
- Grim Harvest
- Fueled By Death
- Corpse Tendrils -> Enhanced Corpse Tendrils -> Plagued Corpse Tendrils
- Army of the Dead -> Supreme Army of the Dead
- Shadowblight
With this killer minion build, you won’t have problems with boss monsters ever again. You’ll be generating so many corpses, you’ll always have skeleton buddies on your side — and resources to explode and stun everything else.
