Welcome to the guide to Diablo 4 Season 9 builds! Whether you're a seasoned adventurer or a newcomer looking to conquer the depths of Sanctuary, these builds are designed to maximize damage, survivability, and sheer fun. From explosive Spiritborn strategies to devastating Necromancer setups, Rhykker's top builds will help you push deeper into the Pit and dominate the endgame.
10. Rogue Build: Death Trap
Death Trap has seen a decline since Season 8, where it ranked fourth. The nerf to the Eyes in the Dark pants has impacted its effectiveness, but the playstyle remains enjoyable. It's still the best all-around Rogue build for tackling all game content.
When it comes to Pit pushing, an honorable mention should go to Penetrating Shot. In Season 9, this build is performing quite well and may even surpass Death Trap. Penetrating Shot is straightforward to play and a lot of fun. The real twist comes from its interaction with the updated Azurewrath Sword, which has a chance to deal cold damage on Lucky Hit. The optimal version of this build focuses on landing those Lucky Hits as often as possible.
9. Barbarian Build: Lunging Strike
Lunging Strike is the only Barbarian build featured on this list. Unfortunately, many of the previous top Barbarian builds have fallen from grace, but thankfully, Lunging Strike has emerged as a powerful option for the Barbarian class.
This build focuses on basic attacks and utilizes the Paingorger's Gauntlets, which enhance your basic skill ranks. When you damage enemies with a non-basic skill, you mark them for 3 seconds. Then, when you strike them with a basic skill, the damage is echoed to all marked enemies. The key is to tag multiple enemies with a non-basic skill before unleashing your Lunging Strike to maximize damage.
Additionally, you'll want to combine this with the Hooves of the Mountain God boots, which provide a significant boost to attack speed for basic skills. When casting a basic skill at max fury, your fury drains progressively until it runs out, transforming your basic skills into cleave attacks that deal 100% increased damage. This change allows you to shift from single-target damage to area-of-effect attacks.
Lunging Strike also serves as a gap closer, making it a natural mobility skill. Overall, this build is not only effective but also a lot of fun to play!
8. Necromancer Build: Minion Necro
Minion Necro has made its way into the top 10, thanks to The Hand of Naz. This build focuses on skeletal mage minions. By sacrificing both skeleton warriors and golems, you gain an additional skeletal mage for each minion sacrificed.
When a skeletal mage attacks enemies 25 times without dying, it upgrades to a Skeletal Arch Mage. These arch mages have the ability to teleport to safety when attacked, and their strikes can occasionally shatter on impact, dealing 100% increased damage to the target and up to three additional targets. In this build, your minions aren't tanking for you anymore; you become the tank for your arch mages.
You'll definitely want to include the Ring of Mendeln in this setup. This item has undergone quite a journey in Diablo 4, but it seems to be fully functional now. It's essential for this build, as it increases your summon attack speed and boosts your ranks in Skeletal Mage Mastery. The standout feature is that every sixth attack from each minion is empowered, dealing significantly more physical damage. These empowered attacks deliver devastating nukes from your mages.
In summary, the pure summoner Necromancer is a top-tier build now!
7. Necromancer Build: Blight
This Necromancer build focuses on Blight, a shadow damage-over-time build. With this setup, you should equip Ebonpiercer. This item provides multiple ranks to Blight and increases the chance for Blight projectiles to cast twice. Additionally, Blight fires four smaller projectiles that pierce enemies, dealing shadow damage over time. When facing single targets, you can effectively "shotgun" enemies by positioning yourself correctly, allowing all projectiles to hit the same target.
6. Necromancer Build: Blood Wave
Blood Wave has dropped in rankings, previously holding the second spot in Season 8. Despite receiving significant nerfs, Blood Wave remains one of the most powerful Necromancer builds and is incredibly versatile across various situations.
Blood Wave fully utilizes the buffs to shadow damage, transforming it into a darkness skill to activate all possible synergies. Depending on the activity you're engaging in, Blood Wave can be adapted for speedrunning or easier content. However, for Pit pushing, a shadow damage-over-time version is emerging as the top contender.
The Overpower mechanic has been significantly weakened, which was previously the main source of damage for Blood Wave. Currently, the Blood Wave build is shifting away from relying on Overpower damage and is now focusing entirely on scaling damage over time. The gameplay has shifted dramatically; the build no longer prioritizes blood orbs and instead focuses on laying down Desecrated Ground on the battlefield.
5. Druid Build: Fleshrender
Fleshrender centers around the Fleshrender unique item. When you cast a defensive skill, it inflicts significant damage on nearby poisoned enemies, increasing by 50% for every 100 willpower you have. The core gameplay revolves around spamming your defensive skills on poisoned enemies to deal massive area damage.
Key skills include Earthen Bulwark, Cyclone Armor, Blood Howl, and Debilitating Roar. You'll be constantly using these abilities, shouting and roaring until your enemies are defeated.
This build excels as you progress, requiring high gear and Paragon levels since its damage scales with your willpower. For every 100 willpower, your damage output increases. The gearing synergies are designed to minimize cooldowns on your defensive skills, allowing you to use them as frequently as possible.
4. Druid Build: Pulverize
Pulverize has always been a solid early-game build for Druids; while it may not have been exceptional, it has consistently performed well. However, now, in the endgame, it becomes a powerful option, especially with the introduction of the new unique item, Rotting Lightbringer.
When there are no puddles around you, Pulverize creates a poison puddle that guarantees Overpowers and deals a multiple of its normal damage as poisoning over 7 seconds. Additionally, Pulverize causes all close puddles to splash a percentage of their total damage within their area. This item also provides a high chance for Pulverize to hit twice, allowing for massive area-of-effect damage as you lay down your puddles.
This build is straightforward to play and functions at range, thanks to the Shockwave Aspect that allows Pulverize to send out a shockwave. Here's a key detail: Pulverize initially deals area damage around you, then releases a shockwave that extends further. By positioning yourself correctly against single targets, you can ensure that both the melee hit and the shockwave strike the same enemy, optimizing your damage output against bosses.
While Overpower was significantly nerfed in Season 9, it still plays a crucial role in this build by enabling multiple Overpowers.
3. Sorcerer Build: Hydra
Hydra is a lot of fun and makes great use of the new unique item, Ophidian Iris. Hydra is now a core skill, allowing you to create synergies around it. It always summons a three-headed hydra, and its attacks explode on impact. For each additional head beyond three, the Hydra grows larger and deals more damage, leading to some massive Hydra heads! You can have up to 18 heads on a Hydra, which means some seriously large attacks.
You'll also want to combine this with the Serpentine Aspect (such as Serpentine Energy Staff), which increases Hydra's damage based on how much mana you had when you summoned it. Therefore, you want to cast it when you're at max mana. To maximize this, stack effects that boost your max mana, using items like Elixir of Resourcefulness 2, to gain even more power. Keep in mind that you can only have two Hydras summoned at once, and each Hydra lasts for 10 seconds. Overall, the play style of this build is quite relaxed.
2. Spiritborn Build: Balasan Rake
This season, Spiritborns have gained a new item, Balazan's Maxtlatl. With each attack, this item damages nearby enemies for a percentage of your Thorns and deals 100% of this damage as poisoning over 3 seconds. Each time you've retaliated with Thorns for 5 seconds, the poisoning damage increases by 100%, up to 300%.
This poisoning damage-over-time effect synergizes perfectly with the Noxious Resonance passive. Your critical strikes will cause the poisoning on an enemy to burst, dealing 180% of the total poisoning instantly to that target and 20% of the burst damage to surrounding enemies before removing the poisoning effect from the primary target. This means you're constantly applying poison damage and then triggering explosive damage on multiple enemies.
Additionally, Razorplate is beneficial here, allowing you to stack significant Thorns damage. You'll also be utilizing the Jaguar in Spirit Hall. Every 15th time you deal direct damage to an enemy with a Jaguar skill, it unleashes an additional strike that deals 50% of the damage you've inflicted on them in the last 0.5 seconds. Timing your damage windows is crucial for optimizing this build.
To enhance your damage windows, you'll need to use the QAX Rune of Invocation. Casting a skill other than a basic skill will consume all your primary resource to increase your damage by up to 100% for 1 second. Ensure that your Jaguar snapshot is grabbing that 100% damage buff.
Another important thing you want in that snapshot is the Aspect of Plains Power. With a Lucky Hit, you'll cast a mystic circle on the ground. If you stand inside that circle, your damage will increase by 5% for each stack of ferocity you have, resulting in a significant damage multiplier. You also want to make sure that you're The Hunter (Ultimate) skill is popped in that damage window, because it's snapshotting all the damage that you're dealing in the last 0.5 seconds.
If you're playing this build without paying close attention, you might find yourself wondering why your damage fluctuates so dramatically. This build has a high skill ceiling, requiring you to focus and master the nuances of timing. There are several ways to play Balasan Rake, but using Rake as your primary damage dealer is the easiest version to run.
1. Spiritborn Build: Quill Volley Balasan
Quill Volley Balasan is another Spiritborn build, and Spiritons are in a fantastic place this season compared to last season, where they were barely making it into the top 10.
Between Rake and Quill Volley, the latter will be more challenging to play. Your positioning will be more important, and managing your cooldowns will require extra attention. However, despite these challenges, this build has the potential to be the best in the game.
Final Thoughts
Diablo 4 Season 9 offers an exciting array of builds across all classes, each tailored to different playstyles and goals. Whether you prefer summoning hordes of minions as a Necromancer or mastering intricate timing windows as a Spiritborn, there's something here for everyone.
Experiment with these builds, optimize your gear, and dive deep into the Pit—you'll find yourself conquering challenges like never before! Which of these builds will you try first? Leave your thoughts in the comment section! Last but not least, don't forget to subscribe to Rhykker's channel for more future content!
