With the recent announcement of Diablo 4's "Server Slam" beta, players are eagerly awaiting the opportunity to test their skills again and see what changes Blizzard has made to the game. In the previous beta, the Necromancer class stood out as the most versatile and powerful, able to dominate any enemy with its great damage output and an army of undead minions. The returning class was absolutely loved by fans, and some even claimed that it was borderline broken.
While Blizzard has made some obvious adjustments to the Necromancer for the sake of nerfing the class for the Server Slam, it still offers players a wide range of playstyle options. Certain skills in the Necromancer's toolkit complement each other perfectly, allowing for unique and exciting build possibilities.
To help players get the most out of the Necromancer in the upcoming beta, we've put together a guide to the best builds for this class. We'll walk you through the necessary items, skills, and combinations to create a powerful and effective Necromancer build that will help you conquer Sanctuary with ease.
Corpse Exploder
One of the most popular and widely used build for the Necromancer is the corpse exploder build. This build revolves around the skill "corpse explosion," which deals massive damage to enemies when triggered. Even with the nerfs expected in the Server Slam Beta, corpse explosion is still an excellent skill to build around. To complement the corpse explosion, we recommend using the legendary skill "Blood Mist," which grants invincibility to the Necromancer and causes all corpse explosions to trigger in the surrounding area while the ability is in effect.
In this build, Blood Mist is the key skill, triggering explosions automatically and dealing a disgusting amount of damage to the enemies. It's worth noting that you don't need to upgrade Blood Mist, but the "Ghastly Blood Mist" upgrade is highly recommended, as it drops a corpse every second, ensuring four explosions at the very least and resulting in more damage.
While this build doesn't rely heavily on basic skills for damage, we suggest using Reap as a melee-range ability. Upgrading Reap allows you to have a chance at gaining an extra corpse, making it an excellent setup tool before unleashing your devastating Blood Mist explosions. For a core skill, we recommend Bone Spear, which can penetrate the first enemy and rebound for bonus damage. To make the most out of Bone Spear, utilize the "Splittering Aspect," which makes enemies vulnerable for 3.0 seconds on the main spear hit and is really useful when clearing hoards out.
No necromancer build is complete without summons, and for this build, we recommend using skeletal warriors and golems. The skeletal warriors will mainly provide support for damage while the golems act as tanks and absorb damage. There's no need for skeletal mages in this build, so we're going to skip those and opt for the sacrifice buff in The Book of Dead, which grants a greater chance of making enemies vulnerable more often and amplifying damage for zero cost.
For passive abilities, it is highly recommended to have the skill Grim Harvest on you as it grants you 9 Essence points for each corpse you consume. As corpses are consumed when you raise minions or explode them, this skill will help improve your Essence recovery by a lot. You can also have the skill Fueled by Death for your second passive, as it gives you a small 4% damage boost for every corpse you consume for a limited amount of time. It maxes out at 12% but complements the rest of the skills extremely well, making this build super strong and fun to play with.
Blight Commander
For those of you who are tired of using the same Corpse Exploder build that everyone else is using and want to try something new and innovative that relies more on summoning an army to do the damage for you, then the Blight Commander might be just what you need to spice up your gameplay.
The Blight Commander build is a little different and has a laid-back playstyle that focuses heavily on summoning minions and utilizing damage over time effects to eventually do big damage or bleed opponents out. The namesake ability of this build is the Blight ability, which is essentially a dark pool of poison that deals damage over time. You will be mostly opening your attacks with this ability, and when upgraded, it can also slow enemies down, granting your huge summons windows to take them out.
Your basic attack for this build will be Bone Splinters. While not the most heavy-hitting attack, Bone Splinters deal enough damage to save you if enemies get too close. When upgraded, it can be a good way to support your summons from the back, making it a nice ability to have on hand.
Although not the star of the show for this build, Corpse Explosion is still an important ability in this build as well. Using corpses is necessary for any necromancer build, but instead of focusing solely on dealing damage like the first build with simple explosions, you'll want to upgrade Corpse Explosion all the way up to Blighted Corpse Explosion. This upgraded ability will deal damage over time, which complements the build's focus on damage over time effects and makes quick work of groups. DOT stacks really well in this game, so it would be a shame not to utilize it.
For the summons, you'll want to go with the Skirmisher upgrade for the Skeletal Warriors, as they will be your key damage source. These warriors will be accompanied by cold mages with the Essence upgrade, which will help to compensate for the huge amount of essence that a build like this will consume. Two passives, Skeletal Warrior Mastery and Skeletal Mage Mastery, are must-haves for this build, as they will significantly boost your minion's damage output and help them last longer. Other than that, feel free to play around with some more passive skills like Grim Harvest or Corpse Tendrils to find what works best for your playstyle.