Diablo 4 best Necromancer build – Corpse Explosion Necromancer best skills and aspects

The Diablo 4 best necromancer build is without a doubt the Corpse Explosion Necromancer – or more specifically, the Necromancer build with the “never-ending chain of exploding corpses, deadly bones, and blood fog”. It’s time to become less of a skeleton army commander and more of a demolitions expert.

If you’re looking to get the best Diablo 4 Necromancer build for yourself, here’s how – no minions required. We’ve played the game extensively as part of our testing process – read our full Diablo 4 review here. If you’re looking for a different class, we also have a lethal Diablo 4 Barbarian build and Diablo 4 Rogue build guide. Now let’s start with our Necromancer building guide.

Diablo 4 best necromancer build in diablo 4

Let’s call this Diablo 4 Necromancer build Corpse Blast Necromancer, after its main ability. Simply put, the idea is to quickly create a bunch of corpses and then blow them up for extra damage. We will be using bone attacks to weaken opponents, which in turn will make them more vulnerable to corpse explosion damage.

Best skills for the Necromancer

• Bone Shards (Base, Bone): Fires three Bone Shards. This skill has a happy hit rate of 17% and generates six essences plus one more essence each time an enemy is hit by the same effect of Bone Shards.
• Bone Spear (Core Skill, Bone): Summon a Bone Spear that deals damage and pierces through enemies. This skill costs 25 essences and has a happy hit rate of 50%.
• Corpse Explosion (corpse): Blows up nearby corpses, dealing damage to all nearby enemies. This skill has a happy hit rate of 40%.
• Blood Mist (macabre, blood): Grants immunity for 3 seconds, reducing movement speed by 20% and periodically dealing 2% damage to enemies. Blood Mist also heals you for a small percentage (depending on upgrades) of your maximum HP.
• corpse tendrils (corpse): Veins burst from a corpse, attracting enemies, dealing damage and stunning them for three seconds. The corpse is not consumed. This skill has a 20% lucky hit chance.
• Bone Storm (ultimate, bone): Summons a whirlwind of bones that deals damage for 10 seconds.

This is the list of active skills required for our best Diablo 4 Necromancer build, in the same order they appear in the skill tree. Bone Shards are primarily used to create Essences, while Bone Spear is your preferred damage skill. Since the ultimate is also a bone skill, we can take full advantage of all bone skill improvements.

It won’t take long before the ground is littered with usable corpses, but before you get to the detonation make sure you use Corpse Vines first to pull enemies together and apply negative effects to them.

Diablo 4 Necromancer build skill point distribution

• Bone Shards: Rank 1. Unlock Improved Bone Shards for a 25% chance to fire two additional Bone Shards (only works if you have 50 or more Essences).
• bone spear: Rank 5. Use “Empowered Bone Spear” for extra damage and “Supernatural Bone Spear” to cast the vulnerable debuff on the first enemy hit (lasts three seconds).
• Hewn Flesh: Rank 3. This passive skill grants a lucky hit effect: dealing damage has a 12% chance (when fully upgraded) to spawn a corpse. This chance is doubled when fighting a boss.
• corpse explosion: Rank 5. Unlock the Enhanced upgrade to increase the skill’s radius and the Afflicted upgrade to deal 8% more damage against slowed, vulnerable, or stunned enemies.
• blood mist: Rank 5. Also unlock Improved and Ghastly Bloodmist. The former reduces the skill’s cooldown by two seconds when you trigger the overwhelm effect, while the latter spawns a corpse every second while the skill is active.
• Grim Harvest: Rank 3. Fully upgraded, this passive generates 6 essences per corpse consumed, so it’s an amazing essence source for this build. Also, unlock the Fueled by Death (Rank 3) upgrade to deal 9% more damage after consuming a corpse.
• cadaver tendrils: Rank 5. Unlock Reinforced Corpse Vines to slow enemies by 50% before being attracted. Unlock Afflicted Corpse Vines to make enemies vulnerable for 3 seconds when hit by this skill.
• gearing: Rank 3. This increases the critical hit rate for all your bone skills based on the amount of essence you have. The following Compound Fracture and Evulsion upgrades are incredibly powerful, but note that they only work well if you have a high critical hit chance.
• Bonestorm: Rank 1. Make sure to unlock both Prime and Supreme Bone Storm upgrades to gain damage reduction and increased critical hit chance while Bone Storm is active.
• Ossified Essence: Rank 1. Your bone skills deal 1% additional damage for each essence point you have over 50.
• Book of the Dead – Iron Golem: Sacrifice the Iron Golem to gain a 30% increase in critical hit damage.
• Book of the Dead – Skirmisher Skeleton Warriors: Sacrifice the Skirmisher Skeletons for a 5% critical hit chance. Optional: Combine this with the Stand Alone (Rank 1) and Memento Mori (Rank 3) passive skills to increase this effect by 60%.
• Book of the Dead – Cold Mages: Sacrifice them to deal 15% more damage against vulnerable enemies.
• Nonliving Energy (optional): Your maximum essence will be increased. Your core abilities deal more damage at the cost of additional Essence.
• Necrotic Shell (optional): Boost a certain percentage of your base life when a corpse is formed by your skills or minions.

Most of the active skills in this Corpse Explosion Necromancer build should be fully upgraded. The upgraded Bone Shards, Bone Spear, and Corpse Vines abilities apply debuffs to our enemies, triggering the additional damage provided by the Scourging Corpse Explosion upgrade.

Remember the two things you definitely don’t want to be without: corpses and essence. Blood Mist and Carved Flesh will help you with the first one, while Grim Harvest is an incredibly helpful way to instantly regain essence after each corpse explosion. If you’re having trouble recovering the essence, try the Inanimate Energy skill. If your necromancer is having trouble staying alive, you should also use the Necrotic Shell passive ability. Take points from Blood Mist or Serration if needed.

Finally, you might be wondering where the minions are. Since this Diablo 4 Necromancer build doesn’t use the skeleton, mage skeleton, or golem minions at all, it’s best to sacrifice them in exchange for a good combat bonus. However, if you’re still leveling up, using minions as a buffer between you and your opponents can be very helpful. If you feel you need that extra protection, don’t rush to get rid of it.

Diablo 4 Necromancer build – best stats and gear

Since it improves skill damage, we can’t have too much intelligence for this Diablo 4 Necromancer build. However, make sure you also have a decent amount of willpower, as this will help you regain the essence. We’ll keep our weapon advice simple: get the most damage possible (probably a two-handed weapon). As for the bonuses, look out for a critical hit boost and additional bonus damage, especially based on status effects. Any additional upgrades to your core abilities, corpse abilities, and bone abilities are very welcome. Finally, always think of precious stones. The main consideration for the necromancer here is to increase the damage profile of the class. As such, we recommend always using rubies in armor gem sockets to give the class as much max health as possible.

Necromancers build the best aspects

Here are the best Necromancer aspects in Diablo 4:

• Aspect of the Explosive Mist (Offensive): Using Blood Mist causes a corpse explosion. Whenever Blood Mist detonates a corpse, its cooldown is reduced.
• Aspect of the Serration (offensive): Bony Essence increases the critical hit damage of your bone skills based on your essence.
• Aspect of Agony (Utility): Critical hits with bone skills increase your essence regeneration.
• Aspect of grasping veins (usefulness): Increases the chance of a critical hit after casting corpse tendrils and deals additional critical hit damage to enemies hit by corpse tendrils.
• Aspect of Exposed Flesh (Resource): Adds a lucky strike effect with a 10% chance of generating a large amount of essence when you hit an enemy with a bone skill.

Like the suggested aspects shown above, the best Necromancer aspects for this build are typically those that improve critical rate, essence regeneration, and damage output. Avoid aspects with minion based buffs.

To achieve the truly overpowered version of this Diablo 4 Necromancer build, you need the Aspect of the Explosive Mist. Not only does it generate additional corpse explosions, but it also significantly increases its own cooldown when you do so. Remember the Ghastly Blood Mist upgrade? The explosion even results in free corpses, setting you up for a pretty heated corpse-blasting streak.

That covers Diablo 4’s best Necromancer build. If you’re looking for easy XP, check out the best dungeons to farm in Diablo 4. If you are looking for gold, find out how to get gold quickly in the Diablo 4 explainer guide. If you want to try a different class, we highly recommend checking out our best barbarian build in Diablo 4.

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Release date:

June 6, 2023