Best Necromancer builds in Diablo 4 season 6

Necromancers are the summoners of Diablo 4, but that’s not their entire identity. Like much of Diablo 4, Necromancers are far more complex than you’d initially imagine. So when you can summon minions to do your bidding or sacrifice them for major stat bonuses, how do you know what to do? That’s where we come in, with our suggestions of the best Necromancer builds for Diablo 4 season 6.

Necromancers are able to summon Skeletons and Golems. But they’re also able to cast Sorcerer-like spells dealing in the creepier sides of magic. They can sling bones and drain blood from foes. They can even project poison blight on the ground. And, yes, they can sacrifice minions for incredible bonuses with the Book of the Dead. Not to your taste? We also have builds for the Sorcerer, Rogue, Druid, Spiritborn, and Barbarian classes.

In this Diablo 4 guide, we’ve gathered and simplified the best Diablo 4 Necromancer builds for season 6. If you need even more information on item affixes or other more complex ideas, we’ve been sure to link out to the more detailed versions of these builds, as well as where to find their original creators.

Best Necromancer build for leveling in Diablo 4 season 6

A Necromancer standing in front of three bloody skeletons in Diablo 4 concept art

Image: Blizzard Entertainment

This build is based off Chronikz’s Necromancer leveling guide at maxroll.gg, and is purely for leveling (i.e., allocating your 71 skill points between levels 1 and 60) and early stages of the Torment I difficulty. If you want more detailed information about the item affixes you want to look for on your gear, or which other Legendary powers are great for your build, check out the original maxroll.gg guide.

Best skills for leveling

This Necromancer leveling guides focuses Blood Surge. In this build, you’ll also use Raise Skeleton, Soulrift, Blood Mist, Corpse Tendrils, and Iron Maiden.

Here are the best skills for a Necromancer leveling build, organized by the exact order you should purchase them in — bearing in mind that some skills require you to allocate a number of skill points in the tree in order to unlock them. As such, you’ll need to unlock new skills before enhancing existing ones.

  1. Reap / Enhanced Reap
  2. Blood Surge (rank 1-4)
  3. Blood Mist
  4. Blood Surge (rank 5) / Enhanced Blood Surge / Paranormal Blood Surge
  5. Grim Harvest
  6. Iron Maiden / Enhanced Iron Maiden
  7. Skeletal Warrior Mastery (rank 1-3)
  8. Corpse Tendrils / Enhanced Corpse Tendrils / Plagued Corpse Tendrils
  9. Fueled By Death (rank 1-3)
  10. Amplify Damage
  11. Soulrift (rank 1-5) / Supreme Soulrift / Prime Soulrift
  12. Inspiring Leader (rank 1-3)
  13. Affliction
  14. Imperfectly Balanced (rank 1-3)
  15. Hewed Flesh (rank 1-2)
  16. Subtract 1 rank from Skeletal Warrior Mastery
  17. Titan’s Fall (rank 1-3)
  18. Death’s Embrace (rank 1-3)
  19. Amplify Damage (rank 2-3)
  20. Precision Decay (rank 1-3)
  21. Skeletal Mage Mastery (rank 1-3)
  22. Coalesced Blood (rank 1-3)
  23. Drain Vitality (rank 1-2)
  24. Transfusion (rank 1-2)
  25. Tides of Blood (rank 1-3)
  26. Necrotic Carapace (rank 1-3)
  27. Memento Mori (rank 1-3)
  28. Stand Alone (rank 1-3)

Best Book of the Dead setup for leveling

Here are the minions you should use for this build:

  • Skeletal Warriors – Skirmishers
  • Skeletal Mages – Cold
  • Golem – Bone (Sacrifice)

Best Legendary Aspect for Necromancer leveling build

When you first start your new character, complete these five dungeons first in order to collect their Aspects. Then place them on a piece of gear (ideally jewelry and never weapons). The random drop Aspects are all nice to add to your Codex and your gear if you’re lucky enough to find them on your leveling journey.

  • Blood-Bathed (Hoarfrost Demise, Fractured Peaks)
  • Voracious Rage (Hallowed Ossuary, Fractured Peaks)
  • Grasping Veins (Corrupted Grotto, Kehjistan)
  • Disobedience (Halls of the Damned, Kehjistan)

Best Necromancer build for endgame season 6

This build is based off of Seroc Ifkre’s Spirit Wave Necromancer endgame guide at MaxRoll.gg, and is a general endgame guide capable of finding success in all activities. This guide assumes that you’re over level 60, have access to all 71 skill points, and are making progress on your Paragon Boards. If you want more detailed information about the item affixes you want to look for on your gear, or why these Legendary powers are great for your build, check out the original MaxRoll guide.

Best skill points for Spirit Wave build for endgame

This build utilizes Blood Wave as its core skill. It also uses Blight, Blood Lance, Corpse Tendrils, Corpse Explosion, and Blood Mist.

Since you need all 71 points for this build, the order you select these skills in doesn’t matter as long as you have the pre-requisite points in the earlier skill tree tiers. Here is how you should spend your skill points for this build:

  • Hemorrhage (rank 1-2)
  • Blood Lance / Enhanced Blood Lance / Paranormal Blood Lance
  • Blight / Enhanced Blight / Supernatural Blight
  • Imperfectly Balanced (rank 1-3)
  • Hewed Flesh (rank 1-3)
  • Blood Mist
  • Corpse Explosion
  • Necrotic Fortitude (rank 1-2)
  • Titan’s Fall (rank 1-3)
  • Fueled by Death (rank 1-3)
  • Decrepify / Enhanced Decrepify / Abhorrent Decrepify
  • Death’s Embrace (rank 1-3)
  • Amplify Damage (rank 1-3)
  • Corpse Tendrils / Enhanced Corpse Tendrils / Plagued Corpse Tendrils
  • Bone Spirit (rank 1-5) / Enhanced Bone Spirit / Ghastly Bone Spirit
  • Necrotic Carapace (rank 1-3)
  • Compound Fracture (rank 1-3)
  • Evulsion (rank 1-3)
  • Blood Wave (rank 1-5) / Prime Blood Wave / Supreme Blood Wave
  • Finality (rank 1-3)
  • Memento Mori (rank 1-3)
  • Stand Alone (rank 1-3)
  • Inspiring Leader (rank 1-2)
  • Ossified Essence

Necromancer Book of the Dead setup for Spirit Wave build

This is a full sacrifice build, so here’s how you need to setup your Book of the Dead:

  • Skeletal Warriors – Skirmishers (Sacrifice)
  • Skeletal Mages – Cold (Sacrifice)
  • Golems – Iron (Sacrifice)

Legendary Powers and Uniques for Spirit Wave build

To make this build work, you’re going to need powerful Legendary Powers and Unique items to augment your build.

Seroc Ifkre recommends these Aspects:

  • Helm: Harlequin Crest (Mythic) or Cursed Aura
  • Chest: Blood Artisan’s Cuirass (Unique)
  • Gloves: Tidal
  • Pants: Hardened Bones
  • Boots: Concussive Strikes
  • Sword: Serration
  • Shield: Gore Quills
  • Amulet: Great Feast
  • Ring 1: Fastblood (dungeon)
  • Ring 2: Ring of Starless Skies (Mythic) or Serration

If you want to get into the nitty gritty of stat priorities, refer to Seroc Ifkre’s original guide.

Paragon Boards for Necromancer Spirit Wave build

The Paragon Board system is very complex, and you’ll want to carefully pair your Glyphs with specific boards for your class:

  1. Starter Board / Sacrificial
  2. Bone Graft / Essence
  3. Blood Begets Blood / Exploit
  4. Frailty / Corporeal
  5. Flesh-eater / Amplify

You should level your Glyphs to 15 in this specific order:

  1. Essence
  2. Sacrificial
  3. Corporeal
  4. Exploit
  5. Amplify

You can path your own way through the Paragon Boards following these basic guidelines. However, for the best results, followSeroc Ifkre’s path exactly.

How to make a great Necromancer build

A necromancer stands at a campfire next to a text description of the necromancer class in Diablo 4.

Image: Blizzard/Activision via Polygon

Necromancer’s are Diablo 4’s main summoning class — although Druids, ironically, had better summons during the game’s launch window. But aside from their army of minions, Necromancers also act as a darker caster, sharing a lot of playstyle DNA with the Sorcerer.

Like all classes, most Necromancer builds boil down to a few Key Passives:

  • Bone
  • Blood/Health
  • Shadow
  • Minion

Bone skills — like Bone Spear — hit extremely hard for Necromancers, and are great for chunking down enemies. The Ossified Essence Key Passive modifies that damage even further for players that successfully pool their Essence. Blood builds utilize Blood skills to both keep the Necromancer healthy while dealing big damage. These builds typically end with the Rathma’s Vigor Key Passive.

Shadow builds use Shadow skills to poison enemies with dark essence. Interestingly, the Shadowblight Key Passive not only benefits the Necromancer, but also their minions, making it a more diverse build path. Minion builds are Necromancer’s main bread and butter, but are entirely dependent on how good minions are in the current meta. When they’re useful, these builds end with the Kalan’s Edict Key Passive.

Like all classes, Necromancer builds have other identities to them — like Thorns — but most will converge on one of the four identities highlighted above. What really determines build viability on Necromancer is how you use your minions and the Book of the Dead. If you want to make your own build, decide early on if you want to sacrifice your minions or use them in battle. This will not only determine which skills you’ll want to use, but which of the four Key Passives you want to angle toward.

Looking for other Diablo 4 builds? We have explainers on the Spiritborn, Sorcerer, Rogue, Druid, and Barbarian classes.