Necromancer Class Overview

The Necromancer returns in Diablo 4 as the master of the Undead! They wield Shadow, Blood, Bone, Corpses and Curses as easily as ever before. With a horde of Skeletons, lead by your massive Golem, a single Necro fills the fields of Sanctuary with a terrifying crowd. This overview covers their Strengths & Weaknesses, Skills, Passives, Legendary Aspects, and much more.

Class Identity

The Necromancer is able to dish out tons of Single-Target and Area of Effect (AoE) damage. You have the ability to mix and match what minions you use to best maximize your build synergy OR sacrifice them all to be a one-Necro army! The multiple types of Crowd Control (CC) options, as well as great survivability and sustainability, gives the Necromancer unparalleled play-style freedom and versatility.

Strengths

• Versatile Damage: Necromancer Offensive Skills have a great mixture of AoE and Single-Target options. The versatility comes from many of the AoE sources of damage also work well against Single-Targets.
• Blood Orbs: This Necromancer specific resource gives us great options for replenishing Life, Essence and even triggering other Passives/Aspects for skill synergizing.
• Crowd-Control: The Necromancer can Slow, Stun, Pull, Chill, apply Vulnerable and literally imprison enemies in rings of Bone. Few other classes can accomplish all of this in the same build.
• Surprisingly Tanky: Don't let the emaciated body fool you. The Necro easily stacks Fortify and Barrier, all while replenishing Life and becoming completely Immune through Blood Mist. Throw some Skeletons or your Golem in the way of danger for even more survivability.
• Corpse Explosion: It's the best Skill the Diablo franchise has ever had. Once a single tiny demon body hits the floor, you cover the screen in blood and gore! This Skill NEVER stops being satisfying every time you clear the screen and the next one too!

Weaknesses

• Too Many "Core" Skills: While the options for Skills gives a lot of room for customization, most end-game Necro build wants to use Corpse Explosion, Corpse Tendrils, Decrepify and Blood Mist. While it seems silly to complain about having great Skills, this does limit the types of builds since you can only use 6 at a time.
• Squishy To Start: The Necromancer becomes very tanky during a fight. "Becomes" being the key word there. You need to collect Blood Orbs, generate Barrier and generate Corpses to max out your Fortify, which requires active combat.
• Complex Skill Rotation: You need to keep multiple timers and Skill cooldowns at the forefront of your mind to truly unlock the potential of Necro builds. The addition of Blood Orbs and needing to grab them where they drop adds even further complications to keep track of.
• Where are the Corpses?: Generating Corpses can be a lot harder than you might expect. For Bosses and other single-target objectives, your ability to generate Corpses to resurrect minions, and use Corpse Explosion/Corpse Tendrils can be a tough task to accomplish.
• Slow Late Game Scaling: The Necro absolutely SMASHES open-world content, PvP, and Early-game leveling, but they're also very gear dependent. You might hit a brick wall progression-wise until you find key gear pieces to give you the Utility and damage multipliers you need to push high tier Torment.

Equipment

Necromancers have the option of using a strong 2-Handed Weapon for bigger damage multipliers, or 1-Handed Weapon and a Focus for Cooldown Reduction and an additional Legendary Aspect, or swapping the Focus for a Shield for more survivability and Block Chance.

• Focus vs Shield: The Focus allows you to stack more Offensive Aspects, Damage and Cooldown Reduction. The Shield gives a unique Chance to Block which reduces incoming damage by a large percentage, use Defensive/Utility Aspects and stack Thorns damage.
• 2-Handed vs 1-Handed: Since the Necromancer is reliant on Legendary Aspects for our biggest damage multipliers, the 2-Handed Weapon gives the biggest bonus here as well as on its rolled affixes. That being said, 1-Handed Weapon combinations can give better Lucky Hit Chance, Skill Damage and the ability to select an additional Aspect to better empower a build with multiple powerful Aspects.

Skills & Passives

Skill points are unlocked by level-ups and the Renown system. As you spend more points, you unlock more categories of skills. Each active skill can be ranked up to 5 times (with bonus Ranks from items), increasing their damage or reducing their cooldown with each additional rank. After unlocking a skill, you can enhance it with another point and then choose one out of two modifiers to specialize it further.

There are Passive Skills found all over the tree, attached as optional choices to certain skill clusters. They grant small bonuses to damage, defense or utility under certain conditions and help to round out your build by shifting it further in the direction you want to take. All passives have 3 ranks and usually scale linearly.

Basic Skills

Hemorrhage

Enhanced Hemorrhage

Acolyte's Hemorrhage

Initiate's Hemorrhage

Notes:

Basic skills are used to generate Essence. and apply debuffs like Vulnerable. When you run out of resources, they are useful to finish off small enemies or to add extra damage against an Elite or Boss while you prepare one of your stronger Essence-spending attacks. They also bring important utility including the generation of Corpses.

Reap

Enhanced Reap

Initiate's Reap

Acolyte's Reap

Notes:

Basic skills are used to generate Essence. and apply debuffs like Vulnerable. When you run out of resources, they are useful to finish off small enemies or to add extra damage against an Elite or Boss while you prepare one of your stronger Essence-spending attacks. They also bring important utility including the generation of Corpses.

Decompose

Enhanced Decompose

Acolyte's Decompose

Initiate's Decompose

Notes:

Basic skills are used to generate Essence. and apply debuffs like Vulnerable. When you run out of resources, they are useful to finish off small enemies or to add extra damage against an Elite or Boss while you prepare one of your stronger Essence-spending attacks. They also bring important utility including the generation of Corpses.

Bone Splinters

Enhanced Bone Splinters

Acolyte's Bone Splinters

Initiate's Bone Splinters

Notes:

Basic skills are used to generate Essence. and apply debuffs like Vulnerable. When you run out of resources, they are useful to finish off small enemies or to add extra damage against an Elite or Boss while you prepare one of your stronger Essence-spending attacks. They also bring important utility including the generation of Corpses.

Core Skills

Corpse and Macabre Skills

Corruption Skills

Corpse and Macabre

Ultimate Skills

Key Passives

Unique Class Mechanic - The Book of the Dead

The Book of the Dead is a unique Necromancer Minions enhancement system. You can specialize your Skeletal Warriors, Mages, and Golem to fit the needs of your build. You can also choose to sacrifice your summons, stopping your ability to summon them, but gaining powerful thematic bonuses based on the options you choose. As your Necromancer reaches higher levels, you are able to summons more types of Minions to add to your horde! You gain access to the actual menu at Level 5!

Necromancer Class Quest: Unlock Your Golem

The Necromancer needs to complete a Class specific Quest to unlock the ability to summon their golem. See our guided walkthrough below:

Attributes

The four core attributes provide the following to the Necromancer:

• Strength: Armor (20%)
• Intelligence: Skill Damage (12.5% per 100), All Elemental Resistances (5% per 100)
• Willpower: Resource Generation (3% per 100), Healing Received (7.5% per 100), Overpower Damage (25% per 100)
• Dexterity: Critical Strike Chance (2% per 100), Dodge Chance (0.5% per 100)

Intelligence is considered the main attribute as it increases your damage directly. Dexterity and Willpower are also useful for their offensive and defensive bonuses, while Strength grants bonus Armor. Some items can roll bonuses to attributes and later on Paragon boards allow stacking the right stats for your character. In addition, you may find hidden Altars of Lilith in the open world that unlock a permanent bonus for all of your characters.

Necromancer Summary

• Necromancers have a wide range of abilities that let you build the spooky-undead champion of your dreams. Summon hordes of skeletons, explode corpses, and curse the armies of hell to... hell.
• Your Skeleton army as well as your Golem have 3 different variants with unique upgrades to tailor their abilities to your needs. Or just say forget them all and sacrifice them to empower your Necromancer further. The Book of the Dead gives you quick access to change your build on the fly.
• The Necro has a surprising amount of Crowd Control, AoE and damage-soak via your summons. This makes them a great addition for party-play in the open-world as well as in Dungeons.
• Your combination of healing, Blood Orbs, and stacking Fortify make for many defensive options to build around. Mix and match Offense and Defense to get the best fit for your play-style.
• When all else fails, cast Corpse Explosion until the enemies stop moving. Works every time!

Credits

Written by MacroBioBoi.