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Spirit Wave Necromancer Endgame Build Guide

Season 6 - Season of HatredEndgame

Last Updated:October 11, 2024|Change Log|FAQ

Filling your screen with Blood and Bones is the trademark of the Spirit Wave Necromancer. This build is unique in that all of its damage is procced from a particular Unique item, and how your Skills empower it. While most Necromancer builds focus on a specific skill for the damage, all of the damage from this build comes from the Bone Spirit that are cast from Blood Artisan's Cuirass.

The scaling from this build has multiple sources. One of the most valuable sources of scaling for both Offense and Defense is Maximum HP. With the damage directly scaling from the % of Maximum HP you have. Similar to other Bone builds, this also scales off of Intelligence and Maximum Essence. With the Ossified Essence Key Passive and the innate scaling of Bone Spirit itself, Maximum Essence is a great scaler and gains additional essence from the Legendary Node Bone Graft.

One key note, this build requires very specific gear and will struggle without fully investing into the requirements. The below requirements are bare minimum to get the build online.

Build Requirements:

  • Fastblood is used to reduce the cooldown when you consume Blood Orb
  • Gore Quills for immediate consumption of Blood Orb with Blood Lance.
  • Blood Artisan's Cuirass.
Spirit Wave Necromancer
Note

This build guide assumes you have a Level 60 Character and unlocked Torment 1. To get there, level up with one of our Necromancer Leveling Guides. See how this Build compares against others with our various Build Tier Lists.

Season Theme

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Spirit Wave Necromancer

Season 6 is the Season of Hatred Rising. It features the Zakarum Remnants faction which hunts Realmwalkers, massive behemoths that roam outdoor zones and beckon Mephisto's hellspawn. Participate in these zone events and take down the Realmwalkers to spawn a portal to a Seething Realm. There you can acquire Seething Opals, new consumables that stack with Elixirs for a XP buff and the chance to gather extra rewards when defeating enemies. The types of Opals are:

  • Seething Opal of Equipment
  • Seething Opal of Gold
  • Seething Opal of Materials
  • Seething Opal of Torment
  • Seething Opal of Socketables

Use these Opals at all times to earn reputation with the Zakarum Remnants faction and unlock further rewards.

Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.

Skills & Gameplay

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Spirit Wave Necromancer
  • Blood Lance is utilized to easily consume Blood Orb to enable the Bone Spirit to be cast from Blood Artisan's Cuirass. The upgrade also allows for additional Attack Speed.
  • To enable the build, Blood Wave spawns six Blood Orb per cast. The Enhanced also gives a decent amount of Damage Reduction.
  • Corpse Tendrils Slows, Stuns, makes Blood Orbs and pulls every monster (except Bosses) into a single space so that all of your AoE damage becomes more effective. This also adds to the Stagger of Bosses.
  • While Blight is a Core Skill and has its own unique build, this build utilizes Blight as utility granting a 20%X multiplier to enemies within the Pool.
  • Decrepify Slows, reduces incoming damage, Stuns and reduces your Cooldowns via Lucky Hit mechanics. Paired with the new Frailty board and Amplify Damage, grant a respectable damage increase.
  • Blood Mist is your source of Unstoppable, as well as an amazing survivability tool since it grants Immune for its duration.
Spirit Wave Necromancer Endgame Skill Tree

Skill Rotation

  • Cast Decrepify at range to drastically reduce your target's movement speed and damage output. This also maximizes the procs of Cooldown Reduction per monster pack, to manage your longer Cooldowns. With a 10 second duration, be mindful of when this falls off so that you can re-apply the Curse.1
  • Start your onslaught with Blood Wave. This will not only begin to spawn Blood Orb, it will begin to spawn Corpses, and apply Vulnerable.
  • Once the first corpse has spawned, cast Corpse Tendrils to gather the mobs together and spawn more Blood Orb. This also slows and stuns the mobs.
  • When the mobs are gathered up or you are fighting a Boss, cast Blight to apply the pool which activates your x20% multiplier. You will want to cast this somewhat frequently as it has a six second duration.
  • At this point, you are ready to fill your screen with blood and bones! Casting Blood Lance will begin to consume all of the Blood Orb on your screen unleashing unholy amounts of Bone Spirit while weaving in Blood Wave on every cooldown.
  • Primarily used for defensive purposes, Blood Mist, grants Unstoppable and you are Immune during its duration. This helps with in sticky situations or to quickly reposition yourself to a more effective combat position. Please note, you do not take any skill ranks in the Mythic version as Harlequin Crest grants the skill ranks to utilize this skill

Book of the Dead

With both Memento Mori and Sacrificial impacting your Book of the Dead selections, these become a massive increase in your overall damage output.

  • Skeletal Warriors - Skirmishers for Critical Strike Chance
  • Skeletal Mages - Cold for Vulnerable Damage
  • Golems - Iron for Critical Strike Damage
Book of the Dead

Learn more details and how to unlock this system in our full Book of the Dead Guide.

Paragon & Glyphs

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Spirit Wave Necromancer
!
Important

Carefully check your Paragon Boards to ensure correct board rotation. Glyphs go from a radius of 3 to 4 at level 15 and from 4 to 5 at level 46. Some of them cannot be activated before reaching these thresholds! Progress through The Pit to rank up your Glyphs.

Use the slider to see the progression steps. At around Paragon 200, leveling slows down significantly and all important Rare clusters, Legendary nodes and Glyph sockets should be unlocked. Afterwards, you can min/max your build with minor tweaks and by picking up additional smaller nodes.

Spirit Wave Necromancer Paragon and Glyphs
Tip

Some Glyph position swaps, board changes and other pathing adjustments may occur as you unlock your full potential. The setup displayed by default is the final version of the build before spending additional points that do not significantly impact your character's power.

Glyph Leveling Priorities

To Level 15

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

To Level 46

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

There are a total of 328 Paragon Points. After reaching level 60, you gain up to 300 Paragon Levels, 24 from Renown and 4 from Altars of Lilith. Check out our dedicated in-depth guides to learn more about Paragon Boards and Glyphs.

Runes

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Spirit Wave Necromancer

You can have up to two Runewords in your setup, each consisting of one Ritual and one Invocation Rune. Socket them in Two-Handed Weapons if your build calls for them, otherwise place them into your Armor pieces to replace normal gems. The Spirit Wave Necromancer focuses on the following combos:

Best in Slot

  • Zan + Ohm - With the ridiculous amount of casts of Blood Wave we manage with this build, we have a permanent uptime on War Cry for a 15% damage multiplier.
  • Lith + Xal - This build requires a massive amount of spamming to efficiently maintain a high damage output. There are substantial periods of time in which you are stationary so this combo provides a 20% increase in Maximum Life with a very high uptime allowing for both more survivability and more damage from the damage scaling of Blood Artisan's Cuirass.

Alternative choices

If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top runes, you can also benefit from these options:

  • Mot is a good defensive alternative to gain extra damage reduction.
  • Kry will help with crowd control by pulling mobs into closer range as your Blood Wave continues to knock back the mobs.
  • Yom has a huge benefit for staggering Bosses.

Learn more about Runes and how they work in our dedicated Runewords Overview and Runewords Tier List.

Mercenaries

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Spirit Wave Necromancer

Mercenaries are unlocked during the Vessel of Hatred campaign and assist you in battle. There are 4 separate Mercenaries to choose from, each with their own skill trees and abilities. You can have one hired (permanent) mercenary during solo play and a reinforcement who assists you from time to time in certain situations.

Hired: Raheir

While Raheir is our Mercenary, you benefit from know that he will always "have your back." Not only does he come to your aid when you take more than 15% damage, he heals you frequently with his Ground Slam. He also puts his life on the line for you with Bastion redirecting 90% of the damage you would take to himself while also granting you a 25% damage multiplier from Inspiration during the effect.

Reinforcement: Varyana

We choose Ancient Harpoons for extra crowd controls which preferably happens exactly when we cast Blood Wave to mitigate the Knock Back from the skill.

Learn more about Mercenaries and how they work in our dedicated Mercenaries Overview.

Stat Priorities & Item Progression

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Spirit Wave Necromancer

To enable the Spirit Wave Necromancer to perform optimally, hunt for these stats on your gear with good rolls and aim to Temper ⚒️ & Masterwork Crit ↑ them accordingly. Keep in mind that certain stats, such as Armor, Resistances, Extra Size Tempers, Attack Speed and more, have caps that may affect your priorities according to the items and Paragon points available at that moment.

Recommended Endgame Stat Thresholds

  • 100% Critical Strike Chance
  • 80% Attack Speed
  • Blood Artisan's Cuirass Unique Effect of 3 Blood Orb pickup. This is more impactful than a GA item with a 5 Blood Orb pickup
  • Armor Capped 1,000
  • Resistance Capped 70%
  • >10,000 + life
  • >50% Movement Speed
  • >50% Corpse Tendrils Size
  • 60% Cooldown Reduction

Item Progression Goals

Before you dive into the Endgame with the Spirit Wave Necromancer, take a look at this overview of the items used in the build. See below for further details about the different progression steps and variants. Some of your Skill Tree choices depend on what Legendary Aspects and Unique items are available to you. Keep in mind that while we can guarantee that everyone has access to the same Codex of Power Aspects, the exact progression is different for everyone.

Starter
Ancestral
Mythic
Starter Spirit Wave Necromancer Checklist
Ancestral Spirit Wave Necromancer Checklist
Mythic Spirit Wave Necromancer Checklist

Learn more details and how to farm Legendary Aspects and Uniques in our General Farming Guide.

Build Variants

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Spirit Wave Necromancer

This section is designed to guide your Spirit Wave Necromancer from a fresh level 60 into the very late endgame using the three variants Starter, Ancestral and Mythic. At the final step, you should be fully decked out with a great all-rounder build. From there, follow the other min/max variants if you want to optimize around certain activities such as Pit Pushing, Speedfarming and more.

Starter
Ancestral
Mythic
Speedfarming
Pit Pushing

Begin here if you just made it into Torment 1 or are coming from our Leveling Guide! Since only some Aspects can be guaranteed from Dungeon unlocks for the Codex of Power, focus on acquiring the additional aspects via gambling with Murmuring Obols.

Gear & Skills

Starter Spirit Wave Necromancer Gear
Starter Spirit Wave Necromancer Skills
  • Early on in your progression, focus on Armor & Resistances to survive. Each Torment difficulty adds a penalty of -250 Armor and -25% all Res and it's recommended to keep both capped (1000 Armor, 70+ Res) at all times. As you unlock higher power gear, masterworking levels and more Paragon points, you naturally scale your character into the higher difficulties and can start replacing some of these rolls with offensive or utility stats. Disobedience helps with this.
  • Early on in your progression you must make sure you have cooldown recovery everywhere you can get it to maintain the cooldown of your Blood Wave
  • While Cooldown Recovery is the highest priority, Critical Strike Chance is a very strong 1A in requirements for this build as all of the damage is based around Critical Strike Damage.
  • Always take Maximum Life where you can as this not only increases your damage, it will drastically improve your experience with survivability.
  • Reminder : you cannot switch to this build without Blood Artisan's Cuirass
  • The higher your Fastblood, the more efficient this build functions. It is not recommended to switch to this build if you have a roll lower than 2 seconds.

The goal here is to progress through the Torment difficulties as you unlock Ancestral Legendaries, Paragon points, Legendary Aspects, Temper mods and the most important Uniques to pilot this build. Some Legendary Aspects are used temporarily to fill slots that may be replaced with more Unique items later on.

Gear & Skills

Ancestral Spirit Wave Necromancer Gear
Ancestral Spirit Wave Necromancer Skills
  • As you upgrade your gear to Ancestrals with more masterworking levels and reach higher paragon, you can focus more and more on replacing Armor & Resistance rolls with better stats, but ensure to stay capped at 1000 Armor and 70%+ Resistances for the difficulty you're currently in.
  • As you begin to collect items with Greater Affixes, you will want to prioritize those in which enable the build. Primarily looking for Critical Strike Chance and Attack speed as those will be your biggest power spikes early on in your Ancestral Progression. If you are lucky enough to also get your big damage modifiers such as Ranks to Core Skills, these are a major plus.
  • Reminder that the unique affix on Blood Artisan's Cuirass is more important than a Greater Affix on this item.

This is the final version of the build's progression, including all regular Unique items, Mythic Uniques, Legendary Aspects, Temper mods and Masterworking, leaving you with a great all-rounder build for all content in the game. Additional variants use this as a baseline to optimize around certain activities.

Gear & Skills

Mythic Spirit Wave Necromancer Gear
Mythic Spirit Wave Necromancer Skills
  • Now that you have reached the level of farming Uber Bosses, your first priority is to find or craft Harlequin Crest. While Ring of Starless Skies helps you reach some of your required stat thresholds, Harlequin Crest is substantially more important for this build for it massive amount of Cooldown Recovery. It also provides Maximum Essence, which scales your damage, Maximum Life, which scales your damage, and more armor to open up more affix slots.
  • Ring of Starless Skies gives you a huge stat boost to help you achieve your stat caps of 100% Critical Strike chance and minimum 80% Attack Speed.
  • While Mythics can often fully transform a build, for Spirit Wave Necromancer they merely empower and augment the build's structure as it's designed. Each one helps to alleviate affix requirements on other gear pieces and allows you to add on more power. Remember to recheck your Attack Speed and Critical Strike Chance values so you're not wasting anything by being over caps.

The Speedfarming variant optimizes the build for easy activities like Helltides, Whispers, Nightmare Dungeons and lower Pit Tiers after you have finished the Mythic variant and reached a plateau in your progression.

Gear & Skills

Speedfarming Spirit Wave Necromancer Gear
Speedfarming Spirit Wave Necromancer Skills
  • For Speedfarming, Metamorphosis is a huge quality of life as you can quickly dash across the screen to reach your next encounter.
  • Runeword change to Bac+Qua gives you a 30% increase in Movement Speed. This can replace your Zan+Ohm

This setup optimizes the build to push the highest possible Tiers in The Pit after you have finished the Mythic variant and reached a plateau in your progression.

Gear & Skills

Pit Push Spirit Wave Necromancer Gear
Pit Push Spirit Wave Necromancer Skills
  • The only change from the Mythic Version for Pit Pushing is swapping in Doombringer. While this drops your Chance for Bone Spirit to deal Double Damage, you gain a substantial amount of survivability and only slight damage loss.

FAQ & Mechanics

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Spirit Wave Necromancer

Once a guide is released, many players have questions on why and how we are approaching certain choices. In this section you can find the answers to the questions that have been asked the most.

Why does my Blood Wave take so long to reset?

Why do we not scale Maximum Essence?

Why not use Doombringer?

Which adjustments should I make on Hardcore?

Mechanics

Lucky Hit Chance (LHC)

Attack Speed Caps

Stagger

Video Guide

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Spirit Wave Necromancer

Summary

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Spirit Wave Necromancer

The Spirit Wave Necromancer fills your entire screen with blood and bones. Dealing incredible amounts of AOE and Single Target damage. This build will take you to the highest levels of content and perform exceptionally well in both single and group play.

Credits

Season 6 - Season of Hatred
Spirit Wave Necromancer

Huge shoutout to Scriblet from Sanctuary Discord for the work he put into this build in Season 5

Written by Seroc

Reviewed by Macrobioboi

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