Best Diablo 4 Necromancer builds

Looking for the best Diablo 4 Necromancer builds? The Necromancer is one of Diablo 4 most unique classes, and a franchise fan-favourite that once again delivers fun ways to explode corpses and control lots of skeletal minions. If controlling the dead and detonating corpses for massive damage sounds like your kind of thing, then you're in the right place!

In this guide, we'll break down the best Diablo 4 Necromancer builds, covering the powerful Corpse Explosion, Bone, and Blood Necromancer builds. We'll provide a full list of active skills that you'll need for each build, along with all Book of the Dead choices that you should make.

Diablo 4 Corpse Explosion build

Our Corpse Explosion Necromancer build is a wonderfully simple build that allows you to spam - surprise - the Corpse Explosion skill to destroy packs of enemies with ease. Your Skeletal Minions will be on the frontlines, soaking enemy hits and dealing some light damage, while you focus on managing corpses to either blow up baddies or raise new Skeletons as they get killed in battle.

Below, you'll find the most important skills for the Diablo 4 Corpse Explosion Necromancer build:

• Decompose (Enhanced/Acolyte's)
• Blight (Enhanced/Paranormal)
• Corpse Explosion (Enhanced/Blighted)
• Corpse Tendrils (Enhanced/Plagued)
• Army of the Dead (Prime/Supreme)
• Raise Skeletons (Book of the Dead)
• Skeletal Warriors (Reaper - Upgrade 2)
• Skeletal Mages (Shadow - Upgrade 2)
• Golem (Bone - Sacrifice)

The Necromancer's unique Book of the Dead mechanic allows you to select from various minion options, and for this build we've opted to only use the Skeletal Warriors and Mages. We use the second Reaper upgrade for Warriors, which gives them a 15% chance to generate corpses on attacking, and the second Shadow Mage upgrade, which lets them fire a second Shadow bolt every 5th attack.

For the Golem, we've opted to sacrifice the Bone Golem variant. This raises your attack speed by 10%, so that you can detonate packs of enemies even further!

Diablo 4 Bone Necromancer build

Our Bone Necromancer build is a more single-target focused playstyle, and a personal favourite. It still uses Corpse Tendrils and Corpse Explosion to deal with those bigger packs or for a damage option that doesn't rely on Spirit, but it mainly uses Bone Spear to sling huge damage at Vulnerable enemies from a distance.

This build also priorities Critical Strike Chance and Critical Strike damage to get even bigger damage boosts, which pair with Vulnerable damage to destroy Elites and Bosses without breaking a sweat.

Below, you'll find the most important skills for the Diablo 4 Bone Necromancer build:

• Bone Splinters (Enhanced/Acolyte's)
• Bone Spear (Enhanced/Paranormal)
• Corpse Explosion (Enhanced/Plagued)
• Bone Spirit (Enhanced/Ghastly)
• Corpse Tendrils (Enhanced/Plagued)
• Bone Storm (Prime/Supreme)
• Skeletal Warriors (Skirmishers - Sacrifice)
• Skeletal Mages (Cold - Sacrifice)
• Golem (Iron - Sacrifice)

For the Book of the Dead, we've opted to use no Minions and claim a range of Sacrifice bonuses instead.

For Warriors, we've opted to Sacrifice Skirmishers to get 5% increased Critical Strike Chance. For Mages, we've Sacrificed Cold Mages to gain 15% extra Vulnerable damage, which is a huge boost to one of Diablo 4's best damage multipliers! Finally, we've opted to Sacrifice the Iron Golem, which gives a massive 30% bonus to Critical Strike damage.

Diablo 4 Blood Necromancer build

Our Diablo 4 Blood Necromancer build is a nice balance between the two previous builds, offering strong single-target and AoE damage. Regardless of whether you're clearing Nightmare Dungeons across the Diablo 4 map, fighting through Helltides, or still blitzing through the campaign, this Blood Necromancer build will deal massive damage and keep you alive.

It's also the tankiest Necromancer build, with various ways to Fortify for extra life and then deal huge Overpower damage based on your total amount Fortified.

Below, you'll find the most important skills for the Diablo 4 Blood Necromancer build:

• Hemorrhage (Enhanced/Initiate's)
• Blood Lance (Enhanced/Supernatural)
• Blood Mist (Enhanced/Dreadful)
• Blood Surge (Enhanced/Paranormal)
• Corpse Tendrils (Enhanced/Plagued)
• Raise Skeletons (Book of the Dead)
• Skeletal Warriors (Reapers - Upgrade 2)
• Skeletal Mages (Cold - Upgrade 1)
• Golem (Blood - Sacrifice)

With this build, we are using Skeletal Warriors and Mages for some extra defense, as they can soak up hits and easily be regenerated by consuming corpses.

For Warriors, we'd recommend the second Reapers option, which grants them a 15% chance to generate a corpse when attacking an enemy. For Mages, we use the first Cold option to get extra Essence whenever your Cold Mages damage enemies.

Finally, we'v'e opted to sacrifice the Blood Golem to get 10% extra maximum Life, further increasing your tankiness and ensuring that you can survive even the most powerful attacks dealt out by demons throughout Diablo 4.

That wraps up our guide on the best Diablo 4 Necromancer builds. For other playstyles, check out our Diablo 4 Barbarian builds, Druid builds, Sorcerer builds, and Rogue builds.

Activision Blizzard are currently the subject of a number of legal actions, labour disputes and allegations of workplace harassment. Rock Paper Shotgun will continue to write about these issues, as well as covering Activision Blizzard games as part of our commitment to cover subjects of interest to our readers. The latest news can always be found under our Activision Blizzard tag.