Introduction:
The Necromancer class in Diablo 4 has always been a fan favorite, and for good reason. With its dark and powerful magic, it can easily carry you through the game. In this guide, we will focus on the Blood Surge skill and show you how to build a powerful leveling build for the early game.
Build Overview
Our Necromancer leveling build revolves around the Blood Surge skill. By utilizing the early game strength of the Overpower mechanic, we can deal massive area-of-effect (AoE) damage. Additionally, we will make use of our minions, defensive skills like Blood Mist, and healing abilities to stay alive.
Skills and Passives Breakdown
In this section, we will discuss the important skills and passives that make our build effective.
Important Skills
- Reap: While Reap might seem like an odd choice, it provides utility by generating corpses and dealing AoE damage. We recommend upgrading it to Acolyte’s Reap for guaranteed corpse generation.
- Blood Surge: This skill is our primary source of damage. It deals fantastic damage and doesn’t require any additional aspects to be effective. Upgrade it to Paranormal Blood Surge for guaranteed Overpower triggers.
- Blood Mist: Blood Mist is our premier defensive skill, providing damage immunity and minor healing. With frequent Overpower triggers from Blood Surge, its cooldown will be reduced, allowing us to use it often.
- Iron Maiden: Iron Maiden generates essence and offers a free curse. While it doesn’t provide much early on, it becomes more valuable later when combined with the Amplify Damage passive.
- Corpse Tendrils: Corpse Tendrils offers utility by grouping enemies and providing stat bonuses. Its short cooldown makes it versatile and allows for lower investment.
- Army of the Dead: Army of the Dead deals solid damage and boosts our minions. It also leaves behind corpses for Corpse Tendrils and additional summoning or healing of minions.
Important Passives
- Rathma’s Vigor: This key passive grants a guaranteed Overpower every 12 seconds if we stay healthy. It also increases our life, resulting in slightly higher Overpower damage.
- Imperfectly Balanced: While increasing the cost of Blood Surge, this passive provides a significant damage increase. It’s a multiplicative damage bonus that is worth the minor essence cost increase.
- Death’s Embrace: Death’s Embrace enhances both our damage and defenses against close enemies. Since our playstyle revolves around Blood Surge, it synergizes well with the build.
- Amplify Damage: Amplify Damage is a multiplicative damage bonus against cursed enemies. Since we already use Iron Maiden as an essence generator, this passive provides additional damage.
- Coalesced Blood: Coalesced Blood synergizes with Rathma’s Vigor and rewards us for staying healthy. It provides a significant multiplicative damage bonus, although Gruesome Mending won’t be effective if we remain healthy.
- Tides of Blood: Tides of Blood further increases our damage while healthy, specifically for Overpower. Since our build focuses on Overpower damage, this passive is a great choice.
Leveling Order: Where to Assign your Skill Points
To start our leveling process, we will acquire Reap and Enhanced Reap. These skills will allow us to generate corpses and deal AoE damage. We will then proceed to unlock Blood Surge and upgrade it to Paranormal Blood Surge. Afterward, we will return to Reap and upgrade it to Acolyte’s Reap.
Next, we will acquire Blood Mist from the Corpse and Macabre Skills section and upgrade it to Dreadful Blood Mist. We will also add two points to Blood Surge, taking it to level 3. From the Curse Skills section, we will obtain Iron Maiden and Enhanced Iron Maiden. Additionally, we will level Death’s Embrace to level 3.
Afterward, we will unlock Corpse Tendrils and upgrade it to Plagued Corpse Tendrils. We will then return to the Core Skills section and allocate a point in Unliving Energy before leveling Imperfectly Balanced to level 3.
Once we have access to our Ultimate Skills, we will acquire Army of the Dead and upgrade it to Supreme Army of the Dead. With all skills unlocked, we can now focus on obtaining passives. We will grab Gruesome Mending, Coalesced Blood, and Amplify Damage, leveling them to level 3.
Finally, we will acquire Rathma’s Vigor as our key passive and allocate the remaining two skill points to reach level 3 of Tides of Blood. This progression summary will leave us at around level 40, close to completing the campaign.
Aspects and Uniques
To further enhance our build, we can acquire specific aspects and unique items. Dungeon aspects like Blood-bathed Aspect, Aspect of the Protector, Edgemaster’s Aspect, Aspect of Grasping Veins, and Unyielding Commander’s Aspect provide additional damage, defense, or utility.
Other aspects like Aspect of Rathma’s Chosen, Accelerating Aspect, Aspect of Untimely Death, Starlight Aspect, and Aspect of Frenzied Dead offer various bonuses that synergize well with our build.
For unique items, Deathspeaker’s Pendant is a must-have. It provides a unique effect that casts mini Blood Surge nova around our minions, significantly boosting our damage. Mother’s Embrace is another valuable unique ring that rewards us for hitting multiple targets and provides important stats like Crit Chance, Crit Damage, and Overpower Damage. Additionally, Temerity offers sustain and a defensive layer through barriers.
Conclusion
With this powerful leveling build, you can annihilate enemies and progress through Diablo 4 as a Necromancer with ease. Remember to adjust your skills and passives based on your playstyle and the aspects and unique items you acquire. Good luck on your journey into the dark and dangerous world of Diablo 4!
