The Bone Spear Necromancer is the natural endgame build from our great leveling guide! Incredibly fast Attack Speed? Critical Strikes? Never ending Essence? Satisfying Lucky Hits on the whole screen? Yes! With this Bone Spear Necromancer build you will have all of this and more.
Of course, you continue the brand of Bone Spear by making (almost) everything on the screen Vulnerable. With the addition of Lucky Hit: CC on all Armor pieces you will be CC'ing the whole screen until everything falls over (or becomes Unstoppable).
If you are looking for a ranged build, becoming the God of Death while keeping constant maximum distance, stutter stepping outside of the enemy's range and never having to worry about Essence ever again, you have come to the right place!
This build guide assumes you have a Level 50 Character and finished the Campaign. Level up with our Bone Spear Necromancer Leveling Guide. If you are looking for a different Necromancer play style, check out all of our Necromancer Guides.
Season 4 - Loot Reborn
In Season 4, the Season Theme revolves around helping out the Iron Wolves. Compared to past themes, this one does not offer any borrowed power as the entire game has been redesigned with new itemization and crafting options, increasing player power substantially across the board. Instead, you can gather reputation similar to the Vampire Bounty Board from Season 2 to unlock rewards that supercharge your leveling journey to 100 with extra items, crafting materials and eventually even a Resplendent Spark to craft an uber unique.
We recommend to follow the seasonal questline until you unlock the reputation system, check which rewards suit you most and then follow your regular leveling path. To learn more, check out our full Season 4 guide for more information.
Skill Tree
Active Skills
- Bone Spear is your main damage and hits enemies with both the main hit and reflected shards. The secondary damage component can make positioning important when fighting elites or bosses.
- Decrepify coupled with your high Lucky Hit Chance is going to help you reduce all of your cooldowns at a fast pace and is going to provide additional safety through occasional Stuns.
- Blood Mist is your get out of jail free card. While you are Immune, reposition yourself to gain an advantage.
- Bone Storm provides Critical Strike Chance, Damage Reduction, and survivability with Shielding Storm.
- Corpse Tendrils Slows, Stuns, and pulls every monster (except Bosses) into a single space so that all of your AoE damage becomes more effective. It also triggers Grasping Veins, which is handy from time to time for extra damage. NOTE: In the Late Game and Uber Uniques Variant you are relying on unlocking your Corpse Tendrils by acquiring Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul or having +xx Ranks to Corpse Tendrils on your boots. This way you can save a Skill Point, since neither the additional Slow, nor the Vulnerable are beneficial since that is handled through Decrepify and Splintering.
- Corpse Explosion serves you as a support skill by activating your Flesh-eater damage multiplier.
Passives
- Ossified Essence and Serration scale your damage with maximum Essence.
- Compound Fracture, Evulsion, Imperfectly Balanced, Fueled by Death, Memento Mori offer big damage multipliers.
- Stand Alone offers much needed damage reduction.
Book of the Dead
The Bone Spear Necromancer does not rely on its minions at all and powers up by making use of the sacrifice bonuses. You can choose between sacrificing Skeletal Warriors - Skirmishers and Skeletal Warriors - Defenders depending on how your resistances look or how much Critical Strike Chance you already have from other sources. Don't forget that these bonuses are boosted by Memento Mori.
Learn more details and how to unlock this class specialization in our full Book of the Dead Guide.
Resource & Cooldown Management
One of the most important parts of your endgame journey is acquiring enough Essence to destroy your enemies. With the introduction of +x Essence per Second in Season 4 the Resource management on the Bone Spear Necromancer has become extremely easy. Make sure you have enough +x Essence per Second on your gear to cover your Bone Spear costs. It is important to finetune your +x Essence per Second and your Resource Cost Reduction to smoothen the gameplay experience.
Decrepify is the most important ability when it comes to recovering your cooldowns quickly outside of raw Cooldown Reduction on your gear. With every proc you reduce every currently active cooldown by 1 second which adds up to quite a lot more uses of all of your abilities, especially over the course of a long fight.
Paragon Board
Carefully check your Paragon Boards to ensure correct board rotation. Glyphs go from a radius of 3 to 4 when they reach level 15!
Level the Paragon Board by scrolling. Each step optimizes progression.
Glyphs
You need to level up your Glyphs to increase their power and activate their Additional Bonus with surrounding nodes. Glyphs have a radius of 3 by default, this increases to 4 at Glyph level 15. Complete Nightmare Dungeons to obtain Glyph experience.
Glyph Leveling Priorities
Level 15
- Corporeal
- Control
- Scourge
- NOTE: The three Glyphs above need to be leveled to 15 to be functional and are your priority while progressing in WT3 and WT4.
- Essence
- Sacrificial
- Exploit
- Amplify
Level 21
- Essence
- Control
- Exploit
- Scourge
- Amplify
- Corporeal
- Sacrificial
Also check out our dedicated in-depth guides to learn more about Paragon Boards and Glyphs.
Endgame Progression & Variants
When you start diving into the Endgame Bone Spear Necromancer build, you don't have all the tools available to achieve the final build versions. Let us guide you through different progression points to give you a smooth transition from our Leveling Guides to the final build version.
Progression Goals
Many of your Skill choices depend on what Legendary Aspects and Unique items are available to you. While we can guarantee that everyone has access to the same Codex of Power Aspects, the progression might be different for everyone!
- Unlock the following Aspects from Dungeons:
- Splintering in Guulrahn Slums (Dry Steppes)
- Grasping Veins in Corrupted Grotto (Kehjistan)
- Edgemaster’s in Oldstones (Scosglen)
- Requiem in Vault of the Forsaken (Scosglen)
- Disobedience in Halls of the Damned (Kehjistan)
- Find the following Legendary Aspects either as a random drop or by gambling with Obols:
- Concussive Strikes - Gamble Focus.
- Serration - Gamble Focus.
- Conceited - Gamble Focus.
- Juggernaut's - Gamble Pants.
- Hardened Bones - Gamble Pants.
- Shielding Storm - Gamble Pants.
- Slaughter - Gamble Boots.
- Acquire the following Unique items either as a random drop or by farming specific Boss drops.
- NOTE: You cannot gamble Unique items with obols!
- Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul: Automates your corpse consumption if you don't want to press Corpse Explosion. This has the negative side-effect that your Flesh-eater will highly likely not be active during your burst combo. Target farm Varshan.
- Tibault's Will: Useful for the Speedfarming variant. Target farm Andariel and Duriel.
- Lidless Wall: Skyrockets your Defenses in combination with Shielding Storm. Target farm Lord Zir.
- If you're lucky enough to obtain the following Uber Uniques, they're useful for the build:
- Harlequin Crest - Check the "Endgame & The Pit" variant for how to fit this item into the build.
- Ring of Starless Skies - Check the "Endgame & The Pit" variant for how to fit this item into the build.
Learn more details and how to farm Legendary Aspects and Uniques in our General Farming Guide.
Progression Setups
to 100
& The Pit
Once you have completed the leveling guide, only the Codex of Power Aspects are guaranteed. With this setup you can farm the Legendary Aspects and Unique items you need for the next progression point.
Gear
- Don't underestimate Movement Speed early on. As Bone Spear Necromancer you don't have access to movement skills, so putting this on boots and amulet is critical to your success.
- Focus on acquiring +x Essence per Second on your Helm, Chest and Boots slots to solve your Essence management. Supplement with Resource Cost Reduction on your Jewelry.
Skill Tree
- Iron Maiden provides a huge amount of Essence on demand, but only per hit uncursed enemy.
- Corpse Explosion provides Shadow Damage over Time, triggering Reaper's Pursuit.
- Raise Skeleton not only provides additional Essence generation through Skeletal Mages - Cold but also functions as your corpse consumption for Grim Harvest and Fueled by Death.
- Necrotic Carapace allows you to gain Fortify through generating Corpses with Hewed Flesh and by killing Monsters.
Book of the Dead
- Essence generation will be increased by incorporating Skeletal Mages - Cold. If you have enough Essence generation, sacrifice Skeletal Mages - Cold instead.
In this setup, you have access to all Legendary Aspects, allowing you to pilot a much stronger version of this build. Additional Legendary Aspects are used to fill slots that may be replaced with Unique items later on.
Gear
- While you keep increasing your +x Essence per Second on your gear you will now also have access to Tempering. You will increase your build's overall strength tremendously by getting accesss to more survivability, utility and damge.
- Juggernaut's will get you Armor capped at 9230.
- Hardened Bones and Shielding Stormdrastically reduce the amount of damage you take.
Skill Tree
- Change Iron Maiden to Decrepify since your Essence generation is handled through your gear now.
Book of the Dead
- You now have enough Essence generation, therefore you can now sacrifice Skeletal Mages - Cold.
In this setup, you have access to all Legendary Aspects and Unique items, unleashing the strongest version of the Bone Spear Necromancer. Be prepared to grind to access some of these highly sought after items!
Gear
- As you continue your character's journey you will now start to focus on acquiring the correct Greater Affixes and correct Masterworking crits on your gear.
- You will have quite a lot of Attack Speed and Resource Cost Reduction and Essence per Second to go with it. This will enable you to launch an absurd amount of Bone Spears.
- The effect roll on Lidless Wall does not matter since we are sacrificing all minions, increasing even the lowest roll by +75%.
- You need to synchronize Flesh-eater with your Grasping Veins for maximum destruction.
- Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul automates your corpse consumption if you don't want to press Corpse Explosion. This has the negative side-effect that your Flesh-eater will highly likely not be active during your burst combo.
The Bone Spear Necromancer will move at Movement Speed cap in the Speedfarming version and will incorporate Metamorphosis to cover a lot of distance fast in the easier content of the game.
Gear
- Tibault's Will allows you to generate Essence on command by Evading which also teleports you forward a short distance with Metamorphosis.
- Add Movement Speed to your Amulet instead of one of the passives and Attack Speed instead of Maximum Essence.
- Swap all Royal Ruby for Royal Topaz for the maximum amount of Intelligence possible.
Hardcore Adjustments
Hardcore requires you to build into more defenses. Here are some tips to successfully navigate the Bone Spear Necromancer through potentially dangerous situations:
- Swap Golems - Iron for Golems - Blood to maximize your tankiness if absolutely necessary.
Check out our dedicated in-depth guide to learn more survival tricks in Hardcore.
Build Scaling & Stat Priorities
Learn about the important build scaling mechanics and stat weights.
- Essence: This build relies heavily on fast Essence generation as well as Maximum Essence to scale. You should always be close to full Resource.
- Critical Strike Chance: Bone Skills in general have high Chance to Critically Strike and the Skill Tree empowers this further with Serration. Stacking xx% Critical Strike Damage allows for massive damage dumps when successful. Prioritizing 100% Chance to Critically Strike is priority number one.
- Offensive Aspect of Grasping Veins is important to trigger as much as possible allowing you to further push your Critical Strike Chance and Critical Strike Damage to the limits! Ideally always synchronize it with Flesh-eater.
- Vulnerable: You get Vulnerable procs via the Splintering Aspect. This way everything except the first target hit will be Vulnerable. In single-target encounters your Lucky Hit: Vulnerable on the ring will take care of that instead.
- Crowd Control: Everything on your screen should always be CC'ed. Either by Corpse Tendrils or the new Lucky Hit: CC Effects on your Armor slots.
- Don't Get Hit: Make use of your range advantage and hit enemies from afar whenever you are in dangerous situations. By stutter stepping on the edge of your range, you can avoid most projectiles that come your way.
- Armor: A great deal of defenses comes from your Armor. Disobedience and later Juggernaut's will help you reach the cap of 9230.
- Resistances: As an Intelligence main stat class, the Necromancer naturally accrues a lot of Elemental Resistances. Make sure to reach the 70% cap in World Tier 4, and use Maximum Resistance buffs against particularly deadly enemies and content.
- Unstoppable: You only have Blood Mist to gain Unstoppable. Cooldown Reduction helps making this defensive mechanic available more often.
- Fortify: Necrotic Carapace allows you to gain Fortify through generating Corpses with Hewed Flesh and by killing Monsters.
Our Damage Explained article explains how to scale your Offense.
Learn all you need to know to scale Defense with our Defense Explained Article.
Stat Priorities
To enable your build to perform optimally, you need to reach certain Stat "Breakpoints". Some examples are reaching 100% to Critically Strike, or 20 Resource per second. Since there are many values of these stats on different pieces of gear, read the checklist below and refer to the recommended Tempered Affixes and Masterwork Crits ↑. Desirable Greater Affixes will always be the top three recommended Affixes.
Damage Scaling
- 100% Critical Strike Chance during Grasping Veins
- > 60% additional Attack Speed
- > +2 Ranks to Bone Spear
Defense and Utility
- > 20,000 Maximum Life
- Armor Capped: 9,230
- Resistance Capped: 70%
- 100% Corpse Tendrils Size
- > 50% Resource Cost Reduction
- > 180 Maximum Essence
- > 20 Essence per Second
- > 70% additional Movement Speed
- Helm: Juggernaut's
- Essence per Second ↑
- Maximum Essence ↑
- Intelligence ↑
- Resistance to All Elements
- ⚒️ Maximum Life
- ⚒️ Corpse Tendrils Size
- Chest: Shielding Storm
- Maximum Life ↑
- Essence per Second
- Intelligence
- Resistance to All Elements
- ⚒️ Maximum Life
- ⚒️ Corpse Tendrils Size
- Gloves: Concussive Strikes
- Ranks to Bone Spear ↑
- Critical Strike Chance
- Attack Speed ↑
- Intelligence
- Critical Strike Damage
- Vulnerable Damage
- ⚒️ Bone Critical Strike Damage
- ⚒️ Lucky Hit: Freeze
- Pants: Hardened Bones
- Maximum Life ↑
- Intelligence ↑
- Resistance to All Elements ↑
- ⚒️ Maximum Life
- ⚒️ Lucky Hit: Stun
- Boots: Slaughter
- Movement Speed ↑
- Essence per Second ↑
- Intelligence ↑
- Maximum Life
- Resistance to All Elements
- ⚒️ Movement Speed
- ⚒️ Lucky Hit: Immobilize
- Weapon: Serration[/d4-affix (Wand)
- Attack Speed
- Maximum Life
- Intelligence
- Critical Strike Damage
- Vulnerable Damage
- ⚒️ Chance to cast [d4-skill id=432879 mods=01]Bone Spear[/d4-skill] Twice ↑
- ⚒️ Bone Critical Strike Damage
- Amulet: [d4-affix id=621929]Grasping Veins
- Evulsion ↑
- Compound Fracture ↑
- Maximum Resource ↑
- % Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- ⚒️ Movement Speed Reduction
- ⚒️ Bone Critical Strike Damage
- Ring 1: Conceited
- Critical Strike Chance
- Resource Cost Reduction
- Maximum Life
- Critical Strike Damage
- Vulnerable Damage
- ⚒️ Bone Critial Strike Damage
- ⚒️ Resource Cost Reduction ↑
- Ring 2: Splintering
- Critical Strike Chance
- Resource Cost Reduction
- Lucky Hit: Vulnerable
- Maximum Life
- Critical Strike Damage
- Vulnerable Damage
- ⚒️ Bone Critial Strike Damage
- ⚒️ Resource Cost Reduction ↑
- Offhand: Lidless Wall
- Otherwise Look For: Edgemaster's
- Maximum Resource ↑
- Intelligence
- Resource Cost Reduction
- ⚒️ Chance to cast Bone Spear Twice ↑
- ⚒️ Bone Critical Strike Damage
This build benefits the most from the following consumables:
- Elixirs: Elixir of Precision, Elixir of Fortitude
- Type I Incense: Sage's Whisper
- Type II Incense: Soothing Spices to cap Resistances, Reddamine Buzz
- Type III Incense: Chorus of War
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Once a guide is released, many players have questions on why and how you are approaching certain choices. In this section you can find the answers to the questions that have been asked the most.
I'm dealing very low boss / single-target damage, what do I do?
Why not put Grasping Veins on a Two-Handed Weapon?
How can I hit 100% Critical Strike Chance?
Abhorrent Decrepify
Splintering
Video Guide
Summary
- Bone Spear makes almost everything Vulnerable. You lean into this strength and trigger effects off it. Don't forget this while adjusting and swapping your build around!
- Don't forget movement speed on your boots and amulet! It's possibly one of Necromancer's most important stats on those gear slots.
- You need an Essence battery to make more Bone Spears. Exposed Flesh and Torment have a well rounded approach to Essence generation.
- Zoning enemies is important because you don't have ANY movement skills. Corpse Tendrils keep enemies locked up and stunned.
- Happy blasting 🚀!
Credits
Maintained by Chronikz
Originally written by Echohack
Reviewed by MacroBioBoi