The Blight Necromancer Endgame Guide melds the overwhelming power of Darkness Damage Over Time (DoT), with crippling Crowd Control (CC)! Proving that Blight is the ultimate Darkness build for someone looking to absolutely bully the denizens of Hell!
Blight applies damage on hit and a powerful DoT Area of Effect (AoE) pool of oozing miasma. With the addition of the Void aspect, you can literally drag monsters anywhere you want to, giving you complete control over the battlefield.
This build is also great for early progression since it doesn't require any Unique items and many of its best Legendary Aspects are found in the Codex of Power. Finding stronger Aspects from random drops only pushes the build even further!
The overlapping DoT from every one of the skills on your bar, including Corpse Explosion and even Bone Storm with the addition of Ultimate Shadow, allows us to proc Lucky Hit Chance from a plethora of stats on your gear and in your Skill Tree.
This build guide assumes you have a Level 50 Character and finished the Campaign. Level up with our Blight 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 & Gameplay
- Blight is a damage-over-time ranged skill. It deals a sizeable chunk of initial Shadow Damage in addition to damage over time in an Area of Effect (AoE).
- Blighted Copse Explosion turns its explosion into an area of Shadow Damage over time. Stacking continuous DoTs helps to butter up monsters while your Essence replenishes.
- Corpse Tendrils Slows, Stuns, applies Vulnerable and pulls every monster (except Bosses) into a single space so that all of your AoE damage becomes more effective.
- Bone Storm grants 15% Damage Reduction and powerful interactions with Defensive Aspects.
- Decrepify Slows, reduces incoming damage, Stuns and reduces your Cooldowns via Lucky Hit mechanics.
- Blood Mist is your source of Unstoppable, as well as an amazing survivability tool since it grants Immune for its duration.
- Shadowblight procs an instantaneous damage source that can Critically Strike.
- Hewed Flesh gives you an avenue for generating enough Corpses to sate all of your Corpse consumption needs. Stacking a ton of Lucky Hit Chance Bonus makes this passive efficient enough to not stall out on optimal gear. This generates extra survivability from Necrotic Carapace, via Fortified status.
- Gloom and Terror help to add on damage, while Reaper's Pursuit speeds us up and Crippling Darkness helps to stagger bosses and CC enemies in a fight.
Necromancer Specialization - Book of the Dead
The Blight Necromancer doesn't have space on its Skill Bar for more abilities, so you choose to sacrifice all three Minion options for their valuable buffs. Prioritize Shadow Damage from Skeletal Warriors, Vulnerable Damage from Skeletal Mages and Attack Speed from Golem.
Learn more details and how to unlock this class specialization in our full Book of the Dead Guide.
Resource & Cooldown Management
Managing your Resources and Cooldowns is crucial to the success of the Blight Necromancer.
Resource Aspect of the Umbral
Each unique Crowd Control effect that you inflict upon enemies triggers this aspect and generates Essence. Corpse Tendrils, Decrepify and Crippling Darkness all apply CC when used or activated. You can layer these abilities as well.
- Corpse Tendrils initially Slows, then it Pulls and Stuns. That's 3 instances of CC on every target. BUT after the Pull, the Slow is removed from the target, so you're able to re-Slow with Decrepify for another free CC proc.
- The Pull from Void Aspect counts as a CC proc. With enough enemies in range, this fully replenishes the Essence cost of the Skill use.
Grim Harvest
Whenever you consume a corpse via Corpse Explosion you generate Essence with this passive. You get to recoup resources while applying DPS. It's a great two for one!
Abhorrent Decrepify
With your multiple sources of overlapping Damage Over Time (DoT) effects, Decrepify quickly lowers all active Cooldowns by one second and rewards aggressive gameplay.
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
We need to level up our 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.
Note that there are some Glyph position swaps and a few adjustments to surrounding Paragon nodes once they reach level 15. See the last two steps in the Paragon progression above for details. The setup displayed by default is the final version of the build.
Glyph Leveling Priorities
Level 15
- Darkness
- Control
- Scourge
- Sacrificial
- Abyssal
- Exploit
(Not used in the final board setup) - Amplify
Level 21
- Control
- Darkness
- Scourge
- Sacrificial
- Amplify
- Abyssal
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 Blight 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
Some of your Skill Tree choices depend on what Legendary Aspects and Unique items are available to you. These are listed in priority order:
- Unlock the following Aspects from Dungeons:
- Blighted - Akkan's Grasp (Hawezar)
- Damned - Uldur's Cave (Kehjistan)
- Umbral Champion's Demise (Dry Steppes)
- Disobedience - Halls of the Damned (Kehjistan)
- Ghostwalker - Broken Bulwark (Scosglen)
- Shared Misery - Oblivion (Hawezar)
- Hulking - Sepulcher of the Forsword (Kehjistan)
- Inner Calm - Raethwind Wilds (Scosglen)
- Find the following Legendary Aspects either as a random drop or by gambling with Obols:
- Void - Gamble Pants
- Shielding Storm - Gamble Pants
- Ultimate Shadow - Gamble Focus
- Hardened Bones - 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!- Lidless Wall adds a new way to drastically increase your Speedfarming potential! Grants increased survivability from Barrier Generation and Damage Reduction, and provides a significant boost to your Shadow Damage output.
- Greaves of the Empty Tomb offer a valuable option for stacking even more Lucky Hit Chance. They also offer a unique Damage Reduction stat that can't normally be found on boots.
- Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul brings back a powerful Malignant Heart power from Season 1. The auto-casting skills needed to be equipped on your Skill Bar to function. This automates a lot of the build's primary gameplay loop to increase efficiency and Essence management.
- If you're lucky enough to obtain the following Uber Uniques, they're useful for the build.
- Harlequin Crest increases all of your active Skill Ranks, including Blight, making it a very powerful option for damage output.
- Ring of Starless Skies in combination with Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul gives you infinite Essence. Replaces Exposed Flesh/Umbral.
- Doombringer is an incredible option for Tankiness and overall survivability that requires you to sacrifice damage output.
Learn more details and how to farm Legendary Aspects and Uniques in our General Farming Guide.
Progression Steps
Follow the build's gearing progression from level 50 to 100, including the changes that need to be made as you obtain Legendary Aspects and Uniques.
to 100
& The Pit
Once you have completed the leveling process to 50, only the Codex of Power Aspects are guaranteed. With this setup, the Blight Necromancer can farm the Legendary Aspects and Unique items you need for the next progression point.
Gear
- The Codex of Power has many damage multipliers available to fill out your imprinted gear, while focusing on Essence Management and Crowd Control leads to the best success in the early game.
- While Blighted is your largest damage multiplier in the endgame, early on, putting Damned on your Amulet gives a massive damage multiplier on demand. Simply Curse the target and enjoy your bonus damage.
- Replacing some of your damage multipliers with a lucky drop of Reanimation or Frenzied Dead can greatly increase your clear speed, since your minions are very strong at this point in progression.
Skills
- Since Corpse Explosion is still a primary damage source, fully invest 5 Skill Ranks to get the most bang for your buck.
- The points you normally invest in an Ultimate Skill and Blood Mist instead empower your Skeletal/Golem Masteries.
- If you find yourself without Essence, Corpses, or just taking too much damage, you can sacrifice your Golem and put Acolyte's Reap back on your Skillbar to regain a valuable Generator Skill. Replace Hulking with Might for more Damage Reduction.
In this setup, your Blight Necromancer has 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
- Progressing to this Gear and Skill setup still relies on Essence management Aspects, but regains all of the engame tools like Bone Storm and Blood Mist.
- Shielding Storm adds on much needed survivability and helps to proc Shadowblight at higher rates.
- Essence Cost Reduction and Essence Per Second should elminate the need for any other Essence generation tools, allowing you to Sacrifice your Minions and gain the full benefits of their damage multipliers.
Skills
- Regain the points invested in Skeletal/Golem Masteries to acquire Bone Storm, Blood Mist, Stand Alone and Memento Mori.
In this setup, the Blight Necromancer has access to all Unique items and Legendary Aspects. This allows you to pilot this build at its peak efficiency. Let's take a look at the changes you need to make to implement them. This setup is also used for Speed farming which is efficient in, Helltide zones, Tree of Whispers, regular Dungeons, and lower tier Nightmare Dungeons.
Gear
- Ebonpiercer Amulet helps to stack additional DoT onto targets, to quickly proc Blighted and get massive value out of Wither.
- Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul automates your Corpse Tendrils casts in combat. This also has the benefit of pulling in new enemies that have aggroed and maintaining CC on your current targets to maximize DPS.
- Cooldown Reduction and chance to spawn multiple Blight projectiles helps to overlap many DoT AoE fields for maximum coverage.
- Harlequin Crest requires you to moveVoid to your boots, or simply replaces Hardened Bones.
Skills
- Your Skills do not change from the "Leveling to 100" variant.
The Speedfarming setup for the Blight Necromancer assumes you're able to swap survivability for higher damage output, to increase the rate of farming lower difficulty content. Low tier Pit Runs for materials, Helltide for Boss summoning materials and all openworld content to name a few.
Gear
- Replace Royal Ruby with Royal Topaz in your armor for higher damage scaling from your Intelligence multiplier.
- Blood-soaked allows you to spread DoT while moving between packs while your automated Corpse Explosion cleans up for you.
Skills
- Invest the three Skill points into Reaper's Pursuit and Death's Approach.
The Bossing setup for the Blight Necromancer contains every change you should make to quickly farm the Uber Boss ladder as well as the Level 200 Tormented versions.
Gear
- Since you don't need additional Movement Speed to quickly farm the bosses, you're able to stack on two more damage multipliers.
- Concussive Strikes grants another Lucky Hit Chance based Crowd Control effect to quickly stagger bosses while also granting 20% bonus damage once the Boss staggers.
- Conceited directly multiplies your damage as opposed to Ultimate Shadow. Since you have a single target, you don't need this redundancy.
Hardcore Adjustments
Hardcore requires you to build into more defenses. Here are some tips to successful in this game mode:
- Focus more on your Chest & Pants while gearing up. Make sure to have only defensive stats on these two slots as they provide a ton of survivability.
- Always reach Armor and Resistance cap and prioritzie Maximum Life instead of damage nodes on your Paragon Boards.
- Take Blood Mist cooldown Reduction on more Tempers to always have the Skill available as an escape option.
- Use Golems - Blood Sacrifice for even more Maximum Life, if needed.
- Swap to a Shield with Juggernaut's to make space for more Intelligence and Maximum Life Affixes on your gear. Intelligence increases your Elemental Resistances up to the cap of 70%. Shields also have a unique Damage Reduction stat in the form of Block and can have the Damage Reduction affix roll.
Build Scaling & Stat Priorities
Learn about the important build scaling mechanics and stat weights.
- Damage Over Time: Stacking Damage Over Time bonuses seems like a no brainer on a build that does primarily DoT damage. This boosts the damage output from every Skill on your Bar other than Corpse Tendrils. The additional bonus is that Shadowblight procs actually scale with your DoT damage total. Allowing you to scale every damage source.
- Vulnerable: You get Vulnerable procs from Corpse Tendrils. While you don't prioritize Vulnerable Damage it's still powerful to benefit from the 20% multiplier, since it applies to DoT as well.
- Crowd Controls: Since all of your damage occurs in an area, pixel pulls and grouping of monsters becomes a direct damage scaler. This also allows you to benefit from every "Damage to CC'ed Enemies" affix in the game when Corpse Tendrils or Crippling Darkness procs.
- Attack Speed: Increased Attack Speed increases the rate you generate Essence, by reducing the animation length of your skills. It decreases the length of time before Tendrils is on the field and how quickly you can spam cast Blight. It's a high value stat.
- Don't Get Hit: Make use of your range advantage and hit enemies from afar. By stutter stepping on the edge of your range, you can avoid most projectiles that come your way.
- Armor: The armor cap of 9,230 reduces incoming Physical Damage. Always make sure to reach this cap even if it means sacrificng a bit of Damage or Maximum Life.
- Unstoppable: You only have one way to gain Unstoppable and that's from Blood Mist. Cooldown Reduction helps to "scale" this defensive mechanic by making it available more often.
- Damage Reduction: In addition to the typical suite of DR options, Darkness builds can also use Damage Reduction Shadow Damage Over Time Affected Enemies. This super long named Affix allows you to decide when and where you gain the DR buff, regardless of the enemy's position or your current Status.
- Resistances: Prioritize reaching the 70% cap in World Tier 4 at a minimum for most content. Use Max Resistance effects from Elixirs and gear to reach 85% when farming certain bosses and endgame content.
- Maximum Life: Life has become more important than ever with the reduction in options for Damage Reduction. In the overall equation of "Effective Life", scaling Life itself is the easiest option to avoid one-shots.
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
- >50% Lucky Hit Chance
- >50% Chance to Make Enemies Vulnerable for 2 Seconds
- ~25% Chance for Blight Projectiles to Fire Twice
- Max +x Ranks to Corpse Explosion AND Blight
- > 300% Shadow Damage over Time
Defense and Utility
- >25,000 Maximum Life
- Armor Capped: 9,230
- Resistance Capped: 70%
- 100% Corpse Tendrils Size
- 100% Decrepify Size
- ~10 Essence per Second
- 100% Bonus Movement Speed
- Helm: Void
- Lucky Hit Chance ↑
- Cooldown Reduction ↑
- Maximum Life
- Intelligence ↑
- Essence per Second
- ⚒️Maximum Life
- ⚒️Decrepify/Corpse Tendrils Size
- Chest: Hardened Bones
- Maximum Life ↑
- +x to Corpse Explosion ↑
- Intelligence ↑
- Armor
- Essence per Second
- ⚒️Maximum Life
- ⚒️Decrepify/Corpse Tendrils Size
- Gloves: Blighted
- +x Ranks to Blight ↑
- Lucky Hit Chance ↑
- Intelligence ↑
- Attack Speed
- Maximum Life
- ⚒️Shadow Damage Over Time
- ⚒️Decrepify/Corpse Tendrils Size
- Pants: Shielding Storm
- Armor
- Maximum Life ↑
- Intelligence ↑
- Dodge Chance
- ⚒️Total Armor ↑
- ⚒️Lucky Hit: xx% Chance to Freeze for 2 Seconds
- Boots: Slaughter
- Movement Speed ↑
- +x to Corpse Skills ↑
- Essence Per Second ↑
- Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- ⚒ ️Movement Speed
- ⚒️Lucky Hit: xx% Chance to Immobilize for 2 Seconds
- Amulet: Ebonpiercer
- Temporary Use: Swap Blighted here and put Edgemaster’s on your Gloves
- +x to Gloom ↑
- Lucky Hit Chance
- Cooldown Reduction ↑
- Movement Speed
- ⚒️Resource Cost Reduction ↑
- ⚒️Shadow Damage Over Time
- Ring 1: Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul
- Temporary Use: Umbral
- Lucky Hit Chance ↑
- Intelligence ↑
- Lucky Hit: Up to a +xx% Chance to Make Enemies Vulnerable ↑
- Maximum Life
- Damage Over Timer
- ⚒️Ultimate Cooldown Reduction
- ⚒️Shadow Damage Over Time
- Ring 2: Ultimate Shadow
- Lucky Hit Chance ↑
- Intelligence ↑
- Lucky Hit: Up to a +xx% Chance to Make Enemies Vulnerable ↑
- Maximum Life
- Damage Over Timer
- ⚒️Ultimate Cooldown Reduction
- ⚒️Shadow Damage Over Time
- Main Hand: Black River
- Temporary Use: Damned (2-Handed Scythe)
- Resource Cost Reduction ↑
- Attack Speed ↑
- Maximum Life
- Damage Over Time
- Intelligence
- ⚒️+xx% Chance for Blight Projectiles to Cast Twice ↑
- ⚒️Shadow Damage Over Time
- Off Hand: Damned (Focus)
- Lucky Hit Chance ↑
- Cooldown Reduction ↑
- Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- ⚒️+xx% Chance for Blight Projectiles to Cast Twice ↑
- ⚒️Shadow Damage Over Time
Put in the following Gems into your gear:
- Helmet / Body Armor / Pants: Royal Ruby
- Weapon / Off-Hand: Royal Amethyst
- Jewelry: Royal Diamond OR Royal Skull (Which ever is needed to hit either Cap)
This build benefits the most from the following consumables:
- Elixirs: UPDATE TO SEASON 4 ELIXIRS
- Incenses: Song of the Mountain, Reddamine Buzz & Chorus of War
FAQ & Mechanics
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.
Abhorrent Decrepify
Corpse Explosion
Video Guide
Summary
The Blight Necromancer melds the worlds of AoE Damage over time, high Crowd Control and single target damage spikes. It's a DoT build that loves bullying enemies with constant CC.
- Blight deals a small amount of initial damage, and leaves behind an AoE DoT pool of miasma to melt your foes.
- As one of the few Necro builds that actually gains Movement Speed from their skills, the play style is fast and engaging.
- When all else fails, spamming Corpse Explosion eventually kills most things in the game.
- While the leveling build enjoys the addition of Minions, but sacrifice them later on to get the highest bonuses you can from your Skills.
- With enough Lucky Hit Chance and mob density, this build is effectively an Infinimist Necromancer. Don't be afraid to constantly stay in Mist form while your automatic Corpse Explosions tear apart the enemy!
- Practice makes perfect! Don't be afraid to run slightly easier content of Nightmare Dungeons to get the flow of the gameplay loop.
- In Bocca al Lupo!
Credits
Written by MacroBioBoi
Reviewed by Chronikz