Blood Surge Necromancer Endgame Build Guide

Season 5 - Infernal Hordes

In Season 5, the Season Theme brings your hero back into the bowels of Hell, in the Infernal Hordes endgame activity. You're first introduced to Hellbreach Dungeons, miniature Horde-like micro-dungeons that teach you the new mechanics and rewards systems. As you slay more powerful Demons and Bosses, you're rewarded with the new Reputation progression that comes with amazing rewards. These include Crafting Materials, unlocking Season's Journey tiers and even the coveted Resplendent Spark, needed to craft a mythic unique.

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 5 guide for more information.

Skill Tree & Gameplay

Passives

• Rathma's Vigor gives you another source of Overpower procs when you are able to stay Healthy for 12 seconds. Picking up or consuming Blood Orbs decreases the time between guaranteed Overpower procs. Make sure to use your guaranteed Overpower procs on Blood Surge by keeping track of Rathma's Vigor's timer on your buff bar.
• Drain Vitality allows you to quickly stack Fortify to increase your Overpower Damage output as well as decrease incoming damage.

Book of the Dead

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 Blood Surge Necromancer has become extremely easy. Make sure you have enough +x Essence per Second on your gear to cover your Blood Surge costs. It is important to finetune your +x Essence per Second and your Resource Generation to smoothen the gameplay experience. Additionally Starlight helps with Essence Generation.

Decrepify is the most important ability when it comes to recovering all 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. The Paragon Board is optimized in the "Mythic Unique" variant.

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.

Glyph Leveling Priorities

Endgame Progression & Variants

When you start diving into the Endgame Blood Surge 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!

1. Unlock the following Aspects from Dungeons:
   • Grasping Veins in Corrupted Grotto (Kehjistan)
   • Blood-bathed in Hoarfrost Demise (Fractured Peaks)
   • Disobedience in Halls of the Damned (Kehjistan)
   • Sacrificial in Ruins of Eridu (Hawezar)
2. Find the following Legendary Aspects either as a random drop or by gambling with Obols:
   • Juggernaut's - Gamble Pants.
   • Hardened Bones - Gamble Pants.
   • Shielding Storm - Gamble Pants.
   • Slaughter - Gamble Boots.
3. Acquire the following Unique items either as a random drop or by farming specific Boss drops.
   • Blood Moon Breeches - Powerful pants with the highest total damage multiplier as well as decent survivability stats. Target farm Duriel or Andariel.
   • Cruor's Embrace - An absolute powerhouse of an item for the Blood Surge Necromancer. Provides additional Single Target damage whilst also buffing your overall damage and consuming corpses.
4. If you're lucky enough to obtain the following Mythic Uniques, they're useful for the build:
   • Tyrael's Might - 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.

Progression Setups

Hardcore Adjustments

Hardcore requires you to build into more defenses. Here are some tips to successfully navigate the Blood Surge Necromancer through potentially dangerous situations:

• See the gear changes in the "Hardcore" variant above.
• Swap Golems - Iron for Golems - Blood to maximize your tankiness if absolutely necessary.

Build Scaling & Stat Priorities

Learn about the important build scaling mechanics and stat weights.

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.

This build benefits the most from the following consumables:

• Elixirs: Elixir of Destruction, 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

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.

How Does Overpower Work?

• When Diablo 4 first released, Overpower was the most archaic system in the game. It basically didn't interact with the majority damage scaling systems.
• In Patch 1.2, OP was retooled to be a much more intuitive system, similar to Critical Strike and Vulnerable.
• Every attack has a natural 3% chance to Overpower.
• Overpowering checks the players current Life total and multiplies outgoing damage by up to 50%.
  • Example: If the player is at 50% of their total Life, they would get a 25% damage multiplier.
• You gain +1% additive Overpower damage for every 1% of your Base Life you have in Fortify.
  • If you have 150% of your Base Life in Fortify because you have more Maximum Life than your Base Life, you gain +300% Overpower Damage.
• You gain +1% additive Overpower damage for every 1% of your Base Life you have in Bonus Life.
  • Level 100 Necromancers have 7959 Base Life. If you have 20,000 Maximum Life, you have 12,041 Bonus Life above your Base Life.
  • These adds up to 150% Bonus Life in total, giving you +300% Overpower Damage.
• There are many sources in the game that say "You are guaranteed to Overpower on your next Skill use..." meaning that attack always Overpowers.

Blood Surge

• Blood Surge has two damage instances (more with Aspects and Unique items). The first damage instance "drains" all monsters on the screen, then the "surge" damage instance occurs in a small ring around the Necromancer.
• If you "drain" from an enemy at all, you heal for 3% of your Maximum Life with Enhanced Blood Surge. If there are at least four targets, the heal is increased to 6%.
• After five successful "surges" have hit a target, the sixth time you cast Blood Surge the Skill's damage Overpowers due to Paranormal Blood Surge. The sixth cast increases your total cast total to one instead of zero. So it only takes five additional casts after to Overpower, and thereafter.

Video Guide

Summary

The Blood Surge Necromancer is incredibly nuanced and rewards the player for learning as much as you can about Overpower mechanics and how to maximize your Overpower procs. With your huge Maximum Life pool, Fortify and healing, you can survive damage that other builds could never conceive of!

• Blood Surge can hit a target twice, as long as they're within range of the "drain" and the "surge". The "drain" hits the entire screen, while the "surge" only hits Close Enemies.
• Overpower has been drastically overhauled in Patch 1.2! It finally plays well with other damage scalers like Critical Strike and Vulnerable.
• Blood-bathed Aspect allows you to cheat out an extra "surge" for free. This Overpowers when the base Skill does.
• Reset your Bone Storm cooldown by spending resource on Blood Surge, dealing damage and fueling your defenses at the same time!
• Practice makes perfect! Don't be afraid to run slightly easier content of Nightmare Dungeons to get the flow of the gameplay loop.
• Happy blasting 🚀!

Credits

Maintained by Chronikz

Originally written by MacroBioBoi
Reviewed by MacroBioBoi