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Blood Surge Necromancer Leveling Build Guide

Season 8 - Belial's ReturnLeveling

Last Updated:April 29, 2025|Changelog

The Blood Surge Necromancer asks the real question: “Can you ever have too much AoE damage?” Spoiler: you can’t. This build takes full advantage of Essence and Corpses, turning every resource into devastating blasts of damage that leave the screen trembling.

And don’t forget about your squad of glowing skeletons. They’ll have your back for most of the leveling grind, tirelessly taking down enemies. But once you’ve got enough Essence sustain and raw damage, it’s time to sacrifice them—because those Corpses they leave behind can fuel even bigger explosions.

The satisfying part of this build's leveling experience is that it rarely depends on any Legendary Aspects! Making use of the Codex of Power is enough to get you to the end-game, but if you find some key Aspects during your journey, the potential for this build absolutely sky-rockets!

Starting as Blood Surge Necromancer also allows you to pivot easily and seamlessly into the multitude of other Necromancer builds, depending on the Aspects you acquire.

Blood Surge Necromancer Leveling Setup
Note

This build guide takes you up to level 60 and gets you started for the early Endgame on Torment 1 difficulty. If you're looking for Endgame guides, check out our Necromancer Guides section!

Pros
  • Massive AoE
  • Great CC Options
  • Dependable Undead Army
  • Multiple Resources For Damage
Cons
  • No Mobility Skills
  • Low Single Target Damage

Check out our Leveling Builds Tier List to see how this build compares to others.

Boss Powers

Season 8 - Belial's Return
Blood Surge Necromancer

Season 8 is the Season of Belial's Return. It allows you to tap into Boss Powers obtained from World, Event, and Lair Bosses throughout Sanctuary. The new seasonal mechanic, Apparition Incursions, is available at any difficulty level and gives you the opportunity to unlock a subset of these powers very early on. Various Apparition Monsters appear in these special timed events throughout Sanctuary. Defeating these monsters spawns 1 of 10 Apparition Bosses to hunt you down and defeating them grants you their Boss Power. After defeating the first Boss, continue the event for a chance to fight a second Apparition Boss, after which Belial himself joins the fray.

There are 24 Boss Powers available and the first time you defeat one of these Bosses, you claim their power for yourself. Boss Powers each have Main and Modifier effects to boost your build. 13 are available in all difficulties (from Apparition Incursions and World Bosses), while 11 can only be acquired in Torment 1 difficulty or higher from Lair Bosses and Lilith. You can equip 1 Main Power and 3 Modifiers, and all powers can be upgraded up to Rank 20, increasing the potency of both the Main and Modifier effect. You use Spectral Ash to upgrade these powers, dropped from Apparition Incursions and by defeating any Bosses. Boss Powers also scale with your Paragon Level, growing stronger as you progress.

Leveling Boss Powers

Main Power

Ashava's Poison Breath  - This deals significant damage during your early leveling as you apply damage over time to enemies using Corpse Explosion. This power is only obtainable from the world boss Ashava. Be aware when it spawns, as you definitely target farm and get it as early as possible.

Modifiers

Beastmaster's Training - As this build utilizes minions, this power improves their damage.
Hatred's Embrace's Haste - Accessing more crit chance early on is quite important to improve your damage while leveling.
Torusk's Rage - Provides attack speed to increase your DPS and makes the gameplay feel much smoother.

Blood Surge Necromancer Boss Powers

Alternate Boss Powers

Kirma's Sparks - As a main power, it can provide additional damage as you evade. This can be an early option until you unlock a stronger main boss power.
Allek's Talons - As a main boss power, this can add additional damage source to your basic attacks. Additionally it is also a good option as a modifier especially if you have some cooldown reduction on your gear, this can improve your movement speed.

Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.

Skills & Gameplay

Season 8 - Belial's Return
Blood Surge Necromancer

Generators

Only use Reap until you can sustain your Essence without it.

Grim Harvest also generates Essence every time you consume a Corpse with Raise Skeleton.

Raise Skeleton summons 3 Skeletal Mages - Cold which each restore 3 Essence with their primary attack.

Blood Surge

Whenever you hit an enemy with Blood Surge while being Healthy you gain one stack of Overwhelming Blood. At five Stacks of Overwhelming Blood your next Blood Surge Overpowers.

Corpse Explosion

Cast Blighted Corpse Explosion as you generate corpses to activate Ashava's Poison Breath . This significantly improves your overall damage during the leveling experience.

Blood Surge Necromancer Skills

Corpse Tendrils

Corpse Tendrils may be the best source of Crowd Control (CC) in Diablo 4. It Slows, Stuns, applies Vulnerable or generates Blood Orbs and pulls every monster (except Bosses) into a single space so that all of your AoE damage becomes infinitely more effective. With a few of your modifiers and Passives, these statuses become great sources of damage scaling as well. NOTE: Corpse Tendrils does not consume Corpses.

Key Passive

Kalan's Edict helps your minions to have more attack speed, and more damage overall which they do carry your damage quite a lot during the leveling journey.

Final Journey to Level 60

At this point, most of the key synergies are unlocked and the gameplay loop is almost complete. As you level up, you unlock a lot of extra points that go into various offensive and defensive passives or max out certain skills. Check out the skills progression above to see where to put your points as you go, but feel free to deviate from the order displayed as necessary.

Check out our Renown Guide to unlock all your additional Skill Points efficiently. 

Book of the Dead

The Blood Surge Necromancer utilizes the Essence generation of Skeletal Mages - Cold and Skeletal Warriors - Skirmishers, while sacrificing the Golems - Iron. Once you have achieved sufficient Essence sustain, sacrifice Skeletal Mages - Bone. During leveling you can choose to sacrifice Skeletal Warriors - Defenders if your Elemental Resistances become a problem.

Book of the Dead

Unlocking the Book of the Dead

You're able to summon Skeletons as early as level one, with the ability to customize your Skeletal Skirmishers starting at level 5, when the Book Menu unlocks. From there, you unlock more types of Skeletal Warriors, Skeletal Mages and eventually Golems as you gain levels. The Golem requires you to complete a Quest, which is detailed in this resource post. You must put the Raise Skeleton and Golem skills on your skill bar to summon them.

Learn more details and how to unlock this system in our full Necromancer Class Overview.

Gear & Stat Priorities

Season 8 - Belial's Return
Blood Surge Necromancer

To get started as an Blood Surge Necromancer, always use your highest DPS Weapon available for more damage. Otherwise, follow the priority list below. While you don't have all of the desired temper manuals available, simply try to get anything useful on your gear until you acquire the right ones. For example, % Damage and Vulnerable Damage, etc. all work as long as you activate their conditions. Likewise, you can temper multiple defensive options such as Resistances, Life, Armor to fill gaps in your survivability. Tempering low level gear is relatively cheap and the results can be very impactful.

Tip: For the early game, Elemental Surge Weapon Tempers are very powerful due to their high base damage, especially if you are twinking. If you find these, you may want to keep imprinting them on your weapons for an easy time.

1-60 Leveling
Starter T1

Read more about itemization in our Beginner Articles about Damage, Defense and Stats.

Legendaries & Uniques

Season 8 - Belial's Return
Blood Surge Necromancer

The Codex of Power is a collection of Legendary Aspects you can imprint onto Rare or Legendary items at the Occultist. They unlock after completing specific Dungeons located around Sanctuary or salvaging items with these powers. Check out our Map Tool to locate these Dungeons.

For leveling, there are a few powers that can significantly help us if we have the funds to imprint them. In addition, keep an eye out for powerful Unique items you may find for this or other builds.

Must-have Dungeon unlocks

  1. Blood-bathed in Hoarfrost Demise (Fractured Peaks)
  2. Voracious Rage in Hallowed Ossuary (Fractured Peaks)

Nice-to-have Dungeon unlocks

  1. Grasping Veins in Corrupted Grotto (Kehjistan)
  2. Disobedience in Halls of the Damned (Kehjistan)

Other useful Aspects (drop/gamble)

  1. Rathma’s Chosen
  2. Great Feast
  3. Cadaverous
  4. Hardened Bones
  5. Cursed Aura
  6. Metamorphosis

What to Gamble

Offensive1h Weapon, Offhand
DefensiveChest, Pants
Utility, MobilityBoots
ResourceRings

Great Uniques for this build

  1. Cruor's Embrace
  2. Blood Moon Breeches
  3. Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul

Jackpot Drops

As you level up, you may get lucky and find some great random drops. Some of these can massively amplify your power and speed up the leveling by switching to another build. Keep in mind that there are many more Aspects and Uniques that can be useful to multiple builds; this just lists some of the most impactful ones. While we usually recommend starting with Endgame Builds at level 60, you often can make them work earlier with these drops:

Build-defining Aspects

Build-defining Uniques

  1. Ring of Mendeln: Minion Necromancer
  2. Mutilator Plate: Blood Lance Necromancer
  3. Deathless Visage: Bone Spear Necromancer
  4. Kessime's Legacy: Blood Wave Necromancer

Learn more details in our articles covering the Codex of Power and Unique Items.

Runes

Season 8 - Belial's Return
Blood Surge Necromancer

You can have up to two Runewords in your setup, each consisting of one Ritual and one Invocation Rune. Socket them in Two-Handed Weapons if your build calls for them, otherwise place them into your Armor pieces to replace normal gems. The Blood Surge Necromancer focuses on the following combos:

Best in Slot

  • Cir + Gar: This Rune combination allows you to trigger effects by spamming "free" skills like Raise Skeleton, even without hitting a target. It’s particularly useful for maintaining buffs from Runes between combats. The Critical Strike Chance boost from Gar is especially valuable when your gear falls short of reaching 100% crit chance.
  • Cem + Lum: This pairing helps passively generate Essence in scenarios where resource generation would otherwise be limited. It reduces the time spent relying on Generators or alternative resource systems, improving overall efficiency.

Alternative choices

If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top runes, you can also benefit from these options:

  • Mot- For extra defense.
  • Zec - Good option early game when your Soulrift is not yet permanent.

Learn more about Runes and how they work in our dedicated Runewords Overview and Runewords Tier List.

Mercenaries

Season 8 - Belial's Return
Blood Surge Necromancer

Mercenaries are unlocked during the Vessel of Hatred campaign and assist you in battle. There are 4 separate Mercenaries to choose from, each with their own skill trees and abilities. You can have one hired (permanent) mercenary during solo play and a reinforcement who assists you from time to time in certain situations.

  • Hired: Varyana

Her Massacre is the strongest leveling ability out of all available Mercenaries and on top of that she even provides 25% Attack Speed.

  • Reinforcement: Raheir

You choose Bastion for more defense whenever you engage Elites or Bosses.

Blood Surge Necromancer Leveling Mercenaries

Learn more about Mercenaries and how they work in our dedicated Mercenaries Overview.

How To Level

Season 8 - Belial's Return
Blood Surge Necromancer

In Diablo 4, you can level by completing the Campaign, collecting Grim Favors for the Tree of Whispers, completing Helltide activities, grinding Dungeons, clearing Strongholds, fighting in the Undercity of Kurast or interacting with the Seasonal Mechanics. While there are many ways to level up in Diablo 4, not all of them are equal.

Campaign Leveling
Seasonal / Alt Leveling
Tips & Tricks
Speedrun Route

Campaign Leveling

  • For your first character in Diablo 4, completing the Campaign provides all the background lore information but is not necessary.
    • The Campaign is the slowest way to level, but it's worth experiencing the Campaign and Diablo 4's storyline at least once.
    • To play Seasonal Content you need to have completed or skipped the Campaign.
    • If your account is below Rank 4 Renown in each zone, focus on completing your Renown.
      • This only needs to be done once per realm (Softcore / Hardcore).
    • After finishing the campaign, you should focus on earning experience in Helltides by combining Helltide activities with Grim Favors for the Tree of Whispers or completing Gathering Legion Events.
    • Strongholds provide a big boost of experience for little time investment. Make sure to clear all of them after around level 40.

Seasonal / Alt Leveling

  • Complete the Seasonal Questline in order to progress your Seasonal Journey to unlock additional Legendary Aspects and work on your Seasonal Powers.
  • If your account is below Rank 4 Renown in each zone, focus on completing your Renown.
    • This only needs to be done once per realm (Softcore / Hardcore).
  • Complete the Dungeons needed for any Legendary Aspects from your Codex of Power.
  • From level 1-60 you should focus on earning experience in Helltides by combining Helltide activities with Grim Favors for the Tree of Whispers or completing Gathering Legion Events.
  • Strongholds provide a big boost of experience for little time investment. Make sure to clear all of them after around level 40.
  • If you're playing an Alt, make sure to use Tempers and Leveling Caches crafted from the Alchemist to speed up your progression.
  • Find the most efficient way of leveling your character in detail with our Speed Leveling Guide.

Tips and Tricks

  • Imprint Important Aspects on Amulet
    • It is a good idea to put your best Offensive Aspect on your Amulet, since it is usually not replaced as often as your Weapon.
  • Compare Your Items
    • Press Shift to activate item comparison. Use this build guide's Stat Priorities section to identify potential upgrades.
  • Choose an Easy Difficulty
    • Ideally, start on Hard difficulty for the extra XP modifier, then try to go higher when it's way too easy. If that slows you down noticeably, it's better to stay on a lower difficulty.
  • Use Your Materials
    • There's no point in holding on to your gold or materials for later. Use everything to speed up your journey to 60. If you're twinking, make sure to craft the Allowance Caches from the Alchemist at level 20 and if available, equip your Mythic Uniques at level 35 to make the leveling a breeze.

Speedrun Route

  • If you're looking to min/max your time spent on the way to 60 instead of following a generic guideline, you need to use a specific strategy.
  • This usually includes farming certain activities up to a specified level and then switching to other tasks while gathering XP in high density areas and pushing the difficulty as high as you can.
  • We update this strategy seasonally in our Speed Leveling Guide.

Endgame Transition

Season 8 - Belial's Return
Blood Surge Necromancer

As you approach level 60 with the Blood Surge Necromancer, you unlock higher item power gear that represents a massive jump in character power. This is a good time to refresh your setup with new tempers and imprints.

At level 60, Paragon Levels and The Pit unlock. Work towards Tier 10 to enter Torment 1, where the Endgame begins. Focus on overcapping your Armor (1000+) and Resistances (70%+) as you receive some penalties to your character's stats:

  • -250 Armor per Torment difficulty
  • -25% All Resistances per Torment difficulty

At this point, your setup should look roughly like this before you dive into min/maxing with Uniques, Mythics & Masterworking. With better gear, more levels and Glyphs, you can push further and eventually unlock higher difficulties for increased rewards.

This step marks the end of the leveling guide. Below is the Paragon setup to get you started in Torment difficulty, but ideally, you should now transition towards the endgame version of this build or choose another of your liking.

Blood Surge Necromancer Starter Setup

Paragon & Glyphs

!
Important

Carefully check your Paragon Boards to ensure correct board rotation. Glyphs go from a radius of 3 to 4 at level 15 and from 4 to 5 at level 46. Some of them cannot be activated before reaching these thresholds! Progress through The Pit to rank up your Glyphs.

Use the slider to see progression steps. At around Paragon 200, leveling slows down significantly and all important Rare clusters, Legendary nodes and Glyph sockets should be unlocked. Afterwards, you can min/max your build with minor tweaks and by picking up additional smaller nodes.

Blood Surge Necromancer Paragon
Tip

Some Glyph position swaps, board changes and other pathing adjustments may occur as you unlock your full potential. The setup displayed by default is the final version of the build before spending additional points that do not significantly impact your character's power.

Glyph Leveling Priorities

To Level 15

  1. Corporeal
  2. Eliminator
  3. Essence
  4. Sacrificial
  5. Dominate

To Level 46

  1. Dominate
  2. Essence
  3. Corporeal
  4. Sacrificial
  5. Eliminator

Learn more details about the Paragon System in our in-depth Paragon Boards and Glyphs guide.

Summary

Season 8 - Belial's Return
Blood Surge Necromancer
  • The Blood Surge Necromancer has incredible Area of Effect (AoE) damage, clearing the whole screen without much effort.
  • Essence is kept high by Skeletal Mages - Cold and Iron Maiden.
  • Start off with a few Skeletons, but quickly sacrifice them.
  • Enjoy screen wide explosions!

Credits

Season 8 - Belial's Return
Blood Surge Necromancer

Written by LordxSaura

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