Blood Wave Necromancer Endgame Guide

Season 7 is the Season of Witchcraft. It features two separate borrowed power mechanics in the forms of Witchcraft Powers and Occult Gems. Both Seasonal mechanics are unlocked and improved by new NPCs found at the Tree of Whispers after collecting resources from Headhunt Zones, Seasonal areas similar to Helltide that appear across Sanctuary.

There are 25 Witchcraft Powers, 6 of which can be equipped at a time. Each Power belongs to one of four Schools (Eldritch, Growth & Decay, Psyche), tags that promote synergies within themselves and with Occult Gems. Each School has a single Unique Witchcraft Power, only one of which can be equipped at a time. These Unique Powers max out and gain an additional effect at rank 5, while the other Powers max at rank 21 and gain their bonus effects at various levels. To unlock and improve Witchcraft Powers, defeat Headrotten or complete Whispers within the Headhunt Zones to collect Restless Rot. Lost Powers are an exception, requiring you to randomly encounter a Forgotten Altar in Dungeons to unlock them.

Best-in-Slot Witchcraft Powers

Alternate Witchcraft Powers

Doom Orb - A cool looking orb that damages everything in its path! It’s an excellent source of passive damage, especially while leveling.
Aura of Misfortune - A viable alternative to Aura of Siphoning, this Power mitigates some incoming damage while boosting your Movement Speed. Unfortunately, it's ineffective against Bosses.
Hex of Shattering - The Damage Reduction is great and it is the most consistent way to apply a Hex when paired with Voice of the Stars.

Rarely, Headrotten Bosses appear with a still-attached Fugitive Head stolen from the Tree of Whispers. Slay these enemies and return the Heads to Gelena to unlock and upgrade Occult Gems. These Gems are socketable in Jewelry and each provide +160 Armor and +8% Resistance to All Elements. More importantly, each Occult Gem grants a unique effect that synergizes with your equipped Witchcraft Powers to provide a variety of Offensive, Defensive, and Utility-based bonuses.

Best-in-Slot Occult Gems

Voice of the Stars - This Gem enables multiple powerful synergies from our Witchcraft Powers by granting Blood Wave all applicable tags. These synergies include consistent Hex Application and two separate damage multipliers!
Friend of the Bog - Extra Core Stats improve skill damage. Maximum Life improves defense and Overpower damage. Becoming Unhindered helps you move through groups of mobs.
Phantom String - A simple and straightforward damage multiplier for this build

Alternate Occult Gems

Hungering Void - Improves density clearing and optimizes damage application by pulling monsters into your aura range.
Wicked Pact, Heart of Anima, Toadling's Wish - Each grants a bonus to the potency of the three Power types, providing a solid damage boost until higher-tier gems can be crafted. These gems are highly efficient during leveling.

Skill Rotation

• Once you are in range, you cast Blood Wave to start your damage rotation. The lucky hits of Blood Wave make targets Vulnerable and create corpses by procing Hewed Flesh.
• You don't cast Decrepify manually on this build since during the end game you utilize Zan + Wat runeword combination. When you cast your ultimate Blood Wave, runeword automatically casts Decrepify.
• Once you have a corpse, you cast Corpse Tendrils to pull and group targets. 
• As you collect Blood Orbs, Blood Wave cooldown goes down due toFastblood.
• Tidal casts 2 additional Blood Waves, doing even more damage and giving you more orbs to collect. However, with the recent update, Tidal now has an animation lock, meaning you cannot cast another Blood Wave even with a fully reset cooldown until the Tidal animation finishes.
• This might initially sound clunky, but with the new unique pants, Blood Waves now travel half the distance compared to before and move slightly faster. This shorter interval creates the perfect opportunity pick up Blood Orbs and weave in Corpse Explosion, activating Flesh-eater and Fueled by Death.
• Blood Orbs resets the timer for Rathma's Vigor causing Blood Wave to do Overpower damage. As long as you stay healthy for 15 seconds, Rathma's Vigor causes Blood Wave to Overpower. Consuming Blood Orbs decreases this 15 second timer to Overpower more frequently.
• Each Blood Orb reduces Rathma's Vigor timer by 2 seconds. So ideally picking up 8 orbs resets the Rathma's Vigor.
• You pick up Blood Orbs, reduce Blood Wave cooldown and do Overpower damage. Everything in this build synergizes very well with each other. The pit-pushing variant of the build does not use Fastblood, opting instead for another damage multiplier aspect. This results in slightly different gameplay. Be sure to check out the dedicated section below to learn more about the pit-push variant and its unique mechanics.

Book of the Dead

Use the slider to see the 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.

Glyph Leveling Priorities

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 Wave Necromancer focuses on the following combos:

Best in Slot

• Zan + Xal - Every cast of Blood Wave gives you 150 offering. Xal increases your maximum life by 20%. As an Overpower build, this increases not only your survivability but also your damage.
• Igni + Qax - When it comes to pushing high tier PITs, you want to add as much damage as possible. Igni is a great generator, it constantly stores offering and you gain that offering when you cast any ability. Utilizing the Qax rune, if timed correctly you can double the damage of Blood Wave damage. When you use Qax, you need to pay attention to your buff bar because when Qax procs, your next cast needs to be Blood Wave since other damaging skill can also eat this proc.
• Bac + Qax - In this playstyle, you run around all the time picking up blood orbs hence activating Bac rune very frequently. In the speed farm version of the build Bac works as a great generator.
• Zan + Wat - This rune combination is very crucial for pit pushing. It executes enemies, and significantly increases clear speed.

Alternative choices

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

• Yul - Good generator since you cast blood wave and tendrils very often.
• Cem - You evade quite often to maintain unstoppable via meta at the same time activating this rune.
• Yax - Early game can be an easy generator that gives back significant amount of offering.
• Gar - if you can't to reach 100% crit chance due to gear, this rune can help you get there in the meantime.
• Cir - Another good generator since you cast Blood Wave back to back.

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: Subo

Provides great visibility of the map, showing where the monsters are. This is also highly important when pushing pits. It also provides damage multipliers.

• Reinforcement: Raheir

You choose Bastion. It provides you damage mitigation and unstoppable. The pit-pushing variant of the build utilizes a different reinforcement setup. Be sure to check out the dedicated pit-push variant section below for more details.

To enable the Blood Wave Necromancer to perform optimally, hunt for these stats on your gear with good rolls and aim to Temper ⚒️ & Masterwork Crit ↑ them accordingly. Keep in mind that certain stats, such as Armor, Resistances, Extra Size Tempers, Attack Speed and more, have caps that may affect your priorities according to the items and Paragon points available at that moment.

Recommended Endgame Stat Thresholds

Item Progression Goals

Before you dive into the Endgame with the Blood Wave Necromancer, take a look at this overview of the items used in the build. See below for further details about the different progression steps and variants. Some of your Skill Tree choices depend on what Legendary Aspects and Unique items are available to you. Keep in mind that while we can guarantee that everyone has access to the same Codex of Power Aspects, the exact progression is different for everyone.

This section is designed to guide your Blood Wave Necromancer from a fresh level 60 into the very late endgame using the three variants Starter, Ancestral and Mythic. At the final step, you should be fully decked out with a great all-rounder build. From there, follow the other min/max variants if you want to optimize around certain activities such as Pit Pushing, Speedfarming and more.

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.

What can I do to improve my survivability?

The build works really well when you decimate everything in seconds, but may get overwhelmed if fights are long against high level monsters. There are several adjustments you can make when you have trouble with more difficult content:

• Check if your Armor & Resists are capped.
• Use defensive consumables. Especially the Elixir of Fortitude II.
• You can swap Golems - Iron sacrifice with Golems - Blood sacrifice to maximize your tankiness.

Why can't I reset my blood wave cooldown?

• The first thing you need to do is to make sure you have a high rolled Fastblood. Blood Wave Necromancer, the Fastblood significantly improves the flow of this gameplay.

• Kessime's Legacy with GA cooldown reduction provides significant help in optimizing Blood Wave’s cooldown.

How does Blood Wave do Shadow Damage and benefit from Darkness Passives?

• A Darkness skill tag is assigned to Blood Wave because of Ultimate Shadow. It transitions from Physical Damage type to Shadow Damage type, receiving all the benefits that also apply to Shadow Damage and direct damage. Therefore, it can still Overpower and critical strike.

How to Manage Essence Generation and Cooldowns?

• The Blood Wave Necromancer does not actively spend Essence to deal damage. Only spenders are Blight and Blight, and you do not cast them frequently. As long as you cast them when you need to, Essence is not an issues. Your main damage dealer Blood Wave costs no Essence.
• However, Qax uses all your Essence when it is activated. One of the tempering options in one of the rings needs to be "Blood Orbs Restore Essence" instead of "ultimate cooldown reduction" so that the build can sustain throughout the fight, generating enough essence at all times.

Which adjustments should I make on Hardcore?

Generally hardcore and softcore share the same builds. Other than going slower and paying more attention to threats around you, there are some imporant things to consider:

• Focus more on Armor & Resists, making sure that they are always capped especially as you transition into higher torment difficulties.
• Focus more on maximum life rolls, for example replacing DPS stats like main attributes, attack speed and additive increased damage rolls. Also masterwork life more than normal if no other crucial stats have priority.
• Sacrifice Golems - Blood for more Maximum Life.
• Play on a slightly lower difficulty than the build normally would until you've adjusted to the increase in danger, or got better gear.
• Use defensive elixirs and incenses instead of offensive ones.

Mechanics

Blood Wave

• Arguably the coolest ultimate in the game! It does massive AoE damage, gives you a damage reduction, and generates Blood Orbs. 
• Combined with Tidal it generates 2 additional waves that also creates 12 additional blood orbs. 

Blood Orbs and Rathma's Vigor

• In end game, no matter how much you increase your healing received or Blood Orb healing, each Blood Orb reduce the timer of Rathma's Vigor only 2 seconds.
• You need to consume 7 or 8 orbs to reset the timer of Rathma's Vigor fully.
• Because of this there might be times, Blood Wave might not Overpower. This is okay, as you get better at movement and as you accumulate orbs more effectively, orbs overlaps and you can consume multiple orbs all at once to ensure Blood Wave Overpowers frequently.

Lucky Hit Chance (LHC)

• While the mechanics are signifantly more nuanced than this, and many things in game slightly obfuscate the truth, understanding Lucky Hit Chance is fairly simple.
  • With Advanced Tooltips activated in your Gameplay Settings, you can see a Skill's innate LHC.
  • Not every Skill has a LHC even though things may cause those Skills to deal damage.
  • A Skill must apply damage to a target to have a chance to trigger LHC.
  • LHC effects do not have LHC and can't trigger other LHC effects.
  • Skills check for LHC EVERY time they deal damage to ANY targets. There's no limit or "one per cast" mechanics.
• To calculate the chance of triggering something, you take your Skill's LHC, multiply that by (1 + (Total Bonus Lucky Hit Chance / 100)) and then multiply that by the Effect's LHC.
  • Blood Wave has an innate LHC of 50%. Mythic variant has no lucky hit chance from gear so The Mythic Variant gets 0% LHC Bonus, and Decrepify has a 15% chance to trigger Cooldown Reduction on your skills.
  • So the equation is (50% * (1 + (0100)) * 15% = 7.5% chance to trigger. But since Blood Wave can hit the 3 times in total, your chance to trigger Decrepify once is (100% - ((100% - 7.5%%)^3th)) = 20.85%.

Read up more on Attack Speed in our dedicated guide by Ava.

Stagger

Bosses are immune to Crowd Control (CC) effects and instead take Stagger Damage when hit by one. The amount of stagger damage dealt depends on the type of CC and is proportional to its duration. After being hit by a CC effect, the Boss will temporarily take less Stagger Damage from a CC of the same type.

Effectively, this means that when you're just spamming one type of CC you don't need to spam any more of it than what you need to keep a normal enemy permanently CC-d. To stagger the Boss quickly you need to use as many different types of CC as possible. After the Boss is staggered it gains a certain amount of stacking Stagger Damage Reduction for the rest of the fight:

• After 1st Stagger: 20%
• After 2nd Stagger: 40%
• After 3rd Stagger: 60%
• After 4th Stagger: 90%

Bosses naturally regain 1% of their Stagger HP every second and when that regen is combined with 90% Stagger Damage Reduction it becomes borderline impossible to Stagger the Boss again unless you bring a serious amount of crowd controls.

The Blood Wave Necromancer, also known as Shadow Surfer or Shadow Wave, blends blood and shadow to devastate enemies. With the Blood Wave ultimate, it delivers massive AoE damage and generates Blood Orb to reset cooldowns. By utilizing both blood and shadow mechanics, the build gains access to strong multipliers for Overpower and shadow damage.

Corpse Tendrils efficiently groups enemies and boosts Blood Orb generation, while Decrepify enhances control and cooldown reduction. This allows for continuous casting of Blood Wave, overwhelming foes with waves of blood and shadow.

Written by LordxSaura