Minion Necromancer Endgame Build Guide
Looking for a build that's so low-maintenance, it practically plays itself? Meet the Minion Necromancer - your personal army of undead minions will pamper you like royalty, defending you from danger and carrying you through the deepest, darkest levels of The Pit. Say goodbye to the days of your undead friends ditching you mid-battle because now your Minions are so tanky they can stand up to the denizens of Hell!
This Necromancer build is a pure summoner which relies almost exclusively on the damage of its Minions, fulfilling the ultimate undead army commander fantasy.
Your undead army will consist of Skeletal Warriors - Reapers and Skeletal Mages - Shadow while Ring of Mendeln is the star of the show.
Soulrift is the newest Ultimate Skill addition for the Necromancer and it is incredibly powerful due to fixing your Essence, Vulnerable and defense through Barrier all at the same time while granting a massive 75% damage multiplier.
Ring of Mendeln is your big damage providing massive single target nukes and powerful AOE clear.
This build guide assumes you have a Level 60 Character and unlocked Torment 1. To get there, level up with one of our Necromancer Leveling Guides. See how this Build compares against others with our various Build Tier Lists.
Witchcraft Powers
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 three Schools (Eldritch, Growth & Decay, and 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
- Hex of Whispers - A consistent source of Fortification and some damage
- Poison Frog Servant It's a frog! What more do you need to know! It also does a decent amount of damage as well as taunts.
- Aura of Siphoning - A damaging aura that grants a good amount of sustained healing.
- Grow - This is MASSIVE for this build. After casting your ultimate your minions grow to MASSIVE size and gain increased damage. As you progress in leveling you will get more CDR allowing for more Ultimate spam for more uptime.
- Soul Harvest - With three separate abilities with cooldown, this ability maintains its stacks consistently.
- Vengeful Spirit - This power grants intermittent invulnerability.
Alternate Witchcraft Powers
- Doom Orb - a viable alternative which grants more damage with the rapid amount of hits this build applies.
- 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 Specialization - This is a good alternative to grant additional Critical Strike Damage
Occult Gems
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
- Dust Stone - Utilizing one Hex and one Aura, this grants a nice damage multiplier
- Friend of the Bog - Extra Core Stats improve both skill damage and your Witch Powers potency. Maximum life both increases survivability and overall damage when overpowering.
- Pointed Finger - 25% Increased damage for your minions while enemies are Hexed
Alternate Occult Gems
- Toadling's Wish - Increases potency for the three Growth and Decay powers
- Hungering Void - Another way to pull mobs together.
Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.
Skills & Gameplay
- You must select two skills in the basic skill tree to progress. Reap is an incredibly strong choice here. With the enhanced upgrade, as you use Reap and enemies die, you and your minions get a boost to attack speed.
- Blight provides a 20% Multiplier for Elites and Bosses. While this still provides the multiplier to normal enemies as well, this also serves the purpose of activating your rune Wat
- Raise Skeleton consumes a Corpse to always maintain your maximum number of Minions. This also applies Flesh-eater. While you are at the maximum number of Minions, use this skill to buff your minions' damage by 30% for 8 seconds and instantly heal them for 40% of their Maximum Life. This also serves as the fuel for Fueled by Death and Flesh-eater for massive multipliers.
- Decrepify applies a powerful CC effect that also causes Lucky Hit procs to reduce Cooldowns on your Skills, which can also be triggered by your Minions. Prioritize casting this on any new monsters, or when it runs out. This also greatly reduces incoming damage and can stun enemies.
- Corpse Tendrils pulls all mobs (except bosses) tightly into an area to allow for massive AOE also to keep them off of you.. This does not consume a Corpse and should therefore be used before you consume the last available corpse.
- Soulrift provides a 75% damage multiplier, solves Essence, Vulnerable and your defensives with its Barrier.
Skill Rotation
- For the most part minions will stay with you as you move and during combat. That being said, they will usually initiate most fights for you. Their aggressive nature will both a blessing and a curse as they will keep attention on mobs instead of you but other times will pull enemies you are not ready for.
- As your minions begin combat, attacking with Blight will activate your Wat which with the upgrade to Decrepify, it will cast both in the area you are targeting with Blight.
- Once a corpse is formed you will want to use Corpse Tendrils. This does a few things. First it pulls the mobs into a tight space and allows for massive AOE and it also adds stagger to bosses. Secondly, this has a chance to spawn Blood Orb to power up your Blood Orb for a huge multiplier. Using Corpse Tendrils frequently keeps this buff up as well as keeping stagger effects on bosses.
- During combat, you will want to utilize Raise Skeleton often to keep the Priest buff going which grants a massive 30% damage multiplier as well as fuel Fueled by Death and Flesh-eater
- Soulrift is the glue that keeps all of these things going smooth. Whether you are being damaged and need good barrier generation, or you are low on Essence and need refill, or simply needing more damage, this skill does it all. With the cooldown provided by Decrepify, you can keep this up permanently.
- Blood Mist is your sole defensive with this build. Use it to escape tough situations or when you are taking major damage as you become Invulnerable while in Blood Mist.
Book of the Dead
There are 3 different Minion types you can choose to summon or sacrifice, located in the Book of the Dead. The Minion Necromancer chooses to utilize Skeletal Warriors - Reapers which help with the cooldown of Soulrift and Skeletal Mages - Shadow for their damage multiplier.
Sacrificing the Golems - Iron gives a huge multiplier to Critical Strikes.
Your Minions gain 100% of any Stats, Buffs or bonuses the Necromancer gains for itself and 100% of Minion specific stats.
Learn more details and how to unlock this system in our full Book of the Dead guide.
Paragon & Glyphs
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 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.
Minion Necromancer Endgame Paragon
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
- Essence
- Deadraiser
- Amplify
- Eliminator
- Corporeal
To Level 46
- Eliminator
- Essence
- Corporeal
- Amplify
- Deadraiser
There are a total of 328 Paragon Points. After reaching level 60, you gain up to 300 Paragon Levels, 24 from Renown and 4 from Altars of Lilith. Check out our dedicated in-depth guides to learn more about Paragon Boards and Glyphs.
Runes
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 Minion Necromancer focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
- Nagu + Ohm - Provides a hefty 15% damage multiplier for 6 seconds just for having your minions!
- Tam + Wat - As you spam Blight, this will directly cast your Decrepify at the target location with both upgrades!
Alternative choices
If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top runes, you can also benefit from these options:
- Moni - Solid Offering generator if you do not have any alternative available.
- Xal - For extra defense.
- Que - For even more 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
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
With Subo active, he reveals the map to show you where enemies and even harvestables are and also grants a big Critical Strike Multiplier
- Reinforcement: Raheir
You choose Bastion for more defenses and activate off of Blight cast.
Stat Priorities & Item Progression
To enable the Minion 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
- 67% Attack Speed
- 1200%+ Critical Strike Damage
- 2000+ Intelligence
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 75%+
- 7000+ Life
- 160%+ Movement Speed
- 100% Soulrift Uptime
Item Progression Goals
Before you dive into the Endgame with the Minion 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.
Learn more details and how to farm Legendary Aspects and Uniques in our General Farming Guide.
Build Variants
This section is designed to guide your Minion 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.
If you are fresh in Torment 1 coming from a leveling guide, this is where you begin. Since only some Aspects can be guaranteed from Dungeon unlocks for the Codex of Power, focus on acquiring the additional aspects via gambling with Murmuring Obols.
Gear & Skills
- Early on in your progression, focus on Armor & Resistances to survive. Each Torment difficulty adds a penalty of -250 Armor and -25% all Res and it's recommended to keep both capped (1000 Armor, 70+ Res) at all times. As you unlock higher power gear, masterworking levels and more Paragon points, you naturally scale your character into the higher difficulties and can start replacing some of these rolls with offensive or utility stats.
- Do not spam Blight. This skill is only used to apply the 20% multiplier to Elites and Bosses to squeeze out more damage.
- Raise Skeleton not only provides a 30% multiplier on its own, but also an additional 22.5% multiplier with Blood Getter's because it bounces back to your Minions. Additionally you restore Essence through Grim Harvest.
- Soulrift is incredibly powerful due to fixing your Essence, Vulnerable and defense through Barrier all at the same time.
- If for whatever reason you can not sustain your Essence remove Great Feast, move Grasping Veins to ring and use Assistance on your gloves.
The goal here is to progress through the Torment difficulties as you unlock Ancestrals, Paragon points, all Legendary Aspects, Temper mods and the most important Uniques to pilot this build. Some Legendary Aspects are used temporarily to fill slots that may be replaced with more Unique items later on.
Gear & Skills
- As you upgrade your gear to Ancestrals with more masterworking levels and reach higher paragon, you can focus more and more on replacing Armor & Resistance rolls with better stats, but ensure to stay capped at 1000 Armor and 70%+ Resistances for the difficulty you're currently in.
- Once you acquire Ring of Mendeln your damage EXPLODES as this item brings a huge damage increase to this build.
- With the rework to Blood Moon Breeches, these pants become a staple for any minion build as they provide a giant damage multiplier as well as providing Critical Strike Chance and ranks to Hellbent Commander
This is the final version of the build's progression, including all regular Unique items, Mythic Uniques, Legendary Aspects, Temper mods and Masterworking, leaving you with a great all-rounder build for all content in the game. Additional variants use this as a baseline to optimize around certain activities.
Gear & Skills
- Heir of Perdition and The Grandfather provide an incredible damage boost to your Ring of Mendeln procs.
This Speedfarming variant optimizes the build for easy activities like Helltides, Whispers, Nightmare Dungeons and lower Pit Tiers after you have finished the Mythic variant and reached a plateau in your progression.
Gear & Skills
- In the Speedfarming variant you exchange Ohm for Jah in your Weapon and if possible have a pair of boots with movement speed in places of Ranks to Skeletal Warriors.
This setup optimizes the build to push the highest possible Tiers in The Pit after you have finished the Mythic variant and reached a plateau in your progression.
Gear & Skills
- When fighting monsters in high tiers of the Pit, remember that after crowd controlling elites for 5 seconds, they become Unstoppable for 8 seconds. This may be the right moment to start kiting them around because your damage done goes way down and they can freely retaliate.
- In high tier boss fights, beware that many of your conditional damage and damage reduction modifiers cannot activate outside of stagger phases. This means they generally deal more damage against you than regular monsters and you have to prioritize dodging the attacks from shadow bosses while you can barely scratch them outside of stagger bursts.
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.
What Stats improve Minions?
How do I Reset my Cooldowns Faster?
Mechanics
Lucky Hit Chance (LHC)
Attack Speed Caps
Stagger
Video Guide
Coming soon
Summary
The Minion Necromancer is a fun to play, fast-paced tactical genius that performs well in almost any scenario. With a range of tricks and devices up your sleeve, and constant resets on all of your cooldowns, you can deal with anything.
- Soulrift is an amazing addition to the Minion Necromancer by solving Vulnerable, Essence and defense by providing Barrier.
- Decrepify is vital for your build. With the Tam+Wat combo, you can apply both upgrades to enemies allowing for the utility as well as the execute potential to all enemies except Bosses
- Use Corpse Tendrils every time it comes off cooldown to CC all Monsters caught in it and create time to breath and spawn Blood Orb.
- The big damage from this build comes from Ring of Mendeln so farming one of these early will vastly increase your damage and your experience with this build.
Credits
Written by Serocifkre