Minion Necromancer Leveling Build 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 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

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

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.

Key Passive

Unlocking the Kalan's Edict Key Passive massively increases your Minion's Attack Speed and grants them a damage multiplier.

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.

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.

To get started as an Minion 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.

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. Reanimation in Aldurwood (Scosglen)
2. Damned in Uldur's Cave (Kehjistan)

Nice-to-have Dungeon unlocks

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

Great Uniques for this build

1. Ring of Mendeln
2. Blood Moon Breeches

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

• Tidal + Fastblood: Blood Wave Necromancer
• Shattered Spirit's + Requiem: Bone Spirit Necromancer

Build-defining Uniques

1. Mutilator Plate: Blood Lance Necromancer
2. Deathless Visage: Bone Spear Necromancer
3. Cruor's Embrace: 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 Minion Necromancer focuses on the following combos:

Best in Slot

• Yax + Qua - This combo allows for you to maintain additional movement speed for faster leveling.
• Cem + Gar - This combo gives you essence generation for a relatively easy method of evading!

Alternative choices

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

• Poc - We continuously gain and spend Essence, so this is an easy activator with Decrepify.
• Moni - Solid Offering generator if you do not have any alternative available.
• Xal - For extra defense.
• Mot- For even more defense.
• Zec - Good option early game when your Soulrift is not yet permanent.

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 since it is linked to Blight which should only really be used on Bosses in the first place.

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.

Paragon & 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.

Glyph Leveling Priorities

• To supplement your armies damage, utilize Sever to unleash damaging scythes at your enemies.
• Soulrift works as an incredible all rounder in terms of defense and offense and constantly applying Vulnerable.
• Use Corpse Tendrils every time it comes off cooldown to CC all Monsters caught in it and group them up for both you and your minions to slaughter.
• Activating your Golems - Blood on cooldown provides Unstoppable and big damage.
• Enjoy one of the smoothest leveling experiences and command a bone army!

Written by Serocifkre