The Sever Necromancer Endgame Guide is the coolest looking Necro build in Diablo 4! Sever sends a scythe wielding reaper screaming across the battle-field to eviscerate your enemies up to 4 times. Coupled with the amazing damage output and consistent Crowd Control (CC) of Darkness skills, this Shadow wielding power-house absolutely annihilates.
Sever Necro has multiple ways of applying Vulnerable to benefit from a massive damage boost with ease. While Shadowblight on paper looks like a Damage over Time (DOT) ability, it's procced damage can actually Critically Strike! We're highly incentivized to max this damage scaler.
This build is also great for early progressions since it doesn't require any Unique items and many of its best Legendary Aspects are found in the Codex of Power. Finding stronger Aspects from random drops only pushes the build even further!
High Critical Strike Damage eventually outscales your DoT abilities, so you transition to a much more focused build as you acquie Best in Slot (BIS) gear. But during your early progression, the Sever Necromancer gets to dabble in many damage types, allowing for a smooth progression curve and playstyle.
This build guide assumes you have a Level 50 Character and finished the Campaign. Level up with our Sever Necromancer Leveling Guide. If you are looking for a different Necromancer play style, check out all of our Necromancer Guides.
Season 3 - Season of the Construct
In Season 3, you obtain the Seneschal Construct through the Season Questline, then collect Governing Stones or Tuning Stones to add attacks and augment them to support your build. Only certain Tuning Stones work with a particular Governing Stone. Look at the bottom of any Tuning Stone tooltip to see if it is compatible with your Construct's currently equipped Stones. Lastly, they can be leveled up by getting duplicates to max out their power. Check out our full Season 3 guide for more information.
Recommended Stones
- Tempest - Great tool for spreading damage effects.
- Resource Support
- Efficiency Support
- Arcing Support
- Flash of Adrenaline - Direct buffing Stone for your damage.
- Duration Support
- Tactical Support
- Safeguard Support
Alternative Stones
- Protect - Best early game survivability Stone.
If you are lucky enough to get either Evernight or Genesis from Uber Malphas, you want to swap them in on your Construct for their powerful effects. Replace Arcing Support with Evernight and Safeguard Support with Genesis.
Skill Tree & Gameplay
- Sever deals damage to the target it hits and to all enemies within a small radius. It then returns to the Necromancer, dealing a smaller amount of damage again.
- Blighted Copse Explosion turns its explosion into an area of Shadow Damage over time. Stacking continuous DoTs helps to butter up monsters while your Essence replenishes.
- Corpse Tendrils Slows, Stuns, applies Vulnerable and pulls every monster (except Bosses) into a single space so that all of your AoE damage becomes more effective.
- Bone Storm grants 20% Critical Strike Chance to help Sever and Shadowblight crit, 15% Damage Reduction and powerful interactions with Defensive Aspects.
- Decrepify Slows, reduces incoming damage, Stuns and reduces your Cooldowns via Lucky Hit mechanics.
- Blood Mist is your source of Unstoppable, as well as an amazing survivability tool since it grants Immune for its duration.
- Shadowblight procs an instantaneous damage source that can Critically Strike. This adds so much damage to your kit and allows you to stack more damage stats on your gear for better output.
- Hewed Flesh gives you an avenue for generating enough Corpses to sate all of your Corpse consumption needs. Stacking a ton of Lucky Hit Chance Bonus makes this passive efficient enough to not stall out on optimal gear.
- Gloom and Terror help to add on damage, while Reaper's Pursuit speeds us up and Crippling Darkness helps to stagger bosses and CC enemies in a fight.
Necromancer Specialization - Book of the Dead
The Sever Necromancer initially relies on their Minions for Utility, but ultimately ends up Sacrificing them. Prioritize Critical Strike Chance from Skeletal Warriors, Vulnerable Damage from Skeletal Mages and Critical Strike Damage from Golem.
Learn more details and how to unlock this class specialization in our full Book of the Dead Guide.
Resource & Cooldown Management
Managing your Resources and Cooldowns is crucial to the success of the Sever Necromancer.
Resource Aspect of the Umbral
Each unique Crowd Control effect that you inflict upon enemies triggers this aspect and generates Essence. Corpse Tendrils, Decrepify and Crippling Darkness all apply CC when used or activated. You can layer these abilities as well.
- Corpse Tendrils initially Slows, then it Pulls and Stuns. This is 3 instances of CC on every target. BUT after the Pull, the Slow is removed from the target, so you're able to re-Slow with Decrepify for another free CC proc.
Resource Aspect of Exposed Flesh
This Aspect gives Essence on Lucky Hit for any enemy you hit that is Vulnerable. This makes the vast majority of your Essence gain automatic, but you sometimes need other sources to top you off from time to time. Make sure you're properly grouping enemies with Corpse Tendrils so every instance of Sever has as chance to hit the target.
Grim Harvest
Whenever you consume a corpse via Corpse Explosion or Aspect of Explosive Mist you generate Essence with this passive. You get to recoup resources while applying DPS. It's a great two for one!
Abhorrent Decrepify
With your multiple sources of overlapping Damage Over Time (DoT) effects, Decrepify quickly lowers all active Cooldowns by one second and rewards aggressive gameplay. Get close to a group of CC'ed enemies so your Sever hits as many targets on the initial damage, both travel damages and the return damage.
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.
Glyphs
You need to level up your 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.
Note that there are some Glyph position swaps and a few adjustments to surrounding Paragon nodes once they reach level 15. See the last two steps in the Paragon progression above for details. The setup displayed by default is the final version of the build. Imbiber is NOT used in the final Boards, and should not be leveled at all.
Glyph Leveling Priorities
Level 15
- Darkness
- Sacrificial
- Exploit
- Essence
- Abyssal
- Scourge
Level 21
- Essence
- Darkness
- Exploit
- Sacrificial
- Abyssal
- Scourge
DISCLAIMER: The use of the "Optimal Damage" boards requires you to have near maximum stats on your gear and to level additional Glyphs to level 15. While the increase in damage output is significant, it is not required to pilot the build through all content. The additional Glyphs needed are listed below, and REQUIRE the use of Greaves of the Empty Tomb to fully benefit from them!
- Amplify
- Control
- Desecration
Also check out our dedicated in-depth guides to learn more about Paragon Boards and Glyphs.
Endgame Progression & Variants
When you start diving into the Endgame Sever 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
Some of your Skill Tree choices depend on what Legendary Aspects and Unique items are available to you. These are listed in priority order:
- Unlock the following Aspects from Dungeons:
- Blighted - Akkan's Grasp (Hawezar)
- Grasping Veins - Corrupted Grotto (Kehjistan)
- Umbral Champion's Demise (Dry Steppes)
- Ghostwalker - Broken Bulwark (Scosglen)
- Disobedience - Halls of the Damned (Kehjistan)
- Empowering Reaper - Flooded Depths (Scosglen)
- Find the following Legendary Aspects either as a random drop or by gambling with Obols:
- Exposed Flesh - Gamble Ring
- The most important Essence generation Aspect for the endgame variants of this build.
- Decay - Gamble Focus
- A seemingly innocuous Aspect that drastically increases your Shadowblight damage output.
- Shielding Storm - Gamble Pants
- This is the most important defensive Aspect for the build. It continuously generates Barrier while in close combat. The more enemies, the faster the Barrier generation.
- Blood-soaked - Gamble Focus
- Turns Blood Mist into a Shadow Damage applying machine to proc Shadowblight as well as removes the movement speed penalty to turn the skill into a mobility tool. Used for Speed Farming.
- Ultimate Shadow - Gamble Focus
- Turns Bone Storm into a massive AoE Darkness skill that quickly applies tons of Shadow DoTs.
- Exposed Flesh - Gamble Ring
- Acquire the following Unique items either as a random drop or by farming specific Boss drops.
Note: You cannot gamble Unique items with obols!- Lidless Wall adds a new way to drastically increase your Speedfarming potential! Grants increased survivability from Barrier Generation and Damage Reduction, and provides a significant boost to your Shadow Damage output and Critical Strike Chance.
- Greaves of the Empty Tomb offer a valuable option for stacking even more Lucky Hit Chance. They also offer a unique Damage Reduction stat that can't normally be found on boots.
- Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul brings back a powerful Malignant Heart power from Season 1. The auto-casting skills needed to be equipped on your Skill Bar to function. This automates a lot of the build's primary gameplay loop to increase efficiency and Essence management.
- Tibault's Will adds an additional damage multiplier for "free" since you are Unstoppable once you enter Blood Mist. It also massively increases Essence generation.
- If you're lucky enough to obtain the following Uber Uniques, they're useful for the build.
- Harlequin Crest increases all of your active Skill Ranks, including Sever, making it a very powerful option for damage output.
- Ring of Starless Skies in combination with Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul gives you infinite Essence. Replaces Exposed Flesh.
- Doombringer an incredible option for Tankiness and overall survivability that requires you to sacrifice damage output.
Learn more details and how to farm Legendary Aspects and Uniques in our General Farming Guide.
Progression Steps
Follow the build's gearing progression from level 50 to 100, including the changes that need to be made as you obtain Legendary Aspects and Uniques.
Once you have completed the leveling process to 50, only the Codex of Power Aspects are guaranteed. With this setup, the Sever Necromancer can farm the Legendary Aspects and Unique items you need for the next progression point.
Gear
Coming from World Tier 2, you can already have a good array of Legendary Aspects imprinted on key gear pieces to help smooth out gameplay and set you up for success.
- Blighted Offensive Aspect on your weapon adds the biggest total damage multiplier on this build.
- Offensive Aspect of Grasping Veins on the Amulet gives a massive amount of Critical Strike Chance and a decent damage multiplier.
- Resource Aspect of the Umbral on a ring helps with Resource management along with Requiem to increase you Resource pool.
- Ghostwalker in the early game helps with some mobility bonuses.
- While Empowering Reaper is mostly a meme, it does add a little bit of additional Damage over Time and helps proc Blighted.
- Make sure to upgrade your Weapon, Boots and Amulet at least 3 times to help buff high-priority stats.
Skill Tree
Since we need to rely heavily on our Skeletal Minions to increase Corpse generation rate, and Essence management, we invest more heavily into benefitting from their inclusion.
- Swap to Supernatural Sever for a large damage boost.
- Take both Skeletal Masteries to increase their ability to survive as well as increase their chip damage.
- At this stage Bone Storm without Aspect of Ultimate Shadow and Aspect of Shielding Storm is ok, but not worth the inclusion on your Skillbar until you have those Aspects.
In this setup, you have access to all Legendary Aspects, allowing you to pilot a much stronger version of the Sever Necromancer. Additional Legendary Aspects are used to fill slots that may be replaced with Unique items later on.
Gear
Now that we at least have low-rolled versions of the Aspects we need, lets move some options around and discuss the changes.
- Grasping Veins on the Amulet along with Bone Storm grants 50% total Critical Strike Chance, along with your gear, allows you to consistently Crit.
- Exposed Flesh rewards your continuous Vulnerable procs with massive Essence generation. Lucky Hit Chance becomes a much higher priority for stats across your gear to benefit from this consistently.
- Aspect of Shielding Storm adds a much-needed source of Barrier.
In this setup, you have access to all Unique items and Legendary Aspects. This allows you to pilot the Sever Necromancer at its peak efficiency. Let's take a look at the changes you need to make to implement them. This setup easily excels at Helltide zones, Tree of Whispers, regular Dungeons, and Nightmare Dungeons without modification.
Gear
Transitioning to the Late Endgame version of the build only entails replacing your gear with higher Item Power, finding perfect combinations of affixes and replacing Aspects with perfect versions of those same Aspects.
- Greaves of the Empty Tomb offer a unique set of stats on your boots that also help for proccing Shadow Damage over Time as well as Lucky Hit.
- Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul automates Corpse consumption to gain a large amount of action economy. You spend less time worrying about your Essence and more time spamming Sever.
- While this is the standard setup for the Sever Necromancer, many Uniques, Uber Uniques and different gear optimzations are found in the following Variant tabs!
The Optimal Gear variant of the Sever Necromancer assumes you have access to all items in the game and are looking to incorporate some ultra powerful gear! You should NOT attempt to use this setup by randomly mixing and matching items. Most Uniques in the game require you to completely change your build to accomodate them, and Uber Uniques are no exception.
Gear
- Starting with the "Shako" aka Harlequin Crest, you need to drop Exploiter's.
- The +4 Skill Ranks to every active skill is a massive boost to your base damage as well as Cooldowns, Damage Reduction, CC effects and overall performance. This lets you remove Skill Points you otherwise have to invest and place them in higher value options.
- Luckily you have a Ring of Starless Skies to essentially give you infinite Essence along side Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul.
- Lidless Wall solves all of your survivability issues while also capping your Critical Strike Chance.
Skill Tree
A lot of this is going to look weird, but stick with it! You can do some intersting things when you have +4 Ranks to all active Skills.
- You no longer need the Cooldown Reduction from Abhorrent Decrepify to have permanent uptime on Bone Storm so you can remove the points from Decrepify BUT still apply cast it for it's DR and Slow effect while ALSO proccing Amplify Damage.
- Blood Mist is only needed to break CC effects and you reach 100% Critical Strike Chance with your Seneschal so you remove the 3 points from this Skill.
- With these extra points, you can max out Reaper's Pursuit, Death's Approach and Inspiring Leader for maximum SPEED!
Seneschal Companion
If you are lucky enough to get either Evernight or Genesis from Uber Malphas, you want to swap them in on your Construct for their powerful effects. Replace Arcing Support with Evernight and Safeguard Support with Genesis.
The Gauntlet setup makes the Sever Necromancer a high scoring machine! The benefit to getting this gear, is that it also makes you more efficient in farming the Open World, Helltide zones, Tree of Whispers, regular Dungeons, and Nightmare Dungeons.
Gear
- The Lidless Wall offers a very special type of gameplay loop, where you are running through content as fast as physically possible to keep 100% uptime of Bone Storm.
- Coupled with the Black River + Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul combo for automating Corpse Explosion/Corpse Tendrils casts, means you can focus on efficiency, while your build does the rest of the work for you.
- Tibault's Will adds additional damage while also increasing your Essence generation significantly! Evading during a long fight, or on the way to your next pack of enemies typically refills your entire Essence globe.
- Shrine Buff Duration is a secretly important stat for maintaining high uptime of Shrines (Movement Speed and bonus effects) and Pillars for a Score bonus multiplier.
Skill Tree
You need to find four Skill Points to re-invest in Corpse Explosion to get the most bang for your buck, so you sacrifice a less valuable multiplier (Terror) and a single point from Stand Alone.
Nightmare Dungeon Adjustments (Pushing)
A build may require additional changes to successfully "Push" through harder content like Level 100 Nightmare Dungeons:
AVOID THESE Nightmare Dungeon Affixes
Before going into what you should change on your build, take a look at Nightmare Dungeon Affixes that you need to avoid for a successful push:
- Monster attacks from a distance reduce your Armor by 7% for 6 sec, stacking up to 35%.
- Monsters take 40% less Shadow damage.
- Monsters take 40% less damage from close targets.
- Monsters take 60% less damage from Critical Strike.
These Affixes are bad, but not unbeatable:
- Crowd Control durations vs monsters is reduced by 40%.
- The duration of Vulnerable Effects vs monsters is reduced by 60%.
- Monsters become Unstoppable when life drops below 30%.
Hardcore Adjustments
Hardcore requires you to build into more defenses. Here are some tips to successful in this game mode:
- The Sever Necromancer is arguably the squishy-est Darkness Necromancer build in the game. Make sure to prioritize defensive stats and gear options whenever possible.
- When using a 1-Hander and Off-Hand, choose a Shield instead. Find a Shield with multiple Damage Reduction rolls, and place an additional Defensive Aspect on it. Aspect of Audacity or Aspect of Might if using a basic skill.
- In the Paragon Boards, select additional Armor Nodes in Rare clusters whenever possible.
- Use Blood-drinker instead of Sacrificial and swap Corpse Tendrils to Blighted Corpse Tendrils to increase passive healing while generating the Fortified Status.
- Only farm Nightmare Dungeon content that's a few Levels above your Character until you're comfortable farming higher difficulty content.
Build Scaling & Stat Priorities
Learn about the important build scaling mechanics and stat weights for the Sever Necromancer.
- Critical Strike Chance: Stacking xx% Critical Strike Chance gains us a 1.5 multiplier as well as activating multipliers from the Book of the Dead and Aspect of Grasping Veins. Remember that the base 20% damage proc of Shadowblight can Crit AND Offensive Aspect of Decay eventually increases those procs to deal 300% extra damage. So while our Sever loves Crit chance, so does this proc.
- Vulnerable: We get Vulnerable procs from Sever. While you don't prioritize Vulnerable Damage it's still powerful to benefit from the 20% multiplier.
- Crowd Controls: Since all of our damage occurs in an area, pixel pulls and grouping of monsters becomes a direct damage scaler. This also allows us to benefit from every "Damage to CC'ed Enemies" affix in the game when Corpse Tendrils or Crippling Darkness procs.
- Attack Speed: Increased Attack Speed increases the rate you generate Essence, by reducing the animation length of your skills. It decreases the length of time before Tendrils is on the field and how quickly you can spam cast Sever. It's a high value stat.
- IMPORTANT NOTE: While the primary Damage Reduction stats are communicated below, you need ONE source of Damage Reduction vs Distant Enemies to stop catching upsetting one shots from off screen damag
- Don't Get Hit: Make use of your range advantage and hit enemies from afar. By stutter stepping on the edge of your range, you can avoid most projectiles that come your way.
- Armor: A great deal of defenses comes from your Armor. The Aspect of Disobedience can help to increase the effectiveness of it. Make sure to get as much Armor on your gear as possible.
- Unstoppable: You only have one way to gain Unstoppable and that's from Blood Mist. Cooldown Reduction helps to "scale" this defensive mechanic by making it available more often.
- Damage Reduction: In addition to the typical suite of DR options, Darkness builds can also use Damage Reduction Shadow Damage Over Time Affected Enemies. This super long named Affix allows you to decide when and where you gain the DR buff, regardless of the enemy's position or your current Status.
- Resistances: As an Intelligence main stat class, the Necromancer naturally accrues a lot of Elemental Resistances. Make sure to reach the 70% cap in World Tier 4, and use Maximum Resistance buffs against particularly deadly enemies and content.
Our Damage Explained article explains how to scale your Offense.
Learn all you need to know to scale Defense with our Defense Explained Article.
Stat Priorities
Choosing the right stats for your gear can make or break your build. You don't always find perfect stats (also known as affixes) though and you may need to make a tough choice between two good pieces of equipment. Use the following list of priorities to compare your gear and pick the best.
IMPORTANT NOTE: While the primary Damage Reduction stats are communicated below, you need ONE source of Damage Reduction vs Distant Enemies to stop catching one shots from off screen damage.
- You only need one roll of % Total Armor on your gear IF you're using Juggernaut's in the end game.
- Helm: Exploiter's
- % Total Armor
- Maximum Life
- Lucky Hit Chance while You Have a Barrier
- Cooldown Reduction
- Intelligence
- Resistance
- Chest Armor: Shielding Storm
- Maximum Life
- % Total Armor
- Damage Reduction from Shadow
Damage Over Time-Affected Enemies - Damage Reduction from Close Enemies
- Damage Reduction
- Gloves: Blighted
- +xx Ranks to Sever
- Critical Strike Chance
- Attack Speed
- Lucky Hit: Restore Primary Resource
- Lucky Hit Chance
- Shadow Damage over Time
- Intelligence
- Pants: Juggernaut's
Implicit: Potion Grants Barrier- Maximum Life
- % Total Armor
- Damage Reduction from Shadow
Damage Over Time-Affected Enemies - Damage Reduction from Close Enemies
- Damage Reduction
- +xx Ranks to Corpse Explosion
- Boots: Greaves of the Empty Tomb
Alternative: Ghostwalker Mobility Aspect
Implicit: + to Max Evade Charges- Movement Speed
- +xx Ranks to Corpse Tendrils
- Essence Cost Reduction
- Resistance
- Intelligence/All Stats
- Dodge Chance
- Amulet: Grasping Veins
- Movement Speed
- Cooldown Reduction
- +xx Ranks to Gloom
- Essence Cost Reduction
- % Total Armor
- Damage Reduction from Shadow
Damage Over Time-Affected Enemies - Damage Reduction from Close Enemies
- Ring 1: Exposed Flesh
Alternative: Umbral- Lucky Hit Chance
- Critical Strike Chance
- Damage to Close Enemies
- Maximum Life
- Shadow Damage
- Essence Generation
- Ring 2: Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul
- Unique Aspect Minimum Timer
- Lucky Hit Chance
- Maximum Life
- +xx Ranks of All Corpse Skills
- Maximum Essence
- Main Hand: Ultimate Shadow (Wand)
- Intelligence
- All Stats
- Core Skill Damage
- Damage to Close Enemies
- Vulnerable Damage
- Off-Hand: Decay (Focus)
- Lucky Hit Chance
- Lucky Hit Chance while You Have a Barrier
- Cooldown Reduction
- Critical Strike Chance
- Essence Cost Reduction
- Damage Reduction from Shadow
Damage Over Time-Affected Enemies - Intelligence/All Stats
Put in the following Gems into your gear:
- Helmet / Body Armor / Pants: Royal Ruby
- Weapon / Off-Hand: Royal Emerald
- Jewelry: 1 of each Gem Royal Ruby, Royal Topaz, Royal Emerald.
This build benefits the most from the following consumables:
- Crafted Elixirs: Heady Precision Elixir or Elixir of Magic Resist
- Dropped Elixirs: Elixir of Combatant Fortune for high Lucky Hit Chance bonus.
- Type I Incense: Sage's Whisper
- Type II Incense: Soothing Spices to cap Resistances or Reddamine Buzz for Maximum Life.
- 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.
Mechanics
Learn about the mechanical details which makes the build tick.
Abhorrent Decrepify
Corpse Explosion
Video Guide
Summary
The Sever Necromancer melds the worlds of AoE Damage over time, high Crowd Control and single target damage spikes. It's a DoT build that loves Critical Strike Chance and Damage. Able to stack Vulnerable often, the Sever Necromancer also enjoys some of the strongest damage scalers in the game.
- Sever has four total damage instances, helping to apply a lot of Shadow Damage procs and Lucky Hit chances.
- As one of the few Necro builds that actually gains Movement Speed from their skills, the play style is fast and engaging.
- When all else fails, spamming Corpse Explosion eventually kills most things in the game.
- While the leveling build enjoys the addition of Minions, you sacrifice them to get the highest bonuses from your Skills
- With enough Lucky Hit Chance and mob density, this build is effectively an Infinimist Necromancer. Don't be afraid to constantly stay in Mist form while your automatic Corpse Explosions tear apart the enemy!
- Practice makes perfect! Don't be afraid to run slightly easier content of Nightmare Dungeons to get the flow of the gameplay loop.
- In Bocca al Lupo!
Hungry for more Guides?
Necromancer Guides
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Credits
Written by MacroBioBoi
Reviewed by Echohack