Sever Necromancer Endgame Build Guide
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. This synergizes naturally with our new Key Passive - Affliction! Acting as a phenomenal damage tool in the early game and transitioning into a free damage scaler in the end game.
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!
In the early game, your Skeletal Minions are a great bonus for utility and Essence management. Later on your sacrifice them for even more power. The Sever Necromancer begins as a master of the undead but becomes a solo Reaper of Darkness. allowing for a smooth progression curve and playstyle.
Build Requirements:
- Reaping Lotus' Aspect vastly increases your damage output and the overall efficiency of this build, even as a minimum roll on the Aspect.
- Banished Lord's Talisman: Used in the endgame to transform the build into an Overpower Powerhouse!
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.
Boss Powers
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.
Best-in-Slot Boss Powers
Main Power
Grigoire's Lightning Square - Activates your Boss Power Modifiers, fast and often. Most important to proc Wandering Death's Chest Beam as quickly as possible
Modifiers
- Wandering Death's Chest Beam - Executing non-Bosses vastly improves your clear speed, especially in the Pit.
- Sinerat's Flames - Adds a large multiplier for Shadow damage.
- Harbinger of Hatred's Volley - Adds a large multiplier when attacking Vulnerable enemies.
Alternate Boss Powers
- Lilith's Wind of Hate - When speedfarming the Pit, the additional Blisters help to clear Elites/Bosses faster. The additional targets they create also help in triggering Lucky Hit Chance procs.
- Urivar's Lobbed Bombs - When speedfarming, the additional cooldown procs for your Ultimate helps with Soulrift uptime.
Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.
Skills & 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.
- Corpse Explosion does not directly contribute to your damage output, but activates multiple buffs for you. Cast this every 5 seconds for maximum benefits!
- Corpse Tendrils Slows, Stuns, makes Blood Orbs and pulls every monster (except Bosses) into a single space so that all of your AoE damage becomes more effective.
- Soulrift grants Barrier, generates Essence, applies Vulnerable and grants a Damage buff over its duration. Cast this whenever it's available.
- Decrepify Slows, reduces incoming damage, Stuns and reduces your Cooldowns via Lucky Hit mechanics. Cursed Aura automatically spreads this AND Iron Maiden onto monsters within range.
- Blight adds a 20% damage multiplier to targets inside of its puddle.
- Blood Mist is your source of Unstoppable, as well as an amazing survivability tool since it grants Immune for its duration.
Skill Rotation
- IF IT'S STILL ON YOUR SKILL BAR: Cast Decrepify at range to drastically reduce your target's movement speed and damage output. This also maximizes the procs of Cooldown Reduction per monster pack, to manage your longer Cooldowns. Follow this up with a Blight for the 20% damage bonus. Recast this whenever its six second duration would run out.
- Begin casting Sever into the pack where your extra projectiles can hit the maximum number of targets. While continuously casting this Skill, clicking any other Skill's button will "weave" it into your rotation. This is known as Skill Buffering and helps to reduce the total animation length of your attacks. This is a great way to cast Corpse Explosion every 5 seconds to maintain your buff uptime.
- Immediately cast Corpse Tendrils on the first Corpse generated to Crowd Control everything, as well as capping your Critical Strike Chance from Grasping Veins.
- Whenever it's off Cooldown AND you're engaging a monster pack, use Soulrift. It's only effective as long as enemies are within range, so don't be afraid to get in close and personal!
- Reapply Decrepify whenever new enemies are coming into range. Many people forget to recast this then get caught by surprise by the damage output of their target.
- When in doubt Blood Mist out! Reposition and end the Mist early by clicking the Skill again, once you're ready to re-engage. A great tactic is to generate a Corpse during this time then immediately cast Corpse Tendrils on it for more safety.
- On Controller or Console Sever tends to target the front of the closest enemy and miss many targets behind them. Casting Sever without any thumbstick input while right up against a pack makes the skill cast at minimum distance and overlaps the majority of enemies at the same time. Use this on Bosses for the best damage output.
- Decompose can be used to quickly aggro a group of enemies, while you're herding together large packs in the Pit. Don't actively channel the skill, just spam into for part of a second while running up to and past enemies. Even a single damage instance will activate their decision making.
Book of the Dead
While the Sever Necromancer benefits from having an active army of Skeletons at your disposal, in the endgame you Sacrifice them for even more power. Skeletal Warriors - Reapers adds Shadow Damage, Skeletal Mages - Cold adds Vulnerable Damage and Golems - Iron adds another powerful Critical Strike multiplier.
- When you swap to an Overpower setup, you sacrifice Skeletal Mages - Bone.
Learn more details and how to unlock this system in our full Necromancer Class Overview.
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.
Sever 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
- Abyssal
- Sacrificial
- Replaced with Dominate
- Exploit
- Replaced with Gravekeeper
- Eliminator
To Level 46
- Essence
- Abyssal
- Eliminator
- Gravekeeper
- Dominate
Learn more details about the Paragon System in our in-depth Paragon Boards and Glyphs guide.
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 Sever Necromancer focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
- Igni + Ohm - Easily maintains the 15% damage bonus.
- Ahu + Xan - Once your enemies drop below 80% of their Life, your proc rate for Offering skyrockets and you begin Overpowering very often.
Alternative choices
If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top runes, you can also benefit from these options:
- Cir + Gar - The benefit of this Rune is that spamming "free" skills like Corpse Explosion triggers this, even without hitting a target. You can maintain certain buffs from Runes in between combats. Gar granting Critical Strike Chance is very nice when your gear cannot reach 100% chance without it.
- Cem OR Yax OR Moni + Lum - Helps to "passively" generate Essence during many scenarios where you cannot otherwise generate Resource and helps to reduce you time spent using Generators or alternative systems.
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. You can have one Hired Mercenary that accompanies you into battle, and one Reinforcement Mercenary that triggers a selected Skill from their Tree based on your Skill use or other conditional event:
Hired: Raheir
Offers the most consistent damage scaling overlap from Inspiration. The damage reduction from Bastion helps to survive dangerous situations in the Pit.
Reinforcement: Varyana
Varyana's Whirlwind procs Decrepify multiple times, even against a single target.
Learn more about Mercenaries and how they work in our dedicated Mercenaries Overview.
Stat Priorities & Item Progression
To enable the Sever Necromancer to perform optimally, hunt for these stats on your gear with good rolls and aim to Temper ⚒️ & Masterwork Crit ↑ them accordingly. The green arrow ↑ indicates which affix is most impactful to Masterwork Crit, and it does not indicate how many Masterwork Crits you need on that particular affix. Keep in mind that certain stats such as Armor, Resistances, Extra Size Tempers, Attack Speed etc. have caps that may affect your priorities according to the items and Paragon points available at that progression step.
Recommended Endgame Stat Thresholds
- 100% Critical Strike Chance (With Grasping Veins proc)
- 94% Attack Speed
- 100% Chance for Sever to Deal Double Damage
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 85%
- >9,000 Life
- >50% Movement Speed
- >50% Corpse Tendrils Size
- >30% Soulrift Duration
- >20% Ultimate Cooldown Reduction
Item Progression Goals
Before you dive into the Endgame with the Sever 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 Sever 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.
Begin here if you just made it into Torment 1 or are coming from our Leveling Guide! 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. Disobedience helps with this.
- If you find a Slower 2-Handed Weapon (Axe, Mace, Scythe) with great stats on it, don't be afraid to use it until you find a good 2-Handed Sword. The Slower attack speed makes Essence Management easier and you hit harder each time.
- Reaching 100% Critical Strike Chance is your number one priority before other stats. Always reliably critting means you can expect a certain damage output, and for monsters to consistently die in the same number of skill uses.
- Reaping Lotus' changes up the gameplay experience significantly from normal Sever play. Because your bonus projectiles launch from where your Sever lands, you want to place it directly in the thick of a pack of enemies instead of launching it through long lines of targets. Placing Sever directly on top of a Boss can also cause every projectile to hit them simultaneously for huge burst damage.
- Cooldown Reduction on your Helmet helps with better uptime of Grasping Veins as well as Soulrift. Try to time your damage bursts during these timers and focus on resetting their cooldown with Decrepify whenever possible. Dont cast Soulrift until you have to, so it's up during dangerous combat scenarios.
- You can also cast Decrepify to proc Affliction for free, as long as the enemy is Vulnerable. This is a great way to clear out trash monsters or minimize DPS loss while you're generating Resource.
- Depending on how much Essence Per Second you have on gear, tempering Resource Generation can outperform Resource Cost Reduction on your Jewelry. You want Resource Cost Reduction for the Ancestral setup coming next, but you can optimize this way if you're willing to re-temper later on with better gear.
The goal here is to progress through the Torment difficulties as you unlock Ancestral Legendaries, Paragon points, 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.
- Crown of Lucion adds an interesting kiss/curse mechanism to your gameplay. It offers a massive increase to your damage while demanding significantly more efficient Resource management from your gear. If you're struggling to maintain enough Essence to make it work, continue using a Legendary Helm.
- With Greaves of the Empty Tomb, you can reach 100% Chance for Sever to Deal Double Damage, without needing it on your weapon at all. Make sure to have a total of 100% between the two, if your Greaves aren't Masterworked/Greater Affixed, yet.
- At this point you may have Blood Begets Blood activated in your Paragon Boards. Try to pick up one of the Blood Orbs created by Corpse Tendrils within the 5 second window of the buff to maintain its full stacks.
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
- Shroud of False Death is by far the strongest Chest Armor available for the build. You always want to use it, if you can get one. An alternative is Tyrael's Might, which makes it much easier to hit your Resistance caps, even in high Torment difficulties. This allow for optimizations in the Paragon Board as well, regaining spent Paragon points to use for more damage or survivability, elsewhere.
- Heir of Perdition is easily swapped out from Crown of Lucion, bringing significantly stronger affixes with it and making Essence management easier. If you find a Ring of Starless Skies you can replace Grasping Veins. Double check your Critical Strike Chance and Attack Speed to maintain your caps.
- While Mythics can often fully transform a build, for the Sever Necromancer, they merely empower and augment the build's structure as it's designed. Each one helps to alleviate affix requirements on other gear pieces and allows you to add on more power. Remember to recheck your Attack Speed and Critical Strike Chance values so you're not wasting anything by being overcapped.
The 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
- Igni + Jah lets you Teleport every few seconds while clearing content.
- Remember that Blood Mist grants movement speed now. Don't be afraid to use it while moving between packs, if you aren't at the Movement Speed cap.
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
- This variant transforms Sever Necromancer into an Overpower powerhouse! The added damage from stronger multipliers, stronger gear and different Paragon board options helps to catapult Sever even further. Take special care to check Book of the Dead options.
- To reach Armor and Resistance Caps: You need to consume Soothing Spices as your Tier II Incense. You can sacrifice Intelligence on your Gloves for an Armor affix if you refuse to use consumables.
- Your goal in the Pit is to attack as many enemies as possible, to minimize how long it takes to clear the trash and proceed to the boss. Herd together multiple packs of enemies before you begin dealing damage. This also maximizes your Lucky Hit procs to reduce cooldowns and trigger Overpowers.
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.
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.
Essence per Second and Resource Cost Reduction
Essence per Second (EPS) affix on the Helm, Chest and Boots helps to passively replace Essence as you cast your damage skills. Resource Cost Reduction reduces the cost of every skill by a percentage equal to the total on your gear. Since the base rolls of EPS add up to 12 and the Necromancer regains 3 EPS, you generate a total of 15 per second. To completely replace the Essence loss of 1 cast per second you need 40% Resource Cost Reduction. This would allow you to go "infinite", meaning you would never run out of Essence. When casting your skills more than once per second, you need more of both stat to achieve this equilibrium.
Exposed Flesh/Lucky Hit: Chance to Restore Primary Resource
The Aspect gives Essence on Lucky Hit for any enemy you hit that is Vulnerable. The Lucky Hit Chance Temper works on a target regardless of Vulnerable Status. This makes the vast majority of your Essence gain automatic.
Grim Harvest
Whenever you consume a corpse via Corpse Explosion, Raise Skeleton 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.
- Sever has multiple damage components. The first is obvious, when you cast Sever, it attacks in a small circle around the target or area you selected. As it travels to that location, the projectile applies damage to any enemy it hits along the way. Then Sever travels back to the Necromancer and deals damage in a small circle around you. It also damages anything the projectile travels through on the way back.
- This makes Sever hit a target up to four times as long as it was in range of both circle attacks and along the path of the projectile as it traveled in both directions.
- With the addition of Reaping Lotus', the first projectile flies out and then three "mini-severs" travel out in a triangle shape. These three "mini-severs" all work like the normal Sever projectile would, dealing damage four times. The initial projectile no longer travels back to the Necromancer.
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
- 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.
- Sever has an innate LHC of 40%. The Mythic Variant gets 47.1% LHC Bonus, and Decrepify has a 15% chance to trigger Cooldown Reduction on your skills.
- So the equation is 40% * (1 + (47.1/100) * 15% = 8.82% chance to trigger. But since Sever can hit the target four times, your chance to trigger Decrepify once is (100% - ((100% - 8.82%)^4th)) = 30.88%.
Read up more on Attack Speed in our dedicated guide by Ava.
- While all the exact mechanics are much more nuanced, there are two separate Attack Speed Bonus caps of +100% that apply to all builds for a total potential of +200%. For Necromancers, these two caps include:
Cap 1
- Attack Speed on Gear
- Attack Speed from Paragon Nodes
- Elixirs
- Kalan's Edict for Minions
- Golems - Bone Sacrifice
- Moonrise
- Artillery Shrine
Cap 2
- Accelerating
- Rapid
- Rathma's Chosen
- Reap
- Blood Lance
- Hemorrhage
- Howl from Below for Corpse Skills
- Blood Attack Speed Temper
Read up more on Attack Speed in our dedicated guide by Ava.
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.
Video Guide
Coming Soon!
Summary
The Sever Necromancer captured the hearts of Necro fans everywhere with its awesome visual effects and build fantasy. Who doesn't want to be the Grim Reaper of Undeath? Spam this Skill into packs of Demons and watch the bodyparts fly!
In Bocca al Lupo!
Credits
Written by MacroBioBoi