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 our 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 2 - Season of Blood
Completing the seasonal questline, partaking in the seasonal Blood Harvest event and collecting Potent Blood are the main ways of obtaining and empowering these abilities. Check out the full Season 2 Guide from Chewingnom to learn more! Helms & Boots can have up to 3 Pacts, Pants can have up to 4, Chests & Gloves can have up to 5 giving you 20 Pacts to empower.
Best-in-Slot Vampiric Powers
- Anticipation - Increases Bone Storm damage and up time.
- Prey on the Weak - Increases Vulnerable damage and applies that status when an enemy has a Vampiric Curse.
- Ravenous - Grants a large amount of Attack Speed.
- Sanguine Brace - Provides Critical Strike Chance and Fortify.
- Metamorphosis - Grants Unstoppable when you Evade, deals damage and applies Vampiric Curse to enermies in your path.
Alternative Vampiric Powers
- Resilience Major Damage Reduction tool to increase tankiness.
- Terror is swapped to when fighting Bosses to gain the 100% Critical Strike Chance once they are staggered.
- Hemomancy is great for increasing your AoE damage output in the open world content.
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 our Essence replenishes.
- Corpse Tendrils Slows, Stuns, applies Vulnerable and pulls every monster (except Bosses) into a single space so that all of our 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 our Cooldowns via Lucky Hit mechanics.
- 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 our 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. The changes to Terror in Patch 1.2 make it a viable multiplier of all Shadow Damage sources.
Necromancer Specialization - 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 Infinimist Necromancer doesn't have space on its Skill Bar for more abilities, so we choose to sacrifice all three Minion options for their valuable buffs. We 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 this build.
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 will 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 we consume a corpse via Corpse Explosion or Aspect of Explosive Mist we 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
We need to level up our 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.
- The Scourge Glyph is only used in the beginning of Paragon progression, since we can meet its requirements without leveling it to 15. It's suboptimal in the final Paragon Board setup.
Glyph Leveling Priorities
Level 15
- Darkness
- Territorial
- Imbiber
- Control
- Sacrificial
- Essence
Level 21
- Darkness
- Territorial
- Imbiber
- Control
- Essence
- Sacrificial
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, 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)
- Find the following Legendary Aspects either as a random drop or by gambling with Obols:
- Decay - Gamble Focus
- A seemingly innocuous Aspect that drastically increases our 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.
- Decay - Gamble Focus
- 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 but requiring constant enemy engagement to maintain its bonus Bone Storm. While increasing survivability from Barrier Generation and Damage Reduction, it also provides a significant boost to our Shadow Damage output and Critical Strike Chance.
- Greaves of the Empty Tomb are an interesting 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 or use Evade with Metamorphosis . Great for Speed Farming and Bossing.
- 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. Replaces Might.
- Ring of Starless Skies in combination with Exposed Flesh gives you infinite Essence as long as you don't cast any other skills in between. Replaces Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul.
- Doombringer an incredible option for Tankiness and overall survivability that requires you to sacrifice damage output. Requires you to drop Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul to make room for the Aspect Ultimate Shadow.
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, you 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 an Amulet adds the biggest total damage multiplier we can on this build.
- Offensive Aspect of Grasping Veins 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 the new aspect Aspect of the Long Shadow (TEMP) which has the added benefit of being an Offensive Aspect.
- Wind Striker Aspect in the early game helps with some mobility bonuses.
- 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.
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.
- 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.
- 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 22% 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 we don't prioritize Vulnerable Damage it's still powerful when we manage to apply it.
- 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 we generate Essence, by reducing the animation length on our generators. It decreases the length of time before Tendrils is on the field and how quickly we can spam cast Sever. It's a high value stat.
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 won'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.
- Helm: Disobedience
- % 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 Chance
- Shadow Damage over Time
- Intelligence
- Pants: Might
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
- Dodge Chance
- xx Resistance (Needed To Cap Res)
- Intelligence
- All Stats
- Amulet: Grasping Veins
- Movement Speed
- Cooldown Reduction
- +xx Ranks to Gloom Passive
- 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
- 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)
- Damage to Close Enemies
- Intelligence
- All Stats
- Core Skill Damage
- Vulnerable Damage
- Off-Hand: Decay (Focus)
- Lucky Hit Chance
- Lucky Hit Chance while You Have a Barrier
- Cooldown Reduction
- Critical Strike Chance
- 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 one 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, we sacrifice them to get the highest bonuses we can from our 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
