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 Pit Pushing Variant 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.
Season Theme
Season 6 is the Season of Hatred Rising. It features the Zakarum Remnants faction which hunts Realmwalkers, massive behemoths that roam outdoor zones and beckon Mephisto's hellspawn. Participate in these zone events and take down the Realmwalkers to spawn a portal to a Seething Realm. There you can acquire Seething Opals, new consumables that stack with Elixirs for a XP buff and the chance to gather extra rewards when defeating enemies. The types of Opals are:
- Seething Opal of Equipment
- Seething Opal of Gold
- Seething Opal of Materials
- Seething Opal of Torment
- Seething Opal of Socketables
Use these Opals at all times to earn reputation with the Zakarum Remnants faction and unlock further rewards.
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.
- Blood Mist is your source of Unstoppable, as well as an amazing survivability tool since it grants Immune for its duration.
Skill Rotation
- 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 bolt 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 of 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.
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.
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.
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
- Eliminator
- Exploit
- Control
To Level 46
- Essence
- Abyssal
- Eliminator
- Exploit
- Control
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 Sever Necromancer focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
- Lith + Yom - Sever requires 21 Frames to cast and standing still for 0.3 seconds only takes 18 frames. Every time you stop to cast Sever, you trigger Lith.
- Tam + Ohm - Since you reach 21 Frame Breakpoint for Sever, you generate nearly 75 Offering per second. This requires six seconds of skill use to proc the rune, which can happen in bursts as you run from pack to pack, or while avoiding Boss mechanics.
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
Raheir offers a ton of survivability from Valiance, and Bastion, as well as CC'ing enemies nearly continuously. They also increase your damage through Inspiration.
Reinforcement: Varyana
Varyana adds another layer of CC on demand for the build, which helps with staggering Bosses via Earth Breaker.
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. 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
- 100% Critical Strike Chance
- 95% Attack Speed
- 100% Chance for Sever to Deal Double Damage
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 85%
- >6,000 Life
- >50% Movement Speed
- >50% Corpse Tendrils Size
- >30% Soulrift Duration
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 pretty 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.
- 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
- Tyrael's Might make 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. Notice the new temper of Lucky Hit Chance: Restore Primary Resource on the Ring. This along with Ring of Starless Skies completely eliminate any Resource issues you might have had.
- 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 over caps.
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
- Dropping Greaves of the Empty Tomb lets you use Legendary Boots with two key difference on them: Significantly higher base Movement Speed rolls with specialized Greater Affix and Masterwork Crits, along with the aspect Creeping Mist. Now Blood Mist can be used as a poor-necro's Teleport since you're completely Immune and able to move over large distances, multiple times. Use this when moving between packs or event areas in outdoor content.
- Tam as a Ritual Stone activates when you move five meters, something you do more often than spamming Skills since most enemies should be dying very quickly.
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 into Pit tier 100 and beyond. Pay special note to the changes in your Book of the Dead.
- To reach Armor and Resistance Caps: You need to consume Soothing Spices as your Tier II Incense. You can sacrifice attack speed on your Gloves for an Armor affix if you refuse to use consumables.
Gameplay
- Bone Spirit does NOT do damage on this build. Its cast every other Sever to spend the 275 Essence required to trigger Banished Lord's Talisman. So the next cast of Sever Overpowers. This gains a huge amount of bonus damage from your Maximum Life and Fortify, as well as an additional 50% multiplier etc.
- To make this easier to manage, go into your Gameplay settings and disable all damage types EXCEPT Overpower (Orange/Blue). When your Overpower triggers, if it's a cascading rollout of multiple damage numbers, even on a single target, that was Sever. If it's a single damage instance that pops up quickly, that was Bone Spirit. As you pilot the build, you become more comfortable with the proc rate of this effect.
- To apply your Decrepify, you use the Wat Runeword. While this applies Horrid Decrepify, it also reads the points you have in Abhorrent Decrepify. You get the best of both worlds. The execute on Elites helps to drastically speed up clear times in the dungeon portion of the Pit.
- If you feel uneasy about dropping Blood Mist from your Skillbar, you can replace Blight instead.
Paragon Board
This variant uses different Paragon Boards and different Glyphs. Make sure to level up Dominate, Amplify and Sacrificial to Rank 46 before swapping to this version.
Mercenary
Hired: Subo
Subo offers three major benefits. First, he keeps monsters active for longer while you pull packs together, with his Seeker power. Second, he offers an Overpower multiplier through Explosive Charge. Third, his overlapping DoT effects trigger Abhorrent Decrepify.
Reinforcement: Aldkin
Aldkin's Storm of Fire offers the best single target trigger rate of Abhorrent Decrepify for Soulrift uptime against bosses.
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.
I Keep Running out of Essence!
How do I Reset my Cooldowns Faster?
How Does Sever's Damage Work?
Which adjustments should I make on Hardcore?
Mechanics
Lucky Hit Chance (LHC)
Attack Speed Caps
Stagger
Video Guide
This Video Guide is for the Pit Pushing Variant that was recently updated on this build guide. It's an Overpower Variant. If you are not playing that variant of the build, continue to follow the Base: Critical Strike version of the build, detailed in the Mythic Variant.
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