Sever Necromancer Leveling Guide

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

Alternate Boss Powers

• Blackmailer's Sabotage - Great early game survivability tool.
• Allek's Talons - Free movement speed in the early game helps to smooth out gameplay and accelerate your progression.

Blood Mist

Blood Mist is your one stop shop for survivability. Keeping this skill available until you're in a sticky situation can determine whether you make it out alive from a combat scenario. It grants Immunity from all damage and effects, pauses Damage Over Time effects on your like Poison and Bleed, as well as allowing you to move through enemies without being hindered. Once you get Cursed Aura, you can add this skill to your rotation.

Ultimate Skill - Soulrift

Soulrift does a ton of heavy lifting for your progression to the endgame and beyond. It generates a massive amount of Essence for your per second. On top of that it automatically applies Vulnerable so there's no downtime on your easiest damage scaler. It applies a stacking buff that directly multiplies your damage! And last but not least it generates Barrier. This acts like temporary Life points, which comes along with a ton of benefits later on for the build. Not to mention it does a decent amount of AoE DoT damage for free.

Key Passive - Affliction

Affliction synergizes with every part of your build and adds another great damage output mechanic to help maintain DPS. Once your target either has Vulnerable applied (nearly all the time), is Crowd Controlled (nearly all the time), or affected by Damage Over Time (nearly all the time), you can cast your Curse on that target (which costs no Essence on this build) for a free damage instance that scales with your normal strengths. As well as granting you a bonus 15% damage scaler.

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. If you're not enjoying your Skeletal Minions, replace them with Corpse Explosion for more passive damage. Or consider using the Golems - Bone for a massive tank that also helps with AoE damage and Vulnerable uptime.

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 of the Dead 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 Raise Skeleton and Golem on your skill bar to summon them.

To get started as an Sever 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, Damage to Close, Vulnerable Damage, etc. all work as long as you activate their conditions. Likewise, you can temper multiple defensive options such as Resistances, Life and Total 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. Damned - Uldur's Cave - Kehjistan
2. Voracious Rage - Hallowed Osuary - Fractured Peaks
3. Grasping Veins - Corrupted Grotto - Kehjistan

Nice-to-have Dungeon unlocks

1. Disobedience - Halls of the Damned - Kehjistan
2. Empowering Reaper - Flooded Depths - Scosglen
3. Wind Striker - Shivta Ruins - Kehjistan

Great Uniques for this build

1. Greaves of the Empty Tomb (Best in Slot Item)
2. Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul
3. Mother's Embrace
4. Penitent Greaves

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. Ring of Mendeln: Minion Necromancer
2. Cruor's Embrace: Blood Surge Necromancer
3. Mutilator Plate: Blood Lance 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 Sever Necromancer focuses on the following combos:

Best in Slot

• Cir + Lum: The best way to quickly generate Resources during the leveling process.
• Cem + Gar: Evading mid combat or while moving to another pack adds on Critical Strike Chance to further scale your damage.

Alternative choices

As long as you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top Runes, you can also benefit from these options:

• Cir + Ceh - The Spirit Wolves this spawns apply Vulnerable and help to hold monster aggro while absorbing a bit of projectile damage. Especially helpful when you can't maintain 100% uptime on Soulrift.
• 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.

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:

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.

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.

Glyph Leveling Priorities

Coming soon.

The Sever Necromancer brings together all of the coolest aestetics of a Shadow Reaper, with the power of an Undead army and great endgame scalability!

• Unlock the recommended Codex Powers for an easy start to your progression
• Focus on scaling Vulnerable Damage and activating it often for maximum DPS.
• Rely on your Skeletons for extra damage and utility, but keep using Raise Skeleton to replace fallen minions as well as heal them.
• Experiment with different Skills and Minion combinations to see what fits your playstyle!

Written by MacroBioBoi