Want a low-maintenance "afk" build that still clears everything with ease? The Pure Summoner Necromancer may be just what you are looking for! It is the perfect build for anyone looking for a more hands-off approach to gaming. This Necromancer is a pure summoner that relies almost exclusively on the damage of its Minions, fulfilling the ultimate undead army general fantasy. No Shadow Damage here! With the Lucky Hit proc of Ring of Mendeln, your Minions do incredible burst damage!
The best Minions for this build are Skeletal Warriors - Reapers, Skeletal Mages - Bone, and Golems - Iron; they all deal Physical Damage to enemies. Applying Vulnerable with Corpse Tendrils multiplies your legion's damage. Your undead soldiers can power through any and all endgame content, but are particularly effective against high mob density.
Bone Storm is the Pure Summoner Necromancer's ultimate defense, providing consistent shielding with Aspect of Shielding Storm and Osseous Gale Aspect. Go forth and command your army from the frontlines to empower them further with Hellbent Commander!
Raise Skeleton
Corpse Tendrils
Blood Mist
Bone Storm
Golem
Decrepify
Skeletal Warriors - Reapers
Upgrade 2
Skeletal Mages - Bone
Upgrade 1
Golems - Iron
Upgrade 1
This build guide assumes you have a Level 50 Character and finished the Campaign. Level up with our Summoner Necromancer Leveling Guide. If you are looking for a different Necromancer playstyle, check out all of our Necromancer Guides.
Solid AoE Clear ✔
All The Minions ✔
Farms Everything ✔
Laid-Back Playstyle ✔
❌ Slow Pusher
❌ Slow Boss Killer
❌ Delayed Damage Output
❌ Requires Ring Of Mendeln
Season 1 - The Malignant
Players on the Eternal Realm should ignore this section of the guide. This build is designed to work without Caged Hearts, though it can be enhanced by them.
Diablo 4 Season 1 introduces a new questline to hunt Malignant Monsters across Sanctuary. Defeating them drops Caged Hearts that are placed in Jewelry infested sockets to gain build-altering powers. Check out the full Season 1 The Malignant guide from Chewingnom to learn more!
- There are 32 Caged Hearts divided into 4 different colors, 1 color for each type:
- Vicious: Orange, Offensive Power
- Brutal: Blue, Defensive Power
- Devious: Pink, Utility Power
- Wrathful: Black, Super
- The first 3 must be socketed into their respective infested socket color, while the 4th can be placed into any infested socket.
- Once socketed, they cannot be removed. Instead they can be broken down into Invokers to target farm the Caged Hearts you want inside Malignant Tunnels.
- Higher powered Caged Hearts drop at higher levels.
With this in mind, let's look at the top 3 best Caged Hearts (and alternatives) for this build:
Best-in-Slot Caged Hearts
- Caged Heart of the Decrepit Aura - Greatly improves your defensive power and CC. Allocating a Skill Point into Abhorrent Decrepify allows you to rapidly reduce your Bone Storm and Blood Mist cooldowns while using this Heart! See the Level 100 Endgame Variants section below for how to make the most of Caged Heart of the Decrepit Aura.
- Caged Heart of The Barber - Best for maximizing the damage output of your undead army; magnifies the impact of your Ring of Mendeln burst damage.
- Caged Heart of the Sacrilegious - Since you are usually right on top of the Corpses you produce, this greatly improves the reliability of Corpse Tendrils, and thus Vulnerable uptime. It also automatically revives your army using Raise Skeleton.
Alternative Caged Heart
- Caged Heart of the Great Feast - Since this build does not use any Essence at all while using Caged Heart of the Decrepit Aura, this is a great alternative to Caged Heart of The Barber for powering up your minions.
Skill Tree
Active Skills
- Raise Skeleton allows you to summon Skeletal Warriors and and Skeletal Mages from Corpses.
- Golem automatically summons a Golem. Its active ability makes your Golem Unstoppable and take less damage.
- Corpse Tendrils Slows, Stuns, Pulls, and makes enemies Vulnerable.
- Decrepify Slows monsters and makes them do less damage. Abhorrent Decrepify lowers the cooldowns of all your other Skills.
- Bone Storm massively increases your survivability, and also your Minions' damage somewhat.
- Blood Mist allows you to become Immune and Unstoppable for a short period.
Passives
- Kalan's Edict Key Passive empowers your Minions with bonus Attack Speed. As long as you are not constantly taking damage, this Passive is a big DPS boost.
- Hewed Flesh generates enough Corpses for Raise Skeleton, Corpse Tendrils, and Osseous Gale Aspect.
- Necrotic Carapace makes use of your Corpse generation engines of Hewed Flesh and Skeletal Warriors - Reapers to make your character tankier.
- Amplify Damage makes the most of Decrepify being consistently applied to monsters.
- Maxing out Skeletal Warrior Mastery, Skeletal Mage Mastery, and Golem Mastery massively increases both the defensive and offensive power of all of your Minions.
- Death's Embrace makes your character tankier on the frontlines and makes your Skeletal Warriors do more damage. Synergizes well with Hellbent Commander.
- Death's Reach makes your Skeletal Mages do more damage.
- Bonded in Essence and Death's Defense are mandatory defensive boosts for all of your Minions. Maxing these out makes your Minions much less likely to die.
- Inspiring Leader and Hellbent Commander further boost the offensive power of all of your Minions. Stay healthy and on the front lines with your Minions for best results!
- Spiked Armor boosts your Thorns stat, adding to the Thorns on Ring of Mendeln to give your Minions decent Thorns damage.
Book of the Dead
Skeletal Warriors - Reapers
Upgrade 2
Skeletal Mages - Bone
Upgrade 1
Golems - Iron
Upgrade 1
Learn more details about this class specialization in our full Book of the Dead Guide.
Paragon Board
Level the Paragon Board by scrolling. Each step optimizes progression.
Glyphs
The primary goal is to level up all used Glyphs to 15. At this level, Rare Glyphs increase their Radius, allowing you to pick up extra Attributes relevant to them. Complete Nightmare Dungeons to level up Glyphs in the following order:
| Order to Level Glyphs to 15 | Order to level Glyphs from 15 - 21 | |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | Deadraiser | Deadraiser |
| 2. | Control | Control |
| 3. | Exploit | Exploit |
| 4. | Mage | Warrior |
| 5. | Warrior | Mage |
If you would rather maximize the potential of your Golem at the expense of Vulnerable Damage, you can replace Exploit with Golem. Most of the time this result in a loss of damage, however.
There are a total of 225 Paragon Points. Starting with level 50 you gain 4 Paragon Points per level, including 20 from Renown, and 4 from Altars of Lilith.
Gameplay
The Pure Summoner Necromancer initiates with Decrepify and charges directly into monsters while Bone Storm and/or Blood Mist is active. After the first Corpse is generated, use Corpse Tendrils to CC and make enemies Vulnerable. Golems - Iron can CC and make enemies Vulnerable without Corpses, and is best used whenCorpse Tendrils is on cooldown. From there your Minions make short work of the heavily compromised monsters.
Skill Usage/Rotation
- Cast Decrepify to Slow and weaken monsters in front of you. Recast Decrepify as needed to weaken approaching monsters and to lower all of your cooldowns with Abhorrent Decrepify. Decrepify initiates your Minions to engage in combat instead of waiting for other attacks to land first.
- Close the gap with Evade and charge into as many monsters as you can with Bone Storm or both Bone Storm and Blood Mist active. Both help you generate Corpses with Hewed Flesh and Ghastly Blood Mist, and help proc Ring of Mendeln's Lucky Hit effect. Bone Storm additionally empowers your Minions and massively increases your survivability with Damage Reduction and the Barrier generated by Aspect of Shielding Storm.
- Also use Blood Mist whenever you encounter hard Crowd Control such as Frozen. Blood Mist makes you Immune and Unstoppable for a short period, allowing you to escape dangerous situations. Activate Blood Mist again to cancel it at will.
- Cast Corpse Tendrils on the first available Corpse. This will immediately Slow any encroaching monsters. It then pulls monsters onto a single spot (Pixel Pull), Stunning them and applying Vulnerable. Immediately cast Corpse Tendrils again whenever it is off cooldown and there are available Corpses.
- Command your Golems - Iron to use its slam attack on a high value target or targets. Repeat whenever it is off cooldown.
- Cast Raise Skeleton on available Corpses to instantly heal your Skeletal Minions and increase their damage every 5 seconds, or to revive them as needed. Always maintain your maximum number of Minions.
- Try to stay on top of or just ahead of your Minions to maximize their damage output with Hellbent Commander.
- Keep Bone Storm active as much as possible to shield yourself against taking damage with Aspect of Shielding Storm. This furthers your Minion's offensive potential with Inspiring Leader and Kalan's Edict. Evade is your best friend for avoiding damage as well!
- Lead your Minions into battle and let them do all the heavy lifting with the burst damage from Ring of Mendeln.
Resource Management
The Pure Summoner Necromancer only uses Essence for Decrepify, which does not consume enough Essence to deplete your orb when used as suggested. Thus, it is best to avoid Essence generating Aspects and stats on this build, as they provide no benefit whatsoever.
Endgame Gear & Skill Progression
When you start diving into the Endgame you don't have all the tools available to achieve the Best in Slot versions. In this section, we guide you through different progression points to give you a smooth transition from our Leveling Guides to the final build version.
Progression Goals
The effectiveness of the Pure Summoner Necromancer depends on what Legendary Aspects and Unique items are available to you. While we can guarantee, that everyone has access to the same Codex of Power Aspects, the progression might be different for everyone!
- Unlock the following Aspects in your Codex of Power:
- Aspect of Reanimation in Aldurwood (Scosglen): Boosts all of your Skeletal Minions' damage.
- Aspect of Grasping Veins in Corrupted Grotto (Kehjistan): Greatly improves your Minion's Critical Strike Chance and Critical Strike Damage.
- Aspect of Disobedience in Halls of the Damned (Kehjistan): Key defensive Aspect that massively boosts your Armor.
- Eluding Aspect in Caldera Gate (Fractured Peaks): Can be used on the Starter version of the build for an additional escape option when Blood Mist is on cooldown.
- Aspect of the Protector in Lost Archives (Fractured Peaks): Decent defensive option that can be used on the Starter version of the build.
- Unyielding Commander's Aspect in Faceless Shrine (Hawezar): Solid offensive and defensive option for your Minions on the Starter version of the build.
- Find the following Legendary Aspects by farming in Dungeons, Nightmare Dungeons, Helltides, through the Tree of Whispers, or gambling with Obols:
- Blood Getter's Aspect: Increases the number of Skeletal Warriors you can summon. Essential for maximizing the potential of this build.
- Viscous Aspect: Increases the number of Skeletal Mages you can summon. Essential for maximizing the potential of this build.
- Aspect of Shielding Storm: Makes you near invincible while using Bone Storm.
- Osseous Gale Aspect: Prolongs Bone Storm, thus increasing the uptime for maximum defensive and offensive capabilities.
- Aspect of Frenzied Dead: Boosts all of your Minions' DPS.
- Aspect of Hardened Bones: Bolster's your Minions' defenses.
- Blood-soaked Aspect: Allows you move faster with Blood Mist active.
- The following Unique items you can find by farming in Dungeons, Nightmare Dungeons, Helltides, and through the Tree of Whispers:
- Ring of Mendeln: This item enables the full potential of the build. Your Minions are far less effective without the burst damage from its Lucky Hit proc.
- Razorplate: Can be used for a Thorns-focused approach on gear, Paragon, and in your Book of the Dead.
Note: This approach is not the most efficient or optimal. It is a fun item that amplifies your Minion's Thorns damage.
Learn more details and how to farm Legendary Aspects and Uniques in our General Farming Guide.
Progression Setups
Once you have completed the Leveling Guide, only the Codex of Power Aspects are guaranteed. With this setup you can farm the Legendary Aspects you need for the next progression point.
Gear
Imprint the following Aspects onto your gear:
- Aspect of Disobedience (Helmet)
- Aspect of the Protector (Body Armor)
- Unyielding Commander's Aspect (Gloves)
- Eluding Aspect (Boots)
- Aspect of Reanimation (Amulet)
- Aspect of Grasping Veins (Ring)
Avoid imprinting Offensive Aspects on Weapons early on, as they are often replaced. Click on the Early Endgame tab to see what it takes to transition from this Starter Leveling Build to the Endgame approach.
Note: Caged Heart of the Great Feast is a great alternative to Caged Heart of The Barber early on if you do not have multiple Caged Hearts of The Barber to spare.
Skills
Allocate Points into Army of the Dead and its upgrades instead of Bone Storm and its upgrades before acquiring Aspect of Shielding Storm. Aspect of Shielding Storm is key to making Bone Storm more effective than Army of the Dead.
Gameplay
Use Army of the Dead regularly to empower your Minions and to revive them when most of them have died.
Build Scaling & Stat Priorities
In this section you can find the answers to all nitty-gritty details that make this build function, as well as how to scale it to its maximum potential.
Build Scaling
Learn all you need to know about how to scale the Pure Summoner Necromancer in the endgame.
- Critical Strike Chance: Stacking x% Critical Strike Chance and xx% Critical Strike Damage is key to dealing high damage with your Minions. Your Minions benefit from 30% of your total Critical Strike Chance and Critical Strike Damage.
- Vulnerable: You get your Vulnerable procs from Corpse Tendrils. With Cooldown Reduction and + to Skills, Corpse Tendrils is available more often, making enemies Vulnerable as often as possible. Minions benefit from 100% of your Vulnerable Damage multiplier, making Vulnerable Damage an extremely important stat to stack.
- Close Enemies: Damage to Close Enemies is extremely effective on this build, since your Minion
- Crowd Controls: Corpse Tendrils and Decrepify provide an enormous amount of Crowd Control, Slowing and Stunning constantly. This also allows your Minions to benefit from 30% of every "Damage to CC'ed Enemies" affix on gear and on your Paragon.
- Attack Speed/Minion Attack Speed: Your Minions benefit from 30% of your own Attack Speed stat, making this a solid stat. But more importantly, your Minions benefit 100% from any Minion specific stat, including Minion Attack Speed. This stat in particular is very important for increasing their DPS.
Note: Your Weapon's speed does NOT impact your Minion's attack speed. - + to Skills: Additional ranks of Hellbent Commander scale the damage on this build incredibly well.
- All Stats: This stat is essential for increasing this build's damage via hitting important Paragon Node thresholds.
- Summoning Skill Damage: This stat is moderately effective for increasing your Minion's damage since your Minions benefit from 100% of this.
- Physical Damage: Your Minions benefit from 30% of your total Physical Damage stat, making it a minor DPS increase for them.
- Thorns: Thorns damage can be triggered by most attack from enemies. This includes AoE damage and continuous effects, which help to stack a great deal of bonus damage onto a target. Spiked Armor and Ring of Mendeln are enough, and it's not recommended to prioritize anymore on other gear pieces.
Stat Priorities & Gear Options
There are many stats and status effects that generate on gear, but many are not important for your build. Some stats may block others from rolling or only appear on certain gear slots. See below for a general breakdown as well as a per slot priority list for Legendary Aspects and stats.
Put the following Gems into your gear:
- Helmet / Body Armor / Pants: Royal Ruby
- Weapon / Off-Hand: Royal Emerald or Royal Sapphire
- Jewelry: Royal Skull
This build benefits a great deal from the following Consumables:
- Elixirs: Elixir of Combatant Fortune, Heady Precision Elixir, Iron Skin Elixir, Heady Iron Barb Elixir, and all lesser versions. Use an emergency Curative Elixir if you find yourself CC'd while taking heavy damage and Blood Mist is on cooldown.
- Incense: Song of the Mountain or Reddamine Buzz
Refer to the table below to see the best rolls for every slot ranked in order of importance:
| SLOT | ASPECT/UNIQUE | STAT PRIORITY |
| Weapon (Wand) | One of: Aspect of Reanimation Aspect of Grasping Veins Osseous Gale Aspect Blood Getter's Aspect | Implicit: Lucky Hit Chance 1. Critical Strike Damage 2. Vulnerable Damage 3. Damage to Close Enemies 4. Damage to Stunned Enemies 5. Damage to Crowd Controlled Enemies 6. Damage to Slowed Enemies 7. All Stats |
| Off-Hand | One of: Osseous Gale Aspect Aspect of Reanimation Aspect of Grasping Veins Blood Getter's Aspect | 1. Cooldown Reduction 2. Lucky Hit Chance 3. Critical Strike Chance 4. Maximum Minion Life 5. Lucky Hit Chance while You Have a Barrier 6. All Stats |
| Helm | One of: Aspect of Disobedience Aspect of Hardened Bones Aspect of Shielding Storm | 1. % Total Armor 2. Maximum Life 3. Cooldown Reduction 4. Lucky Hit Chance while You Have a Barrier 5. All Stats |
| Chest | One of: Aspect of Hardened Bones Aspect of Disobedience Aspect of Shielding Storm | 1. % Total Armor 2. Damage Reduction from Close Enemies 3. Damage Reduction 4. Maximum Minion Life 5. Damage Reduction from Distant Enemies 6. Damage Reduction while Fortified 7. Summoning Skill Damage 8. Physical Damage 9. All Stats |
| Gloves | One of: Aspect of Reanimation Aspect of Grasping Veins Osseous Gale Aspect Blood Getter's Aspect | 1. Lucky Hit Chance 2. Critical Strike Chance 3. Attack Speed 4. All Stats |
| Pants | One of: Aspect of Shielding Storm Aspect of Hardened Bones Aspect of Disobedience | Implicit: Potion Grants Barrier 1. % Total Armor 2. Damage Reduction from Close Enemies 3. Maximum Life 4. Damage Reduction while Fortified 5. Maximum Minion Life 6. Damage Reduction 7. Damage Reduction from Distant Enemies 8. Dodge Chance |
| Boots | Viscous Aspect | Implicit: Max Evade Charges 1. Movement Speed 2. Ranks of Corpse Tendrils 3. Dodge Chance 4. Movement Speed After Killing an Elite 5. All Stats 6. Damage Reduction while Injured |
| Amulet | Aspect of Frenzied Dead | 1. Ranks of Hellbent Commander 2. Movement Speed 3. Cooldown Reduction 4. Minion Attack Speed 5. Lucky Hit Chance while You Have a Barrier 6. Total Armor 7. Damage Reduction 8. Damage Reduction from Distant Enemies 9. Damage Reduction while Fortified 10. Summoning Skill Damage |
| Ring 1 | Ring of Mendeln | 1. Lucky Hit: Chance to empower all of your Minions, causing the next attack from each to explode for Physical Damage 2. Lucky Hit Chance 3. Minion Attack Speed 4. Maximum Minion Life 5. Thorns |
| Ring 2 | One of: Aspect of Reanimation Aspect of Grasping Veins Osseous Gale Aspect Blood Getter's Aspect | 1. Critical Strike Chance 2. Critical Strike Damage 3. Vulnerable Damage 4. Lucky Hit Chance 5. Maximum Life 6. Damage to Crowd Controlled Enemies 7. Damage to Slowed Enemies 8. Damage to Close Enemies 9. Physical Damage |
Hardcore Adjustments
Hardcore requires you to prioritize defensive stats and gameplay. Here are some tips to successfully navigate this build through potentially dangerous situations:
- Equip a Shield instead of a Focus. Find a Shield with multiple Damage Reduction rolls and place an additional Defensive Legendary Aspect on it.
- Swap Golems - Iron (Upgrade 1) for Golems - Blood (Upgrade 1) to increase your tankiness.
- This build already prioritizes survivability above other stats on the majority of its gear. In general, prioritize Total Armor, Life, and a mix of all Damage Reduction stats on the Pure Summoner Necromancer.
- In the Paragon Boards, select additional Armor and Maximum Life Nodes in Rare clusters whenever possible.
- Distance yourself from dangerous monsters as much as possible and let your Minions take care of them from afar. You can initially engage with Bone Storm active to maximize your survivability with Barrier from Aspect of Shielding Storm, and then immediately back out of tough situations.
- Only farm Nightmare Dungeons with monsters that are about the same level as your character until you have high defensive stats on all of your gear, and are comfortable farming higher difficulty content.
Check out our dedicated in-depth guide to learn more survival tricks in Hardcore.
Level 100 Endgame Variants
You can optimize your build further for certain endgame activities, such as Speedfarming, Nightmare Dungeon Pushing, etc. Let's take a look at the changes you need to make to achieve the best results in them.
The Standard Build featured at the top of the guide is suitable for success in Nightmare Dungeons up until Tier 80. Before we go into how to push Tier 100 NM Dungeons, make sure to avoid the following Afflictions PERIOD:
AVOID THESE Nightmare Dungeon Afflictions
- Monster Critical Resist - Makes all enemies much more tanky with how much your Minions rely on Critical Strike Damage.
- Melee Defenders - This stat makes monsters very tanky on a close quarters combat build.
- Monster Barrier - It is difficult for your Minions to break through monster Barrier to deal damage.
- Monster Vulnerable Resist - Noticeably prolongs fights against high HP Elites and Bosses.
- Monster Physical Resist - Makes monsters resist your Minions' Physical Damage. This will make the dungeon take significantly longer.
Pushing the highest Tier Nightmare Dungeon requires a more tanky build. We make a few Gear, Book of the Dead, and Gameplay adjustments below. And remember to run an Iron Skin Elixir if you are going for the achievement!
Gear
Change the following:
- Use a Shield instead of a Focus for maximum survivability. This requires sacrificing Osseous Gale Aspect, and will mean somewhat lower Bone Storm uptime. This is fine though since in many cases you want to play well behind your Minions against monsters this strong!
- Put Aspect of the Protector on your Shield for another reliable Barrier. You can never have too many! Alternatively, imprint Aspect of Might if you are using Reap and have Caged Heart of the Decrepit Aura as a source of Decrepify (see the Season 1 build variant)
- Prioritize Defensive Stats on your gear wherever possible such as Total Armor, Maximum Life, and Damage Reductions.
Book of the Dead
Change out your Golems - Iron (Upgrade 1) for Golems - Blood (Upgrade 1) to increase your tankiness.
Gameplay
Keep your distance from dangerous monsters and let your Minions do all the heavy lifting. Tactically use Bone Storm only to maximize your Barrier. This will mean sacrificing much of your Minions' bonus damage from Hellbent Commander, but it is worth it for the sake of survival.
No changes to Skills, Paragon, or Glyphs are necessary to complete a Tier 100 Nightmare Dungeon.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
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.
Can Minions Clear Endgame Content?
The short answer is yes. With enough investment into Minion stats from Skills, Gear, and Paragon Minions can become extremely powerful and tanky. Particularly, high mob density takes a beating from your undead army, and any content besides Uber Lilith, including high-tier Nightmare Dungeons, is fair game for a Pure Minion build. That being said, Ring of Mendeln is required for peak endgame performance.
What Stats Improve Minions?
In general, Minions benefit from 30% of any non-Minion specific offensive stats such as Critical Strike Chance, Critical Strike Damage, Physical Damage, and from 100% of Minion specific stats (stats that mention "Minions" or a specific Minion type in their name) such as Minion Attack Speed. Minions also benefit 100% from the Vulnerable Damage stat. All Minion-specific defensive stats and Aspects appear to work with 100% effectiveness as well.
Can This Build Work Without Ring of Mendeln?
It can... however it will be much less effective. Strap yourself in, grab a bag of chips, and prepare yourself for the slow push! The good news though is that if you invest enough in your Minion's stats as directed by this guide, they will rarely die except against the strongest foes. It may just take awhile for them to kill high density and tankier enemies.
Mechanics
Learn all you need to know about how to scale this build in the endgame.
Corpse Tendrils
Ring of Mendeln
Video Guide
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Summary
- This build dominates with Ring of Mendeln. Before acquiring Ring of Mendeln, enjoy the nice chill slow push.
- Lead your undead army on the frontlines to make the most of Hellbent Commander. Bone Storm with Aspect of Shielding Storm enables you to survive under the toughest conditions.
- Decrepify is your best friend. Use it as often as possible on as many enemies as possible to lower the cooldowns of all your other essential Skills.
- Focus on buffing your Minions as much as possible with your Skills, stats on Gear, Aspects, and Paragon.
- Show those monsters what a pure summoner build is capable of!
Credits
Written by DarkHumility
Reviewed by MacroBioBoi