Necromancer Class Overview
Last Updated:April 24, 2025|Changelog
The Necromancer returns in Diablo 4 as the master of the Undead! They wield Shadow, Blood, Bone, Corpses and Curses as easily as ever before. With a horde of Skeletons, lead by your massive Golem, a single Necro fills the fields of Sanctuary with a terrifying crowd. This overview covers their Strengths & Weaknesses, Skills, Passives, Legendary Aspects, and much more.
Class Identity
The Necromancer is able to dish out tons of Single-Target and Area of Effect (AoE) damage. You have the ability to mix and match what minions you use to best maximize your build synergy OR sacrifice them all to be a one-Necro army! The multiple types of Crowd Control (CC) options, as well as great survivability and sustainability, gives the Necromancer unparalleled play-style freedom and versatility.
Attributes
The four core attributes provide the following to the Necromancer:
- Strength: Armor (20%)
- Intelligence: Skill Damage (12.5% per 100), All Elemental Resistances (5% per 100)
- Willpower: Resource Generation (3% per 100), Healing Received (7.5% per 100), Overpower Damage (25% per 100)
- Dexterity: Critical Strike Chance (2% per 100), Dodge Chance (0.5% per 100)
Intelligence is considered the main attribute as it increases your damage directly. Dexterity and Willpower are also useful for their offensive and defensive bonuses, while Strength grants bonus Armor. Some items can roll bonuses to attributes and later on Paragon boards allow stacking the right stats for your character. In addition, you may find hidden Altars of Lilith in the open world that unlock a permanent bonus for all of your characters.
Check out our Stat Overview to learn more.
Equipment
Necromancers have the option of using a strong 2-Handed Weapon for bigger damage multipliers, or 1-Handed Weapon and a Focus for Cooldown Reduction and an additional Legendary Aspect, or swapping the Focus for a Shield for more survivability and Block Chance.
- Focus vs Shield: The Focus allows you to stack more Offensive Aspects, Damage and Cooldown Reduction. The Shield gives a unique Chance to Block which reduces incoming damage by a large percentage, use Defensive/Utility Aspects and stack Thorns damage.
- 2-Handed vs 1-Handed: Since the Necromancer is reliant on Legendary Aspects for our biggest damage multipliers, the 2-Handed Weapon gives the biggest bonus here as well as on its rolled affixes. That being said, 1-Handed Weapon combinations can give better Lucky Hit Chance, Skill Damage and the ability to select an additional Aspect to better empower a build with multiple powerful Aspects.
Necromancer Item Slots:
Armor
Helm
Chest Armor
Gloves
Pants
Boots
Jewelry
Amulet
Ring (x2)
Weapons
Two-Handed Sword, Axe, Mace and Scythe
- OR -
Axe, Sword, Mace, Dagger, Wand, and Scythe + Shield / Focus
Check out our Legendary Aspects and Codex of Power Overview or our Uniques Overview to learn more about which items the Nceromancer has access to.
Skills & Passives
Skill points are unlocked by level-ups and the Renown system. As you spend more points, you unlock more categories of skills. Each active skill can be ranked up to 5 times (with bonus Ranks from items), increasing their damage or reducing their cooldown with each additional rank. After unlocking a skill, you can enhance it with another point and then choose one out of two modifiers to specialize it further.
There are Passive Skills found all over the tree, attached as optional choices to certain skill clusters. They grant small bonuses to damage, defense or utility under certain conditions and help to round out your build by shifting it further in the direction you want to take. All passives have 3 ranks and usually scale linearly.
Check out our Skill Tree Overview to learn more details.
Basic Skills
Hemorrhage
Enhanced Hemorrhage
Acolyte's Hemorrhage
Initiate's Hemorrhage
Notes:
Basic skills are used to generate Essence. and apply debuffs like Vulnerable. When you run out of resources, they are useful to finish off small enemies or to add extra damage against an Elite or Boss while you prepare one of your stronger Essence-spending attacks. They also bring important utility including the generation of Corpses.
Core Skills
Blood Surge
Enhanced Blood Surge
Supernatural Blood Surge
Paranormal Blood Surge
Notes:
These Skills are your primary method for dealing damage and applying the different effects your build needs. This includes applying Vulnerable, generating Blood Orbs and applying AoE Damage Over Time (DOT) damage to trigger other Aspects and Skills.
Corpse and Macabre Skills
Blood Mist
Enhanced Blood Mist
Ghastly Blood Mist
Dreadful Blood Mist
Notes:
Here we get Corpse Explosion and Blood Mist, must haves for any Necromancer build. You also gain access to the Passive Skills that define the Necro: Deal extra Damage after consuming a Corpse, and the first buff for our Skeletons.
Corruption Skills
Iron Maiden
Enhanced Iron Maiden
Horrid Iron Maiden
Abhorrent Iron Maiden
Notes:
Here's your selection bewteen 2 Curses. As well as more specialized Passives for increasing your damage dealt and damage reduction.
Corpse and Macabre
Corpse Tendrils
Enhanced Corpse Tendrils
Plagued Corpse Tendrils
Blighted Corpse Tendrils
Notes:
In this node, we finally get our hands on the best CC in the game, Corpse Tendrils. We also unlock Bone Spirit, which is the strongest Single-target Skill the Necro has access to. But these are just appetizers compared to the huge Passive trees that spread out from this node. The Necromancer is truly defined by the Passive Skills you select. Each skill type (Bone, Blood, Darkness) have 12 total Ranks to unlock various benefits when using them.
Ultimate Skills
Blood Wave
Prime Blood Wave
Supreme Blood Wave
Notes:
Ultimates are high-impact abilities with a long cooldown and need to be built around to be effective, so not every build runs with one of them. Only one can be chosen, with a two-step linear upgrade path that offers no extra choices. The Necromancer also unlocks the 12 Rank Passive tree for their skeletal army at this node.
Key Passives
Kalan's Edict
Shadowblight
Rathma's Vigor
Ossified Essence
Affliction
Notes:
These Key Passives are located at the very bottom of the Skill Tree. They are extremely powerful and modify the overall play style of your build. Similar to Ultimate Skills, only one of them can be chosen!
Unique Class Mechanic - The Book of the Dead
The Book of the Dead is a unique Necromancer Minions enhancement system. You can specialize your Skeletal Warriors, Mages, and Golem to fit the needs of your build. You can also choose to sacrifice your summons, stopping your ability to summon them, but gaining powerful thematic bonuses based on the options you choose. As your Necromancer reaches higher levels, you are able to summons more types of Minions to add to your horde! You gain access to the actual menu at Level 5!
General Summon Overview
There are three types of horrors the Necromancer can summon at any given time. Your Minions gain 30% of your stats as a baseline. Raise Skeleton and Golem must be on your skillbar to summon them.
- Skeletal Warriors: These are your front-line swarming minions. There are high DPS, Tank and slow heavy Damage focused variants. Sacrificing these awards bonuses similar to the focus they have.
- Skeletal Mages: These skeletons are your back-line artillery minions. There are Shadow Damage, Physical Damage, and Chilling CC focused variants. Sacrificing these awards bonuses to your damage potential and Resource management.
- Golems: The Golems are front-line disruption tanks. There are Ultra-tanky, AoE damage, and AoE CC focused variants. Sacrificing your Golem awards bonuses that increase your own tankiness and DPS potential.
Necromancer Class Quest: Unlock Your Golem
The Necromancer needs to complete a Class specific Quest to unlock the ability to summon their golem. See our guided walkthrough below:
- At Character Level 25 you unlock the Quest "Necromancer: Call of the Underworld".
- Travel to the Shrine of Rathma by selecting "Track" on the quest objective. It is to the Northwest from Kyovashad in Fractured Peaks.
- Interact with the Shrine of Rathma and then interact with Maltorius, the spectral NPC that spawns.
- Collect Unbroken Bones which drop from undead that spawn in the surrounding area to the south of the Shrine. 12 are required in total.
- Travel to the next area indicated by a blue circle on your map to the South West of the Shrine. Continue to Track the quest for ease of access.
- Find the "Bitter Cave" entrance in the center of the blue ring on your map. Enter the Cave.
- Travel into the cave to find the Jar of Souls and interact with it. This activates an event that requires you to kill the spawning undead to fill up the Jar's meter. This should require ~18 total undead.
- Talk to Maltorius who spawns next to the Jar's platform.
- You've completed the quest and can now summon your Golem as well as customize it in the Book of the Dead.
- Remember to add the Golem Skill to your Skill Bar if you want to actively summon your new pet!
Necromancer Summary
- Necromancers have a wide range of abilities that let you build the spooky-undead champion of your dreams. Summon hordes of skeletons, explode corpses, and curse the armies of hell to... hell.
- Your Skeleton army as well as your Golem have 3 different variants with unique upgrades to tailor their abilities to your needs. Or just say forget them all and sacrifice them to empower your Necromancer further. The Book of the Dead gives you quick access to change your build on the fly.
- You gain access to the basic Skeletal Warrior: Skirmishers at level 1 with the Raise Skeleton Skill. You unlock the UI Menu for the Book of the Dead at Level 5. You continue to unlock new Skeleton options all the way up to Level 25, for free.
- The Necro has a surprising amount of Crowd Control, AoE and damage-soak via your summons. This makes them a great addition for party-play in the open-world as well as in Dungeons.
- Your combination of healing, Blood Orbs, and stacking Fortify make for many defensive options to build around. Mix and match Offense and Defense to get the best fit for your play-style.
- When all else fails, cast Corpse Explosion until the enemies stop moving. Works every time!
Credits
Maintained by Avarilyn.
Written by MacroBioBoi.