Diablo 4 Summoner Necromancer Build – Blightlord – In this Diablo 4 Endgame Necromancer Build Guide, I’ll show you how to play an evolved version of the Blight Summoner Build, specifically the Blightlord. The Blightlord is a hybrid AoE Diablo 4 Build that specializes in dealing massive Shadow Damage over Time (DoT). If you’re searching for a Diablo 4 Endgame Necromancer Build that is aimed at World Tier 3, and one that controls the battlefield while commanding an army of powerful Minions, then this Diablo 4 Build Guide is for you!

Diablo 4 Summoner Necromancer Build – Blightlord

In case you didn’t realize from the last patch, Minions were actually buffed, making them more viable. So people have been wondering, can you actually play a Minion Master or Summoner Necromancer? And the answer is a resounding yes, which I’ll separate into two parts. The first is how to keep your summons alive and use them and the second one involves getting as much Shadow Damage as possible. 

Here, you’ll be maximizing several passives such as Bonded in Essence and Death’s Defense while triggering Raise Skeleton often to make sure that your Minions remain resilient in combat. On the other hand, this Diablo IV Endgame Build will continue to build a ton of Shadow Damage while dealing Shadow DoT, just like before, with Corpse Explosion. But instead of using Blight as your main Skill, you’ll be depending on Iron Maiden, Decrepify, and Bone Storm. 

Even against Elites and Bosses, the idea is to stack Shadow passives that further amplify your damage and make your Minions dominate the battlefield to make sure that enemies are taking Shadow Damage. 

Skill Distribution

Each Diablo 4 Necromancer Build comprises the 6 Active Skills they have equipped and changing these Skills can drastically alter the way the Necromancer Class in Diablo IV plays. In this section, we’ll take a look at what Skills you should slot for the Blightlord Necromancer Diablo 4 Endgame Build. By the time you reach Level 50, you’ll approximately have 55 points, assuming that you’ve accumulated enough Renown from different regions to gain 6 extra points. So your Skill distribution should look something like this:

LEVEL 50+ NECROMANCER SKILLS
Skill	Points Spent
Reap	1
Enhanced Reap	1
Unliving Energy	1
Hewed Flesh	3
Corpse Explosion	7 (+2 from Gear)
Enhanced Corpse Explosion	1
Blighted Corpse Explosion	1
Skeletal Warrior Mastery	3
Grim Harvest	3
Iron Maiden	3 (+2 from Gear)
Enhanced Iron Maiden	1
Abhorrent Iron Maiden	1
Amplify Damage	3
Decrepify	1
Enhanced Decrepify	1
Abhorrent Decrepify	1
Skeletal Mage Mastery	3
Gruesome Mending	1
Transfusion	3
Necrotic Carapace	1
Reaper’s Pursuit	3
Gloom	3
Terror	3
Bonded in Essence	3
Death’s Defense	3
Bone Storm	1
Prime Bone Storm	1
Supreme Bone Storm	1
Shadowblight Key Passive	1

The above list gives you the general order to invest in Skills, but keep in mind that you should prioritize picking up new Active Skills over investing in passives, so pick up passives later if you can get new Active Skills when you level up.

Diablo 4 Blightlord Endgame Necromancer Build – Skills

In this section, I’ll discuss the key similarities and differences in Skills between the previous Blight Summoner Beginner Build and the current Blightlord Endgame Build for the Necromancer Class. The strategies will change depending on the type of foe you’re facing whether they’re comprised of a large group of enemies or Elites and Bosses.

Minion Passives

A few Minion passives you’ll need to max out as soon as possible are Bonded in Essence and Death’s Defense. Bonded in Essence makes it so that when you use the Raise Skeleton Skill, which is basically when you have all your Minions out, it will pull a Priest to heal them based on 10% of their Health. With this passive fully maxed out, it becomes 70% of their HP, keeping them alive very early on in fights. You’ll hardly use this but there are points in the game where you’ll need to heal them. As such, Bonded in Essence can help keep your Minions alive during difficult encounters.

On the other hand, Death’s Defense makes it so that when you have this Skill maxed out, your summons can’t take more than 30% of their Maximum Life in a single hit. So they won’t get one-shot, two-shot, or even three-shot. It’ll take a minimum of 4 attacks for them to die, which is absolutely fantastic, giving you the time to heal and keep them alive. 

Additionally, we have Skeletal Warrior Mastery and Skeletal Mage Mastery maxed out. These give your Minions increased Health and damage even though we’re really not worried about damage in this Blightlord D4 Necro Build. But, of course, you’ll still want them to deal the most amount of damage possible while making sure they stay alive. After all, they can’t inflict any sort of carnage if they’re dead. 

Decrepify

In connection with reducing the damage taken by your army of the dead, you have Decrepify. This makes it so that the cursed enemies you mark do 20% less damage. As a result, you and your summon take 20% less damage, allowing you both to stay alive and resilient on the battlefield without having to do anything special. 

To further improve their durability, you’re going to want to get these Legendary Aspects, specifically the Aspect of Hardened Bones and the Aspect of the Embalmer. The Aspect of Hardened Bones makes it so that when you have over 7 Minions on the battlefield, their damage reduction will be raised to as much as 20%, which is a significant amount, especially since you also have Decrepify. 

On the other hand, you also have the Aspect of the Embaler. So every time you consume a corpse, you have a chance to drop a Blood Orb. With the Transfusion Passive, you’re able to heal your Minions when you pick up Blood Orbs. You’ll then get these from constantly detonating Corpses with Corpse Explosion out at a very, very rapid pace. Since you’re usually nearby, having to walk over these orbs without needing to trigger any other ability, will passively heal your summons. 

All of these things work together to make it very hard to kill your Minions so remember to get every single one of them. 

Grim Harvest, Hewed Flesh & Corpse Explosion

After the most recent patch, the Grim Harvest passive has been nerfed from generating 9 Essence for every consumed Corpse down to 7 at max rank. So this is making it harder to activate a main or Core Skill. To resolve this issue, you’ll need to invest in the Hewed Flesh passive. So this Lucky Hit provides you with a 12% chance to spawn a Corpse at the same location while you’re dealing damage. 

Next, aside from allocating all 5 points to Corpse Explosion, you need to gain access to the Blighted Corpse Explosion to deal Shadow DoT, much like in the Blight Summoner Diablo 4 Necromancer Beginner Build. What’s going to happen here is that Corpses will appear on the ground either because of your Minions or because you’re dealing some damage. So you’re going to start using Corpse Explosion.

These damages are going to tick. Every time they tick and they Lucky Hit, you’re going to have a chance to create another Corpse. They will then continue to spawn to create an almost limitless pile from this DoT that keeps ticking so you never run out even against Bosses. And this snowballs into more and more Corpses so much so that you can’t even detonate them fast enough.

Shadowblight

For the Key Passive, you’re going to choose Shadowblight. What this does is it further increases the damage you and your summons deal once targets are caught in your Shadow AoEs and every 10th time they take Shadow Damage. So the more stacks you place with Blight and Corpse Explosion, the greater the damage received by your enemies.

A great aspect to consider here is the Aspect of Decay, which you get from Legendary Items. The damage of Shadowblight after 10x increases the next time it’s inflicted on targets, letting you kill them efficiently. Each successive time it pops, you’re going to get one burst damage after the next, which is very good for this Diablo 4 Necromancer Build since we’re constantly spamming Shadow Damage. 

Another aspect that’s exceptionally good is the Blighted Aspect, which you can get by completing Akkhan’s Grasp Dungeon in Hawezar. This will briefly grant an additional 50% damage for 6 seconds when Shadowblight damages enemies several times. So the effect is pretty much permanently active once you start your Shadow Damage going. It’s even to be more advantageous if you put it on a Two-Handed Weapon and get the top range to boost damage by up to 180%! This is a staggering amount of damage depending on where the Blighted Aspect is slotted.

If not, consider putting it on your Amulet because you can still get a lot of damage here while keeping a Wand for the fast cast speed and increased Lucky Hit Chance. 

Iron Maiden

Iron Maiden makes it so that enemies take damage when they attack you but also generates Essence. Additionally, this Skill heals you when they die as long as they remain afflicted by the curse it brings. So you can trigger Iron Maiden at the beginning of a fight, then enemies are going to hit you, and then you’re going to heal right away when you kill them. 

Note that you’ll greatly need the Aspect of the Damned from Uldur’s Cave in Kehjistan since it significantly boosts your Shadow DoT against cursed enemies affected by Decrepify and Iron Maiden. 

Bone Storm

For Bone Storm, you’ll want to get the Aspect of Ultimate Shadow in order to actually deal Shadow DoT with this Ultimate Skill. In combination with Shadowblight, it’s going to be very strong for this Diablo IV Necromancer Build to destroy as many enemies around you as possible while reducing the damage you and your Minions take. 

Another aspect you should get because of Bone Storm is the Aspect of Shielding Storm to gain a Barrier every second. This is up for a percentage of your Maximum Life so it’s something you’ll want to trigger when a lot of enemies are around in order to protect you. It’s also going to trigger Shadowblight.

Lastly, there’s the Fastblood Aspect from the Iron Hold Dungeon in Hawezar that makes it so that whenever you pick up a Blood Orb, the cooldown of Bone Storm is reduced by 1 second. This is very good for the D4 Necro Build because the cooldown of your Ultimate Skill is reduced just by running into enemies and murdering them with Corpse Explosion over and over again. At the same time, you’ll end up healing your Minions, and then you’ll be able to trigger Bone Storm again. So all of this will be repeated, especially during tough fights like against The Butcher where you continue to remain durable. 

Book of the Dead

For Book of the Dead, you’ll unlock the 2nd node of the Reaper of the Skeletal Warriors. Doing so will let you create a Corpse when they attack an enemy. This is not only good for regular enemies but also against Bosses.

For the Skeletal Mage, you’ll go for Shadow or Cold Mages. Shadow Mages will help trigger Shadowblight more often but Cold Mages helps crowd control targets by Freezing them so this can be beneficial as well. It’s also very strong since it can eliminate Elites quickly. And while they’re Frozen, you don’t take damage. 

And lastly, for the Golem, you’ll want to choose the 2nd node of the Iron form. What he does is slam on the ground to apply the Vulnerable effect. The Golem will run around, stun everything in its path, and then make groups of enemies and Elites Vulnerable so you’ll want to trigger this all the time. 

Diablo 4 Blightlord Endgame Necromancer Build – Equipment, Gems & Aspects

At World Tier 3, you’ll gain access to a lot of items together with their bonuses. It can be difficult to determine the right ones to keep for your Diablo IV Necromancer Endgame Build without the proper direction. So in this section, I’ll discuss the best gear bonuses you should chase after together with the Gems and aspects to place in them. Remember that you can replace unwanted affixes at The Occultist and that you should upgrade your gear at The Blacksmith for the best results.

Weapon & Shield

For the Weapon, I highly recommend equipping a Wand for this D4 Necro Build due to the Lucky Hit Chance it provides. So it helps to increase the likelihood that you’re going to spawn Corpses while having a very, very fast Attack Speed. As a result, Corpse Explosion is going to fire off much faster, allowing you to stack up these DoT extremely quickly. The other bonuses you’ll want include the following:

• Critical Strike Damage
• Critical Strike Chance
• Damage to Close Enemies
• Intelligence
• Damage to Injured Enemies
• Damage Reduction from Distance Enemies
• Minion Attack Speed
• Maximum Minion Life

For the gem, slot the Amethyst to improve your Shadow DoT. It’s also good to have the Aspect of the Damned imprinted here to maximize the Shadow Damage increase against enemies cursed by Decrepify and Iron Maiden.

For the Legendary Shield, the Maximum Minion Life bonus can be stacked giving your Minions a lot more Health, making them much harder to kill. Here, you’ll also want to imprint the Blood Getter’s Aspect to raise the number of Skeletal Warriors on the floor. 

But do note that the amount of aspects you want to slot really depends on how much damage you want to come from your Minions versus how much damage you want to come from you. The way this Blightlord Diablo 4 Necromancer Build is set up is that the majority of the damage comes from your character while some of them come from your Minions. 

Armor

For Armor, you have the Helm, Chest Armor, Gloves, Pants, and Boots. The major bonuses you’ll want here include the following:

• Healing Received
• Ranks of Iron Maiden and Corpse Explosion
• Various Elemental Resistance
• All Stats
• Dexterity
• Total Armor
• Lucky Hit Chance
• Damage Reduction from Close Enemies
• Movement Speed

Additionally, you’ll still want to slot the Ruby to raise your Maximum Life.

The Legendary Aspects you’ll need for your Armor are the Aspect of Hardened Bones, Aspect of Shielding Storm, Aspect of Decay, Aspect of the Embalmer, and the Viscous Aspect. We’ve already touched base with most of them so I’m going to talk about the Viscous Aspect. This is going to considerably benefit your Minions, particularly your Skeletal Mages as it boosts their numbers. So if, for instance, you’ve chosen any of the nodes under Cold Mages, they’ll raise the chances of Freezing more enemies given their greater group on the battlefield. 

Jewelry

For Jewelry, you have the Amulet and 2 Rings. The gear bonuses you’ll need include the following:

• Damage to Affected By Shadow Damage Over Time Enemies
• Damage Over Time
• Maximum Minion Life
• Shadow Damage
• Ultimate Skill Damage
• Cooldown Reduction

The aspects you want to be imprinted on your Jewelry are the Fastblood Aspect, the Aspect of Ultimate Shadow, and the Blighted Aspect. 

You should then slot any of the gems like Diamonds that will grant additional Elemental Resistances based on what you currently lack.

Diablo 4 Blightlord Endgame Necromancer Build – Paragon

At Level 50, you unlock the basic Paragon board, which lets you gain Stats and specific bonuses to further enhance your Diablo 4 Blightlord Endgame Necromancer Build. What you’ll want to focus on while you’re leveling from Level 50 to 70 is Willpower and Intelligence to considerably boost your damage.

For the Glyph Socket, you’ll primarily want the Mage Rare Glyph to further raise the damage of your Skeletal Mages. If you don’t have this yet, then you’re better off using the default Advantage or Reanimator Magic Glyphs. Advantage raises your damage against Slowed targets whereas Reanimator enhances your Minion’s overall damage.

Final Tips

For this Diablo 4 Blightlord Endgame Necromancer Build, if you want to use an Essence Spender Core Skill such as Blight, you can certainly do so. You’ll just need to replace Iron Maiden, especially if you don’t own the Aspect of the Damned. 

Aspect of Frenzied Dead is also phenomenal, as it boosts Minion Attack Speed by up to 60% when they damage an enemy, which can really help them increase their over DPS, particularly in Boss fights where they can just sit there and wail on them.

Lastly, use Elixirs to not only boost your damage but to increase your XP gain. They are not hard to craft, and you should have a bunch of materials by this point of the game. They can make your Dungeon clear speed a bit better if you know the enemy type you will be facing. You might need to enter the dungeon first to see what’s inside before using it.

---

Be sure to check out our Diablo 4 Wiki for any other questions you have about the game and the Builds page if you are looking for more Diablo IV Builds, as well as our Getting Started Guide and Best Class to Play in the Beta Guide if you are looking for more Diablo 4 content!