In this Diablo 4 Necromancer Build, I’ll show you how to play a LvL 70+ White Walker Necromancer that’s aimed at World Tier 4. If you are looking for a Build that uses Minions and the Frost element in order to not only boost your damage but also Freeze enemies, then this Diablo 4 White Walker Necromancer Build Guide is for you!

Diablo 4 Summoner Necromancer Build – White Walker

A lot of people have been asking me to make an endgame Minion Build that can keep Minions alive where they can actually do something in combat. So my primary objective with this Diablo IV Build is to incorporate them but it’s worth noting that they don’t deal a ton of damage in this game even after acquiring all of the summon nodes. However, these Minions are able to provide Corpses and Freeze enemies, making it easier for you to kill them while providing decent Essence. What’s more, is that they act as meat shields, and once you get the Ring of Mendeln Unique Ring, they’ll be able to deal a lot more damage upon exploding on enemies, making them viable than before.

So the first thing to consider with this Diablo 4 White Walker Necromancer Build is how you get your Minions to survive. It took a while to balance survivability with damage but you can tweak this around a little as you see fit depending on the Equipment you have. So in terms of the Paragon Boards, which I’ll discuss in detail later on, I’ve taken the Cult Leader to focus on boosting Minion Damage and protection. 

Next, I have Maximum Minion Life on a lot of my gear to give them Health to avoid dying quickly. There’s still the maxed-out Bonded in Essence, which makes it so that your Skeletal Priest heals for 60% more of your Maximum Minion Life. You’ll also notice that there’s no more Death’s Defense, and that’s simply because your summons usually doesn’t take up to 30% of the Health in one hit anymore. 

As such, I’ve opted to put my points into Inspiring Leader, which makes it so that after you’ve been Healthy for 4 seconds, your Minions gain 12% Attack Speed. Attack Speed is beneficial because when Cold Mages deal damage, they give back Essence on top of Chilling and Freezing enemies. So the faster they attack, the more often that’s going to happen. In effect, there will be more opportunities to create Corpses to activate Corpse Explosion or to heal your Minions.

Diablo 4 Summoner Necromancer Build – White Walker

Once you hit Tier IV you’ll want to start thinking about min/maxing to get the most out of your Build, and that starts with Skills. Thanks to Paragon Boards and to the increased Equipment affixes, you’ll be able to bypass most of the restrictions you previously faced while leveling up. I also won’t get too deep into Skills, as you most probably know how they work by now.

LEVEL 70+ NECROMANCER SKILLS
Skill	Points Spent
Bone Splinters	1
Enhanced Bone Splinters	1
Bone Spear	5
Enhanced Bone Spear	1
Supernatural Bone Spear	1
Hewed Flesh	3
Blood Mist	1
Enhanced Blood Mist	1
Ghastly Blood Mist	1
Corpse Explosion	5
Enhanced Corpse Explosion	1
Plagued Corpse Explosion	1
Skeletal Warrior Mastery	3
Grim Harvest	3
Fueled by Death	1 (+1 from Gear)
Death’s Reach	3
Skeletal Mage Mastery	3
Corpse Tendrils	4 (+3 from Gear)
Enhanced Corpse Tendrils	1
Plagued Corpse Tendrils	1
Necrotic Carapace	2
Serration	3
Compound Fracture	5 (+2 from Gear)
Evulsion	3
Army of the Dead	1
Prime Army of the Dead	1
Supreme Army of the Dead	1
Inspiring Leader	3
Bonded in Essence	3
Ossified Essence Key Passive	1

Book of the Dead

• Skeletal Warriors – 2nd Node of the Reaper
• Skeletal Mages – 1st Node of the Cold
• Golems – Sacrificed Iron

Diablo 4 Necromancer Build: Equipment, Gems, and Aspects

Equipment is the most important part of any Endgame Build, and It’s important to understand that it’s a long-term goal. You won’t have all Paragon Boards available right away, and getting all uniques will probably take a lot of farming, so try to use Legendary Aspects to adjust to your needs while you farm levels and better gear.

Legendary Aspects and Unique Powers

I’ll divide the Equipment into different slots, so it’s easier to understand what you should be using and what affixes you should be looking for. Remember that unique equipment has fixed affixes and powers, so if you are using one, you might need to re-slot a Legendary Aspect into a different piece.

Another important thing to notice is that, when looking for stats, you’ll want to make sure you are fulfilling your Paragon Rare Node requirements. Some rare nodes have very high requirements, and equipment is what allows you to fulfill them. These bonuses often double the rare node effect so, for example, getting an Equipment piece with +100 Dexterity might unlock one or more Node bonuses, giving you a massive bonus as a result.

Helm

Legendary Aspect

Blood Getter’s Aspect: This is an alternative if you don’t acquire the Deathless Visage Unique Helm, allowing you to increase the number of Skeletal Warriors you summon.

OR

Aspect of the Protector: This gives more protection by letting you conjure a damage shield upon hitting Elites or Bosses.

Affixes

• +Total Armor
• +Physical Damage
• +Critical Strike Damage with Bone Skills
• +Maximum Essence

Unique Equipment

Deathless Visage: This makes Bone Spear even more deadly. When you send it through a pack of enemies, the explosions trail behind it to wipe everything out. 

Chest Armor

Legendary Aspect

Viscous Aspect: This increases the number of Skeletal Mages you have by 2, giving you 5 of them.

Affixes

• Damage Reduction from Distant Enemies
• +Damage
• +Physical Damage
• +Intelligence

Unique Equipment

No unique Equipment is recommended for this category.

Gloves

Legendary Aspect

No Legendary Aspect is recommended for this category.

Affixes

• +Critical Strike Chance
• +Cold Damage
• +Freeze Duration
• +Lucky Hit: Up to a 5% Chance to Restore X Primary Resource

If you don’t have Frostburn yet, you’re going to want Gloves that give Critical Strike Chance and Ranks of Bone Spear. 

Unique Equipment

Frostburn: This makes it so that you have a Lucky Hit Chance to Freeze enemies for 2 seconds, which follows the frost theme portion of our Diablo 4 Necromancer Build. You have the Blizzard Skill from your Skeletal Mages as well as their cold attacks from the Book of the Dead. And now, with Frostburn, you yourself are able to Freeze targets as well. So this prevents them from dealing damage to you and from doing a lot of things while boosting your damage against CCed enemies because of the Control Glyph.

Pants

Legendary Aspect

Aspect of Disobedience: This increases your Armor by up to 50% if you have a max roll, for 4 seconds when you deal any form of damage.

OR

Aspect of the Protector: This gives more protection by letting you conjure a damage shield upon hitting Elites or Bosses.

Affixes

• +Maximum Minion Life
• Damage Reduction
• +Damage for 4 Seconds After Killing an Elite
• +Dodge Chance

Unique Equipment

No unique Equipment is recommended for this category.

Boots

Legendary Aspect

Coldbringer’s Aspect: Every 10 seconds, your Cold Skeletal Mages may cast Blizzard to deal Cold Damage and continuously Chill targets for 8% for 6 seconds. This is fantastic in terms of dealing damage and keeping them alive, especially if you have Damage vs Crowd Controlled Enemies. However, because I already have the Coldbringer’s Aspect for my Boots, I don’t have room for extra Skeletal Warriors, which you may want, so that’s the tradeoff here. 

You can have more Skeletal Warriors but I simply find that the Skeletal Mages are more beneficial to this Diablo IV White Walker Necromancer Build to enhance your Crowd Control Damage. This is especially true since you’re going to make use of the Control Glyph to increase your damage and that of your Minions against Chilled and Frozen enemies.

Affixes

• +All Stats
• +Ranks of Corpse Tendrils
• +Movement Speed

Unique Equipment

No unique Equipment is recommended for this category.

One-Handed Weapon

Legendary Aspect

No Legendary Aspect is recommended for this category.

Affixes

• +Intelligence
• +Damage to Distant Enemies
• +Damage to Healthy Enemies
• +Rank of Fueled by Death Passive

If you don’t have Black River yet, I suggest using any One-Handed Weapon that has Critical Damage, Vulnerable Damage, Core Skill Damage, or Damage to Distant Enemies. Or perhaps All Stats to boost your damage via Paragon Boards. 

Unique Equipment

Black River: This considerably boosts your Attack Speed, which is where your Minions’ Attack Speed is based on. It also enhances your damage to distant enemies as well as a rank to Fueled by Death Passive, thereby boosting damage upon consuming a Corpse. More importantly, Corpse Explosion consumes up to 4 additional Corpses and widens its explosion radius. At higher levels, this Skill starts to fall off since you need to constantly detonate a ton of Corpses. This is why a lot of people move to the Shadow version of it to enhance their damage even if it’s slower.

Now because of Black River, Corpse Explosion becomes meta again while ramping up your Essence regeneration because if you use it once and there are 5 Corpses on the ground, you’ll get back 30 Essence, which makes Bone Spear stronger.

The reason why Bone Spear is stronger when you have Maximum Essence is because of the Ossified Essence Key Passive. This makes Bone Skills deal 1% increased damage for each point of Essence you have above 50 upon cast. So try to cast Bone Spear when you’re at Maximum Essence, and keeping yourself topped up in between casts will make this Skill deal greater damage. And since you don’t need to fling these spears at a lightning rate with this Diablo 4 White Walker Necro Build, you would be fine to alternate it with Corpse Explosion.

Offhand Weapon

Legendary Aspect

Aspect of Reanimation: This increases your Skeleton Damage after they have been alive for 10 seconds up to 30%. Since I had a max roll on the Aspect of Reanimation, I decided to keep it.

OR

Aspect of Frenzied Dead: However, since Minions don’t deal a ton of damage, you can make use of this aspect to increase their Attack Speed for 3 seconds after damaging an enemy, stacking up to 3x. As a result, they’ll be able to Freeze things faster while getting back your Essence quicker. It’s also going to create more Corpses from your Reapers that can be detonated with Corpse Explosion. So even though it’s not necessarily boosting their damage, the situation will be better. 

Affixes

• +Maximum Minion Life
• +Resource Generation
• Cooldown Reduction
• +Critical Strike Chance Against Injured Enemies

Unique Equipment

No unique Equipment is recommended for this category.

Amulet

Legendary Aspect

Splintering Aspect: For this White Walker D4 Necromancer Build, you’re going to use Bone Spear to help support your Minions at range as well as Corpse Explosion without spending Essence. Because of Bone Spear, you’ll want to imprint the Splintering Aspect, which makes it so that enemies hit beyond the first Vulnerable are also Vulnerable for a certain amount of seconds, and that bone shards that splinter from Bone Spear deal increased damage to them. I’ve placed the Splintering Aspect on my Amulet to get more damage out of it. 

Affixes

• +Willpower
• Cooldown Reduction
• +Ranks of Compound Fracture Passive
• Essence Cost Reduction

Unique Equipment

No unique Equipment is recommended for this category.

First Ring

Legendary Aspect

No Legendary Aspect is recommended for this category.

Affixes

• +Lucky Hit Chance
• +Minion Attack Speed
• +Maximum Minion Life

Unique Equipment

Ring of Mendeln: All of its affixes are great for this D4 White Walker Necro Build except for Thorns. But if you’re playing a Thorns Minion Build with Razor Plate, it would be good. Now the Ring of Mendeln makes it so that while you have 7+ Minions, you gain Lucky Hit up to a 10% chance to empower them, causing their next attacks to explode for X amount of Physical Damage. This is fantastic because periodically, your Minions will just hit for huge damage against mobs. They don’t deal a ton of damage natively so having the Ring of Mendeln bypasses that problem.

Another thing that seems to happen with this Ring, although it needs more testing, is its synergy with the Army of the Dead Ultimate Skill. It seems to cause insane damage, allowing them to wipe out packs of enemies in a second. I’m not sure if that’s because they’re detonating or if it’s due to the high Lucky Hit Chance. But it makes Army of the Dead absolutely lethal. 

Second Ring

Legendary Aspect

Aspect of Grasping Veins: This is one that should probably be in just about every Necromancer Diablo IV Build and it makes it so that you have up to a 20% increased Critical Strike Chance for 6 seconds after using Corpse Tendrils and you gain up to 60% Critical Strike Damage to enemies damaged by this Skill. The Aspect of Grasping Veins is another good candidate for your Amulet. Corpse Tendrils allow you to pull targets together, allowing you to Stun them and apply the Vulnerability effect. As such, this considerably raises your damage. And it lets you group them up nicely to then activate Bone Spear and Corpse Explosion. 

OR

Requiem Aspect: This provides a lot of Essence per active Minion, and since you have 9, that’s 45 Maximum Essence, which is a huge amount. This lets you further boost Bone Spear’s Damage by 45% if you cast at Maximum Essence. So the Requiem Aspect is worth getting as long as you get 4 or the max roll for it.

Affixes

• +Vulnerable Damage
• +Critical Strike Chance
• +Maximum Life
• +Damage to Stunned Enemies

Unique Equipment

No unique Equipment is recommended for this category.

Gems

For gems, you’ll want to slot:

• Weapon: Emeralds to increase Critical Strike Damage against Vulnerable enemies.
• Armor: Rubies to boost your Maximum Life.
• Jewelry: Skulls to boost your Defense value.

Paragon and Glyphs for the Necromancer Build

When it comes to Paragon Boards, we are mainly going to aim for Rare Nodes that increase our damage output, as well as Glyphs that synergize with our Build. Please note that the order in which I get the Nodes is just a general guideline, and you can adjust it to your current needs.

Second Paragon Board – Cult Leader

As mentioned earlier, the Cult Leader Paragon Board is focused on Minion Damage and protection so it doesn’t boost your D4 White Walker Necromancer Build’s damage in any way. There are a couple of really good Rare and Magic Nodes in this tree. First is Custody, which significantly reduces the damage your Minions take. Once you meet the Dexterity requirement, they’ll take lesser damage. Second is Overlord, which increases Minion Damage.

And what’s really great is a glyph socket positioned perfectly between these two clusters. Here, I recommend slotting the Deadraiser Glyph. This makes it so that Paragon Nodes within range gain plus a percentage bonus to your Minion Damage and Minion Damage Reduction modifiers. So Custody and Overlord are going to get affected as well as the Magic Nodes around them. Once you upgrade this to Level 15, its radius will expand to incorporate all Magic Nodes to further improve their performance in combat. 

Up until you have this Deadraiser Glyph, you probably need to use the Aspect of Hardened Bones to give your Minions enough damage reduction to stay alive. When this glyph reach Level 15, I was able to remove my Legendary Aspect. I find that healing them regularly improves their survivability. However, if you need more protection for them, then there’s a Rare Node in the upper left-hand corner called the Armor-Clad to provide your Minions with more Armor and Maximum Life.

Third Paragon Board – Bone Graft

From the Cult Leader Tree, I got the Skeletal Mages Nodes but had to sacrifice the Skeletal Warrior ones on the left to gain access to the Bone Graft Paragon Board. I then picked up some passives like Essence on Kill to keep my resources topped up as well as the Bone Graft Legendary Node to enhance both my damage and Maximum Essence the more Bone Skills I use. 

You’ll also unlock a third glyph socket to slot in Control and be able to deal more damage to Chilled, Frozen, and CCed enemies. 

Final Tips

With regard to node clusters, you’ll notice that there are several unused Magic Nodes on the way to the third glyph socket. The priority is to level up the Control Glyph to maximize the damage to CCed enemies while boosting your Minion Damage as well. So I intended to gain access to it first before going back to pick up these nodes. Also, you’ll need a bit more Dexterity there. My thought process will be to spend the next 20-30 Paragon points to flesh out this Bone Graft Tree with the things I missed, and then perhaps unlock more stuff in the Cult Leader Board, especially if I need more Minion survivability or want to get more Skeletal Warrior Damage.  

So that wraps up our Diablo 4 White Walker Necromancer Build. Even though Minions aren’t as strong as compared to sacrificing them, they continue to be viable in the endgame. They’re also fun to play with and contribute in other ways besides damage-dealing like Freezing enemies and providing Corpses for Corpse Explosion. 

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Stay tuned for more Diablo IV Builds. We have another Druid and Barbarian Build coming along so you can look forward to those. 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 Ultimate Beginner Guide and All Classes Overview if you are looking for more Diablo 4 content!