Diablo 3 Necromancer Builds Guide

If you’re looking to find some great Diablo 3 Season 19 Necromancer builds, for different purposes and different play-styles, you’ve...

If you’re looking to find some great Diablo 3 Season 19 Necromancer builds, for different purposes and different play-styles, you’ve come to the right place.

This guide will provide you with the best Diablo 3 build, for both beginners and end-game players; as well as a leveling build. If you are an aspiring Crusader, we have builds for that as well as other classes.

Diablo 3 Season 19 Necromancer Builds

This beginner build is for Necromancers at Fresh level 70, who have the Pestilence Master’s Shroud set.

Active Skills – The active skills you need for this build are:

  • Corpse Lance – Ricochet (Left Click)
  • Blood Rush – Molting (Right Click)
  • Bone Armor – Dislocation (1)
  • Devour – Cannibalize (2)
  • Bone Spear – Blighted Marrow (3)
  • Land of the Dead – Frozen Lands (4)

Passive Skills The passive skills you need for this build are:

  • Stand Alone
  • Final Service
  • Blood is Power
  • Fueled by Death

Play-Style
The main feature of this build is that it uses the steady damage bonus of a poison-stacking spec and the CDR-like speed farming staples.

When playing with this build, use the ‘Land of the Dead’ active skill as soon as it is ready. To take this build to the next level, acquire the weapon ‘Nayr’s Black Death’, its power will complement your Bone Armor – Dislocation, Bone Spear – Blighted Marrow and Corpse Lance – Ricochet wonderfully.

After acquiring Nayr’s Black Death, the next weapon you need is the ‘Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac’, which will help you use the Bone Spear – Blighted Marrow for cooldown resets.

To maintain your HP and also acquire free Corpse Lance shots from the Pestilence 2-piece, spam Devour as much as you can. Keep moving about with Blood Rush.

Leveling Build

This build is designed to help beginner Necromancers easily, and reliably level up through the pre-Torment hurdles and bring you into low Torment farming; without the need for any specific legendary or set bonuses.

Active Skills – The active skills you need for this build are:

  • Bones Spikes – Sudden Impact (Left Click)
  • Skeletal Mage – Singularity (Right Click)
  • Blood Rush – Potency (1)
  • Frailty – Scent of Blood (2)
  • Command Skeletons – Frenzy (3)
  • Devour – Devouring Aura (4)

Passive Skills – The passive skills you need for this build are:

  • Extended Servitude
  • Overwhelming Essence
  • Spreading Malediction
  • Fueled by Death

Play-Style
This leveling build is centered around using Corpses to accumulate power, then releasing it using minion summons. Mixing the Bone Spikes skill into the perpetual Corpse usage by Devour – Devouring Aura will help you top your Essence off frequently, and also use your whole reserve for powerful Skeletal Mage – Singularity summons.

Use your Command Skeletons on the bigger, stronger enemies, and weaken all the enemies you can using the Frailty curse. Keep in mind that you can always use the Blood Rush – Potency skill to reposition and keep yourself out of the way of the minion frontline.

The power of this build comes straight from the Skeletal Mage minions. They will be responsible for most of the damage dealt by this build. You can obtain the base Skeletal Mage at level 5, and most of its runes can be acquired very quickly. Right as you reach level 29, be sure to switch to Singularity, if you can.

Essence is quite a difficult resource to obtain, as it does not passively restore itself. So, it is crucial to have an active regenerator on your bar, if you’re using a leveling build. Bone Spikes is perfect for this build as it has a long reach, good utility runes, and an impressive 24 Essence for each cast.

What makes it even better is that you get Bone Spikes at level 1, and the stun rune ‘Sudden Impact’ at level 6. Once you level up further, trade this rune for Path of Bones at level 43, to get better damage.

The Blood Rush skill in this build works the mobility aspect. It’s a long range, blink ability, which is reminiscent to the Wizard’s Teleport. The Command Skeletons skill provides helpful additional damage, allowing you to dish out high, single-target DPS.

Endgame

As the build name suggests, this LoD Skeletons Group Necromancer build is aimed at powerful, high level players. The mix of the Legacy of Dreams’ versatility, powerful Thorn synergy, and great use of the class’ innate potential, this build is an excellent Rift Guardian killer.

Active SkillsThe active skills you need for this build are:

  • Grim Scythe – Cursed Scythe (Left Click)
  • Command Skeletons – Kill Command (Right Click)
  • Land of the Dead – Plaguelands (1)
  • Bone Spear – Blighted Marrow (2)
  • Death Nova – Blight (3)
  • Bone Armor – Dislocation (4)

Passive Skills – The passive skills you need for this build are:

  • Aberrant Animator
  • Swift Harvesting
  • Eternal Torment
  • Spreading Malediction

Gear
Unlike the previous builds, this build requires specific gear to actually work; as it is an endgame build.

  • Helmet – Andariel’s Visage
  • Shoulders – Pauldrons of the Skeleton King
  • Gloves – Tasker and Theo
  • Chest – Aquila Cuirass
  • Belt – Dayntee’s Binding
  • Pants – Swamp Land Waders
  • Boots – Illusory Boots
  • Bracers – Nemesis Bracers
  • Amulet – Wisdom of Kalan
  • Ring 1 – Stone of Jordan
  • Ring 2 – Convention of Elements
  • Weapon – Trag’Oul’s Corroded Fang
  • Offhand – Bone Ringer
  • Legendary Gem 1 – Boyarsky’s Chip
  • Legendary Gem 2 – Bane of the Stricken
  • Legendary Gem 3 – Legacy of Dreams
  • Weapon Slot – Nayr’s Black Death
  • Armor Slot – Bloodsong Mail
  • Jewelry Slot – Krysbin’s Sentence

Play-Style
This skill selection revolves around using Poison to add stacks to Nayr’s Black Death, while also adding as many synergistic runes as you can. Grim Scythe – Cursed Scythe is one of the greatest utility skills in the Necromancer class, as it has a chance to apply the base effect of all the curses (Decrepify, Leech and Frailty), without you even having to slot them on your bar.

Your main weapon for this build, ‘Trag’Oul’s Corroded Fang’ works very well with this skill, as it increases the chance of it to apply the curses, and also boosts damage against cursed targets.

The Bone Armor skill works as a damage reduction buffer. It plays very well with Wisdom of Kalan, but you don’t necessarily need it; but do get it if you can.

Command Skeletons will be the main damage dealer of this build, and Bone Spear – Blighted Marrow and Death Nova – Blight will be your couple of Essence spenders. They add a lot of stacks to Nayr’s Black Death, so they should only be used to refresh the Nayr buff’s duration.

In this build, The Land of the Dead skill is not supposed to be used to spam any corpse skills while it’s active; instead, it will be used to grant you a Nayr stack using the Plaguelands rune.

Aberrant Animator is required as a baseline since this Thorns build is dependent upon pet application of the effect. To stack Bane of the Stricken quicker, Swift Harvesting is used. This will result in greater attack speed.

The Eternal Torment and Spreading Malediction passives work incredibly well with each other, as the Eternal Torment makes Cursed Scythe’s applied curses permanent, and Spreading Malediction improves your damage output for each cursed enemy.

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Ali is a passionate RPG gamer. He believes that western RPGs still have a lot to learn from JRPGs. He is editor-in-chief at SegmentNext.com but that doesn't stop him from writing about his favorite video ...