One of the builds you can make for Necromancers in Diablo 4 is the Blight Necromancer build. All classes in Diablo 4 offer many exclusive skills and abilities. The name of our build alone suggests that this build is all about utilizing the Blight core skill of the Necromancer class to deal Damage over time to enemies.
If you love ordering around your guardians and sacrificing them for your gains, this build is for you. The guide below will help you select which skills to unlock, the right skill rotation, and the best Paragon board choices.
Jump To:
- Skills and unlock order
- Book of the Dead upgrades
- Playstyle and skill rotation
- Gear, Gems, and Stats
- Paragon Boards
- Unique items
- Legendary Aspects
- Elixirs and Potions
Blight Necromancer skills and unlock order
The Necromancer Skill tree is quite complex as a whole. But don’t worry; we will focus on a confined list of skills for our Diablo 4 Blight Necromancer build.
- Decompose (Basic)
- Blight (Core)
- Blood Mist (Macabre)
- Corpse Explosion (Corpse)
- Decrepify (Curse)
- Corpse Tendrils (Summoning)
- Shadowblight (Key Passive)
The following is the order in which you should unlock all the skills and their upgrades using your skill points.
| Unlock Order | Skill Name |
| 1 | Decompose |
| 2 | Blight (Rank 5) |
| 3 | Enhanced Blight |
| 4 | Supernatural Blight |
| 5 | Blood Mist |
| 6 | Corpse Explosion (Rank 5) |
| 7 | Enhanced Corpse Explosion |
| 8 | Plagued Corpse Explosion |
| 9 | Decrepify |
| 10 | Corpse Tendrils |
| 11 | Iron Maiden |
| 12 | Hewed Flesh (Rank 3) |
| 13 | Grim Harvest (Rank 3) |
| 14 | Fueled By Death (Rank 3) |
| 15 | Amplify Damage (Rank 3) |
| 16 | Death’s Embrace (Rank 3) |
| 17 | Shadowblight |
| 18 | Death’s Embrace (Rank 3) |
| 19 | Gloom (Rank 3) |
| 20 | Terror (Rank 3) |
| 21 | Stand Alone |
| 22 | Memento Mori |
Book of the Dead upgrades
Since we focus on inflicting high amounts of damage on enemies using Shadow skills, there is no need to worry about upgrading your Book of the Dead. The Minions will be sacrificed in the battle to amplify damage and gain Life generation.
- Skeletal Warriors: By sacrificing the front-line skeletal warriors, the Shadow damage from your characters increases by a specific percentage.
- Skeletal Mages: This back-line artillery Minion force will also be sacrificed to gain increased damage against Vulnerable enemies.
- Golems: These disruption tanks will be the source of gaining bonus Life in the battle.
Blight Necromancer playstyle and skill rotation
You must keep your enemies slowed down initially so they do not leave your Damage over Time attacks’ range. This can be made possible if you successfully stack Lucky Hit Chance on your gears and use the skill set in a suitable order.
The Corpse Explosion will be the main source of damage and Essence generation. Its upgraded version, Blighted Corpse Explosion, damages the ground and allows you to slow enemies while applying a debuff on them.
Blight increases the damage dealt to the enemies by inflicting the Slow effect on them with its enhanced upgrade. Before Blight, Decrepify should be used to curse enemies to Slow them and take less damage from them.
On top of that, Iron Maiden will further enhance our damage power using some suitable legendary aspects.
Our Blight Necromancer build in Diablo 4 will be incomplete without adding the Shadowblight key passive. With this unique skill in your arsenal, you and your army of Minions will deal bonus damage to the enemies once Shadow skills hit them.
Damage Reduction from Enemies
Taking less damage from enemies translates to more prolonged survival. A few skills below will be pretty helpful on the battlefield for damage reduction.
- Death’s Embrace: With this skill, you take less damage from Close enemies while dealing more of it to them.
- Decrepify: After using this skill, you will take 20 percent reduced damage from enemies for the next few seconds.
Essence Generation
Essence is their primary resource, which restores itself automatically, though very slowly. Using the following skills on the Necromancer will also grant Essence.
- Decompose: As a basic skill; Decompose allows Necromancers to generate Essence by dealing with DoT and creating a corpse for battle.
- Grim Harvest: With this fantastic skill, consuming a corpse gains you 2 Essence.
Blight Necromancer Damage Rotation
To start the rotation, the first thing to do is curse the enemies with Decrepify. It will Slow them for you and reduce the Cooldown for a short period whenever you land one Lucky Hit.
The next skill to use will be Blood Mist, which gains you an immune status for 3 seconds and Heals you in the process.
Most enemies will already be wiped out of existence in the battle. Here Corpse Tendrils helps you to make corpses fight against enemies. It will take some time to master, but you will love it once you know how to use it.
However, this will slow you down, but the damage they do will compensate for it. This tank attack allows you to clear out tough opponents quite quickly.
Gear, Gems, and Stats priority
The Stats for the Blight Necromancer build are mentioned in order of importance. You need to upgrade them accordingly.
- Intelligence
- Willpower
- Dexterity
Following is a list of affixes to prioritize on gear for our build.
- Damage reduction from Close Enemies
- Damage Reduction from Affected by Shadow Damage Over Time Enemies
- Ranks of Corpse Explosion
- Ranks of Blight
- Movement Speed
- Lucky Hit Chance
- Movement Speed After Killing an Elite
For the Blight Necromancer build in Diablo 4, we recommend the following Gems to have on each of the gear slots:
| Type | Gemstone | Effect |
| Weapon | Amethyst | This gem will help gain increased Damage over Time. |
| Armor | Ruby | This gem will help gain increased Damage over Time. |
| Jewelry | Skull | If you’re struggling to survive tough bosses or swarms of enemies, using Skull will rescue you by powering up armor. |
Paragon Boards for Blight Necromancer
Below is our recommended list of Necromancer Paragon nodes and glyphs that you should consider to maximize the efficiency of the Blight Necromancer build in D4.
- Wither: This node will increase the damage caused by Shadow skills, which further amplifies by having extra Willpower.
- Flesh Eater: This one grants an additional 40% damage when five corpses are consumed. The Consuming Corpses damage also gets supported by this fantastic rare node.
- Bone Graft: This legendary node increases your Essence and damage when you hit enemies with bone skills.
- Scent of Death: With this legendary node, your character gets Damage reduction and an increased damage bonus against enemies.
Moving on to the Glyphs, consider going for the ones mentioned below.
- Sacrificial: This preliminary rare glyph significantly bonuses to all Magic nodes within range. It also helps you deal more damage when you’ve sacrificed all Minions.
- Control: This rare node is convenient when the matter comes to Crowd Controlled enemies.
- Darkness: Give you a boost in the Shadow damage for the cost of five Willpower. Moreover, it will also reduce the enemy damage output after you do shadow damage.
Unique Items
You can’t quickly get these higher-tier items in Diablo 4. However, if you have them, they can make your build one of the best in the game.
The following unique items are pretty compatible with our Blight Necromancer build.
- Andariel’s Visage (Helm): This unique items help you get extra Life Steal and attack speed in D4.
- Howl from Below: Allow you to boost the damage by corpse explosion skill.
Legendary Aspects for Blight Necromancer
As aspects are not readily available from loot drops, we mostly have to find them in Dungeons throughout the five zones of Sanctuary. The aspects present in the Codex of Power can also be extracted by heading to the Occultist.
You can pair the following useful aspects with your Blight Necromancer Build in Diablo 4.
- Aspect of Explosive Mist: You can use it to activate the Corpse Explosion to damage surrounding enemies.
- Blighted Aspect: It is an offensive enhancement that empowers you with enhanced damage against Slowed enemies and even increased damage against Stunned adversaries.
- Aspect of Disobedience: This significantly boosts your overall resilience, making it harder for opponents to bring you down with their attacks.
- Aspect of the Void: With this aspect in your arsenal, you can pull enemies near the area, which is affected when using the Blight skill.
Elixirs and Health Potions
To complete your Blight Necromancer Build in Diablo 4, you must gather Elixirs and Potions to ensure your survivability through to the end. Once you have the necessary levels for visiting certain towns in Sanctuary, you must visit them to upgrade healing potions that may help regain the lost amount of health.
Elixirs should be prioritized while considering the nature of the enemies you are combating. For example, in the case of the Slaying Elixirs, the Elixir of Man-slaying is useful against Bandits, Cultists, Cannibals, etc.
The Assault set of Elixirs provides attack speed (in addition to EXP). So, the magic Elixir called Heady Assault Elixir helps gain 20% attack speed and 5% experience for the next 30 minutes.
