There are several builds that you can make for the Necromancer in Diablo 4, the most popular of which is the Summoner Necromancer build.
The name alone gives it away that this build is all about utilizing the Necromancer’s exclusive skill to summon undead minions to attack, defend, and support.
Having an undead army to do your bidding makes the Necromancer one of the easiest classes to level up in Diablo 4.
You are also going to find an easy time against some of the most difficult bosses because your minions are going to be taking most of the damage, leaving you safe in the back.
The following guide will get you started on which skills to unlock, which Book of the Dead upgrades to pick, the right skill rotation, the best unique items, and more.
- 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
Summoner Necromancer skills and unlock order
The Necromancer skill tree can feel a bit overwhelming at first. Do not fret though, below are the main skills that the Summoner Necromancer build revolves around in Diablo 4. You just need to focus on these.
- Sever (Basic)
- Golem (Offensive)
- Reap (Defensive)
- Raise Skeleton (Core)
- Corpse Explosion (Offensive)
- Corpse Tendrils (Active)
- Army of the Dead (Ultimate)
So we have devised a list of skills based on the Summoner Necromancer build. It will include the order of unlocking them and their upgrades as well from the Necromancer Skill tree in Diablo 4
| Unlock Order | Skills (Rank) |
|---|---|
| 1 | Bone Splinters |
| 2 | Enhanced Bone Splinters |
| 3 | Bone Spear |
| 4 | Reap |
| 5 | Enhanced Bone Spear |
| 6 | Supernatural Bone Spear |
| 7 | Hewed Flesh (Rank 3) |
| 8 | Blood Mist |
| 9 | Grim Harvest (Rank 3) |
| 10 | Fueled by Death (Rank 3) |
| 11 | Skeletal Warrior Mastery (Rank 3) |
| 12 | Decrepify (Rank 3) |
| 13 | Enhanced Decrepify |
| 14 | Abhorrent Decrepify |
| 15 | Death’s Embrace (Rank 3) |
| 16 | Skeletal Mage Mastery (Rank 3) |
| 17 | Death’s Reach (Rank 3) |
| 18 | Necrotic Carapace (Rank 3) |
| 19 | Bone Storm |
| 20 | Prime Bone Storm |
| 21 | Supreme Bone Storm |
| 22 | Bonded in Essence (Rank 3) |
| 23 | Inspiring Leader (Rank 3) |
| 24 | Death’s Defense (Rank 3) |
| 25 | Kalan’s Edict |
| 26 | Golem Mastery (Rank 3) |
| 27 | Blighted Corpse Explosion |
So from the table above you can look up these skill points and unlock them and also work on upgrading them for your Summoner Necromancer Build in Diablo 4.
However, you need to keep in mind that based on your choices you can definitely turn your Summoner Necromancer build into a heavy offensive build by relying on your minions to take out the hordes of enemies.
In addition to that you will also be capitalizing on the bonuses from these respective skill points which will further increase your attack damage and attack speed as well making your build an overpowered one in Diablo 4.
Moreover, if you are tired of the skeleton aid then you can resort to the sturdy golem ones. Use the Golem mastery on them and it will increase their health and attacking damage as well in Diablo 4.
Finally, your Summoner Necromancer build cannot be completed without the ultimate skill known as the Army of the Dead. Using it you can raise the dead to your aid, explode them on nearby groups of enemies and deal massive damage on your foes as well.
Book of the Dead upgrades
The Necromancer can raise minions to do his bidding in Diablo 4. Since this build is purely focused on summoning undead minions, you need to unlock the best upgrades in your Book of the Dead.
- Skeletal Reapers: Upgrade 1 and 2
- Bone Skeletons: Upgrade 1 and 2
- Blood Golem: Upgrade 1 and 2
Summoner Necromancer playstyle and skill rotation
The main focus for your Summoner Necromancer build should be to not only keep yourself alive but your minions as well.
You need to be on the defensive end from those elite monsters who will be specifically targeting you in Diablo 4.
In short, your defenses are based on your personal positioning in the game, healing your minions and gathering loads of essence from your mage skeletons in Diablo 4.
Your Bone Spear, Enhanced Bone Spear, and Supernatural Bone Spear are going to be your main focus in the Summoner Necromancer build.
As the Supernatural Bone Spear will be making your enemies vulnerable which will help you by increasing the damage output of corpse explosion in Diablo 4.
This way your Summoner Necromancer Build can utilize your warrior capabilities of creating these corpses and then utilize those particular corpses for damage output in Diablo 4.
So you can start by using the Summoner Necromancer build to create corpses to surround yourself in Diablo 4. Those corpses will be generating your essence, healing your skeletons, and doing damage to your enemies as well.
Damage rotation
So anytime you have full essence, which is the Necromancer’s mana, you will be dumping your Bone Spear in Diablo 4.
It will end up creating more vulnerable enemies thus increasing the damage of Bone Spear for your Summoner Necromancer Build in Diablo 4.
Similarly, if you run out of essence you can generate it back using the Grim Harvest skill in Diablo 4.
So basically this build is about positioning you behind your skeletons as they are going to be your attacking power and will take the initial aggression from the monsters.
This will allow you to cast Corpse Explosion freely on your enemies. Moreover, you can also use Decrepify to curse your enemies and then simply hit them with the Bone spear.
You can also use the Ring of Mendeln to turn your minions into those crowd-controlled beasts. As it allows you to trigger lucky hits with up to a 10 percent chance to empower all your minions.
This paired with the Corpse Explosion brings that chance to 50 percent in Diablo 4. So if you have 12 minions surrounding you, this will cause the next attack from each of these minions to explode for massive physical damage in Diablo 4.
Finally, you can use the Bone Storm to deal with elite enemies and Bosses in Diablo 4. It will allow you to capitalize on the extra critical strike chance by dealing a strong attack in the form of a swirling storm of bones.
This attack will give your minions the upper hand as they will be receiving a portion of that extra critical strike chance as well. So overall your Summoner Necromancer Build will be a tough nut to crack for the enemies in Diablo 4.
Gear, Gems, and Stats
So if you want to make the best out of your Summoner Necromancer Build in Diablo 4, then you should use that gear which ensures the survivability of your minions for a far longer duration.
| Gear | Name |
| (2 Handed) Sword | Spinal of Reanimation |
| Helm | Deathless Visage |
| Chest | Sovereign Mail of Disobedience |
| Gloves | Coldbringer’s Adventure Gloves |
| Boots | Viscous Warlord Boots |
| Amulet | Blood Getter’s Choker |
| Ring | Ring of Mendeln |
So to determine the solidness of your Summoner Necromancer build you will have to resort with the item affixes that come with the items you used. These affixes will ultimately increase the stats of your respective build in Diablo 4. These include:
- Increased ranks of Skills and Passives
- Increased Critical Strike Damage with Bone Skills
- Increased Summoning Skill Damage
- Increased Damage Reduction
- Increased Physical damage
- Increase in Max Minion Life
- Increase in Ranks of Corpse Explosion
- Increase in Movement speed and Intelligence
- Increased Healing from items and enemies
Furthermore, when it comes to prioritizing Diablo 4 stats, Here is what you need to look for in your gear.
| Primary Stats | Effects Per Point |
| Intelligence | +0.1 percent Skill Damage+0.05 percent to All Resistance |
| Willpower | +0.1 percent Resource Generation+0.1 percent to Healing received+0.25 Overpower Damage |
| Dexterity | +0.02 Critical Strike Chance +0.025 Dodge Chance |
Furthermore, you can use the following gems to pair with your Summoner Necromancer Build in Diablo 4. These include:
| Gear | Gem (Type) |
| Weapon | Emerald |
| Armor | Ruby |
| Jewelry | Skull |
Paragon Boards
The Paragon Boards allow you to place points in rare and legendary nodes which increase the stats of your Summoner Necromancer build in Diablo 4.
So what happens here is that every time you get a paragon point you will be able to put these in the nodes, these nodes have their own attributes and benefits and also give off bonuses based on the nodes that are around them in Diablo 4.
There are plenty of paragon nodes that you can find for your Summoner Necromancer build in Diablo 4.
- Glyph Socket: The main highlight of using it is that you can generate massive damage to crowd-controlled enemies through your Summoner Necromancer Build in Diablo 4. However, this requires a radius increase so this control must have level 15 or higher. This way you will have enough radius to gain more intelligence and get those secondary effects going.
These include the Skeletal Mage Glyphs, Skeletal Warrior Glyphs, etc. Moreover, you can level up these Glyphs as well for warrior damage and increased armor in Diablo 4.
Exploit
If you don’t have the required level (15) you can go with this Rare Glyph in Diablo 4. The reason for considering the exploit in other slots is due to its potential for more damage instead of the survivability factor which should play nicely for your Summoner Necromancer build in Diablo 4.
Preservation
This rare node grants you an additional 200 Armor which works really well for armor defenses along with granting you an intelligence of (+10) in Diablo 4.
Knowledge
After you unlock this rare node you can increase the damage output by 20 percent and intelligence by +10 in Diablo 4.
Custody
Once you utilize the paragon points on this Rare Node in Diablo 4, it can be very beneficial for your minions.
As you can end up getting a 16 percent Damage reduction for your Minions followed by an Intelligence of (+10) as well in Diablo 4 for your Summoner Necromancer Build.
Cult Leader
Choosing the paragon node for your Summoner Necromance build, you will get all the benefits of this legendary node which will increase the damage of your minions in Diablo 4.
In this case, the damage output will exceed by 45 percent, which is pretty significant when dealing with large groups of enemies in Diablo 4.
Flesh-Eater
Using this legendary node from the second paragon board in your Summoner Necromancer Build you can consume five corpses.
This in turn grants you with 40 percent increased damage for at least six seconds in Diablo 4.
This is because corpse explosion is basically your primary source of damage, so you should definitely use this paragon board for your Summoner Necromancer builds in Diablo.
Unique Items
So if you want to pair the best Unique Item with your Summoner Necromancer build in Diablo 4 then you can resort to using the Ring of Mendeln.
Ring of Mendeln: This Ancestral Unique Ring grants you massive cold resistance and shadow resistance for your Summoner Necromance build in Diablo 4.
Along with these, you get other affixes which include a Lucky Hit Chance of 4.8 percent as well. As for your minions, their attack speed increases by 11 percent along with their maximum life which goes up by 31.5 percent in Diablo 4.
Coming to the major aspect of this Unique Item, you can use more than 7 minions to get a 10 percent chance to generate an explosive attack from each of these minions.
So as your minion comes in contact with the enemy he will explode, causing a physical damage of 12,148 which can prove to be very resourceful for your Summoner Necromancer in Diablo 4.
Legendary Aspects
So moving on to the Legendary Aspects from your Summoner Necromancer Build in Diablo 4. You can work your way by grinding those dungeons, strongholds, etc in World Tier 3 and finally get your hands on these amazing legendary aspects to boost your respective build stats in Diablo 4.
Here you need to keep in mind that the aspects you get from the codex of power can be transferred as well in Diablo 4.
To do that you can use an Occultist to help you in transferring them onto the gear you want as well.
We have mentioned the legendary aspects that you can pair with your Summoner Necromancer Build in Diablo 4.
- Aspect of Frenzied Dead: This legendary offensive aspect offers a lot of incentives for your Summoner Necromancer build in Diablo 4. These include your minions gaining attack speed after striking the enemies and this attack speed goes up by 42 percent.
- Aspect of Hardened Bones: This aspect is beneficial for your minions given that you have more than seven minions on the battlefield in Diablo 4. It increases their damage reduction by 20 percent.
- Aspect of Reanimation: An offensive aspect that offers a damage increase of 30 percent to your minions while they are alive. However, this aspect kicks in after 10 sec in Diablo 4.
- Unyielding’s Commander’s Aspect: Once your Summoner Necromancer build is equipped in this aspect your army of minions will gain massive attack speed. Furthermore, their resistance to damage will also be increased by 90 percent making them more formidable in Diablo 4
- Protecting Aspect: This is a defensive aspect that allows you to form a magical bubble that works to defend you by absorbing the enemy damage for a short while in Diablo 4.
Elixirs and Potions
To complete your Summoner Necromancer Build in Diablo 4, you will need to stock up on Elixirs and Potions to ensure your survivability through to the end.
Since you have used this build for instilling damage on the hordes of enemies you need to take your own health into consideration as well.
For that, it is best to upgrade healing potions in order to increase their effectiveness in Diablo 4. You have the option to craft Elixirs as well, but their use is limited to one time.
On the other hand, you get special bonuses that can be equally resourceful in dire situations. So you can use the following elixir and potion with this Summoner Necromancer Build in Diablo 4.
Weak Assault Elixir
Using this elixir you can increase your attack speed and experience which will come in handy for you when engaging multiple (elite) leveled enemies in Diablo 4.
In addition to that it grants your Summoner Necromance with a special bonus in terms of providing it with different buffs for 30 minutes. During this, your resistance and attack speed are increased exponentially in Diablo 4.
Light Healing Potion
So if you are running low on health in your Summoner Necromancer build then you can use a light healing potion in Diablo 4.
It can help you massively by restoring 35 percent of your max life in 3 sec. Furthermore, you can also upgrade this healing potion once you reach level 30, to improve its effectiveness in Diablo 4.
