Diablo 4 is out in the wild and players are slowly working their way through the game’s five classes to discover their preferred playstyle. If you’re planning on taking the Sorcerer or Barbarian, we’ve also got guides for how to build the powerful Lightning Sorcerer and Hammer of the Ancient Barbarian builds. However, for this build guide we’re taking a look at the Necromancer – specifically how to build the deadly Shadow Summoner Necromancer.
The Necromancer is all about utilising armies of the dead to do your bidding. The Shadow Summoner Necromancer build takes full advantage of your skeletal minions complete with buffs to ensure that they’re always outputting great damage while staying in combat for as long as possible. Unlike the previous builds we’ve covered, this build is a bit more complex as it requires a decent amount of skills to pour points into, some of which need you to at least hit level 20 first.
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Diablo 4 Shadow Summoner Necromancer Build Guide
To start building the Shadow Summoner Necromancer, you’ll need to distribute points into the following skills:
- Reap: Reap will be your Basic Skill. Much like the Sorcerer’s Arc Lash, this ability lets you swipe at enemies in front of you with a scythe. It’s great for dealing with large mobs but it becomes deadly with the boosted attack speed per enemy hit.
- Blight: Blight is a Core Skill for the Shadow Summoner Necromancer build. This leaves a trail that deals damage to enemies that walk through it. Upgrading to Enhanced Blight ensures enemies are slowed down by 25%, meaning they’ll be taking more damage over time in the defiled area. Upgrading it further to Supernatural Blight adds an additional 10% extra damage on top of that.
- Hewed Flesh: Hewed Flesh is also a great Passive Skill to have. It has a set percentage chance to create a corpse at the target’s location when you land a critical hit, doubling it on bosses. As you can imagine, it’s very helpful for replenishing your army.
- Corpse Explosion: Moving onto the Macabre Skills, we have the good old Corpse Explosion. This allows you to detonate corpses around the area for big AoE damage. You’ll want to max this one out and upgrade it to Enhanced Corpse Explosion and Blight Corpse Explosion for maximum results, though it isn’t a big requirement for this build.
- Grim Harvest: Grim Harvest is another Macabre/Passive Skill worth investing in. It essentially keeps your Essence high which you’ll need since you’re constantly casting spells.
- Fueled by Death: With the Passive Skill Fueled by Death, this increases your base damage for a few moments everytime you exhume a corpse. It’s a great offensive buff that won’t run out of steam with stacks of corpses to utilise.
- Death’s Embrace: The only Corruption Skill you’ll need for this build is Death’s Embrace. Working hand-in-hand with Reap, any enemies close to you take more damage from your attacks and as a result, deal less damage to you.
- Corpse Tendrils: The Summoning Skill Corpse Tendrils draws enemies closer to your corpses and stuns them. Paired with Corpse Explosion, this is an incredibly handy and powerful skill to control crowds. Upgrading it to Enhanced Corpse Tendrils applies the Slow status ailment before pulling them.
- Necrotic Carapace: The Passive Skill Necrotic Carapace from the Summoning skill tree bolsters your base life total whenever a corpse is created from one of your minions or skills. It’s useful for staying alive and keeping your health up.
- Reaper’s Pursuit/Terror/Crippling Darkness/Gloom: You can optionally pour a point into each of these skills, further increasing your stun chance, movement speed, damage taken by shadow damage and bonus damage to slowed, stunned or immobilised enemies.
- Army of the Dead: Army of the Dead should be your Ultimate Skill. This summons skeletons to fight alongside you for a few moments before exploding and dealing 30% of their base damage. Upgrading it to Prime Army of the Dead leaves behind a corpse while further enhancing it to Supreme Army of the Dead summons skeletal warriors and skeletal mages. From here, you’ll have a number of options for buffing your minions, including useful skills like Hellbent Commander, which buffs your minions’ damage, or Death’s Defense which keeps them from losing more than 50% of their maximum life from a single hit.
- Shadowblight: Since this build is all about buffing Shadow damage, you’ll want to lean into Shadowblight. Any Shadow damage you inflict on enemies infects them with Shadowblight for two seconds, though it also grants you and your minions bonus damage. Every 20th time this procs, the bonus damage multiplies, which is very handy in boss fights.
Finally, there’s the Necromancer Aspects you’ll want to get for this build. There’s only really one that’s gonna serve the Shadow Summoner Necromancer well:
- Blood Getter’s Aspect: Increases the maximum number of Skeletal Warriors a player can summon. This can be useful for players who want to overwhelm their enemies with a large number of minions.
Diablo 4 is now available for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC.
