The Necromancer has always been one of the, if not the, most fun classes to play in Diablo 4. With access to a variety of builds dealing with Bone, Blood, and Darkness, there’s no wrong way to play the Necromancer when you get to the endgame.
But there’s one build that stands above the rest when you’re pushing through the higher tiers of the game. As popularized by the popular Diablo content creator Naecabon, the Blood Mist build is our pick for the best endgame Necromancer build. We take a seemingly simple skill and make it the core of how the build functions.
A guide to the Blood Mist endgame Necromancer build
The Blood Mist build revolves around maintaining maximum uptime on the Blood Mist skill itself. At first glance, a feat like this would require access to a lot of endgame gear but there is a simpler way of getting there. While we do need endgame gear eventually, on our way to acquire the gear, we focus on maximizing our Lucky Hit chance for maximum cooldown reduction on Blood Mist.
This is done using the Decrepify skill’s Lucky Hit ability, granting you a chance to reduce all your skill cooldowns every time you hit an enemy affected by Decrepify. With the other skills in our build, you are practically guaranteed to land consistent damage on all the Decrepified targets, which in turn provides an almost infinite uptime on Blood Mist.
To accomplish all of this, corpses are a must. This is why our chosen skills will all have something to do with either generating corpses or detonating them. But before we get to that, let us talk about Blood Mist, how it works, and what upgrade path we choose for this build.
Blood Mist turns the Necromancer into a bloody mist that grants you damage immunity. With the upgrades we’ve chosen for this build, it works as an offensive ability as well.
- Enhanced Blood Mist: The cooldown of Blood Mist is reduced each time you cast a skill that Overpowers.
- Ghastly Blood Mist: Blood Mist leaves a corpse behind every second it is active.
Enhanced Blood Mist is one of the upgrades that will help us get to an infinite uptime on Blood Mist and Ghastly Blood Mist grants us another source of corpse generation. While these upgrades might not seem very straightforward as to where this build is going, it will make more sense when we talk about the other skills we have chosen.
Skill progression
When we get to the endgame, this is what our six skill slots should look like.
- Blood Mist: The backbone of this build.
- Reap: Our Basic skill of choice. Great for Essence generation and initial damage. Also grants damage reduction for two seconds upon impact.
- Decrepify: Our Curse skill that cripples all enemies caught by slowing them and reducing their outgoing damage.
Reap is the best Basic skill in this build because of its corpse generation aspect with Acolyte’s Reap. This produces the first corpse you need to start your chain of explosions. Enhanced Reap also grants you bonus attack speed if the Reaped enemies die within two seconds. The attack speed bonus isn’t too important in this build, but it is a prerequisite to get to Acolyte’s Reap.
Next, the tempo-setting skill of this build is Decrepify. While the curse is great for crowd controlling by itself, it truly shines in this build with Abhorrent Decrepify. This upgrade grants you a Lucky Hit ability to reduce cooldowns when you damage a cursed enemy. Additionally, Enhanced Decrepify grants you a Lucky Hit ability to stun all cursed enemies when you damage them.
- Corpse Explosion: Consumes a corpse by detonating it, dealing area damage to all enemies.
- Corpse Tendrils: Spawns veins from a corpse that pulls in all nearby enemies to the corpse.
Now we get to the meat of this build. Corpse Explosion will be upgraded with Blighted Corpse Explosion, which releases a poison mist that slowly kills enemies instead of an explosion. With Enhanced Corpse Explosion’s increased radius, the chain reaction of explosions will cover the battlefield in miasma that drains enemies of their lives.
Corpse Tendrils is our control skill of choice, pulling all enemies to a corpse of choice and then detonating it with Corpse Explosion. The upgrades to this skill also slow all enemies in the radius of the skill (Enhanced Corpse Tendrils) and leave them all in a Vulnerable state upon impact (Plagued Corpse Tendrils), making it the perfect crowd control ability.
With the right Aspects later in this build, Blood Mist will take care of our corpse detonating needs.
- Bone Storm: Our Ultimate skill of choice. A swirling tornado of Bone surrounds you for 10 seconds, dealing damage to all enemies in the area.
Bone Storm is the perfect Ultimate ability for this build since it not only deals damage, but its upgrade, Prime Bone Storm, grants you damage reduction while the skill is active. Not only does it become a great defensive skill to use in tandem with Blood Mist, but Supreme Bone Storm turns it into an offensive monster by granting you increased critical strike chance.
The next part of this guide tackles the passive abilities needed to support this build.
Passive abilities
The passive abilities we choose for this build are divided into the Key Passive and the secondary passives that affect other active skills.
- Hewed Flesh: Your outgoing damage has a chance to create a corpse from an affected target.
- Grim Harvest: You generate Essence each time you consume a corpse.
- Fueled by Death: You deal increased damage after consuming a corpse.
- Death’s Embrace: You deal increased damage to and receive less damage from close enemies.
- Amplify Damage: You deal increased damage to enemies afflicted by a Curse skill.
- Reaper’s Pursuit: You gain increased movement speed after damaging enemies with Darkness skills.
- Crippling Darkness: You gain a chance to stun enemies after damaging them with Darkness skills.
- Terror: You deal increased Shadow damage to enemies that are stunned, chilled, slowed, immobilized, or frozen.
- Gloom: You deal increased Shadow damage to enemies that are hit by Darkness skills.
- Stand Alone: You gain increased damage reduction from all sources when you have no minions.
- Memento Mori: You gain 60 percent increased Sacrifice bonuses by sacrificing both Skeletal Warriors and Skeletal Mages.
And finally, we choose the Key Passive ability for this build.
- Shadowblight: Your outgoing Shadow damage inflicts enemies with Shadowblight. When affected, enemies take bonus damage for every tenth hit of Shadow damage. Additionally, Shadowblight’s damage increases even further based on your Shadow damage over time bonus.
Next, we talk about the Necromancer’s Book of the Dead choices.
Book of the Dead
The Book of the Dead is the Necromancer’s unique class mechanic. This tome allows you to summon undead creatures to aid you in battle. If you would rather not have minions by your side, you can choose to sacrifice them instead and gain additional bonuses to your stats.
Since this build is complete and all of our six skill slots are full, we are better off sacrificing our minions for the bonuses they provide.
- Skeletal Warriors – Reapers (Sacrifice): You deal increased Shadow damage.
- Skeletal Mages – Cold (Sacrifice): You deal increased damage to Vulnerable enemies.
- Golems – Iron (Sacrifice): You deal increased critical strike damage.
The final part of this build revolves around choosing the right Aspects for your gear.
Aspects
The Aspects that you choose will drastically change how you play this build. First, we need to address the two most important Aspects that we need to imbue.
- Aspect of Explosive Mist: Blood Mist automatically detonates nearby corpses when active. Each corpse detonated reduces the cooldown of Blood Mist.
- Blood-soaked Aspect: Blood Mist leaves a trail of Shadow damage behind it that deals damage over time. Additionally, there is no movement speed penalty for Blood Mist.
The first Aspect effectively automates the detonation process and ensures that there is as little downtime as possible between Blood Mist casts, letting it stay active for as long as possible. The second Aspect turns Blood Mist into a mobility spell as well as increases your overall Shadow damage over time with the trail of Desecrated Ground.
The rest of the Aspects complete this build.
- Aspect of Ultimate Shadow: Bone Storm turns into a Shadow skill that deals additional Shadow damage over time.
- Aspect of Shielding Storm: You gain a barrier each time you damage enemies with Bone Storm.
- Aspect of Decay: You increase the damage of Shadowblight each time it triggers on an enemy. This effect stacks up to five times.
- Aspect of Grasping Veins: You gain increased critical strike chance when you cast Corpse Tendrils. Additionally, you deal increased critical strike damage to enemies affected by the spell.
- Aspect of Disobedience: You gain increased armor (stacking) each time you deal damage.
- Blighted Aspect: You deal increased damage when Shadowblight procs 10 times.
- Ghostwalker Aspect: You gain increased movement speed and can run through enemies when you turn Unstoppable.
Finally, some unique gear that fits the build.
- Black River: Corpse Explosion consumes four additional corpses in the area, dealing more damage with a larger effect radius.
- Howl from Below: Corpse Explosion instead summons an explosive skeleton that seeks out the nearest enemy and detonates.
- Lidless Wall: You gain a chance to create an additional Bone Storm outside of your active Bone Storm when you damage an enemy.
- X’Fal’s Corroded Signet: All of your damage over time effects have a chance to erupt, dealing bonus burst damage.
And that’s the end of the build. To further enhance your season two experience, check out what Vampiric Powers would suit your Blood Mist Necromancer.
