Necromancers are a staple of the Diablo series. The class was made iconic by its arsenal of Bone spells and Summons and the Necromancer excels when using these builds. However, not many players rely on the untapped potential of the third path, Blood Magic. Blood spells were introduced back in Diablo 3 and really polished in Diablo 4.
Since the Blood path is not the most common Necromancer path, there are a few known builds that make the most of this skill tree. A popular build that is on the rise, especially with the release of season one, is Blood Lance.
Diablo 4 Blood Lance Necromancer build
When it comes to Blood-based builds, there are not a lot of viable ones out there in the meta currently. The Blood Lance build is our build of choice because it utilizes one of the more underrated core skills in the Necromancer’s set, Blood Lance. With the right upgrades and aspects, this skill scales amazingly well in the late game.
Unlike the other more popular Necromancer builds, like the Bone Spear build and various Summoning builds, the Blood Lance build takes advantage of life itself to deal the most damage.
Before we get started, the first question that needs to be answered is how does Blood Lance even work? Blood Lance is a Core skill that fires a spear of blood that latches on to the first enemy. After a few seconds, the lance ruptures, dealing damage to the enemy it was latched to as well as all surrounding enemies in the vicinity.
Related: Best Diablo 4 Necromancer leveling build
Blood Lance, like most active skills, has three different upgrades that dictate what bonuses you are going to get when you invest your skill points into them.
- Enhanced Blood Lance: Blood Lance now pierces through all previously lanced enemies, dealing reduced damage per enemy it pierces.
- Supernatural Blood Lance: After six casts of Blood Lance, the next lance will Overpower enemies hit and spawn a Blood Orb below the primary target.
- Paranormal Blood Lance: When two or more enemies (or one boss enemy) are affected by a Blood Lance, you gain increased attack speed. Additionally, the skill’s essence cost also reduces.
Enhanced Blood Lance is the mandatory upgrade to Blood Lance that increases the skill’s area of effect damage by piercing enemies.
From this point on, you get to choose your next upgrade. If you want more Blood Orb generation for additional Blood Lances, Supernatural Blood Lance is the way to go. If you want a flat attack speed increase, Paranormal Blood Lance is your choice.
Skill progression
We have chosen these six best-in-slot active skills for this build:
- Blood Lance: The Core skill of choice in this build.
- Hemorrhage: Our essence generation skill that also has a chance to spawn Blood Orbs.
- Blood Mist: Turn into a bloody vapor rendering you immune to damage while also dealing damage and regenerating your health.
First, we choose our Blood skills. Since we will be spamming Blood Lance, we need a source of essence generation. Hemorrhage not only fits our Blood build perfectly, but also spawns Blood Orbs which we can use to heal, generate essence, and create more Blood Lances.
Blood Mist is your defensive disengaging skill. Damage immunity becomes more important as you get closer to the endgame where enemies one-shot you. With the right aspects, Blood Mist can also be your secondary source of damage via corpse explosions. The regeneration ability of this skill is just the icing on the bloody cake in this build.
- Bone Prison: Creates a barrier of bone around the targets. They cannot move until the prison is destroyed or its duration expires.
- Decrepify: Cripples enemies, slowing their movement speed and reducing their damage output.
Next, we choose control skills. Bone Prison is ideal to trap dangerous enemies like elites and bosses while you escape or launch a counterattack. With the right upgrades, Bone Prison will also help you generate essence and leave enemies in a vulnerable state.
Decrepify is our curse of choice for this build. The additional slow and damage reduction provides great crowd control for you to spam Blood Lances to chunk them all down. With the right upgrades, you can stun all cursed enemies as well as reduce your own cooldowns when you damage them.
- Bone Storm: Creates a tornado of bones around you, dealing continuous damage to all enemies surrounding you for 10 seconds.
Our ultimate ability of choice in this build is Bone Storm. Quite possibly the best ultimate ability in the Necromancer’s kit, Bone Storm wipes out enemies and bosses alike. The upgrades to this skill give the Necromancer additional damage reduction and even increased critical strike chance while Bone Storm is active. With the right passives and aspects, the skill’s uptime becomes almost permanent.
Passive abilities
The offensive passives will boost your damage even further:
- Coalesced Blood: Your Blood skills deal increased damage when you are healthy.
- Tides of Blood: Your Blood skills deal increased Overpower damage. This bonus doubles when you are healthy.
- Death’s Embrace: You deal bonus damage to close enemies while taking reduced damage.
- Death’s Reach: You deal bonus damage to distant enemies.
The defensive passives will keep you alive without your summons:
- Stand Alone: Increases your overall damage reduction which gets weaker for each active minion you have.
- Drain Vitality: Your Blood skills have a chance to fortify you for a percent of your base life when they hit an enemy.
The utility passives will let you endure and regenerate through long battles:
- Gruesome Mending: You gain increased healing when your life is below half.
- Memento Mori: Your skeletal minions’ sacrifice bonuses are increased by 60 percent when you sacrifice both of them.
- Amplify Damage: You deal bonus damage to cursed enemies.
The key passive is the most essential one to pick up:
- Rathma’s Vigor: Increases your max health by 10 percent. If you maintain a healthy status for 12 seconds, your next Blood skill will Overpower the enemy.
Book of the Dead
The Necromancer’s unique class mechanic, Book of the Dead, is responsible for their minion management. The Necromancer’s Skeletal Warriors, Skeletal Mages, and Golems with all of their upgrades are found here.
Since this build isn’t focused on Necromancer summons, we will be sacrificing all of them for their unique bonuses.
- (Sacrifice) Skeletal Warriors – Skirmishers: Increases your critical strike chance.
- (Sacrifice) Skeletal Mages – Cold: Increases your damage against vulnerable enemies.
- (Sacrifice) Golems – Iron: Increases your critical strike damage.
A combination of these sacrifices will greatly boost your Necromancer’s critical strikes. An increased chance and increased damage to your critical strikes will make short work of all surrounding enemies with Blood Lance and Bone Storm.
Related: Best Necromancer Golems by ranking in Diablo 4
Turning enemies vulnerable will also boost the damage of this build further, especially against enemies in endgame areas like Nightmare Dungeons. Use these sacrifices to the best potential since you won’t have minions to tank for you.
Aspects
Finally, we choose the best aspects for your Necromancer that will really power up the Blood Lance build and push it over the edge. Before we get to the core aspects, let us talk about the newest aspect added to the game, as of season one.
- Aspect of Gore Quills: Casting Blood Lance will also consume Blood Orbs to create more Blood Lances from them. The extra Blood Lances deal reduced damage and prioritize enemies that haven’t been hit by Blood Lance.
This season one aspect will be almost mandatory for Blood Lance builds to power them up. The rest of the aspects you will want are as follows.
- Aspect of Shielding Storm: Whenever Bone Storm damages an enemy, you gain a barrier for the next 10 seconds that blocks up to five percent of your max health in damage.
- Aspect of the Embalmer: When you consume a corpse, you have a chance to spawn a Blood Orb.
- Aspect of Explosive Mist: Your Blood Mist automatically triggers Corpse Explosion on surrounding corpses. The cooldown of Blood Mist reduces for each corpse it detonates.
- Aspect of Hungry Blood: When your Blood Lance hits an enemy that has been previously hit by Blood Lance, it has a chance to fire another Blood Lance at a nearby enemy.
- Aspect of Potent Blood: When your life is full, Blood Orbs restore essence instead.
- Aspect of Rathma’s Chosen: If your Blood skills deal Overpowered damage, you gain up to 50 percent increased attack speed for the next four seconds.
- Aspect of Disobedience: Dealing damage grants you increased armor per attack.
- Blood Seeker’s Aspect: Your next Blood Lance will deal increased bonus damage per enemy already lanced.
- Osseus Gale Aspect: Bone Storm can now consume corpses to increase its own duration.
- Fastblood Aspect: Blood Orbs also reduce your Ultimate skills’ cooldown per Orb picked up.
Imbue these aspects on your best Necromancer weapons and armor to really make this build take off in the endgame. Aspects like Shielding Storm and Blood-related aspects are amazing supporting aspects for this build too.
