Blight Necromancer Build Guide - Diablo 4 Maxroll.gg (2024)

Season 4 - Loot Reborn

Skill Tree & Gameplay

• Shadowblight procs an instantaneous damage source that can Critically Strike.
• Hewed Flesh gives you an avenue for generating enough Corpses to sate all of your Corpse consumption needs. Stacking a ton of Lucky Hit Chance Bonus makes this passive efficient enough to not stall out on optimal gear. This generates extra survivability from Necrotic Carapace, via Fortified status.
• Gloom and Terror help to add on damage, while Reaper's Pursuit speeds us up and Crippling Darkness helps to stagger bosses and CC enemies in a fight.

Tier 100+ Pit Gameplay

• The Blight Necromancer does nearly all of its damage during the "Staggered" phase of a Boss fight, where you can activate additional damage multipliers that only effect "Crowd Controlled" targets. When a Boss is Staggered it has every Crowd Control effect on it.
• Your primary objective is to Stagger a Boss when the least amount of Shadow Boss attacks are happening, to maximize the time you can stand still and apply the maximum number of overlapping DoT effects.
• Before a Boss is staggered, while you can apply damage, focus on applying Crowd Control via Lucky Hit Chance tempers on your gear, Decrepify and most importantly Corpse Tendrils.

Necromancer Specialization - Book of the Dead

Resource & Cooldown Management

Managing your Resources and Cooldowns is crucial to the success of the Blight Necromancer.

Resource Aspect of the Umbral

Each unique Crowd Control effect that you inflict upon enemies triggers this aspect and generates Essence. Corpse Tendrils, Decrepify and Crippling Darkness all apply CC when used or activated. You can layer these abilities as well.

• Corpse Tendrils initially Slows, then it Pulls and Stuns. That's 3 instances of CC on every target. BUT after the Pull, the Slow is removed from the target, so you're able to re-Slow with Decrepify for another free CC proc.
• The Pull from Void Aspect counts as a CC proc. With enough enemies in range, this fully replenishes the Essence cost of the Skill use.

Grim Harvest

Whenever you consume a corpse via Corpse Explosion you generate Essence with this passive. You get to recoup resources while applying DPS. It's a great two for one!

Abhorrent Decrepify

With your multiple sources of overlapping Damage Over Time (DoT) effects, Decrepify quickly lowers all active Cooldowns by one second and rewards aggressive gameplay.

Essence per Second and Resource Cost Reduction

Essence per Second (EPS) affix on the Helm, Chest and Boots helps to passively replace Essence as you cast Blight. Resource Cost Reduction reduces the cost of Blight by a percentage equal to the total on your gear. Since the base rolls of EPS add up to 12 and the Necromancer regains 3 EPS, you generate a total of 15 per second. To completely replace the Essence loss of 1 cast per second you need 40% Resource Cost Reduction. This would allow you to go "infinite", meaning you would never run out of Essence. When casting Blight more than once per second, you need more of both stat to achieve this equilibrium.

Paragon Board

Carefully check your Paragon Boards to ensure correct board rotation. Glyphs go from a radius of 3 to 4 when they reach level 15!

Glyphs

We need to level up our Glyphs to increase their power and activate their Additional Bonus with surrounding nodes. Glyphs have a radius of 3 by default, this increases to 4 at Glyph level 15. Complete Nightmare Dungeons to obtain Glyph experience.

Note that there are some Glyph position swaps and a few adjustments to surrounding Paragon nodes once they reach level 15. See the last two steps in the Paragon progression above for details. The setup displayed by default is the final version of the build.

Glyph Leveling Priorities

Special Note: While Leveling, on the third board you can use Golem to empower your Golem if you haven't sacrificed it yet. Use Imbiber instead if you are not using the Golem. This is a temporary Glyph and isn't used in the final boards.

Endgame Progression & Variants

When you start diving into the Endgame Blight Necromancer build, you don't have all the tools available to achieve the final build versions. Let us guide you through different progression points to give you a smooth transition from our Leveling Guides to the final build version.

Progression Goals

Some of your Skill Tree choices depend on what Legendary Aspects and Unique items are available to you. These are listed in priority order:

1. Unlock the following Aspects from Dungeons:
   • Blighted - Akkan's Grasp (Hawezar)
   • Damned - Uldur's Cave (Kehjistan)
   • Umbral Champion's Demise (Dry Steppes)
   • Disobedience - Halls of the Damned (Kehjistan)
   • Ghostwalker - Broken Bulwark (Scosglen)
   • Shared Misery - Oblivion (Hawezar)
   • Hulking - Sepulcher of the Forsword (Kehjistan)
   • Inner Calm - Raethwind Wilds (Scosglen)
2. Find the following Legendary Aspects either as a random drop or by gambling with Obols:
   • Void - Gamble Pants
   • Shielding Storm - Gamble Pants
   • Ultimate Shadow - Gamble Focus
   • Hardened Bones - Gamble Pants
   • Slaughter - Gamble Boots
3. Acquire the following Unique items either as a random drop or by farming specific Boss drops.
   Note: You cannot gamble Unique items with obols!
   • Lidless Wall is an interesting tool for early game survivability as well as a decent tool for speedfarming and Helltide farming to help automate parts of the build. Not viable for endgame Pit Pushing.
   • Greaves of the Empty Tomb offer a valuable option for stacking even more Lucky Hit Chance. They also offer a unique Damage Reduction stat that can't normally be found on boots.
   • Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul (RoSS) The auto-casting skills needed to be equipped on your Skill Bar to function. This automates a lot of the build's primary gameplay loop to increase efficiency and Essence management.
   • Black River a powerful option in the early game. This also offers a powerful automated gameplay experience with the RoSS for speedfarming and during Helltide.
4. If you're lucky enough to obtain the following Uber Uniques, they're useful for the build.
   • Harlequin Crest increases all of your active Skill Ranks, including Blight, making it a very powerful option for damage output.
   • Ring of Starless Skies in combination with Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul gives you infinite Essence. Replaces Exposed Flesh/Umbral. Not optimal for the endgame variant, but still very powerful.
   • Doombringer is an incredible option for Tankiness and overall survivability that requires you to sacrifice damage output.

Progression Steps

Follow the build's gearing progression from level 50 to 100, including the changes that need to be made as you obtain Legendary Aspects and Uniques.

Hardcore Adjustments

Hardcore requires you to build into more defenses. Here are some tips to successful in this game mode:

• Focus more on your Chest & Pants while gearing up. Make sure to have only defensive stats on these two slots as they provide a ton of survivability.
• Always reach Armor (9,230) and Resistance (70%) cap and prioritize Maximum Life instead of damage nodes on your Paragon Boards.
• Take Blood Mist cooldown Reduction on more Tempers to always have the Skill available as an escape option.
• Use Golems - Blood Sacrifice for even more Maximum Life, if needed.
• Swap to a Shield with Juggernaut's to make space for more Intelligence and Maximum Life Affixes on your gear. Intelligence increases your Elemental Resistances up to the cap of 70%. Shields also have a unique Damage Reduction stat in the form of Block and can have the Damage Reduction affix roll.

Build Scaling & Stat Priorities

Learn about the important build scaling mechanics and stat weights.

Stat Priorities

To enable your build to perform optimally, you need to reach certain Stat "Breakpoints". Some examples are reaching 100% to Critically Strike, or 20 Resource per second. Since there are many values of these stats on different pieces of gear, read the checklist below and refer to the recommended Tempered Affixes and Masterwork Crits ↑. Desirable Greater Affixes will always be the top three recommended Affixes.

Put in the following Gems into your gear:

• Helmet / Body Armor / Pants: Royal Ruby OR Royal Topaz
• Weapon / Off-Hand: Royal Amethyst
• Jewelry: Royal Diamond OR Royal Skull (Which ever is needed to hit either Cap)

This build benefits the most from the following consumables:

• Elixirs: Elixir of Advantage II / Elixir of Resourcefulness II
• Incenses: Song of the Mountain, Reddamine Buzz & Chorus of War

FAQ & Mechanics

Once a guide is released, many players have questions on why and how we are approaching certain choices. In this section you can find the answers to the questions that have been asked the most.

Video Guide

Summary

The Blight Necromancer melds the worlds of AoE Damage over time, high Crowd Control and single target damage spikes. It's a DoT build that loves bullying enemies with constant CC.

• Blight deals a small amount of initial damage, and leaves behind an AoE DoT pool of miasma to melt your foes.
• As one of the few Necro builds that actually gains Movement Speed from their skills, the play style is fast and engaging.
• When all else fails, spamming Corpse Explosion eventually kills most things in the game.
• While the leveling build enjoys the addition of Minions, but sacrifice them later on to get the highest bonuses you can from your Skills.
• With enough Lucky Hit Chance and mob density, this build is effectively an Infinimist Necromancer. Don't be afraid to constantly stay in Mist form while your automatic Corpse Explosions tear apart the enemy!
• Practice makes perfect! Don't be afraid to run slightly easier content of Nightmare Dungeons to get the flow of the gameplay loop.
• In Bocca al Lupo!

Credits

Written by MacroBioBoi

Reviewed by Chronikz