Build Introduction
The Blood Lance Necromancer build, also known as a “Bloodmancer”, is a collaboration guide made between content creators Ghazzy and Garm. It provides a sturdy, resilient, and high damage dealing character for you to start your adventures in Diablo 4 with. Thanks to the massive amount of Life and Fortify we have on this build, the damage dealt by Overpower on our skills skyrockets, as Overpower provides bonus damage based on the sum of your current Life and Fortify.
This build is entirely designed around 
Blood Lance, for both clearing packs of enemies and single-target, it’s crucial to point out that this build performs extremely well at killing bosses, whilst the 
Blood Surge version of a Bloodmancer is better at clearing. Our defensive layers come in the form of Fortifying our massive Life pool and having access to Blood Orbs, which will heal us when picked up. Enemies should be cursed with 
Decrepify to lower their damage dealt. Through 
Hemorrhage we can recover Essence very smoothly while clearing Nightmare Dungeons.
Important to point out that for this build to feel the best you will want to get a 
Aspect of Gore Quills equipped as soon as you find one. It’s a drop-only aspect so keep your eyes open!
At the end of this guide you’ll find an end-game version that combines the best of this 
Blood Lance build with the Blood Surge build to bring you the absolute best of both worlds for clearing and single-target damage output.
You are able to level with this build, however, we would strongly recommend checking out the Necromancer Leveling guide for the smoothest experience going through the campaign before switching to this build.
Strengths and Weaknesses
- Very tanky
- High Overpower damage
- Consistent performance
- Relies on gear to perform in the end-game
- Early game requires a lot of usage from your Basic Skill
- Requires a lot of investment to kill Uber Lilith
To see how this build compares to the other builds on our site, you can check out our build tier lists.
Season of the Construct
Season 3 Patch Updates
The following list details the changes in the Season 3 Update (1.3.0) that are specific to this build. Check the Changelog for all the other guide updates.
Patch 1.3.0
- The addition of the new unique Mutilator Plate allows for some interesting tests to be done before I include it in the guide if at all!
- Slight nerfs to the additive damage bonus coming from Overpowering hits whilst they fixed the Fortitude flask to now scale your life a lot higher to the point of being able to reach 60, 70 maybe even 80,000 life!
Seneschal Construct Companion Powers
The Season 3 theme introduces a Seneschal Construct Companion that can deal damage or provide support to complement your character. Equip the Seneschal with two Governing Stones to activate their abilities, and then link them to three Tuning Stones each to augment the abilities. There are 12 different Governing Stones and 27 different Tuning Stones that can be found in Vaults scattered across Sanctuary. Fuse together duplicate stones to level them up, increasing the potency of Governing Stones or adding augments to Tuning Stones.
Listed below are the recommended Governing Stones and their linked Tuning Stones for the Blood Lance Necromancer, ranked by importance. The Governing stones you want to use for this build will be Lightning Bolt, and Tempest.
- Resource Support: The Construct will generate Essence for us on a consistent basis.
- Evernight: Grants +4 to all skills for a very short duration. You will want this on both skills the Construct uses to optimize uptime to increase damage output.
- Safeguard: Provides extra Damage Reduction.
- Duration: Extends the duration of the skill which is best combined with Lightning Bolt and the use of both Resource and Safeguard.
- Breaking: Instantly destroys Barrier effects and makes enemies vulnerable.
- Arcing: Makes the ability hit 10 additional enemies. Best combined with Breaking to make the effect hit more enemies.
- Efficiency: Provides extra Critical Strike Chance.
When it comes to the active skills for the Construct, it truly does not matter for this build. Whichever ability provides the fastest or most reliable hits on enemies will the best choices for Blood Lance.
Skill Tree Points
Blood Lance Hemorrhage 
Blood Mist Decrepify 
Corpse Tendrils 
Bone Storm The following tables show the full allocation of Skill Points for the Blood Lance Necromancer build. The first table has the most important 48 points to start the build. The second table has the remaining 10 points that are allocated once you obtain all Skill Points from Renown.
| Priority Skills & Skill Tree Passives | Cluster |
|---|---|
| Hemorrhage, Enhanced Hemorrhage, Acolyte’s Hemorrhage |  Basic Skill |
Blood Lance Level 5, Enhanced Blood Lance, Supernatural Blood Lance,  Hewed Flesh Level 2 |  Core Skill |
| Blood Mist, Enhanced Blood Mist, Ghastly Blood Mist |  Curse Skill |
Decrepify, Enhanced Decrepify, Abhorrent Decrepify,  Amplify Damage Level 3,  Death’s Reach |  Summoning Skill |
Corpse Tendrils, Enhanced Corpse Tendrils, Blighted Corpse Tendrils,  Gruesome Mending,  Coalesced Blood Level 3,  Tides of Blood Level 3,  Drain Vitality Level 3,  Transfusion Level 3 |  Corpse & Macabre Skill |
 Inspiring Leader Level 3,  Stand Alone Level 2,  Memento Mori Level 3 |  Ultimate Skill |
 Rathma’s Vigor |  Key Passives |
| Remaining Renown Points | Cluster |
|---|---|
 Unliving Energy,  Imperfectly Balanced Level 3 | Core Skill |
| Bone Storm, Prime Bone Storm, Supreme Bone Storm, Stand Alone Level 3, Death’s Reach Level 3 | Ultimate Skill |
Book of the Dead
The Blood Lance Necromancer is designed to be able to take hits from enemies consistently. Using minions with this playstyle is a waste and can cause problems when you want to use Blood Lance if enemies are scattered across your screen, hitting your minions rather than moving towards you. Therefore, we will be sacrificing all of them.
- Melee Skeletons: sacrifice the Defenders, as this provides us with increased resistances.
- Mage Skeletons: Bone Mages will be sacrificed in the name of Lilith to provide a huge increase to Overpower Damage.
- Golem: Blood Golem will also be sacrificed, as this buff provides a massive increase of Life.
Paragon Board
The Paragon progression system unlocks at Level 50 and provides a vast amount of character power. On the Paragon Board, bonuses range from minor stats on Magic Nodes to more powerful Rare Glyphs and Legendary Nodes.
As you path towards Glyph Sockets and Legendary Nodes, you should prioritize Damage, Intelligence, Resistance, and Life for Normal and Magic Nodes. Glyph radius increases as you level them up. Therefore, if you cannot fulfill Additional Bonus requirements early on, skip allocating extra nodes for now. It’s also important to point out that you might not have the Glyph you want when you reach your first socket; if that’s the case, simply slot in any Glyph providing any beneficial stats for you until you get the correct one.
Listed below are images of the pathing you should take along with the locations of the Glyphs and order you should choose your Paragon Boards past the initial Starting board.
Starting Board
We will be focusing on picking up a lot of Rare and Magic Nodes that provide Life. Start with rushing to the socket on this initial board, in which we’ll place the 
Sacrificial Glyph. Only take the extra attributes within range of the Glyph which will increase when you level the Glyph up via Nightmare Dungeons. Once done, we’ll grab the Rare and Magic Nodes, then move out north to our second board, Blood Begets Blood.
Blood Begets Blood
Blood Begets Blood will act as a crossroads, as we will be coming back to this one to head out on all sides in the end. We’ll start by rushing up on the left-hand side of the board and grab the socket, in which we use the 
Amplify Glyph. Similar to our starting board, we only take the attributes within radius if the Glyph level allows us to enable the bonus modifier from it. Head out on the right-hand side for our third board, Scent of Death.
Scent of Death
Start by rushing the socket in which we’ll use the 
Dominate Glyph. We want to level this Glyph first and pick up all Willpower nodes within radius to enable the bonus modifier. The legendary node and the Rare and Magic Nodes on the right side can be ignored at this stage and picked up in your final levels towards level 100. Once this is done, we’ll circle back to Blood Begets Blood (2nd board) and rush up on the north side.
Bone Graft
This is a straight forward board. Rush the socket node and use the 
Territorial Glyph. Yet again, we will only take the extra Nodes within radius if the level of the Glyph allows. We also want to take every single Rare and Magic Nodes as shown on the image before we leave this one. Once done we will, yet again, go back to Blood Begets Blood (second board) and this time head out on the left-hand side, picking any missed Rare and Magic Nodes according to the image for that board as seen further up in this guide.
Bloodbath
We are closing in on the highest levels the game has to offer as we enter this board. Therefore, we will rush the Glyph Socket and use Control Glyph here. Again, only take extra attributes to help enable the bonus modifier if the level of the Glyph has increased the radius enough to allow for it. We also want to grab the Rare and Magic Nodes left of the Glyph socket before we finalize the build by taking a quick detour north to get a few extra nodes from a sixth Board.
Wither
The Wither board is only here to throw us some extra Life Nodes. Once these nodes are picked up we grab any extra attributes within radius of our Glyphs when they level up and continue progression of our previous board by taking the nodes we’ve skipped up until now.
Paragon board images courtesy of d4builds.gg.
Mechanics and Playstyle
The order of which you’ll want to use your skills is very simple with this build. Anytime you ever run out of Essence, you will resort to using Hemorrhage. Outside of that, Blood Lance will be our main source of damage and should be spammed. Make sure enemies are cursed by using Decrepify before attacking. For bigger targets and/or bosses, you’ll use Bone Storm for added Critical Strike Chance and added Damage Reduction. Corpse Tendrils should be manually used when needed to group enemies up and generate Blood Orbs, which helps our Blood Lance via the Gore Quills Aspect.
Should you find yourself in harms way and need a panic button, good old Blood Mist is there to save your day!
Gear Choice and Stat Priority
Prioritize a higher total damage output when it comes to your weapon, as the higher it is, the better. It should be kept in mind that if you find a higher Item Power 1-Handed weapon, it could very well be better than a 2-Handed weapon if coupled with an Off-hand or even a shield, as Shields scale your main-hand weapon by 80%!
Listed below are the Affixes to prioritize on gear for Blood Lance Necromancers. Affixes for each gear slot are listed in order of importance. Bolded stats are the most important and sometimes vital for the build to function properly.
| Gear Slot | Important Affixes |
|---|---|
| Helm | + Life + Armor + Basic Skill Attack Speed + Attributes (Or any resistances if you need to reach the 70% cap) |
| Chest | + Life + Armor + Damage Reduction + Damage Reduction from Close Enemies |
| Gloves | + Overpower Damage + Ranks of Blood Lance + Attack Speed + Critical Strike Chance |
| Pants | + Life + Armor + Damage Reduction + Damage Reduction from Close Enemies |
| Boots | + Movement Speed + Essence Cost Reduction + Damage Reduction While Injured + Dodge Chance Against Distant Enemies |
| Amulet | + Ranks of Tides of Blood + Damage Reduction + Movement Speed + Essence Cost Reduction |
| Rings | + Life + Overpower Damage + Lucky Hit Chance + Resource Generation |
| 1H Wand | + Overpower Damage + All Stats + Core Skill Damage + Intelligence |
| Off-hand (Focus) | + Lucky Hit: #% Chance to Slow + Critical Strike Chance + Intelligence + Lucky Hit |
Aspects, Powers, and Uniques
We are focusing on making Blood Lance more effective for clearing, then focusing on ramping up our defensive layers so we can reliably tank endgame bosses. Listed below are the best-in-slot Aspects found on Legendary Items that are important for the Bloodmancer build.
Aspects from the Codex of Power can be used if you cannot find the proper Legendary drops, but they have weaker effects. Extract Aspects from the lower level Legendary Items and imprint them onto better Rare Items with Preferred stats. This does not require any changes to your skill-tree.
| Gear Slot | Aspect Name | Aspect Power |
|---|---|---|
| Helm |  Aspect of Disobedience | You gain 0.25-0.5% increased armor for 4 seconds when you deal any form of damage, stacking up to 25-50%. |
| Chest | Aspect of Might | Basic Skills grant 20% Damage Reduction for 2-6 seconds. |
| Pants | Protecting Aspect | When hit while not Healthy, a magical bubble is summoned around you for 3-5 seconds. While standing in the bubble players are Immune. Can only occur once every 90 seconds. |
| Boots |  Ghostwalker Aspect | While Unstoppable and for 4 seconds after, you gain 10-25% increased Movement Speed and can move freely through enemies. |
| 1H Weapon | Aspect of Grasping Veins | Gain 10-20% increased Critical Strike Chance for 6 seconds when you cast Corpse Tendrils. You deal 20-40% bonus Critical Strike Damage to enemies damaged by Corpse Tendrils. |
| Glove | Aspect of Gore Quills | Blood Lance will consume Blood Orbs to also conjure lances from them. Each additional Blood Lance deals 20-50% of normal damage and prioritizes targeting un-lanced enemies. |
| Amulet (50% Scaling) | Aspect of Rathma’s Chosen | Whenever your Blood Skills Overpower you gain 20-50% Attack Speed for 4 seconds. |
| Ring | Sacrificial Aspect | Your sacrifice bonuses are increased by 15-25%. |
| Ring |  Aspect of Potent Blood | While Healthy, Blood Orbs grant 10-20 Essence. |
| Off-hand (Focus) | Aspect of Untimely Death | Each percent of your Maximum Life you heal beyond 100% grants you 0.5% bonus Overpower damage on your next Overpowering attack, up to a 20-60% bonus. |
Unique Items
The Protecting Aspect on our pants can easily be replaced by the common Unique Item 
Temerity, but using a Legendary pair of pants is more than fine until you get the Unique. In the late-game stage, you’ll want the Unique pants 
Blood Moon Breeches as it scales your Overpower damage significantly.
If you’re able to find a 
Banished Lord’s Talisman you’ll remove the Aspect of Potent Blood and put your Aspect of Rathma’s Chosen on one of your rings instead. This is an incredible amulet and fits perfectly well in the optimized end-game version of this build that demands it.
Another great item to add whenever you get one is the 
Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul which would simply replace the Aspect of Untimely Death power.
End-Game Notes
As you progress through the game in World Tier 4 you’ll want to aim to kill end-game bosses such as Uber Lilith, Duriel, and Grigoire to name a few. Besides Uber Lilith, the other bosses merely demand resistances to be at the 70% cap (or higher via Elixirs) and having all your aspect powers on gear following the modifier priority listed earlier in this guide. However, Uber Lilith can be very challenging, some builds have a very easy time with her whilst others struggle. This end-game version will completely obliterate her and any other end-game boss you’ll encounter.
To make the switch to this hybrid build using both Blood Lance and Blood Surge you’ll first want to make sure you have all the gear and aspect powers for it. The important part here is that we will use the same action-bar as the original build and simply switch Blood Lance in for big end-game bosses and switch it back to Blood Surge when running anything else. Besides the action-bar switch you also want to have 2 gear pieces in your inventory with proper aspect powers and gear modifiers to fulfill this switch. The Surge style will require the use of a shield for Aspect of Shielding Storm and when you switch to Lance you’ll want a Focus off-hand instead with Aspect of Hungry Blood or Aspect of Gore Quills. The other item you’ll switch is a pair of gloves, for surge that would include the modifier + Ranks of Blood Surge having the Blood-bathed Aspect and when you switch to Blood Lance the modifier should instead be + Ranks of Blood Lance and the aspect will be either Aspect of Hungry Blood or Aspect of Gore Quills. The off-hand relic modifier priority should be including: Critical Strike Chance, Basic Skill Attack Speed, Essence Cost Reduction and the last modifier can be anything from Damage Reduction to Resource Generation.
Unique items such as Banished Lord’s Talisman and Blood Moon Breeches are incredibly powerful for this build. You can play the build before getting them, you can then freely choose what powers you’ll put on your Amulet and what extra powers to add in their stead.
| Gear Slot | Aspect Name | Aspect Power |
|---|---|---|
| Helm | Aspect of Might | Basic Skills grant 20% Damage Reduction for 2-6 seconds. |
| Chest | Aspect of Disobedience | You gain 0.6-1.1% increased Armor for 4 seconds when you deal any form of damage, stacking up to 36-66% |
| Gloves (Blood Surge Clearing) | Blood-bathed Aspect | Blood Surge’s nova echoes again after a short delay, dealing 60-50% less damage. |
| Gloves (Blood Lance Bossing) | Aspect of Hungry Blood | Each cast of Blood Lance will launch an additional Blood Lance at a Nearby enemy when it first hits an enemy that is already lanced, dealing 38-48% of normal damage. |
| Boots | Ghostwalker Aspect | While Unstoppable and for 4 seconds after, you gain 10-25% increased Movement Speed and can move freely through enemies. |
| 1H Weapon (Wand) | Aspect of Grasping Veins | Gain 10-20% increased Critical Strike Chance for 6 seconds when you cast Corpse Tendrils. You deal 20-40% bonus Critical Strike Damage to enemies damaged by Corpse Tendrils. |
| Ring | Aspect of Rathma’s Chosen | Whenever your Blood Skills Overpower you gain 20-50% Attack Speed for 4 seconds. |
| Ring | Aspect of Untimely Death | Each percent of your Maximum Life you heal beyond 100% grants you 0.5% bonus Overpower damage on your next Overpowering attack, up to a 20-60% bonus. |
| Off-hand (Shield) | Aspect of Shielding Storm | Each time that Bone Storm damages an enemy, gain a Barrier equal to 2-5% of your base Life for 10 seconds. |
| Priority Skills | Cluster |
|---|---|
| Hemorrhage, Enhanced Hemorrhage, Acolyte’s Hemorrhage | Basic Skill |
Blood Lance Level 5, Enhanced Blood Lance, Supernatural Blood Lance, Blood Surge Level 5, Enhanced Blood Surge, Paranormal Blood Surge,  Unliving Energy,  Imperfectly Balanced Level 3 | Core Skill |
| Blood Mist, Enhanced Blood Mist, Ghastly Blood Mist | Curse Skill |
Decrepify, Enhanced Decrepify, Abhorrent Decrepify, Amplify Damage Level 3,  Death’s Embrace Level 3 | Summoning Skill |
Corpse Tendrils, Enhanced Corpse Tendrils,  Plagued Corpse Tendrils, Gruesome Mending, Coalesced Blood Level 3, Tides of Blood Level 3, Drain Vitality Level 2 | Corpse & Macabre Skill |
Inspiring Leader Level 3, Stand Alone Level 2, Memento Mori Level 3,  Bone Storm, Prime Bone Storm, Supreme Bone Storm | Ultimate Skill |
| Rathma’s Vigor | Key Passives |
When it comes to the Book of the Dead we keep the same approach as the original guide here, we can still sacrifice our Melee Skeletons for extra resistances but once your gear covers that we want the Critical Strike Chance instead from the Skirmishers!
Gems
Listed below are the best Gems to socket into gear for each slot type.
- Weapon:
Royal Ruby for +#% Increased overpower damage. - Armor: Royal Ruby for +#% Maximum Life.
- Jewelry:
Royal Diamond or any other gem that gives + to a specific resistance to help get to the 70% cap.
Elixirs and Health Potions
To gain an edge in your adventures, head to the Alchemist and craft Elixirs that enhance your stats and experience gain for 30 minutes. Remember to gather the necessary crafting materials by foraging plants. Select an Elixir that provides the resistance you need most, or try the 
Assault Elixir to boost your Attack Speed.
Return to the Alchemist again when you reach Level 20, 30, 45, 60, 70, 80 and 90, to upgrade your potion. The extra healing is essential to survival.
Changelog
- January 22nd, 2024: Guide updated for Season 3 Season of the Construct.
- November 3rd, 2023: Optimized Paragon Board and added end-game version.
- October 15th, 2023: Guide updated for Season 2 Season of Blood, Patch 1.2.
- August 7th, 2023: Guide added.
