Bone Spear Endgame Necromancer Build for Diablo 4 (Season 4)

Build Introduction

Bone Spear Necromancer is one of the smoothest builds to level a Necromancer with; It performs just as well in the endgame content by providing high critical hits with Bone Spear in combination with an insane amount of corpses being generated. We can easily regain our Essence at the same time as we are dealing respectable damage using Corpse Explosion, making the Bone Spear Necromancer a very consistent and reliable build. A very important note here is that the Blighted Corpse Explosion deals damage twice per second helping us generate an insane amount of corpses via Hewed Flesh, which is how we sustain the build.

In the endgame we will gain access to more legendary powers that takes this build to a whole new level. Since our biggest source of damage comes from Bone Spear, we can provide legendary powers to help sustain more or less only casting the Bone Spears!

Besides being reliable and consistent, this build guarantees the Vulnerable effect on enemies, making it a great option for group play.

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.

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Build Variants

A build variant is a modified version of an existing build that changes some aspects of it, such as the damage type, specific skills or passives, and even certain items like different Uniques or Legendary Aspects.

Below you will find any variant that relates to the Bone Spear Endgame Necromancer.

Strengths and Weaknesses

To see how this build compares to the other builds on our site, you can check out our build tier lists.

Build Requirements

Required Uniques

Lidless Wall

Skill Bar and Skill Tree Points

Recommended

Suggested Skill Bar

Bone Spear Blood Mist Corpse Explosion Corpse Tendrils Bone Storm Decrepify

Follow the points allocated in the Skill Tree above for the complete 58-point build. The additional 10 skill points are completed using the Renown system.

Book of the Dead

We will be sacrificing all our minions. Below you’ll find the details covering all aspects of how we utilize the Book of the Dead for the Bone Spear Necromancer.

• Melee Skeletons; Skirmishers will be the choice here for the added critical strike chance.
• Mage Skeletons; sacrificing the Cold Mages grants us increased damage to Vulnerable enemies. The build reliably making enemies Vulnerable makes this the best choice.
• Golem; Iron is sacrificed for extra critical strike damage.

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 is 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. Note that each Rare Glyph’s information and radius listed below is for the Level 21 version.

1. Starting Board

For the Starter Board, we will path along the right side, all of the Magic Nodes as we grab three Rare Nodes and the socket slot to get the Control Glyph. (If you’re using the end-game version of this build the Glyph should be Amplify instead). If you are able to collect enough Intelligence within radius, depending on the level of your Glyph, you should. Once done with the board, we will head on north and attach Bone Graft.

2. Bone Graft

Bone Graft should be rotated to have the Legendary Node easily accessible on the right-hand side. We begin the route by rushing that node and picking up both Rare and Magic Nodes, as we do a push to the top left corner moving in to the socket slot. Optimally we want the Exploit Glyph slotted in here, and only pick up extra Dexterity Nodes within radius if the Glyph level has enough within radius. This should be the first Glyph you’ll want to level up. The next step from here is to path out on the left side for our third board, Scent of Death.

3. Scent of Death

Scent of Death will need to be rotated so you have the Legendary Node located on the south side as we will be rushing the socket slot before we pick up all Rare and Magic Nodes, finishing the pathing with the Legendary node. The Glyph we’ll be using here is the Corporeal Glyph. Similar to previous boards, we will only be going out of our way to pick up extra attributes enabling the bonus modifier if we can, based on the Glyph level. Once done here, we will head out north for our fourth board, Flesh-Eater.

4. Flesh-Eater

Flesh-Eater which will be positioned so the Legendary Node is again located as far from our starting point as possible. We are going to be picking up the socket first in which we slot in the Amplify Glyph. If you’re using the end-game version of this build, the Glyph should be Sacrificial instead. Same procedure here as before, only take the extra surrounding attributes if needed and possible within the Glyph radius based on its level. Next we actually skip the Legendary Node and rush towards the remaining Rare and Magic nodes on the left while skipping the top right Nodes, as the goal is to get to the last board, Bloodbath, on the left side.

5. Bloodbath

Bloodbath’s only purpose here is to grab the socket. Rotate the board to match the image above. We will rush the socket and slot in the Essence Glyph. Needless to say, we are picking up the surrounding Dexterity if the Glyph level allows for it. Once this board is finished we will circle back for the remaining Rare and Magic Nodes on our fourth board. At this point, you’re either finished or you have spare attributes to pick up within radius of your Glyphs as they level up.

Paragon Board images courtesy of d4builds.gg.

Gear, Gems, Elixirs, and Stats

The Season of Loot Reborn brings us an incredible shift in how gear and itemization are done. It is a major and will affect the game beyond Season 4’s confines. For further details, make sure to read our Tempering and Masterworking section below.

Legendary Aspects

Each aspect is listed with its matching gear slot. Do your best to keep each aspect in the assigned slot. Additionally, if you are trying to farm a specific item, we recommend using your Obols to target farm them!

Gear Slot	Gems	Aspect / Unique	Legendary Aspect / Unique Power
Helm	Royal Ruby	Juggernaut’s Aspect	You gain x Armor, but your Evade has 100% increased cooldown.
Chest	Royal Ruby	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.
Gloves	N/A	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.
Pants	Royal Ruby	Aspect of Hardened Bones	You and your Minions gain 15-20% increased Damage Reduction.
Boots	n/a	Aspect of Slaughter	You gain 20% Movement Speed. Lose this bonus for 2.5-5 seconds after taking damage.
Weapon 1H (Dagger)	Royal Emerald	Accelerating Aspect	Critical Strikes with Core Skills increase your Attack Speed by 15-25% for 5 seconds.
Off-hand	Royal Ruby	Lidless Wall	Lucky Hit: While you have an active Bone Storm, hitting an enemy outside of a Bone Storm has up to a 5-25% chance to spawn an additional Bone Storm at their location. Each of your active Sacrifice bonuses increase the chance by 25% and the total additional Bone Storms you can have by +1.
Amulet (50% Scaling)	Any Resistance Jewel	Aspect of Serration	The Ossified Essence Key Passive also increase the Critical Strike Damage of your Bone Skills by 1%x per Essence above 50, up to 38-60%x.
Ring	Any Resistance Jewel	Conceited Aspect	Deal 10-25% increased damage while you have a Barrier active.
Ring	Any Resistance Jewel	Splintering Aspect	Bone Spear’s primary attack makes enemies hit beyond the first Vulnerable for 3 seconds. Bone Shards from Bone Spear deal 30-60% bonus damage to Vulnerable enemies and pierce them.

Gems

See below for a more detailed explanation of the best Gems to socket into your gear for each category.

Weapon Gems	Armor Gems	Jewelry Gems
Royal Sapphire For Crit Damage.	Royal Ruby For increased Maximum Life.	Royal Amethyst Royal Sapphire Royal Ruby

Which Elixirs Should You Use?

Visit the Alchemist and craft an Elixir providing any Resistance you need most, or the Elixir of Advantage to increase Attack Speed. Some Elixirs cannot be crafted and only drop from things like Helltides or Nightmare Dungeons. Additionally, make sure to keep your health potion upgraded!

Stat Priority and Tempering Affixes

Affixes on the same line are considered to be equally important. Bolded affixes are the most important targets for Masterworking upgrades.

Keep in mind that the maximum Resistance is 70% by default for each element and can be increased to 85% by various sources.

Rotation and Playstyle

The build features a very straight forward play-style, you are essentially always casting Bone Spear as your main source of damage. To help boost your damage and efficiency we want keep up our Decrepify curse as it will lower the cooldown of our Bone Storm. Besides the obvious we will be using Blood Mist as a panic button and Corpse Tendrils is utilized to group enemies together for easier bursting of enemy packs. The Corpse Explosion is used when you run out of Essence and the shadow damage pool it leaves on the ground also makes you move faster when it hits an enemy!

Uniques and Uber Uniques

Below you will find information on Uniques and Uber Uniques that are useful for this build. Moreover, if you are interested in target farming Uber Uniques, check out our How to Farm Uber Uniques guide.

Uniques

Listed below are the recommended and optional Unique Items for this build. This build thrives of the legendary aspect powers so we would prefer not to involve any uniques to have the build function the best. This doesn’t mean you can’t play around with some changes and test it out yourself though!

• Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul is a great tool to automate your corpse skills but comes at the cost of the Conceited aspect making you deal less damage to gain a bit of quality of life.

Season 4: Loot Reborn

The following list details the changes in the Season 4 Update (Patch 1.4.0) that may pertain to the Summoner Necromancer build. Check the Changelog for all the other guide updates. As you can see only 1 change affected the build directly and its a good one!

• There was no notable changes outside of the removal of the Movement Speed penalty when using Blood Mist which we only use as a panic button in this build.

Advanced Information

Below, you will find every additional piece of information you need to know for a more in-depth look at this build.

Build Mechanics

The build functions with the combination of regaining essence via corpse consumption and heavily reducing the cost of our abilities. Thanks to our skill-tree we gain big bonuses when having a large Essence pool when we use our Bone Spear making it vital to sustain it which our gear modifiers will help achieve. Besides this we are consistently going to re-apply Bone Storm via Lidless Wall when we move from pack to pack clearing enemies. These Bone Storms also generates a barrier for personal defenses.

Before you reach super optimized gearing the corpse skills will help maintain the play-style and efficiency.

Defenses

The consistent application of Bone Storms via our unique shield we will have a very high up-time of a Barrier for protection. Outside of that the build dishes out a crazy amount of damage with lucky hit modifiers allowing you to crowd control enemy packs.

Offenses

With a heavy focus on critical hits, the Bone Spears cover large areas with instant damage application. This is combined with Corpse Tendrils to group up enemies to demolish them in a swift move by throwing your Bone Spears right after!

Paragon

The recommended Paragon boards for this build are listed above, and further down below, you can find a more thorough route for allocating the Paragon points, as well as some notes on why specific nodes were chosen and why they are essential for this build.

Glyphs & Legendary Nodes	Effect
Amplify	– Grants +150% bonus to all Magic Nodes within range. – Additional Bonus is unlocked with 40 intelligence in radius making enemies affected by your Curses take an additional x10% increased damage from you and your minions.
Exploit	– For every 5 Dexterity purchased within range, you deal +8% increased damage to Vulnerable targets. – Additional Bonus is unlocked with 25 Dexterity in radius, you deal x1% for 6 seconds up to 10% increased damage against Vulnerable targets.
Corporeal	– Grants +150% bonus to all Magic nodes within range. – Additional Bonus is unlocked with 40 Intelligence in radius, you and your minions deal x10% increased Physical damage and you gain 1% Movement Speed for each active Minion.
Sacrificial	– Grants +150% bonus to all Magic nodes within range. – Additional Bonus is unlocked with 40 Intelligence in radius, you deal x10% increased damage while you have no active minions.
Essence	– For every 5 Dexterity purchased within range, you deal +20% increased Critical Strike Damage. – Additional Bonus is unlocked with 25 Dexterity in radius, Critical Strikes deal x22% increased damage to enemies that are not Healthy.
Bone Graft	Hitting enemies with Bone Skills increases your damage by x1% and your Maximum Essence by 2 for 8 seconds, stacks up to x8% increased damage and 16 Maximum Essence.
Scent of Death	With at least 2 Corpses Nearby, you gain 15% Damage Reduction. With no Corpses Nearby, you deal x15% increased damage.

Let’s take it one step further and break down each of the beneficial nodes we spend our Paragon Points on.

Starting Board

1. Amplify We mainly grab this Glyph for the additional bonus effect which is easy to unlock on the starting board.

Bone Graft

1. The Exploit will be fully invested in on this board when the Glyph level allows for it!
2. Bone Graft is super important for the build as it provides a significant damage boost to the build.

Scent of Death

1. Similar to Exploit we will fully invest in the Corporeal when possible.
2. Scent of Death will also be picked up early on this board to fully benefit from the corpses generated with the build.

Flesh-Eater

1. Sacrificial allows us to scale the magical nodes within range, on this board we’ll be taking all the magic nodes on the right side in radius.

Bloodbath

1. Essence Our last Glyph and board is entirely focused on maximizing the benefits of the Glyph by taking the needed attributes in range as the Glyph levels up.

Tempering and Masterworking

The Season 4 update (Patch 1.4.0) introduces a rework for itemization. Tempering and Masterworking bring the biggest change to itemization since the release of Diablo 4, so make sure you understand the new systems explained in this section.

The amount of affixes on items has been changed to reflect its rarity: Normal Items have no affixes, Magic Items have 1 affix, Rare Items have 2 affixes, Legendary Items have 3 affixes, and Unique Items have 4 affixes. Upgrading a Rare Item to a Legendary Item by imprinting a Legendary Aspect from the Codex of Power will not add a third affix. Therefore, Legendary Items are superior to lower rarity items for a min-maxed character.

Greater Affixes are a newly added mechanic that increases the value of an affix by 50%. Ancestral Legendary Items and Unique Items can now drop with up to 4 Greater Affixes! Search for items with your preferred Greater Affixes to upgrade with Tempering and Masterworking.

Tempering and Masterworking is an important system, even mandatory in the endgame, for character progression. You are able to add 2 additional affixes on any Rare Item or Legendary Item, exclusive to the Tempering System. An Ancestral Legendary Item can have up to 5 total affixes! Unfortunately, Unique Items cannot be tempered to add affixes.

Masterworking uses new crafting materials found in The Pit to further enhance the stats of an item. These upgrades can be applied on an Ancestral Legendary Item that has its Tempering Slots filled out. Unique Items can be upgraded with Masterworking right away, as tempering does not apply to them. Each item has 12 upgrade slots. On upgrade Ranks 4, 8, and 12, a random affix is increased in value by 25%. Every other upgrade Rank applies a 5% increase to all affixes on an item. Attempt to apply the bonus 25% upgrade to your preferred affix multiple times by resetting the Masterworking Ranks to repeat the process.

Obol Gambling

Obol gambling is a great way to potentially find item upgrades or items missing from your build. Check out the new tool from Icy Veins for gambling Obols in the link below:

Changelog

• May 16th, 2024: Gem updates.
• May 10th, 2024: Guide updated for Season 4 Loot Reborn.
• January 22nd, 2024: Guide updated for Season 3 Season of the Construct.
• October 15th, 2023: Updated guide for the 1.2 patch.
• August 7th, 2023: Minor updates for the 1.1.1 patch.
• August 5th, 2023: Guide updated for patch 1.1.1 (launches on August 8th).
• July 26th, 2023: Optimized gear affix list.
• July 19th, 2023: Guide updated for Season 1 including Malignant Hearts.