Mendeln Summoner Necromancer Endgame Build for Diablo 4 (Season 3)

Build Introduction

This is the endgame version of original Summoner Necromancer build which requires the unique Ring of Mendeln, as the entire build is designed around it! This build was curated in collaboration with SinityX, the first player to defeat Uber Lilith with a Summoner build, and GhazzyTV. We can both say we’ve optimized and fine-tuned this build to perfection!

While being able to run Tier 100 Nightmare Dungeon, as well as defeating Uber Lilith. The build is by far the best Necromancer build you can possible play during Season 1. It’s extremely fast & brings out brutally high damage numbers making it capable of killing Uber Lilith well before you reach level 100 even!

As a final note before we dive in to the details, the damage is exclusively coming from the Ring of Mendeln. This means the damage is coming from you as the player and not your Skeletal Minions.

As previously mentioned, this build is a variant of the Summoner Endgame Necromancer. To access the original version of the build, click the button below:

Video Guide

The video below shows the old version of this build, playstyle is very similar so we’ll leave this up for that purpose. A new video is coming soon showing the insane power this build brings!

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

Ring of Mendeln

Since the build is entirely designed around Ring of Mendeln, you’ll need that Unique Ring before you can follow this guide. The Ring itself is a random Unique and can’t be directly target farmed outside of opening jewelry boxes in Helltide events.

Before you get the ring, you can always play the initial Summoner Necromancer build.

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

• Minor QoL changes such as minions being able to walk through Bone Prison and the Cult Leader legendary node on the Paragon board now scaling minion damage based of how much attack speed they are given. However, we don’t scale our minions damage output in this specific build but rather our own making the changes more or less insignificant.

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 Mendeln Summoner.

Skill Tree Points and Skill Bar

Recommended

Suggested Skill Bar

Summoning Skill Bone Spear Blood Mist Decrepify Corpse Tendrils Bone Storm

Priority Skills & Skill Tree Passives	Cluster
Reap, Enhanced Reap	Basic Skill
Hewed Flesh Level 3, Bone Spear Level 5, Enhanced Bone Spear, Paranormal Bone Spear	Core Skill
Blood Mist, Enhanced Blood Mist, Ghastly Blood Mist, Skeletal Warrior Mastery Level 3, Grim Harvest, Fueled by Death Level 3	Corpse & Macabre Skill
Decrepify, Enhanced Decrepify, Abhorrent Decrepify, Death’s Embrace Level 3, Skeletal Mage Mastery Level 3, Amplify Damage Level 3, Death’s Reach Level 3	Curse Skill
Corpse Tendrils, Enhanced Corpse Tendrils	Summoning Skill
Bone Storm, Prime Bone Storm, Supreme Bone Storm, Inspiring Leader Level 3, Bonded in Essence Level 3	Ultimate Skill
Kalan’s Edict	Key Passives

Remaining Renown Points	Cluster
Unliving Energy Level 3	Core Skill
Corpse Tendrils Level 4	Summoning Skill
Death’s Defense Level 3	Ultimate Skill

Book of the Dead

Since this is a pure Minion build, we’ll want to use our Minions instead of sacrificing them. However, since we are in need of other skills, the Golem just isn’t bringing enough power to be used.

• Melee Skeletons: Skirmisher Skeletons; We’ll grab the +1 extra skeleton here for a higher damage output.
• Mage Skeletons: Cold Skeletons; The Essence generating Cold Skeletons will help sustain our Bone Spears.
• Golem: Iron Golem; you’ll want to sacrifice the Iron Golem to provide increased Critical Strike damage.

Paragon

The Paragon progression system unlocks at Level 50, providing 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, 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. It’s very important to point out that to make this build work, you will need to keep the minions alive. This is done with our final board, Cult Leader, in which we’ll use the Deadraiser Glyph to scale our Damage Reduction Nodes for the minions. Due to the importance of this board, it is recommended to place this early on instead of Flesh-Eater board as you progress your character and later on when you’re higher level become able to swap places with the two boards you’ll do so.

Starting Board

The Starting Board is very straight forward; rush the right-hand side and get the socket in which we will socket the Amplify Glyph. Remember to take the extra attributes within radius to get the bonus modifier from the Glyph if possible. The radius will increase as you level the Glyph up via Nightmare Dungeons. We’ll next head out north to our next board. Do ignore the first nodes on the left side of this board till you’ve collected all sockets from all our boards.

Scent of Death

For Scent of Death, remember, in order to match the image above, you may need to rotate the Paragon Boards. In this Board we’ll start by rushing the Legendary Node Scent of Death before taking the Magic and Rare Nodes on our way to the socket, in which we’ll place the Control Glyph. As with the Starting Board, take the extra attributes within radius if possible to get the bonus modifier out of the Glyph. Once done, we’ll briefly exit on the left side to get our third Board, Bone Graft, before coming back and exiting out of the north side to enter the Cult Leader Board.

Bone Graft

With Bone Graft, we’ll rush the socket to place the Exploit Glyph. As before, take extra attributes if the radius and level of the Glyph allows for the bonus modifier to be activated. Once done, we’ll head back to our second board, Scent of Death, and head out on north.

Cult Leader

Here we rush the socket slot, you’ll grab the surrounding Magic and Rare Nodes as we make our way to the socket in which we’ll place the Deadraiser Glyph. Only take the extra attributes and Nodes around this Glyph if you have it leveled enough to enable the bonus modifier. If not you just path out on the right side for our fifth board, Flesh-Eater.

Flesh-Eater

For Flesh-Eater, take all surrounding Magic and Rare as shown in the image, grabbing the socket first to place the Essence Glyph. Only take extra attributes around it to enable the bonus modifier, however, prioritize any and all Dexterity nodes within the Glyph radius to further scale our damage output. Once done, we’ll head back to our third board (Bone Graft) and move out north to the final Paragon Board.

Wither

Wither is mainly here for two reasons: To get us Damage to Elites Nodes, and to enable access to the bonus modifier from the Glyph socket. We make this socket worth the investments with the Corporeal Glyph, to get extra damage output and a little bit of extra resistances.

Paragon board images courtesy of d4builds.gg.

Mechanics and Playstyle

This build is entirely designed around Ring of Mendeln. We’ll want to stack Lucky Hit as much as possible on every single gear piece. This build will be abusing the high base Lucky Hit chance of our Bone Spear coupled with the Aspect making it able to hit up to 6 times per cast.

The mechanic of the build is all centered around triggering Lucky Hits, and thanks to Bone Spear, the effect happens frequently. Initially, you want to make sure enemies are cursed by Decrepify, and use Corpse Tendrils to group up enemies, as well as increasing your Critical Strike Chance thanks to the aspect power and watch enemies melt from absurd levels of damage output.

Gear Choice and Stat Priority

Lucky Hit is absolutely crucial for this build to function, but at the same time this build craves Critical Strike Chance. The goal is 100% chance to Critical Strike, achieved by combining our Aspect Powers and the bonus Critical Strike Chance we get from our Supreme Bone Storm. The Mendeln Summoner build ensures low cooldown rate through Lucky Hits, meaning it can consistently apply Vulnerable unto enemies through Decrepify, thus making stacking Vulnerable damage an ideal option.

Listed below are the Affixes to prioritize on gear for the Mendeln Summoner Necromancer. 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

Legendary Aspects

Listed below are all the recommended Legendary Aspects, whether from the Codex of Power or found on Legendary Items, that are important for the Mendeln Summoner Necromancer build. Aspects from the Codex of Power can be used if you cannot find the proper Legendary drops, but they have weaker effects.

Gear Slot	Aspect Name	Aspect Power
Helm	Coldbringer’s Aspect	Every 8 seconds, your Skeletal Mages cast a blizzard that deals X Cold damage and continuously Chills enemies for 8% over 6 seconds.
Chest	Aspect of Disobedience	You gain 0.25-0.50% increased Armor for 4 seconds when you deal any form of damage, stacking up to 15-66%.
Gloves	Blood Getter’s Aspect	Your maximum number of Skeletal Warriors is increased by 2.
Pants	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.
Boots	Viscous Aspect	Your maximum number of Skeletal Mages is increased by 2.
1H Weapon	Splintering Aspect	Bone Spear’s primary attack makes enemies hit beyond the first Vulnerable for 1.5-2.5 seconds. Bone Shards from Bone Spear deal 30-60% bonus damage to Vulnerable enemies and pierce them.
Amulet (50% scaling)	Aspect of Grasping Veins	Gain 10-20% increased Critical Strike Chance for 6 seconds when you cast Corpse Tendrils. You deal 30-60% bonus Critical Strike Damage to enemies damaged by Corpse Tendrils.
Ring	Aspect of Exposed Flesh	Lucky Hit: Up to a 10% chance to generate 30-50 Essence when hitting a Vulnerable enemy.
Offhand	Osseous Gale Aspect	Bone Storm consumes up to 8 Corpses to increase its duration by up to 5-10 seconds.

Unique Items

Ring of Mendeln: While you have 7 or more Minions you gain: Up to 10% chance to empower all of your Minions, causing the next attack from each to explode for [X] Physical damage.

The only Unique we’ll want to use is the Ring of Mendeln. The entire build is designed around this ring, making it mandatory for the build to function.

Gems

Listed below are the best Gems to socket into gear for each slot type.

• Weapon: Royal Emerald for +#% Increased Vulnerable Critical Strike Damage.
• Armor: Royal Ruby for Life increase.
• Jewelry: Diamond to help cap resistances at 70%. You can always use any of the specific resistance gems to help get close to the cap of your resistances as well.

Elixirs and Health Potions

To gain an edge in your adventures, head to the Alchemist in Kyovashad 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 by 7%.

Return to the Alchemist again when you reach Level 20 and 30 to upgrade your potion. The extra healing is essential to survival.

For the endgame, it’s important to make sure you have the highest level health potion as well as an active elixir as it provides increased experience gained and can either compensate low resistances or increase your damage output in the form of attack speed.

Changelog

• January 22nd, 2024: Guide updated for Season 3 Season of the Construct.
• October 22nd, 2023: Minor Skill-Tree Adjustments.
• October 21st, 2023: Paragon Board updated.
• October 15th, 2023: Guide updated for Season 2 Season of Blood, Patch 1.2.
• August 7th, 2023: Guide updated for Patch 1.1.1.
• July 26th, 2023: Big rework on the structure of the guide.
  • Changes entire Paragon Board, Aspects, skill tree.
  • Finalized decision of the Season 1 Heart choices.