Blood Surge Necromancer Gauntlet Build Guide for Diablo 4 (Season 3)

Gauntlet Build Introduction

The Gauntlet variant build for the Blood Surge Necromancer is a late endgame setup, focused on speed to obtain the highest leaderboard score. This is one of the best Gauntlet builds for Necromancers in Season 3 of Diablo 4. For more information on this endgame activity, check out our Gauntlet Guide.

Climbing up leaderboard ranks of the Gauntlet requires quick mobility and high damage to clear enemies before the timer runs out. Therefore, the Gauntlet setup for the Blood Surge Necromancer trades defense for offense whenever possible. Since this build guide is meant to be the absolute best to top the leaderboards, it will be using a very gear heavy setup. However, you are still able to play and perform well in the Gauntlet without them.

This Gauntlet build guide assumes your character is Level 100. Start with the Blood Surge Necromancer Leveling Guide if you are starting a new character from Level 1-50, and then the Blood Surge Necromancer Endgame Guide from Level 50-100. You should also already have the Build Requirements listed in the section below.

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

There’s a handful of unique items required for this build to perform at a very high level. You can realistically play it without these unique items by replacing them with Legendary Aspect Powers from the original base endgame build guide. Do keep in mind that it will perform less optimally should you not have all of the high end items listed below.

Required Uniques

Harlequin Crest

Blood Moon Breeches

The Grandfather

Ring of Starless Skies

Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul

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

• 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!

Best 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 is the best Seneschal Construct Companion setup for Blood Surge Necromancer in the Gauntlet. Although only 3 Tuning Stones can be linked to each Governing Stone, alternative options are possible to try out, change them at your own discretion.

1. Flash of Adrenaline: Administers a quick flash of adrenaline into the player, granting bonus damage for a duration.
   • Initiative: Teleports your Construct to the enemy if it’s out of range.
   • Tactical Support: Decrease the cooldown of the supported Skill.
   • Duration Support: Supported Skills have their durations increased.
     
2. Tempest: Electrically charge an enemy causing it to deal damage to themselves and additional enemies each second over time. If the enemy is killed, Tempest spreads to another enemy.
   • Evernight: The supported Skill grants you +4 to all Skills when used.
   • Efficiency Support: When the supporting skill deals damage, you gain Critical Strike Chance to the same targets hit.
   • Resource Support: Player gains an amount of Primary Resource when the supporting Skill first deals damage.

Skill Tree Points and Skill Bar

Recommended

Suggested Skill Bar

Corpse Tendrils Decrepify Blood Mist Blood Surge Bone Storm Corpse Explosion

The following tables show the full allocation of Skill Points for the Blood Surge Necromancer Gauntlet Build. If you do not have all Skill Points obtained from Renown you should prioritize finishing that before pushing the Gauntlet leaderboards.

WARNING: This Skill Tree setup is designed for maximum damage output to obtain the highest score possible in the Gauntlet. Defense is traded for Offense at nearly every possible opportunity. This glass cannon playstyle can take some practice to master.

Priority Skills & Skill Tree Passives	Cluster
Hemorrhage, Enhanced Hemorrhage	Basic Skill
Blood Surge Level 5, Enhanced Blood Surge, Paranormal Blood Surge, Hewed Flesh Level 3, Unliving Energy, Imperfectly Balanced Level 3	Core Skill
Corpse Tendrils, Enhanced Corpse Tendrils, Blighted Corpse Tendrils, Spiked Armor, Grim Harvest, Fueled by Death Level 3	Corpse & Macabre Skill
Decrepify, Enhanced Decrepify, Abhorrent Decrepify, Death’s Reach (Death’s Approach) Level 3, Amplify Damage Level 3	Curse Skill
Reaper’s Pursuit Level 3, Gruesome Mending, Coalesced Blood Level 3, Tides of Blood Level 3, Drain Vitality Level 2	Summoning Skill
Bone Storm, Prime Bone Storm, Supreme Bone Storm, Inspiring Leader Level 3, Stand Alone Level 3, Memento Mori Level 3	Ultimate Skill
Rathma’s Vigor	Key Passives

Book of the Dead

This Blood Surge Necromancer is designed to speed clear the Gauntlet to compete in the leaderboards. To achieve this we are going to be sacrificing every single one of our minions to further boost the capabilities of the builds performance.

• Melee Skeletons: We sacrifice the Skirmishers here for higher critical strike chance.
• Mage Skeletons: Bone mages provides increased Overpower damage output.
• Golem: Iron Golem further scales our critical strike damage output.

Paragon

The Paragon progression system unlocks after reaching Level 50, and offers a considerable boost to character power. Within the Paragon Board, there are many different bonuses, ranging from minor stat enhancements on Magic Nodes to more significant gains with Rare Glyphs and Legendary Nodes.

Important Notes:

• Additional Bonus requirements on Rare Glyphs may not be obtainable until they gain increased radius range at Level 15.
• Attach Legendary Boards in the correct order. Bonus requirements of Rare Nodes increase with their placement order.
• Make sure you select the correct Legendary Boards and rotate them into the correct orientation before attachment.

The table below contains the most beneficial Rare Glyphs and Legendary Nodes for the Blood Surge Necromancer in the Gauntlet, sorted in the order obtained in the final Level 100 Paragon Tree. The images that follow provide a visual of each Paragon Board setup.

Name	Effect
Sacrificial	* Grants + 150% bonus to all Magic nodes within range. * Additional Bonus (requires 40 intelligence purchased in radius range): You deal x10% increased damage while you have no active Minions.
Corporeal	Grants + 150% bonus to all Magic nodes within range. * Additional Bonus (requires 40 intelligence purchased in radius range): You and your minions deal x10% increased Physical damage and you gain 1% Movement Speed for each active Minion.
Dominate	* For every 5 Willpower purchased within range, you deal + 39.45% increased Overpower damage. * Additional Bonus (requires 25 willpower purchased in radius range): When you Overpower an enemy, all damage they take from you and your Minions is increased by x12% for 5 seconds.
Scent of Death	With at least 2 Corpses Nearby, you gain 15% Damage Reduction. With no Corpses Nearby, you deal x15% increased damage.
Essence	* For every 5 dexterity purchased within range, you deal + 20% increased Critical Strike Damage. * Additional Bonus (requires 25 dexterity purchased in radius range): Critical Strikes deal x22% increased damage to enemies that are not Healthy.
Bloodbath	Deal x35% increased Overpower damage.
Amplify	* Grants + 150% bonus to all Magic nodes within range. * Additional Bonus (requires 40 intelligence purchased within radius range): Enemies affected by a Curse Skill take x10% increased damage from you and your Minions.
Flesh-eater	Consuming 5 Corpses grants x40% increased damage for 6 seconds.

Starting Board (Sacrificial)

Blood Begets Blood (Corporeal)

Scent of Death (Dominate)

Bloodbath (Essence)

Flesh-eater (Amplify)

Paragon Board images courtesy of d4builds.gg. Click this link for the Paragon planner.

Mechanics and Playstyle

The playstyle of the build is extremely straight forward, as it is with the base Blood Surge Necromancer build. Ensure enemies are cursed by Decrepify, as this will provide Cooldown Reduction, lowered enemy damage output and significantly boost your own damage output on the enemies. After this you will rip Blood Surge while keeping your Bone Storm up, clearing large packs of enemies while on the move. Combine this simple rotation while using your Evade action to speed through the Gauntlet.

The Unique items for this build will not only boost defensive and offensive scaling modifiers, but also provides comfortable sustain for Essence and automates corpse consumption for damage boost, crowd-control and to gain a bit of Essence back. Legendary Aspect Powers such as Metamorphosis renders you Unstoppable to make it easier to avoid crowd-control situations such as freezing enemies.

Gear Choice and Stats

We won’t be using that many non-unique items for optimal performance, but the few pieces that we are we will focus our efforts in Essence sustain by lowering the cost of our abilities, scaling our movement speed, as well as our attack speed. Most importantly, when it comes to the Gauntlet, increases to Shrine Buff Duration are the key feature to achieving high leaderboard scores. Remaining modifiers will either be Intelligence, Life or damage scaling modifiers. Below you will find a list showing you what modifiers should go on what slot.

Higher Item Level gear provides higher stat values. Replace outdated gear often, and upgrade new gear at the Blacksmith to increase Item Levels further.

Stat Priority List

Listed below are the affixes to prioritize on gear for Blood Surge Necromancer in the Gauntlet. Each line of affixes are listed in order of importance. Affixes on the same line are considered to be equally important, but their benefits may vary depending how much is stacked or other character stats. Bolded stats are the most important and sometimes vital for the build to function properly.

The priority order of Resistances is Lightning > Poison > Fire > Cold > Shadow. Maximum Resistance is 70% by default for each element and can be increased to 85% by various sources.

Legendary Aspects and Codex of Power

Listed below are all the best-in-slot Aspects found on Legendary Items that are important for the Gauntlet Blood Surge Necromancer 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 lower level Legendary Items and imprint them onto better Rare Items with preferred stats.

Gear Slot	Aspect Name	Legendary Aspect Power
Body Armor	Aspect of the Embalmer	Consuming a Corpse has a 20-30% chance to spawn a Blood Orb.
Gloves	Blood-bathed Aspect	Blood Surge’s nova echoes again after a short delay, dealing 30-10% less damage.
Boots	Metamorphosis	When you Evade you turn in to a cloud of bats, becoming Unstoppable for 2.5 seconds. Enemies along your path take X Physical damage and are inflicted with Vampiric Curse. Evade’s Cooldown is increased by 10-5 seconds.
Amulet	Aspect of Rathma’s Chosen	Whenever your Blood Skills Overpower you gain 20-50% Attack Speed for 4 seconds.

Unique Items

Listed below are the set of unique items used by the Blood Surge Necromancer Build for optimal Gauntlet leaderboard performance.

• Harlequin Crest – Provides a ton of extra levels to our skills on top of very beneficial base stats.
• Blood Moon Breeches – Bread and butter of Overpower builds as we gain an insane amount of multiplicative damage scaling.
• The Grandfather – We want to crit when we hit, this bad boy will make sure those crits are noticeable.
• Ring of Starless Skies – This ring reduces the cost of our abilities and increase our damage output consistently.
• Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul – This is how we automate our corpse consumption which provides crowd-control, resources, speed and increased damage output. A jack of all trades if you will.

Gems

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

• Weapon: Royal Emerald for Critical Strike Damage to Vulnerable Enemies.
• Armor: Royal Ruby for Maximum Life.
• Jewelry: Royal Skull for Armor or Individual Resistance Gems for Resistances that are not already capped at 70%. The priority order of Resistances is Lightning > Poison > Fire > Cold > Shadow.

Elixirs

Listed below is the best Elixirs to consume for the Gauntlet. Elixirs that are not available at the Alchemist can only be found as drops. Open Splitting Steel and Mystery Chests in Helltides to farm non-craftable Elixirs.

• Elixir of Cruelty (non-craftable): Provides the highest source of Critical Strike Chance from an Elixir. Alternatively, Heady Precision Elixir can be crafted at the Alchemist. This is the absolute best Elixir you could use for this build in the Gauntlet.

Changelog

• March 9th, 2024: Guide created.