Leveling as a Necromancer with Bone Spear and Corpse Explosion
The 
Bone Spear Necromancer leveling build is a high damaging ranged build that brings high consistency to the battlefield, ensuring the damage output is kept high even when you’re building up your Essence to continue casting Bone Spears. This makes it an incredibly smooth build to level your Necromancer with!
Due to the high damage output, this build will take you from the start of the game all the way through the campaign with ease, as well as being capable of soloing the Cathedral of Light Capstone dungeon.
Solo play can be fun and playing with friends can be great, if you have the right spec! The high damage output makes the build very attractive to have in a party with friends, and it also makes enemies consistently Vulnerable, allowing the rest of your party to benefit immensely for having you with them.
If you are already level 50, you can check out any of our Endgame Necromancer builds.
Level 50/Endgame Blood Surge Necromancer Build Level 50/Endgame Sever Shadowmancer Build Level 50/Endgame Bone Spear Necromancer BuildSkill Tree Points
At this point in your character progression it is optimal to move all your points in 
Blood Surge over to Bone Spear, as both are located in the Core cluster. This allows you to utilize 
Corpse Explosion to clear any extra enemies the Bone Spear did not kill without forcing you to move into close range of your enemies.
Mechanics and Playstyle
The build starts off with casting Blood Surge as your main source of damage output coupled with Corpse Explosion. This works very well, but does force you to position yourself close to the enemies. This is later solved by moving your points over to Bone Spear which will be our main source of single-target damage. However, thanks to the combination of exploding corpses and the passive 
Grim Harvest, we can easily use Bone Spear to kill initial enemies and finish the remaining mobs with our Corpse Explosion, building our Essence pool back and creating a very smooth playstyle and leveling experience.
When fighting bosses you essentially want to dump all your Essence by casting Bone Spear. Thanks to your Reaper Skeletons providing corpses, as well as the passive 
Hewed Flesh, you should always have an abundant amount of corpses around your enemies to create a wave of explosions with Corpse Explosion. Aside from re-summoning your skeletons if needed, this rotation rinses and repeats like clockwork!
Should you find yourself completely out of Essence and with no corpses, you’ll resort to using your 
Bone Splinters to create corpses and regain Essence.
Book of the Dead
Necromancer’s class specific ability is the Book of the Dead, which provides three different type of minions that unlock by leveling up. Some of these choices comes down to personal preference, so we will outline our preferred setup for leveling this build.
- Melee Skeletons – We’ll want to run the Reapers. The second effect choice from these bad boys allows them to have a 15% chance to create a corpse on hit. Seeing as our build thrives on both damage output and Essence gain from corpses this is the ideal choice.
- Mage Skeletons – In the early leveling process, you can choose to run the Cold version of the Mage Skeletons to regain Essence on Hit. We are not aiming to invest anything to have them survive long term, as this would cause them to take up more time being resummoned rather than providing something beneficial for your build. Our choice here is to sacrifice them as Cold Skeletons, providing us with extra damage against Vulnerable enemies.
- Golem – When you first gain access to the Golem, we would strongly recommend using him as an actual tank. The Golem doesn’t go down easily and helps taunt enemies, enabling you to safely do damage from a distance. Use either the Bone Golem, which provides corpses when the summon takes a certain amount of damage, or the Blood Golem, which redirects a portion of the damage you take yourself, as both are great choices during this time frame. Towards the end of the campaign we would opt for sacrificing the Iron Golem, which provides Necromancer with extra Critical Strike Damage.
Legendary Aspects and Codex of Power
There is really only one Legendary Aspect that is truly powerful and worth mentioning for this build, which is the 
Splintering Aspect, unlocked by completing the Guulrahn Slums dungeon in Act 3, Dry Steppes.
This legendary power allows us to make enemies Vulnerable, which in turn allows us to remove the Supernatural Bone Spear and change it into Paranormal Bone Spear. Most importantly, we are now able to make large groups of enemies all reliably become Vulnerable.
As you level up the build, you will want to keep this power and at the same time allow yourself to freely equip upgrades as you find them. Weapons are the biggest source of our damage output, and this is why we do NOT recommend putting your power there. The power is there more for the effect rather than the increased damage it also provides. Instead of putting it on weapons, we recommend strongly that you apply this to one of your Rings; this will allow you to have more free room to equip upgrades (in case of a great Ring drop, you can replace the Ring without the Aspect) without wasting precious materials re-applying the Aspect every time you find an upgrade.
It’s also very important to note that as you gain higher item level items, they will become more expensive to apply these powers to!
Gear Choice and Stat Priority while Leveling
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 that 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%!
Outside of this, you’ll be on the look out for the following modifiers, in no particular order:
- Damage against Vulnerable Targets;
- Damage against Distant targets;
- Critical Strike Damage;
- Lucky Hit Chance, which is very effective as this helps generate more corpses to keep the rotation of Bone Spears & Corpse Explosion going.
Gems
Listed below are the best Gems to socket into gear for each slot type.
- Weapon: Emerald for +#% Critical Strike Damage to Vulnerable Enemies.
- Armor: Ruby for +#% Maximum Life.
- Jewelry: Diamond for all Resistance or any gem that provides you with the resistance type you lack the most.
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 Weak 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.
