Build Introduction
This guide is a collaboration between GhazzyTV and community member Garm Z. The 
Sever Shadowmancer build is a well-rounded and high-performing build at any stage of progress. The concept is to boost shadow-infused scythes with Overpower scaling in addition to already guaranteed Critical Strikes. Two layers of barrier generation provide excellent survivability even in the most challenging content.
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To see how this build compares to the other builds on our site, you can check out our build tier lists.
Strengths and Weaknesses
- Safe & Comfortable to play
- Consistent damage output
- Unstable Essence Management
Build Requirements
Greaves of the Empty Tomb
Blood Moon BreechesQuick Navigation
Want to skip ahead? Use the table below to jump to the sections you are looking for.
Skill Bar and Skill Tree Points
Blight
Corpse Explosion
ReapSever
Corpse Tendrils
SoulriftFollow the points allocated in the Skill Tree above for the complete 71-point build. The additional 12 skill points are completed using the Renown system.
Necromancer Class Mechanic – Book of the Dead
The Shadowmancer is mainly focused on damage-over-time effects, this is best scaled by sacrificing all our minions.
- Melee Skeletons: Reaper [Sacrifice] – Increased Shadow Damage.
- Mage Skeletons: Cold [Sacrifice] – Increased Vulnerable Damage.
- Golem: Iron [Sacrifice] – Increased Critical Strike Damage.
Gear, Stats, Gems, and Runes
The following sections cover the important systems that are essential to improving the power of your character in the endgame of Diablo 4.
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! Other recommendations for Legendary Aspect farming would be to do the Seasonal mechanic and to some extent you can farm them in Helltides as well.
| Gear Slot | Gems | Aspect / Unique | Legendary Aspect / Unique Power |
|---|---|---|---|
| Helm |  Feo +  Ner |  Aspect of the Cursed Aura | A dark aura surrounds you, inflicting  Decrepify and  Iron Maiden on enemies who touch it. Curses inflicted this way spread to surrounding targets every x seconds and last 4 seconds outside of the aura. |
| Chest |  Royal Topaz |  Aspect of Hardened Bones | You gain 15-20% increased Damage Reduction. |
| Gloves | N/A |  Vehement Brawler’s Aspect | Casting an Ultimate Skill increases your damage by 30%[x] [10 – 30]% for 8 seconds. Gain 2 additional Ultimate Skill Ranks. |
| Pants | Royal Topaz | Blood Moon Breeches | You deal x#% increased Critical Strike Damage to enemies affected by your Curses. |
| Boots | N/A | Greaves of the Empty Tomb | Makes our Sever leave behind Desecrated Ground dealing x Corrupting damage over 2 seconds. |
| Weapon 2H (Sword – 100% Scaling) |  Cir +  Lum | Reaping Lotus’ Aspect | Sever no longer returns and instead splits into 3 specters that expand out and back from its apex. Sever deals #% of normal damage. |
| Amulet (50% Scaling) |  Royal Skull | Sacrificial Aspect | Your Sacrifice bonuses are increased by #%. |
| Ring | Royal Skull | Aspect of the Damned | You deal x#% increased Shadow damage to enemies afflicted by any curse. |
| Ring | Royal Skull | Aspect of Grasping Veins | Gain x% increased Critical Strike Chance for 6 seconds when you cast Corpse Tendrils. You deal 30-75% bonus Critical Strike Damage to enemies damaged by Corpse Tendrils. |
In Season 10, we’ll have access to Chaos Armor to further push the limits of the build!
Curious how this build compares to other endgame options? Take a look at our Endgame Build Tier List.
Stat Priority and Tempering Affixes
Below are the affixes to prioritize on gear. Each line of affixes is listed in order of importance. Tempering Manuals and their recommended affixes are provided in the second column, and the bolded affixes are the most important targets for Masterworking upgrades. The main priority for Greater Affixes are marked with a “*”, secondary would be anything providing Intelligence or Life. Be sure to check our Tempering and Masterworking guides for more details about these topics.
| Slot | Targeted Gear Affixes | Tempering Affixes |
|---|---|---|
| Helm | * 1. Intelligence 2. Maximum Life 3. Essence per Second |  Worldly Endurance #% Total ArmorDecay Innovation #% Soulrift Duration |
| Chest | * 1. Intelligence 2. Maximum Life 3. Essence per Second | Worldly Endurance #% Total ArmorDecay Innovation #% Soulrift Duration |
| Gloves | * 1. + Ranks to Sever 2. Attack Speed 3. Critical Strike Chance | Decay Innovation #% Soulrift DurationElemental Finesse – Night #% Shadow Damage |
| Pants | Blood Moon Breeches * 1. Critical Strike Chance | n/a |
| Boots | Greaves of the Empty Tomb * 1. Chance for Sever to Deal Double Damage 2. Sever Size | n/a |
| Amulet | * 1. + Ranks to Gloom 2. Intelligence 3. + Ranks to Terror Note: If you don’t have 2 passive amulet you can use either of the following stats: Attack Speed or Critical Strike Chance. | Necromancer Efficiency #% Ultimate Cooldown ReductionElemental Finesse – Night #% Shadow Damage |
| Rings (2x) | * 1. Attack Speed 2. Critical Strike Chance 3. Intelligence | Necromancer Efficiency #% Ultimate Cooldown ReductionShadow Finesse #% Shadow Damage |
| 2h Weapon (Sword) | * 1. Intelligence 2. Maximum Life 3. Vulnerable Damage | Dreadful Augments + Ranks to FinalityShadow Finesse #% Shadow Damage |
Keep in mind that the maximum Resistance is 70% by default for each element and can be increased to 85% by various sources.
Make sure to achieve and maintain armor cap of 1,000 as soon as possible! For that purpose helm or chest temporary tempering can be Total Armor %.
Uniques and Mythic Uniques
Below you will find information on Uniques and Mythic Uniques that are useful for this build. Moreover, if you are interested in target farming Mythic Uniques, check out our How to Farm Mythic Uniques guide.
Uniques
- Blood Moon Breeches (Required) – Big damage multiplier and Critical Strike Chance. You can target farm this from all Lair bosses.
- Greaves of the Empty Tomb (Required) – Crazy double damage source for the build.
Mythic Uniques
Heir of Perdition – Replaces your current helmet in favor of insane damage scaling. Greater Affix and Masterworking priority on this item will be + Ranks to Core Skills.
Shroud of False Death – Replaces your Hardened Bones Aspect and provides great scaling. Greater Affix and Masterworking priority on this item will be Maximum Life and/or All Stats.
Ring of Starless Skies – Replaces Aspect of Grasping Veins. Greater Affix and Masterworking priority on this item will be Attack Speed and + Ranks to Core skills.
Gems and Runewords
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Recommended Runewords listed below. | Recommended Runewords then Royal Topaz For increased Intelligence. | Royal Skull For increased Armor.  Royal Diamond Can be used to help resistance if your armor has reached the cap. |
Make sure to convert not used gem-fragments to Skull fragments to obtain 3xRoyal Skull as early as possible.
The following Runewords are recommended to be used for this build.
| Runeword Combination | Effect |
| Without Ring of Starless SkiesCir + Lum | Gain: 300 Offering. Cast 5 Skills then become exhausted for 3 seconds. Requires: 5 Offering (Overflow: Increased Resource Restored) Cooldown 1 second. Restore 3.5 Primary Resource. |
With Ring of Starless Skies Ahu +  Qax | Gain: 15 Offering. Lucky Hit: Up to a 100% chance against non-Healthy enemies. Requires: 400 Offering. (Overflow: Further Increased Damage). Cooldown 1 second. Casting a Skill other than a Basic or Defensive spends all your Primary Resource to increase your damage up to 100% for 1 second. |
| With Aspect of the Cursed AuraFeo + Ner | Gain: 1000 Offering. Become Injured or Crowd Controlled. Cooldown 10 seconds. Requires: 600 Offering. (Overflow: Increased Duration). Cooldown 6 seconds. Invoke the Rogue’s  Countering Concealment, gaining Dodge Chance, Movement Speed, Unstoppable, and Stealth. |
Without Aspect of the Cursed Aura Igni +  Wat | Gain: 25 Offering. Stores offering every 0.3 seconds. Cast a non-Basic Skill to gain the stored offering. Requires: 100 Offering (Overflow: Increase Duration) Cooldown 1 second. Invoke the Necromancer’s Horrid Decrepify Slowing enemies, reducing their damage, and letting you Execute them. |
Paragon board
Below you’ll find the entire end-game paragon board set-up for this build in detail!
Season of Infernal Chaos (Season 10)
In Season 10, we get access to Chaos Perks as well as Chaos Armor. Below, you’ll find a list of our recommended items to look out for.
Chaos Perks
| Power | Description |
 A Beast Cornered | For every 10% Life you are missing, you gain x20% increased damage and 5% Damage Reduction. Spending Resources also drains a percentage of your Life equal to 30% the Resources spent, refunding those Resources. This cannot reduce you to below 10% Life. |
 Marred Guard | You can no longer be healed above 50% Life. You gain 10% Maximum Resistance to All Elements, x20% Armor, and 100% increased Barrier and Fortify Generation. |
 Crazy Brew | Your Healing Potion is infused with the power of Chaos, granting you 100% Resource Cost Reduction, +80% increased Attack Speed and +80% increased Movement Speed for 5 seconds. Your Healing Potion has a 15 second Cooldown and you can drink it at full Life. Cooldown is affected by Cooldown Reduction. |
 Accelerating Chaos | Lucky Hit: Damaging an enemy has up to a 10% chance to trigger a Chaotic Burst on the enemy, dealing 3,176 damage. Your Chaotic Bursts that hit an enemy reduce a random active Cooldown by 0.5 seconds. |
Chaos Armor
Chaos Armor is seasonal corrupted unique gear that can take the form and slots of other armor pieces. An amulet can become boots or a helmet, a shield can become gloves, and so on. Chaos pieces carry their original implicit affixes, like All Resistances from Jewelry or weapon damage multiplier from the shield, regardless of the form they take. They always have increased AND top roll unique aspect value.
Fists of Fate – Any slot except Boots. Good baseline stats and a huge damage multiplier.
Lidless Wall – Any slot except Chest/Boots. Base weapon damage multiplier combined with useful stats.
Bloodless Scream – Any slot except Chest/Boots. Big multiplier to Darkness skills and crowd control effect. For Masterworking you’ll want to prioritize + Ranks to Darkness Skills.
Ebonpiercer – Any slot except Chest/Boots. Massive amount of ranks to 
Reaper’s Pursuit synergizes very well with 6 Darkness skills on our action-bar. For Masterworking you’ll want to prioritize Ranks to Reaper’s Pursuit.
Mercenaries
During the Vessel of Hatred campaign, you will unlock Mercenaries to assist you. While you can choose freely early on, we recommend Raheir as your main merc, and Varyana as a Reinforcement once you reach endgame.
For the reinforcement, stick with Aldkin, utilizing his Flame Surge skill being cast when the player casts Sever.
Build Mechanics
Rotation and Playstyle
We keep Soulrift up and 
Flesh-eater multiplier by exploding 3 corpses with Corpse Explosion regularly. We group up enemies with Corpse Tendrils and apply Blight if possible. Then we just spam Sever! If you’re standing close to the enemies, you could use Reap once for some extra damage resistance and attack speed.
Make sure to use your healing potion to activate Crazy Brew for increased cast speed and free casts right before you unleash your damage!
- Ahu will generate significant amount of offering from not-Healthy enemies with Lucky Hits. This is combined with Qax which will trigger a massive double damage buff for 1 second every cooldown.
- Cir during skill spam every 3 seconds provides huge amount of offering in a bulk. Lum converts the offering to Essence in ratio of 5:3 once per second. Effectively refills your Essence pool fully once per second during skill spam.
- Igni passively provides enough offering to trigger Wat on internal cooldown which will supplement the Decrepify from Aspect of the Cursed Aura.
- Feo guarantees unstoppable for roughly 80%+ of the time by providing excessive amount of offering to Ner on becoming crowd controlled.
Which Elixirs Should You Use?
Visit the Alchemist and craft 
Strong Assault Elixir for increased attack speed, a cheaper option would be Elixir of Destruction II, however, if you’re struggling on Essence 
Elixir of Resourcefulness II can be very helpful. Some Elixirs cannot be crafted and only drop from things like Helltides or Nightmare Dungeons. Additionally, make sure to keep your health potion upgraded!
Season 10 Updates
For a complete overview of Season 10, mechanics and theme, new leveling activity, and other changes coming, please take a look at our comprehensive season hub here. Regarding seasonal updates for Necromancer:
- Buffed Reaping Lotus’ Aspect significantly.
- Sever received a slight baseline nerf.
- No other big changes outside of the new seasonal powers being introduced.
Obol Gambling
Obol gambling is a great way to potentially find item upgrades or items missing from your build. Check out the tool guide from Icy Veins for gambling Obols in the link below.
Changelog
- September 19th, 2025: Guide updated for Season 10. Mostly gear changes with the new seasonal mechanic additions.
- June 29th, 2025: Guide updated for Season 9.
- May 5th, 2025: Optimized and updated post launch for Season 8.
- April 26th, 2025: Guide updated for Season 8.
- January 19th, 2025: Guide updated for Season 7.
- October 12th, 2024: New Paragon tool added.
- October 7th, 2024: Paragon board added.
- October 2nd, 2024: Guide updated for Season 6.
- August 5th, 2024: Guide updated for Season 5, Infernal Hordes.
- May 13th, 2024: Guide updated for Season 4 Loot Reborn.
- January 22nd, 2024: Guide updated for Season 3 Season of the Construct.
- 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 19th, 2023: Guide updated for Season 1 including Malignant Hearts.
