Shadow Summoner Endgame Necromancer Build for Diablo 4 (Season 5)

Build Introduction

The beloved playstyle of having an army of Skeletal Minions destroying everything for you is the main focus of this build guide. The build will require certain Legendary Powers to be a performing character, which is covered in this guide. Outside of letting our minions do our damage, we will be Cursing enemies with Decrepify and Slowing them down on top of consistent cooldown recovery allowing for high up-time of our Bone Storm. We combine this with a massive spam of Corpse Explosion ramping up tons of Shadow damage to trigger the Shadowblight Key Passive for insane damage output! This specific version of the summoner build is referred to as a Shadow Minion build, and since we are using both Skeletons and Golems, Zoomancer is often a common name for the build!

You are able to level with this build however, if you are new to the game, 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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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

This build has no mandatory items or Aspects to function, meaning you can play it right from the start!

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 Shadow Summoner / Zoomancer Necromancer.

Skill Bar and Skill Tree Points

Recommended

Suggested Skill Bar

Bone Storm Summoning Skill Summoning Skill Corpse Explosion Decrepify Corpse Tendrils

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

Since we are focusing on dealing damage with our minions, we will be keeping all our minions alive for this build, and not sacrificing any of them.

• Melee Skeletons; Reaper Skeletons We grab the corpse generating upgrade here.
• Mage Skeletons; Shadow Skeletons Having more multiplicative damage per active Shadow Mage will directly scale our minions damage output.
• Golem; Bone Golem provides extra layers of defense by being able to taunt enemies for us and shed corpses on demand with the ability.

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 reduction for your Minions, Minion Attack Speed, 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’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. Also, note that the Glyph radius is based on level 21 Glyphs.

1. Starting Board

The Starting Board will be focused on picking getting to the socket slot, and we will want the Amplify Glyph. Depending on the level and radius, you should pick up the extra Intelligence Nodes if you can enable the Additional Bonus for it. Then, we proceed by pathing upward for our next board, Cult Leader, by taking all Magic Nodes and the Rare Node on the left side.

2. Cult Leader

Cult Leader should be rushed through by taking the socket and the Legendary Node. Pick up the Rare and Magic nodes, when you reach the socket, you’ll want to use the Deadraiser Glyph. Similarly to our starting board, if the radius is big enough to get the bonus modifier, you should take the extra Intelligence. Once done, we’ll path out to the south side for our third board, Wither.

3. Wither

Similarly to our previous board, we’ll be rushing towards the Legendary Node and picking up the Rare and Magic Nodes as shown in the image above on the way. Once you reach the socket, you’ll slot in the Golem Glyph and the extra Nodes around for damage mitigation for our minions. Make sure you grab the displayed Rare and Magic nodes before you move to the right for the fourth board, Flesh-Eater.

4. Flesh-Eater

For Flesh-Eater, we will rotate to get the socket slot first, in which we want to use the Essence Glyph. Similarly to our previous boards, we’ll take the extra attributes if the radius allows for us to benefit from the bonus modifier. After this, we will finish our progression by getting the remaining Rare and Magic nodes and head to our next board.

5. Scent of Death

With Scent of Death, we’ll fit it so we can rush the socket, in which we use the Control Glyph which will provide a ton of extra damage against crowd controlled enemies. This board is exclusively used to get another Glyph and benefit from a lot of extra damage multipliers.

6. Hulking Monstrosity

With Hulking Monstrosity is here to fit the Darkness Glyph and rush the legendary node to finish our paragon board.

Paragon board images courtesy of d4builds.gg.

For an in-depth analysis of each board and our particular node choices, please see the detailed Paragon section here.

Gear, Gems, Elixirs, and Stats

Season 5 has brought some very nice itemization changes which are reflected in this guide as seen down 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	Gain x Armor, but your Evade has 100% increased Cooldown.
Chest	Royal Ruby	Aspect of Hardened Bones	You and your Minions gain 15-20% increased Damage Reduction.
Gloves	N/A	Blood Getter’s Aspect	Your Skeletal Priests also empower you at 55-70% effectiveness.
Pants	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.
Boots	N/A	Aspect of Occult Dominion	Your maximum number of Skeletal Warriors and Skeletal Mages is increased by 2.
Weapon 1H (Sword)	Royal Emerald	Osseous Gale Aspect	Bone Storm consumes up to 8 Corpses to increase its duration by up to 5-10 seconds.
Off-hand (Focus)	Royal Emerald	Aspect of Reanimation	Your Minions gain increased damage while alive, up to 30-40% after 10 seconds.
Amulet (50% Scaling)	Any Resistance Gem	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.
Ring	Any Resistance Gem	Aspect of Frenzied Dead	Each time one of your Summoning Minions damages an enemy, they gain 10-14% Attack Speed for 3 seconds, up to 30-42%.
Ring	Any Resistance Gem	Blighted Aspect	You deal 50-120% increased damage for 6 seconds after the Shadowblight Key Passive damages enemies 10 times.

Do note that if you can achieve 9230 armor without Juggernaut’s Aspect, you can change this to Aspect of Plunging Darkness. Do keep in mind that Plunging Darkness is an offensive aspect and can’t be placed on a helmet. To solve this you can place Blood Getter’s Aspect on your helmet and make room on your glove for the new power. This allows you to move the points in the skill tree away from Corpse Explosion and put them in the Blight. The left-over point from Unliving Energy will then be placed in Bone Prison, allowing for an interaction where you make your minions deal extra damage via the Supernatural Blight. This is, of course, mainly for the highest endgame, where the armor is easier to get via Mastercrafting and one or two armor rolls via Temper-crafting.

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 Emerald For Crit Damage.	Royal Ruby For increased Maximum Life.	Royal Amethyst Royal Sapphire Royal Ruby Royal Skull

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

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. To masterwork, you will need rare materials that only drop from The Pit. Be sure to check our Tempering guide, our Masterworking guide, as well as our guide about The Pit for more details about these topics.

Slot	Targeted Gear Affixes	Tempering Affixes
Helm	1. Cooldown Reduction 2. Maximum Life 3. Intelligence	Profane Innovation #% Corpse Tendril Size Profane Cage Ranks to Crippling Darkness
Chest	1. Armor 2. Maximum Life 3. Intelligence	Profane Cage Ranks to Crippling Darkness Profane Innovation: x% Corpse Tendrils Size
Gloves	1. Ranks to Skeletal Mage Mastery 2. Attack Speed 3. Critical Strike Damage	Natural Schemes #% Crowd Control Duration Profane Finesse: x% Damage against Cursed Enemies
Pants	1. Ranks to Skeletal Mage Mastery 2. Maximum Life 3. Intelligence	Profane Cage Ranks to Crippling Darkness Natural Schemes #% Crowd Control Duration
Boots	1. Maximum Life 2. Movement Speed 3. Intelligence	Natural Motion: Movement Speed Natural Schemes #% Crowd Control Duration
Amulet	1. Ranks to Hellbent Commander 2. Movement Speed 3. Cooldown Reduction	Necromancer Efficiency: x% Ultimate Cooldown Reduction Profane Finesse: x% Damage against Cursed Enemies
Ring	1. Critical Strike Chance 2. Attack Speed 3. Intelligence	Necromancer Efficiency: x% Ultimate Cooldown Reduction Profane Finesse: x% Damage against Cursed Enemies
Ring	1. Lucky Hit: Chance to Make Enemies Vulnerable for 2 seconds. 2. Critical Strike Chance 3. Intelligence	Necromancer Efficiency: x% Ultimate Cooldown Reduction Profane Finesse: x% Damage against Cursed Enemies
1H-Weapon	1. Critical Strike Damage 2. Intelligence 3. Maximum Life	Summoning Augments: x% Chance for Skeletal Mage Attacks to Cast Twice Profane Finesse: x% Damage against Cursed Enemies
Off-hand (Focus)	1. Critical Strike Chance 2. Cooldown Reduction 3. Intelligence	Summoning Augments: x% Chance for Skeletal Mage Attacks to Cast Twice Profane Finesse: x% Damage against Cursed Enemies

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 main focus is to make sure all your minions are alive and well. Ensure to use the Raise Skeleton skill every 5 seconds, keeping the damage buff and heal up on your Minions. Outside of this, it’s important you keep enemies Cursed with Decrepify and spam Corpse Explosion for damage output. Using our Golem (Bone) skill will render us Unstoppable and lets our Golem taunt nearby enemies to keep us safe. Whenever you run out of Essence, spamming the Corpse Explosion skill will generate more Essence back thanks to Grim Harvest.

Make sure to check out the advanced Build Mechanics section for a more in-depth description of how the build works, what synergies exist, and what to look out for.

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 Uber Uniques guide.

Uniques & Mythic 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!

• Harlequin Crest: Amazing helmet but comes at the cost of removing one of our Legendary Aspect powers. Should only really be considered if the content you’re farming doesn’t require heavy investments in keeping you or your minions alive as you will have to remove 1 of your defensive aspects (free choice) to fit it.

Season 5: Loot Reborn

The following list details the changes in the Season 5 Update (Patch 1.5.0) that may pertain to the Shadow Summoner / Zoomancer Necromancer build. Check the Changelog for all the other guide updates.

• Necromancer Minion attacks can now Overpower.
• Minions are now more aggressive and will automatically engage nearby enemies.
• Shadowblight – Hits required reduced from 10 to 8. Damage increased from 22% to 44%.

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

Needless to say, your minions are doing most of the heavy lifting. Mechanically, you have your entire toolkit doing Shadow damage to consistently trigger your Shadowblight Key Passive for not just high damage numbers but also to further increase your damage output via your Legendary Aspects. Ultimately, you’re looking at staying behind your minion army, filling the screen with destructive powers of shadow.

Defenses

Your golem will not just taunt nearby enemies but also make you unstoppable to prevent being crowd-controlled. Besides that and the army of skeletons protecting you, the build itself features extremely good defensive layers in the form of damage reduction, resistance caps, and armor.

Offenses

The damage output is all about ramping hard and fast-hitting shadow damage from a variety of skills. These shadow hits are coming from your minions as well as your damage over time effects from Corpse Explosion, all ramping up and triggering your Shadowblight Key Passive often and hard!

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.
Deadraiser	– Paragon nodes within range gain +100% bonus to their Minion damage and damage reduction modifiers. – Additional Bonus is unlocked with 40 intelligence in radius causing every hit made by your minions make enemies take 1% increased damage up to 15% for 10 seconds.
Golem	– For every 5 Willpower purchased within range, Golems gain +19,8% increased damage. – Additional Bonus is unlocked with 25 Willpower in radius making your Golem deal an additional x25% increased damage.
Essence	– For every 5 Dexterity purchased within range, you deal 20% increased Critical Strike Damage. – Additional Bonus is unlocked with 25 Dexterity in radius causing Critical Strikes to deal x22% increased damage to enemies that are not Healthy.
Control	– For every 5 Intelligence purchased within range, you deal 10% increased damage to Crowd Controlled Targets. – Additional Bonus is unlocked with 40 Intelligence in radius making you and minions deal x20% increased damage to Crowd Controlled targets.
Darkness	– For every 5 Intelligence purchased within range, you deal 6.6% increased Shadow Damage. – Additional Bonus is unlocked with 40 Intelligence in radius causing you and your minions Shadow damage to reduce the enemies damage output by 2% per stack up to 10% for 5 seconds.
Cult Leader	Your minions deal x30% increased damage for each x20% of Attack Speed Bonus they have, up to a maximum of 100% Attack Speed Bonus.
Wither	Your Shadow damage over time effects have x5% chance to deal x50% bonus damage each time they deal damage. This chance is increased by x1% and bonus damage is increased by x4% for each 60 Intelligence you have.
Flesh-eater	Consuming 5 Corpses grants x40% increased damage for 6 seconds.
Scent of Death	With at least 2 Corpses Nearby, you gain 15% Damage Reduction. With no Corpses Nearby, you deal x15% increased damage.
Hulking Monstrosity	You Golem has x40% increased Maximum Life and deals x100% 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. Prime and Resilience as well as Preservation are all there to increase your defensive layers
2. Knowledge purely a damage increasing node.
3. Amplify is the Glyph choice on this board simply because it will scale all the surrounding magic nodes, however, we don’t take many of these and are instead focusing on the additional bonus effect from the Glyph exclusively.

Cult Leader

1. Custody combined with the Glyph choice Deadraiser provides a crazy amount of defensive stats for your minions. This is combined with the other rare node in range: Overlord.
2. Cult Leader is picked up on this board as our Attack Speed is directly inherited by the minions making this a strong node, scaling our damage output by a lot!

Wither

1. Wither Since the entire build is all about delivering tons of shadow damage hit, this node will help scale that damage output.
2. Defensive rare nodes as we pass by will come in the form of Dragging Shadows and Restorative.
3. Offensive rare nodes are Gnawing Darkness and Malediction.
4. We pick the Golem as it is easy for us to unlock the additional bonus effect with Willpower on this board.

Flesh-Eater

1. Flesh-eater works wonders for us as we are consistently consuming corpses with this build.
2. The only rare node we pick up here is the Targeted for increased damage against elites.
3. Essence Glyph makes it easy for us to unlock the additional bonus effect on this board.

Scent of Death

1. Before we reach the Legendary node we grab the Shadow Resilience for defensive purposes.
2. Scent of Death is another corpse related node, making perfect sense for the build.
3. Control Glyph, again due to the ease of access to unlock the additional bonus effect.
4. The remaining two rare nodes are there to give both defenses and offensive power and help enable our Glyph bonus power: Deathmarked and Preservation.

Hulking Monstrosity

1. Darkness Yet another Glyph specifically chosen to make it easy to unlock the bonus modifier.
2. The two rare nodes are both located within the Glyphs radius, giving your Golem both health and damage output: Mutation and Miscreation.
3. Hulking Monstrosity is also picked up here to further skyrocket the Golems performance.

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

• August 5th, 2024: Guide updated for Season 5, Infernal Hordes.
• May 20th, 2024: 1 Aspect change, note for endgame added below that list + gear modifier priority changed.
• May 16th, 2024: Gem updates.
• May 15th, 2024: Guide finalized with Season 4 gear changes!
• May 14th, 2024: Minor tweaks on aspects and skill-tree.
• May 10th, 2024: Guide updated for 1.4.
• March 5th, 2024: Guide updated for 1.3.3.
• January 22nd, 2024: Guide updated for Season 3 Season of the Construct.
• October 28th, 2023: Improved the entire Paragon Board.
• October 22nd, 2023: Minor Skill-Tree Adjustments.
• 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.