Diablo 4 Blood Lance Necromancer Build Guide: Sanguine Lancer

The Blood Lance Necromancer build for Diablo 4 utilizes the creation and use of Blood Orbs to not only replenish your resources but also dish out high Overpower Damage against your foes.

This Necromancer build guide assumes you’re at least level 50 and have completed enough of your Renown to have gained the 10 additional Skill Points available.

If you want a great leveling build to reach this point with, try our Necromancer Leveling Build – A build that combines Blood Skills with minions for support. If you want to level up as a Blood Lance Necromancer, at the end of this guide, we have a leveling section showing you how to develop a new character from level 1 with this build.

Build Overview

Between Blood Lance’s power, range, and speed this build can very easily deal with the hardest content in the game. This inherently makes the build quite safe overall and allows us to run Blood Wave in place of the usual Bone Storm.

In addition to this, we also stack up a ton of Life, which not only helps us survive but also boosts our Overpower damage substantially. As a result, it’s not uncommon to end up with 10,000+ Max Life and Fortify. Between this and our massive amount of Overpower Damage this lets us deal a ton of damage with our guaranteed overpowers.

And to top everything off, we still have Corpse Tendrils for grouping and stunning enemies, Decrepify to reduce incoming damage and our cooldowns, and so many Blood Orbs that we should have no issues be capped on both Life and Fortify in most cases.

Skill and Passive Breakdown

In this section, we’ll be talking about each skill we use. This is the whys and hows of how the build works, and then we’ll cover the skill point distribution.

Skills

These are the main skills for the build. We’ll explain what purpose each serves and how they fit the build.

Hemorrhage

This is our basic attack, which we’ll rarely ever need to use outside of very rare occasions. It can at least help spawn Blood Orbs as needed. Just be careful it never consumes Rathma’s Vigor.

Blood Lance

Blood Lance is our Main DPS Skill, which has a ton of range. Between its piercing effect and the Gore Quills Aspect, it’ll dish out a of damage regardless if it’s a single target or mobbing situation.

Blood Mist

Blood Mist is mostly our panic button and Unstoppable, letting us escape crowd control and survive tough situations. However, with the amount of Overpower Damage we have, it can also deal fairly high damage if it consumes Rathma’s Vigor.

Corpse Tendrils

This helps us group enemies up making it easier for Blood Lances to quickly pierce and hit multiple enemies. Additionally, it’ll spawn a ton of extra Blood orbs for us.

Decrepify

Decrepify is used to keep enemies at range, while also helping to reduce the cooldowns of Blood Mist, Corpse Tendrils, and Blood Wave. We’ll also deal extra damage by applying it, so there’s no reason to not apply it on everything.

Bone Storm

Bone Storm is going to offer us a lot of protection and damage though the use of the Osseous Gale and Shielding Storm, in addition to its base effects.

Passives

Here we’re only going to talk about the main passives we absolutely want as well as our Key passive. There are unfortunately a couple we will need to take to get access to these though.

Key Passive – Rathma’s Vigor

Rathma’s Vigor is a great Key passive, allowing our Blood Skills to Overpower once every 12 seconds, regardless of our other effects that grant a similar effect. It also grants us a bit of extra Maximum Life, increasing both survivability and Overpower Damage.

Unliving Energy

While we don’t really need this extra Essence, it definitely help early on where resources can still be an issue. It also allows us to reach Imperfectly Balanced. Once we’re able to fully sustain Essence without a generator, we can move two points to Blood mist to lower its cooldown a bit more.

Imperfectly Balanced

While this does increase the cost of Blood Lance, it’s a great damage bonus that will actually affect Overpower. We’ll also very easily offset the minor cost increase by heavily reducing the cost through our gear affixes.

Hewed Flesh

Hewed Flesh is great for letting us consistently generate corpses for Corpse Tendrils, as well as Osseous Gale.

Grim Harvest

We’ll only benefit from this during Bone Storm while we have the Osseous Gale Aspect. However, it adds a nice bit of Essence generation to the skill even with a single point spent on it.

Fueled by Death

Similarly to Grim Harvest, this will trigger with Osseous Gale, this time maintaining the damage boost this grants for a short duration. This makes Bone Storm a window of burst damage for us.

Amplify Damage

We’ll curse just about everything we fight with Decrepify, so this is a nice damage bonus for us.

Gruesome Mending

Since this is no longer conditional, this is a nice addition to the build instead of being a stepping stone. It’ll greatly improve our Blood Orbs letting them both easily heal us and change the Aspect of Untimely Death quicker.

Transfusion

Transfusion will gives us a chance to create Blood orbs with any Blood Skill. This lets us make good use of the Gore Quills and Potent Blood Aspect more often without relying on additional setup.

Coalesced Blood

We’ll rarely ever not be Healthy, so this is just free damage for us. All those Blood Orbs we’ll be spawning will keep us topped off all the time.

Tides of Blood

This is a pretty sizable boost to our Overpower Damage, being another multiplier in addition to our Sacrifice bonus. We’ll also want to get additional levels of this on our Amulet to increase this bonus even further.

Inspiring Leader

All Blood Skills heavily rely on Attack Speed to be able to trigger overpower more frequently, and this is a nice bump of Attack Speed that can help take a bit of pressure off our gear.

Stand Alone

We sacrifice all our minions already, so this is a free chunk of Damage Reduction with no downside.

Momento Mori

This boosts our Sacrifice bonuses from Skeletons, which in this case means more Critical Strike Chance and Overpower damage for the build. Between this and the Sacrifice Aspect, our Overpower damage absolutely skyrockets, being able to get incredibly close to 1000% Overpower Damage with high-end gear with good rolls.

Skill Point Distribution

This is an easy-to-reference table for where we’ll be placing all of our Skill points. These are listed in the order they appear on the skill tree.

Icon	Skill Name	Skill Tree	Points
	Hemorrhage	Basic	1
	Enhanced Hemorrhage	Basic	1
	Blood Lance	Core	1
	Enhanced Blood Lance	Core	1
	Supernatural Blood Lance	Core	1
	Unliving Energy	Core	1
	Imperfectly Balanced	Core	3
	Hewed Flesh	Core	3
	Blood Mist	Corpse and Macabre	1
	Enhanced Blood Mist	Corpse and Macabre	1
	Ghastly Blood Mist	Corpse and Macabre	1
	Grim Harvest	Corpse and Macabre	1
	Fueled by Death	Corpse and Macabre	3
	Decrepify	Curse	1
	Enhanced Decrepify	Curse	1
	Abhorrent Decrepify	Curse	1
	Amplify Damage	Curse	3
	Death’s Embrace	Curse	3
	Corpse Tendrils	Corpse and Macabre	1
	Enhanced Corpse Tendrils	Corpse and Macabre	1
	Plagued Corpse Tendrils	Corpse and Macabre	1
	Gruesome Mending	Corpse and Macabre	3
	Transfusion	Corpse and Macabre	3
	Coalesced Blood	Corpse and Macabre	3
	Drain Vitality	Corpse and Macabre	1
	Tides of Blood	Corpse and Macabre	3
	Bone Storm	Ultimate	1
	Prime Bone Storm	Ultimate	1
	Supreme Bone Storm	Ultimate	1
	Inspiring Leader	Ultimate	3
	Stand Alone	Ultimate	3
	Momento Mori	Ultimate	3
	Rathma’s Vigor	Key Passive	1

Gearing and Stats

In this section, we’ll cover all the things you’d want to keep an eye out for to enhance the final build. This includes our Recommended Weapons, Book of the Dead, Aspects, and of course, Uniques.

Recommended Weapons

This build uses a Wand and Focus as its main weapons. Not only do we benefit from the extra Lucky Hit Chance and Cooldown Reduction from these two items, but we also need that extra Aspect Slot. There’s far too many great aspect for this build, and even with the extra space, we’re still heavily limited by them.

Ideal Stats

The table below details the ideal stats for our gear, be on the lookout for gear that matches at least three of the four rolls below.

Due to the width of the table, we highly recommend mobile users rotate their devices to view it properly.

Slot	Stat 1	Stat 2	Stat 3	Stat 4
Wand	Core Skill Damage	Overpower Damage	Intelligence	Chance to Execute Non-Elites
Focus	Cooldown Reduction	Critical Strike Chance	Essence Cost Reduction	Lucky Hit Chance
Helm	Cooldown Reduction	Maximum Life	Total Armor	Resistance
Chest	Maximum Life	Damage Reduction	Total Armor	Resistance
Gloves	Critical Strike Chance	Lucky Hit Chance	Overpower Damage	Attack Speed
Pants	Maximum Life	Damage Reduction	Total Armor	Resistance
Boots	Movement Speed	Resource Cost Reduction	Resistance	Resistance
Amulet	Cooldown Reduction	Ranks to Tides of Blood	Movement Speed	Essence Cost Reduction
Rings	Critical Strike Chance (Or Resource Generation)	Lucky Hit Chance	Overpower Damage	Maximum Life

Recommended Gems

This build uses Rubies in our Weapons, Rubies in our Armor, and Diamonds in Jewelry.

We opt for Rubies in our Weapons as we’re heavily focusing on Overpower Damage. This bonus Overpower Damage will also get scaled up by our passives, easily adding a good bit of extra damage.

We use Rubies in our Armor, as this not only helps us survive but also further increases our Overpower Damage

We go with Diamonds for Our Jewelry for the general resistances. These can be swapped out for gems that provide more or a specific resistance as needed.

Vampiric Powers

During the Season of Blood, we’ll have access to Vampiric Powers, which allow us to slot up to five unique powers into our Sanguine Circle to increase the power of the build. We’ll include more than the maximum in the selection below to offer alternatives, but they will be listed in order of their relative strength.

Name	Effect	Reason
Blood Boil	When a Skill Overpowers, create Volatile Blood Drops that deal physical damage when collected. Additional gain a periodic guaranteed Overpower.	The extra guaranteed Overpower is great for the build.
Ravenous	Chance to increase Attack Speed by a portion to Total Movement Speed.	Huge boost of DPS.
Hemomancy	Deals AoE Physical Damage that scales with Max Life. Heal for each enemy it hits. 4 second cooldown.	Adds additional AoE to the build and scales well with our Life stacking.
Anticipation	Reduces Ultimate Skill Cooldown. Additionally increases Ultimate Damage for each nearby enemy afflicted with a DoT.	More Uptime for Bone Storm.
Sanguine Brace	Fortifies when defeating enemies. While Fortify is equal to or greater than 50% Maximum Life, gain Critical Strike Chance.	Another source of Fortify and free Critical Strike Chance.
Undying	Recover Life when casting Skills. The effect is doubled under 50% Max Life.	Great additional Sustain for the build
Hectic	Every 5 basic Skills, slightly reduces an active coldown.	We use Hemorrhage a fair bit still, this adds more benefits to it.

Book of the Dead

This builds sacrifices all its minions, which include Skeletal Skirmishers, Bone Mages, and Iron Golems.

We Sacrifice Skeletal Skirmishers for their bonus Critical Strike Chance. With Momento Mori and the Sacrifical Aspect, this grants us up to 10% Critical Strike Chance.

We Sacrifice Bone Mages for the multiplicative bonus to Overpower Damage. With Momento Mori and the Sacrificial Aspect, this grants up to x80% Overpower Damage.

We Sacrifice the Bone Golem for the Attack Speed it offers. The Blood Golem is another decent choice, but Attack Speed is very nice for the build overall.

Aspects

We’ll cover the Aspects that are recommended for maximizing the potential of the build. We’ll also suggest which gear slot you should look to place them in.

Gore Quills Aspect

Gore Quills is core to the and allows us to consume Blood Orbs without manually picking them up by turning them into Blood Lances. It also interacts with Supernatual Blood Lance, trigger the effect sooner in some cases, but also resetting the counter for 0 instead of 1, leaving it the same speed.

This provides minimal damage as is more for the utility, so we’ll place it on one of our weapons.

Aspect of Rathma’s Chosen

Attack Speed is a big component of Overpower Builds for the Necromancer. The faster you can cast your skills, the faster and more often you can trigger the guaranteed Overpower effects.

This is one of our most important Aspects, as such we’ll place it on our Amulet to start. As we get gear to boost our Attack Speed and a good roll, we’ll swap it with Sacrifical and have it on our Gloves instead.

Sacrificial Aspect

Sacrificial Aspect is a huge damage bonus for us. This increases the effect of Bone Mage Sacrifice. Between this and Momento Mori we end up with getting all of our Overpower Damage boosted by 180%!

We’ll place this in our Gloves to start, but as we get gear it’ll get swapped with Rathma’s Chosen. This will have it move to our Amulet and further boost our Overpower Damage.

Aspect of Untimely Death

This makes it so any time we heal above 100% Life, we gain Overpower damage. In combination with the effects of the Sacrificial Aspect and Momento Mori stacking together to multiply our Overpower damage, this is a huge boost of damage.

While this provides meaningful damage, we’ll rarely be able to max out the bonus. As such there’s no need to increase a max value and we’ll place in on one of our weapons.

Aspect of Potent Blood

This allows our Blood Orbs at Full Life to not only boost our damage through the Aspect Untimely Death, but also replenish our Essence. With a good roll and some Essence Cost Reduction on our gear, we’ll never run out of Essence.

As a Resource Aspect, this can only be placed on one of our Rings.

Fastblood Aspect

The Fastblood Aspect allows us to speed up the cooldown of our Ultimate by consuming Blood Irbs. Since we’ll do that often enough, it heavily reduces the cooldown of Blood Wave.

As a Resource Aspect, this can only be placed on one of our Rings.

Aspect of Explosive Mist

Explosive Mist allows Blood Mist to case Corpse Explosion for us, triggering the effects of Grim Harvest and Fueled by Death. We’ll still want to eventually be able to manually cast Corpse Explosion, but this is helpful even when we can.

We’ll place this on either or Chest or Helm, whichever is open. Embalmer will fill the remaining spot.

Aspect of the Embalmer

This gives us a chance to create additional Blood Orbs with every use of Corpse Explosion, regardless of the source. Additionally, with the Sacreligious effect, we’ll also get the effect regard of what skill it casts.

We’ll place this on either or Chest or Helm, whichever is open. Explosive Mist will fill the remaining spot.

Aspect of Disobedience

Disobedience is still a great defensive aspect, especially for a build that going to hit rapidly. Between the manual casts and Gore Quills, we’ll stack this up pretty fast.

We’ll place this on our Pants, keeping them a purely defensive slot. Though it can be fit into the Chest or Helm in place of a different Aspect, but forces Embalmer to take its place here.

Ghostwalker Aspect

Ghostwalker is a great alternative to the Blood-soaked Aspect. This allows us to not slow to a crawl when using Blood Mist, and maneuver better while using it.

As a Mobility Aspect, we’ll only ever want to place this in our Boots. We have more valuable aspects to slot into our Amulet for this build.

Unique Items

We’re only going to talk about the few that offer the strongest effects on the build. While there are others that help, these are the ones you really want to slot into your build if you get the chance. These will drop starting in Tier 3 content, but decent upgrades for the build once you get them.

Blood Moon Breeches

Blood Moon Breeches are a pair of Unique Pants that allow Minions to apply Curses. Additionally, Cursed enemies take increased Overpower Damage. While we have to manually curse for the second bonus, it’s very hard to pass up. They even come with Maximum Life and additional Ranks to Amplify Damage.

Banished Lord’s Talisman

Banished Lord’s Talisman is an optional Unique Amulet that grants an additional Guaranteed Overpower by spending our Resource, while increasing the damage on Critical Strikes that Overpower significantly. Additionally, this has a ton of useful affixes that normally do not roll on Amulets.

The big downside to this is the lack of Aspect space it leaves us. We often cannot afford to give up an Offensive Aspect Slot to fit this in.

Tibault’s Will

Tibault’s Will is a pair of Unique Pants that grant a huge chunk of Essence and a damage boost when we become Unstoppable. These work well as an alternative to the Blood Mood Breeches in Season 2 thanks to the Metamorphosis power, but overall feel weaker.

Paragon Boards and Glyphs

These two endgame options are part of the Paragon System which is available starting at level 50.

Paragon Boards

Paragon Boards are a feature that becomes available at level 50. These boards allow us to spend the Paragon points we earn for leveling and Renown to strengthen our character. Each of these has a single Glyph Slot to place a glyph of our Choice.

Starter Board

Like all starter boards, this one offers generic damage and defenses.

As usual, we’ll path up the right side through Prime to our Glyph Node, then continue up the left side through Knowledge and head to the next board. We’ll also grab Preservation here later to activate our Glyph and Resilience for the Increased Life.

Bloodbath

Bloodbath is our real first board; offering tons of Damage while Fortified, Maximum Life, and Overpower Damage. Bloodbath increases the damage of all our Guaranteed Overpower effects, acting as yet another multiplier for our Overpower Damage.

We’ll rotate the board so that Remedy is closest to out entry point. We’ll path straight to Bloodbath first, picking up Thick Hide and its cluster along the way. After that, we’ll branch off to our Glyph Node, pathing through the Dexterity nodes. We’ll pick up Hardened and then head to the left side gate. Before we head out, pick up Powerhouse and its cluster for a ton of Overpower Damage.

Blood Begets Blood

Blood begets Blood offers a lot of bonuses of Blood orbs, increasing their healing and giving damage bonuses. The Legendary node itself isn’t worth it, as it costs too much and doesn’t actually benefit Overpower.

We’ll rotate this board so that Invgorated is the closest Rare node to our entry point. We’ll head straight to Invigorate before Grabbing the Glyph Node, Blooddrinker, Blood-Empowered, as well as many of the Willpower nodes here. Willpower not only activates our glyph, but also gives us more Overpower Damage. After this, we’ll head back to the Invogratd cluster and path to the upper gate, through the Aggression cluster taking it as well.

Bone Graft

This is a quick and easy Glyph slot for us and nothing more.

We’ll rotate this board so the Glyph Node is in the lower right of the board. We’ll path straight to the Glyph, taking only Erudite and its nearby Willpower to get some value from our Glyph. Then we’ll head out the right gate.

Flesh-eater

Flesh-eater has some usable stats for us, like Attack Speed and Elite Damage. We don’t have the points to even consider taking the Legendary Node.

We’ll rotate this board so that Culler is in the upper left. We’ll path straight to the Glyph Node, happily taking the nearby Intelligence for our Glyph. Next we’ll grab Targeted and its cluster, as the Magic Nodes will be boosted by our glyph for tons of Elite Damage. Then we’ll grab Erudite before heading straight up the left side to the upper gate, through Culler, taking that cluster as well.

Cult Leader

We’re only here for the Glyph Node, as this board offers us nothing else.

Rotate the board so the Glyph Node is in the lower right. Path to the Glyph Node, taking as many normal Intelligence Nodes as possible. This board is one of the few we can get 40 Intelligence on without having to get a single rare node or overspend our points, as it’s all in two straight lines from the Glyph Node.

Glyphs

Each of our Paragon Boards has a Glyph Slot, where we can socket one of our Glyphs. These Glyphs provide powerful bonuses that can be leveled up by completing Nightmare Dungeons to increase their power. Below are the Glyphs we recommend and what board to place them on.

Blood-drinker

Blood Drinker boosts the value of all Magic Nodes in range, which in this case gives us a bit of extra Damage and Armor. With 40 Intelligence allocated in range, our Blood Orbs will also Fortify us, giving us a reliable way to generate Fortify.

We’ll place this in our Starter Board, as it’s either this or Amplify that goes here. This is just the stonger of the two effects early on, being our main source of Fortify. Once the glyph is leveled to 15, points can be adjusted to meet the requirement with less point use.

Essence

Essence increases our Critical Strike Damage for every 5 Dexterity allocated in range. With 25 Dexterity allocated in range, we get an additional bonus to Critical Strike Damage against enemies below 80% health.

We’ll slot this in Bloodbath, as it has easy access to Dexterity thanks to the Hardened cluster. This requires the Glyph to be at least level 15 to gain the bonus.

Dominate

Dominate increases our Overpower Damage for every 5 Willpower allocated in range. With 25 Willpower allocated in range, Overpowering an enemy will cause it to take increased damage.

We’ll slot this in Blood Begets Blood, as we can pick up a ton of Willpower here. There’s both enough to active the Glyph here immediately and get extra for later on for a greater bonus once the glyph is leveled.

Territorial

Territorial grants increased Damage against Close for every 5 Dexterity allocated in range. With 25 Dexterity allocated in range, we gain additional damage reduction from close enemies.

We’ll place this in Bone Graft, as we can get the bonus almost by just passing through and only one extra point. The bonus is what we’re after, but we can make some use of the damage too on rare occasions. This does require the Glyph to be at least level 15.

Sacrificial

Sacrificial boosts all Magic Nodes in range, and in this case grants additional Elite Damage, Dexterity, and Willpower. With 40 Intelligence allocated in range, we deal increased damage while we have no active minions.

We’ll place this in Flesh-eater, as we can easily reach the Intelligence required for the bonus once the glyph is at least level 15. In addition, the Elite Damage is fairly valuable in general for us.

Amplify

Amplify also boosts Magic Nodes allocated in range, but we don’t take any for this Glyph. With 40 Intelligence in range, we’ll gain additional damage against cursed enemies.

We’ll place this in Cult Leader, which allows us to grab the bonus, despite not taking any Magic or Rare Nodes. This requires the Glyph to be level 15 to activate

Leveling Order

If you want to play this build from level 1, the next segment of this build guide is for you. Below you will see the exact leveling order in which you should acquire your skills and passives to maximize damage and overall performance.

Levels	Icon	Skill	Purpose
2-3		Hemorrhage	Our Basic Skill that can generate Essence and Blood Orbs.
4-6		Blood Lance	Upgrade to Supernatural Blood Lance for guarnateed Overpowers
7		Unliving Energy	Opens Imperfectly Balanced for later.
8-10		Blood Mist	Upgrade to Ghastly Blood Mist for corpse generation.
11-13		Hewed Flesh	Allows Blood Lance to generate Corpses.
14-16		Decrepify	Upgrade to Abhorrent Decreipfy for Cooldown Reduction chance.
17-19		Imperfectly Balanced	One of the very few damage bonuses that affects Overpower.
20-22		Corpse Tendrils	Upgrade to Blighted Corpse Tendril for Blood Orb generation.
23-25		Death’s Reach	Great daamge boost while keeping enemies at range.
26-28		Blood Wave	Ultimate which both provides extra safety in a knockback as well as Blood Orb generation.
29-31		Stand Alone	Huge source of Damage Reduction.
32-34		Momento Mori	Big increase to our Overpower Damage.
35		Rathma’s Vigor	Guaranteed Overpower for any Blood Skill.
36-38		Inspiring Leader	Attack Speed is fundamental to Overpower.
39		Gruesome Mending	One point is required to reach the useful Blood Skill passives.
40-42		Coalesced Blood	A great damage boost for the build.
43-45		Tides of Blood	Mostly free Overpower Damage.
46-48		Amplify Damage	The last reliable damge bonus we can get without reliance on gear or Aspects
49+		Grim Harvest	Allows us to generate additional Essence with Aspect of Explosive Mist and later Corpse Explosion directly.
Renown		Fueled by Death	Damage boost from Aspet of Explosive Mist or Corpse Explosion
Renown		Corpse Explosion	Upgrade to Blighted Corpse Explosion for higher damage and DoT to trigger Abhorrent Decrepify more often.
Renown		Death’s Embrace	Reduces damage taken from close enemies while also increasing damage to them.

This concludes our Diablo 4 Necromancer Build focusing on the Blood Lance skill. You can find more leveling and endgame Diablo 4 builds here on VULKK.com to try new things with your characters and spice up your gameplay.

To learn how to maximize your damage in Diablo 4, consult with our guide on that topic. Learning how to deal the highest possible damage with your build is crucial to succeeding in the Endgame and highest tiers.

If you want to try something different, try one of our other Necromancer Builds: