Diablo 4: Army of the Dead Necromancer Build Guide

A minion-centric build for Diablo 4’s Necromancer that uses Army of the Dead to boost its minions and output high damage.

This necromancer build guide assumes you’re level 60 and have completed enough of your Renown to have gained the 12 additional Skill Points available.

If you want a great leveling build to reach this point with, try our Overpowering Blood Surge Leveling Build – Which uses the early power of Blood Surge combined with minions for a smooth leveling experience.

If you want to level up with this build, 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

To build around Army of the Dead, we’ll need to get Sanguivor, Blade of Zir, to enable it to deal heavy damage. Our minions will still provide a lot of our damage as well as some utility, allowing the build to have more stable damage overall instead of purely focused on burst.

We’ll be making use of many other utility skills like Blood Mist and Corpse Tendrils to improve our ability to survive, as well as boost our and our minions’ damage output. This allows the build to take on most content with minimal issues, with one particular exception.

That exception is Infernal Hordes. Minion AI causes them to spread their damage too thin, so if we’re not able to keep Army of the Dead running at all times during a wave, we lack the AoE needed to excel here. We can still clear it just fine, just don’t expect it to be quite as rewarding or consistent.

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 into the build.

Passives

Below are the main passives that allow the build to function.

Fueled by Death

By consistently consuming corpses with Raise Skeleton, we’re able to keep this damage bonus active at all times.

Titan’s Fall

Combined with Necromatic Carapace and Army of the Dead, this ensure we’ll always have this damage bonus active for Bosses and Elites.

Skeletal Warrior Mastery

Despite not focusing on them too much, Reapers still do decent damage. However, we’re still mainly using this to increase their Maximum Life, helping them survive more easily.

Amplify Damage

We’ll mostly be making use of this effect through Curses, as our access to Fear is limited. Cursed Aura will apply Curses for us, as well as Vampiric Curse from our minions once we get Sanguivor.

Coalesced Blood

Coalesced Blood increases our Damage while we’re Healthy, which also extends to our minions as well. Considering the minions will take more of the incoming damage than us, we’ll be healthy more often than not.

Necrotic Carapace

Necrotic Carapace allow our Reapers and Army of the Dead to very easily keep us Fortified.

Terror

Terror mostly benefits our Skeletal Mages, so we use Shadow Mages just to leverage this boost. It boosts Reap and Blight, but they’re more utility-focused anyway.

Gloom

Effectively the same as Gloom, but strong once fully stacked. Blight and Reap make this very easy to stack.

Finality

Another solid damage boost for us and our minions, which conveniently lasts almost as long as Army of the Dead.

Hellbent Commander

This is one of the largest damage boosts we get, and it applies to Army of the Dead and our minions. Try to boost this with more ranks on an Amulet.

Inspiring Leader

A nice chunk of basically Free Critical Strike, Chance for us and our Minions. Minions should double dip off this effect and get a total of 30% Crit Chance, as they inherit our bonuses, in addition to the bonus specifically for them on this passive.

Key Passive – Kalan’s Edict

With a total of 11 Minions with the Aspect of Occult Dominion, this grants a huge DPS boost to our minions as 33% Attack Speed and x33% Damage. If any of our Minions happens to die, all remaining minions also get a further boost.

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
	Reap	Basic	1
	Enhanced Reap	Basic	1
	Initiate’s Reap	Basic	1
	Blight	Core	1
	Enhanced Blight	Core	1
	Supernatural Blight	Core	1
	Blood Mist	Corpse & Macabre 1	1
	Enhanced Blood Mist	Corpse & Macabre 1	1
	Ghastly Blood Mist	Corpse & Macabre 1	1
	Titan’s Fall	Corpse & Macabre 1	3
	Skeletal Warrior Mastery	Corpse & Macabre 1	3
	Grim Harvest	Corpse & Macabre 1	1
	Fueled by Death	Corpse & Macabre 1	3
	Decrepify	Curse	1
	Enhanced Decrepify	Curse	1
	Abhorrent Decrepify	Curse	1
	Amplify Damage	Curse	3
	Death’s Embrace	Curse	3
	Skeletal Mage Mastery	Curse	3
	Death’s Approach	Curse	3
	Precision Decay	Curse	3
	Corpse Tendrils	Corpse & Macabre 2	1
	Necrotic Carapace	Corpse & Macabre 2	2
	Coalesced Blood	Corpse & Macabre 2	3
	Reaper’s Pursuit	Corpse & Macabre 2	3
	Gloom	Corpse & Macabre 2	3
	Terror	Corpse & Macabre 2	3
	Crippling Darkness	Corpse & Macabre 2	2
	Army of the Dead	Ultimate	5
	Prime Army of the Dead	Ultimate	1
	Supreme Army of the Dead	Ultimate	1
	Inspiring Leader	Ultimate	3
	Hellbent Commander	Ultimate	3
	Finality	Ultimate	3
	Kalan’s Edict	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, Runewords, and of course, Uniques.

This section will also make note of any Borrowed Power Mechanics that come with more Seasonal Realms. If you’re not playing the build in a Seasonal Realm, these can be ignored, and the build will function without them.

Recommended Weapons

This Build uses a Unique Two-handed Sword, Sanguivor, Blade of Zir. Before acquiring this Unique, a Two-handed Scythe is recommended for the bonuses Summoning Damage.

A two-handed Sword can also be a great option to stack up Critical Strike Damage as well. Alternatively, as One-handed Sword for its Critical Strike Damage and a Focus for access to more Cooldown Reduction can work just as well.

Ideal Stats

The table below details the ideal stats for our gear, be on the lookout for gear that matches at least two of the three rolls below. We’ve also included Aspects here for easier viewing, refer to the Aspects section for additional details on why these are selected.

Affixes that are CAPITALIZED are the Priority Affixes to get as a Greater Affix, though further Greater Affixes are welcome. These are not required for most content, but are a good way to push the build further. Affixes in Bold are the ideal Affixes to boost with Masterworking.

In cases where multiple Affixes are listed, the secondary option is for when another stat reaches its cap. This is most common with Armor, where it’d be substituted for another affix.

Scroll the top row horizontally
to see more gear tabs.

Gems and Runewords

This build uses Emeralds in our Weapons, Runes and Topaz in our Armor, and Diamonds or Skulls in Jewelry.

We opt for Emeralds in our Weapons as Critical Strike Damage is a great way to boost our damage overall. For Season 8 in Particular, this helps empower Beastmaster’s Training, granting even more Summon Damage.

We use Topaz in our Armor, as Intelligence gives us both damage and some Elemental Resistance.

We go with Diamonds or Skulls for Our Jewelry, with priority on Skulls until we’re Armor capped, as Armor can be tougher to cap on an Intelligence class. After this, we can fill the remaining slots with Diamonds or specific gems to fill gaps in our Elemental Resistances.

For Runeword there are multiple great combinations we can use, below are our recommended Runewords for Different stages of the builds.

For additional information regarding Runewords, check out our Runewords Guide, which covers all the available runes as well as common and useful combinations.

Stage	Ritual | Invocation	Result
Leveling	Yax | Qua	Drinking a Healing Potion grants 40% Movement Speed for 5 seconds.
Leveling	Cir | Lum	Casting 5 Skills restores 60 Resource.
Midgame	Cir | Gar	Casting 5 Skills grants 25% Critical Strike Chance for 5 seconds.
Midgame	Neo | Zec	Dealing Damage after not taking any for 2 seconds reduces Ultimate Cooldown by 2 seconds.
Endgame	Nagu | Zec	Every 5 seconds, Ultimate Cooldown is reduced by 1 second for every active minion, up to 6.
Endgame	Bac | Que	Traveling 30 meters casts Earthen Bulwark, granting Barrier.
Endgame	Bac | Gar	Traveling 5 meters grants 2.5% Critical Strike Chance for 5 seconds, stacking up to 25%.

Book of the Dead

The Necromancer’s Book of the Dead allows a Necromancer to slightly customize, or even sacrifice, any of these three Minion Arachetypes, Skeletal Warriors, Skeletal Mages, or Golems.

Skeletal Reapers are our Warriors of choice. We’ll take the Corpse Upgrade for the early game, to help keep us Fortified, but swap to Cooldown Reduction late game to help spam Army of the Dead.

Shadow Mages are our Mages of choice. We’ll make use of the extra hit every 3rd attack early game to bump their DPS up, but Late game, we’ll want the Damage per Shadow Mage instead.

We’ll Sacrifice our Iron Golem, as the Critical Strike Damage it provides is easily the best option here. We’ll want to sacrifice Bone Golems when we first unlock them, as the Attack Speed is more impactful early game before we stack Critical Strike Damage.

Boss Powers

Boss Powers are exclusive to Season 8, and offer us a wide variety of options. But we’ve narrowed down the best choices for all stages of the game.

For more information on Boss Powers, check out our Boss Powers Explained guide, which details how to get and upgrade each power, and potential uses for them.

Stage	Power	Reason
Leveling	Allek’s Talons (Main)	Adds a ton of damage to Reap, applying Damage over Time to a wide area.
Midgame	Varshan’s Lifesteal (Main)	Decent damage and consistent healing.
Endgame	Urivar’s Lobbed Bombs (Main)	Huge boost of CDR and decent damage once we’re able to frequently cast Army of the Dead.
All	Beast Master’s Training (Modifier)	Huge increase to Summon Damage for stacking Critical Strike Damage, which we already do.
All	Hatred’s Embrace’s Haste (Modifier)	Free Critical Strike Chance for keeping our Shadow Resistance capped. Almost caps us alongside Grasping Veins
All	Blackmailer’s Sabotage (Modifier)	Converts a portion of our Fortify into Barrier, allowing easy barrier Generation, especially in the Endgame.
Endgame	Torusk’s Rage (Modifier)	A huge boost of Attack Speed, but relies on the Control Paragon Glyph to get anywhere near its full value without sacrificing stronger Tempers.

Aspects

We’ll cover the Aspects recommended for maximizing the build’s potential. The Ideal Stats section above lists the recommended slots for these, but they can be arranged however necessary, except for ones placed in 2H Weapons or Amulets.

Aspects marked with an Asterisk (*) below are swapped in or out at different stages of progression, noted in their details.

Unique Items

The Unique items listed below are beneficial to the build, but not required for the build to function unless stated otherwise. Unique Items can drop in any difficulty, but are more common in Torment Difficulties.

Sanguivor, Blade of Zir

This build’s endgame heavily relies on Sanguivor, Blade of Zir. This Unique Two-handed Sword gives us a huge boost of Summoning Damage, Intelligence, Maximum Life, Ranks to all of our Minion Mastery Passives, and a high chance for Army of the Dead to deal double Damage.

Ring of Mendeln

The Ring of Mendeln is a great interim Unique Ring that allows our minions to deal amazing damage, by adding a high damage burst to every 6th attack. This also comes with Minion Attack Speed, Ranks to all of our Minion Mastery passives, Damage, and Intelligence.

We can use this until we get a good Greater Affixes on our Armor to better enable Sanguivor.

Blood Moon Breeches

While not an ideal option as we’d prefer a more defensive set of Pants, Blood Moon Breeches pack a punch for our build. They allow our Minions AND Army of the Dead to apply Decrepify and Iron Maiden. Not quite as reliable as Cursed Aura, but it’s not bad. In addition, they offer us ranks of Hellbent Commander, which is by far our best passive to get ranks for.

While we don’t require Golem Mastery, everything else about this is great for the build.

Heir of Perdition

This Mythic Helmet is insane. Heir of Peridition gives us a huge x60% damage multiplier, on top of also giving us 20% Critical Strike Chance, Lucky Hit Chance, and Movement Speed, in addition to ranks for Core Skills. Except for those skill ranks, all of this is highly beneficial.

Paragon Boards and Glyphs

Paragon Boards and Glyphs are a feature that becomes available at level 60. Below are our recommended Paragon Boards and Glyph Choices. These are listed in the order we recommend them, as well as their pathing.

With the abundance of Paragon Points we can earn, we’ve split the pathing into Initial Pathing and Additional Pathing. Initial Pathing is the clusters we pick up while pathing through the board, while Additional Pathing are ones we come back for later for additional stats once we’ve gotten all of our Glyphs socketed.

Starter Board

Starter Boards offer a lot of generic offensive and defensive stats. In this case, Damage, Elite Damage, Armor, and Maximum Life are worth picking up.

This board offers a lot of accessible Intelligence, so we’ll socket Control here to take advantage of this.

This Glyph grants Damage to Crowd-Controlled Enemies per Intelligence allocated in range. With 40 Intelligence allocated, it grants x20% increased damage to Crowd-Controlled Enemies. At Glyph Level 45, it also grants a multiplicative bonus to Damage.

Cult Leader

Cult Leader offers a wide variety of minion bonuses, including some generic ones near the Glyph Node we’ll take advantage of. Cult Leader is great, as it turns the Aspect of Frenzied Dead into a very powerful damage increase for our minions.

We’ll need to rotate this board so that the Glyph Node is in the Bottom Right.

This board offers a lot of accessible Intelligence, so we’ll socket Deadraiser here to take advantage of this.

This Glyph boosts Minion Damage and Damage Reduction Paragon Nodes allocated in range, granting us extra Summon Damage and Minion Damage Reduction. With 40 Intelligence allocated, it grants 1% Damage to an enemy each time it’s hit by our minions, up to 15%. At Glyph Level 45, it also grants a multiplicative bonus to Crowd-Controlled Damage.

Scent of Death

Scent of Death offers a ton of generic offensive and defensive bonuses, which include Scent of Death itself.

We’ll need to rotate this board so that the Gyph Node is closer to the bottom.

This board offers a lot of accessible Intelligence, so we’ll socket Mage here to take advantage of this.

This Glyph grants Increased Skeletal Mage Damage per intelligence allocated in range. With 40 Intelligence allocated in range, it grants 35% All Elemental Resistance to all Minions. At Glyph Level 45, it also grants a multiplicative bonus to Damage.

Fraility

Friability offers a good amount of Vulnerable Damage, Crowd-Controlled Damage, and some generic Defenses. Frailty causes enemies to take increased damage the longer they remain cursed, great for both Cursed Aura and Vampiric Curse.

We’ll rotate this board so that the Glyph Node is on the left side of the board.

This board offers a lot of accessible Dexterity, so we’ll socket Exploit here to take advantage of this.

Exploit grants Vulnerable Damage Per Dexterity allocated in range. With 25 Dexterity allocated, it grants x1% Damage per hit on a Vulnerable enemy, stacking up to x10%. At Glyph Level 45, it also grants a multiplicative bonus to Vulnerable Damage.

Flesh-eater

Flesh-eater offers us even more generic offensive and defensive bonuses, making it easy to make use of. Flesh-eater itself grants us a huge damage bonus for 6 seconds when we consume 5 corpses, and refreshes for each corpse consumed within the duration.

We’ll rotate this board so that the Glyph Node is on the right side of the board.

This board offers a lot of accessible Dexterity, so we’ll socket Essence here to take advantage of this.

Essence grants Critical Strike Damage Per Dexterity allocated in range. With 25 Dexterity allocated, it grants x22% Damage with Critical Strikes against Non-Healthy enemies. At Glyph Level 45, it also grants a multiplicative bonus to Critical Strike Damage.

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
2-4		Acolyte’s Reap	Early consistent corpse generation.
5-7		Paranormal Blood Surge	Good AoE and damage with guaranteed Overpowers.
8-10		Ghastyle Blood Mist	Ghastly Blood Mist
11-13		Skeletal Warrior Mastery	Extra survivability for our Warriors.
14-16		Abhorrent Iron Maiden	Strong early curse with no cost and provides extra damage when enemies hit us or our minions and heals us when the enemy dies.
17-19		Skeletal Mage Mastery	Huge damage and defense buff for our Mages.
20-23		Blood Surge	Max our main skill for the early game
24-26		Death’s Embrace	More damage for Blood Surge
27-29		Supreme Army of the Dead	Good damage, creates a lot of corpses, and revives minions.
30-32		Hellbent Commander	More damage for our minions.
33-34		Necrotic Carapace	Allows Army of teh Dead and our Reaper to grant us Fortify.
35		Kalan’s Edict	Good boost for our minions, especially with Aspect of Occult Dominion
36-38		Inspiring Leader	Critical Strike Chance for us and our Minions.
39-41		Death’s Approach	Movement Speed to get around faster.
42-44		Titan’s Fall	More damage to Elites and Bosses.
45-47		Coalesced Blood	More damage while we remain healthy
48-50		Tides of Blood	More Overpower Damage for Blood Surge
51		Reaper’s Pursuit	Taken to reach other passives for now.
52-54		Gloom	Great damage bonus our Mages can stack for for themselves
55-57		Terror	More damage for our Mages against Elites and bosses.
58-60		Amplify Damage	More Damage for everyone.
Respec		Supernatural Blight	Now at Level cap, we’ll swap to Blight, dropping the points from Blood Surge and Tides of Blood, freeing up 7 additional points for other passives.
Respec		Abhorrent Decrepify	Move the points from Iron Maiden to Decrepify instead.
Respec		Ultimate and Passives	Place some of the freed up passives from earlier into Reaper’s Pursuit and Army of the Dead
Respec + R1		Finality	With the remaining respec point and one of our renown points, grab more damage for Army of the Dead
R2		Grim Harvest	Take this to reach Fueled by Death.
R3-R5		Fueled by Death	More generic damage for consuming a corpse
R6		Corpse Tendrils	Take the basic skill and swap it with our Curse on the hotbar, Aspect of Cursed Aura applies our curse for us.
R7-R9		Precision Decay	Gives us a nice boost to Lucky Hit Chance to help trigger Abhorrent Decrepify.
R10-R12		Crippling Darkness	Chance for stun with Darkness Skill, including our Mages that can now stagger Bosses quite well.

This concludes our Diablo 4 Necromancer Build focusing on the Army of the Dead 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.