Blood Wave – Necromancer Build for Diablo 4 (Season 8)

Build Introduction

This guide is a collaboration between GhazzyTV and community member Garm Z. The Blood Wave build, despite significant nerfs, still is expected to be the one of top-performing Necromancer builds in Season 8 due to Blood & Shadow scaling unity. Highly gear dependent and expensive build delivers performance worth the price.

There will be plenty of required items for this build to work as listed down below in this guide in detail.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Build Requirements

Required Uniques

Kessime’s Legacy

Fastblood Aspect

Tidal Aspect

Both Fastblood Aspect and Tidal Aspect needs to have good rolls to help make the build feel good to play.

Quick Navigation

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Skill Bar and Skill Tree Points

Recommended

Suggested Skill Bar

BlightDecomposeBlood MistBlood WaveCorpse TendrilsReap

Follow the points allocated in the Skill Tree above for the complete 71-point build. The additional 10 skill points are completed using the Renown system.

Necromancer Class Mechanic – Book of the Dead

Since we are focusing entirely on dealing brutal damage with our Blood Wave, we have no interest in bothering our minions, so they will all be sacrificed in the name of Lilith.

• Melee Skeletons: Defenders [Sacrifice] – Resistance to All Elements.
• Mage Skeletons: Bone [Sacrifice] – Increased Overpower damage.
• Golem: Iron [Sacrifice] – Increased Critical Strike Damage.

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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! Outside of Obols to get your Legendary Aspects the recommendation is to engage with the seasonal mechanic as they are often lucrative in terms of Legendary drops and to some extend farming Helltide areas.

Gear Slot	Gems	Aspect / Unique	Legendary Aspect / Unique Power
Helm	Igni + Xal	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 2.5-0.3 seconds and last 4 seconds outside the aura.
Chest	Royal Topaz	Aspect of Hardened Bones	You and your Minions gain 10-30% increased damage reduction.
Gloves	N/A	Vehement Brawler’s Aspect	Casting an ultimate Skill increases your damage by x#% for 8 seconds. Gain 2 additional Ultimate Skill Ranks.
Pants	Royal Topaz	Kessime’s Legacy	Blood Wave now creates a wave on each side of you and converge at your feet pulling enemies in as well as increasing the damage they take from your Blood Wave.
Boots	N/A	Aspect of Metamorphosis	When you Evade you turn in to a cloud of bats, becoming Unstoppable for 2.5 seconds. Enemies along your path take X Physical damage and are inflicted with Vampiric Curse. Evade’s Cooldown is increased by X seconds.
Weapon 2H (Mace)	Cir + Vex	Tidal Aspect	Blood Wave fires 2 additional wave, each dealing X% of normal damage, but you can no longer recast it until the last wave ends.
Amulet	Royal Skull	Fastblood Aspect	Blood Orbs reduce your Ultimate Cooldown by # seconds.
Ring	Royal Skull	Aspect of Ultimate Shadow	Blood Wave is now a Darkness Skill and deals Shadow damage. Blood Wave creates Desecrated Ground as it travels, dealing # Corrupting Damage over 4 seconds.
Ring	Royal Skull	Aspect of the Damned	You deal x#% increased Shadow damage to enemies afflicted by any Curse.

Curious how this build compares to other endgame options? Take a look at our Endgame Build Tier List.

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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. Cooldown Reduction 2. Intelligence 3. Maximum Life	Worldly Endurance # Maximum Life Profane Innovation #% Corpse Tendril Size
Chest	* 1. Maximum Life 2. Intelligence 3. All Resistances	Worldly Endurance # Maximum Life Profane Innovation #% Corpse Tendril Size
Gloves	* 1. Critical Strike Chance 2. Maximum Life 3. Intelligence	Blood Finesse #% Blood Overpower Damage Thorn Army + Ranks to Spiked Armor
Pants	Kessime’s Legacy * 1. #% Chance for Blood Wave to Deal Double Damage 2. Blood Wave Cooldown Reduction	n/a
Boots	1. Movement Speed 2. Maximum Life * 3. Armor	Necromancer Motion #% Movement Speed Thorn Army + Ranks to Spiked Armor
Amulet	* 1. + Ranks to Tides of Blood 2. % Intelligence 3. Critical Strike Chance Note: With high endgame gear you can replace Critical Strike Chance with + Ranks to Coalesced Blood.	Blood Finesse #% Blood Overpower Damage Necromancer Efficiency #% Ultimate Cooldown Reduction
Ring	* 1. Maximum Life 2. Lucky Hit: Chance to make enemies vulnerable 3. Intelligence	Blood Finesse #% Blood Overpower Damage Necromancer Efficiency #% Ultimate Cooldown Reduction
Ring	* 1. Maximum Life 2. Lucky Hit: Chance to make enemies vulnerable 3. Critical Strike Chance	Blood Finesse #% Blood Overpower Damage Necromancer Efficiency #% Ultimate Cooldown Reduction
2H Weapon (Mace)	1. Lucky Hit: Chance to Restore Essence * 2. Maximum Life 3. Intelligence	Blood Finesse #% Blood Overpower Damage Blood Augments #% Chance for Blood Wave to Deal Double Damage

Keep in mind that the maximum Resistance is 70% by default for each element and can be increased to 85% by various sources. Furthermore, Unique items cannot be tempered, only masterworked!

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 % and/or Spiked Armor ranks.

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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

• Kessime’s Legacy (Required) – Bread and butter of the build as it makes your Blood Wave do more damage and pull enemies in. You can find these pants from Lord Zir himself!

Mythic Uniques

• Shroud of False Death – Scales damage by a lot! Greater Affix and Masterworking priority will be on the Maximum life.
• Heir of Perdition – You’ll have to move Cursed aura to your boots and replace the boots aspect with this item to further scale damage. Greater Affix and Masterworking priority will be on the Critical Strike Chance. This item also allows you to free up one of your runeword for any damage options and crit boss power should you chose to run that.

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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
Runeword described below.	Recommended Runewords otherwise Royal Topaz For increased Intelligence.	Royal Skull till armor is capped after that we use Royal Diamond

The following Runewords are recommended for use in this build.

Runeword Combination	Effect
Cir + Vex	Gain 300 Offering when you cast 5 Skills then become exhausted for 3 seconds. For 150 Offering you gain +1 to Skills for 10 seconds, able to overflow to +3.
Igni + Xal	Gain: 25 Offering. Stores offering every 0.3 seconds. Cast a non-Basic Skill to gain the stored offering. Requires: 300 Offering. (overflow: Gain More Maximum Life). 3 second cooldown. Gain 20% Maximum Life for 6 seconds.

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Paragon Board

Below you’ll find the entire end-game paragon board set-up for this build in detail!

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Boss Powers (Season 8)

The newly added seasonal mechanic lets us power our builds up by using abilities from endgame bosses themselves! Below you’ll find the recommended list for this build.

Main Boss Power:

• Urivar’s Lobbed Bombs

Modifier Boss Powers:

• Hatred’s Embrace’s Haste – You’ll want to switch this out if you can get Critical Strike capped without it. At that point you’ll use Harbinger of Hatred’s Volley instead.
• Wandering Death’s Chest Beam
• Belial’s Eye Beams

Mercenaries

Mercenaries provide a nice extra layer of power to your character and mostly comes down to preferential decision. Below you’ll see the set-up I personally would run for this build which is having Raheir as the Mercenary and for reinforcement I’d use Aldkin!

Raheir Skill Tree choices:

• Ground Slam
• Raheir’s Aegis
• Bastion
• Inspiration

Aldkin Reinforcement choices:

• Opportunity Skill: Skill Cast – Whenever the player casts Blood Wave.
• Reinforcement Skill – Field of Languish

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Build Mechanics

Rotation and Playstyle

The entire playstyle is all about grouping enemies together then explode with tsunami’s of actual Blood Wave that comes crashing down obliterating your enemies.

We will utilize Corpse Tendrils to help group enemies together and generate Blood Orbs that we consume to consistently be able to spam our Blood Waves. The Darkness skills on our action-bar is mainly there to scale the passive node Reaper’s Pursuit.

For hairy situations where you need to get out of harms way we have Blood Mist.

Which Elixirs Should You Use?

Visit the Alchemist and craft an Elixir providing any Resistance you need most, or the Elixir of Fortitude II to increase Maximum Life. Some Elixirs cannot be crafted and only drop from things like Helltides or Nightmare Dungeons. Additionally, make sure to keep your health potion upgraded!

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Season 8 Updates

For a full overview of what is new in Season 8, please take a look at our comprehensive season hub.

Here is a quick overview of seasonal changes relevant to this build:

• Massive nerf to Ultimate Rank 5 bonus now being capped at 200% – The build will still be one of the top performers for Season 8.
• Better options for Runewords this season compared to last season.
• Kessime’s Legacy saw some nerfs whilst buffing the damage component of Blood Wave Explosion damage.
• Tidal Aspect received some minor nerfs.
• Minor bug fixes and bufs/nerfs that aren’t very noticeable outside of the above mentioned changes.

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 guide Icy Veins for gambling Obols in the link below.

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Changelog

• May 5th, 2025: Optimized and updated post launch for Season 8.
• April 26th, 2025: Guide updated for Season 8.
• January 19th, 2025: Guide posted for Season 7.