To find out more general information about leveling as a Necromancer in Diablo 4, you can check out our main Necromancer Leveling guide. Or you can go to our Necromancer Builds page for a list of other leveling and endgame Necromancer builds for you to choose from.
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Build Introduction
The Bone Spear Necromancer leveling build is a high damaging ranged build that brings high, consistent damage to the battlefield, ensuring high DPS output even when building up Essence to continue casting Bone Spears. This makes it an incredibly smooth build to level your Necromancer with!
Due to the high damage output, this build will take you from the start of the game all the way through the campaign with ease.
Solo play can be fun and playing with friends can be great, if you have the right spec! The high damage output makes the build very attractive to have in a party with friends, and it also makes enemies consistently Vulnerable, allowing the rest of your party to benefit immensely for having you with them.
Skill Tree Points and Skill Bar
At this point in your character progression it is optimal to move all your points in Blood Surge over to Bone Spear, as both are located in the Core cluster. This allows you to utilize Corpse Explosion to clear any extra enemies the Bone Spear did not kill without forcing you to move into close range of your enemies.
Mechanics and Playstyle
The build starts off with casting Blood Surge as your main source of damage output coupled with Corpse Explosion. This works very well, but does force you to position yourself close to the enemies. This is later solved by moving your points over to Bone Spear which will be our main source of single-target damage. However, thanks to the combination of exploding corpses and the passive Grim Harvest, we can easily use Bone Spear to kill initial enemies and finish the remaining mobs with our Corpse Explosion, building our Essence pool back and creating a very smooth playstyle and leveling experience.
When fighting bosses you essentially want to dump all your Essence by casting Bone Spear. Thanks to your Reaper Skeletons providing corpses, as well as the passive Hewed Flesh, you should always have an abundant amount of corpses around your enemies to create a wave of explosions with Corpse Explosion. Aside from re-summoning your skeletons if needed, this rotation rinses and repeats like clockwork!
Should you find yourself completely out of Essence and with no corpses, you’ll resort to using your Bone Splinters to create corpses and regain Essence.
Book of the Dead
Necromancer’s class specific ability is the Book of the Dead, which provides three different type of minions that unlock by leveling up. Some of these choices comes down to personal preference, so we will outline our preferred setup for leveling this build.
- Melee Skeletons – We’ll want to run the Reapers. The second effect choice from these bad boys allows them to have a 15% chance to create a corpse on hit. Seeing as our build thrives on both damage output and Essence gain from corpses this is the ideal choice.
- Mage Skeletons – In the early leveling process, you can choose to run the Cold version of the Mage Skeletons to regain Essence on Hit. We are not aiming to invest anything to have them survive long term, as this would cause them to take up more time being resummoned rather than providing something beneficial for your build. Our choice here is to sacrifice them as Cold Skeletons, providing us with extra damage against Vulnerable enemies.
- Golem – When you first gain access to the Golem, we would strongly recommend using him as an actual tank. The Golem doesn’t go down easily and helps taunt enemies, enabling you to safely do damage from a distance. Use either the Golem (Bone), which provides corpses when the summon takes a certain amount of damage, or the Golem (Blood), which redirects a portion of the damage you take yourself, as both are great choices during this time frame. Towards the end of the campaign, we would opt for sacrificing the Golem (Iron), which provides Necromancer with extra Critical Strike Damage.
Mercenary
Aldkin is a great choice with crowd-controlling features, but the comfortability of using Subo, who brings the ability to reveal enemies and materials in the area, makes him a natural preferential decision. The mercenaries are a nice addition to the game and whichever you chose to run is up to you. The recommendation for this build will be to run Subo.
Skill-tree wise we’ll grab the left-hand side first for Wire Trap to provide stuns with the following node is up to you. Trip Mines is the next big notable to grab, taken for safety reasons. We finish that tree with Mastermind.
For the reinforcement, stick with Raheir, utilizing his Bastion skill being cast when the player becomes injured.
Witchpowers
In Season 7 we will have access to Witchpowers granting some absolutely crazy abilities that we’ll utilize to enhance our builds power. Below, you’ll find a list of the recommended powers we use for this build.
Red Power (Unique):
Purple Powers:
Legendary Item Aspects
To unlock Aspects in the Codex of Power, you must find it naturally or complete the corresponding Dungeon where the specific Aspect drops. Visit the Occultist to imprint this Aspect onto an item. Aspects from the Codex of Power can be used often on weapons.
There is really only one Legendary Aspect that is truly powerful and worth mentioning for this build, which is the Splintering Aspect, unlocked by completing the Guulrahn Slums dungeon in Act 3, Dry Steppes.
This Aspect allows us to make enemies Vulnerable, which in turn allows us to remove the Supernatural Bone Spear and change it into Paranormal Bone Spear. Most importantly, we are now able to make large groups of enemies all reliably become Vulnerable. The Aspect is there more for the effect rather than the increased damage it also provides.
Outside of the obvious Blood-bathed Aspect other aspect powers can be of great use to further scale the efficiency as you’re leveling:
- Juggernaut’s Aspect
- Aspect of Hardened Bones
- Aspect of Occult Dominion
- Bone Duster’s Aspect – Depending on when you get access to this power you’ll want to adjust your skill-tree to enable Bone Prison and your playstyle will now orient around setting up your damage output. This is done by casting Corpse Tendrils and having a Bone Prison surrounding the enemies for insane damage output.
We have a dedicated in-depth Aspect and Codex of Power guide that you can check out for more information.
Gear Choice and Stat Priority while Leveling
Prioritize a higher total damage output when it comes to your weapon, as the higher it is, the better. It should be kept in mind that if you find a higher Item Power 1-handed weapon, it could very well be better than a 2-handed weapon if coupled with an off-hand or even a shield, as shields scale your main-hand weapon by 80%!
Outside of this, you’ll be on the look out for the following modifiers, in no particular order:
- Critical Strike Chance;
- Critical Strike Damage;
- Lucky Hit Chance, which is very effective as this helps generate more corpses to keep the rotation of Bone Spears & Corpse Explosion going.
- + Level of Bone Spear
- Attack Speed
Gems and Runewords
Listed below are the best Gems to socket into gear for each slot type.
- Weapon: Emerald for +#% Critical Strike Damage.
- Armor: Topaz for +#% Increased Intelligence.
- Jewelry: Diamond for all Resistance or any gem that provides you with the resistance type you lack the most.
When it comes to Runewords for the leveling stage of this build we’d recommend combining Cem + Ton as well as Moni + Gar to optimize your builds efficiency.
Elixirs and Health Potions
To gain an edge in your adventures, head to the Alchemist in any major town, and craft Elixirs that enhance your stats and experience gain for 30 minutes. Remember to gather the necessary crafting materials by foraging plants. Select an Elixir that provides the resistance you need most, or try the Assault Elixir to boost your Attack Speed.
Return to the Alchemist again when you reach Level 20 and 30 to upgrade your potion. The extra healing is essential to survival.
Paragon board
Below you’ll find the entire end-game paragon board set-up for this build in detail!
Changelog
- January 20th, 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.
- May 12th, 2024: Guide updated for Season 4 Loot Reborn.
- January 22nd, 2024: Guide updated for Season 3 Season of the Construct.
- October 15th, 2023: Guide made ready for Season 2 patch 1.2.0
- August 7th, 2023: Guide made ready for Patch 1.1.1
