Build Introduction
This guide is a collaboration between GhazzyTV and community member Garm Z. The Blight DoT build is a very relaxing, well-rounded, and high-performing build for any content, providing many layers of defenses as your enemies die to brutal shadow damage over time.
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Strengths and Weaknesses
- Great season starter
- Safe & comfortable to play
- Doesn’t require heavy gear investment or Uniques
- Has a unique item requirement to function
- Lacks single-target damage before you get the unique item
To see how this build compares to the other builds on our site, you can check out our build tier lists.
Build Requirements
EbonpiercerQuick Navigation
Skill Bar and Skill Tree Points
Blight
Reap
Corpse Tendrils
Corpse Explosion
Bone Prison
SoulriftFollow the points allocated in the Skill Tree above for the complete 71-point build. The additional 12 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 shadow skills, we have no interest in bothering our minions, so they will all be sacrificed in the name of Lilith.
- Melee Skeletons: If Resistances < 50% Defenders [Sacrifice] – Resistance to All Elements. If resistances are fine then Reapers [Sacrifice] – Increases our Shadow Damage.
- Mage Skeletons: Cold [Sacrifice] – Increased damage to Vulnerable.
- Golem: Blood [Sacrifice] – Increased Maximum Life by x#%.
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! Other recommendations for Legendary Aspect farming would be to do the Seasonal mechanic and to some extent you can farm them in Helltides as well.
| Gear Slot | Gems | Aspect / Unique | Legendary Aspect / Unique Power |
|---|---|---|---|
| Helm |  Igni +  Thul |  Wildbolt Aspect | Every x seconds, Distance enemies are pulled in to you and take x#% increased damage for 3 seconds. This effect cannot occur while you are in Stealth. |
| Chest |  Royal Topaz |  Aspect of Hardened Bones | You gain 10-30% increased damage reduction. |
| Gloves | N/A |  Aspect of Plunging Darkness | Bone Prison is now a Darkness Skill and spawns Blight for 6 seconds. Your Blight deals x#% increased damage while Bone Prison is active. |
| Pants | Royal Topaz | 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. |
| 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 (Axe) |  Ahu +  Qax | Aspect of the Damned | You and your minions deal x35-55% increased Shadow damage to enemies afflicted by any Curse. |
| Amulet |  Idol From Below | Ebonpiercer | Blight also shoots 4 smaller projectiles that pierce enemies and deal X Shadow damage over 3 seconds. |
| Ring | Scornful Light |  Aspect of the Great Feast | While you have no active Minions, you deal x#% increased damage, but you lose 7 Essence per second. |
| Ring | Tyrant Bane | Sacrificial Aspect | Your Sacrifice bonuses are increased by x35-55%. |
Curious how this build compares to other endgame options? Take a look at our Endgame Build Tier List.
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. Maximum Life * 2. Intelligence 3. Cooldown Reduction |  Decay Innovation #% Soulrift DurationWorldly Endurance # Maximum Life |
| Chest | 1. Essence per Second 2. Maximum Life * 3. Intelligence | Decay Innovation #% Soulrift DurationWorldly Endurance # Maximum Life |
| Gloves | 1. Intelligence 2. Corruption Damage * 3. Attack Speed | Shadow Finesse #% Corruption DamageDecay Innovation #% Soulrift Duration |
| Pants | 1. Intelligence 2. Maximum Life * 3. Armor | Worldly Endurance #% Total ArmorDecay Innovation #% Blight Size |
| Boots | 1. Essence per Second 2. Movement Speed * 3. Intelligence | Necromancer Motion #% Movement SpeedProfane Innovation #% Corpse Tendril Size |
| Amulet | Ebonpiercer * 1. + Ranks to Reaper’s Pursuit | n/a |
| Rings (2x) | 1. Intelligence 2. Corruption Damage * 3. Attack Speed | Shadow Finesse #% Corruption DamageNecromancer Efficiency #% Ultimate Cooldown Reduction |
| 2H Weapon (Axe) | * 1. Intelligence 2. Maximum Life 3. Lucky Hit: Chance to restore primary resource | Shadow Finesse #% Corruption DamageShadow Augments — Decay #% Chance for Blight Projectiles to Cast Twice |
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 reach the Armor Cap of 1,000.
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
Some Mythic Unique items can be absolutely insane, but comes at the cost of removing a Legendary aspect power which we are already very short on. Below is a list of Mythic Uniques you could use though:
Heir of Perdition – Simple helmet replacement. Greater Affix and Masterworking priority on this item will be the Lucky Hit modifier.
Shroud of False Death – Simple body armor replacement. Greater Affix and Masterworking priority on this item should be on the all stats or split with the Life modifier.
Ring of Starless Skies – This can replace your Sacrificial ring but would also require you to switch out your boss modifier from Beast in the Ice’s Sleet for Sinerat! Greater Affix and Masterworking priority on this item is the Attack Speed.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Recommended Runewords listed below | Recommended Runewords otherwise Royal Topaz For increased Intelligence. | Horadric Jewels as listed further below. |
The following Runewords are recommended to be used for this build.
| Runeword Combination | Effect |
| Ahu + Qax | Gain: 15 Offering. Lucky Hit: up to 100% chance against non-Healthy enemies. Requires: 400 Offering. (Overflow: Further Increased Damage). Cooldown: 1 second. Casting a Skill other than a Basic of Defensive spends all your Primary Resource to increase your damage up to 100% for 1 second. |
| Igni + :Thul | Gain: 25 Offering. Store offering every 0.3 seconds. Cast a non-Basic Skill to gain the stored offering. Requires: 300 Offering. (Overflow: Increased Size). Cooldown: 1 second. Invoke the Sorcerer’s Mystical Frost Nova, inflicting Freeze and Vulnerable onto enemies. |
Cir + 
Lum is a temporary Runeword that can help with Essence till you’re good without it. This Should be the main Runeword and once Essence is solved we replace it with whichever Runeword you get last as listed above.
Paragon Board
Below, you’ll find the entire end-game paragon board set-up for this build in detail!
Horadric Spells and Jewels (Season 9)
In Season 9, we will have access to Horadric Jewels and Horadric Spells, granting some absolutely crazy abilities that we’ll utilize to enhance our build’s power. Below, you’ll find a list of the recommended powers we use for this build.
Horadric Spell
| Type | Power | Description |
| Catalyst |  Astral Pillar + Blight | Cooldown: 7 seconds. Lucky Hit Chance: 14%. Shape an Ethereal Column that Taunts for x seconds. Piercing waves flow from it and dceal x damage, until you create another one or move too far away. |
| Infusion |  Nebulous Extract | Your Spell Catalyst now deals Shadow and or Corrupting damage. Enemies hit by it deal x% reduced damage for 7 seconds. While equipped, your Shadow Damage Bonus is equal to that of your highest Damage Type Bonus. At Rank 5 it will deactivate enemy monster summoner effects for 5 seconds. |
| Arcana |  Bloody Charm | Your Catalyst gains a specialized Execute effect for non-Boss enemies with 20% or less Life. Bloody Charm will also execute non-boss enemies with Cosmic Anomaly implosions. Successful executions increase your Attack Speed by 20% for 8 seconds. |
| Arcana |  Tranquil Stone | Invoking your Catalyst grants Unstoppable for 5 seconds whenever it activates. |
| Arcana |  Fractured Core | Your Catalyst deactivates monster Damage Resistance Aura effects for 5 seconds, but you take 15% more stacking damage for the same time. |
Horadric Jewels
Use these Jewels over regular gems in your jewelry slots to further enhance the build:
Mercenaries
During the Vessel of Hatred campaign, you will unlock Mercenaries to assist you. While you can choose freely early on, we recommend Raheir as your main merc, and Varyana as a Reinforcement once you reach endgame.
For the reinforcement, stick with Aldkin, utilizing his Flame Surge skill being cast when the player casts Blight.
Build Mechanics
Rotation and Playstyle
It’s all about spam! You want to utilize Corpse Tendrils to control enemies, followed by Bone Prison which spawns a Blight for damage output, we further emphasize on our Corruption damage by using Corpse Explosion, this is used to maintain buffs from our Paragon Board and Skill-tree bonuses from consuming corpses.
Enemies will be cursed by 
Decrepify if you’re close enough to them which is very important, on top of having very high uptime on Soulrift, this builds deals a ton of Shadow damage over time. Adding the damage output of both Blight and Corpse Explosion is one thing, but when we couple that with Ebonpiercer things just melt away!
Which Elixirs Should You Use?
Visit the Alchemist and craft an Elixir providing better resources via 
Elixir of Resourcefulness II or if that is fine you can go for the 
Elixir of Fortitude II for Maximum life, should you need armor you could always run 
Elixir of Iron Barbs II. Some Elixirs cannot be crafted and only drop from things like Helltides or Nightmare Dungeons. Additionally, make sure to keep your health potion upgraded!
Season 9 Updates
For a full overview of what is new in Season 9, please take a look at our comprehensive season hub. Additionally, Season 9 isn’t changing anything notably for the build outside of providing the new Horadric powers.
Obol Gambling
Obol gambling is a great way to potentially find item upgrades or items missing from your build. Check out the new tool guide from Icy Veins for gambling Obols in the link below.
Changelog
- June 29th, 2025: Guide added to the site for Season 9.
