Summoner – Necromancer Leveling Build for Diablo 4 (Season 15)

Build Introduction

The Summoner Necromancer is a staple leveling build controlling a small army of Skeleton Warriors, Skeleton Mages and even up to 3 Golems. Minions inherit all the Summoner’s stats – be it Armor or Resistances, Attack Speed or Critical Strike Chance. It allows you to invest only just enough into the Summoner’s defenses without compromising the minions and focus solely on the offensive potential of both.

Necromancer’s class-specific ability is the Book of the Dead, which provides three different types of minions at different levels. This build is designed around using all types of your minions, even sacrificed ones.

Key Minion type changes during progression:
- Level 5: Skeleton Warrior – Skirmishers [Upgrade #1] (extra two Skeleton Warrior for free).
- Level 5: Skeleton Mage – Shadow [Upgrade #2] (more survivability scaling with Maximum Life).
- Level 8: Golem – Bone [Upgrade #1] (enables Corpse generation on demand for Corpse Explosion).
- Level 12: Skeleton Warrior – Reapers [Upgrade #1] (significantly more Corpses and Cooldown Management).
- Level 50: Golem – Bone [Sacrifice] (trade non-scalable aurabot Golem damage for another 10% Attack Speed).
- Level 50: Skeleton Warrior – Reapers [Upgrade #2] (50%[x] increased damage).
Final setup:
- Skeletal Warriors: Reapers [Upgrade #2] – 50%[x] increased damage and 15% chance to Stun for 1 second.
- Skeletal Mages: Shadow [Upgrade #2] – Bolts grant you and the Shadow Mage a Barrier for 3% of your Maximum Life for 4 seconds, up to 30%.
- Golem: Bone [Sacrifice] – 10%[+] Attack Speed and Golem does 50%[x] less damage.

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Skill Tree Points

Use the Skill Tree above to complete the 83-point build. 69 skill points are gained by leveling, and 14 skill points are locked behind the Season Rank System or Renown for Seasonal or Eternal characters, respectively. Use “Leveling Path” toggle to see the exact order of skill allocation.

If you get extra skill-points from the Seasonal Journey early on, and it throws off build order – just throw them into either Skeleton Mage or Skeleton Warrior.

Corpse Explosion received massive buff this season, so it can stay relevant for longer, especially if you weren’t lucky to acquire any useful Legendary Aspects or Uniques early. So switching to Army of the Dead can happen at any comfortable point later – around level 40, or even 50, after Skeleton Mage and Skeleton Warrior ranks are leveled.

Decrepify is activated via Wat Runeword, once obtained, so it is not needed on the skill bar. As an alternative – Teb Runeword can be used to automate Iron Maiden instead, to have Decrepify on skill bar for manual Unholy Frenzy buff uptime control.

The new Lord of Hatred expansion Skill Tree unlocks in stages, permanently unlocking new skill clusters. For example, Necromancer Curses unlock at level 13, so from level 13 it is possible to refund all previously allocated skill points and start leveling skills starting from the Curses cluster right away (or anywhere above it).

Skill points from the Season Rank System or Renown do not affect Skill Tree progress and can be allocated to skill ranks you already unlocked.

The Build Mechanics section helps to explain how these Skills play and interact.

Following Necromancer’s Class Mechanic will explain how it will be adjusted at certain levels to synergize with your Skills progression.

Gear, Stats, Gems and Runes

Check the sections below for important gearing considerations to improve your character’s power while leveling.

Legendary Aspects

In the new Lord of Hatred expansion, Legendary Aspects became significantly more powerful, so it is a good idea to keep an eye on everything you can research from early on. We have a dedicated in-depth Aspect and Codex of Power guide that you can check out for more information on gear enchanting.

Always salvage gear you don’t use, even if you already have a better Legendary Aspect roll in the Codex of Power. Stockpiling crafting materials from early levels will pay off during Torment World Tier push.

Always check the merchant’s stock when visiting town – not only do they sell affordable Magic and Rare gear relevant for your level, but they also sometimes sell Legendaries.

Building up Mercenary Rapport from early levels and bartering for Aspect Caches or specific Legendaries is a great way to hunt for specific slot Legendary Aspects.

The Purveyor of Curiosities is another excellent way to obtain specific slot Legendary Aspects, and even Uniques – by gambling with Murmuring Obols you farmed in your journey.

Imprinting Aspects costs 10 Baleful Fragments, which can be acquired early mostly by salvaging Legendary or Unique gear, or opening Baleful Chests in PvP zones. The scarcity of useful Aspects to imprint and the high cost of imprinting – multiplied by the extremely high rate of gear turnover – makes it impractical to imprint your gear until you are about to progress past the Penitent World Tier.

The most efficient way is to maintain only a few of the most powerful Legendary Aspects on your gear. These should be strategically placed on gear pieces that you can avoid replacing for the longest possible time, if ever. Weapon slots are eliminated due to the highest gear turnover rate. The ideal spot is the Amulet, due to the 150% effect of the imprinted Aspect and the rarity of useful, high-value affixes on that slot during the early game.

These are the most impactful Legendary Aspects that can speed up the leveling process:

These are the most impactful Uniques accessible early, that can speed up the leveling process:

The Undercrown – more Skeleton Warrior and Skeleton Mage – it is all what this build is about
Leoric’s Crown – scaling Splinter of Hellfire for damage multiplier at the cost of Critical Strike Chance you never had in first place, and such
Pact of Bone – massive amount of Critical Strike Chance and Attack Speed for minions
Will of Rathma – decent damage multiplier with no downsides
Insight – absolutely a beast of the item, massive size of all necessary affixes for the build, but it is better to keep the runes, until max level Ancestral item base is acquired
Stealth / Enigma – early versions of best in slot Chest pieces, provide exceptional mobility and solid defenses
Lidless Wall – requires to level Bone Storm with Roll The Bones instead of Soulrift, and average Critical Strike Chance, like from Pact of Bone, to make most of it, but it will result in massive Critical Damage multiplier, almost capped Critical Strike Chance, more than 30% Attack Speed and high survivability.

Stats Priority and Tempering Affixes

Keep in mind that Tempering Affixes are unlocked by Tempering Manuals you find as you progress. Be sure to check our Tempering guide for more details about this topic.

Try to obtain the highest Worldly Endurance tempering recipe available as early as possible, because of extreme Maximum Life rolls, especially at higher rarities.

One of the regular affixes on a gear piece can be re-rolled repeatedly until the desired outcome. This is covered in our Occultist guide for more details.

Both Tempering and Enchanting are very affordable in the early game, costing only 5 Veiled Crystals. Single Magic Worldly Endurance – Maximum Life temper can almost double your and your Minion’s Maximum Life early, so don’t miss out.

Generally, you will be trying to go for a few recommended affixes per piece, in descending priority:

Gems and Runewords

It is not recommended to socket items until level 50+ due to material cost and the fact that you’ll be replacing your gear too frequently, especially weapons.

If a socket already exists in your gear, use the following gems:

Weapon: Amethyst for Shadow Damage increase.
Jewelry: Soul Splinters, Ruby for Fire Resistance, Topaz for Lightning Resistance.

When it comes to Runewords, there are only a couple that this build can utilize well. The most attractive ones available early are:

Nagu + Ceh / Cir + Ceh – Summons a pack of up to 6 Spirit Wolves, triggering your Lucky Hit procs.
Igni + Wat / Teb – Applies Decrepify, or Iron Maiden accordingly, automatically along your skills once every 1.2 seconds. It allows you to invest into Decrepify upgrades and use them without having the skill on your Skill Bar. Check the playstyle and rotation section of the guide to see how it affects the build.
Nagu + Que / Igni + Que / Cir + Que – Maintains a Druid’s Earthen Bulwark barrier for extreme survivability in descending efficiency and uptime.
Cir + Kry – Invoke Spiritborn’s Vortex to pull enemies together.

Make sure you slot these in your Helmet, Pants or Chest, since Weapon allows you to use damage multiplier gems instead. You get runes back for free when salvaging the item.

Season Mechanics

Splinters of Evil

In Season of Hell’s Legacy, one of seasonal powers will consist of the three Splinters of Prime Evil, acquired by completing seasonal questline and defeating echoes of Diablo beneath Tristram Cathedral, Baal at Arreat Summit, and Mephisto within the Durance of Hate. Splinter of Evil trigger iconic Prime Evil area of effect damage abilities and alter actitivies associated with the Prime Evil.

Main consideration for first Splinter of Evil choice is expected to be in activity modifiers. Only one Splinter of Prime Evil can be used at a time, but there is a mechanism to change. Due to Helltide being the most common early progression activity, it is recommended to use Splinter of Terror first.

Duplicitous Soul Splinters

The second layer of seasonal powers consists of Duplicitous Soul Splinters gems, like Abyssal Splinter of Hellfire, to be slotted into jewelry and the newly introduced Leoric’s Crown helm. You can equip up to three Soul Splinters among available Jewelry slots.

Duplicitous Soul Splinters gems provide sizeable buffs to some stats at the price of heavy penalties to others. One should be careful at making choices to either ignore the penalty – Damage over Time builds do not care about losing Critical Strike Chance, or compensate it – Minion builds often have an abundance of Critical Strike Chance from Pact of Bone, Litany of Death, Roll The Bones etc.

Recommended Duplicitous Soul Splinters setup to can be looked up in Gems and Runewords.

Diablo II Runewords Gear

In Season 15 some Diablo II runes, like Ral or Ith were reintroduced for the season, as the cherry on top. While being not impressive on their own – they can be used to craft new Unique gear piece by combining certain runewords and Normal “white” item base inside Horadric Cube. There are few the most impressive outcomes, like Enigma (Jah Ith Ber), Spirit (Tal Thul Ort Amn), Grief (Eth Tir Lo Mal Ral) or Infinity (Ber Mal Ber Ist). Ancestral version of item base will produce the Ancestral version of Unique.

For a complete overview of the current Season, its mechanics and theme, new leveling activities, and other changes, please take a look at our comprehensive season hub here.

Talismans

The Lord of Hatred expansion introduces Talismans as a new character progression and itemization layer. Find, equip, and fill a suitable Horadric Seal with a variety of Charms. These grant everything from plain stats similar to any gear piece to powerful set effects, doubling down on and elevating Necromancer archetypes to new heights.

This build Talisman goalposts would be:

Horadric Seal with the most Charm Slots possible
Charms and Seals with valuable affixes, like:
- + 1 Charm Slot
- +% Movement Speed
- Practiced Technique Charm full set
- + to Minions Skill
- + to Darkness Skills
- +%[x] Shadow Damage
- +% Minion Attack Speed

Mercenaries

The mercenaries are useful, but not a crucial addition to the game, so whichever one you choose to run is up to you. Aldkin helps to reach meaningful Critical Strike Chance thresholds with Raging Violence. Varyana improves skill rotation speed with Bloodthirst. Subo reveals enemies and resources on the minimap for optimal routes. Raheir protects you in times of need with Valiance and Bastion.

Default recommendation for this build will be to run Varyana:

Take note that during campaign leveling, primary mercenaries often will be dismissed in favour of quest-related NPCs.

We also recommend using the Reinforcement slot to level up all your mercenaries evenly to get extra loot caches and Pale Marks.

Build Mechanics

This is a straightforward minion zookeeper build, eventually buffed by Unholy Frenzy and Gargantua auras. From early levels Corpse Explosion does the heavy lifting of burst damage and AoE clearing, while minions generate Corpses and act as a meat shield. Gear requirements are close to none for the recommended difficulty level, as long as the gear is of any relevant item level and has a fraction of the recommended affixes.

Before Level 50 Golem switches to Gargantua:

Send Golem into enemies using active ability.
Send Skeleton Warriors to attack enemies using the active ability.
Use Corpse Explosion until corpses created by Golem, Skeleton Warrior Reapers and Decompose are exhausted, if you still have it.
Channel Decompose to create more corpses, if you still have it, to apply crowd control and deal some extra damage
If Iron Maiden is leveled at this point – apply it to the enemies, to generate Ferocity and Overpower stacks for Attack Speed and Additive Damage respectively, Fortify and some extra Blood Orbs for healing. Also, if you have Wat runeword – it will be activated, together with Iron Maiden every other time to buff your Summons. If you use Teb runeword instead – Curses will change places in rotation.
Use Sever for mobility and emergency corpse creation, if needed.
You can use Army of the Dead for more damage when needed, but the benefits from Unyielding Commander will be constantly active at all times regardless, due to a bug.
Repeat.

After Level 50 Golem, switch to Gargantua:

Use Sever for emergency corpse creation, if needed to revive Skeleton Warrior.
Use Golem active ability to become Unstoppable, if you are about to be Crowd Controlled.
Send Skeleton Warriors to attack enemies using the active ability.
Debuff enemy packs using Iron Maiden to generate Ferocity and Overpower stacks for Attack Speed and Additive Damage respectively, Fortify and some extra Blood Orbs for healing. Also, if you have Wat runeword – it will be activated, together with Iron Maiden every other time to buff your Summons. If you use Teb runeword instead – Curses will change places in rotation.
Use Sever for mobility and emergency corpse creation, if needed.
You can use Army of the Dead for more damage when needed, but the benefits from Unyielding Commander will be constantly active at all times regardless, due to a bug.
Repeat.

Season Updates

Below you’ll find the most noteworthy changes for Season 15 Hell’s Legacy:

Army of the Dead Unyielding Commander initial damage multiplier is lower, but now scales with ranks + Passive Bonus bug keeping Unyielding Commander active all time still present
Corpse Explosion massive damage buffs, also Multiple Corpses and Corpse Efficiency upgrades are not mutually exclusive anymore.

For a complete overview of the current Season, its mechanics and theme, new leveling activities, and other changes, please take a look at our comprehensive season hub here.

Difficulty and Endgame

This guide is designed to get you to level 70 in a smooth and enjoyable way. Once there, you’ll want to look at a proper endgame-designed build guide and start making required preparations. Make sure you pick one of our recommended ones!

Recommended World Tier to start: Hard

Quantity over quality is a road to success in leveling. Staying at a difficulty level where Elites and Seasonal content pose low threat and do not take any significant time to kill nets the most experience. Moving upwards through World Tiers should happen when the requirements to unlock the next level become trivial.

Preparations for an endgame build usually take some time to acquire the required gear and will result in the character unlocking the paragon board after reaching level 70. To continue the progression and farm gear more efficiently, the selected endgame build paragon board can be followed.

Changelog

September 30th, 2026: Simplified Curses options for the build
September 15th, 2026: Guide updated for Season 15.
July 1st, 2026: Minor optimizations.
June 27th, 2026: Guide updated for Season 14.
April 29th, 2026: Added Skill Tree, optimizations (delaying full support transition)
April 27th, 2026: Minor optimizations and cleanup.
April 26th, 2026: Guide updated for the Lord of Hatred expansion.
March 7th, 2026: Guide updated for Season 12.
December 11th, 2025: Reworked leveling build for Season 11, Divine Intervention

Slot	Affixes	Tempering Affixes
2H Weapon	1. Weapon Damage 2. x% All Damage Multiplier 3. Maximum Life	Weapons – Worldly Destruction – Attack Speed
Helm	1. Maximum Life 2. Armor 3. Resistance to All Elements 4. Essence per second	Defensive – Worldly Endurance – Maximum Life
Chest	1. Maximum Life 2. Armor 3. Resistance to All Elements 4. Essence per second	Defensive – Worldly Endurance – Maximum Life
Gloves	1. x% Vulnerable Damage Multiplier 2. x% All Damage Multiplier 3. Attack Speed 4. Maximum Life	Offensive – Worldly Finesse – Vulnerable Damage
Pants	1. Maximum Life 2. Armor 3. Resistance to All Elements 4. Essence per second	Defensive – Worldly Endurance – Maximum Life
Boots	1. Movement Speed 2. + Evade Charges 3. Maximum Life 4. Armor 5. Resistance to All Elements	Mobility – Natural Motion – Movement Speed
Amulet	1. Movement Speed 2. x% Vulnerable Damage Multiplier 3. x% All Damage Multiplier 4. Attack Speed 5. Maximum Life	Offensive – Worldly Finesse – Vulnerable Damage
Rings	1. x% Vulnerable Damage Multiplier 2. x% All Damage Multiplier 3. Attack Speed 4. Maximum Life	Offensive – Worldly Finesse – Vulnerable Damage

Soul Splinter	Slot preference	Effect
Abyssal Splinter of Pain	Avoid	You gain 40% Damage Reduction, but you lose 30% Movement Speed.
Abyssal Splinter of the Black Soulstone	Jewelry	Killing enemies absorbs a soul for 15 seconds. Each soul increases your damage by x5.0% but increases your damage taken by 0.5%. This effect stacks, but does not refresh.
Abyssal Splinter of Hellfire	Leoric’s Crown or worse prioritized Jewelry	You deal x100% increased damage, but lose 100% Critical Strike Chance.
Abyssal Splinter of the Mother	Avoid	You are Unhindered. Touching enemies makes them Vulnerable for 10 seconds. After touching 250 enemies, you are Stunned for 4 seconds.
Abyssal Splinter of Anguish	Jewelry	You gain +35% Attack Speed and Critical Strike Chance, but your Primary Resource Costs are increased by 30%.
Abyssal Splinter of Lies	Leoric’s Crown or worse prioritized Jewelry	You gain 100% increased Gold Drop Rate, Crafting Material Drop Rate, and 25% Bonus Experience, but you are always Weakened and Vulnerable.
Abyssal Splinter of Sin	Optional Jewelry (when pushing Torment tiers)	You gain x40% Maximum Life, but your Maximum Primary Resource is reduced by 30%.
Abyssal Splinter of Damnation	Avoid	Killing an Elite Pack increases Monster Power by 1 for 25 Seconds