The Necromancer has always had a variety of builds to work with in Diablo 4. With spells specializing in Bone, Blood, and Darkness skills, there is little they cannot do. However, when it comes to pushing endgame content, one of the builds stands above the others: the Blood Surge build.
A guide to the Blood Surge Necromancer build
The Blood Surge Necromancer build revolves around one skill: Blood Surge. The skill releases a nova of blood that pulses outwards, dealing more damage depending on how many enemies are caught in its radius. Running this build in density-rich areas like Nightmare Dungeons and other endgame areas is the way to go because Blood Surge tears through groups of enemies in no time.
This is done through Blood Surge’s Overpower damage, which deals bonus damage based on your health pool and maximum Fortified Life. Because of this, the build also focuses on building the Necromancer with stacks of Life, making the class super tanky as they run through hordes and spamming Blood Surge.
With other Blood builds being nerfed, Blood Surge now takes the cake at the peak of Blood builds. Like every other non-Ultimate skill, it has two optional upgrades and one mandatory one. For the purposes of the Blood Surge build, these are the ones we choose.
- Enhanced Blood Surge: Blood Surge also heals you for a percentage of your maximum Life. This effect increases per enemy hit.
- Paranormal Blood Surge: As long as you are Healthy, Blood Surge grants Overwhelming Blood when it hits an enemy. After five stacks of the buff, the next Blood Surge used will Overpower.
The combination of Enhanced Blood Surge and Paranormal Blood Surge will accelerate your damage output as long as you maintain over 80 percent of your maximum Life. The constant Overpower damage will make short work of most enemies you encounter.
Next, we look at the other skills needed for this build.
Skill progression
When you get to the endgame, your six skill slots should look something like this:
- Blood Surge: The backbone of this build.
- Hemorrhage: Deals minor damage and generates Essence. Also has a chance to generate a Blood Orb from the affected target.
- Blood Mist: Disperse into mist, dealing damage, healing yourself, and becoming invulnerable to damage for a short time.
Hemorrhage is the generator skill for this build. Apart from gaining Essence, you also generate Blood Orbs that heal you. Enhanced Hemorrhage turns the Blood Orbs into an offensive tool, allowing your Hemorrhage to deal damage to two additional targets. Acolyte’s Hemorrhage grants bonus attack speed while your Necromancer is healthy.
Blood Mist is the best combination of offense and defense. The skill makes you invulnerable to damage while damaging enemies and healing your `Necromancer. Enhanced Blood Mist reduces the skill’s cooldown when you Overpower, while Ghastly Blood Mist will leave a corpse behind every second, perfect for the skill that comes next.
- Decrepify: Curses enemies, slowing them and reducing their outgoing damage.
- Corpse Tendrils: Spawns veins from a corpse that pulls in all nearby enemies to the corpse.
Decrepify is a great tempo-setting skill. While the curse is great for crowd control by itself, it truly shines in this build with Abhorrent Decrepify with its cooldown reduction capabilities. Additionally, Enhanced Decrepify grants you a Lucky Hit ability to stun all cursed enemies when you damage them.
Corpse Tendrils is the control skill of choice, pulling all enemies to a corpse and leaving them Vulnerable with Plagued Corpse Tendrils. Additionally, every enemy caught will also be slowed upon arrival after the Enhanced Corpse Tendrils upgrade, making this a valuable control skill all around.
- Bone Storm: A swirling tornado of Bone surrounds you for 10 seconds, dealing damage to all enemies in the area.
The final ability in this build is the Ultimate skill: Bone Storm. Apart from dealing damage, its Prime Bone Storm upgrade grants you damage reduction while the skill is active. Finally, Supreme Bone Storm improves its offensive power by granting you an increased critical strike chance.
Leveling build
While the endgame build is powerful by itself, getting there will take a while. To make your leveling journey to level 50 easier, these are the choices we recommend.
- Raise Skeleton: Creates Skeleton Warriors from corpses to fight for you.
- Reap: Essence generator skill that damages enemies and causes them to deal less damage.
- Corpse Explosion: Detonates a corpse, dealing damage to all enemies in the area.
- Corpse Tendrils: Pulls in all surrounding enemies to a corpse of your choosing.
- Bone Spirit: Summons a cursed spirit that seeks enemies and explodes, dealing damage.
- Blood Surge: Creates an outward nova of blood, damaging all enemies in the area.
Keep these skills in your skill bar until you get to level 50 and can switch to the endgame variant.
Passive abilities
The passive abilities for this build are divided into the Key Passive and the secondary passives that affect other active skills.
- Imperfectly Balanced: You deal increased damage with your Core skills, but they cost more Essence.
- Unliving Energy: Your maximum Essence is increased.
- Grim Harvest: You generate Essence each time you consume a corpse.
- Death’s Reach: You deal increased damage to distant enemies.
- Death’s Embrace: You deal increased damage to and receive less damage from close enemies.
- Amplify Damage: You deal increased damage to enemies afflicted by a Curse skill.
- Gruesome Mending: You receive increased healing from all sources.
- Coalesced Blood: Your Blood skills deal increased damage when you are Healthy.
- Drain Vitality: You have a chance to Fortify for a percent of your maximum Life when you hit enemies with Blood spells.
- Tides of Blood: Your Blood skills deal increased Overpower damage. When you are Healthy, this bonus damage doubles.
- Stand Alone: You gain increased damage reduction from all sources when you have no minions.
- Memento Mori: You gain 60 percent increased Sacrifice bonuses by sacrificing both Skeletal Warriors and Skeletal Mages.
For a Blood build, there is no better Key Passive ability.
- Rathma’s Vigor: Your next Blood skill cast will Overpower if you have remained Healthy for 12 seconds. Additionally, every time you get healed or overhealed by a Blood Orb, the timer reduces by two seconds.
Book of the Dead
The Book of the Dead is the Necromancer’s unique class mechanic, a tome that allows you to summon minions in battle. Alternatively, if you prefer going the solo route and sacrificing your minions, you can get different bonuses based on your Book of the Dead choices.
Since the Blood Surge build doesn’t use summons, we sacrifice them to gain various bonuses.
- Skeletal Warriors – Skirmishers (Sacrifice): You gain an increased critical strike chance.
- Skeletal Mages – Bone (Sacrifice): You deal increased Overpower damage.
- Golems – Iron (Sacrifice): You deal increased critical strike damage.
The final part of this build revolves around choosing the right Aspects to imbue on your Necromancer’s gear.
Aspects
Depending on the Aspects you choose, this build’s power can skyrocket. First, we address the main Aspect of this build.
- Blood-Bathed Aspect: Your Blood Surge’s nova detonates twice, with the second nova pulsing after a short delay and dealing half damage.
This Aspect ensures maximum damage output from your Blood Surge. With constant Overpowers, nothing should stand in your way. Following that, we pick up the rest of the Aspects to complete this build.
- Aspect of Disobedience: You gain increased armor (stacking) each time you deal damage.
- Aspect of Grasping Veins: You gain increased critical strike chance when you cast Corpse Tendrils. Additionally, you deal increased critical strike damage to enemies affected by the spell.
- Aspect of Might: You gain damage reduction when you use a Basic skill.
- Aspect of Potent Blood: You gain Essence from Blood Orbs while you are Healthy.
- Aspect of Rathma’s Chosen: You gain increased attack speed for a short while when your Blood skills Overpower.
- Aspect of Shielding Storm: You gain a barrier each time you damage enemies with Bone Storm.
- Ghostwalker Aspect: You gain increased movement speed and can run through enemies when you turn Unstoppable.
And finally, some unique gear that fits the build.
- Banished Lord’s Talisman: Your next Core skill cast is guaranteed to Overpower after you spend 300 Essence. Additionally, if your Overpower damage lands a critical strike, it will deal bonus damage.
- Lidless Wall: You gain a chance to create an additional Bone Storm outside of your active Bone Storm when you damage an enemy.
- Temerity: You gain a damage barrier for eight seconds every time you heal beyond 100 percent of your maximum Life.
- Tibault’s Will: You gain increased damage and recover half of your Essence when you become Unstoppable.
And that’s the end of the best Blood Surve Necromancer build. Check out our Season of the Construct starter guide to further enhance your season three experience in Diablo 4!
