The first season of Diablo IV is rapidly approaching, with its official release date set for July 20th, 2023. Many players will want to try out new characters and new builds, and although we do not know every passive from the upcoming heart gems, we can theory-craft a build that will get you started if you are looking to play as a Necromancer for the first time.
Diablo IV is available right now on all the major platforms and the first season of the game will introduce a new mechanic of Malignance. There will be a random chance at respawning Malignant enemies when an Elite enemy spawns and they will have a chance of dropping latest items – hearts, which can be inserted into jewelry gems. The season will also have a battle pass, but you do not have to gamble anything. The rewards are mostly cosmetic so it’s not like you are playing casino games online where you get something practical out of it, rather you just get visual accessories to make your character look pretty.
Necromancer Bone Spear Playstyle
This Necromancer build relies on consistent damage if you have the essence to do it. You use your basic skill to create a corpse, then you use Corpse Tendrils to CC enemies and get bonuses from your aspects and then just destroy everything with your core skill Bone Spear. If you are running out of essence or need healing, you can use Iron Maiden curse and Bone Prison to regenerate some of that resource. If you are facing against larger groups of enemies use your ultimate. Thanks to your aspects and passives you should have your Bone Storm back in no time.
Skills and Paragon Boards
For your basic skill you want to either take Reap with Enhanced Reap and Acolyte’s Reap upgrades to create a free corpse, or Bone Splinters for more essence regeneration. In the latter option you also want to take Enhanced and Acolyte’s upgrades. Basic skill requires only one point so you can go down in the skill tree, and it is not your damage source so do not bother putting more points into it.
Next for the most important part and your main damage source you want to take Bone Spear as your core skill. Put all five points into that skill and pick up Enhanced Bone Spear and Paranormal Bone Spear upgrades. In this section you also want to pick up three passive abilities. Max out Unliving Energy, Imperfectly Balanced and Hewed Flesh.
Then we go towards the Bone Prison skill. Here you also want to put one point with two upgrades, Enhanced one and Dreadful Bone Prison. No passives here. Then you can take either one of the courses. If you want to slow enemies go for Decrepify and if you are lacking in sustain Iron Maiden with the Abhorrent upgrade is a great pickup as well. Max out Death’s Embrace passive and you can also optionally put one point into Amplify Damage.
One of the best crowd control abilities in the entire game must be Corpse Tendrils, so pick it up and max it out as well with full five points. Pick up Enhanced and Blighted upgrades to get the most out of that skill. There are also four passives worth picking up so max out Serration, Evulsion, Rapid Ossification and Compound Fracture.
Finally for your ultimate, you want to pick up Bone Storm with both of its upgrades and max Stand Alone and Memento Mori passives to get the most out of your sacrifice bonuses. Finally, pick up Ossified Essence as your capstone passive.
As for your minions, you want to sacrifice everything so choose Skeletal Warriors Defenders sacrifice, Cold Skeletal Mages sacrifice, and Iron Golem sacrifice. This will get you a lot of damage reduction as well as Critical Strike Damage and Vulnerable Damage which are two of the best damage multipliers in the game.
Bone Spear Necro Legendary Aspects
There are some variations here, but we will list our favorite combination of legendary aspects on every piece of gear. Stats on your gear really depend on your preferences. You should focus on survivability with Maximum Health on Pants and Rings, and Critical Strike Chance, Damage and Vulnerable Damage on your Weapon and Gloves. As for the necklace, the best passive for this build is to get 3 points into the Evulsion passive skill roll and prioritize Damage Reduction on all pieces of gear.
- Helm – Deathless Visage (Unique)
- Chest Armor – Aspect of the Protector (Barrier)
- Gloves – Aspect of Grasping Veins (Corpse Tendrils)
- Pants – Aspect of Disobedience (stacking Armor)
- Boots – Eluding Aspect (crowd control damage reduction)
- Weapon – Splintering Aspect (Bone Spear piercing)
- Amulet – Aspect of Serration (Ossified Essence)
- Ring 1 – Aspect of the Umbral (restore Resource)
- Ring 2 – Fastblood Aspect (reduce Ultimate Cooldown)
To finish off the build, get yourself some Topaz gems into the armor slots to reduce the incoming damage by 50% when you are under the effects of Crowd Control. For jewelry, you can put skulls in to get more armor for the very much-needed survivability for the end game and Nightmare Dungeon pushing. Hopefully you are all set for the upcoming Season of Malignance in Diablo IV.