Diablo 4 Necromancer Build Guide – Blight Summoner: In this Diablo 4 Beginner Necromancer Build Guide, I’ll show you how to play a Blight Summoner Necromancer, which is a DoT/Summoner Diablo 4 Build that focuses on attacking multiple enemies with Blight while your Skeletons swarm them down. If you’ve been looking for a Diablo 4 Beginner Necromancer Build that is aimed at World Tiers 1 & 2, and one where you summon deadly minions to do your bidding while stacking Damage Over Time effects, then this Diablo 4 Build Guide is for you!

• The Level 50 version of this build evolves into the Blightlord Build.

Also, be sure to check out our Diablo 4 Wiki and Interactive Map if you need help finding specific Altars of Lilith, Dungeons, or Side Quests!

Diablo 4 Blight Summoner Necromancer Build Guide

The general strategy for this Diablo IV Beginner Build is to start by deploying Blight into a pack of enemies. Doing so will deal massive damage over time (DoT) in a decent-sized AoE puddle. This major Skill will also Slow them down and further boost your and your Minions’ overall damage by 15%. Since Blight requires Essence, you’re going to want to drain this resource and then switch over to using Corpse Explosion. By this time, you’ll have enough Corpses on the ground to detonate them into more AoE DoT puddles. 

Going back to restoring Essence, you’ll be casting Decompose all throughout. It also amplifies your damage, making it another decent way to destroy multiple enemies on the floor as they’re getting demolished by Blight and Corpse Explosion. A great aspect that goes well with this Skill is the Flesh-Rending Aspect. When you spawn a Corpse with Decompose, you gain additional Essence, which will then factor into using Blight more frequently. 

For Elites and Bosses, you’ll bombard them with your powerful Skeleton Warriors, Skeleton Mages, and Golem. With passives that improve the damage and Life of Skeleton Warriors and the Golem’s inherent tankiness, you’re certain to destroy strong opponents in a matter of seconds. Of course, this works well on top of consistently casting Blight, Decompose, and Corpse Explosion.

Diablo 4 Blight Summoner Necromancer Build Guide – Skill Distribution

Each Diablo 4 Necromancer Build comprises the 6 Active Skills they have equipped and changing these Skills can drastically alter the way the Necromancer Class in Diablo IV plays. In this section, we’ll take a look at what Skills you should slot for the Blight Summoner Necromancer Diablo 4 Beginner Build. There are 25 points in total that you’ll get upon reaching Level 25. 1 point comes from earning enough Renown in Fractured Peaks. So your Skill distribution should look something like this:

LEVEL 25 NECROMANCER SKILLS
Skill	Points Spent
Decompose	1
Enhanced Decompose	1
Acolyte’s Decompose	1
Blight	5
Enhanced Blight	1
Supernatural Blight	1
Unliving Energy	1
Imperfectly Balanced	3
Corpse Explosion	5
Enhanced Corpse Explosion	1
Blighted Corpse Explosion	1
Skeletal Warrior Mastery	2
Army of the Dead	1
Prime Army of the Dead	1

The above list gives you the general order to invest in Skills, but keep in mind that you should prioritize picking up new Active Skills over investing in passives, so pick up passives later if you can get new Active Skills when you level up.

How to Handle Packs of Enemies

So there are really several different strategies to employ in this Diablo IV Build for the Blight Summoner Necromancer, and these change depending on whether or not you’re facing a large group of enemies or a Boss. Let’s start with a group of enemies first, and we’ll cover how to handle Bosses in the next section.

Decompose

When it comes to Basic Skills, the best one to choose for this D4 Necro Build is Decompose. By default, you restore 7 Essence every second while spawning a Corpse every 2.5 seconds. Not only can you trigger Blight more often, but you’ll also end up having a lot of Corpses to use Corpse Explosion more as well. 

For upgrades, you’ll want to go for Enhanced Decompose and Acolyte’s Decompose. Enhanced Decompose lets you gain additional Essence when an affected target dies whereas Acolyte’s Decompose improves you and your summons’ damage against them. You should activate this Skill when your Essence reserve is low and when you see enemies with low Health. Using Decompose on them will net you the extra 10 Essence.

Remember to complete the Nostrava Deepwood Dungeon in Fractured Peaks to acquire the Flesh-Rending Aspect in order to generate more of this resource when spawning a Corpse. An aspect that would work well with Decompose is the Rotting Aspect. This gives you a high chance to create another Corpse, allowing you to keep on using Corpse Explosion. However, the Rotting Aspect can only be extracted from Legendary Items but note that it’s not mandatory for this Diablo 4 Beginner Necromancer Build.

Blight

Blight is your go-to Core Skill for this Diablo 4 Build for the Necromancer. It allows you to hit for some direct damage but also drop a puddle of Shadow DoT in a large AoE. Doing so damages enemies standing in it. What’s more, is that since DoT effects in Diablo IV stack, you’ll be able to keep using multiple versions of Blight to really crank out some damage. As such, you’ll want to invest all 5 points into this as well as unlock two more upgrades.

Once you have the Enhanced Blight passive, you’ll be able to Slow down enemies, which helps to keep them inside the AoE but also allows for more damage since you can get bonuses like Damaged to Slowed Enemies quite easily on your gear. When you have the Supernatural Blight upgrade, you and your Minions also deal 15% more damage to those standing in Blight, making your succeeding attacks that much more potent.

Since you’ll want to maximize the power of Blight early on, you’ll immediately allocate 1 point to Unliving Energy to gain access to Imperfectly Balanced. Imperfectly Balanced is a great passive. Blight will consume more Essence but you’ll be able to deal +15% increased damage, making the tradeoff worth it. You can also offset this by investing in the right resource-generating Skills.

Corpse Explosion

Throughout the course of combat, you’ll inevitably spawn Corpses, necessitating the use of Corpse Explosion for best results. So you should invest 5 points into this Skill. However, unlike the other Corpse Explosion D4 Necromancer Builds, you’ll be taking the Blighted Corpse Explosion passive instead of Plagued Corpse Explosion. 

Rather than going for burst DPS against crowd-controlled enemies, you’ll convert Corpse Explosion’s damage type to Shadow DoT, similar to Blight. And since DoT effects stack, detonating many Corpses in a row will add up on enemies and Bosses, so make sure to use this often.

Raise Skeleton (Book of the Dead)

One of your Skill slots will of course be occupied by Raise Skeleton as you’ll want an army of the undead since it’s half of this Blight Summoner Diablo 4 Necromancer Build. For Skeletal Warriors, you’ll be using the 1st node of the Skirmisher in order to summon another Warrior. What’s more, is that investing 2 points into the Skeletal Warrior Mastery passive considerably boosts their Life and damage, making them much stronger. Be sure to maximize this when you earn more Skill points.

For the Skeletal Mages, you’ll be selecting the 1st node of the Cold version to gain extra Essence when they attack enemies. This helps with resource management, allowing you to cast Blight more often and stack up those DoTs. They also have a high tendency to Freeze enemies, letting you all jump in for the kill. 

Additionally, it’ll be good to chase after the Aspect of Reanimation, which you obtain by progressing in the Scosglen Campaign. This buffs the overall damage dealt by your Skeletons so they can destroy more enemies efficiently. Furthermore, remember to repetitively activate the Raise Skeleton Skill to heal your Minions while boosting their damage for a brief amount of time. This will come in very handy in tough fights.

Diablo 4 Beginner Necro Build for Boss Fights

During Boss fights with this Diablo 4 Blight Summoner Beginner Necromancer Build, you’ll pretty much employ the same strategy. You’ll be alternating between Blight and Corpse Explosion on top of triggering Decompose to replenish both Corpses and Essence. More importantly, though, your Golem and Army of the Dead Ultimate Skill will shine.

Golem

For the Golem, you’ll be selecting the 1st node of Bone, which allows him to drop a Corpse when he takes enough damage that reduces his Maximum Life by 20%. As such, you’ll get to trigger continuous Corpse Explosions to be able to stack more DoTs on Bosses with this D4 Necromancer Build.

Coupled with the Golem Skill, you’ll be sure to gain several Corpses from him during Boss encounters since he can act as your meat shield while taking in less damage. This is not only great for getting enemies or a Boss off of you, but also for keeping the Golem alive under these circumstances. Should he die though, he’ll respawn after 20 seconds, which shouldn’t be a big deal since you still have other Minions to aid you.

Army of the Dead

Army of the Dead is your Ultimate Skill, which you’ll mostly use against Bosses and Elites. It summons Skeletons for 7 seconds that explode over and over again in AoEs, thereby damaging everything around you. This has a very long cooldown though at 90 seconds but it provides decent burst damage. Only 1 Skill point is needed here. 

Next, you’ll want to unlock the Prime Army of the Dead upgrade so that after the Skeletons explode, there’s a chance to drop Corpses, which significantly helps in Boss fights where they’re less available.

Final Tips

For this Diablo 4 Necromancer Build – Blight Summoner, the other gear bonuses you’ll want to acquire as you level up include Intelligence for the added Skill Damage, Shadow Damage, Damage Over Time, Core Skill Damage, Damage to Crowd Controlled Enemies, +1 Rank to Blight, and +1 Rank to Corpse Explosion. All of these will boost your damage so try to get them if you can.

Beyond Level 25, I highly recommend maximizing the following passives – Grim Harvest, Necrotic Carapace, and Skeletal Mage Mastery. Grim Harvest provides excellent synergy between Blight and Corpse Explosion since every time you trigger Corpse Explosion, you generate 9 Essence. Meanwhile, Necrotic Carapace grants Fortify to both you and your Minions when either of your Skills spawns a Corpse to significantly improve survivability. And then there’s Skeletal Mage Mastery, which like Skeletal Warriors, makes the Mages more powerful in combat.

For the other passives, I highly suggest trying out Bonded in Essence and Death’s Defense. Bonded in Essence lets the Skeletal Priest heal your Skeletons while Death’s Defense reduces every Minion’s damage intake if it’s coming from a single source such as a Boss. As a result, they’ll be less likely to die in these tough encounters.

You’ll be swapping from one better gear to the next at a rapid pace to keep up with the types of enemies you face. It’s for this reason that you’ll want to save the Legendary Aspects you acquire from Legendary Items for the endgame. Once these are extracted from the Equipment and imprinted elsewhere, you won’t be able to reuse them in the future. So when it comes to these types of Legendary Aspects, the good ones to go for at higher levels are the Blood Getter’s Aspect, Viscous Aspect, and Aspect of the Void.

The Blood Getter’s and Viscous Aspects allow you to summon additional Skeleton Warriors and Skeleton Mages, respectively, to help pad out their numbers and defeat enemies quicker. Meanwhile, the Aspect of the Void lets Blight pull in enemies, making it easier to keep them in your AoE.

Lastly, you’ll probably want to complete the Lost Archives Dungeon in Fractured Peaks to gain the Aspect of the Protector. This is going to be very useful against Elites since it automatically conjures a Barrier for you once every 30 seconds.

---

Be sure to check out our Diablo 4 Wiki for any other questions you have about the game and the Builds page if you are looking for more Diablo IV Builds, as well as our Ultimate Beginner Guide and Best Class to Play Guide if you are looking for more Diablo 4 content!