Blight Shadowmancer – Necromancer Build for Diablo 4

Build Introduction

The Blight Shadowmancer Necromancer build is a very relaxing build, providing many layers of control over your enemies and the comfortability of safety behind your darkness skills as your enemies die to damage over time effects.

This build is similar to the Sever Shadowmancer build, which is an excellent choice to use before you have the required gear and/or Unique items to transition to this end-game variant. Or if you’d like, you can try out the Infinimist Build Guide here.

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Build Variants

A build variant is a modified version of an existing build that changes some aspects of it, such as the damage type, specific skills or passives, and even certain items like different Uniques or Legendary Aspects.

Below, you will find any variant that relates to the Blight Shadowmancer Necromancer.

Strengths and Weaknesses

To see how this build compares to the other builds on our site, you can check out our build tier lists.

Build Requirements

Required Uniques

Ebonpiercer

The build features four Unique items, all of which are very common drops. The build will function without them, but will perform considerably worse until you get them.

Skill Bar and Skill Tree Points

Recommended

Suggested Skill Bar

DecrepifyCorpse ExplosionCorpse TendrilsBlood MistSoulriftBlight

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: Reapers – By sacrificing these you get tons of extra Shadow damage.
• Mage Skeletons: Cold Mages – These provide increased damage to Vulnerable enemies.
• Golem: Bone – Provides increased Attack Speed.

Mercenary

Mercenaries provide a nice extra layer of power to your character and mostly comes down to preferential decision. Below you’ll see the set-up I personally would run for this build which is having Subo as the Mercenary and for reinforcement I’d use Varyana!

Subo Skill Tree choices:

• Wire Trap
• Ready At Hand
• Trip Mines
• Mastermind

Varyana Reinforcement choices:

• Opportunity Skill: Skill Cast – Whenever the player casts any skill in combat.
• Reinforcement Skill: Bloodthirst

Paragon Board

Below you’ll find the entire end-game paragon board set-up for this build in detail!

Gear, Gems, Elixirs, and Stats

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!

Gear Slot	Gems	Aspect / Unique	Legendary Aspect / Unique Power
Helm	Grand Topaz	Aspect of Disobedience	You gain 0.4-0.8% increased Armor for 4 seconds when you deal any form of damage, stacking up to 25-40%.
Chest	Grand Topaz	Aspect of Hardened Bones	You and your Minions gain 10-30% increased damage reduction.
Gloves	N/A	Aspect of the Great Feast	If you have no active Minions, you gain 30-45% increased damage and lose 7 Essence per second.
Pants	Cem + Lum	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 the Void	Blight’s defiled area, when spawned, pulls in enemies around the affected area.
Weapon 2H (Axe)	Lith + Yom	Aspect of the Damned	You and your minions deal x35-55% increased Shadow damage to enemies afflicted by any Curse.
Amulet	Any Resistance Jewel	Ebonpiercer	Blight also shoots 4 smaller projectiles that pierce enemies and deal X Shadow damage over 3 seconds.
Ring	Any Resistance Jewel	Sacrificial Aspect	Your Sacrifice bonuses are increased by x35-55%.
Ring	Any Resistance Jewel	Aspect of the Long Shadow	Lucky Hit: Your Shadow Damage Over Time effects have a 15-35% chance to generate 3 Essence.

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
Lith + Yom	Grand Topaz For increased Intelligence.	Royal Amethyst Royal Sapphire Royal Ruby Royal Skull

The following Runewords are recommend to be used for this build.

Runeword Combination	Effect
Lith + Yom	Gain 25 Offering when standing still for 0.3 seconds. For 500 Offering you evoke the Druid’s Petrify stunning enemies and increasing your Critical Strike Damage against them.
Cem + Lum	Gain 75 Offering when you Evade. For 5 Offering with a 1 second cooldown you restore 1 Essence.

Which Elixirs Should You Use?

Visit the Alchemist and craft an Elixir providing any Resistance you need most, or the Elixir of Advantage to increase Attack Speed. Some Elixirs cannot be crafted and only drop from things like Helltides or Nightmare Dungeons. Additionally, make sure to keep your health potion upgraded!

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. 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. Armor	Decay Innovation #% Soulrift Duration Worldly Endurance #% Total Armor
Chest	1. Resistance to All Elements 2. Maximum Life 3. Intelligence	Worldly Endurance #% Total Armor Decay Innovation #% Soulrift Duration
Gloves	1. Ranks to Blight 2. Intelligence 3. Attack Speed	Profane Finesse #% Damage to Cursed Enemies Decay Innovation #% Soulrift Duration
Pants	1. Intelligence 2. Maximum Life 3. Armor	Worldly Endurance #% Total Armor Profane Innovation #% Corpse Tendrils Size
Boots	1. Maximum Life 2. Movement Speed 3. Intelligence	Necromancer Motion #% Movement Speed Profane Innovation #% Corpse Tendrils Size
Ring #1	1. Attack Speed 2. Lucky Hit: Chance to make enemies vulnerable 3. Intelligence	Worldly Stability #% Resource Generation Profane Finesse #% Damageto Cursed Enemies
Ring #2	1. Attack Speed 2. Maximum Life 3. Intelligence	Worldly Stability #% Resource Generation Profane Finesse #% Damage to Cursed Enemies
2H Weapon (Axe)	1. Lucky Hit: Chance to Restore Essence 2. Maximum Life 3. Intelligence	Profane Finesse #% Damage to Cursed Enemies Shadow 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!

Rotation and Playstyle

It’s all about spam! You want to utilize Corpse Tendrils to control enemies, which is also done via Blight in combination with the legendary aspect Aspect of the Void, pulling enemies in and stunning them. Blood Mist is our panic button should all else fail.

With enemies being cursed by Decrepify, 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!

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

The build is designed around the Ebonpiercer but below you’ll find some optional Mythic Unique items worth looking at!

Mythic 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
• Tyrael’s Might
• Ring of Starless Skies

Season 6: Vessel of Hatred

The following list details the changes in the Season 6 Update that may pertain to the Summoner Necromancer build. Check the Changelog for all the other guide updates.

• No direct changes worth mentioning outside of the Paragon rework and general itemization changes.

Advanced Information

Below, you will find every additional piece of information you need to know for a more in-depth look at this build.

Build Mechanics

By creating tons of Shadow damage over time effects on the battle-field we have a long list of effects taking advantage of just that both in terms of resource management, damage output and defensive scaling.

Most of our damage output will in the end come from the Ebonpiercer.

Defenses

The build provides a crazy amount of control over the enemies with stuns and slows being reliably on the field at all times. Soulrift provides a barrier to further enhance our defensive state and, should you find yourself in a dangerous spot, Blood Mist will save the day!

Offenses

A multitude of Shadow damage over time effects perfectly works in harmony with the build requiring unique item as they will trigger for big bursts of damage output.

Obol Gambling

Obol gambling is a great way to potentially find item upgrades or items missing from your build. Check out the new tool from Icy Veins for gambling Obols in the link below.

Changelog

• October 12th, 2024: New Paragon tool added.
• October 7th, 2024: Paragon board added.
• October 2nd, 2024: Guide updated for Season 6.
• August 5th, 2024: Guide updated for Season 5, Infernal Hordes.
• May 31st, 2024: Fixed a minor Paragon Board route miss.
• May 16th, 2024: Gem updates.
• May 13th, 2024: Guide updated for Season 4 Loot Reborn.
• January 22nd, 2024: Guide updated for Season 3 Season of the Construct.
• October 21st, 2023: Updated Paragon Boards.
• October 15th, 2023: Guide updated for Season 2 Season of Blood, Patch 1.2.
• August 7th, 2023: Guide updated for Patch 1.1.1.
• July 19th, 2023: Guide updated for Season 1 including Malignant Hearts.