Shadow Blight – Necromancer Build for Diablo 4 (Season 9)

Build Introduction

This guide is a collaboration between GhazzyTV and community member Garm Z. The Shadow Blight build is a very relaxing, well-rounded, and high-performing build for any content, providing many layers of defenses as your enemies die to brutal critting shadow damage.

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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

Blood Moon Breeches

Quick Navigation

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Skill Bar and Skill Tree Points

Recommended

Suggested Skill Bar

Corpse TendrilsBone PrisonReapBlightCorpse ExplosionSoulrift

Follow the points allocated in the Skill Tree above for the complete 71-point build. The additional 12 skill points are completed using the Renown system.

Necromancer Class Mechanic – 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: If Resistances < 50% Defenders [Sacrifice] – Resistance to All Elements. If resistances are fine then Reapers [Sacrifice] – Increases our Shadow Damage.
• Mage Skeletons: Cold [Sacrifice] – Increased damage to Vulnerable.
• Golem: Iron [Sacrifice] – Increased Critical Strike Damage.

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Gear, Stats, Gems, and Runes

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! Other recommendations for Legendary Aspect farming would be to do the Seasonal mechanic and to some extent you can farm them in Helltides as well.

Gear Slot	Gems	Aspect / Unique	Legendary Aspect / Unique Power
Helm	Igni + Thul	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.
Chest	Royal Topaz	Aspect of Hardened Bones	You gain 10-30% increased damage reduction.
Gloves	N/A	Aspect of the Damned	You and your minions deal x35-55% increased Shadow damage to enemies afflicted by any Curse.
Pants	Royal Topaz	Blood Moon Breeches	You deal 20-50% increased Critical Strike Damage to enemies affected by your Curses.
Boots	N/A	Aspect of Metamorphosis	When you Evade you turn in to a cloud of bats, becoming Unstoppable for 2.5 seconds. Enemies along your path take X Physical damage and are inflicted with Vampiric Curse. Evade’s Cooldown is increased by x seconds.
Weapon 2H (Sword)	Ahu + Qax	Blighted Aspect	Consecutive hits with the Shadowblight Key Passive deal x#% increased damage for each hit, resetting after 6 seconds of the first.
Amulet	Idol From Below	Ebonpiercer	Blight also shoots 4 smaller projectiles that pierce enemies and deal X Shadow damage over 3 seconds.
Ring	Scornful Light	Aspect of Decay	Each time the Shadowblight Key Passive deals damage to enemies, it increases the next Shadowblight’s damage within 10 seconds by x#%, stacking up to 5 times.
Ring	Elemental Brand	Sacrificial Aspect	Your Sacrifice bonuses are increased by x35-55%.

Curious how this build compares to other endgame options? Take a look at our Endgame Build Tier List.

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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. The main priority for Greater Affixes are marked with a “*”, secondary would be anything providing Intelligence or Life. 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. Cooldown Reduction	Decay Innovation #% Soulrift Duration Worldly Endurance # Maximum Life
Chest	1. All Resist 2. Maximum Life * 3. Intelligence	Decay Innovation #% Soulrift Duration Worldly Endurance # Maximum Life
Gloves	1. Intelligence 2. Critical Strike Chance * 3. Attack Speed	Elemental Finesse – Night #% Shadow Damage Decay Innovation #% Soulrift Duration
Pants	Blood Moon Breeches * 1. Critical Strike Chance	n/a
Boots	1. Essence per Second 2. Movement Speed * 3. Armor	Necromancer Motion #% Movement Speed Profane Innovation #% Corpse Tendril Size
Amulet	Ebonpiercer * 1. + Ranks to Reaper’s Pursuit	n/a
Rings (2x)	1. Intelligence 2. Critical Strike Chance * 3. Attack Speed	Elemental Finesse – Night #% Shadow Damage Necromancer Efficiency #% Ultimate Cooldown Reduction
2H Weapon (Sword)	* 1. Intelligence 2. Maximum Life 3. Lucky Hit: Chance to restore primary resource	Elemental Finesse – Night #% Shadow Damage 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!

Make sure to reach the Armor Cap of 1,000. If you struggle to reach this cap you can replace Maximum Life modifiers and tempers to Armor ones instead to help achieve this cap.

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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

• Ebonpiercer (Required) – Bread and butter of the build as we make our Blight shoot additional smaller projectiles that pierce enemies dealing even more corruption damage.
• Blood Moon Breeches (Required) – Big damage multiplier and should not be easily overlooked.

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 – Simple helmet replacement. Greater Affix and Masterworking priority on this item will be the Lucky Hit modifier. You’ll have to move your Aspect of the Cursed Aura to either your chest unless you’re wearing the next Mythic Unique, then you’ll move it to the boots and replace Aspect of Metamorphosis instead!
• Shroud of False Death – Simple body armor replacement. Greater Affix and Masterworking priority on this item should be on the All Stats.
• Ring of Starless Skies – This can replace your Sacrificial Aspect ring! Greater Affix and Masterworking priority on this item is the Attack Speed.

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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
Recommended Runewords listed below	Recommended Runewords otherwise Royal Topaz For increased Intelligence.	Horadric Jewels as listed further below.

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

Runeword Combination	Effect
Ahu + Qax	Gain: 15 Offering. Lucky Hit: up to 100% chance against non-Healthy enemies. Requires: 400 Offering. (Overflow: Further Increased Damage). Cooldown: 1 second. Casting a Skill other than a Basic of Defensive spends all your Primary Resource to increase your damage up to 100% for 1 second.
Igni + Thul	Gain: 25 Offering. Store offering every 0.3 seconds. Cast a non-Basic Skill to gain the stored offering. Requires: 300 Offering. (Overflow: Increased Size). Cooldown: 1 second. Invoke the Sorcerer’s Mystical Frost Nova, inflicting Freeze and Vulnerable onto enemies.

Cir + Lum is a temporary Runeword that can help with Essence till you’re good without it. This Should be the main Runeword and once Essence is solved we replace it with whichever Runeword you get last as listed above.

Before you reach 100% Critical Strike chance you’ll replace your Thul rune for Gar.

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Paragon Board

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

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Horadric Spells and Jewels (Season 9)

In Season 9, we will have access to Horadric Jewels and Horadric Spells, granting some absolutely crazy abilities that we’ll utilize to enhance our build’s power. Below, you’ll find a list of the recommended powers we use for this build.

Horadric Spell

Type	Power	Description
Catalyst	Astral Pillar + Blight	Cooldown: 7 seconds. Lucky Hit Chance: 14%. Shape an Ethereal Column that Taunts for x seconds. Piercing waves flow from it and dceal x damage, until you create another one or move too far away.
Infusion	Nebulous Extract	Your Spell Catalyst now deals Shadow and or Corrupting damage. Enemies hit by it deal x% reduced damage for 7 seconds. While equipped, your Shadow Damage Bonus is equal to that of your highest Damage Type Bonus. At Rank 5 it will deactivate enemy monster summoner effects for 5 seconds.
Arcana	Bloody Charm	Your Catalyst gains a specialized Execute effect for non-Boss enemies with 20% or less Life. Bloody Charm will also execute non-boss enemies with Cosmic Anomaly implosions. Successful executions increase your Attack Speed by 20% for 8 seconds.
Arcana	Tranquil Stone	Invoking your Catalyst grants Unstoppable for 5 seconds whenever it activates.
Arcana	Fractured Core	Your Catalyst deactivates monster Damage Resistance Aura effects for 5 seconds, but you take 15% more stacking damage for the same time.

Horadric Jewels

Use these Jewels over regular gems in your jewelry slots to further enhance the build:

• Idol From Below
• Scornful Light
• Elemental Brand

Mercenaries

During the Vessel of Hatred campaign, you will unlock Mercenaries to assist you. While you can choose freely early on, we recommend Raheir as your main merc, and Varyana as a Reinforcement once you reach endgame.

• Ground Slam
• Raheir’s Aegis
• Bastion
• Inspiration

For the reinforcement, stick with Varyana, utilizing her Bloodthirst skill being cast when the player casts Blight.

• Bloodthirst

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Build Mechanics

Rotation and Playstyle

It’s all about spam! You want to utilize Corpse Tendrils to control enemies, followed by Bone Prison followed up withBlight for damage output. We further emphasize on our Shadow damage by using Corpse Explosion, this is used to maintain buffs from our Paragon Board and Skill-tree bonuses from consuming corpses.

Enemies will be cursed by Decrepify if you’re close enough to them which is very important, 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!

Which Elixirs Should You Use?

Visit the Alchemist and craft an Elixir providing better resources via Elixir of Resourcefulness II or if that is fine you can go for the Elixir of Advantage II for increased Attack Speed. Should you need armor you could always run Elixir of Iron Barbs II. Some Elixirs cannot be crafted and only drop from things like Helltides or Nightmare Dungeons. Additionally, make sure to keep your health potion upgraded!

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Season 9 Updates

For a full overview of what is new in Season 9, please take a look at our comprehensive season hub. Additionally, Season 9 isn’t changing anything notably for the build outside of providing the new Horadric powers.

• Generic buffs across the board, but nothing that really stands out other than the buffs making the build perform exceptionally well!

Obol Gambling

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

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Changelog

• June 29th, 2025: Guide updated for Season 9.
• May 5th, 2025: Optimized and updated post launch for Season 8.
• April 26th, 2025: Guide updated for Season 8.
• January 19th, 2025: Guide updated for Season 7.
• 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.