Bone Mage Spear Summoner Necromancer Endgame Build Guide for Diablo 4 (Season 4)

Build Introduction

This build features the niche approach of using our Bone Mages cast Bone Spear to deal damage, but we’ll also be casting spears ourselves of course. Combined with the full force of the Deathless Visage the spears spawn bone echoes that explode for high damage bursts. The mages will cast the spears every 6th attack, making the unique ring Ring of Mendeln a logical addition to the builds toolkit!

Outside of this unique play style the build is very much like other summoner versions such as the Mendeln summoner build, Shadow Minion, or even Golem summoner, and can also be compared to the original self-casting Bone Spear builds, those variations can be found in the links below:

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

Deathless Visage

Ring of Mendeln

Since the build is entirely designed around Bone Spear coupled with Deathless Visage, you’ll want that Unique helmet before you follow this guide to achieve its full efficiency. It can later be replaced with Harlequin Crest if you wish. Since the bone mages will cast the spears every 6th attack we couple this with Ring of Mendeln to also trigger every 6th attack!

Skill Tree Points and Skill Bar

Recommended

Suggested Skill Bar

Summoning Skill Summoning Skill Bone Spear Decrepify Corpse Tendrils Army of the Dead

Follow the points allocated in the Skill Tree above for the complete 58-point build. The additional 10 skill points are completed using the Renown system.

Book of the Dead

This build is all about having our minions attack fast to trigger the unique ring, this means a heavy focus of critical strike damage and attack speed.

• Melee Skeletons: Reapers – We’ll make sure these guys create corpses on hit for us to consistently use our summoning skill to heal our minions and/or to use Corpse Tendrils.
• Mage Skeletons: Bone Mages – The bread and butter of the build; the first option makes the mages cast either Bone Spear or Bone Splinters if they are on the action bar. We will only have the Spear on the bar making them cast it every 6th attack!
• Golem: Bone Golem – We can generate 5 corpses on demand with the first option.

Paragon Board

The Paragon progression system unlocks at Level 50 and provides a vast amount of character power. On the Paragon Board, bonuses range from minor stats on Magic Nodes to more powerful Rare Glyphs and Legendary Nodes.

As you path towards Glyph Sockets and Legendary Nodes, you should prioritize Damage, Intelligence, Resistance, and Life for Normal and Magic Nodes. Glyph radius increases as you level them up. Therefore, if you cannot fulfill Additional Bonus requirements early on, skip allocating extra nodes for now. It’s also important to point out that you might not have the Glyph you want when you reach your first socket; if that is the case, simply slot in any Glyph providing any beneficial stats for you until you get the correct one.

Listed below are images of the pathing you should take along with the locations of the Glyphs and order you should choose your Paragon Boards past the initial Starting Board. Note that each Rare Glyph’s information and radius listed below is for the Level 21 version.

1. Starting Board

All boards will either be rushing the socket node for a Glyph or the Legendary node. Outside of that you only need to keep in mind that you should always pick up any surrounding attributes required according to the image above to fulfill the additional bonus modifier of the Glyph. For the Glyph radius to increase it needs to level up to 15 first.

For the starter board you can skip the Magic and Rare providing life and resistance on the left side till you reach World Tier 4 and start by rushing the socket node for Amplify then follow the image above and head out up north.

2. Bone Graft

Bone Graft needs to be rotated twice to fit the image above. In here we’ll start by rushing the Legendary node Bone Graft then head to the socket node for Essence. Once this is done we’ll pick up any remaining Magic and Rare before exiting to the left.

3. Cult Leader

Cult Leader does not need to be rotated. We start with a socket rush approach to get the Deadraiser this will help our minions survive. Before leaving the board up north we’ll head down for the Cult Leader node first.

4. Flesh-Eater

Flesh-Eater needs to be rotated once to fit the image above. Rush the socket node for the Corporeal followed by the Legendary node Flesh-eater. Once done you’ll want the remaining Magic and Rare before you exit to the right!

5. Bloodbath

Bloodbath requires 1 spin to fit the image above. This board has 1 purpose and that is the socket node for the Exploit, then you head out north.

6. Scent of Death

One spin for Scent of Death will be needed. In here we’ll yet again rush the socket node for a Glyph which is Control followed by the Legendary node Scent of Death. After this you’ll pick up the remaining Magic and Rare and any extra attribute nodes for our previous boards Glyphs to finish the builds paragon progression!

Paragon board images courtesy of d4builds.gg.

Gear, Gems, Elixirs, and Stats

The Season of Loot Reborn brings us an incredible shift in how gear and itemization are done. It is a major and will affect the game beyond Season 4’s confines. For further details, make sure to read our Tempering and Masterworking section below.

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	Royal Ruby	Deathless Visage	Bone Spear leaves behind echoes as it travels that explode dealing X damage, increased by x5% for every 30% of your Critical Strike Damage Bonus.
Chest	Royal Ruby	Blood Getter’s Aspect	Your Skeletal Priests also empower you at 55-70% effectiveness.
Gloves	N/A	Aspect of Splintering Energy	Bone Spear’s primary attack makes enemies hit beyond the first Vulnerable for 3 seconds. Bone Shards from Bone Spear deal 30-60% bonus damage to Vulnerable enemies and pierce them.
Pants	Royal Ruby	Aspect of Hardened Bones	You and your Minions gain 15-20% increased Damage Reduction.
Boots	N/A	Aspect of Occult Dominion	Your maximum number of Skeletal Warriors and Skeletal Mages is increased by 2.
Weapon 1H (Sword)	Royal Emerald	Aspect of Serration	The Ossified Essence Key Passive also increases the Critical Strike Damage of your Bone Skills by x1% per Essence above 50, up to x25-40%.
Off-hand (Focus)	Royal Emerald	Aspect of Reanimation	Your Minions gain increased damage while alive, up to x25-40% after 10 seconds.
Amulet (50% Scaling)	Any Resistance Jewel	Aspect of Frenzied Dead	Each time one of your Summoning Minions damages an enemy, they gain 10-14% Attack Speed for 3 seconds, up to 30-42%.
Ring	Any Resistance Jewel	Ring of Mendeln	Every 6th attack from each Minion is empowered, exploding for X Physical damage.
Ring	Any Resistance Jewel	Unyielding Commander’s Aspect	While Army of the Dead is active, your Minions gain 70-100% increased damage and take 90% reduced damage.

Do keep in mind that you’ll need to reach 9230 armor, which is the cap to mitigate physical damage taken. If your gear isn’t reaching this, you can replace the Blood Getter’s Aspect with the Juggernaut’s Aspect until it does.

Gems

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
Royal Emerald For Crit Damage.	Royal Ruby For increased Maximum Life.	Royal Amethyst Royal Sapphire Royal Ruby Royal Skull

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. To masterwork, you will need rare materials that only drop from The Pit. Be sure to check our Tempering guide, our Masterworking guide, as well as our guide about The Pit for more details about these topics.

Slot	Targeted Gear Affixes	Tempering Affixes
Chest	1. Armor 2. Maximum Life 3. Intelligence	Worldly Endurance #% Total Armor Profane Innovation #% Corpse Tendril Size
Gloves	1. Ranks to Bone Spear 2. Critical Strike Chance 3. Attack Speed	Bone Finesse #% Bone Critical Strike Damage Profane Innovation #% Corpse Tendril Size
Pants	1. Ranks to Skeletal Mage Mastery 2. Intelligence 3. Maximum Life	Worldly Endurance #% Total Armor Profane Innovation #% Corpse Tendril Size
Boots	1. Essence per Second 2. Movement Speed 3. Intelligence	Natural Motion #% Movement Speed Natural Schemes #% Crowd Control Duration
Amulet	1. Ranks to Evulsion 2. Maximum Essence 3. Ranks to Compound Fracture	Bone Finesse #% Bone Critical Strike Damage Worldly Stability #% Resource Cost Reduction
Ring	1. Lucky Hit: Chance to Make Enemies Vulnerable on Hit 2. Resource Cost Reduction 3. Critical Strike Chance	Bone Finesse #% Bone Critical Strike Damage Worldly Stability #% Resource Cost Reduction
1H-Weapon (Sword)	1. Critical Strike Damage 2. Intelligence 3. Maximum Life	Bone Finesse #% Bone Critical Strike Damage Bone Augments #% Chance for Bone Spear Projectiles to Cast Twice
Off-hand (Focus)	1. Maximum Resource 2. Resource Cost Reduction 3. Intelligence	Bone Finesse #% Bone Critical Strike Damage Bone Augments #% Chance for Bone Spear Projectiles to Cast Twice

Rotation and Playstyle

The play style is very straight-forward, make sure you always keep the Skeletal Priest buff active by using your Raise Skeleton skill on a corpse when you have the maximum amount of corpses. This will heal the minions to keep the Bone mages alive as they are consistently damaging themselves when attacking. Outside of this, you’ll want the enemies to always be cursed by Decrepify.

Follow this up with sending your golem into the enemy pack using the golem ability, this will generate corpses allowing for Corpse Tendrils to group up enemies to then unleash brutal damage by spamming Bone Spear!

Uniques and Uber Uniques

Below you will find information on Uniques and Uber Uniques that are useful for this build. Moreover, if you are interested in target farming Uber Uniques, check out our How to Farm Uber Uniques guide.

Uniques

Listed below are the recommended and optional Unique Items for this build. This build thrives of the legendary aspect powers so we would prefer not to involve any uniques to have the build function the best. This doesn’t mean you can’t play around with some changes and test it out yourself though!

• Deathless Visage – All our damage is about Bone Spear, this unique will skyrocket the efficiency of that approach.
• Ring of Mendeln – Our bone mages will cast the spears every 6th attack, Mendeln will further make every 6th attack explode for even more bursts of damage.

Uber Uniques

The only uber unique this build can utilize in a highly effective manner is the classic Harlequin Crest. While providing a bit better layer of defense compared to Deathless Visage, you will also have a significant increase in single-target damage output. Sadly, it’s not all rainbows and unicorns; you will have a slight loss of clear speed damage when using it over the Visage.

Season 4: Loot Reborn

The following list details the changes in the Season 4 Update (Patch 1.4.0) that may pertain to the Summoner Necromancer build. Check the Changelog for all the other guide updates. As you can see only 1 change affected the build directly and its a good one!

• Minions now inherit 100% of the players stats.

Video Guide

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

The generic mechanics is all about corpse generation from Hewed Flesh and our melee skeletons as well as on-demand corpses via the Golem. Besides that we are looking at utilizing the Bone Mage mechanic that allows them to cast Bone Spear every 6th attack which we combine with Ring of Mendeln to trigger even bigger bursts of damage every 6th attack. An army of minions defending us on top of consistent crowd control via Corpse Tendrils thanks to the corpses generated is how the build works!

Defenses

The golem will not just generate corpses it will straight up taunt enemies making them attack you, this will cause bosses to stagger faster as well. The army of minions defending us is one layer of our defense whilst the other is a consistent application of crowd control via Corpse Tendrils to both stun enemies as well as grouping them up together.

Offenses

Bone Spear is the name of the game for our offensive scaling powers. Our bone mages and you as the player will be casting them at a consistent basis coupled with Deathless Visage and Ring of Mendeln to deliver high bursts of damage output.

Paragon

The recommended Paragon boards for this build are listed above, and further down below, you can find a more thorough route for allocating the Paragon points, as well as some notes on why specific nodes were chosen and why they are essential for this build.

Glyphs & Legendary Nodes	Effect
Amplify	– Grants +150% bonus to all Magic Nodes within range. – Additional Bonus is unlocked with 40 intelligence in radius making enemies affected by your Curses take an additional x10% increased damage from you and your minions.
Essence	– For every 5 Dexterity purchased within range, you deal 20% Increased Critical Strike Damage. – Additional Bonus is unlocked with 25 Dexterity in radius, making your Critical Strikes deal x22% increased damage to enemies that are not Healthy.
Deadraiser	– Paragon nodes within range gain +100% bonus to their Minion damage and damage reduction modifiers. – Additional Bonus is unlocked with 40 Intelligence in radius, Whenever your Minions deal damage to an enemy, that enemy takes 1% increased damage from you and your Minions, up to 15% for 10 seconds.
Corporeal	– Grants +150% bonus to all magic nodes within range. – Additional Bonus is unlocked with 40 Intelligence in radius, making you and your Minions deal x10% increased Physical damage and you gain 1% Movement Speed for each active Minion.
Exploit	– For every 5 Dexterity purchased within range, you deal +8% increased damage to Vulnerable targets. – Additional Bonus is unlocked with 25 Dexterity in radius, you deal x1% for 6 seconds up to 10% increased damage against Vulnerable targets.
Control	– For every 5 Intelligence purchased within range, you deal +10% increased damage to Crowd Controlled targets. – Additional Bonus is unlocked with 40 Intelligence in radius, You and your minions deal x20% increased damage to Crowd Controlled targets.
Bone Graft	Hitting enemies with Bone Skills increases your damage by x1% and your Maximum Essence by 2 for 8 seconds, stacks up to x8% increased damage and 16 Maximum Essence.
Cult Leader	Your Minions deal x30% increased damage for each x20% of Attack Speed Bonus they have, up to a maximum of 100% Attack Speed Bonus.
Flesh-eater	Consuming 5 Corpses grants x40% increased damage for 6 seconds.
Scent of Death	With at least 2 Corpses Nearby, you gain 15% Damage Reduction. With no Corpses Nearby, you deal x15% increased damage.

Starting Board

1. Socket rushing will be the name of the game on most boards, we’ll begin that process on the starting board to get Amplify.
2. Ignore the Life and Resistance nodes on the left side till you reach World Tier 4.

Bone Graft

1. Start with Bone Graft.
2. Before leaving the board you want to rush the socket for Essence.
3. Do pick up any Magic and Rare nodes before leaving this board.

Cult Leader

1. Socket rush to grab Deadraiser.
2. Make sure to get the legendary node Cult Leader before you leave the board.

Flesh-Eater

1. Socket rush for the Corporeal.
2. Grab the Magic and Rare on the way to the Legendary node Flesh-eater.

Bloodbath

1. Socket rush for Exploit, it’s the only purpose of this board.

Scent of Death

1. Socket rush for Control.
2. Pick up the Legendary node Scent of Death
3. Pick up any remaining Magic and Rare from here on out.

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

• May 27th, 2024: Guide published