Sever Shadowmancer – Necromancer Build for Diablo 4

Build Introduction

The Shadowmancer is designed entirely around using Sever and Blighted Corpse Explosion to consistently deal Shadow damage to enemies while ramping up big layers of defense and crowd control. This results in an effective, high-damage dealing and safe Necromancer build.

Necromancer can reach crazy damage output when fighting world bosses or harder boss encounters in general. The endgame Legendary Aspects will push the build further, scaling the damage even higher!

Thanks to making enemies Vulnerable and providing effective crowd control in the form of both Slowed and Stunned enemies, this build is effective in solo play as well as in party with your friends.

You are able to level with this build, however, we would strongly recommend checking out the Necromancer Leveling guide for the smoothest experience going through the campaign before switching to this build.

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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

Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul

The build functions very well without the ring but works significantly better with it!

Skill Bar and Skill Tree Points

Recommended

Suggested Skill Bar

SeverBlightSoulriftCorpse ExplosionCorpse TendrilsBlood Mist

Book of the Dead

The Shadowmancer is mainly focused on damage-over-time effects, this is best scaled by sacrificing all our minions.

• Melee Skeletons: Reaper – This gives us more Shadow damage.
• Mage Skeletons: Cold – Increases our Vulnerable damage output.
• Golem: Iron – Will be sacrificed to give us more Critical Strike Damage.

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 Hardened Bones	You and your Minions gain 10-25% increased Damage Reduction.
Chest	Grand Topaz	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 lasts 4 seconds outside the aura.
Gloves	N/A	Aspect of the Damned	You deal x35-50% increased Shadow damage to enemies afflicted by any Curse.
Pants	Lith + Yom	Aspect of Disobedience	You gain #% increased armor for 4 seconds when you deal any form of damage, stacking up to #%.
Boots	N/A	Aspect of Slaughter	You gain 20% Movement Speed. Lose this bonus for 2.5-5 seconds after taking damage.
Weapon 2H (Sword – 100% Scaling)	Tam + Ohm	Reaping Lotus’ Aspect	Sever no longer returns and instead splits into 3 specters that expand out and back from its apex. Sever deals #% of normal damage.
Amulet (50% Scaling)	Any Resistance Jewel	Aspect of Grasping Veins	Gain 15-38% increased Critical Strike Chance for 6 seconds when you cast Corpse Tendrils. You deal x30-75% bonus Critical Strike Damage to enemies damaged by Corpse Tendrils.
Ring	Any Resistance Jewel	Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul	You automatically active the following equipped Skills on Corpses around you: Raise Skeleton every 2-1 seconds Corpse Explosion every 2-1 seconds Corpse Tendrils every 16-8 seconds
Ring	Any Resistance Jewel	Aspect of Exposed Flesh	Lucky Hit: Up to a 10% chance to generate 35-55 Essence when hitting a Vulnerable enemy.

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
Runewords as seen below.	Grand Topaz For increased Intelligence.	Royal Amethyst Royal Sapphire Royal Ruby Royal Skull

The following Runewords are recommended 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 invoke the druid’s Petrify stunning enemies and increasing your Critical Strike Damage against them.
Tam + Ohm	Gain 25 Offering from casting a non-channeled core skill. For 600 Offering you invoke the Barbarian’s War Cry skill increasing your damage dealt for 6 seconds.

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. Essence per Second 3. Armor	Profane Innovation #% Decrepify Size Worldly Endurance # Maximum Life
Chest	1. Maximum Life 2. Armor 3. Damage Reduction	Worldly Endurance # Maximum Life Profane Innovation #% Corpse Tendrils Size
Gloves	1. Attack Speed 2. Ranks to Sever 3. Critical Strike Chance	Profane Finesse #% Damage to Cursed Enemies Profane Innovation #% Corpse Tendrils Size
Pants	1. Maximum Life 2. Intelligence 3. All resistance	Worldly Endurance # Maximum Life Worldly Fortune Lucky Hit: #% Chance to Stun for 2 seconds
Boots	1. Essence per Second 2. Movement Speed 3. Maximum Life	Necromancer Motion #% Movement Speed Natural Schemes #% Crowd Control Duration
Amulet	1. Ranks to Gloom 2. Attack Speed 3. Cooldown Reduction	Profane Finesse #% Damage to Cursed Enemies Necromancer Efficiency #% Ultimate Cooldown Reduction
Ring	1. Attack Speed 2. Critical Strike Damage 3. Intelligence	Profane Finesse #% Damage to Cursed Enemies Necromancer Efficiency #% Ultimate Cooldown Reduction
1h Weapon (Sword)	1. Intelligence 2. Attack Speed 3. Critical Strike Damage	Shadow Augments — Execution #% Chance for Sever Projectiles to Cast Twice Profane Finesse #% Damage to Cursed Enemies

Keep in mind that the maximum Resistance is 70% by default for each element and can be increased to 85% by various sources.

Rotation and Playstyle

This build at its core is played like a ranged build. Standing afar from your enemies delivering tons of damage via your shadow Sever. Essence wise you’ll generate this via lucky hits from Aspect of Exposed Flesh and your Soulrift which we maintain 100% uptime with thanks to gear and tempers.

Rotation wise we’ll be making sure we keep enemies cursed with application of Decrepify, while Soulrift is kept up for the damage increase it provides. After this we’ll want to use Corpse Tendrils as soon as there is a corpse available for increased damage output and crowd control, keeping enemies tethered in place. Once you’ve set up your buffs and debuffs, spam Sever for damage output which will trigger Blight, making enemies take more damage due to our aspect powers.

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 Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul is the only regular unique item we care about.

Mythic Uniques

Some Mythic Unique items can bring a lot of power but they come at the cost of an aspect power. Below you’ll find a list of potentially useable Mythic Uniques.

• Ring of Starless Skies – Replaces Aspect of Empowering Reaper. This means removing our points in Blight and putting them elsewhere.
• Harlequin Crest – Replaces Hardened Bones

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, obviously affected by the general itemization and paragon rework in the core game.

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 build stacks a ton of Shadow damage from a variety of sources, both from ourselves and minions. Sever itself serves the purpose of our main damage outside of that, but you’ll also be casting Blight on enemies to increase the damage they take.

Only mechanic of the build that’s out of the ordinary is the way we use our Melee Skeletons. They are Defenders with the upgrade chosen that makes them take 99% reduced damage. This allows them to tank literally everything in the game without the risk of dying!

Defenses

Consistent crowd control on the field in the form of slows by keeping enemies cursed with Decrepify multiple sources of stuns and an army of more or less immortal Melee Defender Skeletons makes the build extremely resilient. Should something get through and actually hit you despite all of that, you don’t need to worry; the build offers a ton of defensive layers via the gear and legendary aspect to mitigate incoming damage. However, we can’t always be perfect. If we end up in a dangerous situation, we always have trusty old Blood Mist to get us out of harms way and let our minions take over the tanking job!

Offenses

Big critical strike hits with Sever thanks to Reaping Lotus’ Aspect on top of a large quantity of damage over time effects to consistently melt your enemies.

Corpse Tendrils both stuns and pulls enemies in on top of providing you with extra critical strike chance and critical strike damage. Soulrift further pushes our performance by ramping our damage through absorbed souls and applying Vulnerable to enemies who have had their souls ripped 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

• 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 13th, 2024: Guide updated for Season 4 Loot Reborn.
• January 22nd, 2024: Guide updated for Season 3 Season of the Construct.
• 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.