Necromancer Leveling Guide for Diablo Immortal

The variety and breadth of quests and miscellaneous objectives makes the leveling in Diablo: Immortal a relatively straightforward and pain-free task. Still, you can employ different strategies during this process; most notably, hyper-focusing on efficiency by spamming Story Quests and Dungeons when you hit level requirement story gaps, or taking your time during leveling with additional Zone Events, Lairs and Tasks — a more casual, but far less taxing approach.

Skills unlock gradually as you level your character. Skills are your primary means to defeating enemies, and their interaction with skill-enhancing or skill-altering Legendary Items are what forms the synergies that define the success of your character. The power of Skills is enhanced by Charms, and the power of Legendary Items can be increased when they are Awakened. The game limits you to the use of five Skills — a Primary Attack and four Active Abilities that have some form of limitation to their use (charges, cooldowns). Primary Attacks are not limited in their use, and charge up an Ultimate bar as they are used. When it is fully charged, you are able to use the Ultimate version of that Primary Attack.

Level 1: Necromancers start out with Soulfire at level 1, and you will retain this Primary Attack for the duration of your leveling process; the level 34 unlock, Bone Spear, is mostly useful in PvP situations and will make little sense during questing. The other two starting skills are Grim Scythe and Command Skeletons. While Grim Scythe is limited in its endgame usefulness, it is a steady and reliable source of corpses during leveling, where synergies are still not locked in place and you can't rely entirely on kill speed for the purpose. Command Skeletons are an excellent provider of single-target damage that will accompany you all the way through the endgame, and you should get used to the targeting mechanics of the skill as early as possible.

• As part of the Battle Pass you can also claim Baleful Trinity while leveling, and it is highly recommended that you do so; this legendary off-hand will further improves the (already considerably powerful) Soulfire Primary Attack with an additional projectile, strengthening your damage output in the downtime periods of your cooldowns.

Level 3: Corpse Explosion comes into the build. This ability requires the corpses of slain enemies (or corpses generated through other means, such as abilities and legendary item powers) to function; as such, it falls off in non-trivial content. Thankfully, clearing (mostly) trivial content is what you do during leveling, and you can lean onto its powers hard for trash clearing. Right from the get-go, Corpse Explosion synergizes with Grim Scythe for an easy rotation of:

• Pull monsters — either naturally, by running close by, or drawing them in with Soulfire potshots — and building up density;
• Slashing through the crowd with one or both charges of Grim Scythe (depending on the size of the pull), generating at least 2-4 corpses (and potentially more, from enemies fallen from this attack);
• Detonating the generated corpses with Corpse Explosion, likely resulting in the spectacular, room-clearing decimation of the entire pack.

Level 8: Bone Spikes gets added to the build. While this is a charge-up ability, it is recommended that you release it without the build up — it slows you down too much, and you get the desired crowd control as a baseline effect. This ability does not fit well with the purposes of leveling, and will be replaced soon.

Level 15: At this level, you get to improve the mobility of your build by replacing Bone Spikes with Wraith Form. While it is not the best movement ability in the game, it is the solitary skill of this kind available to Necromancers — and the considerable distances you will need to cross during leveling make it a great addition to your skill lineup. Get used to its mechanics and use it in between fights; note that (contrary to its tooltip) you very much can attack while in Wraith form, and you will simply interrupt its effect. Refrain from using other abilities if you want to make use of Wraith Form's full duration.

Level 20: With the unlocking of your other staple summon, Skeletal Mage, you can safely ditch Wraith Form for another source of damage, as well as Massacre bonus maintenance. Carefully position these stationary summons across the battlefield so they can clean up remaining stragglers while you run to the next fight, keeping your kill streaks going.

Level 50: A point of experimentation comes at level 50, where you unlock Command Golem. While dealing reasonable damage of their own (which can be further enhanced by legendary items), Golems excel at crowd control and keeping monster attention away from you. The havoc a carefully placed Golem can wreak on the battlefield is without equal, so experimenting with him at least for a bit (over Skeletal Mage) is encouraged.

Early on, you should focus on trying out the skills that get added to your arsenal, and equipping better gear as it drops (the in-game cue comes from the flashing bag, indicating an upgrade piece). Your gear can be improved at the Blacksmith at a material cost — and while it starts out small, it quickly scales to a hefty amount. Make sure you pick up all items you come across (the auto-pickup option in Settings helps), and salvage them in town.

Upgrading your equipment is a central part of power acquisition in Diablo Immortal; never hesitate to upgrade a piece, regardless of its stats, since its upgrades will carry over to its eventual replacement for free. Upgrading all Primary gear pieces to level 6 before moving forward to level 7 on any of them is advised, since you gain an additional attribute at that level.

During leveling, you will occasionally hit experience walls (accompanied by the message "You must reach level X before continuing.") as you do the Main Story. To quickly get over the Experience hurdle, your most efficient route is to complete Battle Pass activities — namely, repeatedly grinding out Dungeons, with Bestiary turn-ins and Tasks mixed in. To mitigate the amount of time spent grinding, as well as to (likely) enjoy the game more, you can purposefully seek out Hidden Lairs and complete Tasks as they open up during the storyline completion. While this will slow down your questing, it will pay off later down the line as it diminishes some of the grind walls.

Pay extra heed to the Battle Pass tracker, as it unlocks consumable bonuses along the way, as well as a Legendary Item early on in the leveling process. Legendary items are potential gamechangers for every character, so you ensure you pick the one that will benefit you the most.

Legendary items are exceedingly rare gear pieces that provide unique bonuses — enhancing or altering an ability's powers altogether. When you come across one, especially for a slot where you still have Rare or lower tier items equipped, replace it immediately. Legendaries innately roll superior stats to lower tier items. Feel free to experiment with your newfound Legendary and the skill it enhances; once you no longer need it, extract its power at the Essence Transfer NPC in Westmarch. This allows you to overwrite subsequent Legendary items (likely with better stats) in the same slot with the extracted power, retaining the legendary bonus. Extract as many Legendary powers as you can, so you can easily adapt from one build to another whenever you need. Of course, feel free to salvage duplicate Legendary items that you have already extracted.

Some of the best Legendary items to stumble upon while leveling as a Necromancer are: Linger-Mantle, Rotspur, Guided by Maggots, Mournful Destroyer, Baleful Trinity, Pyre's Allure, Flickering Warmth, Desolatoria, Clotburst, Visitant's Sign, No-mouth Face. The best Legendary item to choose from the Battle Pass legendaries is Baleful Trinity, since it further improves your preferred leveling Primary Attack, Soulfire.

Similarly to all Diablo games, gems will make a huge difference to your character in Diablo Immortal — so make a point to hunt down Normal Gems in Hidden Lairs, and Legendary Gems in Elder Rifts (they get a chance to drop if you use a Crest consumable). Additionally, you should follow the quest line to unlock the Helliquary activity as soon as it becomes available at level 41. This is done in order to receive the Scoria currency while doing Bounties.

When you turn in Bestiary pages, you will receive a class-specific consumable. For Necromancers, this item is the Shining Skull, which summons a Soul Keeper to recharge an empty resurrection stone. This is a very underwhelming consumable; still, it can be occasionally useful, so don't hesitate to use it.

Improving your attributes in Diablo Immortal generally revolves around increasing the total amount of Combat Rating, or CR. Every primary attribute point (Strength, Fortitude, Vitality, Willpower, and Intelligence) grants you 1 point of CR.

The priority attribute for Necromancers is Intelligence, which gives +0.3 Damage per point; given otherwise identical options, use the one with higher Intelligence to increase your DPS. Second in the priority order is Fortitude, which adds to your Armor Penetration — indirectly increasing damage dealt by also improving your crit chance. This attribute suffers from diminishing returns due to crit caps, but is still quite valuable. Third in the priority order is Vitality, which simply increases your Life total; the longer you can stave off death, the better.

Stat priority order and stat benefits for Necromancers are as follows:

• 1. Intelligence — Grants +0.3 Damage to Necromancers, and +1 to your total CR.
• 2. Fortitude — Grants +0.1 Armor Penetration, which affects your crit chance. It also grants +0.1 Armor; Armor increases your Block chance, and blocking attacks mitigates 20% of the damage dealt. More mitigation is never amiss, and even more so when dealing with riskier content like the Helliquary. It also adds +1 to your total CR.
• 3. Vitality — Grants +3 Life; the more you can add to your total health pool, the better. With a reasonable investment in Vitality, an alrady durable class like the Necromancer can become unstoppable. This attribute also adds +1 to your total CR.
• 4. Willpower — Grants +0.1 Potency and 0.1 Resistance. Potency increases the duration of harmful effects that you inflict on your foes. Resistance lowers the duration of harmful effects inflicted by your enemies on you. This attribute also adds +1 to your total CR.
• 5. Strength — Grants +1 CR. This attribute does nothing else for Necromancers, and should be avoided as much as possible.

You should not put an emphasis on Special Attributes when considering between gear pieces. This is due to the overpowering importance of Primary Attributes and your CR total. That being said, the better Special Attributes are the two Crit Stats (Critical Hit Chance and Critical Hit Damage), Cooldown Reduction, Beneficiary Effect Duration, and Movement Speed. You can also consider Increased Damage to Players for PvP gear.

As per tradition for Diablo games, socketed gear allows you to insert beneficial gems according to your needs. In Diablo Immortal, gems are divided between Normal Gems (socketable in Secondary Gear) and Legendary Gems (socketable in Primary Gear).

Normal Gems can only be socketed in Secondary Gear. Normal gems are divided into Red, Blue and Yellow sockets, and their priority is listed below. Priority-wise, gems are decent power increases to your character, but should never come at the cost of Primary Attributes and your CR score. Go for Red and Blue gems over Yellow if possible, as they provide a stronger bonus overall.

• Red Sockets: Prioritize Tourmaline as it provides a straight Damage increase. Ruby is also decent for the Life increase, but only if you lack Tourmalines.
• Blue Sockets: Prioritize Sapphire, which increases your Armor Penetration, and your Critical Hit Chance stat as a result. Note that Crit Chance provided from Sapphires has diminishing returns, capping out at 33%; when benefits from ArPen get too insignificant, swap to Aquamarine. Aquamarine provides Armor, which is a decent source of damage mitigation.
• Yellow Sockets: Prioritize Citrine for the Potency gains, increasing the duration of harmful effects you inflict on enemies; however small its benefits, they trump the Resistance effects provided from Topaz.

Legendary Gems can only be socketed in Primary Gear. They provide unique and very powerful bonuses on top of a robust stack of stat increases. Legendary Gems are found in Elder Rifts enhanced by the Crest consumables, as well as through crafting at the Jeweler in Westmarch.

Early on in Necromancer character progression, you should use common, 1- and 2-Star Legendary Gems like:

• Fervent Fang — Can be obtained from the Battle Pass, saving you some Crests. Provides a stacking damage increase against a target with successive attacks; great for single target damage.
• Ca'arsen's Invigoration — Half of the Primary Attack-Ultimate combo, this gem increases the speed and damage of Primary Attacks, getting you back quickly to spamming the supremely powerful Hungering Soulfire.
• Zod Stone — The other half of the Primary Attack-Ultimate combo, this gem increases the duration and damage of Ultimate skills, allowing for unparalleled uptime of Hungering Soulfire.
• Everlasting Torment — For the mere cost of a critical hit, this gem inflicts a considerable DoT and an Attack Speed increase to boot. Even at a low quality, this gem starts off with incredible stats and fits nicely from the get-go.
• Chained Death — This is a great early game gem, especially during farming where you usually pull hordes of enemies to maximize your AoE skills. It amplifies your damage the more enemies you fight, encouraging chaining fights together.
• Berserker's Eye — This gem increases damage dealt at the cost of an increase in damage taken. For most of the farming PvE content, this is a reasonable trade-off that you can feasibly mitigate with the Necromancer's ample sources of mitigation.

In summation, efficient leveling is equated to a well-rounded build and knowing which tasks to prioritize at any given time — usually dictated by the storyline quests and the current state of your Battle Pass tracker.

The basic damage-dealing rotation during leveling will come from the interplay between Command Skeletons, which excel at single-target damage, and your corpse generation (natural and through Grim Scythe) and detonation (with Corpse Explosion). As you make your way to the next fight, make sure you have dropped your Skeletal Mages in strategic positions around the battlefield, so they can finish off any remaining stragglers and keep your Massacre bonus active.

Swap into improved gear on the fly as upgrades come left and right during leveling; the helpful green arrows that indicate increased stats are your best friends. Ensure that your worn pieces are always upgraded at the Blacksmith to the highest level you can afford at the time. Currency spent on upgrading is never wasted.

Don't neglect transferring the essence of Legendaries that you don't need anymore, and only salvage duplicate Legendaries, once you have that particular power extracted.

At level cap, take a good look at your available legendary items, give the Necromancer Overview guide a thorough read, and make a choice which of our endgame guides you will strive to complete first:

• Necromancer Command Skeleton Bounties Build
• Necromancer Skeletal Mage Dungeon Build
• Necromancer Command Golem Challenge Rift Build
• Necromancer Bone Armor Support Build for Raids
• Necromancer Bone Spear PvP Build