The Necromancer is high in the meta in Season 6 of Diablo 4 and the Blood Lance build is a powerful minion-free setup that sees the class do major damage to enemies from a distance.
The Blood Lance Necro build involves the Necromancer using this gruesome move as their primary offensive weapon while utilizing other skills and gear that boost its power. This Necromancer build is ranked as A-tier in the current endgame meta, so it’s a great choice for those fond of the Priests of Rathma, especially anyone who wants to use a powerful Necro build, but without using summons.
Below, we’ll detail how to optimize the build, giving you the best skills, items, Aspects, and Glyphs to target on your journey. For the PvP players out there, we’ll also inform you if we think the Blood Lance Necro is effective this season.
Best Blood Lance Necromancer skills
To assemble the Blood Lance Necromancer build, allocate this many points on these active skills:
| Active Skill | Upgrades | Points allocated |
|---|---|---|
| Reap | – | 1 |
| Decompose | – | 1 |
| Blood Lance | Enhanced, Supernatural | 5 |
| Blood Mist | – | 1 |
| Decrepify | Enhanced, Abhorent | 5 |
| Corpse Explosion | – | 1 |
| Corpse Tendrils | Enhanced, Plagued | 1 |
| Bone Storm | Enhanced, Supreme | 1 |
Here’s which Passive Skills you should choose:
| Passive Skill | Points |
|---|---|
| Unliving Energy | 1 |
| Hewed Flesh | 3 |
| Grim Harvest | 1 |
| Fueled by Death | 3 |
| Imperfectly Balanced | 3 |
| Amplify Damage | 3 |
| Death’s Approach | 3 |
| Memento Mori | 3 |
| Serration | 3 |
| Coalesced Blood | 3 |
| Grusome Mending | 2 |
| Tides of Blood | 3 |
| Stand Alone | 3 |
| Rapid Ossification | 3 |
| Rathma’s Vigor | 1 |
When you start a new character, if you’re a returning player, you’ll likely have lots of skill points ready to assign from your Renown or by being boosted to level 60 from the start.
But if you’re a new player, you’ll need to start from scratch. The good news is you’ll be able to hit level 60 very quickly in the post-Season 6 version of Diablo 4.
Below, we’ve detailed how many skill points you’ll need to assign to each passive and active skill using your leveling and Renown points.
You may find yourself needing to select other skills to progress across the skill tree. That’s okay, just respec to the ones included in the build once you’re able. Who knows, you may create a custom build that suits your needs better.
Best Book of the Dead setup
In the Blood Lance Necromancer build, you have three types of minions to summon or sacrifice through the Book of the Dead. For this build, you sacrifice them all in this order:
- Skeletal Warriors – Sacrifice
- Skeletal Mages – Sacrifice
- Golems – Sacrifice
This sacrifice strategy ensures you maximize your damage output, making your Overpower hits and crits even deadlier.
Of course, it means you won’t be able to use your minions as allies, but you’ll be buffed from their death, making you a one-Necromancer army.
Best Blood Lance Necromancer skill rotation
Use the following skill rotation when approaching mobs and elites in battle:
- Decreptify
- Corpse Tendrils
- Blood Mist
- Bone Storm
- Blood Lance – Main Skill
- Corpse Explosion
This rotation involves having your minions ready, and then casting Decreptify and Corpse Tendrils to slow, poison, and damage enemies.
Then we cast Blood Mist and Bone Storm to injure and trap the mob/elites we’re targeting before pelting them with Blood Lance. This will be when the main meat of our damage is done and most of the mobs or the Elite will die at this stage.
However, we can now cast Corpse Explosion to do massive AOE damage to any survivors, who are probably already injured and unlikely to survive. If so, repeat the cycle or blow up more bodies!
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Best Legendary Aspects
Legendary Aspects can boost your build and add special powers to buff your primary skills. Here are the ones you need and where to find them:
| Aspect | Power | Dungeon | Region | Gamble Obols |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grasping Veins | Increased critical strike chance for Corpse Tendrils | Corrupted Grotto | Kehjistan | – |
| Blood Seekers | Boosts Blood Lance damage | Mercy’s Reach | Fractured Peaks | – |
| Sacrificial | Boosts Sacrifice minion buffs | Ruins of Eridu | Hawezar | – |
| Great Feast | Increased minion damage | – | – | Focus |
| Gore Quills | Blood Lance has a chance to spawn Blood Orbs | – | – | Focus |
| Shielding Storm | Bone Storm generates Barrier | – | – | Pants |
| Hardened Bones | You and your minions get damage reduction | – | – | Pants |
| Metamorphosis | Evade triggers Unstoppable for 2.5 seconds | – | – | Boots |
Remember, you can also strip these Aspects from their original item and apply them to an item of your choosing.
Best Mercenaries
Select Raheir as your Primary merc. His defensive buffs will help keep you alive should you get caught by a mob. He can also do decent damage to enemies and support you on the front line.
We’d recommend bringing Varyana as your support merc. As you don’t have minions, she will lend some much-needed melee support and will complement Raheir nicely. Together, they’ll defend you and do lots of damage to mobs or elites.
Best Paragon Glyphs
Once you reach level 60 you’ll stop earning skills points and start earning Paragon points instead. This leveling system works very differently and involves you selecting updates from various boards with different themes and buffs.
Every path is different, but the good news is that by targeting different Glyphs as you move around the Paragon Board, you’ll start buffing your Necro in the ways that matter most to the build.
See below to see which Glyphs you should target first.
Level 15
- Corporeal
- Exploit
- Dominate
- Essence
- Sacrificial
- Amplify
Level 21
- Essence
- Dominate
- Exploit
- Corporeal
- Amplify
- Sacrificial
Once you reach Paragon Level 15, work your way towards the above Glyphs. You’ll also unlock more across the Paragon Board as you earn more points, but selecting these particular Glyphs in this order will keep you on the best possible path for the Blood Lance build.
Best endgame weapons, armor & socket
Here’s the best gear you should hunt down for the Blood Lance Necromancer build, including the best socket to use:
| Item | Socket | Item type | Power |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shadow Sin | Ruby for extra life | Helm | – |
| Runic Mail of Disobedience | 2x Ruby for extra life | Chest Armor | Bone Storm has the chance to trigger Barrier |
| Shadow Guardian | – | Gloves | – |
| Heroic Rival | 2x Ruby for extra life | Pants | – |
| Corpse Revenge | – | Boots | Increased Skeleton Priest damage |
| Imp End | Ruby for overpower damage | Main Hand | – |
| Wraith Voup | 1x Ruby for overpower damage | Offhand | – |
| Blood Seeker’s Choker | Skull to boost armor | Amulet | Boosts Blood Lance damage |
| Ring of Potent Blood | Skull to boost armor | Ring 1 | Boosts Blood Orbs |
| Sacrificial Ring | Skull to boost armor | Ring 2 | Boosts Sacrifice damage |
It’ll take time to track down this exact set, but once you do this will make up your endgame gear. Of course, it’s up to you which gear you equip and you may want to mix it up, but this setup will give you a decided advantage.
Blood Lance build for PvP
The good news about using the Necromancer Blood Lance build for PvP is that it’s the exact build we’ve described above in our endgame section. The build is rated A-tier for PvP this season, so while it’s not at the very top, it’s still deadly and a great choice for taking down other players.
Now that you know how to craft this top-tier Necromancer build, make sure to check out our guides for the Druid, Sorcerer, Rogue, Barbarian, and Spirtiborn.
