The Necromancer remains a powerful class in Diablo 4, and if you want to start as one in Season 8, then you'll want a build that can clear quickly and take advantage of the boss powers that the season has to offer. This sounds simple enough, but with the many options available to Necromancers, making a build that can do both can be tricky.

The following is a leveling build meant to take new Necromancers all the way to the endgame in Diablo 4. It uses a mixture of both Blood and Minion skills, and it doesn't require much in terms of items or Legendary Aspects, making it very accessible for fresh starters.

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Diablo 4 Season 8: Blood Surge Necromancer Leveling Build

Diablo 4 Season 8 Blood Surge Necromancer

This build mainly uses Blood Surge and skeletal minions as its main sources of damage. This combo is very good for leveling as it answers both your AoE and single-target needs. However, Blood Surge requires a lot of Essence, which is why we'll be using the following skills:

Active Skills

Skill

Notes

Enhanced Hemorrhage

Basic Essence Generator that's good for all situations. Use sparingly.

Paranormal Blood Surge

Your bread-and-butter damage skill. The Paranormal upgrade gives it guaranteed Overpower procs after every 5 hits.

Raise Skeleton

Skeletons will compensate for Blood Surge's low single-target DPS. Use Skirmishers with the additional Skeleton upgrade and Ice Mages with the Essence Generation upgrade.

Ghastly Bone Prison

Cast Bone Prison on elites and bosses to make them Vulnerable. The Ghastly upgrade turns it into a decent Essence Generator for crucial moments.

Horrid Iron Maiden

Makes enemies take damage over time and when they attack you or your minions. The Horrid upgrade lets Iron Maiden restore Essence when it curses targets.

Supreme Soulrift

Excellent AoE damage effect that grants a steady stream of Essence while making enemies Vulnerable. Grants near-infinite uses of Blood Surge while active.

The build is very easy to use: just walk up to enemies, spam Blood Surge, and use your Essence-generating skills so you can spam Blood Surge some more. Use Soulrift when fighting a big pack of elites or a boss, then just keep using Blood Surge until you're out of Essence.

Level up Blood Surge to 5 as soon as possible. You can also level up Soulrift if you want it to deal more damage, though the extra points may be better spent on passives.

Passives

Your most important passives are the following:

  • Unliving Energy (3)
  • Skeletal Warrior Mastery (3)
  • Skeletal Mage Mastery (3)
  • Amplify Damage (3)
  • Death's Embrace (3)
  • Coalesced Blood (3)
  • Tides of Blood (3)
  • Drain Vitality (3)
  • Transfusion (3)
  • Rathma's Vigor

All of these combined result in a general damage boost that works with every part of your kit. The only things you need to pay attention to here are the Blood skill passives.

Coalesced Blood, Tides of Blood, Transfusion, Drain Vitality, and Rathma's Vigor all work together to give you a massive damage bonus. All you need to do to make sure they work is to stay Healthy and Fortified, and make sure to pick up Blood orbs produced by Hemorrhage and Blood Surge (via the Transfusion passive).

Use any remaining skill points on passives you deem fit.

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Boss Powers

Diablo 4 Season 8 Boss Power Ashava

Season 8's main mechanic is the ability to use Boss Powers. When you defeat world bosses, ladder bosses, or bosses from the seasonal event, you'll unlock their powers. Main Powers grant you specific effects attributed to that boss, while Modifiers grant you powerful stat buffs.

You don't exactly need Boss Powers for this build to work, but since you'll be using them anyway, try to get the following:

  • Ashava's Poison Breath (Main Power): Dropped by world boss Ashava. This launches waves of poison when you attack enemies suffering from DoT effects (Soulrift counts as a DoT effect).
  • Beastmaster's Training (Modifier): Increases the damage dealt by your summoned minions based on your Critical Strike Damage. Dropped by the Beastmaster in Incursion events.
  • Hatred Embrace's Hate (Modifier): Gain bonus crit chance based on your Shadow Resistance. Dropped by Hatred's Embrace in Incursion events.

Aspects and Equipment

All this build needs is Blood-bathed Aspect, which makes Blood Surge cast two novas (slot this in your Amulet). You likely won't have many Aspects to work with if you're using this build as a fresh starter, so it's fine even if you use only this one. However, you'll want to keep an eye out for the following if you want to make the most out of this build:

As for item stats, the most important one to get is Essence Per Second. This will make spamming Blood Surge much easier whenever Soulrift isn't active, and it'll save you plenty of time in general. With a high Essence Per Second stat, you can remove Hemorrhage and replace with a skill like Corpse Tendrils or Blood Mist.

For the rest of your gear stats, focus on damage and survivability. Gear that adds ranks to your abilities and passives are also very good.

Runewords

You can play this build without using any runewords in Diablo 4, but if you want to use some, here are a few good combos:

  • CirLum: Regenerate Essence after casting 5 skills.
  • ZanTec: When you cast Soulrift, you also invoke the Barbarian's Earthquake skill.
  • CemQua: Gain movement speed when you Evade.
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Diablo 4
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9 /10
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Released
June 5, 2023
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WHERE TO PLAY

SUBSCRIPTION
DIGITAL
Checkbox: control the expandable behavior of the extra info

ESRB
Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Language, In-Game Purchases, Users Interact
Developer(s)
Blizzard
Publisher(s)
Blizzard
Engine
Proprietary Engine
Multiplayer
Online Multiplayer, Online Co-Op, Local Co-Op
Cross-Platform Play
All platforms
Cross Save
All platforms
Franchise
Diablo
Number of Players
1-2 players
Steam Deck Compatibility
Verified
Genre(s)
Action RPG, Hack and Slash
OpenCritic Rating
Mighty
Local Co-Op Support
1-2 players (console only)
How Long To Beat
26 Hours
X|S Optimized
Yes
File Size Xbox Series
158.25 GB
PS Plus Availability
N/A
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