Build Introduction
Bone Spear Necromancer is one of the smoothest builds to level a Necromancer with. It performs just as well in the endgame content, providing high critical hits with 
Bone Spear in combination with setting enemies up inside a 
Bone Prison to guarantee Overpowering hits. We assist bringing them inside this set-up with the use of 
Corpse Tendrils.
In the endgame we will gain access to more legendary powers that takes this build to a whole new level. Since our biggest source of damage comes from Bone Spear, we can provide legendary powers to help sustain resources, eventually resulting in only casting the Bone Spears!
Besides being reliable and consistent, this build guarantees the Vulnerable effect on enemies, making it a great option for group play.
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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Build Variants
A build variant is a modified version of an existing build that changes some aspects of it, such as the damage type, specific skills or passives, and even certain items like different Uniques or Legendary Aspects.
Below you will find any variant that relates to the Bone Spear Endgame Necromancer.
Strengths and Weaknesses
- Incredible damage output
- Fast and comfortable with proper gear
- Capable of Tier 100 Nightmare Dungeon & Uber Lilith
- Somewhat squishy
- Requires specific gear and aspect powers to fully self-sustain without corpse consumption
- Can feel a bit clunky and slow until you get better gear
To see how this build compares to the other builds on our site, you can check out our build tier lists.
Build Requirements
This build has no mandatory unique items to make the build function!
Skill Bar and Skill Tree Points
Blood Mist
DecrepifyBone PrisonCorpse Tendrils
Bone Storm
Bone SpearFollow the points allocated in the Skill Tree above for the complete 71-point build. The additional skill points are completed using the Renown system.
Book of the Dead
We will be sacrificing all our minions. Below you’ll find the details covering all aspects of how we utilize the Book of the Dead for the Bone Spear Necromancer.
- Melee Skeletons: Skirmishers – will be the choice here for the added critical strike chance.
- Mage Skeletons: Cold Mages – sacrificing the Cold Mages grants us increased damage to Vulnerable enemies. The build reliably making enemies Vulnerable makes this the best choice.
- Golem: Iron – is sacrificed for extra critical strike damage.
Mercenary
Aldkin is a great choice with crowd-controlling features, but the comfortability of using Subo, who brings the ability of revealing enemies and materials in the area, makes him a natural preferential decision. The mercenaries are a nice addition to the game and whichever you chose to run is up to you. The recommendation for this build will be to run Subo.
Skill-tree wise we’ll grab the left-hand side first for 
Wire Trap to provide stuns and the following node is up to you. 
Trip Mines is the next big notable to grab, taken for safety reasons. We finish that tree with 
Mastermind.
For the reinforcement, stick with Raheir, utilizing his Bastion skill being cast when the player becomes injured.
Witchpowers
In Season 7 we will have access to Witchpowers granting some absolutely crazy abilities that we’ll utilize to enhance our builds power. Below, you’ll find a list of the recommended powers we use for this build.
Red Power (Unique):
Purple Powers:
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 |  Juggernaut’s Aspect | You gain x Armor, but your Evade has 100% increased cooldown. |
| Chest |  Poc +  Ohm | Aspect of Shielding Storm | Each time that Bone Storm damages an enemy, gain a Barrier equal to 2-5% of your Base Life for 10 seconds. |
| Gloves | N/A |  Aspect of Grasping Veins | Gain 10-20% increased Critical Strike Chance for 6 seconds when you cast Corpse Tendrils. You deal 20-40% bonus Critical Strike Damage to enemies damaged by Corpse Tendrils. |
| Pants | Grand Topaz | Aspect of Hardened Bones | You gain 15-20% increased Damage Reduction. |
| Boots | n/a |  Aspect of Slaughter | You gain 20% Movement Speed. Lose this bonus for 2.5-5 seconds after taking damage. |
| Weapon 2H (Mace) |  Royal Emerald | Bone Duster’s Aspect | Bone Spear is guaranteed to Overpower enemies within Bone Prison and deals x#% increased damage to them. |
| Amulet (50% Scaling) | Any Resistance Jewel | Aspect of Serration | The Ossified Essence Key Passive also increase the Critical Strike Damage of your Bone Skills by 1%x per Essence above 50, up to 38-60%x. |
| Ring | Any Resistance Jewel | Conceited Aspect | Deal 10-25% increased damage while you have a Barrier active. |
| Ring | Any Resistance Jewel | Splintering Aspect | 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. |
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 |
|---|---|---|
 Grand EmeraldFor Critical Strike Damage. | Grand Topaz For increased Intelligence. |  Royal Amethyst Royal Sapphire Royal Ruby  Grand Skull |
The following Runewords are recommended to be used for this build.
| Runeword Combination | Effect |
 Poc +  Ohm | Gain 2 Offering by spending 5% of your Maximum Resource 600 Offering will trigger the Barbarian’s  War Cry |
In Season 7 we’ll have access to Occult Gems, below you’ll find the list of these gems we want to use for this build.
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. Essence per Second 2. Maximum Resource 3. Intelligence |  Worldly Endurance # Maximum LifeProfane Innovation #% Corpse Tendril Size |
| Chest | 1. Essence per Second 2. Maximum Life 3. Intelligence | Worldly Endurance # Maximum LifeProfane Innovation #% Corpse Tendril Size |
| Gloves | 1. Ranks to Bone Spear 2. Critical Strike Chance 3. Attack Speed | Bone Finesse #% Bone Critical Strike DamageWorldly Fortune Lucky Hit: #% Chance to Freeze on hit |
| Pants | 1. Maximum Life 2. Armor 3. Intelligence | Worldly Endurance # Maximum LifeWorldly Fortune Lucky Hit: #% Chance to stun on hit |
| Boots | 1. Essence per Second 2. Movement Speed 3. Intelligence | Natural Motion #% Movement SpeedWorldly Fortune Lucky Hit: #% Chance to immobilize on hit |
| Amulet | 1. Ranks to Evulsion 2. Ranks to Compound Fracture 3. Maximum Resource | Bone Finesse #% Bone Critical Strike DamageWorldly Stability #% Resource Cost Reduction |
| Ring | 1. Resource Cost Reduction 2. Critical Strike Chance 3. Maximum Life | Bone Finesse #% Bone Critical Strike DamageWorldly Stability #% Resource Cost Reduction |
| Ring | 1. Resource Cost Reduction 2. Critical Strike Chance 3. Lucky Hit: Chance to make enemies Vulnerable on hit | Bone Finesse #% Bone Critical Strike DamageWorldly Stability #% Resource Cost Reduction |
| 2H-Weapon (Mace) | 1. Critical Strike Damage 2. Intelligence 3. Maximum Life | Bone Augments #% Chance for Bone Spear Projectiles to Cast TwiceBone Finesse #% Bone Critical Strike Damage |
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
The build features a very straight forward play-style with a focus on casting Bone Spear as your main source of damage. We optimize this by making sure we get 100% chance to Overpower our spears by having enemies inside a Bone Prison. To help boost your damage and efficiency, keep up the Decrepify curse as it will lower the cooldown of our Prison and Bone Storm. Blood Mist will be used as a panic button and Corpse Tendrils is utilized to group enemies together for easier bursting of enemy packs.
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!
Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul is a great tool to automate your corpse skills, but comes at the cost of the Conceited aspect making you deal less damage to gain a bit of quality of life.
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 functions with the combination of regaining essence via corpse consumption and heavily reducing the cost of our abilities. Thanks to our skill-tree, we gain big bonuses when having a large Essence pool when we use our Bone Spear making it vital to sustain it which our gear modifiers will help achieve. Besides this we are consistently going to re-apply Bone Storm, these Bone Storms also generate a barrier for personal defenses.
Before you reach super optimized gearing the corpse skills will help maintain the play-style and efficiency.
Defenses
Through the consistent application of Bone Storms via our unique shield, this build will have very high up-time with Barrier for protection. Outside of that, the build dishes out a crazy amount of damage with lucky hit modifiers allowing you to crowd control enemy packs.
Offenses
With a heavy focus on critical hits, the Bone Spears cover large areas with instant damage application. This is combined with Corpse Tendrils to group up enemies to demolish them in a swift move by throwing your Bone Spears right after!
Obol Gambling
Obol gambling is a great way to potentially find item upgrades or items missing from your build. Check out the new tool guide from Icy Veins for gambling Obols in the link below:
Changelog
- February 12th, 2025: Minor adjustments and clarifications.
- January 19th, 2025: Guide updated for Season 7.
- 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 23rd, 2024: Finalized tempering modifiers.
- May 16th, 2024: Gem updates.
- May 10th, 2024: Guide updated for Season 4 Loot Reborn.
- January 22nd, 2024: Guide updated for Season 3 Season of the Construct.
- October 15th, 2023: Updated guide for the 1.2 patch.
- August 7th, 2023: Minor updates for the 1.1.1 patch.
- August 5th, 2023: Guide updated for patch 1.1.1 (launches on August 8th).
- July 26th, 2023: Optimized gear affix list.
- July 19th, 2023: Guide updated for Season 1 including Malignant Hearts.