With the start date for Diablo 4 Season 10 right around the corner, now is the time for players to start planning their builds for the upcoming season. Leveling a new season character in Diablo 4 can be one of the biggest hurdles standing between players and the new seasonal content, since players won't be able to get the full Diablo 4 endgame experience until they hit level 60, access the Paragon Board, and start their runs through the Pit. As such, builds designed for fast leveling at the start of a season are essential for overcoming the initial grind that comes with a new Diablo 4 season.
For players looking to jump into Diablo 4 Season 10 as a Necromancer, one build option stands above the others for its smooth leveling potential. Minion Necromancers have tended to be the most successful in reaching max level in past Diablo 4 seasons due to their ability to rely on their summons for damage. In Diablo 4 Season 10, it appears that this build will once again be ideal for Necromancers in the early game, and it comes with some new additions via the Season 10 Chaos Perks mechanic to up its utility even more.
Diablo 4 Season 10 starts on September 23.
One Diablo 4 Season 10 S-Tier Build May Be Writing a Check It Can’t Cash
Although one Diablo 4 Season 10 build will likely be S-Tier in the meta, most players won't be able to achieve its optimal version.
Leveling with a Minion Necromancer Should Be Even Better in Diablo 4 Season 10
The Necromancer archetype is iconic for its ability to summon armies of the undead to fight at their side, and Diablo 4 puts this mechanic front and center for the class. Necromancer builds in Diablo 4 have essentially two optimal playstyles: summon all minions and invest in maximizing their damage output, or sacrifice all minions to gain the buffs the Book of the Dead provides for doing so. When it comes to leveling as a Necromancer, it's in the player's best interest to utilize their Minions in the early game, even if they plan on sacrificing them and transitioning to a different build for Diablo 4's endgame content.
Minion Necromancer's Ideal Skills
- Reap
- Blight
- Soulrift
- Raise Skeleton
- Corpse Tendrils
- Corpse Explosion
The core of this build revolves around summoning the Necromancer's Skeletal Warriors, Skeletal Mages, and Golem using Raise Skeleton. With these minions active, players can largely let them do the heavy lifting while supporting them by pulling enemies together with Corpse Tendrils, damaging and restoring Essence with Soulrift and Corpse Explosion, and creating pools of Corrupting damage over time with Blight. Reap joins the hotbar as the Necromancer's Basic Skill of choice for this build, but is not critical to success.
For the Necromancer's Legendary Aspects, Minion users will want to ensure they have the Aspect of Disobedience, Aspect of Reanimation, and Aspect of the Damned.
Diablo 4 Season 10 Gives Minion Necromancers New Tools in Their Kit
While this setup has been the standard Minion Necromancer leveling build for several Diablo 4 seasons now, the new mechanics Season 10 is adding can make this build even stronger. Diablo 4 Season 10 is giving players access to Chaos Perks, which augment certain skills or grant players powerful modifiers at the cost of risky trade-offs. In addition to a pool of general Chaos Perks, each class has its own set of exclusive perks that are tailored to its skills. For Necromancers, two Chaos Perks stand out as having fantastic synergy potential with Minion builds:
- Grim Reapers (Magic Chaos Perk) – Your Skeleton Warriors now also use Reap dealing 50-150% of normal damage in addition to their regular attacks.
- Defile the Dead (Legendary Chaos Perk) – You can consume each Corpse twice. Consuming at Corpse creates a Chaotic Burst, dealing 200-400% Shadow damage.
Grim Reapers seem like the obvious choice for a Chaos Perk on a Minion Necromancer build, since granting Reap to the player's Skeletal Warriors with increased damage supports the build's focus on empowering the Necromancer's Minions. However, Defile the Dead is also a powerful weapon in the build's arsenal since Corpse Explosion is already a powerful AoE skill the player can use while their Minions draw the enemy's focus. Adding 200-400% Shadow Damage on top of the base explosion damage being dealt twice gives the Necromancer more of a punch and allows the player to be more than a passive part of this build's gameplay loop.
Diablo 4
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 88 /100 Critics Rec: 93%
WHERE TO PLAY
- Engine
- Proprietary Engine
- Genre(s)
- Action RPG, Hack and Slash
