Diablo 4 Bone Spear Necromancer build, Aspects, and Book of the Dead tips
A bone to pick with you
A good Diablo 4 Necromancer Bone Spear build is strong enough to let you take on challenging endgame content alone and come through unscathed.
It’s not without costs, though. The Necromancer is squishy already, and our Bone Spear Necromancer is even squishier.
Foregoing most of the Book of the Dead summons in favor of gaining passive boosts limits your attack potential, but it’s necessary for keeping your Necromancer alive.
Diablo 4 Necromancer Bone Spear build
Diablo 4 Necromancer Bone Spear build – Best skills
Bone Spear is, unsurprisingly, the center of this build, but we're throwing in a fair few supporting skills for maximum damage potential.
| Skill Type | Skill Name | Points to Invest |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | Bone Splinters -> Enhanced Bone Splinters | 2 |
| Core | Bone Spear -> Paranormal Bone Spear | 5 |
| Macabre | Corpse Explosion -> Blighted Corpse Explosion | 3 |
| Macabre | Blood Mist | 1 |
| Summoning | Corpse Tendrils -> Plagued Corpse Tendrils | 3 |
| Ultimate | Bone Storm -> Supreme Bone Storm | N/A |
It's a fairly basic build from a skill perspective, since most of your unique utility comes from passives. Bone Splinters is a decent basic attack to keep around, since it damages foes and, at the enhanced level, fires even more when you cast with high Essence. Paranormal Bone Spear has a higher critical strike chance and damages more enemies when you do land a critical strike.
Corpse Explosion is standard for pretty much any Necromancer build, and it works just as well in this one. The Blighted variant is ideal for handling mobs and dealing easy damage to bosses, since it converts the damage to a Shadow miasma that lingers for six seconds.
We threw Blood Mist in to help escape in case things go awry. If you end up with spare skill points, pump a few into Blood Mist, and get it to the Ghastly enhancement. Ghastly Blood Mist leaves behind corpses every second, which is handy for triggering more Corpse Explosion fogs and getting more out of Corpse Tendrils.
Diablo 4 Necromancer Bone Spear build – Best passives
| Passive Category | Passive Name | Points to Invest |
|---|---|---|
| Core | Hewed Flesh | 3 |
| Core | Unliving Energy | 3 |
| Core | Imperfectly Balanced | 3 |
| Macabre | Grim Harvest | 3 |
| Macabre | Fueled by Death | 3 |
| Corruption | Death's Reach | 3 |
| Corruption | Death's Embrace | 3 |
| Summoning | Serration | 3 |
| Summoning | Evulsion | 3 |
| Summoning | Compound Fracture | 3 |
| Summoning | Reaper's Pursuit | 3 |
| Key | Ossified Essence | 3 |
The Necromancer's passives are what determine your style more than the actual skills. This mix of abilities bumps up your critical damage, drastically raises your bone skill damage, and lets you get the most out of your supporting skills as well, especially Corpse Explosion and Corpse Tendrils. The two Reach passives help you deal extra hurt at range and up close, though you should try being at range as much as possible
Diablo 4 Necromancer Bone Spear build – Book of the Dead
We decided to sacrifice all summons to maximize our stat boosts, though some popular and successful builds keep the Skeletal Warriors and just sacrifice the Mages and Golems. That's fair, since the Skeletal Warrior buffs aren't as spectacular, but in our experience, the extra physical resistance and shadow damage that come from sacrificing this lot do come in handy.
It also fits in with one of our Aspects of choice.
Diablo 4 Necromancer Bone Spear build – Best Aspects
Here's what you should aim for in the Aspect department.
- Aspect of Sacrifice - Raises sacrifice buffs
- Aspect of Grasping Veins - Increased critical chance after casting Corpse Tendrils
- Splintering Aspect - Bone Spear causes vulnerability
- Blood-Soaked Aspect - Blood Mist deals Shadow damage
- Cadaverous Aspect - Consuming a corpse increases your next core skill cast's damage
- Aspect of Serration - Ossification raises bone skill critical strike damage based on your essence
Diablo 4 Necromancer Bone Spear build – Paragon board
The Paragon board that interests us here is, naturally, the Bone Graft board, so plan on spending most of your points there first. Reinvigorate and Shaper of Bone are two of the most important rare nodes on this board, along with Calcified.
On your starter board, focus on grabbing the magic nodes and the Amplify rare node, along with any intelligence and dexterity nodes you can easily reach.
If you're not ready to specialize this deeply just yet, take a look at our general purpose Diablo 4 Necromancer build guide, and check out our class tier list to see what other classes might fit best. And if you fancy a stint as a spell slinger, our Ice Shard Sorcerer guide has one powerful path to follow.