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 for leveling and endgame, 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 Bone Spear Necro is effective this season.
Best Blood Lance leveling build in Diablo 4 Season 6
As you level while playing through either the campaign or the new Season 6 content, you’ll want to make sure that you’re selecting your skills in the following order:
| Level | Skill |
|---|---|
| 1 | Reap |
| 2 | Decompose |
| 3 | Bone Lance |
| 4 | Bone Lance |
| 5 | Enhanced Bone Lance |
| 6 | Supernatural Bone Lance |
| 7 | Bone Lance |
| 8 | Bone Lance |
| 9 | Bone Lance |
| 10 | Blood Mist |
| 11 | Unliving Energy |
| 12 | Imperfectly Balanced |
| 13 | Imperfectly Balanced |
| 14 | Imperfectly Balanced |
| 15 | Hewed Flesh |
| 16 | Hewed Flesh |
| 17 | Hewed Flesh |
| 18 | Corpse Explosion |
| 19 | Fueled by Death |
| 20 | Fueled by Death |
| 21 | Fueled by Death |
| 22 | Grim Harvest |
| 23 | Decreptify |
| 24 | Enhanced Decreptify |
| 25 | Abhorrent Decreptify |
| 26 | Decreptify |
| 27 | Decreptify |
| 28 | Decreptify |
| 29 | Decreptify |
| 30 | Death’s Approach |
| 31 | Death’s Approach |
| 32 | Death’s Approach |
| 33 | Corpse Tendrils |
| 34 | Enhanced Corpse Tendrils |
| 35 | Plagued Corpse Tendrils |
| 36 | Grusome Mending |
| 37 | Coalesced Blood |
| 38 | Coalesced Blood |
| 39 | Coalesced Blood |
| 40 | Tides of Blood |
| 41 | Tides of Blood |
| 42 | Tides of Blood |
| 43 | Rathma’s Vigor |
| 44 | Rapid Ossification |
| 45 | Rapid Ossification |
| 46 | Rapid Ossification |
| 47 | Bone Storm |
| 48 | Enhanced Bone Storm |
| 49 | Supreme Bone Storm |
| Renown 1 | Serration |
| Renown 2 | Stand Alone |
| Renown 3 | Stand Alone |
| Renown 4 | Stand Alone |
| Renown 5 | Mememto Mori |
| Renown 6 | Mememto Mori |
| Renown 7 | Mememto Mori |
| Renown 8 | Serration |
| Renown 9 | Serration |
| Renown 10 | Gruesome Mending |
These skills will help you to craft the ideal Blood Lance build. Of course, you’ll need to have unlocked the Renown points to use the extra ten. Once you do though, focus on adding the above solo Necro passives to give your character a boost heading into the endgame.
If you do want to use minions, switch out the Memento Mori and Stand Alone passives for Hellbent Commander and Inspiring Leader.
Best Book of the Dead setup for leveling
When it comes to using the Necromancer’s unique Book of the Dead skills for a Blood Lance build, we recommend selecting the following:
- Skeletal Warriors – Sacrifice
- Skeletal Mages – Sacrifice
- Golems – Sacrifice
As you can see, we’ll not be using minions in battle for this build and instead will be Sacrificing them to make our Necromancer even more powerful. Of course, you can choose to use them, just know your build won’t be as individually powerful if you do.
Best leveling rotation
Here’s the best rotation of attacks you should use when approaching mobs of enemies:
- Decreptify
- Corpse Tendrils
- Blood Mist
- Bone Storm
- Blood Lance – Main Skill
- Corpse Explosion
When you approach a mob, hit them with Decreptify to put them on the backfoot. Now, cast Corpse Tendrils to stun enemies and increase the likelihood of producing extra corpses.
From here, hit them with your main attacks, using Blood Mist to do devastating damage from a distance once your minions engage the mob. Now you can use your two most effective skills, Bone Storm, and can begin firing volleys of Blood Lance into the fray.
By now, Corpse Tendrils will have worn off, so hit them with another round of it, maximizing your corpse generation, stunning the survivors, and even topping up their poison levels. As the bodies pile up, cast Corpse Explosion to wipe out the surviving enemies.
Best Legendary Aspects
While Legendary Aspects will become more useful in the endgame version of the Blood Lance build, there are some you can hunt down while progressing to level 50 or while playing through the story. Here’s where you can find them:
| Aspect | Power | Dungeon | Region |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sacrificial | Boosts Sacrifice Minion buffs | Ruins of Eridu | Hawezar |
| Grasping Veins | Increased critical strike chance for Corpse Tendrils | Corrupted Grotto | Kehjistan |
| Blood Seeker’s | Boosts Blood Lance damage | Mercy’s Reach | Fractured Peaks |
Best Blood Lance endgame build in Diablo 4 Season 6
Once you reach endgame in Season 6 by beating the story, hitting level 50, and unlocking the Paragon Board, you can then respec to the endgame version of the Blood Lance Necro build.
The good news is that for this endgame build, you’ll be keeping the exact same set-up you had for leveling. So there’s no need to respec, unless you want to add or remove minions.
| 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 |
Best endgame Book of the Dead setup
Once again, we recommend Sacrificing your minions:
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- Skeletal Warriors – Sacrifice
- Skeletal Mages – Sacrifice
- Golems – Sacrifice
Of course, if you’d prefer to use minions, feel free, just know you’ll be less powerful as an individual Necromancer.
Best endgame rotation
For endgame, use the following skill rotation when approaching mobs in battle:
- Decreptify
- Corpse Tendrils
- Blood Mist
- Bone Storm
- Blood Lance – Main Skill
- Corpse Explosion
The rotation remains the same in endgame as it was for leveling. So see above for a detailed breakdown.
Best Legendary Aspects
Now that you’ve reached endgame, you’ll have access to many more Legendary Aspects to boost your build and add special powers to buff your primary skills. Some are the same as in the leveling build, but now there’s even more. Here’s where and how you can 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.
Paragon Board
Once you reach level 50 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 Bone Spear Necro in the ways that matter most to the build.
See below to see which Glyphs you should target first.
Best Glyphs
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 Blood Lance endgame item build
| 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.
Alternative to Necromancer 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.