Best Diablo 4 Minion Necromancer build in Season 5

The Necromancer is at the top of the meta in Season 5 of Diablo 4 with the Minion build, so here’s how to assemble it for leveling, endgame, and details on if we’d recommend it for PvP play.

The Minion Necro build involves the Necromancer doing what they do best – summoning the dead and pitting them against the forces of Hell. As the Necromancer is a top-tier class this season, knowing how to build it when leveling a new character is paramount.

From there, we’ll detail how to optimize the build for 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 Minion Necro is effective this season.

Best Minion leveling build in Diablo 4 Season 5

As you level while playing through either the campaign or the new Season 5 content, you’ll want to make sure that you’re selecting your skills in the following order:

Level	Skill
1	Reap
2	Decompose
3	Blood Surge
4	Blood Surge
5	Enhanced Blood Surge
6	Paranormal Blood Surge
7	Blood Surge
8	Blood Surge
9	Skeletal Warrior Mastery
10	Skeletal Warrior Mastery
11	Skeletal Warrior Mastery
12	Iron Maiden
13	Enhanced Iron Maiden
14	Death’s Approach
15	Death’s Approach
16	Corpse Tendrils
17	Enhanced Corpse Tendrils
18	Plagued Corpse Tendrils
19	Blood Surge
20	Grim Harvest
21	Amplify Damage
22	Amplify Damage
23	Death’s Approach
24	Inspiring Leader
25	Inspiring Leader
26	Inspiring Leader
27	Hellbent Commander
28	Hellbent Commander
29	Hellbent Commander
30	Kalan’s Edict
31	Imperfectly Balanced
32	Imperfectly Balanced
33	Imperfectly Balanced
34	Hewed Flesh
35	Hewed Flesh
36	Necrotic Carapace
37	Necrotic Carapace
38	Necrotic Carapace
39	Hellbent Commander
40	Hellbent Commander
41	Hellbent Commander
42	Fueled by Death
43	Fueled by Death
44	Fueled by Death
45	Unliving Energy
46	Skeletal Mage Mastery
47	Skeletal Mage Mastery
48	Skeletal Mage Mastery
49	Kalan’s Edict
Renown 1	Golem Mastery
Renown 2	Golem Mastery
Renown 3	Golem Mastery
Renown 4	Blood Mist
Renown 5	Enhanced Blood Mist
Renown 6	Ghastly Blood Mist
Renown 7	Hewed Flesh
Renown 8	Spiked Armor
Renown 9	Spiked Armor
Renown 10	Iron Maiden

These skills will help you to craft the ideal Minion Necro build. Of course, you’ll need to have unlocked the Renown points to use the extra ten, so if you find it more convenient to upgrade your Golem Mastery before selecting some of the other passives, feel free.

However, each of the passive skills above will boost your Minions and make them as powerful as they can be from your base skills and stats. As every build needs active skills, we’ve provided a variety that complements the Minion build.

As there’s synergy between Corpse skills and Minion skills, we’ve also ensured that your passive Corpse skills have been selected so that enemies leave lots of corpses for you to resurrect as minions. We’ve ignored Bone Magic, but your primary offensive skills will be Blood Magic, with some Shadow attacks thrown in for close-quarter combat.

Best Book of the Dead setup for leveling

When it comes to using the Necromancer’s unique Book of the Dead skills for a Minion build, we recommend selecting the following:

• Skeletal Warriors – Reapers
• Skeletal Mages – Cold
• Golems – Blood

This Book of the Dead setup is the best for this build, letting your Reaper Skeletal Warriors focus on melee combat while your Mages support them from a distance with Cold Magic. This will slow enemies down while your Skeletons, Golem, and yourself strike at them while they’re vulnerable.

We’ve selected the Blood Golem for this Book of the Dead setup as it’ll allow your Golem to buff your damage output and heal you when you’re in danger. While the Minion Necro isn’t a glass cannon per se, you’ll spend a lot of time managing your troops, and the Blood Golem is an extra layer of security against mobs and elites.

Best leveling rotation

• Summon Minions
• Iron Maiden
• Corpse Tendrils
• Blood Mist / Blood Surge
• Reap / Decompose
• Corpse Tendrils

The best rotation for this build might sound complicated at first, but it’s actually pretty simple. For starters, you’ll likely already have your minions with you, so your first attack should be to strike a mob with Iron Maiden so that they’re likely to take more damage when the battle starts.

Next, cast Plagued Corpse Tendrils to stun enemies and increase the likelihood of producing extra corpses to re-supply your minion army. From here, hit them with your main attacks, using Blood Mist then Blood Surge to do devastating damage from a distance once your minions engage the mob.

Should an enemy get too close to you slice them with Reap, get to a safer distance and target them with Decompose. 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.

Of course, whichever rotation works for you will be the best to use, but the above is a logical, tried, and tested method to combine skills into one powerful set of attacks.

Best Legendary Aspects

While Legendary Aspects will become more useful in the endgame version of the Minion 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
Reanimation	Increased minion damage	Aldurwood	Scosglen
Grasping Veins	Increased critical strike chance for Corpse Tendrils	Corrupted Grotto	Kehjistan
Unyielding Commander’s	Increased minion damage	Faceless Shrine	Hawezar
Blood-bathed	Duplicates Blood Surge Nova	Hoarfrost Demise	Fractured Peaks
Disobedience	Boosts defense based on your minion damage output	Halls of the Damned	Kehjistan

Best Minion endgame build in Diablo 4 Season 5

Once you reach endgame in Season 5 by beating the story, hitting level 50, and unlocking the Paragon Board, you can then respec to the endgame version of the Minion Necro build. This is very similar to the leveling build, but there are some key differences in terms of point allocation that we’ll go into below.

First, you’ll need to switch your active and passive skills. As you’ll already have your 50 skill points to use, along with any Renown points you’ve unlocked, allocate them to the following active and passive skills:

Active Skill	Upgrades	Points allocated
Reap	–	1
Decompose	–	1
Blood Mist	Enhanced, Ghastly	2
Decrepify	Enhanced, Abhorent	5
Corpse Tendrils	Enhanced, Plagued	1
Army of the Dead	Enhanced, Supreme	1

Passive Skill	Points
Unliving Energy	1
Hewed Flesh	3
Grim Harvest	2
Fueled by Death	3
Skeleton Warrior Mastery	3
Amplify Damage	3
Death’s Approach	3
Skeletal Mage Mastery	3
Reaper’s Pursuit	1
Gloom	1
Necrotic Carapace	3
Terror	3
Golem Mastery	3
Inspiring Leader	3
Kalan’s Edict	1

This build still primarily focuses on Minion skills as your primary form of offense, but leans more into Shadow Magic such as the Reap skill, rather than Blood Magic when it comes to getting your hands dirty in combat.

You’ll be less of a glass cannon in endgame, so it pays to have a choice between attacking enemies from a distance and getting up close and personal when the situation requires it. We’ve also switched curses, replacing Iron Maiden with Decrepify. This will slow enemies down and give our minions the advantage in battle.

Best endgame Book of the Dead setup

The key difference between the Book of the Dead skills in endgame is that we’ll be selecting Shadow Magic for our Skeleton Mages rather than cold:

• Skeletal Warriors – Reapers
• Skeletal Mages – Shadow
• Golems – Blood

As for the rest of the Book of the Dead setup, it’ll be the same as it was for leveling, so you can keep the rest exactly as it was.

Best endgame rotation

For endgame, use the following skill rotation when approaching mobs in battle:

• Summon Minions
• Decreptify
• Army of the Dead
• Corpse Tendrils
• Blood Mist
• Reap / Decompose

The rotation of attacks in endgame involves first casting Decreptify to slow enemies, (your minions will likely already be there), then hitting a mob with your ultimate skill, Army of the Dead. This will likely kill many of them, so next you’ll cast Corpse Tendrils to stun and poison the weakened survivors – and to maximize corpse generation.

From here, your minions will engage the slow, stunned, and weak mob while you cast Blood Mist or Decompose. Alternatively, you can race into the fray and hack enemies apart with Reap until they’re all dead. Subtle changes from our leveling rotation, but tactic.

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
Reanimation	Increased minion damage	Aldurwood	Scosglen	–
Grasping Veins	Increased critical strike chance for Corpse Tendrils	Corrupted Grotto	Kehjistan	–
Unyielding Commander’s	Increased minion damage	Faceless Shrine	Hawezar	–
Blood-bathed	Duplicates Blood Surge Nova	Hoarfrost Demise	Fractured Peaks	–
Disobedience	Boosts defense based on your minion damage output	Halls of the Damned	Kehjistan	–
Frenzied Dead	Boosts minion damage and speed	–	–	Offhand
Occult Domination	Increases number of Skeleton Warriors by 2	–	–	Boots
Blood Getter’s	Skeletal Priest now empowers you by an extra 55-77%	–	–	Boots
Hardened Bones	You and your minions get damage reduction	–	–	Pants
Aphotic	Skeletal Priest empowers Skeleton Warriors by an extra 20%	–	–	Boots
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 Minion Necro in the ways that matter most to the build.

See below to see which Glyphs you should target first.

Best Glyphs

Level 15

• ‍Golem
• ‍Corporeal
• ‍Exploit
• ‍Essence
• ‍Deadraiser
• ‍Amplify
• ‍Control

Level 21

• ‍Golem
• ‍Essence
• ‍Exploit
• ‍Control
• ‍Deadraiser
• ‍Corporeal
• ‍Amplify

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 Minion Necro build.

Best Minion endgame item build

Item	Socket	Item type	Power
Runic Skullcap of Hardened Bones	Ruby for extra life	Helm	Increased minion damage
Runic Mail of Occult Domination	Ruby for extra life	Chest Armor	Increased Skeleton Warriors by 2
Runic Gloves of Reanimation	Ruby for extra life	Gloves	Increased minion damage
Blood Getter’s Runic Leggings	Ruby for extra life	Pants	Increased Skeleton Priest damage
Aphotic Runic Cleats	Ruby for extra life	Boots	Increased Skeleton Priest damage
‍Unyielding Commander’s Sparr	Emeralds for poison damage	Main Hand	Army of the Dead increases minion damage
–	–	Offhand	–
Nazar of the Great Feast	Diamond for extra attack power	Amulet	Increased minion damage
Circle of the Grasping Veins	Diamond for extra attack power	Ring 1	Increased minion critical hit rate
Circle of Frenzied Dead	Diamond for extra attack power	Ring 2	Increased minion attack speed

Alternative to Necromancer Minion build for PvP

The Minion Necro isn’t recommended for PvP, and while it’s fantastic in PvE, we’d recommend using the Bone Spirit or Bone Spear build instead, sacrificing your minions and turning your Necromancer into a one-person army.

It’s not suited to PvP play as most players will treat your minions like normal enemies, or elites at best, and will take them down just as quickly, leaving you alone and vulnerable in battle.

If you’re set on taking this build into battle against other players, though, we’d suggest sticking to our endgame version for the best results.

Now that you know how to craft this top-tier Necromancer build, make sure to check out our guides for the Druid, Sorcerer, Rogue, and Barbarian.