Diablo 4 Sever Soulrift Necromancer Leveling Build – Soulshredder Guide: In this Diablo 4 Necromancer leveling build, I’ll show you a Necro Build that makes use of the Necromancer’s new Sever aspect as well as the new Shadow ultimate, Soulrift. If you enjoy builds where you set up a bunch of buffs, then spam an ability to blend enemies to a fine dust, then this Necro leveling Build will be perfect for you!

Also, be sure to check out our Diablo 4 Wiki and Interactive Map if you need help finding specific Altars of Lilith, Dungeons, or Side Quests!

Diablo 4 Sever Soulrift Necromancer Leveling Build Season 6 – Soulshredder

This build revolves entirely around maximizing our DPS with Sever, one of the Necromancer’s core shadow skills. The recent patch for Vessel of Hatred introduced a new aspect, Reaping Lotus, which is the cornerstone of this build. Reaping Lotus splits Sever into three specters, each dealing up to 200% of the original damage. Thanks to this new aspect, I managed to make a build that can be best descriped as a smoothie blender, with scythes chopping up enemies rapidly as they stand in place stunned and grouped from Corpse Tendrils. It’s a pretty satisfying build which I found very fun to optimise and tinker with.

The main idea is to buff the damage we get from casting Sever as much as we can from our aspects and skills, while also getting a bunch of essence so we can spam cast it. The new Soulrift ultimate is the perfect supporting skill for these goals, generating essence every second and giving a damage buff of up to 30%. It’s also a darkness skill just like sever, so any darkness damage stats will apply to both Sever and Soulrift. Our last damaging skill to round off the build is Blighted Corpse Explosion, another darkness skill that we can buff with aspects and passives to further empower our Sever playstyle.

We’re aiming to create the perfect setup to maximize the power of each Sever cast, using Decrepify, Corpse Tendrils, and Blighted Corpse Explosion to amplify damage. So, lets take a look at the skill tree.

Diablo 4 Sever Soulrift Necromancer Build – Skill Distribution

Basic Cluster

In the Basic cluster, I put 2 points into decompose for Enhanced Decompose. This is a skill that actually stuck with my build the full way through, since there arent really any great essence generators that you can find early on. We do have the Umbral Aspect for some regeneration when we use our main combos, but against tough bosses, using Decompose to get some corpses and essence from time to time is very helpful.

Core Cluster

In the core cluster, we want to max out Sever to get our maximum possible damage output, and get the modifier Paranormal Sever, which makes enemies Vulnerable every 3rd cast. We will be building for vulnerable damage alongside Crit Damage, and this is one of our few sources so its pretty important to get.

In this branch, we also get the Hewed Flesh passive which is incredibly important for corpse generation. Lucky Hit Chance will be one of the central themes in this build since Sever can get around 50% lucky hit chance, and being able to spawn a corpse from Sever is very important for leading on with Corpse Tendrils and Blighted Corpse Explosion.

The passive after Hewed Flesh is Imperfectly Balanced, which increases the cost of Sever by 9% and increases its damage by 15%. The 9% increase in essence is something we can can optimise from affixes later, and the 15% damage buff is multiplicative which is very valuable for this build.

1st Corpse & Macabre Cluster

In the 1st Corpse & Macabre Cluster after Core Skills, we put max points into Corpse Explosion, and choose the Blighted Modifier so it becomes a darkness skill dealing Shadow Damage over time. We want this mainly to activate the Shadowblight key passive, but also for the extra buffs from passives in this cluster; The Fueled By Death passive will give up to a 9% increase in damage for 6 seconds after consuming a corpse, and the Grim Harvest passive gives us 6 essence every time we consume a corpse.

One other passive in this tree that is pretty good is Titan’s Fall, which increases damage to elites by up to 18% when fortified. This is only useful once we get the passive Necrotic Carapace later down the line, which fortifies you for 5% of your max life when you generate corpses from skills. This fortify actually stacks up surprisingly fast since we have a very high Lucky Hit Chance from all our skills, and the max points into Hewed Flesh means we are generating corpses very quickly. With enough speed, you can maintain fortify for basically a whole dungeon, which is why I think this 18% buff is pretty good with this build.

Curse Cluster

Moving onto the Curse cluster, we first have Decrepify. Decrepify will apply a slow 40% slow to all enemies afflicted, giving us some CC, and most importantly will give us cooldown reduction with the Abhorrent Decrepify modifier. This modifier gives a 15% chance to reduce your active cooldowns by 1 second when you lucky hit against enemies afflicted with Decrepify. The plan with this skill is to hit a bunch of enemies with Sever, Corpse Explosion and Soulrift to get as many lucky hits as possible to reduce the cooldown of Soulrift, since its on a 40 second cooldown.

In this cluster, we also max the Precision Decay passive to increase our Lucky Hit Chance, since this is a core characteristic of our build.

2nd Corpse & Macabre Cluster

In the 2nd Corpse & Macabre cluster, we have the skill Corpse Tendrils with the modifier Plagued Corpse Tendrils, which will group up enemies, stun them and make them vulnerable. This is the most important supporting skill for Sever, since the size of Sever isnt exactly large and grouping them up increases the amount of hits and lucky hits we will be procing with every cast of Sever. Also, as a plus, you can also equip the Umbral Aspect to recharge some Essence when you cast this skill, since it CC’s a bunch of enemies.

There’s also a branch of passives in this cluster focused on empowering our darkness skills, which we will want to mostly max out. Reaper’s Pursuit will increase our movement speed by up to 15% while we deal damage with Darkness, Gloom will make enemies take up to 18% more Darkness damage, Crippling Darkness will stun on lucky hit with Darkness skills, and Terror will deal 9% increased darkness damage to slowed enemies, and 9% more to stunned enemies. To get the max value out of terror, you will need to slow with Decrepify, then stun with either Crippling Darkness or Corpse Tendrils. Also note that you should probably only put 1 point into Crippling Darkness just to get the stun, since the extra points dont do much.

The other passive I chose in this tree is the aforementioned Necrotic Carapace to give us fortify. Again, you only really need 1 point in this passive to make it work.

Ultimate Cluster

In the Ultimate Cluster, I maxed out soulrift and got its 2 modifiers. Soulrift will deal Shadow Damage every second (not Shadow Damage over Time), and absorb up to 3 “souls” of nearby enemies every 0.25 seconds, granting you a small barrier and 2 essence. Once you get the two modifiers, you’ll deal 30% extra damage once you absorb 30 souls, and apply vulnerable to enemies that you absorb. This is the “big damage button” for this build, since you get all these bonuses which help you deal more damage, and amps your essence to spam cast Sever.

You can also get 3 points into the Finality passive in this cluster to deal an extra 15% damage after casting for 8 seconds. The other passives in this branch are Stand Alone for 18% damage reduction while you have no minions, and Inspiring Leader to gain 12% Crit Chance while healthy.

Key Passive Cluster

Lastly the key passive cluster. For this build, I went with the Shadowblight passive since all our damage is Shadow Damage, and will easily proc this key passive multiple times. Given a few tweaks to the build, you could also theoretically try the new key passive Affliction, which will basically increase your damage by 15% and make curse skills deal Shadow Damage as well. Personally, I think this is probably better later on in the game as part of an endgame build. Shadowblight feels good to level with, so thats what I went with for this build.

Book of the Dead

Minions are not very valuable for this build once you get everything set up, but they are useful in the early game. I’d say that for the first 20 or so levels, minions are pretty useful, but from then on they are better off sacrificed. For Skeletal Warriors, you should sacrifice the Reapers for the 10% increased Shadow Damage for basically all of your leveling. Once you reach Torment 1 which reduces your resistances, you may need to swap the sacrifice to the Defenders for an extra 25% resistance to all elements.

The other 2 sacrifices are basically the same throughout your playthrough; Sacrifice Cold Mages for 20% increased Vulnerable damage, and sacrifice the Iron Golem for a 35% increase to Critical Strike Damage.

Diablo 4 Sever Soulrift Necromancer – Equipment, Gems and Aspects

Luckily, most of the aspects in this build are obtainable from dungeons, but you will need to find the Reaping Lotus aspect in order to exponentially boost the damage from this build.

The Best Aspects

• Reaping Lotus’ Aspect: Sever no longer returns and instead splits into 3 specters that expand out and back from its apex. Sever deals [80-120]% of normal damage. This is the best aspect for the build, turning sever into a smoothie blender. I would recommend putting this on either your amulet or a 2H weapon since its very important for our damage.
  
• Aspect of the Damned: You deal [35-55]%[x] increased Shadow Damage to enemies afflicted by any curse. I put this on a Two Handed Sword or Axe to get the double effect for this passive, since all 3 of our major damage output is from Darkness Skills, so a 100% bonus to that is great value. Just make sure you are cursing enemies regularly to get the full value.
  
• Aspect of Grasping Veins: Gain [5-25]%[+] increased Critical Strike Chance for 6 seconds when you cast Corpse Tendrils. You deal [10-50]%[x] bonus Critical Strike Damage to enemies for 6 seconds after they are damaged by Corpse Tendrils. Since Corpse Tendrils doesnt cost any resource, and doesnt even consume a corpse, we will basically be spamming this off cooldown for as long as we have corpses. The reduced cooldown on abilities from hitting enemies with Decrepify makes Corpse Tendrils recharge really fast with large groups of enemies, so this aspect will be on basically all the time when fighting big groups.
  
• Aspect of Decay & Blighted Aspect: Each time the Shadowblight Key Passive deals damage to enemies, it increases the next Shadowblight’s damage within 10 seconds by [30-50]%[x], stacking up to 5 times.
  You deal [35-55%] increased damage for 6 seconds after the Shadowblight Key Passive damages enemies 10 times. Since we are doing tons of Shadow Damage that procs Shadowblight very often, it makes sense to get the aspects that make Shadowblight even better. These work passively, so there isnt any changes to gameplay you need to accomodate these.
  
• Umbral Aspect: Restore [1.0-6.0] resource of your Primary Resource when you Crowd Control an enemy. This aspect is great for any time Soulrift is on Cooldown and you need energy to cast Sever. This build can get very essence hungry, so this aspect is great for trying to get more sustain early in the game; later on there will be plenty of uniques you can find to get better resource management.

Great Aspects

• Aspect of Hardened Bones: Your Minions gain [10-30]% increased Damage Reduction.
• Aspect of Disobedience: You gain [0.4-0.8%][+] increased Armor for 4 seconds when you deal any form of damage, stacking up to [25.00 – 46.00]%[+]
• Aspect of the Cursed Aura: You automatically Curse enemies around you with Decrepify and Iron Maiden. Curses inflicted this way spread to surrounding targets every [2.5 – 0.3] seconds and last 4 seconds outside of the aura.
• Aspect of Metamorphosis: When you Evade you turn into a cloud of bats, becoming Unstoppable for 3 seconds. Enemies along your path take 2 Physical damage and are inflicted with Vampiric Curse. Evade’s Cooldown is increased by [10 – 4] seconds.
• Exploiter’s Aspect: You have 20% increased Crowd Control Duration. While enemies are Unstoppable, you deal [20-40%]
  

Equipment Affixes

For affixes, you will want to generally focus on Intelligence, Crit/Vulnerable Damage, Crit Chance, Damage Over Time, and Armor, Resistances or Life. Ideally, you’ll want to get a Crit Chance affix on all jewelry and gloves, since crits are the majority of your damage. Also, try to pump Vulnerable Damage more than I did; I got some pretty unlucky rolls and was only able to get a measly 44%, when you should have around 200%. You should switch between 2 Handed Swords and Axes depending on whether you need the inherent Critical Damage or Vulnerable affix if possible, to balance it out.

Besides damage, you also generally want to get more armor and resistances as you get further into the game, since torment difficulties will lower your armor and resistances to a point where survivability becomes more important than damage. There are a few specific affixes I recommend:

• Helm, Chest, Legs: Armor, Max Life, Resistances and Cooldown Reduction on Helmet
• Gloves: Critical Strike Chance, Critical Strike Damage/Damage over Time, Ranks to Sever
• Boots: Intelligence, Movement Speed, Armor/Ranks to Corpse Tendrils
• 2 Handed Weapon: Intelligence, Vulnerable Damage/Critical Strike Damage, Damage Over Time
• Amulet: Ranks to Gloom, Critical Strike Chance, Movement Speed, Armor/Resistance if necessary
• Rings: Critical Strike Chance, Intelligence, Critical Strike Damage

Gems

When it comes to gems, you’ll want to have the following:

• Weapon: Emerald, Sapphire or Amethyst depending on which damage you lack
• Armor: Topaz to add more Intelligence
• Jewelry: You’ll want to add the Elemental Resistances that you are lacking, or armor you are missing from skull gems to get to the 1000 cap.

Tempering

There are a few really good tempers for this build; Firstly Shadow Augments – Execution for weapons has an affix which gives a chance of casting sever twice, which doubles the reaping lotus’ 3 spectres into 6. There is also Execution Innovation which has an affix to increase the size of Sever by up to 20%, which I highly recommend as well.

Other than damage, you should also try to get the Lucky Hit Chance to restore essence from the Wordly Stability resource temper, since we are hitting a bunch of lucky hits in this build.

Final Tips

For some final tips, I want to summarise what this build does; Decrepify adds a slow and stun CC which is great for the Umbral Aspect, Reduces cooldowns, and gives us the Damned aspect to increase our shadow damage by 70%. Corpse Explosion gives us 9% extra damage, generates essence, and triggers shadowblight often for the Blighted aspect (35% damage). Corpse Tendrils adds a slow for Umbral, adds vulnerable and gives Crit Chance + Damage with the Grasping Veins aspect. Soulrift gives us a huge essence boost, increases damage up to 30%, and adds vulnerable. Lastly, Sever has a 46% Lucky Hit Chance which we can use to create corpses, fortify, or reduce cooldowns with Decrepify. We use Reaping Lotus for a big damage boost, and temper for double cast + size.

The main combo I found myself getting used to is to sever a big group of enemies until corpse made, then use Corpse Tendril to group them up. Once they get pulled, then decrepify and ult for maximum possible damage output, and spam sever. Against bosses, this build is a bit of a hit or miss; most of the time you’ll melt bosses by generating corpses with sever, and getting energy back from Soulrift. However, sometimes you just don’t proc the Lucky Hits, which is why I kept the Decompose Basic Skill to keep myself from getting softlocked on essence in these boss fights. Once you get further into the game with more uniques for essence, you can probably respec some skill points to replace Decompose for Blood Mist. Until then, I recommend using the Aspect of Metamorphisis on your boots to get out of CC, which is something I found incredibly useful. Theres also two fantastic uniques you can get at the endgame, one of which is called The Unmaker from Beast in the Ice in Torment, and the other Greaves of the Empty Tomb from Grigoire, The Galvanic Saint. These are practically made for this build, so I highly recommend farming them at Torment 1.

---

Be sure to check out our Diablo 4 Wiki for any other questions you have about the game and the Builds page if you are looking for more Diablo IV Builds, as well as our Getting Started Guide if you are looking for more Diablo 4 content!