Necromancer Build Guide Diablo 2 Resurrected | Summoner Necro

Diablo 2 Resurrected Necromancer Build Guide for the Summoner Necromancer. This is an End Game Necromancer Build that can get you through Nightmare and even Hell Difficulty in Diablo 2 Resurrected. If you are looking for an End Game Necromancer Build, then this Guide is for you.

Class: Necromancer
Skill Line Focus: Summoning Spells
Build Focus: Summons
Main Attribute: Vitality
Difficulty Level: Nightmare/Hell
Level: 40 – 90+

Diablo 2 Resurrected Necromancer Build | Summoner Necromancer

The Summoner Necromancer conjures skeletons and resurrects corpses to fight against the forces of evil. You’ll be using Raise Skeleton, Clay Golem and Revive to conjure your minions, Corpse Explotion to deal AoE damage and Decrepify , Amplify Damage and Life Tap to help your minions during fights. While playing as a Summoner, you’ll send your minions to the front to do the hack and slash while you use the Corpse Explosion spell and Curses to aid them.

This build is intended to be used for Nightmare and Hell difficulties starting around around Lvl 40. You can start the game with this build, but I personally recommend you use our Bone Necromancer Beginner build instead, and then respec into this one. If you are already playing and want to respect into this build though, the easiest way to do it is by claiming the Den of Evil reward from Akara at the Rogue Encampment. You’ll get 3 respecs (1 for each difficulty) and you’ll need to be on the same difficulty to reclaim them.

Necromancer Build Guide Stats | Summoner Necro

Like most Builds in Diablo 2 Resurrected, our Stats distribution will focus on assigning enough points into Strength to meet equipment requirements, and then assigning everything else into Vitality to gain as much Life as possible.

Strength: Just enough to use your equipment. This will greatly depend on the gear that you are using, and the +Strength that you get from the rest of your equipment.
Dexterity: No points required
Vitality: All remaining points should be spent here.
Energy: No points required

Having a Hellfire Torch and an Annihilus will greatly reduce your stat investment into Strength. These unique charms provide between +10-20 to all Attributes and +10-20 to all Elemental Resistances. Having both in your inventory will save you between 20 and 40 stats points that you can spend into Vitality greatly increasing your health pool. The additional passive resistances will also allow you to depend less on +All Resistances equipment, opening up more options.

If you don’t have a Hellfire Torch or an Annihilus yet, I strongly recommend that you get them as soon as you can. Perfect rolled ones are very expensive, but you can get bad rolled ones for very affordable prices. Make sure to get a low roll when you are starting off and then upgrade it when you have enough money.

Necromancer Build Guide Skills | Summoner Necro

The Summoner Necromancer focuses on the Summoning Tree, but you’ll also be spending some points in the Poison and Bone and Curse Trees. You’ll use the following Skills when playing this Diablo 2 Resurrected Necromancer Build:

Raise Skeleton

Skeletons are by far the most powerful summon the Necromancer has. You can have multiple skeletons active at the same time and they attack from melee range. This is very useful because, when you encounter enemies, your Skeletons will march forward creating a living wall between you and your enemies. This allows you to summon new skeletons and spam Corpse Explosion safely.

Skeletons become more powerful and raise in number with each point assigned into the skill. They’ll also gain additional life and damage from Skeleton Mastery and Elemental Resistances from the Summon Resist skill.

Skeleton Mastery

This skill greatly increases Damage and Hit Points of both your Skeletons, and of any monster that you summon using the Revive Skill, making it a must for this build. Since you’ll have a lot of Skeletons, and hopefully some Monsters, you should see great benefits here.

Summon Resist

This Skill passively increases Elemental Resistances of all your minions, including Skeletons, Resurrected Enemies and your Golem. You’ll only want to assign 1 point here, as you’ll get a lot of +Skills from your equipment which will be more than enough for your minions.

Clay Golem

The Clay Golem is great because you can cast it as many times as you like, allowing you to maintain 100% uptime. This particular golem applies a slow when it hits enemies, which works great against all bosses and can be stacked with your Decrepify curse. Since you don’t need a corpse, the golem is also your main way killing enemies when you are starting off your army.

Revive

This skill allows you to resurrect an enemy monster with increased health. In addition, it’ll get all the benefits from Skeletal Mastery and Summon Resist, making it the most powerful minion that you can get. The biggest downside of this skill is that resurrected monsters will only last for 180 seconds, at which point they’ll die. This means that you’ll need to constantly revive enemies after each battle to keep your army going. For this reason, I only recommend assigning around 5 to 10 points here. You’ll get a lot of +Skills from your equipment, and you won’t have enough corpses to keep up if you max it out.

Revived Monsters will do their normal and skilled attacks but they will not raise other monsters. Some monsters have special attacks such as Lightning, Fire Balls, Meteors, Blizzards, and more. Once you convert these Monsters, they will use their special attacks against their former friends. It’s also worth mentioning that Revived monsters will not act like your regular minions, but instead retain their regular mechanics and movements that you would expect to see when they are facing you. This means that cowardly monsters will usually move away from the battlefield and others might be slow or have idle times.

Corpse Explosion

Widely considered one of the best skills in Diablo 2 Resurrected, Corpse Explosion allows you to explode your enemy’s bodies, dealing a % of the corpse life as 50% Physical Damage and 50% fire damage in a large AoE. Since Nightmare and Hell difficulty monsters have very large health pools, this spell only gets better as you further progress into the game.

One very important thing to consider, is that once you explode a corpse you won’t be able to raise a skeleton or revive the body, meaning that you’ll often have to manage the amount of corpses at your disposal. I highly recommend that you always prioritize maintaining your army, over dealing damage.

Amplify Damage

This skill lowers enemy Physical Resistance by 100%. It will also remove the Physical Immunity of many Monsters, allowing you to be able to clear all content in the game. This skill works on both regular enemies and Bosses, and you should use it when you want to maximize the amount of damage and are not worried so much about losing Skeletons or resurrected enemies. Since Corpse Explosion deals 50% physical damage, enemies under this curse will take additional damage as well.

Decrepify

This skill curses a group of enemies applying 3 different effects at the same time making them move and attack slower, deal less damage, and makes them take amplified physical damage. I personally prefer this skill over Amplify Damage, because it allows your skeletons and revived monsters to stay alive for a larger period of time, even if fights take a little longer.

The slow effect stacks with the Clay Golem slow, allowing you to stun-lock some bosses and uniques. The Decrepify radius is rather small, and assigning more points into it will only increase its duration. So you’ll want to repeatedly cast it when facing multiple enemies.

Life Tap

This spell curses a group of monsters so that damaging them gives the attacker, in this case your summons, life. This curse is great to restore your army’s health, and I personally like to use it every two encounters or so to make sure all my units are full life.

Level 40 Necromancer Skill Distribution

Since this guide is starting at Lvl 40, you’ll want to first focus on your Raise Skeletons and Skeleton Mastery, and then work towards Corpse Explosion. You should have around 43 skill points at lvl 40 (39 from levels, and 4 from Quests). You should have your Skills placed in the following manner:

LEVEL 40 NECROMANCER SKILLS
Skill	Points Spent
Raise Skeleton	20
Skeleton Mastery	4
Clay Golem	1
Golem Mastery (Pre-requisite)	1
Summon Resist	1
Skeletal Mage (Pre-requisite)	1
Blood Golem (Pre-requisite)	1
Iron Golem (Pre-requisite)	1
Revive	1
Teeth (Pre-requisite)	1
Corpse Explosion	5
Amplify Damage	1
Weaken (Pre-requisite)	1
Terror (Pre-requisite)	1
Decrepify	1
Iron Maiden (Pre-requisite)	1
Life Tap	1

Level 90 Necromancer Skill Distribution

At level 90 you should have 101 skill points to distribute, 89 from Levels and 12 from Quests, and they should look like this:

LEVEL 90 NECROMANCER SKILLS
Skill	Points Spent
Raise Skeleton	20
Skeleton Mastery	20
Clay Golem	20
Golem Mastery (Pre-requisite)	1
Summon Resist	1
Skeletal Mage (Pre-requisite)	1
Blood Golem (Pre-requisite)	1
Iron Golem (Pre-requisite)	1
Revive	9
Teeth (Pre-requisite)	1
Corpse Explosion	20
Amplify Damage	1
Weaken (Pre-requisite)	1
Terror (Pre-requisite)	1
Decrepify	1
Iron Maiden (Pre-requisite)	1
Life Tap	1

Budget Equipment | Summoner Necro

Since your minions will be the ones doing the fighting, you’ll want to focus all your equipment on making them stronger with +Skills and leave your own resistances as a secondary priority. When you are starting off you’ll obviously have less gear, so here are some cheap Runewords and Unique items that you can use while you search for better gear.

Helmets

Lore (Runeword): This helmet provides +1 to all Skills as well as +30% lightning resistance which is perfect for this build. You can farm the runes by completing Nightmare Countess.
Uniques: Any helmet that provides +Skills works great here. For example Tarnhelm, Peasant Crown, Wormskull, etc.

Weapon

Wands (All Rarities): Wands are the best way to increase your +Skills early on. You can buy them from merchants at any town or search for Magical, rare or Unique ones. For secondary stats you’ll want to search for Faster Cast Rate or any other skill mentioned in this build.
Spirit (Runeword): This Runeword provides +2 To All Skills and +25-35% FCR. It also increases your defense, thanks to Faster Hit Recovery and Vitality. The additional mana is also great. Finding a 4 socketed weapon can be a little tricky, but stay on the lookout for Crystal Swords, Longswords and Broadswords. If you happen to play the Secret Cow Level, if you find any unsocketed of these types of Weapons, you can get a guaranteed 4 sockets from Larzuk by completing the Siege on Harrogath quest
White (Runeword): Runes for this wand can be farmed by running Nightmare Countess. While better suited for a Bone Necromancer, this wand is still a great budget option for this build, providing +4 to Skeleton Mastery, Faster Cast Rate, and +3 to Poison and Bone Skills, which include Corpse Explosion. A very important note here, is that you can craft the White Runeword on wands of normal rarity that already have +skills. So if for example you can craft it on a wand that already has +2 to Raise Skeletons you’ll keep that mod when you craft the Runeword.

Shield

Ancient’s Pledge (Runeword): This shield doesn’t provide +Skills but compensates by granting a huge boost to resistances allowing you to survive early Hell.
Shrunken Heads (All Rarities): These shields usually come with +Skills on them, so make sure to check their mods each time you find one.

Armor

Stealth (Runeword): This is by far the best armor that you can get early on. The 25% Faster Cast Rate is nice, while the poison resistance and Faster Hit Recovery (FHR) provides more survivability.
Uniques: Any unique armor with +Skills is also great for this build, like for example The Spirit Shroud, Skin of the Vipermagi, Trang-Oul’s Scales, Que-Hegan’s Wisdom, etc.

Gloves

When it comes to gloves you’ll want to focus on defensive stats such as Life and Resistances.

Belt

For the belt you’ll want something with Life and Resistances.

Boots

You’ll want to search for Faster Run/Walk speed on your boots as well as Resistances and Life. Run/Walk speed is important to quickly navigate through the map so make sure to get it.

Rings

You’ll want to search for rings that have life, stats and resistances as well as Faster Cast Rate.

Amulet

Try to find an amulet that provides +Necro Skills or +Necro Summoning skills. Other than that, you’ll want to search for Stats, Health and resistances.

Charms

For charm’s you’ll mainly want to look for +Life, +Mana and +Summoning Skills.