Necromancer Diablo 2 Class Guide
The Necromancer is master of the undead, summoning skeletons, casting curses and poison and bone based skills to destroy his enemies. The class is one of the original 5 from Classic Diablo 2 and has multiple viable builds available, with either a passive playstyle allowing your summoned warriors to do the work for you or mastering poison and bone skills and becoming a spell caster.
This is a very solid class for beginner players and those looking to try Hardcore mode for the first time, with the Summoning Spells skill tree providing you with plenty of support from summoned skeletons and revive monsters to both deal damage and shield you. More challenging builds come from focusing on the Poison and Bone Skills tree, with the most popular builds utilizing the Poison Nova skill or Bone Spear – which is also a very strong build for PvP action! Whichever path you choose to follow, you will make use of a variety of Curses at your disposal, to both boost your own damage and reduce the defence and resistances of your enemies.
The following sections will take you through the skill trees available to the Necromancer and the most popular builds.
Summoning Skills
The Summoning Skills tree is the best starter build if you are playing the game for the first time, or moving into Hardcore mode. You are able to summon a variety of monsters to fight by your side, including Skeleton Warriors, Skeleton Mages, Golems and also reviving monsters you have already slain. Your summons can also receive big bonuses from their corresponding mastery skill, making them a very strong and durable army as you fight your way through all difficulties. Following this build you have the potential for 30+ monsters fighting with you, and it’s a lot of fun watching them move from monster to monster destroying everything in their path.
Poison and Bone Skills
The Poison and Bone Skills tree allows you to become a spell caster, and contains one of the strongest spells for PvM – Corpse Explosion. Corpse Explosion explodes the bodies of monsters that you have slain, dealing damage to the surrounding monsters equal to a percentage of the slain monsters life. The reason this is so strong is that it scales all the way through the game, and once you reach Hell the monsters have a huge amount of life – which means you deal a huge amount of damage! This spell can be used with any Necromancer build, as even a single point here will work wonders. We also have the option of further damage dealing spells within this tree, the most notable being Poison Nova and Bone Spear, and also spells to shield us from damage in the form of Bone Shield.
Curses
Whichever build you choose to run with a Necromancer, you will always spend points in Curses as they are simply too good to ignore. Curses have the ability to significantly increase the damage taken by monsters, reduce their defence, make them run in fear, reduce their attack and walk speed and also reduce their resistances – there really is an option for everything. If you choose to build a Summon Necromancer you will primarily use the Amplify Damage and Decrepify curses to increase the damage of your summoned monsters, whereas a Poison Necromancer would use Lower Resist to reduce monster’s resistances and increase the amount of poison damage taken. Amplify Damage also significantly increase the amount of damage Corpse Explosion deals, making it even stronger for PvM!
