Diablo 4 Sever Soulrift Necromancer Leveling Build Season 6 - Soulshredder
Oct. 7, 2024Diablo 4 Sever Soulrift Necromancer Leveling Build Season 6 – Soulshredder
Diablo 4SeverSoulriftNecromancerLevelingBuild– Soulshredder Guide: In this Diablo 4Necromancerlevelingbuild, I’ll show you a NecroBuildthat makes use of theNecromancer’snew Sever aspect as well as the new Shadow ultimate,Soulrift. If you enjoybuildswhere you set up a bunch of buffs, then spam an ability to blend enemies to a fine dust, then this Necro levelingBuildwill be perfect for you!
Also, be sure to check out ourDiablo 4 WikiandInteractive Mapif you need help finding specificAltars of Lilith,Dungeons, orSide Quests!
Thisbuildrevolves entirely around maximizing our DPS withSever, one of theNecromancer’score shadow skills. The recent patch for Vessel of Hatred introduced a new aspect, Reaping Lotus, which is the cornerstone of thisbuild. 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 abuildthat can be best descriped as a smoothie blender, with scythes chopping up enemies rapidly as they stand in place stunned and grouped fromCorpse Tendrils. It’s a pretty satisfyingbuildwhich I found very fun to optimise and tinker with.
The main idea is to buff the damage we get from castingSeveras much as we can from our aspects and skills, while also getting a bunch of essence so we can spam cast it. The newSoulriftultimate 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 bothSeverandSoulrift. Our last damaging skill to round off thebuildis Blighted Corpse Explosion, another darkness skill that we can buff with aspects and passives to further empower ourSeverplaystyle.
We’re aiming to create the perfect setup to maximize the power of eachSevercast, using Decrepify,Corpse Tendrils, and Blighted Corpse Explosion to amplify damage. So, lets take a look at the skill tree.
In the Basic cluster, I put 2 points into decompose for Enhanced Decompose. This is a skill that actually stuck with mybuildthe 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.
In the core cluster, we want to max outSeverto 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 thisbuildsinceSevercan get around 50% lucky hit chance, and being able to spawn a corpse from Sever is very important for leading on withCorpse Tendrilsand Blighted Corpse Explosion.
The passive after Hewed Flesh is Imperfectly Balanced, which increases the cost ofSeverby 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 thisbuild.
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 thisbuild.
Moving onto the Curse cluster, we first haveDecrepify. 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 withSever, Corpse Explosion andSoulriftto get as many lucky hits as possible to reduce the cooldown ofSoulrift, 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 ourbuild.
In the 2nd Corpse & Macabre cluster, we have the skillCorpse Tendrilswith the modifier PlaguedCorpse Tendrils, which will group up enemies, stun them and make them vulnerable. This is the most important supporting skill forSever, 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 orCorpse 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.
In the Ultimate Cluster, I maxed outsoulriftand got its 2 modifiers.Soulriftwill 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 thisbuild, since you get all these bonuses which help you deal more damage, and amps your essence to spam castSever.
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.
Lastly the key passive cluster. For thisbuild, 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 thisbuild.
Minions are not very valuable for thisbuildonce 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.
Luckily, most of the aspects in thisbuildare obtainable from dungeons, but you will need to find the Reaping Lotus aspect in order to exponentially boost the damage from this build.
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:
When it comes to gems, you’ll want to have the following:
There are a few really good tempers for thisbuild; FirstlyShadow Augments – Executionfor weapons has an affix which gives a chance of castingsevertwice, 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.
For some final tips, I want to summarise what thisbuilddoes; 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 Tendrilsadds a slow for Umbral, adds vulnerable and gives Crit Chance + Damage with the Grasping Veins aspect.Soulriftgives 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 tosevera big group of enemies until corpse made, then useCorpse Tendrilto group them up. Once they get pulled, then decrepify and ult for maximum possible damage output, and spam sever. Against bosses, thisbuildis a bit of a hit or miss; most of the time you’ll melt bosses by generating corpses with sever, and getting energy back fromSoulrift. 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 ourDiablo 4 Wikifor any other questions you have about the game and theBuildspage if you are looking for more Diablo IVBuilds, as well as ourGetting Started Guideif you are looking for more Diablo 4 content!
Castielle
Senior Editor at Fextralife. I enjoy gaming, playing and watching sports, cooking yummy food, watching a good movie and hanging out with Fex.
