Blood Lance Necromancer Leveling Build Guide for Diablo IV Season 12 - Slaughter

The Season 9 theme is the Sins of the Horadrim. This season allows you to craft unique Horadric Spells using three different components: a Catalyst, an Infusion, and three Arcana. You earn Catalysts and Infusions through the Seasonal Questline, and Arcana can be found while exploring Nightmare Dungeons. You choose a Skill as the trigger for your Horadric Spell. Once in Torment I or higher, Horadric Jewels can be crafted, which replace the Gems in your Jewelry, adding additional power to your build.

You use Disintegrate as it has a long duration and is incredibly reliable. As long as you are positioned between the enemy and the Disintegrate, it applies its effects to the target.

You use Nebulous Extract as the Infusion to have more tankiness, as it reduces enemy damage by 10%.

Tranquil Stone - This Arcana gives you access to high uptime on Unstoppable "for free".
Shifting Powder - Due to the importance of Movement Speed, using Shifting Powder allows you to meet the movement speed requirement early on.
Invigorating Helix - While leveling, you do not have access to a lot of healing. This helps you stay durable in combat.

Sapping Crux - Makes you have higher Vulnerable uptime if you find this early on.

During the leveling always use your highest DPS weapon available for more damage. Ideally Ultimately, the best weapon for leveling is a Two-Handed Sword or Scythe for as much damage as possible. Otherwise, follow the priority list below. While you don't have all of the desired temper manuals available, simply try to get anything useful on your gear until you acquire the right ones. For example, % Damage, Damage to Close, Vulnerable Damage, etc. all work as long as you activate their conditions. Likewise, you can temper multiple defensive options such as Resistances, Life, Armor to fill gaps in your survivability. Tempering low level gear is relatively cheap and the results can be very impactful.

Tip: For the early game, Elemental Surge Weapon Tempers are very powerful due to their high base damage. If you find these, you may want to keep imprinting them on your weapons for an easier time.

The Codex of Power is a collection of Legendary Aspects you can imprint onto Rare or Legendary items at the Occultist. They unlock after completing specific Dungeons located around Sanctuary or salvaging items with these powers. Check out our Map Tool to locate these Dungeons.

For leveling, there are a few powers that can significantly help us if we have the funds to imprint them. In addition, keep an eye out for powerful Unique items you may find for this or other builds.

Must-have Dungeon unlocks

1. Blood Seeker's (Mercy`s Reach - Fractured Peaks)
2. Potent Blood (Betrayer`s Row - Dry Steppes)
3. Grasping Veins (Corrupted Grotto - Kehjistan)

Nice-to-have Dungeon unlocks

1. Disobedience (Halls of the Damned - Kehjistan)
2. Might (Dark Ravine - Dry Steppes)

Other useful Aspects (drop/gamble)

1. Gore Quills
2. Accelerating
3. Blood Boiling
4. Hardened Bones
5. Cursed Aura
6. Metamorphosis

What to Gamble

Great Uniques for this build

1. Mutilator Plate
2. Blood Moon Breeches

As you level up, you may get lucky and find some great random drops. Some of these can massively amplify your power and speed up the leveling by switching to another build. Keep in mind that there are many more Aspects and Uniques that can be useful to multiple builds; this just lists some of the most impactful ones. While we usually recommend starting with Endgame Builds at level 60, you often can make them work earlier with these drops:

Build-defining Aspects

• Tidal + Fastblood: Blood Wave Necromancer
• Shattered Spirit's + Requiem: Bone Spirit Necromancer

Build-defining Uniques

1. Ring of Mendeln: Minion Necromancer
2. Cruor's Embrace: Blood Surge Necromancer
3. Mutilator Plate: Blood Lance Necromancer
4. Kessime's Legacy: Blood Wave Necromancer

You can have up to two Runewords in your setup, each consisting of one Ritual and one Invocation Rune. Socket them in Two-Handed Weapons if your build calls for them, otherwise place them into your Armor pieces to replace normal gems. The Blood Lance Necromancer focuses on the following combos:

Best in Slot

In the end game with fully unlocked setup, you want to run the combinations below;

• Cir + Gar: This Rune combination allows you to trigger effects by spamming "free" skills like Raise Skeleton, even without hitting a target. It’s particularly useful for maintaining buffs from Runes between combats. The Critical Strike Chance boost from Gar is especially valuable when your gear falls short of reaching 100% crit chance.
• Cem + Lum: This pairing helps passively generate Essence in scenarios where resource generation would otherwise be limited. It reduces the time spent relying on Generators or alternative resource systems, improving overall efficiency.

Alternative choices

Especially during the leveling, as long as you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top Runes, you can also benefit from these options:

• Mot- For extra defense.
• Zec - Good option early game when your Soulrift is not yet permanent.

Mercenaries are unlocked during the Vessel of Hatred campaign and assist you in battle. There are 4 separate Mercenaries to choose from, each with their own skill trees and abilities. You can have one hired (permanent) mercenary during solo play and a reinforcement who assists you from time to time in certain situations.

• Hired: Varyana

Her Massacre is the strongest leveling ability out of all available Mercenaries and on top of that she even provides 25% Attack Speed.

• Reinforcement: Raheir

You choose Bastion for more defense whenever you engage Elites or Bosses.

In Diablo 4, you can level by completing the Campaign, collecting Grim Favors for the Tree of Whispers, completing Helltide activities, grinding Dungeons, clearing Strongholds, fighting in the Undercity of Kurast or interacting with the Seasonal Mechanics. While there are many ways to level up in Diablo 4, not all of them are equal.

As you approach level 60 with the Blood Lance Necromancer, you unlock higher item power gear that represents a massive jump in character power. This is a good time to refresh your setup with new tempers and imprints.

At level 60, Paragon Levels and The Pit unlock. Work towards Tier 10 to enter Torment 1, where the Endgame begins. Focus on overcapping your Armor (1000+) and Resistances (75%+) as you receive some penalties to your character's stats:

• -250 Armor per Torment difficulty
• -25% All Resistances per Torment difficulty

At this point, your setup should look roughly like this before you dive into min/maxing with Uniques, Mythics & Masterworking. With better gear, more levels and Glyphs, you can push further and eventually unlock higher difficulties for increased rewards.

This step marks the end of the leveling guide. Below is the Paragon setup to get you started in Torment difficulty, but ideally, you should now transition towards the endgame version of this build or choose another of your liking.

Use the slider to see progression steps. At around Paragon 200, leveling slows down significantly and all important Rare clusters, Legendary nodes and Glyph sockets should be unlocked. Afterwards, you can min/max your build with minor tweaks and by picking up additional smaller nodes.

To Level 15

1. Essence
2. Gravekeeper
3. Abyssal
4. Eliminator
5. Dominate

To Level 46

1. Dominate
2. Abyssal
3. Gravekeeper
4. Eliminator
5. Essence

Coming soon.