As of now, Diablo 4 Season 4 will be released on May 14, 2024 at approximately 1 PM EDT. Therefore, it is crucial to complete the remaining tasks in Season of the Construct and prepare a competent starting build before the start of the new season.
Here I bring you one of the best solo tank builds in Diablo 4, Shadow Necromancer endgame build. This tank can deal pretty decent damage and allow you to work your way into Season 4.
Before jumping in, I want to remind you that in order to complete this build and maximize damage, it is very necessary to buy Diablo 4 Gold in advance! Without further ado, let’s start building.
Skill
Shadow Necromancer differs from most builds in Diablo 4 because it relies on DoT damage to kill most monsters, rather than huge critical hits. So boosting critical strike is meaningless for most of the damage this build does.
In exchange, we used like a hit for some damage-dealing mechanics. They will always naturally roll with a lucky hit.
Let’s move on to skills in this area. Our major source of damage is Corpse Explosion with the miasma passive. This will cause massive shadow damage to enemies standing in it for 6 seconds.
Our goal is to create as many pools as possible by spawning as many bodies as possible. Because the effects are additive, you can use this setting to melt group monsters or even bosses for efficient farming of D4 Gold.
This can be achieved through a combination of active and passive skills. The active skill that helps is Reap, and when you take Acolyte’s Reap, it gives you a corpse when you hit. Refreshed every 5 seconds.
Sever is another great skill that helps with corpse spawning and is our spendable spender. It benefits from Paranormal Sever, which is also an important source of vulnerability.
Then Blood Mist will also be mentioned, as the horrific passive allows you to create a corpse every second without bleeding. Plus, the immunity you gain from doing so makes it outstanding.
There is also a passive skill in this skill tree, Hewed Flesh, which gives you a 12% chance to create a corpse of an unlucky hit. This is our primary generator of corpses, which triggers with every damage from Shadow Pool. That’s why Lucky Hit is so important for this build, and having a source for it is great.
How To Improve Survivability?
In addition, we also need some utility skills to help us survive.
Corpse Tendrils and their upgraded skills allow you to pull and stun mobs, then create Blood Orbs to help you heal. This is an impressive skill and one that I usually use at the beginning of a pull.
Bone Storm is also a skill I use on monster packs, but I usually save it for elites. Because whenever Bone Storm deals damage to an enemy, Aspect of Shielding Storm will grant you a barrier equal to 2%-5% of your base health for 10 seconds. This will generally keep you alive in large pools and elite battles.
But sometimes, you do get hit hard. This is where Blood Mist comes into play. It gives you on-demand immunity and also creates corpses. So this is a good way to get out of danger.
Passives
We also implemented some passives to help round out the character.
We use Grim Harvest for Essence region, which allows us to cast spells faster. We also get an additional 9% damage after consuming a corpse with Fueled by Death. This only increases the damage since we’re always exploding corpses.
Additionally, Death’s Embrace and Necrotic Carapace are great defensive passives. Death’s Embrace will reduce our damage to close enemies, while also giving us a small damage increase. Necrotic Carapace then gives us Fortify every time our skill creates a corpse, which happens often.
Finally, when we use Sacrificing or Minions, which we run individually in Memento Mori, these only give us passive damage reduction and sacrifice bonuses, respectively.
Items And Aspects
Now let’s take a look at Diablo 4 Items and Aspects that make this build work.
In my opinion, there is really only one Diablo 4 unique item that can be used with this build, and that is Harlequin Crest. This was a game changer for me and completely changed the build. What it does instead of immediately detonating the corpse is create a skeleton that rushes towards the enemy and explodes. This is crazy.
It gives us a whopping 30% damage buff. This number gets higher the longer we stay in one place. So for the most part, we try not to move unless necessary. This buff increases gradually, but disappears immediately when you move.
For Aspect, Ultimate Shadow is great because it makes Bone, Storm and Darkness scale, so we can benefit from all Darkness passive skills.
Aspect of Shielding Storm is also a good choice for us. This enhances Necromancer’s defenses, granting them a barrier equal to a percentage of their base health every time Bone Storm damages an enemy. This has great synergy with Aspect of The Protector.
Ghostwalker Aspect is also very critical in this build. It has two Wildcards, one giving you extra damage reduction and the other giving you an extra movement speed bonus. But these are just my choices. You can choose whatever you want here.
Paragon Board Explained
Now let’s look at Paragon Board.
The first board we are going to use is Wither. Each additional shadow damage has a chance to cause more than 50% of shatter damage. And these chances increase for every 50 points of your willpower. This means this build is driven by Intelligence and Willpower in terms of damage.
There are also tons of great nodes on this board that can buff damage over time. All in all, this is a great board.
The next great board is Flesh-Eater. Every 5 corpses consumed adds a flat 40% damage, and we’ve been completely devouring corpses. So that’s great. I think this will continue forever.
Next up is Scent of Death. Since corpses surrounded us, many times we cannot consume them all. So if there are at least 2 corpses nearby you will get 15% damage reduction. When there are no corpses nearby, you deal 15% more damage.
For the last one, I chose Blood Begets Blood. Although I don’t have enough legendary Diablo 4 items, I have a lot of good rare items that enhance Blood Orbs. This node can increase the damage of Blood Orbs by 5%, up to 15%, for 5 seconds.
Outro
All in all, this Shadow Necromancer is a great build. But one thing I want to mention is that all build sets are endless. I think there are many ways to create a character in this game and you should choose the one that best suits your play style. See you next time.
