This is a Necromancer Sever leveling build and guide for Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred (D4). Read on to learn more about the Necromancer Sever leveling build as well as tips for leveling the Necromancer class in the Vessel of Hatred expansion and Season of Hatred Rising!

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Class Guide	Best Builds	Book of the Dead

Necromancer Sever Leveling Build

Sever Build Summary

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Summary		Skill Progression		Aspects and Affixes
Gems		Mercenary		Playstyle

Build Summary
Sever Leveling Build
	Focus: Leveling, Farming
Resource Efficient High survivability Strong AoE Damage Cooldown Reliant

This leveling build for Season 6 uses the new Ultimate Skill of the Necromancer called Soulrift. It allows us to gain an insane amount of Essence just by being active while also empowering our damage output. We then utilize Sever due to its strong early-game power and AoE clearing ability.

Sever Build Skills and Passives

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Summary		Skill Progression		Aspects and Affixes
Gems		Mercenary		Playstyle

※ More skills can be seen by scrolling vertically.

Active Skills
Basic Skill Tree ┗ Reap (1/5) 　┗ Enhanced Reap
Core Skill Tree ┗ Sever (5/5) 　┗ Enhanced Sever 　　┗ Paranormal Sever ┗ Hewed Flesh (1/3) 　┗ Imperfectly Balanced (3/3)
Corpse and Macabre Skill Tree 1 ┗ Blood Mist (1/5) ┗ Corpse Explosion (1/5) 　├ Fueled by Death (3/3) ┗ Grim Harvest (1/3) ┗ Necrotic Fortitude (1/3)
Curse Skill Tree ┗ Iron Maiden (1/5) 　　┗ Enhanced Iron Maiden 　　　┗ Abhorrent Iron Maiden ┗ Decrepify (1/5) 　　┗ Enhanced Decrepify 　　　┗ Abhorrent Decrepify ┗ Death's Embrace (3/3) ┗ Death's Approach(3/3) ┗ Amplify Damage (3/3) ┗ Precision Decay (3/3)
Corpse and Macabre Skill Tree 2 ┗ Reaper's Pursuit (3/3) 　　┗ Gloom (3/3) 　　┗ Crippling Darkness (1/3) 　　┗ Terror (3/3) ┗ Corpse Tendrils (1/5) 　　┗ Enhanced Corpse Tendrils 　　　┗ Plagued Corpse Tendrils
Ultimate Skill Tree ┗ Soulrift (5/5) 　┗ Prime Soulrift 　　┗ Supreme Soulrift ┗ Finality (3/3) 　├ Memento Mori (3/3) ┗ Stand Alone (3/3) 　┗ Inspiring Leader (3/3)
Key Passive ┗ Affliction

Sever Build Skill Progression

At the early levels, focus on unlocking and upgrading your active skills, particularly Sever, which will provide most of your damage and clear. Your secondary goal will be to continue leveling up while getting passives that increase your damage such as Imperfectly Balanced and Amplify Damage.

Progressing forward, you'll need to get Corpse Explosion as our Essence management is still poor and we'll want a secondary tool to deal damage while also filling up our essence tank. Unfortunately, Reap nor other primary skills are truly effective so we'll go with Corpse Explosion and Grim Harvest.

Our next spikes are our actives Corpse Tendril and finally, Soulrift. Corpse Tendrils is self-explanatory as it's a damage buff then getting the rest of the passives that increase damage (primarily from the Curse tree) then unlocking the Ultimates to get Soulrift.

From here onwards, get the rest of the missing skills while prioritizing the Affliction Key Passive and you should mostly be set with the actives as Soulrift greatly strengthens the build with barriers and essence generation.

Sever Build Book of the Dead

Skeleton Warriors	Skeleton Mages	Golem
Reaper Sacrifice	Cold Sacrifice	Iron Sacrifice

We'll be sacrificing our Summons for this solo Soulrift Sever build. As a shadow build that relies on upfront damage instead of DoTs via Sever, we'll be choosing to sacrifice Reaper, Cold Mages, and the Iron Golem.

These sacrifices will give us bonus Shadow Damage, Vulnerable Damage, and Critical Strike Damage, which are all stats this build likes to have.

Book of the Dead Guide

Sever Build Best Aspects and Affixes

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Summary				Aspects and Affixes
Gems		Mercenary		Playstyle

※ More gear Aspects can be seen by scrolling vertically.

Gear	Aspect and Affixes
Head	Aspect of Disobedience ・Armor ・Cooldown Reduction ・Lucky Hit Chance Temper: ・Utility - Decay Innovation 　┗ Soulrift Duration Defensive - Worldly Endurance 　┗ Maximum Life
Chest	Aspect of Concussive Strikes ・Intelligence ・Armor ・Maximum Lufe Temper: ・Utility - Decay Innovation 　┗ Soulrift Duration Defensive - Worldly Endurance 　┗ Maximum Life
Gloves	Aspect of Grasping Veins ・Intelligence ・Vulnerable Damage ・Lucky Hit Chance Temper: ・Offensive - Profane Finesse 　┗ Damage to Cursed Enemies ・Utility - Decay Innovation 　┗ Soulrift Duration
Pants	Aspect of the Cursed Aura ・Armor ・Max Life ・Any Elemental Resistance Temper: Utility - Decay Innovation 　┗ Soulrift Duration Defensive - Worldly Endurance 　┗ Maximum Life
Boots	Aspect of Slaughter ・Resistance to Element ・Armor ・Movement Speed Temper: ・Utility - Decay Innovation 　┗ Soulrift Duration Defensive - Worldly Endurance 　┗ Maximum Life
Amulet	Aspect of the Damned ・Intelligence ・Cooldown Reduction ・Lucky Hit Chance Temper: ・Resource - Necromancer Efficiency 　┗ Ultimate Cooldown Reduction ・Offensive - Profane Finesse 　┗ Damage to Cursed Enemies
Ring	Aspect of Retribution ・Lucky Hit Chance ・Intelligence ・Vulnerable Damage Temper: ・Resource - Necromancer Efficiency 　┗ Ultimate Cooldown Reduction ・Offensive - Profane Finesse 　┗ Damage to Cursed Enemies
Ring	Aspect of Empowering Reaper ・Lucky Hit Chance ・Intelligence ・Vulnerable Damage Temper: ・Resource - Necromancer Efficiency 　┗ Ultimate Cooldown Reduction ・Offensive - Profane Finesse 　┗ Damage to Cursed Enemies
2-Handed Sword	Reaping Lotus' Aspect ・Intelligence ・Vulnerable Damage ・Damage Temper: ・Weapons - Shadow Augments - Execution 　┗ Chance for Sever to Cast Twice ・Offensive - Profane Finesse 　┗ Damage to Cursed Enemies

Sever Build Best Gems and Runewords

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Summary		Skill Progression		Aspects and Affixes
Gems		Mercenary		Playstyle

Sever Build Best Gems

Armor	Weapons	Jewelry
Topaz	Emerald	Diamond

For gems, it's best to slot in Topazes to your armor slots as these gems increase your Intelligence, which translates to more damage and resistances. For your weapons, Emeralds are the best choice as this can increase your damage via Critical hits. However, for the early game, you can also go for Sapphires to capitalize on the Vulnerable damage while your build still has low Critical Strike Chances.

Jewelry slots will be the most flexible as you'll want to reach the cap of 70% Resistances for all elemental types as well as reaching the maximum armor value so feel free to adjust these depending on your current stat setup.

Sever Build Best Runewords

Runeword 1
Poc Zec

For our Runewords, Zec + Poc is our only recommended choice as it can greatly lower our Soulrift's cooldown. This also works great with our Sever while Soulrift is active because we'll be using more resources while under the effect of Soulrift which will allow Soulrift to further gain more cooldown reduction.

Sever Build Mercenary

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Summary		Skill Progression		Aspects and Affixes
Gems		Mercenary		Playstyle

Mercenary	Reinforcement
Varyana	Raheir

Add Varyana as Your Main Mercenary

Varyana's passive effect greatly enhances not just this build but the whole Necromancer playstyle as a whole. It's worth taking her just for the passive movement speed you get from her Massacre passive which can quickly stack up as the this build can quickly decimate groups of enemies.

Going for her Bloodthirst skill route also increases your attackspeed which allows you to throw more Severs due thanks to your near-limitless resource.

Varyana Mercenary Guide

Choose Raheir as Your Reinforcement

For your Reinforcement Mercenary, Raheir is arguably the best one in terms of active skills. We'll want to set Raheir's skill to Bastion which would redirect 90% of all damage you'll take to Raheir. However, we'll want this skill for its next effect which is granting Unstoppable to you for 1 second. We'll then have Raheir's opportunity usage to Crowd Control which means Raheir will dispel the crowd control on you whenever you get stunned or have any other form of crowd control applied to you.

Raheir Mercenary Guide

Sever Build Playstyle and Rotation

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Summary		Skill Progression		Aspects and Affixes
Gems		Mercenary		Playstyle

The play style of the Sever Necromancer mainly revolves around the uptime of Soulrift. Once Soulrift is active, you are extremely empowered which allows you to non-stop use your Sever and is your strongest point. Once it's down, its time to utilize some manual usage of curses to activate Affliction and regain Essence in the process. Repeat this playstyle changes between Soulshift Sever spam and Curse + Sever spam depending on Soulshift's uptime.

1. Cast Soulrift and use Sever Non-stop to maximize the resource generation from Soulshift
2. Once Soulrift is down, reposition yourself to apply curses to enemies near you while using Decrepify on units far from you before attacking to maximize your cooldown reduction from Lucky Hits.
3. Rely on Corpse Explosion damage when you run out of essence and Soulrift is still on Cooldown.
4. Re-activate Soulrift to regain your Essence and use Sever non-stop once again.

Necromancer Leveling Tips for Season 6

Start with Hard Difficulty Complete Call of the Underworld Quest at Level 25 Immediately Learn Soulrift When Possible Play Through the New Content and Activities

Start with Hard Difficulty

Hard Difficulty is the perfect starting difficulty in the game. It does not increase the game's difficulty by a huge amount while massively increasing the multiplier you gain for experience and gold drop.

Best Difficulty Tier to Start With

Complete Call of the Underworld Quest at Level 25

We recommend immediately completing Call of the Underworld at level 25 as this will unlock the Golem skill for your Necromancer. While we do sacrifice our minions, clearing this quest will allow us to also gain the perks of the sacrificed Iron Golem for a decent amount of Critical Strike boost.

Call of the Underworld Quest Walkthrough

Immediately Learn Soulrift When Possible

Once you amass enough experience points and gain access to Soulrift, make sure to learn the Ultimate Skill as soon as possible as your build's potential will massively increase from its active effects. Reallocate your points or disregard your current skill point investment on other skills to ensure that you get this Ultimate Skill in the earliest time you can.

Soulrift Skill Effects and How to Use

Participate in New Content and Activities

The rest of your gear and aspects can be obtained by grinding out activities such as Helltides and Hatred Rising Event. Make sure to spend time participating in these events, as they have a good chance of dropping what you need.

It's also best to take part in the new Vessel of Hatred content, if you were able to purchase the expansion.

Best Necromancer Endgame Build

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Build Guides and Tier List

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