Corpse Explosion Blight Necromancer Abattoir of Zir Build (Season 2)

This is a Season 2 Corpse Explosion Blight endgame build and prepared for the new Abattoir of Zir for the Necromancer in Diablo 4 (D4).This build utilizes several Shadow DoT and Lucky Hit modifiers for a DoT centric build. Read on for the complete list of Vampiric Powers, Skills, and Aspects you need and how to play the build for Season 2 and clear the new Abattoir of Zir (AoZ).

Infinimist Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths

High and Consistent Damage

Blight Corpse Explosion plays almost identically to the well known Infinimist Build but with a twist of having Blight in its build. This means that its much more resource hungry than Infinimist (which doesn't use much resource at all) in exchange of a DPS boost. This means that this build variant suffers from a bit of durability loss in exchange of more fire power.

High Survivability

While we do mention that this build suffers a bit of durability loss than Infinimist, it doesn't mean that this build is suddenly the most fragile build in the game. We utilize a lot of lucky Hit to reduce our cooldowns from Decrepify which translates to more uptime for Blood Mist and Bone Storm which also translates to a higher survivability.

Easy Resource Management

Corpse Explosion Blight build uses several resource regenerating aspects and uniques to resolve our Essence management issues. We use Tibault's Will for free Essence whenever we dodge thanks to the Invulnerability from Metamorphosis and also maximize our corpse consumption with Corpse Explosion which gives us free essence from Grim Harvest. Very minor but Lidless Wall can also regenerate a bit of Essence on Lucky Hit which means the higher our Lucky hit chance is, the more consistent the build becomes.

Weaknesses

Cooldown Reliant

While we do have several lucky hit modifiers to reduce our cooldown, having an awkward timing of not being able to refresh all our cooldowns after a mob group encounter makes us very vulnerable. Without Bone Storm and Blood Mist, we become an extremely easy target with not much ways to answer threats as we don't have an instant method to kill threats and generate corpses to start up our combo.

To clear Abattoir of Zir, you'll need to defeat enough enemies to summon the Blood Seekers that will hunt you and defeat them in under 10 minutes. This is plenty of time so avoid rushing in if your cooldowns are unavailable and pace yourself properly when navigating the endgame dungeon.

Low Burst Potential

This is a given with DoT builds where we have consistent damage but low burst potential. This may cause us to struggle with enemies that have high HP and against bosses/elites. This is much more true against Blood Seekers.

Lucky Hit Dependent

Much life Infinimist, the Blight Corpse Explosion build is Lucky Hit dependent. If you don't have a decent amount of Lucky Hit Chance, the build will straight up, not function. This is also the reason we utilize certain affixes from defensive armor options like helms and even the Greaves of Empty Tomb to further ramp up our Lucky Hit Chance.

Corpse Explosion Blight Build Overview

Build Summary

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Summary		Skill Progression		Aspects & Affixes
Gems		Vampiric Powers		Paragon

Skills

Aspects & Uniques

Stats & Gems

Build Overview and Summary
Corpse Explosion Blight		Tier: Focus: PVE Playstyle: Solo and Party
Active Skills
Passive Skills

Build Overview and Summary
Corpse Explosion Blight		Tier: Focus: PVE Playstyle: Solo and Party
Aspects and Uniques
Tibault's Will X'Fal's Corroded Signet Greaves of the Empty Tomb Howl from Below Lidless Wall Aspect of Disobedience (Helm) Aspect of Shielding Storm (Pants) Blighted Aspect (Amulet) Aspect of Decay (Weapon) Aspect of Ultimate Shadow (Ring)

Build Overview and Summary
Corpse Explosion Blight		Tier: Focus: PVE Playstyle: Solo and Party
Stat Priorities			Recommended Gems
・Cooldown Reduction ・Vulnerable Damage ・Critical Strike Chance ・Intelligence ・Lucky Hit Chance ・Damage Reduction ・Damage Reduction while Fortified ・Damage Reduction from Close Enemies ・Armor			Ruby (Armor) Diamond (Jewelry) Skull (Weapon)

This build aims to utilize several Shadow DoT to increase our mob clearing capability. We also maximize our Lucky Hit Chance to trigger several Lucky Hit triggers for our build that will supplement our DPS even further. Said Lucky Hit triggers include X'Fal's Corroded Signet, Decrepify Cooldown triggers, Lidless Wall's Bone Storm, and additional essence regeneration from Aspect of the Long Shadow

Corpse Explosion Blight Build Breakdown

Skill Progression

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Summary		Skill Progression		Vampiric Powers
Aspects & Affixes		Gems		Paragon

Active Skills

Skill		Upgrade Path
Reap (1 Point)	→	Enhanced Reap
Blight (1 Point)	→	Enhanced Blight	Supernatural Blight
Blood Mist (4 Points)	→	Enhanced Blood Mist	Ghastly Blood Mist
Corpse Explosion (5 Points)	→	Enhanced Corpse Explosion	Blighted Corpse Explosion
Decrepify (1 Point)	→	Enhanced Decrepify	Abhorrent Decrepify
Corpse Tendrils (1 Point)	→	Enhanced Corpse Tendrils	Plagued Corpse Tendrils
Bone Storm (1 Point)	→	Prime Bone Storm	Supreme Bone Storm

Passive Skills

Corpse Explosion Blight Passives
Hewed Flesh (3 Points)	Grim Harvest (3 Points)	Fueled by Death (3 Points)
Death's Embrace (3 Points)	Amplify Damage (3 Points)	Reaper's Pursuit (1 Points)
Crippling Darkness (1 Points)	Gloom (3 Points)	Terror (4 Points)
Necrotic Carapace (1 Point)	Stand Alone (3 Points)	Memento Mori (3 Points)
Shadowblight (1 Point)

Skill Progression Breakdown

Note that this is an endgame build and its skill build progression is not ideal to be followed as a new character

Recommended Skill Progression
Lv.2	Lv.3	Lv.4	Lv.5
Reap	Enhanced Reap	Blight	Enhanced Blight
Lv.6	Lv.7	Lv.8	Lv.9
Supernatural Blight	Hewed Flesh	Corpse Explosion	Enhanced Corpse Explosion
Lv.10	Lv.11	Lv.12	Lv.13
Blighted Corpse Explosion	Corpse Explosion	Corpse Explosion	Corpse Explosion
Lv.14	Lv.15	Lv.16	Lv.17
Corpse Explosion	Grim Harvest	Grim Harvest	Grim Harvest
Lv.18	Lv.19	Lv.20	Lv.21
Fueled by Death	Fueled by Death	Fueled by Death	Amplify Damage
Lv.22	Lv.23	Lv.24	Lv.25
Amplify Damage	Amplify Damage	Necrotic Carapace	Bone Storm
Lv.26	Lv.27	Lv.28	Lv.29
Prime Bone Storm	Supreme Bone Storm	Death's Embrace	Death's Embrace
Lv.30	Lv.31	Lv.32	Lv.33
Death's Embrace	Decrepify	Enhanced Decrepify	Abhorrent Decrepify
Lv.34	Lv.35	Lv.36	Lv.37
Blood Mist	Shadowblight	Blood Mist	Blood Mist
Lv.38	Lv.39	Lv.40	Lv.41
Blood Mist	Stand Alone	Stand Alone	Stand Alone
Lv.42	Lv.43	Lv.44	Lv.45
Memento Mori	Memento Mori	Memento Mori	Hewed Flesh
Lv.46	Lv.47	Lv.48	Lv.49
Hewed Flesh	Reaper's Pursuit	Crippling Darkness	Terror
Renown Skill Points (Lv50 Onwards)
R1	R2	R3	R4
Terror	Terror	Gloom	Gloom
R5	R6	R7	R8
Gloom	Corpse Tendrils	Enhanced Corpse Tendrils	Plagued Corpse Tendrils
R9	R10
Enhanced Blood Mist	Ghastly Blood Mist

Book of the Dead

Raise Skeleton	→	Warrior (Reaper)	Sacrifice
	→	Mage (Cold)	Sacrifice
Golem	→	Blood	Sacrifice

We sacrifice Reaper, Cold Mage, and Blood Golem for Shadow Damage, Vulnerable Damage, and extra HP respectively for the following reasons.

• Reaper - extra shadow damage, we do not utilize Defenders as our Sacrifice due to our Shadow Resistance Nodes on the Paragon Board so the all resistance bonuses will be wasted as we already capped out one of our resistances.
• Mage - best choice as we apply vulnerable thanks to our Corpse Tendrils
• Blood Golem - Max HP bonus is better for our setup as we don't have a lot of Critical Strike modifier in this build to make use of its Critical Strike damage increase.

Book of the Dead Guide

Best Vampiric Powers

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Summary		Skill Progression		Vampiric Powers
Aspects & Affixes		Gems		Paragon

Vampiric Power Cost	Effect Explanation
Flowing Veins 2 2 2	You deal 60% increased Damage Over Time to enemies that are moving or affected by a Vampiric Curse. DoT damage bonus for our DoT-focused build.
Metamorphosis 2 2 2	When you Evade you turn into a cloud of bats, becoming Unstoppable for 4 seconds. Enemies along your path take 160% Physical damage and are inflicted with Vampiric Curse. Mandatory to this build and its synergy with Tibault's Will. Gives us a free Unstoppable trigger to gain all of Tibault's Will's bonus damage output.
Domination 1 0 0	You deal 24% increased damage to enemies who are Stunned, Immobilized, Frozen, or Feared. If they're also Injured and not an Elite, they're instantly killed. Corpse Tendrils stuns enemies which can increase our damage output tremendously with Domination.
Prey on the Weak 2 0 0	You deal 16% increased damage to Vulnerable enemies. Enemies are Vulnerable while affected by a Vampiric Curse from your other Vampiric Powers. We apply vulnerable easily thanks to Corpse Tendrils which translates to a steady damage output bonus from Prey on the Weak.
Anticipation 0 1 0	Your Ultimate Skills gain 20% Cooldown Reduction. Your Ultimate Skills gain 12% increased damage for each nearby enemy affected by your Damage Over Time effects. Faster Bone Storm cooldown to increase our survivability.
7 | 5 | 4	Total Pacts Required: 16

List of Vampiric Powers and Pacts Explained

Aspects and Affixes

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Summary		Skill Progression		Vampiric Powers
Aspects & Affixes		Gems		Paragon

Best Weapons

Weapon	Aspects and Affixes
Wand	Aspect of Decay Each time the Shadowblight Key Passive deals damage to enemies, it increases the next Shadowblight's damage within 10 seconds by (20-40)%, stacking up to 5 times. ・+ Lucky Hit Chance (Inherent) ・+ Intelligence ・+ Damage to Slowed Enemies ・+ Damage Over Time ・+ Damage to Crowd Controlled Enemies
Shield	Lidless Wall Lucky Hit - While you have an active Bone Storm, hitting an unaffected enemy has a (5-25)% chance to spawn an additonal storm at their location. Each of your active Sacrifice bonuses increases the chance by 25% and the total additional Bone Storms you can have by +1. ・+ 60% Blocked Damage Reduction (Inherent) ・+ 20% Block Chance (Inherent) ・+ 80% Mainhand Weapon Damage (Inherent) ・+ Thorns (Inherent) ・+ X% Attack Speed ・+ X% Lucky Hit: Chance to Restore Your Primary Resource ・+ X% Maximum Life ・+ X% Maximum Essence

Best Armor

Equipment	Aspects and Affixes
Helmet	Aspect of Disobedience You gain (0.25-0.50)% increased Armor for 4 seconds when you deal any form of damage, stacking up to (66)%. ・+ X% Total Armor ・+ X Lucky Hit Chance While you Have a Barrier ・+ X% Elemental Resistance ・+ X Max Life
Chest	Aspect of Shielding Storm Each time that Bone Storm damages an enemy, gain a Barrier equal to (2-5)% of your Base Life for 10 seconds. ・+ X% Total Armor ・+ X% Damage Reduction from Close Enemies ・+ X% Damage Reduction ・+ X% Damage Reduction from Shadow Damage DoT Affected Enemies
Gloves	Howl from Below Instead of detonating immediately, Corpse Explosion summons a Volatile Skeleton that charges at a random enemy and explodes. Corpse Explosion's damage is increased by (30-40)% . ・+ X% Lucky Hit chance ・+ X% Corpse Skill Attack Speed ・+ Lucky Hit: Up to a X% Chance to Stun ・+ Lucky Hit: Up to a X% Chance to Fear
Pants	Tibault's Will You deal 20-40% increased damage while Unstoppable and for 4 seconds after. When you become Unstoppable, gain 50 of your Primary Resource. ・+X% While injured, Potions restore 20% resource (Inherent) ・+X% Damage Reduction from close enemies ・+X% Potion Capacity ・+X% Damage ・+X% Maximum Resource
Boots	Greaves of the Empty Tomb Create desecrated ground beneath your Sever spectres as they travel, damaging enemies for (XX) Shadow damage over 2 seconds. ・Attacks reduce evade cooldown by .X seconds ・+ X% Movement Speed ・+ X% Lucky Hit Chance with Shadow Damage ・+ X% Damage Reduction from Shadow Damage DoT Affected Enemies ・+ X Essence Cost Reduction

Best Jewelry

Jewelry	Aspects and Affixes
Amulet	Blighted Aspect You deal (50-120)% increased damage for 6 seconds after the Shadowblight Key Passive damages enemies 10 times. ・+ X% Resist All (Inherent) ・+ X% Damage Reduction ・+ X% Shadow Damage Over Time ・+ X% Darkness Skill Damage ・+ X% Cooldown Reduction
Ring	X'Fal's Corroded Signet Lucky Hit: Your damage over time effects have up to a 50% chance to erupt, dealing 5.0-6.0 damage of the same type to Nearby enemies. ・+ X% Resistance to Fire Element (Inherent) ・+ X% Resistance to All Element (Inherent) ・+ X% All Stats ・+ X% Damage Over Time ・+ X% Lucky Hit Chance ・+ X% Cooldown Reduction
Ring	Aspect of Ultimate Shadow Bone Storm and Blood Wave are also Darkness Skills, deal Shadow damage, and gain additional effects. Enemies damaged by Bone Storm take 0.43-0.48 Shadow damage over 2 seconds. Blood Wave desecrates the ground it travels over, dealing (YY) Shadow damage over 4 seconds ・+X% Resistance to all Elements (Inherent) ・+X% Resistance to 1 Random Element (Inherent) ・+X% Lucky Hit Chance ・+X% Damage Over Time ・+X% Damage To Shadow Afflicted Enemies ・+X% Shadow Damage

Best Gems

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Summary		Skill Progression		Vampiric Powers
Aspects & Affixes		Gems		Paragon

Gem Type	Effect Explanation
Royal Amethyst (Weapon)	+8.0% Damage Over Time This is a DoT focused build and we do not focus on amplifying our Critical Strike chances. We focus on more consistent DPS and less focus on DPS other than DoT and Shadow bonuses to avoid gaps in damage output. With this setup, Amethyst is a better choice than Emerald despite its synergy with Shadowblight and X'fal.
Royal Ruby (Armor)	4.0% Maximum Life Aside from Necrotic Carapace, we have no consistent way to reach the Fortify status. We use Rubies instead to amplify our max HP values for a more consistent way to survive enemy attacks.
Elemental Gems (Jewelry)	+30% Elemental Resistance Gems Provides 30% Elemental resistance to a chosen element. We highly recommend capping out your elemental Resistance and gems that provide elemental resistances will be the key to doing so. The gems you can use for the three jewelry slots you have are flexible and highly depends on the resistances you currently have. We also recommend supplmenting this with one armor piece (Helm, Torso, or Waist piece) to cap out all of your resistances.

How to Reach Maximum Resistance

Paragon Board Setup

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Summary		Skill Progression		Vampiric Powers
Aspects & Affixes		Gems		Paragon

Starter Board (Darkness)

Standard setup for our Starter Board where we take all Rare Nodes except unnecessary magic nodes and all Intelligence nodes in the Glyph area to maximize our Glyph effect.

• Darkness (Glyph) - A straight up damage boost to shadow damage which our main source of damage.
• Resilience (Rare) - Provides a decent amount of survivability to our build. Allows us an extra wiggle room to not be in Bloodmist and fire off some Corpse Explosion or other utility skills.
• Prime (Rare) - Provides a straight up DPS boost which is valuable in our build.
• Knowledge - Same reasoning as Prime but we don't take the Willpower Nodes.
• Preservation - A good source of armor to amplify our survivability.

Flesh-Eater Board (Tears of Blood)

Highest stat value node for Tears of Blood. We take all nodes under the Tears of Blood radius to maximize the DPS it gives us while also amplifying the Rare nodes in that region.

• Tears of Blood (Glyph) - The main reason that we use Tears of Blood in Flesh-Eater is it's the most efficient Glyph slot for Tears of Blood at Tier 50. At Tier 50, it will only have 14 wasted slots and 6 non-stat magic nodes which will greatly amplify the damage bonus that Tears of Blood has.
• Flesh-Eater (Legendary) - Gives us a heft amount of DPS which we can easily trigger as consuming corpses is the main game of the build.
• Erudite (Rare) - Has the most Resistance increasing Rare node and can cap out the rest of our Elemental Resistance provided that we supplement the rest with elemental gems.
• Targeted (Rare) - Damage to elites and intelligence. A semi-mandatory node for our build to ensure that we're able to kill elites, especially the Blood Seekers in Abattoirs of Zir.
• Stifle (Rare) - We mainly take this just to pass the next board and the extra damage to injured is a nice bonus but we can't maximize the critical strike bonus due to our DoT focused stats.

Wither Board (Gloom)

Another shadow and DoT centric board which we easily welcome in our build.

• Scourge (Glyph) - A straight up damage boost to shadow damage DoT type which is the main damage type of Infinite Mist. Taken with the same reasoning as Darkness.
• Wither (Legendary) - Bonus damage to our DoT is always welcome and this stacks up extremely quickly.
• Gloom (Rare) - Gets us an extra Intelligence stat and Shadow Resistance. We don't take any other Shadow Resistance nodes aside from the one magic node leading to it as this allows us to cap out the Shadow Resistance for our build without relying on other elemental gems.
• Malediction (Rare) -
• Gnawing Darkness (Rare) - Increased damage to elite and Shadow DoT damage which are both stats that we need.
• Lingering Shadows (Rare) - Shadow Damage and Shadow Damage over time which is another set of damage amplification for our build.
• Dragging Shadows (Rare) - Damage reduction to shadow afflicted enemies means we survive much easier against enemies that have been hit by either Corpse Explosion or Bone Storm.

Scent of Death Board (Control)

• Control (Glyph) - Damage to crowd controlled enemies. An easy glyph to slot into the build.
• Scent of Death (Legendary) - Gives us free survivability in the middle of corpses. We can't ever utilize the DPS boost as our damage comes from corpses but the extra durability is extremely welcome.
• Preservation (Rare) - Armor for higher survivability.
• Deathmarked (Rare) - Damage to injured enemies means our DPS starts ramping up against enemies in longer encounter.
• Deathbringer (Rare) -Same as Deathmarked + some armor as a bonus.

Corpse Explosion Blight Playstyle

Corpse Explosion Blight Build Tips
Recommended Openers and Rotations Always Apply Decrepify Always Stack Blight and Corpse Explosion Avoid Spamming Blood Mist

Recommended Openers and Rotations

Trash Mob Opener and Skill Rotation

Boss Opener

Always Apply Decrepify

Our entire playstyle will get weaker if we cannot cycle our Bone Storm and Decrepify is what will help us with this. Always apply Decrepify enemies first to ensure that we can always maximize our Bone Storm's effect.

Always Stack Blight and Corpse Explosion

Blight is our main damage amplification method which will strengthen every kind of DPS we output. Always try to spread out Blight to ensure that our DoT from Corpse Explosoin and other shadow attacks are maximized.

Avoid Spamming Blood Mist

Unlike Infinimist where Blood Mist is both an offensive and defensive tool, our Blood Mist is entirely there to make sure that we have an escape option (it putting you in unstoppable state that amplifies our damage with Tibault is just a bonus). Try to use Bone Storm if you want an offensive and defensive tool at the same time as much as possible.

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Blood Lance (PVE)	Blood Surge (PVE)	Bone Spear (PVE)
Corpse Explosion Blight (PVE)	Infinimist (PVE)	Necromancer Leveling (Leveling)
Ring of Mendeln Summoner (PVE)	Sever Summoner (PVE)