It’s no secret that no class can rival Necromancer in terms of AOE damage, and that’s true in D2R Ladder Season 5 as well.

Especially when paired with the right build, Necromancer can truly become the king of AOE. If you are using this powerful Necromancer build in Season 5, be sure not to miss this guide.

Below, we’ll detail our pick for the best Necromancer in D2R Ladder Season 5: Poison Nova Necromancer. We’ll discuss everything from the class’s pros and cons to the best D2R Ladder Season 5 items and skills it can use, and more.

Pros & Cons

Necromancer is considered one of the most powerful classes in the game and is known for its fast-paced gameplay style. It can easily overwhelm enemies in a fierce attack. Because it can use its ability to produce an incredible amount of Poison, Fire, and Physical Area of Effect damage in one skill rotation, making it almost impossible for enemies to resist.

Combine all of this with the fact that it deals damage in a wide area as it moves, and Necromancer class is a monster vaporizer.

But no class is perfect. Necromancer is indeed powerful, but it is also a tough class to master and very difficult to learn. What’s more, its ancient game is also quite weak, and its overwhelming advantage only appears in the mid-to-late game. And it’s not the best at dealing a lot of damage in boss fights either.

However, we can eliminate some of these issues by setting up the best build for the class and create Necromancer builds that will be fearsome in D2R Ladder Season 5.

Poison Nova Necromancer

Our pick for the best starting build for D2R Ladder Season 5 is Poison Nova Necromancer build.

It uses skills such as Poison Nova and Corpse Explosion to cause massive damage to enemies in a wide area. They all deal Poison, Fire, and Physical Damage in one turn, while also using Sunder Charms to break down enemy resistance, giving you the chance to deal massive amounts of damage.

Mods such as Amplify Damage, Lower Resist, Conviction Aura, and Sunder Charms can reduce resistance to almost every immunity. 

We combine necromancer with Poison Nova and Corpse Explosion, which deal types of damage. This means that regardless of their immunity to unique sources of damage, it will critically hit them with damage.

This build can be difficult to get the hang off at first, but once you do, there’s almost nothing that can stop you.

Mercenary Selection

Next, let’s talk about the specific mercenary, equipment slots and skills of Poison Nova Necromancer.

Similar to other builds in D2R Ladder, the best Mercenary I recommend is Act 2 Desert Mercenary Hire from Greiz.

This Mercenary has aura ability and can use Jab attack on top of the basic attack. His Might Aura gives you a damage buff that can help you deal with enemies that are immune to Poison, while his Jab attack can be used to damage the rest of the enemies.

Mercenary also requires the use of Infinity War Pike, which reduces enemy resistance, allowing you to deal more damage. It comes with Conviction Aura, which improves your Corpse Explosion.

Overall, with this setup, Act 2 Desert Mercenary is crucial to your survival in D2R Ladder Season 5.

Keeping Mercenary alive can be difficult until you have the necessities recommended in this guide. Therefore, we recommend you sort your items first. This way, you can drag Healing Potions onto mercenary portraits as quickly as possible, or feed them directly from your belt to keep them alive.

If you lose a mercenary in combat, you can resurrect them by talking to any Mercenary NPC in each act. But you should keep in mind that it will cost you more money each time you do it, up to a cap of 50,000 gold.

In short, Poison Nova Necromancer is very effective in clearing high-density monsters in the game. Poison, Fire, and Physical Damage make this build fast and deadly in almost every farming spot. They can increase your farming efficiency in multiple areas.

With solid setup and execution, this build is definitely your go-to build for D2R Ladder Season 5. What do you think of Poison Nova Necromancer? Hopefully, this guide will help you get off to a great start when entering Season 5!