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!

Since D2R Ladder Season 5 is coming soon, here I want to present to you my personal top 5 builds for different classes to start at the beginning of the season.

I will show you the skill trees, the D2R Ladder Items, and the stats with empty inventory so you can directly see which charms you need to improve your resistances. I will also include as many Magic Finds as possible without losing too much stability or performance. In addition, there are also farming recommendations for each build to progress quickly. 

Paladin Build 

Let’s start with the Paladin.

There are two popular builds the Hammerdin or the FOH. In the end, we can play both builds with the same gear. I prefer the FOH because it is so much more comfortable to play, especially as long as you can’t teleport yet.

Here is the gear of the FOH Paladin build.

• Double Spirits
• Skin of the Vipermagi
• Rockstopper
• Pick Rose Branded Amulet 
• Trang-Oul’s Claws Heavy Bracers
• Credendum Mithril Coil
• Aldur’s Advance Battle Boots
• Ring of the Apprentice
• 2 Nagelrings
• Nai’s Puzzler Elder Staff

The build already has maximum fire and cold resistance. With lightning and poison, you would have to add charms. In addition, we also have up to 78 Magic Find depending on how high the Nagelring has rolled. The Holy Bolts have up to 4000 damage at maximum cast rate.

Paladin Farming Spots

The top farming area for an FOH Paladin is the Chaos Sanctuary.

With the staff, we also get there very quickly. It is also good that we have maximum fire resistance. You can also get resistances by Salvation Aura. But it is inconvenient to be dependent on it. It is so much better to have the Redemption Aura standard, so you heal mana and life points by consuming Corpses. 

There are many other good spots to farm as well. The Pit also has only undeads and demons and it is a T85 area.

The Forgotten Tower is also no problem, just like the Arcane Sanctuary. 

Besides Diablo, you can also run Andariel. The only animals that can appear there are spiders. Mephisto basically works too, but the way through the Durance of Hate is ugly without teleport.

In Act 5, Pindleskin is a nice farming spot. But whoever loves to farm the cow level rather plays a Hammerdin because there are the FOH is useless. 

Necro Build

Next, we have the Necromancer as the starting character quite unpopular, but this has the advantage that the D2R Ladder Items for him are quite cheap, especially the torch later on.

In addition, we can play a Poison Necro very easily, which can even farm quite a few areas because he has both poison and fire damage.

Here is the gear of the Poison Necro build.

• Trang-Oul’s Claws Heavy Bracers
• Trang-Oul’s Scales Chaos Armor
• Trang-Oul’s Wing Cantor Trophy
• Lore Grim Helmet
• Venomous Amulet
• Immortal King’s Detail War Belt
• Immortal King’s Pillar War Boots
• Blackbog’s Sharp Cinquedeas
• Spirits
• 2 Nagelrings 
• Garnet Ring of Dexterity

In the change, hand the Gull and the Rhyme shield, so we can get a boost of 125% Magic Find when changing weapons. So, the Necro can poison the monsters and then just switch weapons. It counts how much Magic Finds a character has at the time of the kill, not at the time of casting.

By the way, a handy companion for all characters is an inside mercenary. Since Necro doesn’t have much life, you have to play very carefully and touch a lot.

Necro Farming Spots

The poison damage has a disadvantage that it works slowly. It’s a nice thing. With this playstyle, you can use the MF switch and so the Necro really gets a good bonus.

For the Poison Necro, the Forgotten Tower is a good spot and also the Secret Cow Level works fine thanks to Corpse Explosion.

Arcane Sanctuary is also okay. You can farm Eldritch & Shenk. But in principle, you can also run many more maps and preferably Terror Zones because poisoning new monsters can also be killed with the fire damage of Corpse Explosion and the lower resistances can even break immunities.

Assassin Build 

The Assassin has become a very popular starting character because once you have double Mosaic, there are no limits and the Runeword is not even that expensive.

For farming the resources, Lightning Trapsin is great. Thanks to the fire bomb, it also has some alternative damage against light immune monsters.

Here is the gear of the Lightning Trapsin build.

• Spirit
• Leadless Wall 
• Treachery
• Lore
• Cunning Amulet of Bone Spirit
• Laying of Hands Bramble Mitts
• Credendum Mithril Coil
• Natalya’s Soul Mesh Boots
• 2 Nagelrings

In the change, hand either Gull and Rhyme or the Teleport staff. In principle, you can choose one of these two possibilities with each build .

Assassin Farming Spots 

The Assassin only has Magic Find from the two rings. The boost would not hurt, here.

But to get Mosaic quickly, it’s best to farm D2R Ladder Runes, anyway. So, you run the Forgotten Tower, hoping for a good rune drop. The low rooms can be cubed up.

The cow level should also work as soon as you have sufficient damage. It is also great for farming D2R Ladder Runes and your claw bases.

Kindle Eldridge and Shenk are also easy, just like all the usual spots for lightning builds. And of course the Arcane Sanctuary. You can also find some super chests here. 

Amazon Build 

Keep the mentioned farming areas in mind because they are also interesting for the Amazon. The build is of course a Javazon.

Here is the gear of Javazon.

• Titan’s Revenge Ceremonial Javelin
• Laying of Hands Bramble Mitts
• Credendum Mithril Coil
• Dark Adherent Dusk Shroud
• Rite of Passage Demonhide Boots
• Telling of Beads Amulet
• Valkyrie Wing
• Spirit
• 2 Nagelrings

Amazon Farming Spots

As mentioned, the build can farm all the usual spots for lightning characters but the true potential is in the cow level. So, whoever likes to farm, their best builds are Javazon.

Sorceress Build 

The most popular starting classes are of course the Sorcerers. Thanks to the teleport, she offers a big advantage. She can complete boss runs very fast. 

My recommendation is a Lightning Firewall build as long as you have no Thunder Charms and stuff to play mono build yet. The Firewall only should handle light immune monsters. For that case, it is sufficient to maximize it without synergies or mastery.

Here is the gear of this build.

• Tal Rasha’s Horadric Crest Death Mask
• Tal Rasha’s Lidless Eye Swirling Crystal
• Tal Rasha’s Fine-Spun Cloth Mesh Belt
• Skin of the Vipermagi
• Spirit
• Arch-Angel’s Amulet
• Magefist
• Aldur’s Advance Battle Boots
• 2 Nagelrings

The Sorceress is, of course, a glass cannon with about 1,000 life. We have to pay attention. The resistances are weak compared to the other builds but the most important are okay, lightning and fire. In addition, we get up to 140 Magic Find.

Sorceress Farming Spots 

The Sorceress can also farm her usual lightning spots, but that’s not what we made her for.

Thanks to teleport, boss runs are done very quickly. Both Andariel and Mephisto can be farmed very easy. This would probably also work great with the Fireball Sorceress as well as with a pure Lightning Sorceress when you just concentrate on the bosses.

But with the hybrid Sorceress, we can also do much more. Even the hell rush shouldn’t be too hard.