News Tag: Diablo 4 Golem Necromancer

Necromancer players have plenty of reason to be excited. Golem Necromancer, already a strong build in Season 11, has nearly doubled its power in Season 12!

It currently stands as Necromancer's most powerful summoning build. It's easy to play, yet incredibly powerful, and holds its own against other top-tier builds in the endgame. Let's break down what enhancements it received and explore its core mechanics.

Golem Necromancer Mechanics

Golem Necromancer's damage reaches a qualitative leap thanks to the unique item, Gravebloom, which splits your Golem into three. Combined with Aspect of Fel Gluttony, your Golem unleashes explosive bursts of damage when using its skill. You can reduce the cooldown of this skill by consuming Corpses.

In Season 12, Golem Necromancer has received buffs in three key areas.

Bug Fix

The Chance to Hit Twice affix, added to Golems via Tempering, now correctly triggers Aspect of Fel Gluttony effect (previously bugged). This means the explosion from your Golem's skill now has a chance to trigger twice, effectively nearly doubling your damage output.

Passive Reworks

• Flesh-Eater: Previously required consuming 3 Corpses for a 40% damage bonus. Now, consuming just 1 Corpse grants a 60% damage bonus with a longer duration.
• Frailty: Previously, the damage bonus against cursed enemies ramped up to 40% over 4 seconds. Now, it provides an immediate 50% damage bonus.

Bloodied Affixes

Season 12 introduces Bloodied Affixes system, granting bonuses after chaining enemy kills. For Golem Necromancer, the most crucial affixes are:

• Cooldown Reduction per stack of Slaughter's Boon
• Increased Core Stat per stack of Slaughter's Boon

Golem Necromancer boasts a very simple rotation. You simply charge into packs, activate your Ultimate skill Soulrift to make all enemies Vulnerable, and let your Golem eliminate them.

Most of the time, your Golem handles everything, allowing you to continuously cast other skills to refresh its cooldown faster. As your gear and Paragon level improve, you can eventually just hold down Golem skill button!

Leveling (1-60)

During the 1-60 leveling process, Golem Necromancer isn't the most efficient for leveling. You'll want to use a different build for a smoother experience.

Early on, you can use Sever combined with Corpse Explosion for fast monster elimination. Sever is a ranged attack that helps you maintain kill streaks, granting bonus experience and more Diablo 4 gold.

Once you have more skill points, you can opt for Raise Skeleton. These minions deal decent damage and, more importantly, tank damage for you, significantly boosting your survivability.

Minion Choices:

• Skeletal Reapers: Help reduce the cooldown of your Ultimate skill.
• Cold Mages: Provide Energy regeneration for Sever.
• Blood Golem: Once unlocked, replace Corpse Explosion. Its passive provides a 50% damage bonus against single targets.

Leveling Skill Setup:

• Reap (Rank 1)
• Sever (Rank 5)
• Raise Skeleton (Rank 1)
• Corpse Tendrils (Rank 1)
• Soulrift (Rank 5)
• Golem (Rank 1)

Gear

Golem Necromancer isn't heavily gear-dependent; you can easily reach level 60 without specific Aspects. However, acquiring the following Aspects will significantly boost your efficiency:

• Aspect of Fel Gluttony
• Aspect of Frenzied Dead
• Shademist Aspect
• Aspect of Reanimation
• Reaping Lotus' Aspect

Endgame

Upon reaching level 60, you can immediately jump into Torment 1 difficulty. Your first task is to gamble for gear at Purveyor of Curiosities (using Murmuring Obols). You have two primary targets:

• Gravebloom
• Ring of Mendeln

Assuming you're not pursuing Mythic items yet, here's a target gear setup for Torment 4:

• Helm: Juggernaut's Aspect
• Chest Armor: Aspect of Hardened Bones
• Gloves: Aspect of Reanimation
• Pants: Blood Moon Breeches
• Boots: Aspect of the Cursed Aura
• Amulet: Aspect of Fel Gluttony
• Ring 1: Ring of Mendeln
• Ring 2: Sacrificial Aspect
• Weapon: Gravebloom
• Offhand: Aspect of Grasping Veins

Correspondingly, your skills need adjustments. Since Golem becomes your primary skill, Sever is no longer needed. You can replace it with Bone Prison. Bone Prison's enhancements can make trapped enemies Vulnerable and restore your Essence.

Endgame Skill Setup:

• Bone Prison: Enhanced Bone Prison and Ghastly Bone Prison
• Reap: Enhanced Reap and Acolyte's Reap
• Corpse Tendrils: Enhanced Corpse Tendrils and Blighted Corpse Tendrils
• Soulrift: Supreme Soulrift and Prime Soulrift
• Blight: (without enhanced options)
• Golem: (without enhanced options)

Paragon Board

Here are the key Legendary nodes you need to target:

• Cult Leader: This is your biggest damage multiplier source (+200% damage). You need to stack 100% Attack Speed to activate its bonus.
• Hulking Monstrosity: Your Golem deals 100% increased damage, and sacrificing minions grants additional damage bonuses.
• Frailty: Increases damage taken by Cursed enemies.
• Flesh-Eater: Consuming Corpses increases your damage.

As you gain more Paragon points, you'll gradually adjust your Paragon Boards, aiming to activate all Legendary nodes while unlocking as many Glyph sockets as possible.

Golem Necromancer is undoubtedly one of the most enjoyable builds in Season of Slaughter. It's rare to see a summoning build reach such heights of power. More importantly, it doesn't rely on Mythic items. With the correct gear and skills, Torment 4 presents no real challenge. As your Paragon level increases and you eventually acquire Mythic items, your damage will reach even greater heights.

The new unique items added in Diablo 4 Season 11 often influence one or more builds in a class, and Gravebloom, the new unique item for Necromancer, brings a new available summoning build to Necromancer.

Gravebloom significantly enhances Necromancer's golems, and compared to traditional minion builds, this playstyle is much more proactive. This is because you need to frequently trigger the golems' active abilities, rather than letting minions attack automatically.

This new build is viable in Season 11 not only because it deals more damage than a Skeleton Army Necromancer, but also because it is very tanky, thus becoming a meta build for Necromancer in Season 11.

Gravebloom

The new unique item, Gravebloom, is a new unique mace. It allows you to summon multiple golems. While the damage of a single golem is reduced, the increased number of golems boosts overall damage. It's also an essential Diablo 4 item for this build; the build won't function properly without it.

Gravebloom provides a total of 40% attack speed, which is incredibly high for a one-handed weapon. It also has a 75% chance for the golem to attack twice.

Golem Necromancer Skills

Active Skills

• Blight: Provides a buff as a Darkness Skill; no active casting required.
• Sever: Also a Darkness Skill that triggers a damage bonus; no active casting required.
• Golem: Summons a golem; you need to cast it to allow the golem to use its active skill.
• Reap: Used to spawn a corpse.
• Soulrift: As an ultimate skill, provides a vulnerability debuff and Essence.
• Decompose: When fighting bosses, if Reap goes on cooldown, you can hold down Decompose to wait for Golem skill to cool down.
• Iron Maiden: Increases damage taken by enemies. Does not need to be placed on the skill bar.
• Decrepify: Curses enemies, slowing them. Does not need to be placed on the skill bar.

Book Of The Dead

Choose to sacrifice all minions, providing Necromancer with additional survivability and damage.

• Skeletal Warriors Defenders: Cannot summon Skeletal Warriors. Gains 25% all elemental resistance.
• Skeletal Mages Cold: Cannot summon Skeletal Mages. Increases damage against vulnerable enemies.
• Golems Blood: Blood Golem allows Necromancer to regenerate health when using active skills. Necromancer reduces damage taken by the golems when they are healthy.

Passive Skills

• Hewed Flesh (3)
• Necrotic Fortitude (3)
• Titan's Fall (3)
• Spiked Armor (3)
• Grim Harvest (1)
• Fueled by Death (3)
• Death's Embrace (3)
• Amplify Damage (3)
• Coalesced Blood (3)
• Reaper's Pursuit (3)
• Necrotic Carapace (1)
• Finality (3)
• Golem Mastery (3)
• Memento Mori (3)
• Stand Alone (3)
• Inspiring Leader (3)
• Kalan's Edict (1)
• Hellbent Commander (3)
• Death's Approach (3)

Death's Embrace is very powerful in Season 11. When an enemy affected by Iron Maiden dies, it automatically restores 7% of the player's Life, providing a continuous source of healing.

Hellbent Commander grants a massive damage bonus when you have 7 or more minions. To trigger this effect, you also need to summon wolves to supplement the number of minions besides the 3 golems.

Golem Necromancer Equipment

• Helm: Heir of Perdition
• Chest armor: Shroud of False Death
• Gloves: Aspect of the Cursed Aura
• Pants: Blood Moon Breeches
• Boots: Hulking Aspect
• Amulet: Aspect of Fel Gluttony
• Ring 1: Aspect of Reanimation
• Ring 2: Aspect of the Great Feast
• Weapon: Gravebloom
• Offhand: Sacrificial Aspect

Aspect of the Cursed Aura automatically applies Decrepify and Iron Maiden curses to nearby enemies. Combined with the healing effect of Iron Maiden, this makes your Necromancer extremely tanky.

Hulking Aspect gives golem attacks a chance to reduce their cooldown and spawn a corpse upon attacking. Aspect of Fel Gluttony allows golems to consume corpses for a damage bonus, and all golem builds require this Aspect.

Other Diablo 4 items, such as Aspect of the Great Feast, directly provide damage bonuses to your golems. You should prioritize affixes for your gear that increase attack speed, critical strike chance, and golem cooldown reduction.

Paragon Board Nodes

• Essence: Provides more critical strike damage.
• Hulking Monstrosity: Through Deadraiser node, makes minion attacks deal more damage to enemies.
• Scent of Death: Provides damage reduction and critical strike damage, enhancing survivability.
• Frailty: Increases the damage of necromancers and minions.
• Corporeal: Increases physical damage.
• Cult Leader & Amplify: Increases the minion's damage based on its attack speed.

Golem Necro Advantages In Season 11

Overall game difficulty has increased, and character survivability and damage have been reduced. Percentage bonuses to main stats (such as Intelligence) have been removed. In this generally harder environment, Golem Necromancer build offers excellent tankiness and damage, with no survivability issues.

In Tormented 4's Open World, the golem's auto-attacks are sufficient for most situations, allowing players to AFK. However, at higher levels of The Pit, you must actively control your Golems. They can face-tank and deal damage in most situations, and even solo new bosses.

You don't need to create a Seasonal Character to experience this build, as all new gear drops in Eternal Realm, and the additional bonuses from Season Journey offer little benefit to this already established build.

Golem Necromancer build may still have some room for improvement, but it surpasses almost every other necromancer summoning build in every aspect. Moreover, the golem's damage can reach over 1 billion, and combined with its tanking capabilities, it is enough to place it in the Tier S build category of Season 11.