As popularized by the legend Naecabon, I'm happy to present to you the Infinimist Necromancer. This Necro build combines the highest survivability rates, with massive AoE Shadow Damage. The build excels at outlasting the most dangerous content!
This build seems like any run of the mill Darkness build. Spam Corpse Explosion and rely on Lucky Hit procs for Crowd Control (CC). But prioritizing Lucky Hit starts to have interesting interactions when you're able to stack over 50% Lucky Hit Bonus. Decrepify allows you to almost immediately refresh all of your cooldowns and have... Infinite Blood Mist uptime. Now you get the build name!
This build is surprisingly easy to respec into if you're coming from the Sever Necromancer Leveling Guide or Sever Necromancer Endgame Guide. It uses many of the same Aspects, including powerful options from the Codex of Power!
The ability to spec into DoT damage or high Critical Strike damage output allows you to consistently rip through content. With certain optimizations for clear speed and single target damage, the Infinimist Necromancer can even speed-farm and clear high level bosses more easily.
This build guide assumesyou have a Level 50 Character and finished the Campaign. Level up with our Sever Necromancer Leveling Guide. If you are looking for a different Necromancer play style, check out all of our Necromancer Guides.
DifficultyAverage
SpeedfarmingVery Good
The PitAverage
BossingBelow Average
DefenseExcellent
Season 5 - Infernal Hordes
In Season 5, the Season Theme brings your hero back into the bowels of Hell, in the Infernal Hordes endgame activity. You're first introduced to Hellbreach Dungeons, miniature Horde-like micro-dungeons that teach you the new mechanics and rewards systems. As you slay more powerful Demons and Bosses, you're rewarded with the new Reputation progression that comes with amazing rewards. These include Crafting Materials, unlocking Season's Journey tiers and even the coveted Resplendent Spark, needed to craft a mythic unique.
Follow the seasonal questline until you unlock the Reputation system, check which rewards suit you most and then follow your regular leveling path. To learn more, check out our full Season 5 guide for more information.
Skill Tree & Gameplay
- Reap is used on the Leveling Variant to generate Corpses on demand and increase your Damage reduction when needed. Used to initiate most fights, as well as increase Corpse production on Bosses.
- Once you advance to using Blight, the Damage multiplier as well as high Lucky Hit Chance naturally enables the engine of this build.
- Decrepify applies a powerful CC effect that also causes Lucky Hit procs to reduce Cooldowns on your Skills. Prioritize casting this on any new monsters, or when it runs out.
- Blood Mist is the cornerstone of the build. This grants full Immunity, triggers Corpse Explosion, makes Corpses, applies Shadow Damage and increases your movement speed.
- Corpse Tendrils is an amazing CC tool and your Vulnerable applicator.
- Bone Storm: Damage, Survivability and Shadow Damage application with Ultimate Shadow. Just an amazing skill on any build.
- And when all else fails, manually casting Corpse Explosion allows for stacking huge damage quickly and revving your Corpse generation engine to keep the death-machine rolling.
- Shadowblight Key Passive is the true MVP of the build. Its proc is an instantaneous damage source that can Critically Strike. This adds so much damage to your kit and allows you to stack more damage stats on your gear for better output.
- Hewed Flesh is the bread and butter of the build. It gives an avenue for generating enough Corpses to sate all of your Corpse consumption needs. Stacking a ton of Lucky Hit Chance Bonus makes this passive efficient enough to not stall out on optimal gear. Hewed Flesh gives you an avenue for generating enough Corpses to sate all of your Corpse consumption needs. Stacking a ton of Lucky Hit Chance Bonus makes this passive efficient enough to not stall out on optimal gear. This generates extra survivability from Necrotic Carapace, via Fortified status.
- Gloom and Terror help to add on damage, while Reaper's Pursuit grants much needed movement speed and Crippling Darkness helps to stagger bosses and CC enemies in a fight, as well as adding another Lucky Hit damage source.
Necromancer Specialization - Book of the Dead
The Infinimist Necromancer doesn't have space on its Skill Bar for more abilities, so you sacrifice your Minions for their valuable buffs. Prioritize Shadow Damage from Skeletal Warriors, Vulnerable Damage from Skeletal Mages and Maximum Life from Golem.
Learn more details and how to unlock this class specialization in our full Book of the Dead Guide.
Resource & Cooldown Management
Managing your Resources and Cooldowns is crucial to the success of this build.
Abhorrent Decrepify
Abhorrent Decrepify has the chance to trigger off of every damage instance from all of your overlapping Damage over Time (DoT) effects. This level of Cooldown management allows for realiably expecting for any and all Skills to be available when needed, even in crucial moments. BUT! It requires you to prioritize Lucky Hit Chance bonus and stacking damage instances, strategically. A minimum of 50% Lucky Hit Chance bonus is recommended to properly pilot the build.
Grim Harvest
The required point in Grim Harvest along with your natural Essence regeneration, means you never need to focus on managing your resource. Your resource to manage is the Corpse generation. The build lives and dies by how many procs of Hewed Flesh can successfully trigger.
Essence Per Second and Resource Cost Reduction
Essence per Second (EPS) affix on the Helm, Chest or Boots helps to passively replace Essence as you cast Decrepify and Blight. Resource Cost Reduction reduces the cost of every skill by a percentage equal to the total on your gear. When casting your skills more than once per second, you need more of both stat to achieve this equilibrium.
Paragon Board
Carefully check your Paragon Boards to ensure correct board rotation. Glyphs go from a radius of 3 to 4 when they reach level 15! Imbiber is used as a holdover only, do not level it!
Level the Paragon Board by scrolling. Each step optimizes progression.
Glyphs
We need to level up our Glyphs to increase their power and activate their Additional Bonus with surrounding nodes. Glyphs have a radius of 3 by default, this increases to 4 at Glyph level 15. Complete Nightmare Dungeons to obtain Glyph experience.
Note that there are some Glyph position swaps and a few adjustments to surrounding Paragon nodes once they reach level 15. See the last two steps in the Paragon progression above for details. The setup displayed by default is the final version of the build.
Glyph Leveling Priorities
Level 15
- Sacrificial
- Scourge
- Abyssal
- Gravekeeper
- Control
- Exploit
- Desecration
Level 21
- Gravekeeper
- Scourge
- Exploit
- Control
- Abyssal
- Sacrificial
- Desecration
Also check out our dedicated in-depth guides to learn more about Paragon Boards and Glyphs.
Endgame Progression & Variants
When you start diving into the Endgame, you don't have all the tools available to achieve the final build versions. Let us guide you through different progression points to give you a smooth transition from our Leveling Guides to the final build version.
Progression Goals
Some of your Skill Tree choices depend on what Legendary Aspects and Unique items are available to you. These are listed in priority order:
- Unlock the following Aspects from Dungeons:
- Blighted - Akkan's Grasp (Hawezar)
- Damned - Uldur's Cave (Kehjistan)
- Ghostwalker - Broken Bulwark (Scosglen)
- Disobedience - Halls of the Damned (Kehjistan)
- Sacrificial - Ruins of Eridu (Hawezar)
- Find the following Legendary Aspects either as a random drop or by gambling with Obols:
- Explosive Mist - Gamble Boots
- Blood-soaked - Gamble Focus
- Hardened Bones - Gamble Pants
- Great Feast - Gamble Focus
- Shielding Storm - Gamble Pants
- Creeping Mist - Gamble Boots
- Acquire the following Unique items either as a random drop or by farming specific Boss drops.
- Howl from Below these are effectively NEED to have gloves for the build. Even a low rolled Sacred version of these gloves out-performs high item power Legendary Gloves.
- X'Fal's Corroded Signet drastically increases your AoE damage output, as well as your kill speed for speedfarming and lower tier content. This is used on a Critical Strike Damage focused version of the build that needs to be tested in Season 5.
- Black River great option for farming density, as well as Bossing. The DoT potential for this item is VERY high.
- Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul The auto-casting skills needed to be equipped on your Skill Bar to function. This automates a lot of the build's primary gameplay loop to increase efficiency and damage output.
- If you're lucky enough to obtain the following Mythic Uniques, they're useful for the build.
- Harlequin Crest empowers your Corpse Explosion damage significantly.
- Sadly these Ubers don't fit onto the build: Andariel's Visage or Doombringer.
Learn more details and how to farm Legendary Aspects and Uniques in our General Farming Guide.
Progression Steps
Follow the build's gearing progression from level 50 to 100, including the changes that need to be made as you obtain Legendary Aspects and Uniques. The Infinimist Necromancer is not recommended as a Leveling build. See our Sever or Blight leveling guides for a smoother transition through the first few World Tiers.
Leveling
to 100
Endgame
& The Pit
Speedfarming
X'Fal's
In this setup, your Infinimist Necromancer has access to all Legendary Aspects, allowing you to pilot a much stronger version of this build. Additional Legendary Aspects are used to fill slots that may be replaced with Unique items later on.
Gear
- Your biggest priority is scaling your Damage Over Time to empower Corpse Explosion. Many of your damage sources can Critically Strike and this nets a small bonus in damage, but is not your primary scaling concerns.
Skills
- Since Corpse Explosion is your primary damage source, fully invest 5 Skill Ranks to get the most bang for your buck.
- If you find yourself dying often, swap in the last point to Acolyte's Reap and replace Blight on your skill bar. The extra Corpse generation and Damage Reduction should help to smooth out difficult combat scenarios.
In this setup, the Infinimist Necromancer has access to all Unique items and Legendary Aspects. This allows you to pilot this build at its peak efficiency. Let's take a look at the changes you need to make to implement them. This setup is also used for Speed farming which is efficient in, Helltide zones, Tree of Whispers, regular Dungeons, and lower tier Nightmare Dungeons.
Gear
- By adding Black River to your kit, you are able to generate significantly higher DoT via Corpse Explosion, while sacrificing more of your burst damage potential from Critical Strike sources. The benefit being the vast number of multipliers available for Corpse Explosion damage.
- This weapon does NOT add any bonus damage unless you successfully explode >1 Corpse. Prioritizing Corpse generation just skyrocketed to an all-time high!
- You also spend less time in Blood Mist, so you need to re-learn how to avoid the damage and explosive death effects you've ignored up until now. Luckily with good temper rolls for Cooldown or Blood Mist duration, you can eliminate this problem.
- To use Harlequin Crest move Explosive Mist to your pants. If you prefer the Barrier from Shielding Storm, replace Hardened Bones on your Chest.
Skills
- This is the standard Skill Tree featured in the standard setup.
The Speedfarming setup for the Infinimist Necromancer assumes you're able to swap survivability for higher damage output, to increase the rate of farming lower difficulty content. Low tier Pit Runs for materials, Helltide for Boss summoning materials and all openworld content to name a few.
Gear
- The primary difference is the inclusion of Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul. This eats up Corpses at a faster rate than just Explosive Mist alone, but amounts to less damage overall since you rarely have five Corpses for both of the effects to consume.
- The automation here allows you to worry less about efficiency and instead enjoy a more relaxed playstyle while speeding through easier content.
DISCLAIMER: THIS VERSION OF THE BUILD HAS NOT BEEN RE-TESTED IN SEASON 5. IT'S NOT CURRENTLY UP TO DATE AND SHOULD ONLY SERVE TO INSPIRE A CRITICAL STRIKE DAMAGE FOCUSED VERSION OF THE BUILD. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!
TheX'Fal's Corroded Signet Variant prioritizes Critical Strike Damage and multiple Lucky Hit Proc effects to drastically increase the speedfarming capabilities of the Infinimist Necromancer.
Gear
- By adding X'Fal's Corroded Signet and prioritizing Critical Strike Chance, you can dish out explosive amounts of AoE damage that eliminate lower tier content, very quickly.
- The trade off is in your single target / bossing damage drops significantly. This setup works much better in density, so you have plenty of targets to proc Cooldown Reduction and your overlapping damage effects.
- This setup currently underperforms in higher tier Pit content and is only recommended for a niche alternative to the main endgame variant!
- You want 100% Critical Strike Chance from gear and Ranks to Crippling Darkness on your tempers.
Skill Tree
Reprioritize Corpse Explosion skill ranks into Crippling Darkness and Inspiring Leader.
Paragon Board
DISCLAIMER: You MUST have the recommended Glyphs leveled to at least Rank 15 before swapping to this board setup.
Hardcore Adjustments
Hardcore requires you to build into more defenses. Here are some tips to successful in this game mode:
- Focus more on your Chest & Pants while gearing up. Make sure to have only defensive stats on these two slots as they provide a ton of survivability.
- Always reach Armor and Resistance cap and prioritzie Maximum Life instead of damage nodes on your Paragon Boards.
- Take Blood Mist cooldown Reduction on more Tempers to always have the Skill available as an escape option.
- Use Golems - Blood Sacrifice for even more Maximum Life, if needed.
- Swap to a Shield with Juggernaut's to make space for more Intelligence and Maximum Life Affixes on your gear. Intelligence increases your Elemental Resistances up to the cap of 70%. Shields also have a unique Damage Reduction stat in the form of Block and can have the Damage Reduction affix roll. You can also use the basic skill Reap instead of Blight and put Might on your Shield.
Build Scaling & Stat Priorities
Learn about the important build scaling mechanics and stat weights.
Damage
Defense
- Critical Strike Chance: Remember that the base 44% damage proc of Shadowblight can Crit AND Offensive Aspect of Decay eventually increases those procs to deal extra damage. X'Fal's Corroded Signet also scales with Critical Strike.
- Vulnerable: You get Vulnerable procs from the Corpse Tendrils. You're able to near-permanently spam this while fighting and also apply it to Bosses, so it becomes an incredibly valuable status.
- Crowd Controls: Since all of your damage occurs in an area, pixel pulls and grouping of monsters becomes a direct damage scaler. This also allows us to benefit from every "Damage to CC'ed Enemies" affix in the game when Decrepify, Corpse Tendrils or Crippling Darkness is applied.
- Attack Speed: Increased Attack Speed increases the rate you can spam our skills. It decreases the length of time before Tendrils is on the field and how quickly you enter into Blood Mist. It's a high value stat.
- Shadow Damage Over Time: Scales your Corpse Explosion damage in the early game progression and multiplies your Shadowblight damage directly. This allows you to focus on your DoT damage and your direct damage sources.
- Corpse Explosion Damage: Once you fully convert over to only doing Damage Over Time via Corpse Explosion, this niche Additive Damage type outscale Shadow Damage over Time and generic Damage Over Time.
- Don't Get Hit: Make use of your range advantage and CC enemies from afar before re-engaging. By stutter stepping on the edge of your range, you can avoid most projectiles that come your way.
- Maximum Life: Life has become more important than ever with the reduction in options for Damage Reduction. In the overall equation of "Effective Life", scaling Life itself is the easiest option to avoid one-shots.
- Armor: The armor cap of 9,230 reduces incoming Physical Damage. Always make sure to reach this cap even if it means sacrificng a bit of Damage or Maximum Life.
- Unstoppable/Immune: Infinite Blood Mist means infinite Immunity. Cooldown Reduction helps to "scale" this defensive mechanic by making it available more often.
- Damage Reduction from Shadow Damage over Time-Affected Enemies: This is the longest named defensive stat in the game, but it's incredibly valuable as another source of Damage Reduction you can always rely on. Plain Damage Reduction and Damage Reduction from Close Enemies are also valuable.
- Resistances: Prioritize reaching the 70% cap in World Tier 4 at a minimum for most content. Use Max Resistance effects from Elixirs and gear to reach 85% when farming certain bosses and endgame content.
Our Damage Explained article explains how to scale your Offense.
Learn all you need to know to scale Defense with our Defense Explained Article.
Stat Priorities
To enable your build to perform optimally, you need to reach certain Stat "Breakpoints". Some examples are reaching 100% to Critically Strike, or 20 Resource per second. Since there are many values of these stats on different pieces of gear, read the checklist below and refer to the recommended Tempered Affixes and Masterwork Crits ↑. Desirable Greater Affixes will always be the top three recommended Affixes.
Damage Scaling
- >100% Bonus Lucky Hit Chance
- At Least 50% Chance to Make Enemies Vulnerable
- > 500% Corpse Explosion Damage
- > 1,200 Intelligence
Defense and Utility
- >25,000 Maximum Life
- Armor Capped: 9,230
- Resistance Capped: 70%
- 100% Corpse Tendrils Size (Quality of Life)
- 100% Decrepify Size (Quality of Life)
- >50% Blood Mist Duration/Cooldown Reduction
- >30% Cooldown Reduction
- 100% Bonus Movement Speed while in Blood Mist
- Helm: Explosive Mist
- Lucky Hit Chance ↑
- Cooldown Reduction ↑
- Maximum Life
- Intelligence
- ⚒️ Blood Mist Duration/Cooldown Reduction ↑
- ⚒️Lucky Hit: Up to xx% Chance to Crowd Control for 2 Seconds.
- Chest: Hardened Bones
- +x Ranks to Corpse Explosion ↑
- Maximum Life ↑
- Intelligence
- +x Ranks to Blood Mist
- ⚒️Blood Mist Duration/Cooldown Reduction ↑
- ⚒️Lucky Hit: Up to xx% Chance to Crowd Control for 2 Seconds.
- Gloves: Howl from Below
- Temporary Use: Creeping Death
- Lucky Hit Chance ↑
- Intelligence ↑
- Damage over Time
- Maximum Life
- ⚒️Corpse Explosion Damage
- ⚒️Lucky Hit: Up to xx% Chance to Crowd Control for 2 Seconds. ↑
- Pants: Shielding Storm
- Maximum Life ↑
- Armor
- Intelligence ↑
- Resistance to All Elements
- ⚒️Total Armor
- ⚒️Lucky Hit: Up to xx% Chance to Crowd Control for 2 Seconds. ↑
- Boots: Creeping Mist
- Movement Speed ↑
- +x Ranks to Corpse Skills ↑
- Essence per Second
- Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- ⚒️Movement Speed while in Blood Mist ↑
- ⚒️Lucky Hit: Up to xx% Chance to Crowd Control for 2 Seconds.
- Amulet: Damned
- +x to Gloom ↑
- +x to Terror ↑
- Lucky Hit Chance ↑
- Cooldown Reduction ↑
- ⚒️Blood Mist Duration/Cooldown Reduction
- ⚒️Corpse Explosion Damage
- Ring 1: Blighted
- Lucky Hit Chance ↑
- Lucky Hit: Up to a +xx% Chance to Make Enemies Vulnerable ↑
- Intelligence ↑
- Maximum Life
- ⚒️Ultimate Cooldown Reduction/Resource Cost Reduction
- ⚒️Corpse Explosion Damage
- Ring 2: Great Feast
- Lucky Hit Chance ↑
- Lucky Hit: Up to a +xx% Chance to Make Enemies Vulnerable ↑
- Intelligence ↑
- Maximum Life
- ⚒️Ultimate Cooldown Reduction/Resource Cost Reduction
- ⚒️Corpse Explosion Damage
- Main Hand: Black River
- Temporary Use: Conceited (Wand)
- Intelligence ↑
- Maximum Life ↑
- Damage over Time
- ⚒️Bone Storm Duration ↑
- ⚒️Corpse Explosion Damage
- Off Hand: Blood-soaked (Focus)
- Lucky Hit Chance ↑
- Cooldown Reduction ↑
- Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- ⚒️Bone Storm Duration ↑
- ⚒️Corpse Explosion Damage
Put in the following Gems into your gear:
- Helmet / Body Armor / Pants: Royal Ruby
- Weapon / Off-Hand: Royal Amethyst OR Royal Emerald with X'Fal's Corroded Signet
- Jewelry: Royal Diamond OR Royal Skull (Which ever is needed to hit either Cap)
This build benefits the most from the following consumables:
- Elixirs: Elixir of Advantage II
- Incenses: Song of the Mountain, Reddamine Buzz & Chorus of War
FAQ & Mechanics
Once a guide is released, many players have questions on why and how we are approaching certain choices. In this section you can find the answers to the questions that have been asked the most.
Why use Critical Strike Chance and Damage?
Abhorrent Decrepify
Corpse Explosion
Video Guide
Summary
The Infinimist Necromancer quickly rose in popularity because it does the two things that Necros are typically bad at... surviving and moving fast. As innovations came, it became obvious that the build occupies a very high spot in the pantheon of Necromancer builds. In Bocca al Lupo!
Credits
Written by MacroBioBoi
Reviewed by Chronikz
