Best Diablo 4 Bone Spear Necromancer build in Season 5

The Necromancer is at the top of the meta in Season 5 of Diablo 4 and the Bone Spear build remains the best setup. Here’s how to assemble the build for leveling and endgame and if we’d recommend it for PvP play.

The Bone Spear Necro build involves the Necromancer using this classic move as their primary offensive weapon while utilizing other skills and gear that boost its power. This Necromancer build is ranked as A-tier in the current meta, so it’s a great choice for those fond of the Priests of Rathma.

From there, we’ll detail how to optimize the build for endgame, giving you the best skills, items, Aspects, and Glyphs to target on your journey. For the PvP players out there, we’ll also inform you if we think the Bone Spear Necro is effective this season.

Best Bone Spear leveling build in Diablo 4 Season 5

As you level while playing through either the campaign or the new Season 5 content, you’ll want to make sure that you’re selecting your skills in the following order:

Level	Skill
1	Reap
2	Decompose
3	Bone Spear
4	Bone Spear
5	Enhanced Bone Spear
6	Paranormal Bine Spear
7	Bone Spear
8	Bone Spear
9	Bone Spear
10	Blood Mist
11	Grim Harvest
12	Iron Maiden
13	Enhanced Iron Maiden
14	Amplify Damage
15	Amplify Damage
16	Amplify Damage
17	Corpse Tendrils
18	Unliving Energy
19	Imperfectly Balanced
20	Imperfectly Balanced
21	Imperfectly Balanced
22	Bone Storm
23	Prime Bone Storm
24	Supreme Bone Storm
25	Fueled by Death
26	Fueled by Death
27	Gim Harvest
28	Death’s Approach
29	Death’s Approach
30	Death’s Approach
31	Skeletal Mage Mastery
32	Skeletal Mage Mastery
33	Skeletal Mage Mastery
34	Ossified Essence
35	Unliving Energy
36	Unliving Energy
37	Hewed Flesh
38	Hewed Flesh
39	Hewed Flesh
40	Hellbent Commander
41	Hellbent Commander
42	Hellbent Commander
43	Necrotic Carapace
44	Fueled by Death
45	Golem Mastery
46	Skeletal Warrior Mastery
47	Skeletal Warrior Mastery
48	Inspiring Leader
49	Inspiring Leader
Renown 1	Inspiring Leader
Renown 2	Serration
Renown 3	Serration
Renown 4	Serration
Renown 5	Compound Fracture
Renown 6	Compound Fracture
Renown 7	Compound Fracture
Renown 8	Evulsion
Renown 9	Evulsion
Renown 10	Evulsion

These skills will help you to craft the ideal Bone Spear build. Of course, you’ll need to have unlocked the Renown points to use the extra ten, so if you find it more convenient, level Evulsion, Compound Fracture, and Serration before the minion Mastery skills.

The above skill selection will help focus your abilities around Bone Spear, making this your most powerful skill while reducing its cooldown time. Of course, you’ll be able to fall back on Reap and Decompose if you run out of Essence, but this will become increasingly unlikely as you level up.

Best Book of the Dead setup for leveling

When it comes to using the Necromancer’s unique Book of the Dead skills for a Bone Spear build, we recommend selecting the following:

• Skeletal Warriors – Skirmishers
• Skeletal Mages – Cold
• Golems – Iron

This Book of the Dead setup is the best for this build, letting your Skirmisher Skeletal Warriors focus on melee combat while your Mages support them from a distance with Cold Magic. This will slow enemies down while your Skeletons, Golem, and yourself strike at them while they’re vulnerable.

We’ve selected the Iron Golem for this Book of the Dead setup as it’ll allow your Golem to protect your Mages and yourself from mobs and elites while you fire volleys into the fray.

Your minions are effective allies while leveling, but as you reach endgame, you’ll soon outgrow the need for them and will be able to do more damage by Sacrificing them – at least with this build.

Best leveling rotation

• Summon Minions – If not already active
• Iron Maiden
• Corpse Tendrils
• Blood Mist
• Bone Storm
• Bone Spear – Main Skill
• Reap – Close Combat

For this build, you’ll likely already have your minions with you, so your first attack should be to strike a mob with Iron Maiden so that they’re likely to take more damage when the battle starts.

Next, cast Corpse Tendrils to stun enemies and increase the likelihood of producing extra corpses to re-supply your minion army. From here, hit them with your main attacks, using Blood Mist to do devastating damage from a distance once your minions engage the mob.

Now you can use your two most effective skills, Bone Storm and Bone Spear. Once you’ve cast Bone Storm, fire a volley of Bone Spears into the fray. You can fall back on Reap and Decompose if the need arises.

By now, Corpse Tendrils will have worn off, so hit them with another round of it, maximizing your corpse generation, stunning the survivors, and even topping up their poison levels.

Of course, whichever rotation works for you will be the best to use, but the above is a logical, tried, and tested method to combine skills into one powerful set of attacks.

Best Legendary Aspects

While Legendary Aspects will become more useful in the endgame version of the Bone Spear build, there are some you can hunt down while progressing to level 50 or while playing through the story. Here’s where you can find them:

Aspect	Power	Dungeon	Region
Splintering	Bone Spear makes enemies vulnerable	Guulrahm Slums	Dry Steppes
Grasping Veins	Increased critical strike chance for Corpse Tendrils	Corrupted Grotto	Kehjistan
Disobedience	Boosts defense based on your minion damage output	Halls of the Damned	Kehjistan

Best Bone Spear endgame build in Diablo 4 Season 5

Once you reach endgame in Season 5 by beating the story, hitting level 50, and unlocking the Paragon Board, you can then respec to the endgame version of the Bone Spear Necro build. This is very similar to the leveling build, but there are some key differences in terms of point allocation that we’ll go into below.

First, you’ll need to switch your active and passive skills. As you’ll already have your 50 skill points to use, along with any Renown points you’ve unlocked, allocate them to the following active and passive skills:

Active Skill	Upgrades	Points allocated
Reap	–	1
Decompose	–	1
Bone Spear	Enhanced, Paranormal	5
Blood Mist	Enhanced, Ghastly	2
Decrepify	Enhanced, Abhorent	5
Corpse Explosion	–	1
Corpse Tendrils	Enhanced, Plagued	1
Bone Storm	Enhanced, Supreme	1

Here’s which Passive Skills you should choose:

Passive Skill	Points
Unliving Energy	3
Hewed Flesh	3
Grim Harvest	1
Fueled by Death	3
Imperfectly Balanced	3
Amplify Damage	3
Death’s Approach	3
Memento Mori	3
Serration	1
Compound Fracture	3
Necrotic Carapace	2
Evulsion	3
Stand Alone	3
Rapid Ossification	3
Ossified Essence	1

This build still primarily focuses on Bone Spear as a primary skill, but now no longer uses minions and instead doubles down on support spells and attacks.

We’ve also switched curses, replacing Iron Maiden with Decrepify. This will slow enemies down and give you time to pepper them with attacks that trap them in a kill box.

Best endgame Book of the Dead setup

The key difference between the Book of the Dead skills in endgame is that you’ll be Sacrificing all your minions to really buff yourself. This build has little need of them, so take the sacrificial buff to make your Bone Spear damage even more deadly.

• Skeletal Warriors – Sacrifice
• Skeletal Mages – Sacrifice
• Golems – Sacrifice

Of course, if you’d prefer to use minions, feel free, just know you’ll be less powerful as an individual Necromancer.

Best endgame rotation

For endgame, use the following skill rotation when approaching mobs in battle:

• Decreptify
• Blood Mist
• Corpse Tendrils
• Bone Storm
• Bone Spear
• Corpse Explosion

The rotation of attacks in endgame involves first casting Decreptify to slow enemies, then hitting a mob with Blood Mist, Corpse Tendrils, then Bone Storm. This will likely weaken many of them, so then hit them with volleys of Bone Spear.

Now cast Corpse Explosion to turn the dead bodies of your enemies into bombs that kill even more of them. Repeat this simple rotation and feel free to miss stages against smaller mobs. Blood Mist for example works whenever you like.

Remember, while you do have access to Reap and Decompose, it’s mostly to ensure other skill chains remain unbroken when leveling up. You’ll not have room for them as active skills while you’re already using six others.

Best Legendary Aspects

Now that you’ve reached endgame, you’ll have access to many more Legendary Aspects to boost your build and add special powers to buff your primary skills. Some are the same as in the leveling build, but now there’s even more. Here’s where and how you can find them:

Aspect	Power	Dungeon	Region	Gamble Obols
Grasping Veins	Increased critical strike chance for Corpse Tendrils	Corrupted Grotto	Kehjistan	–
Splintering	Bone Spear makes enemies vulnerable	Guulrahn Slums	Dry Steppes	–
Disobedience	Boosts defense based on your minion damage output	Halls of the Damned	Kehjistan	–
Torment	Critical Strikes with Bone Skills increases your Essence regeneration	Black Asylum	Fractured Peaks	–
Great Feast	Increased minion damage	–	–	Focus
Serration	Ossified Essence increases critical strikes	–	–	Focus
Concussive Strikes	Attacks have 20% chance to Daze enemies	–	–	Focus
Shielding Storm	Bone Storm generates Barrier	–	–	Pants
Hardened Bones	You and your minions get damage reduction	–	–	Pants
Metamorphosis	Evade triggers Unstoppable for 2.5 seconds	–	–	Boots

Remember, you can also strip these Aspects from their original item and apply them to an item of your choosing.

Paragon Board

Once you reach level 50 you’ll stop earning skills points and start earning Paragon points instead. This leveling system works very differently and involves you selecting updates from various boards with different themes and buffs.

Every path is different, but the good news is that by targeting different Glyphs as you move around the Paragon Board, you’ll start buffing your Bone Spear Necro in the ways that matter most to the build.

See below to see which Glyphs you should target first.

Best Glyphs

Level 15

• ‍Gravekeeper
• ‍Corporeal
• ‍Control
• ‍Essence
• ‍Sacrificial
• ‍Exploit
• ‍Amplify

Level 21

• ‍Essence
• ‍Control
• ‍Exploit
• ‍Amplify
• ‍Corporeal
• ‍Sacrificial
• ‍Gravekeeper

Once you reach Paragon Level 15, work your way towards the above Glyphs. You’ll also unlock more across the Paragon Board as you earn more points, but selecting these particular Glyphs in this order will keep you on the best possible path for the Necro Bone Spear build.

Best Bone Spear endgame item build

Item	Socket	Item type	Power
Deathless Visage	Ruby for extra life	Helm	Bone Spear leaves behind exploring echoes
Runic Mail of Shielding Storm	Ruby for extra life	Chest Armor	Bone Storm has chance to trigger Barrier
Splintering Runic Gloves	Ruby for extra life	Gloves	Bone Spear makes enemies vulnerable
Runic Leggings of Hardened Bones	Ruby for extra life	Pants	Increased Minion damage
Runic Cleats of Metamorphosis	Ruby for extra life	Boots	Increased Skeleton Priest damage
‍Spinal of the Great Feast	2x Emeralds for poison damage	Main Hand	Chance to cast Bone Spear twice
–	–	Offhand	–
Choker of Serration	Diamond for extra attack power	Amulet	Boosts Evulsion and Compound Fracture
Ring of Torment	Diamond for extra attack power	Ring 1	Boosts Torment
Loop of Grasping Veins	Diamond for extra attack power	Ring 2	Boosts Grasping Veins

It’ll take time to track down this exact set, but once you do this will make up your endgame gear. Of course, it’s up to you which gear you equip and you may want to mix it up, but this setup will give you a decided advantage.

Alternative to Necromancer Bone Spear build for PvP

The good news about using the Necromancer Bone Spear build for PvP is it’s the same exact build we’ve described above in our endgame section. The build is rated A-tier for PvP this season, so while it’s not at the very top, it’s still deadly and a great choice for taking down other players.

Now that you know how to craft this top-tier Necromancer build, make sure to check out our guides for the Druid, Sorcerer, Rogue, and Barbarian.