A Comprehensive Guide to Minion Mastery: The Best Build Nobody Is Playing

Necromancer
1

Last updated on the 14th of June, 2023

A Comprehensive Guide to Minion Mastery: The Best Build Nobody Is Playing

— Prologue —

Imagine this: you’re in the heat of battle, fingers flying across your keyboard. You lay down a curse or two on the enemy, carefully position your Corpse Tendrils, and wait with bated breath for its effect to take hold. As the enemy lumbers towards you, you swiftly apply any additional conditionals and prepare to unleash your ultimate followed by which ever skill you’ve been beefing up. This is it, the moment where all your Aspects align, and you’re ready to rain down a world of hurt.

But then you glance at your mini-map, and what do you see? Those darn Barbarians, Druids, Sorceresses, and Rogues have already zoomed past you! They’re three, no, four packs ahead, gleefully slashing, blasting, and smashing while you’re still stuck in your strategic setup. The reality sinks in: it’s just not practical.

It’s no secret that the Necromancer isn’t winning any speed awards in Diablo 4. With the grace of a sloth on a leisurely stroll, we’re lagging behind, resigned to our fate as the slowest moving class in the game.

But what if I told you, it doesn’t have to be this way? That there’s a glimmer of hope for us, the Necromancers, the misunderstood masters of the macabre? What if I told you that a build exists—a better, stronger build—that can help us keep up with the rest? A build so simple, it requires zero setup time, and has movement speed on par with those speed-demon Druids and nimble-footed Rogues?

An approach that was initially scoffed at, dismissed by the masses as the ridiculous ramblings of an eccentric has-been. But friends, I ask you: who has the last laugh when a horde of minions descends upon your enemies, leaving nothing but a trail of bones and despair in their wake?

Yes, you’ve guessed it: it’s a minion build.

Now, pull up a tombstone, get comfortable, and let’s delve into the art of Minion Mastery: The Best Build Nobody Is Playing—until now, of course.

— Why It Works: Understanding Diablo 4’s Multiplicative Damage Buckets —

Welcome, fellow Necromancers, to the theorycrafting section of our guide—where we’ll dive deeper into the arcane knowledge (convoluted mess) of Diablo 4’s damage buckets. Before we get started, let me assure you that no, we’re not talking about actual buckets filled with blood, bones, and souls of the damned (though that does sound thematically appropriate). Instead, we’re talking about the six major categories that determine how much damage you—and in extension your minions—can dish out.

These six damage buckets are:

  1. The singular multiplicative [x] Damage %.

  2. Main stat—Intelligence for our brainy Necromancer.

  3. Attack Speed bonuses.

  4. Critical Strike Damage bonuses.

  5. All additive [+] Damage modifiers.

  6. Vulnerable Damage.

Understanding these buckets is like unlocking the Necronomicon of damage output. The key is to distribute your bonuses across each bucket, rather than overfilling just one. This is because bonuses within each bucket are additive—meaning they get added together first, and then multiplied between buckets. It’s like a dark, magical math class where multiplicative bonuses are your star students, and additive bonuses are the backbenchers who get less impressive the more you have.

Now, let’s see how our underappreciated minion build fits into these six buckets:

  1. The singular multiplicative [x] Damage %. Necromancers have exclusive access to one of the game’s most potent multiplicative damage bonuses, upwards of a whopping 240% increase. It’s passive, consistent, and ridiculously easy to miss.

  2. Intelligence. As Necromancers, we’re naturally gifted in the IQ department. This isn’t just good for lording over the Barbarians; it directly boosts our damage output.

  3. Attack Speed and Minion Attack Speed. Our minions borrow our Attack Speed bonus (not our Attack Speed directly—meaning your weapon’s attack speed has no effect on minions), making them as quick as we are. Additionally, they have their own separate Attack Speed modifier, usually found on amulets. It’s like giving your minions their own personal espresso shots.

  4. Critical Strike Chance and Damage. Other than the base modifiers, we’re looking at bonuses like Critical Strike Chance vs Injured, Critical Strike Damage vs CC, and Critical Strike Damage vs Vulnerable. Essentially, we want to kick ‘em while they’re down.

  5. [+] Damage % additive modifiers. This category includes bonuses like Damage with Minions, Damage vs CC, and Damage to Affected by Shadow DoT. However, beware of modifiers conditioned by the player character—like Damage while Healthy or Fortified. These probably don’t affect minions, so it’s best to avoid them for now.

  6. Vulnerable Damage. We really do want to take advantage of our enemies at their most vulnerable.

So there you have it, a primer on the six damage buckets and how our minion build leverages each one. Like a perfect symphony of death, this build balances these bonuses to unleash a relentless tide of undead fury. It’s a thing of beauty, really—if you’re into that sort of thing. But hey, you’re a Necromancer. Of course you are.

— The Build: A Minion Master’s End-Game Skill Progression —

NOTE: I’ll put a link to the complete build at the end of the thread—but in order to take advantage of the build, it’s important to understand the nuances of each pick and how they interact in the context of the build.

Welcome, fellow Necromancers, to the heart of this guide. We’re about to delve into the nitty-gritty details of our build progression. This section is like a map to an ancient crypt—each step takes us closer to unveiling the pharaoh’s treasure, or in our case, mastering the minion build.

Our key strategy here is to double dip on regular minion modifiers and shadow modifiers that affect minions—while also applying this principle to our gear and Paragon progression. This build is for the truly committed—it requires all but three Renown skill points and a full set of Aspects. The build also only really sets in at level 70+ due to the completion our first primary Paragon board, Cult Leader. But fear not, dear Necromancer, as the rewards are bountiful.

Let’s start our journey in the Basic section of the skill tree →

  1. Reap: Drop one point in Reap and its first enhancement, Enhanced Reap. Reap serves us two delectable dishes: 15% flat Damage Reduction and a 30% flat Attack Speed increase—if the content is dying quickly (and believe me, it will).

NOTE: Reap and Blood Mist is interchangeable depending on the content and your itemization—you reach a point of tankyness where Blood Mist is almost redundant, almost.

Moving on to the Core section of the skill tree →

  1. Blight: Invest one point in Blight, its first enhancement, and the Supernatural Blight upgrade. Blight is our only essence dump, and it serves to slow enemies, increase minion damage, and proc fishing.

  2. Hewed Flesh: Go full out and invest 3/3 in Hewed Flesh. This provides an infinite supply of corpses, proccing off your damage and not minion damage.

Next, we traverse to the Corpse & Macabre section →

  1. Corpse Explosion: Place 1/5 in Corpse Explosion, Enhanced Corpse Explosion, and Blighted Corpse explosion. The damage here is irrelevant—we’re just fishing for procs and generating essence.

  2. Skeletal Warrior Mastery: Invest 3/3 here for essential minion bonuses.

  3. Grim Harvest and Fueled by Death: Grab 3/3 in both for Essence generation and a more or less permanent 9% multiplicative damage modifier.

  4. Blood Mist: Invest one point. This is our only immunity and crucial for more challenging content.

NOTE: Reap and Blood Mist is interchangeable depending on the content and your itemization—you reach a point of tankyness where Blood Mist is almost redundant, almost.

Next, we venture into the Curse section of the skill tree →

  1. Skeletal Mage Mastery: Again, go full 3/3 for essential minion amplification.

  2. Death’s Embrace: Grab 3/3 for the flat 9% damage reduction. The damage component doesn’t affect minions.

Onwards to the second Corpse & Macabre section →

  1. Reaper’s Pursuit: Invest 3/3 for a permanent 15% Movement Speed buff, procced by both Blight and Blighted Corpse Explosion as well as Reap.

  2. Crippling Darkness: Grab 3/3. This gives Reap, Blight, and Blighted Corpse Explosion a Lucky Hit Chance of stunning, enabling additional Damage vs CC modifiers.

  3. Necrotic Carapace: Go full 3/3 for a constant supply of Fortify.

Finally, we arrive at the Ultimate section of the skill tree—and your Key Passive →

  1. Golem Mastery: Invest 3/3 to boost our Iron boy.

  2. Inspiring Leader, Hellbent Commander, Bonded in Essence, Death’s Defense: Grab 3/3 in all of these to increase minion damage and survivability.

  3. Army of the Dead: Grab 1/1 in Army of the Dead, Prime Army of the Dead, and Supreme Army of the Dead.

  4. Key Passive - Shadowblight: This gives us access to the most important modifier in the game, despite shadow and darkness skills not playing a direct role in our damage output.

Lastly, what to do with the leftovers →

  1. Unliving Energy: The remaining 3 skill points find their home here, for a slight quality of life improvement in terms of Essence management. This one is personal choice.

Continue on to the next sections to understand in the practical use of the build, and why it’s so good.

— The Key to the Crypt: Itemization —

Gather around, fellow Necromancers, for we have reached the climax of our tale—the unveiling of the sacred artifact. The centerpiece of our Minion Master build—the Blighted Aspect, specifically applied to a 2-handed weapon. This is the catalyst that awakens the undead army from their eternal slumber and sends them marching on our foes.

You see, the Blighted Aspect activates a global multiplicative damage modifier—a powerful enchantment that amplifies our damage output by a jaw-dropping (max) 240%. And the cherry on top? This magnifier works its magic on everything, including our minions, on a separate multiplicative multiplier—as referred to in the “Why it Works”-section.

“But oh wise one,” I hear you ask, “how does one conjure such a potent spell?” Well, my curious disciple, it all starts with your Shadowblight Key Passive. Passively apply it (through normal game play) 10 times on a single enemy or distributed among multiple enemies. With our constant barrage of Blight and Blighted Corpse Explosion, the downtime is minimal. The only limiting factor is the buff’s uptime itself, as it refuses to stack while active. It’s like a vampire—it hates overexposure.

Now, the Blighted Aspect is the main course of our meal, but let’s not forget about the side dishes. The rest of the Aspects, while lesser in comparison, still play their roles in enhancing the flavor of our build. To truly bring this build into the, well, darkness, we need a specific set of Aspects on particular items.

Fear not, for you do not have to wander aimlessly in search of this mythic item constellation. The complete overview, the Rosetta Stone to this ancient language of Aspects, will be linked below.

The build: https://d4builds.gg/builds/5c1568a6-46cf-480d-b390-8f3ad713a8a5/

— A Word on the Ring of Mendeln —

This build does not depend on any Uniques whatsoever. The Ring of Mendeln, however, is the definite best in slot—and will take the place of the ring that bears the Aspect of Reanimation. This is because this particular Aspect brings a relevant damage modifier, yes, but one that is part of the larger additive damage group. This is the group with most of our modifiers and therefore, comparatively, this Aspect brings the lower overall value between our offensive Aspects.

— A work in progress —

This guide and the build are works in progress—particularly in regards to Paragon distribution and individual item stat weights as I gather feedback and play test.

The build: https://d4builds.gg/builds/5c1568a6-46cf-480d-b390-8f3ad713a8a5/

7 Likes
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The issue is minions can’ survive long enough to be a good build. You can pour all the resources you want into a minion build may get lucky and get the ring of mendein to proc, however you would be hoping that it clears the floor of all mobs. If your minions don’t down enemies in less than 2-3 seconds they die then you spend rest of the fight raising your minions.

On top of all this you have to struggle with dumb AI minions half the time they don’t attack. Minions have no aoe awareness get wiped to floor.

At end of the day know one knows what the necromancer class is suppose to be if not about minions not even blizzard.

1 Like
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Alot of these skill choices are what I am using also. The one major deviation, is I am currently using decompose instead of reap, and trying to get the Rotting Aspect.

Also currently using decrepify instead of corpse explosion, but may swap that back over to CE with the Blighted upgrade.

Not sure why I never grabbed Reaper’s pursuit and crippling darkness though, kind of feel like no brainer pick ups since they boost darkness skills.

Overall good write up, and guide! Feel like I learned something, and excited to get home and try this all out!

1 Like
4

Also, who reads tooltips these days? I seriously wonder if the extended community knows you can heal your minions. I switched from bone spear to minions at 60 and it took me a day to read the tooltip.

I’m only 63, and at moderate solo nm levels I won’t lose a single reaper or mage (and some passive that increase individual minion damage based on how long they’ve been alive).

5

This is a common misconception and simply untrue. Necromancers has access to the second highest Armor in the game—after Barbarian. Your minions scale off your defensive stats—as well as Minion specific ones. You basically want all available armor nodes in your paragon tree as well as Minion Health on select 70+ Ancestral gear pieces along with other, smarter itemization choices. This combined with the fact that—at worst—minions can be 3-shotted—and a powerful priest heal. I will update the guide in the coming days to reflect these points.

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Definitely not a misconception. I have full Ancestral gear, fully decked out minions.

Minion builds - 1 style only reapers and skeleton mages with essence regen.

Can’t use any other minions just won’t work.

There is no build diversity everyone runs around exact same copy cause build so heavy focus on corspe spawning.

Depending which nightmare you get can either do it with ease or struggle.

When I do a t4 nightmare 22-25 and i get slay all monsters in area like thank god this won’t be that hard.

7

They literally have the answer to the problem with the skeletons ONE game back.

Command Skeleton.

Wow, now these useless idiots can be directed to attact a specific enemy instead of swarming around like angry bees.

Make Command Skeleton a core skill, have it cost essence to buff the damage, armor, and attack speed of the Skeleton Warriors and Mages, and make it TARGET something.

We could even go so far as to rework Army of the Dead. How about the explosive undead deal Shadow damage, giving us synergy with the rest of the tree. Then have a final node that super-charges your active minions and causes their attacks to inflict Vulnerability for a short time.

Now minion masters have a reliable cooldown that provides a crucial de-buff, while also getting a nice room-clearing AoE combo once every 70 secs.

Boom done. Hire me Blizzard. I can save your company.

4 Likes
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Its simple to just change they focus, on target which you attack… All use basic attack, so its easy to just make target for minion to monster you are attack… And its fixed

9

Have you seen the goblin video about dmg buckets? Can boost the damage i think

10

22-25 is essentially within the boundaries of Sacred content (1st tier of Ancestral). If you’re already struggling to keep your minions alive at this point, there must be several things you’re doing wrong in terms of skill setup, paragon build and itemization. I’m comfortably farming low 40s—and I still have ways to go. Minion survivability has not been a primary or even secondary issue for me. You are right, however, that minion AI is horrendous—and the primary fault of the build. But every build have strengths and weaknesses.

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And what your thinking about stats on items?

13

have you tried to use blood surge with Aspect of Rathma’s Chosen? For buff atk speed and will be a good skill to procc lucky hit and heal you

14

I’m still working on this section of the guide—but generally Movement Speed, Attack Speed modifiers, Armor % and Minion Health where applicable and a healthy balance of the different damage buckets as specified along with Max Health and Damage Reduction modifiers. You’ll want to completely skip on resistances at the moment, as they are bugged and completely worthless. In terms of main stats and all stats—you’ll want just enough of all the tertiary stats to activate Paragon node bonuses while generally taking Intelligence wherever you can fit it in.

On your second point. This build does not reliably Overpower and have little room to incorporate Blood powers and aspects.

15

And for jewel i think topaz or sapphire would be better for dmg reduction and the ruby jewel just consider your base life for boost your HP

16

Im running a similar build, and getting some ok results.

I recently decided to try to swap in sever for blight. For two reasons

  1. single target damage is the weakness of the build, and sever has this.
    And
  2. its another minion (aesthetically anyway) and i want all the minions.

We’ll see how it works out for me.

17

Sapphire is definitely the theoretical way to go in terms of Armor Sockets due to consistent Fortified through Necrotic Carapace. But while minions definitely scale off player health; I haven’t found them to benefit from Damage Reduction while fortified (they DO benefit from fortified though, it seems). It’s a bit rough to test, though.

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18

This is more or less the build I facerolled to level 70. Once you hit WT4 it falls apart. We require working resists as the AI has 0 concept of fire is bad. Our best minion paragon board (Cult Leader) is almost nonfunctional.

The minion DPS was never the issue, but minions rarely focus one target, let alone a high priority target, to death. If fire enchanted or suppressor mobs are around your minions will die before the threat dies. One elite with suppressor, fire enchanted, and teleport and your minions will be unable to kill it.

Army of the dead replenishes the minions far to slowly. It needs the full duration to even get you back to 11/11. In the meantime the ones who do get revived get picked off before the others rise up.

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about stats i think boost the only passive for minions on amulet is huge. The Hellbent Commander

20

It’s a fair point about the buggy Cult Leader board—the specifics here are still pretty foggy.

Minion survivability is largely an itemization issue once you’ve taken the mandatory skill points with paragon support.

Remember your minions scale of your armor which also partially reduces non-physical damage—you are correct that resistances are completely worthless at the moment; most likely a bug. Necromancer has access to the second highest Armor rating in the game; ironically because our Paragon boards are pretty bad—leaving more room for armor.

Maximum Minion Life % is also really strong, because it basically bolters all other defensive stats with a significantly larger health pool—while also basically buffing our Skeletal Priest heal, since it’s percentage based (and also giving more time for reactive healing in general).

21

You guys seemed to experiment a lot with the damage.

Just a question about how minion damage work. Does “You deal x more damage” affects the damage our character deals, or minions also count ?