Just got an Ancestral and I’m sure it won’t hold a candle to a Bone Spear build, but if it changes, I’ll know I have a good weapon choice.
I use it with my shadow/minion build.
It works pretty well for extra CC and essence and I’m sure the extra sources of damage add up nicely.
Kinda wanna try it with frostburn and see if how those do.
Still waiting on a good copy of the Sever unique boots to use with the Scythe though.
Bloodless needs a rework, it has such cool potential but the stats or even the actual unique part of it kind of falls flat. Pretty sure to get the 2nd benefit you need to run a generator but most darkness builds can eliminate that. This leaves Bloodless in a weird spot and you have to give up cooldown on offhand.
Bloodless scream is a little bit of a trap, but it can be worked around.
What I mean here is that you can get more out of a weapon that provides vulnerable % damage and/or critical damage %. Those are two of the most impactful stats for almost any build in Diablo 4. On top of this, a 2h weapon benefits the Shadowblight key passive if you run the Aspect of Decay on it (upto 400%[x] damage at 5 stacks with a perfectly rolled aspect).
With the above in mind, this is essentially saying that Shadowblight is the common driver of burst damage for a typical shadow damage overtime build. So, you’d be missing out on that, and therefore Sever is a good alternative core skill to run. You may still want Blighted Corpse explosion to support as a source of shadow damage for the key passive, but the key passive is less of a focus due to Bloodless Scream taking that item slot.
Anyway, from here you can build around Sever as a direct damage skill which means stack the hell out of critical chance, critical damage, and vulnerable damage. In your Paragon, minimize the use of the Wither board to the glyph area, and only the rare/magic nodes which support your primary damage method. For the glyph in this board you could run either Abyssal or Scourge (but only if you run some damage over time otherwise its effectiveness is reduced).
I would highly recommend going for Scent of Death. Heck, even make it your very first board (I do in almost every build I play on my two necros). Scent of Death is amazing at adding in survivability but I also tend to run my Wisdom-based glyphs in this board. There is a total of 54 Wisdom around the glyph making this a prime area to raise the Darkness glyph to 21 (106% all shadow damage at rank 21).
Flesheater is also a fantastic board since it has some critical damage in it and even attack speed. Attack speed is going to work well with Sever spam.
Bone Graft, Wither, and Cult Leader (even if you only run the Cold Mages) are just dip boards for their glyphs and maybe a few rare nodes. In this regard, I would focus a bit more on Bone Graft since it has two rare node areas that are valuable. One is the area where you get both health and armor. That is amazing because it is pretty unique to the board. The other area is the essence return on kill.
Bloodbath can also be a good dip board since it is decent spot for dexterity glyphs (so is Bone, and to a lesser extent Flesheater), but may not be highly valuable beyond that.
Essence gain can be controlled if you run Cold Mages and you an consume corpses with that skill to also gain some essence back. If you run Frostburn it comes with Lucky Hit for essence, but the use of a 2h conflicts with how Wands can scale that. So, the next best thing is to stack chill as fast as possible. Cold Mages are obvious. Their Blizzard aspect is nice to add on to that. If you want get more uniques in this, then the Greaves of the Empty Tomb (Sever creates a shadow effect which will also apply chill from Bloodless Scream) or Penitent Greaves (direct chill from the aura plus more damage against chilled).
You could probably make Sever pretty spammable with this, but as you can likely tell from the above this could be a lot of work. It could also be highly reliant on other specific uniques which then dilutes other options you could be going on for more direct power. Still, this can work, and you may even like it. 
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That was my sort of train of thought.
I run Sever, BCE, Tendrils, reapers for extra corpses, cold mages with vuln on hit+blizzard aspect, iron golem with vuln stun and then for now Decompose as my last skill for when I can’t get corpses going fast enough but I’m messing around with other options to go there as I don’t have much wiggle room with aspects because of the Scythe being unique.
Would likely go bone prison+blight aspect if I had the extra slot for it
Took Cult leader, Scent of Death and Wither boards, still playing with how much I want to invest in each, maybe I’ll have enough points for a quick glyph slot on another board, but for now 45-55NM is what I can get done easily with this setup
Using both shadowblight related aspects, tendrils, minion damage reduction, extra Mage and Skeleton and Sever aspect that drops blights on crit.
Eventually I’ll get a good Sever unique for boots to help with Shadowblight procs as I find Blight helps build stacks much faster than Sever does so BCE has to pick up the slack there and maybe a Mendeln but I got 2 Bloodless Scream in the same day, so I decided to see what I could make work.
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I haven’t used Bloodless Scream in a while. I tend to trash them at the moment since my primary weapon is over 800 item power, I’m running the aspect I want, and my stats aren’t total trash. It isn’t the ideal item for my desires, but it works better than most things dropping. I’ve gone back and forth on 1h + shield and focus, but the 2her just fits my goals best right now.
I do have the Sever unique, and I have contemplated using it quite a bit. I may do so, and eventually re-arrange my Paragon boards to dip into a 6th board for the Essence glyph (core skill critical damage; useless for my blight-focused build, but great for other skills). I am still waiting on some other upgrade items to boost my critical chance further before I reconsider Sever. I guess I could use it now, but also my gloves give me +4 to Blight and it is a noticeable damage increase.
One day… One day…
Yeah.
I got gloves with +Sever and Blight as well as max crit chance roll.
Think they Bloodless I use is 808, I would have to double check but it’s 800+.
But Crit chance is my issue now, I leaned heavily into a dot build for leveling so most of my upgrades now are so stupid specific that I likely won’t see one until after I get the boots and maybe Mendeln. Lol
With Bone prison counting as minions I might swap tendrils for that as well as the aspects and then drop extra skeleton for blight aspect that pulls targets.
Sever gets a boost for each minion on cast so with enough crit chance to not need the extra from Tendrils, I feel like Bone Prison+Sever spam with shadowblight procs running would be a substantial kill zone.
Tendrils is easier as it lets you build a “rotation” around it’s cooldown, where as bone prison would be saved more for those oh “censored” moments as stacking cooldown reduction isn’t ideal considering all the other stats you need
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There isn’t one, you’re much better off using a well rolled aspect upgraded rare.
Ive tried various builds with it, and its pretty bad. To do a good ice build, you’re better off using well rolled frostburn and wand/focus and max out lucky hit, with an aspect shared misery on the neck, and some +crowd control duration on gear, you can add cold pets and blizzard to that to further boost it, but bloodless scream doesn’t really add any synergy, it caps out at lower dps than a regular 820 2h scythe, and has crap rolls and you don’t need essence as a darkness build
If it is an upgrade when you find it use it. But don’t hesitate to replace it if you get a drop with better DPS or better affixes for your build. IDK why they have elite mobs that can freeze you with a single hit but a Necromancer with Bloodless Scream freezes stuff twice an hour. Maybe using it with the frost boots and gloves would work well? Never tried it because by the time those dropped for me I had moved on to better weapons.
Tried it for a while, and the “Chill” wasn’t really noticeable, and my frost mages seemed to just do more in terms of chill/frozen. Instead I’m rocking a 2 handed with max blighted aspect for the 240% increased damage most of the time.
You actually get more dps using aspect of decay on a 2h by a fair margin surprisingly