Look Ahead Necromancer Class in Diablo 4

Diablo has always given us the ability to choose how we play. From raging barbarians to arrow-raining rogues, to vicious fire-spewing mages. But one class has always been a favorite, and with a wide variety of abilities, you can harness an army of undead at the snap of your fingers. This is our look ahead to Diablo IV and the Necromancer Class.

Necromancers have always been such a deep-delving class since Diablo II allowing you different play styles and the ability to harness the undead from beneath your feet, and Diablo IV seems to delve even deeper into this class. The Necromancer uses two different styles of resources, Essence, and Corpses. Essence is your primary resource which will be utilized 90% of the time and will slowly restore as you don't use it. Utilizing basic skills will restore essence faster, allowing quicker use of your abilities. Corpses, just as they sound, need corpses nearby and can be used to summon skeletons and minions to improve your skills. There are skills allowing you to use as a form of offence such as corpse explosion, but otherwise, they are more intended for summoning purposes. In addition to resources, Necromancers will have various types of play styles to choose from, which I'll get into later. 

When it comes to weapons, Necros can utilize various styles of gear, from wands, daggers, swords, shields, and focuses. Not to mention that in Diablo IV, they are the only class that can use Scythes. So prepare to become the grim reaper himself.

But alongside weapons, the necros will also hold a book of the dead. This allows the necro to access one extra skill in the hotbar: raising skeletons. The book of the dead allows plays to customize how their armies are focused as they level up. From skeletal mages to warriors to golems to specializations within those classes themselves. This provides another access to customization for a player and their specific play styles. From a more direct attack from a skirmisher to a slower AEO attack utilizing the reaper specialization. But that's not all, as each specialization unit in an army has unique upgrades available to them. So this provides even more customization options for the units in your army and can synchronize with other army members to provide a combination of attacks to nullify your enemies with their playstyles.

Speaking of playstyles, the necromancer classes have 4 different styles to pick from. Which are Bone, Blood, Darkness, and the Army. So let's look at these.

Bone skills are more heavily focused on the physical aspect of damage and utilize a lot of essence with high critical chances. One of those skills is Bone Spirit which utilizes your entire essence to throw a bone toward the closest enemy and explode on impact. The more essence used, the more damaging the explosion. So later in your build, you can upgrade this skill to lower cool down based on critical hits, thus allowing you to perform the skill more frequently and get higher critical hit changes and more damage. A second skill that was announced is the bone prison. This allows the player to make a prison of bones and negate enemies from moving within. This skill can be used to block off corridors, stop hoards from attacking for a period of time, and/or be used in conjunction with another skill to take advantage of the frozen enemies.

From there, we move into the blood playstyle that's more of a defensive form but can be utilized in turning defence into offence. Siphoning lifeforce from the enemy to keep your health high while performing damage at the same time is what the Blood Surge skills do. Drawing a small amount of blood from the enemies and thus healing you, but then creating an explosion around you utilizing that blood for an AOE attack. The damage of this attack increases depending on how many enemies are drained, so this skill is especially beneficial when surrounded by enemies. Another defensive skill is Blood Mist, which turns you into a mist of blood. This provides the ability to become immune to damage while draining life from any enemies you go through while in this form. It's a great defensive skill that also allows you to escape situations that would otherwise see death upon you.

The Darkness play style damage enemies by utilizing damage over time or multiple attacks within a short window which has the opportunity to provide a buff to your character. This play style is also popular for its crowd control and debuff mechanics, such as blight. This throws a massive dark energy ball that explodes on impact but leaves behind a defiled area dealing periodic damage to enemies within that area. This boards well when utilizing the bone prison freezing enemies in place. Another skill announced was decomposing which channels dark energy into enemies, increasing your essence while at the same time summoning Corpses to attack the enemies being attacked. Good little skill to keep your supply of skeletons coming.

And the final playstyle is the Army which, as a necromancer, is extremely common. As we've already discussed with the book of the dead. there is a massive amount of customization options when it comes to the type of skeletons and golems you can summon, and alongside the different playstyles, you can generate a synergy between all of these to help each other and provide a massive damage output while keeping your essence and life high and wielding. From summoning a spew of skeletons to a raging golem, we know necromancers alike will keep their armies strong and in abundance regardless of the style. 

This is just one of the classes and skills announced for Diablo IV. Honestly, this sounds like a fun class where experimentation with different play styles will bring forth various effects and customizable options. What are your thoughts on the necromancer class?