Necromancer

The Necromancer comes from the Priests of Rathma, an order that treats death as a force to be balanced rather than opposed. His combat method reflects this philosophy — rather than fighting directly, he converts the battlefield itself into a resource. Enemy corpses become ammunition, fallen monsters become soldiers, and debuffs amplify every source of incoming damage his army can produce. He is one of the game's strongest supports and a capable solo farmer.

Weaknesses

Without Teleport from gear, the Necromancer's movement is a liability. He has the lowest base speed of the melee-adjacent builds and no skill-based repositioning, which means farming routes that depend on quickly resetting positions between packs are slow until he gets Enigma or an equivalent source. His summoned army is also notably brittle before adequate gear — early Act bosses in particular tend to rapidly deplete skeleton units, requiring frequent re-summoning that interrupts the flow of play.

Playstyle & Skills

The Summoning tree builds a persistent undead army of Skeletons, Skeleton Mages, and Golems, supplemented by Revived monsters. The army's value scales with gear but functions reasonably well at lower investment levels. Poison and Bone provides direct offensive tools — Bone Spear for single-target magic damage, and Corpse Explosion for the most efficient area clear mechanic in the game. Curses modifies how enemies interact with all damage sources: Amplify Damage doubles physical damage taken, Decrepit reduces enemy combat effectiveness, and Lower Resist strips elemental protections to assist allied or self-cast elemental damage.

Early Game & Leveling

The Bone Spear and Corpse Explosion combination is the standard leveling route. Bone Spear deals magic damage, which bypasses physical and elemental immunities, and the White runeword — available at low levels — adds a large bonus to Bone Spear that carries the character through most of Normal and Nightmare. Once Corpse Explosion is online, the pattern becomes: kill one target with Bone Spear, then chain the Corpse Explosion to clear the rest of the group. The radius and fire/physical split on Corpse Explosion makes it one of the most efficient pack-clearing tools in the game.

Farming & Endgame

A fully assembled Summon Necromancer brings an army large enough to handle most content without direct player input. The build's power spike arrives when Teleport becomes accessible through gear — teleporting the entire minion stack directly onto a boss is a fundamentally different experience than walking them there, and it is what elevates the build from functional to dominant. Enigma is the standard source of this.

Poison Nova combined with Corpse Explosion provides a strong alternative for area clearing in the later game, but the build requires more specific gear and investment before it competes with the summoner setup at equivalent item levels.

The Priests of Rathma operate from a vast underground city deep in the jungles of Kehjistan. Known to outsiders as Necromancers, they are among the oldest magical traditions in Sanctuary — their practices predate the formal mage clans. Through the teachings of Rathma and generations of research, they came to understand the boundary between life and death, and learned to manipulate it in ways no other mortal discipline has achieved.

Despite their dark reputation, the Necromancers have never suffered the epidemic of corruption that plagued the Vizjerei and other mage clans. They are pragmatists who view death as a natural component of existence, not something to fear or deny. This philosophical clarity, combined with their understanding of the balance between Order and Chaos, has kept them immune to demonic temptation.

The emergence of the Prime Evils represents a direct violation of the Great Cycle of Being that the Necromancers hold sacred. Their presence on the mortal plane disrupts the natural balance. The Priests of Rathma have left their underground sanctum to eliminate this interference — not out of allegiance to the forces of Order, but to restore equilibrium.