In Diablo 4, the Necromancer is a versatile Class that can decimate enemies in the game no matter the World Tier the player is at. Not only can the Necromancer summon spells, but they don’t have to face their enemies alone. With the Necromancer, gamers can choose to either play the offense, or let the minions guard them so that they can conserve their health and deal damage from afar. Players can even create their own Build by combining different basic, core and ultimate skills.
Key passives play a vital role in winning battles, as they greatly enhance the character’s abilities. However, players can only equip one Key passive at a time, so choosing the right one is important. The Necromancer has four Key passives that can drastically improve a player’s Build. However, not every Key passive is equally effective. Here's how they stack up.
4 Ossified Essence
Ossified Essence is the least buffed Key passive out of the four. It gives only a small percentage increase in damage, and working only on specific types of skill. Ossified Essence will increase the damage of players’ Bone Skills by 1% for each point of Essence the player has above 50 upon cast. The price is high, and the reward is minimal.
On top of that, the Build has to be centred around AoE (Area of Effect) attacks, because this Key passive only works on core Bone skills such as Bone Spear or Bone Spirit. Gamers will have to go out of their way to collect as much Essence as possible during fights. Otherwise, they will be forced to equip Hemorrhage or Decompose, which will generate Essence for them. Aside from this, if the player has Summoner or Corpse Explosion builds, Ossified Essence will be ineffective altogether.
Limiting the choice of core skills in return for a suboptimal boost is not the right strategy to adopt if a gamer wants to improve in Diablo 4. This is why Ossified Essence ranks in last place for Necromancer Key passives.
3 Shadowblight
Shadowblight is a powerful Key passive that can tip the scales at critical points in a battle. With Shadowblight, whenever Shadow-based skills inflict damage on enemies, those enemies get infected with Shadowblight for two seconds. While they are infected, the player’s minions will deal 10% bonus damage to those enemies. In addition to this, every 10th time an enemy receives Shadow damage from the player or his Minions while they are affected by Shadowblight, they take additional 22% damage.
The gamer must have a Shadow-based skill like Reaper in their arsenal for this Key passive to activate. Builds such as the Blightlord or Spirit Bomber will greatly benefit from Shadowblight as they will assist in unlocking that powerful 22% additional damage.
For the skilled gamer, this Key passive is not ideal. The window of time during which the player can deal additional damage is very short. Moreover, only enemies that are within a short radius of the player will actually get cast by Shadowblight, making it even harder to use this Key passive to its full potential.
2 Rathma’s Vigor
This defensive Key passive pairs perfectly with the Blood skills that activate it. Rathma’s Vigor will help gamers in surviving longer during those intense and difficult battles. Their maximum life will increase by 10%, and after they have been Healthy for 15 seconds, their next Blood skill will Overpower; that is, it will deal bonus damage.
The requirement for a character to be ‘Healthy’ is having more than 80% health. While this may seem like a hard thing to achieve at first, the 80% health will actually be the sum of a player’s Current and Fortified life.
Rathma’s Vigor eliminates one of Necromancer’s biggest weaknesses, which is its low health compared to other Diablo classes. On top of that, this Key passive overpowers some of the best skills in the game, such as Blood Surge or Blood Mist, both of which inflict a lot of damage to enemies in the first place. Gamers can use this Key passive in a number of different builds that are focused on maximizing DPS (damage per second).
1 Kalan’s Edict
Utilizing that which is unique to the Necromancer, Kalan’s Edict provides a powerful boost in exchange for an easily achievable prerequisite. If a player has not taken damage in the last 3 seconds, the player’s Minions gain 15% Attack Speed. But that’s not all. If the player has 7 or more Minions, then the Attack Speed is doubled.
While a 15% increase may not look like a substantial advantage on paper, in a battle it makes all the difference. The Minions can make short work of basic monsters with this boost, which they will be receiving quite often as the Necromancer can use the Minions as a shield and hence not take any damage.
It’s not just the boosts that Kalan’s Edict provides the player with that makes it stand out. This Key passive is also not bound to any skill type like its counterparts. If a player is using Necromancer, chances are that his Build makes use of minions at some level, making this Key passive usable in all Builds, even in the Endgame. Just be sure to lay down as many corpses as possible to achieve that bonus multiplier.