Diablo IV Necromancer skills revealed: Bone, darkness, blood, summons

The Necromancer returns as Diablo IV's fifth and final class, bringing a bunch of old classic spells and abilities and a few new tricks.

Diablo IV's Necro looks like a big evolution over Diablo II and III with four total skill trees: Bone, darkness, blood, and summons. A recent quarterly update confirms some of the new skills and abilities coming to D4's Necro.

Bone

Bone skills are relatively physical in nature, and thus benefit more heavily from effects such as Critical Strike. These skills also benefit from having and spending large amounts of Essence, as they have various effects that can cause each of their individual attacks to be even more powerful.

• Bone Spirit - Works as it always did, tracks enemies and explodes, can be charged up with more mana to do more damage
• Bone Prison - Traps enemies, can block hallways/corridors

Darkness

Darkness skills use Shadow magic to overwhelm their enemies. These kinds of attacks tend to be DoT-based or attack multiple times in a short window, with various benefits and rewards being granted for damaging enemies in this way. Darkness skills also tend to have various debuffs and crowd control elements so that they can keep their enemies at bay while they die a slow, painful death.

• Decompose - Damage-dealing curse that generates mana, will also summon corpses to fight for you
• Blight - Ball of dark energy, leaves behind cursed AoE area that deals damage over time

Blood

Necromancers can also use the power of Blood magic to siphon the life from their enemies. Not only do these skills tend to have defensive-oriented benefits, they also have many ways to turn that defense into offense for the player, empowering them and rewarding them for having large amounts of maximum Health as well as keeping their current Health total high.

• Blood surge - Basically a blood nova attack
• Blood mist - Necro transforms into a bloody mist that damages enemies over time
• Blood wave - Summons a bloody wave to disperse enemies

Summons

As you would expect, Necromancers can summon the undead to do their bidding. We also allow players to specialize into empowering their army as much as possible, which includes various kinds of Skeletons as well as the classic Golem. One advantage to this method of playing is that it can easily incorporate the benefits of Bone, Darkness, or Blood skills, allowing you to have a great deal of customization to how you want to interact with your army.

• Skeletal Warriors - Skirmishers (more damage, reduced health), Defenders (bonus health), Reapers (slow attacks, AOE damage)
• Skeletal Mages
• Golems

Book of the Dead

Players will be able to utilize the Necromancer's Book of the Dead, an all-new ability for the class, allowing them to dominate the battlefield with deeper customization of their undead army than ever before.

Fight with aggressive skeleton Warriors, fast-attacking Skirmishers, sword and board Defenders, or scythe-wielding Reapers. Unleash a litany of spells with Skeleton Mages, imbuing them with shadow, cold, and sacrificial magics. Deploy tanking Bone Golems, health-stealing Blood Golems, and charging Iron Golems. Or sacrifice them all to absorb their power.