Diablo IV’s adventure potential is limitless. With outstanding replayability and highly customizable gameplay, diving into diverse builds is an integral part of the excitement. Today, we feature three favorite builds chosen by the developers themselves.
Official launch coming soon, why not try one of these for yourself? Perhaps you’ll find your personal favorite playing style in Diablo IV’s endless possibilities…
Bad to the Bone-Spirit (Necromancer)
by Adam Z. Jackson – Top Designer
The first build that I want to talk about is the one that I plan to run with the launch of Diablo IV, which is a Bone-Spirit Necromancer!
Bone Spirit is one of our bolder skill designs in that it both has a long cooldown and removes ALL of the player’s Essence when cast. In return, it deals a significant amount of additional damage to the enemy for each resource point spent. Enhancing Bone Spirit also reduces the cooldown significantly when Critically Strikes an enemy, adding a target for the player to chase.
Taking all of this together, the goal of this build is to aim for a place where players can increase their maximum Essence as well as their Essence Recovery to a level they can use. Bone Essence on cooldown while still being able to reliably generate enough Essence. to be full again for the next cast. We’ll prioritize Max Resources, Resource Regeneration, and Critical Hit Chance as key stats to pursue. Other stats like Critical Damage or effects like additional damage to Bone skills are also desirable. What’s also very interesting about this build is that I expect it to change a lot over time as I get more gear as well as some of the Legends and Unique I’ll be targeting.
Among the main effects we want is the ghastly Bone Soul, which gives an extra 10% Critical Hit Chance and gives us a reliable Critical Strike on enemies that are critical to the attack. progress until our Critical Hit Chance is high enough through gear and other methods to do so without this upgrade. At that point, we can switch to the fearsome Spirit Bone (which generates 30 Essences for the next 4 seconds after each hit) to help create our Essence. Ossified Essence’s main passive causes Bone Spirit to deal more damage when using more Essence (increasing 1% damage to Bone Skill for every Essence point over 50). Since we plan to always use the Bone Spirit at maximum, this will greatly increase the amount of damage we can deal.
For this build I would try to run only one Bone Golem and sacrifice my Skeleton Skirmishers for an extra Critical Hit Chance (6%) and my Skeletal Mage for extra Max Essence ( 18).
Regarding skills, to start the game I will use Bone Shards, Bone Spear, Bone Soul, Golem, Corpse Explosion and Blood Wave. This set of skills gives me an effective way to use the Corpse while also having the necessary maneuvering tools through my Golems and Blood Waves to keep my enemies at bay and away from them while I slay them with the Spear. Bones and Bone Souls.
Legendaries and Uniques will improve this build even further. Blood Artisan’s Cuirass greatly enhances the construction by providing an alternative method of spawning Bone Spirits by collecting Blood Orbs. After acquiring this Unique feature, my build will also chase the spawning Blood Orbs, which now allow new connections, such as the Legendary Tidal Doom power that spawns multiple Blood Waves, which th also spawn more Blood Orbs to collect!
For a more late-game setup, I traded Bone Shards and Bone Spears for Hemorrhages and Ribs so I could get more Blood Orbs. In this build, I’m using Bone Sprit on cooldown to deal massive damage while creating and collecting Blood Orbs to spawn more Bone Spirits when I can.
Wolfnado (Druid)
by Adam Z. Jackson – Top Designer
A Werewolf Tornado Druid is a fun and powerful build that only gets better with time.
The goal of this build is to fill the screen with as many Cyclones as possible. To do this, you should prioritize maximum Sanity, create Spirits and effects that reward you for gaining, and use as much Sanity as possible.
One Unique that really changes this build is Tempest Roar. Being able to use Tornado as a Werewolf opens up a lot of interactions that weren’t available before. While the build can work without this item, it does create a lot of powerful synergy that really takes it to the next level as you near the end of the game. Some other legends that allow this build are the Stormchasers Doom which allows Tornadoes to seek out enemies and the Calm Breeze legend which allows the Wind Shear to restore all of your Sanity!
Some Skills, Upgrades and Passives that you should consider are Perfect Storm (level 1 Sanity and 15% increase in damage when hitting Vulnerable, Immobilized or Slowed enemies), which creates an engine generate Sanity by making enemies Vulnerable and then using Tornado on them. Energize gives you a 15% chance to restore 10 Spirit when dealing damage to enemies, and Masochistic as Spirit Boon will help maintain; since Tornado becomes a Transfiguration skill, it now heals you for 3% of your max Life when Critically Attacking an enemy!
As for which skills to use, there’s some flexibility, but a good starting setup is Wind Shear, Tornado, Cyclone Armor, Ravens, Blood Howl, and Cataclysm. This skill set allows you to heal, gain Sanity, and activate various ways to apply Vulnerability to enemies.
Imbue-llers Day Off (Rogue)
by Charles Dunn – Game Design Contributor, Classroom
My favorite build and the one I’ll be playing when Diablo IV comes out is the Rogue Imbuement build.
Imbuements are special skills specific to Rogues that enhance their next 2 attacks with the power of Shadow, Poison or Cold. There are many ways to mix and match these Imbuements when building your Rogue, but for this build I’ll be using Shadow and Cold to get the most out of Icy Alchemist’s legendary powers. Cold Imbuement applies Chill to enemies, so I can finish them off with Shadow Imbued, dealing lots of explosions and massive AoE damage! There are many other unique and legendary items that work well with this gameplay, including the extremely powerful Word of Hakan unique amulet, which makes my ultimate Rain of Arrows skill always benefit from both three Imbuements at the same time.
The core skill in this build is Twisting Blades. Not only is it a great way to apply my Imbuements to a large number of enemies, but Advanced Twisting Blades also reduces the cooldown on all of my Imbuements, keeping me in constant action. As for mobility, I like to combine Dash with Twisting Blades in this build, as Dash allows me to easily get through to the other side of a swarm of enemies to ensure Twisting Blades hits the maximum number of targets when they come back. The prep expertise is also a great way to ensure that I have maximum active time for my cooldowns, resulting in very fast-paced gameplay.
One of the most important stats to look for in this build is the Chance of a Lucky Hit. The key legend for this build, Icy Alchemist, is the Lucky Hit effect, as are other skills in the skill tree such as Innervation (10% to gain 8 Energy when Lucky Hit) and Enhanced Cold Imbuement (skill). Cold Imbued has a 30% chance to make enemies vulnerable for 3 seconds). But Rogues are not known for fair play, so I want luck in my favor with Alchemist’s Fortune (15% increased Chance to hit lucky for non-spirit damage) and Main Life Invigoration ( 8% Chance to hit Luck, 16% for Crowd Control or Wounded Enemy).
Finally, the Momentum Key Passive works very well in this build, giving me a bunch of stats I want like Mana Regen for Spam Blade Twist, Movement Speed for maneuvering around combat field to get all the optimal angles for those Twisted Blades and Damage Reduction this is even more important since most of the time I will be in melee range of the enemy. Additionally, the Victim’s primary passive can also work well if there’s enough chance of a Lucky Hit to continuously trigger the enhanced Vulnerability Due to Cold Immersion.
