We just spent a good 2 or 3 hours delving into the leaked database sorting out legendaries we have from the D4 beta and tweaking a build to make a level 50+10 necro (50 points, 10 from renown on all maps).

Active Skills

• Bone Splinters

• Iron Maiden

• Decrep

• Summon skeletons

• Golem

• Bone Storm

Perks of the Build

Essentially resourceless shot gun build Since this build doesn't really have a resource spender, we'll be trying to maximize the amount of Essence we can get. There's a passive that increases essence by 9 and a ring that gives 3-5 essence per minion active. With 13 minions that's 48-74 max essence bringing us to a total of 148-174 and every 10 essence grants us 1.5% crit chance. 5% base crit chance + 15% at 100 essence. So with 148-174 essence we'll have an additional 21-25.5% crit so, 26-30.5% base crit chance BEFORE gear AND dex.

• Bone Splinter makes them vulnerable

• Bone Splinter gets 20% base crit chance before gear

• Iron maiden's reflect scales 15% from your weapon damage

• Decrepify has a 10% chance to stun enemies when they get hit

• Decrepify has a 15% chance to lower active cooldowns by 1

• Skeleton warriors reflect 50% of your thorns

• Golem taunts and reflects 50% of your thorns

• Bone storm triggers on you and your golem and grants 20% additional crit chance while active (40% crit chance no gear or dex)

Gear of the Build

• Head - Blood Getter's Aspect (#skeletons) - aspect of might(dmg reduction with basic skill)

• Gloves - Frenzied Dead (attack speed to minions)

• Body - Exploiter (dmg vs unstoppable) - unique razorthorn

• Pants - basic skill dmg -%, heal for x close enemies, immunity bubble.

• Boots - Vicious (#skeleton spawned)

• Weapon - Reanimation (increased dmg to skeletons while alive)

• Amulet - Edgemasters (24% skills based on resource) - unique deathspeaker's pendant <- drop death's defense and golem mastery to blood surge if you get this amulet

• Ring - Essence Per Skeleton or Iron Maiden Stun

• Ring - Rapid (basic skill attack speed) Unique Ring of Mendeln

• Offhand - the Protector (gain barrier on elite)

With all the legendary affixes in place and skill tree capped at 60 points the build ends up with around 82% minion attack speed, probably around 100-150% increased damage to skeletons.

The goal of the build is to just run into packs of mobs, iron maiden, decrepify and stand near your minions to boost their damage. Since Bone Splinters can shot gun we want to be close anyway. We won't have to rely on resources because this build only have 1 spender which is Decrepify so we the following modifiers work best for us:

In order of priority:

• Thorns

• Attack speed

• Crit damage

• Crit chance

• Vulnerable damage

• Close damage

• Gems

• Topaz in weapon

• Emeralds in armor and shield

• Probably sapphires / topaz in jewelry

Gameplay Tips

• Thorns wasn't really hard to obtain on the beta. We're able to stack around 580 thorns on my Necromancer at 25. There's a legendary affix that makes your thorns do AOE around you but we're not sure it works for your minions. Noticing a lot of things that say "You do" don't apply to minions, cold resist is really strong early on but later you'll need lightning resist. (We play hardcore). Lastly, this build can be transformed into something that appears to be amazing at first glance if you manage to get a specific Unique.

• Blood Surge casts a mini nova on your Minions, dealing Expected (LevelForIPower) damage. Damage is increased by 10% per target drained by the initial cast, up to 50%.

• If you manage to get this Deathspeaker's Pendant (Amulet) you can remove Decrepify and a few passive points (2/3 instead of 3/3) to max out Blood Surge and every time you cast it, 13 mini blood surges + your blood surge will be triggered. That sounds pretty fun.

• We're going hardcore so we want a bunch of meatshields in front of us while staying true to the old school iron maiden d2 builds where you just cast iron maiden and afk. This build seems to have a lot of flexibility in it and shouldn't require too much switching around legendary affixes to make stuff work. If the amulet is required you only have to remove 1 legendary affix and change out 3 passive.