Corpse Lance Necromancer Speed Farming Variation

Last updated on Jul 10, 2024 at 09:00 by Deadset 40 comments
1.

Normal Rift Speed Farming Variation

The Corpse Lance Necromancer can deal quite well with farming Torment difficulty Rifts and low-to-mid Greater Rifts at a very high speed. We have solo speed GR rankings and solo speed T16 rankings if you want to know more about which builds are best for speed farming.

Within the limited scope of these lower difficulties, the necessary damage and toughness to triumph over the enemy is significantly smaller. Thus, your best course of action is to improve utility and speed.

2.

Adapting Skills

Active Skills
Left Mouse Button Corpse Lance Icon Corpse Lance Ricochet Ricochet Right Mouse Button Blood Rush Icon Blood Rush Metabolism Metabolism 1 Bone Armor Icon Bone Armor Harvest of Anguish Harvest of Anguish 2 Devour Icon Devour Voracious Voracious 3 Command Skeletons Icon Command Skeletons Dark Mending Dark Mending 4 Land of the Dead Icon Land of the Dead Frozen Lands Frozen Lands
Passive Skills

The build is a variation of the standard Pestilence progression setup that relies on the fast elite kill speed of low tier content to constantly fuel Messerschmidt's Reaver Messerschmidt's Reaver and chain Land of the Dead Land of the Dead casts.

The rotation of the build goes roughly like this:

2.1.

Season 32 Theme — Ethereal Weapons

Note that the use of an Ethereal weapon will force you out of the Jesseth set, making Command Skeletons Command Skeletons irrelevant here; in their stead, use a curse — Decrepify Decrepify Borrowed Time Borrowed Time is an excellent candidate.

3.

Adapting Gear

You will need to replace the progression-oriented Convention of Elements Convention of Elements for the cooldown reduction of Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac. With this ring, whenever a rift slows down and the Land of the Dead Land of the Dead reset does not overlap as easily, you can spam some Command Skeletons Command Skeletons to make up the CDR loss via Essence spending. Complete the worn jewelry with the usual Squirt's Necklace Squirt's Necklace and Krysbin's Sentence Krysbin's Sentence.

For your bracers, you can either stay on Strongarm Bracers Strongarm Bracers from the progression build, or add a little toughness to an otherwise squishy farming build with Ancient Parthan Defenders Ancient Parthan Defenders. They will be procced and kept up by your high Land of the Dead Land of the Dead Frozen Lands Frozen Lands uptime.

3.1.

Season 32 Theme — Ethereal Weapons

With this Season's addition of Ethereal Weapons as a theme, your ideal weapon during Nephalem Rift T16 speed farming will be Soul Harvest, which provides a unique and massive attack speed stacking mechanic on top of unrivaled skill and pure stat bonuses, and will outperform any other alternatives. It needs to be rolled with the weapon power of Reilena's Shadowhook Reilena's Shadowhook and will ideally have the Rathma's Shield Rathma's Shield passive. Learn more about Ethereal weapons in our Ethereal mechanics guide, and read up on how to farm them in the Ethereal farming guide.

Slot Pieces Stat Priority
Head
  1. Intelligence
  2. Socket
  3. Critical Hit Chance
  4. Vitality
Shoulders
  1. Intelligence
  2. Corpse Lance %
  3. Cooldown Reduction
  4. Vitality
Torso
  1. Intelligence
  2. 3 Sockets
  3. Vitality
  4. Corpse Lance %
  5. Armor
Wrists
  1. Intelligence
  2. Critical Hit Chance
  3. Poison Damage
  4. Vitality
Hands
  1. Intelligence
  2. Critical Hit Damage
  3. Critical Hit Chance
  4. Cooldown Reduction
  5. Vitality
Waist
  1. Intelligence
  2. Vitality
  3. Armor
  4. Life %
Legs
  1. Intelligence
  2. 2 Sockets
  3. Vitality
  4. Armor
Feet
  1. Intelligence
  2. Vitality
  3. Armor
  4. All Resistance
  5. Movement Speed
Amulet
  1. Socket
  2. Critical Hit Damage
  3. Critical Hit Chance
  4. Poison Damage
  5. Intelligence
Ring #1
  1. Socket
  2. Critical Hit Damage
  3. Critical Hit Chance
  4. Cooldown Reduction
Ring #2
  1. Socket
  2. Critical Hit Damage
  3. Critical Hit Chance
  4. Cooldown Reduction
Weapon
  1. High Damage Range
  2. Intelligence
  3. Socket (preferably from Ramaladni's Gift Ramaladni's Gift)
  4. Cooldown Reduction
  5. % Weapon Damage
Off-hand
  1. Intelligence
  2. Critical Hit Chance
  3. Cooldown Reduction

To help you with farming the gear you need for your builds, we have two very useful guides that you can access by clicking the links below: a Salvage Guide to help you quickly check whether or not you can safely salvage a piece of gear and a Legendary Farming Guide to help you efficiently farm legendaries and set items.

3.2.

Altar of Rites

The former Season 28 theme, the Altar of Rites, has been revised and re-added to Diablo 3 as a permanent character progression mechanic. — For virtually all builds and players of all skill levels — from casual to advanced — we recommend progressing through the Altar tree using the path outlined below. The suggested path is geared towards maximum quality of life first, then amplifying damage, and then mopping up the tree with defensive and edge case utility nodes.

Note that while they require reaching them with a Seal, Legendary Potion Powers are not part of the Seal cost system; Potions unlock with a separate resource called Primordial Ashes, obtained from salvaging Legendary or Set items of Primal (red bordered) quality. Upgrade them as soon as possible, and in the order shown below (courtesy of Caleko's Altar of Rites planner).

Altar of Rites Planner

You can read more on the Altar of Rites, Seals and Legendary Potion Powers in our dedicated Altar of Rites Mechanics guide.

4.

Adapting Gemming

In speed runs, Elite and Rift Guardian fights are significantly faster and enemies perish fast; thus, the value of Zei's Stone of Vengeance Zei's Stone of Vengeance diminishes and it is best replaced by Boon of the Hoarder Boon of the Hoarder for the gold-related synergy with an Avarice Band Avarice Band worn by your Follower.

Slot Gems
Jewelry
Helm
Torso and Pants
Weapon

For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.

5.

Adapting Kanai's Cube

For your weapon slot, you can run either Messerschmidt's Reaver Messerschmidt's Reaver (solo normal rift farming) or In-geom In-geom (group normal rift farming) as your cooldown reduction powerhouse; both will work exceptionally well with the build.

Corpsewhisper Pauldrons Corpsewhisper Pauldrons are still a cornerstone piece in the build, necessary for their damage amplification for Corpse Lance Corpse Lance.

In order to attain the full bonuses of the Pestilence and Cpt. Crimson sets, you will need to use Ring of Royal Grandeur Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube.

The Kanai's Cube can be used for much more than simply extracting Legendary powers from items. Please refer to our Kanai's Cube guide for more information.

6.

Follower

The recommended follower for this build during standard T16 rifts farming is the Enchantress due to her vast array of bonuses that complement this build; most notably, Prophetic Harmony Prophetic Harmony for the Cooldown Reduction and Amplification Amplification for the elemental damage increase, both of which you can attain by using a Hand of the Prophet Hand of the Prophet.

For more information regarding followers, we advise you to read our Follower Guide, which contains detailed advice for choosing the skills and the gear of your follower.

7.

Legendary Potion

Your recommended potion is Bottomless Potion of the Unfettered Bottomless Potion of the Unfettered, which renders you immune to Crowd Control effects for a brief time after consuming it — valuable bonus to a build that lacks means to break away from CC outside of straight up evasion via Blood Rush Blood Rush.

8.

Changelog

  • 10 Jul. 2024: Added Season 32 advice for ethereal weapons.
  • 10 Apr. 2024: Guide reviewed for Season 31.
  • 10 Jan. 2024: Revised guide for the permanent addition of the Altar of Rites, and added Season-specific Soul Shard recommendations.
  • 13 Sep. 2023: Added Season 29 Paragon Cap and Gearing recommendations.
  • 22 Feb. 2023: Added Season 28 Altar of Rites recommendations.
  • 26 Aug. 2022: Added Season 27 Angelic Crucible recommendations.
  • 14 Apr. 2022: Guide reviewed for Season 26.
  • 08 Dec. 2021: Added Season 25 Soul Shard recommendations.
  • 22 Jul. 2021: Added S24 Ethereal recommendation.
  • 01 Apr. 2021: Added follower recommendation.
  • 19 Nov. 2020: Added 4th Cube slot recommendation for Season 22.
  • 02 Jul. 2020: Guide was revised with respect to the changes to the Jesseth set in Season 21.
  • 12 Mar. 2020: No changes necessary for Season 20.
  • 22 Nov. 2019: Reviewed for Season 19.
  • 23 Aug. 2019: Reviewed and approved for Season 18.
  • 12 May 2019: Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 17.
  • 27 Oct. 2017: Reworked the variant to a Pestilence setup.
  • 15 Jul. 2017: Updated the speed farming guide with optimized suggestions.
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