Corpse Lance Necromancer Trag'Oul Variation

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

Trag'Oul Blood Lance Variation

The Trag'Oul Blood Lance remains a very viable and capable GR progression build, which focuses on sniping elites rather than relying on the Pestilence full screen, auto-targeting mayhem. This variant's core dynamic comes from the delicate balance of spending life and depleting Corpses to fuel your damage dealer, Corpse Lance Corpse Lance Blood Lance Blood Lance, or replenishing life and consuming Corpses through Blood Rush Blood Rush Transfusion Transfusion and Devour Devour Cannibalize Cannibalize .

2.

Adapting Skills

Active Skills
Left Mouse Button Corpse Lance Icon Corpse Lance Blood Lance Blood Lance Right Mouse Button Blood Rush Icon Blood Rush No rune chosen 1 Devour Icon Devour Cannibalize Cannibalize 2 Command Skeletons Icon Command Skeletons Dark Mending Dark Mending 3 Simulacrum Icon Simulacrum Reservoir Reservoir 4 Land of the Dead Icon Land of the Dead Frozen Lands Frozen Lands
Passive Skills

To play into the 6-piece bonus of the Trag'Oul set, you will have to use the strongest, Life-spending rune of Corpse Lance Corpse LanceBlood Lance Blood Lance.

With Blood Lance Blood Lances consuming a considerable amount of health, especially during Land of the Dead Land of the Dead, you will have to counterbalance them with an even stronger effect — the Cannibalize Cannibalize rune on Devour Devour.

When it comes to Trag'Oul set builds, Blood Rush Blood Rush deserves a special mention. Selection of a particular rune is not necessary; due to the 2-piece bonus, you receive the benefits of the Potency Potency toughness buff, Transfusion Transfusion healing, Molting Molting Corpse generation, and Metabolism Metabolism double charge — all the while losing the drawbacks of the skill from the Hemostasis Hemostasis rune. Playing around the Transfusion Transfusion healing is especially important, since in any decently populated fight it can replenish a decent chunk of what you lost from Blood Lance Blood Lances.

Grisly Tribute Grisly Tribute should be added to this variation over Fueled by Death Fueled by Death from its Pestilence sister spec. This passive is needed for some helpful health sustain in an otherwise healing-starved build.

3.

Adapting Gear

Naturally, this variant replaces the Pestilence set with the 6-piece Trag'Oul set in all the same slots. All stat recommendations and other legendary and set items are completely identical to the Pestilence spec.

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. Physical 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. Physical 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. Max Essence (Secondary Stat)
  6. % Weapon Damage
Off-hand
  1. Intelligence
  2. Critical Hit Chance
  3. Cooldown Reduction
  4. Max Essence (Secondary Stat)

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.

3.1.

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

You will maintain the selection from the main Pestilence version of the build: Bane of the Trapped Bane of the Trapped and Zei's Stone of Vengeance Zei's Stone of Vengeance for the damage amplification, and Gogok of Swiftness Gogok of Swiftness for the CDR and Increased Attack Speed value.

4.1.

Season 30 Soul Shards

In Season 30, your helm and weapon sockets will be taken over by the supremely powerful Soul Shards. For this variant, we recommend the following:

  • HelmSliver of Terror with "Your Attack Speed and Critical Hit Chance are increased by 5% for each skill on cooldown" as its Rank 3 power. For optimization benefits, aim for Intelligence or Melee/Ranged Damage Reduction on its Rank 2 roll.
  • WeaponEssence of Anguish with "When you deal Poison damage to an enemy, they receive 50% increased Poison damage from all sources for 10 seconds" as its Rank 3 power. For optimization benefits, aim for Physical Skills % Damage Increase or Weapon Damage Increase on its Rank 2 roll. Note that Essence of Anguish requires dealing Poison damage to trigger its Base Power; in this build, you accomplish this either by re-rolling the weapon damage range (the two numbers displayed just under the big total DPS number; the first Primary stat roll of any weapon) of your own weapon to Poison, or doing the same to your follower's weapon.
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

You will keep the setup from the solo progression spec, using Reilena's Shadowhook Reilena's Shadowhook for Essence-based damage amplification, Corpsewhisper Pauldrons Corpsewhisper Pauldrons as a Corpse Lance Corpse Lance-dedicated legendary, and Ring of Royal Grandeur Ring of Royal Grandeur to tie the bonuses of Trag'Oul and Cpt. Crimson sets together.

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 solo GR progression is the Enchantress, due to her increased attack speed bonuses (helpful for the attack speed breakpoint-reliant methods of dealing damage in this build) via Focused Mind Focused Mind, as well as the cooldown reduction bonus from Prophetic Harmony Prophetic Harmony and damage reduction from Powered Shield Powered Shield.

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 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.
  • 20 Apr. 2021: Minor fix to the skill and passive selection.
  • 01 Apr. 2021: Added follower recommendation.
  • 19 Nov. 2020: Revision of item, skill, and passive recommendations, alongside advice for Season 22 changes.
  • 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: Moved Trag'Oul as a progression variant.
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