LoD Corpse Explosion Necromancer Key Farming Variation

The LoD Corpse Explosion Necromancer deals with Normal Rift farming excellently, making it one of the preferable builds for the purpose. 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 regular 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.

Active Skills
Frailty Aura of Frailty Blood Rush Metabolism 1 Land of the Dead Frozen Lands 2 Corpse Explosion Final Embrace 3 Decrepify Borrowed Time 4 Bone Armor Harvest of Anguish
Passive Skills
Fueled by Death Blood is Power Spreading Malediction Final Service

Parts of the skill and passive selection will overlap with the base Greater Rift progression build, but others will have to change according to the task at hand. Ability to cross over great distances faster and more efficiently take precedence.

• Of course, Corpse Explosion is still the main damage dealer of the build. You can experiment with the rune, since Nayr stack buildup is not something you particularly care for in standard rifts. Options like Bloody Mess or Final Embrace are completely viable here.
• If the cooldown reduction equipment you wear does not manage to get you to Land of the Dead overlap, you have a failsafe in the face of Decrepify Borrowed Time, which you can simply spread around upcoming fights at your convenience.
• For maximum convenience, you will be using the Frailty curse with the automated radius of Aura of Frailty; its culling effect is a nice bonus, but the real benefit lies in its pulling synergy with the worn (or cubed) Briggs' Wrath.
• Land of the Dead will stay on the hard CC effect of Frozen Lands, ideally overlapping with the strong cooldown reduction-oriented choices in your gearing.
• Bone Armor will be taken with the farming-oriented Harvest of Anguish due to the movement speed buff.
• For maximum mobility, Blood Rush will be taken with the doubled charges of Metabolism.

Some of your progression passives will still make sense during speed farming, i.e. Spreading Malediction (extra damage based on cursed enemies) and Blood is Power (extra CDR) are still quite valuable. We also recommend adding Final Service for the cheat death, as it will prevent the occasional mishap and death-related slowdown, as well as Fueled by Death to further your mobility during standard rift farming.

You will no longer need the damage amplification of Trag'Oul's Corroded Fang in standard rifts, and will make much better use of the cooldown-resetting powers of In-geom.

Since speed is essential in XP runs, you will be wearing Steuart's Greaves over the progression-oriented Ice Climbers, and will be slotting Blood Rush Metabolism in your active skills accordingly (see above).

When it comes to jewelry, our basic recommendation is to keep Krysbin's Sentence for the invaluable damage multiplication bonuses, and add the Act III bounty cache legendary Avarice Band for its tremendous speed farming utility. The combined power of the latter when socketed with a Boon of the Hoarder and paired with Goldwrap will both greatly speed you up and render you near-invulnerable in standard rift farming. The third suggested ring is Briggs' Wrath for the pulling effect on enemies as your curse aura affects them, bringing them right into the devastation of your Corpse Explosions. Distribute these three recommended rings according to your best rolls, wearing your two best and cubing the third.

Slot	Pieces	Stat Priority
Head	Leoric's Crown (Best in Slot) Andariel's Visage (Alternative)	Intelligence Critical Hit Chance Vitality Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat)
Shoulders	Homing Pads	Intelligence Corpse Explosion % Area Damage Cooldown Reduction Health Globe Healing Bonus (Secondary Stat)
Torso	Aquila Cuirass	Intelligence 3 Sockets Corpse Explosion % Armor Melee or Missile Damage Reduction (Secondary Stat)
Wrists	Nemesis Bracers	Intelligence Critical Hit Chance Physical Damage % Vitality Melee or Missile Damage Reduction (Secondary Stat)
Hands	Grasps of Essence	Critical Hit Damage Critical Hit Chance Area Damage Intelligence (or Cooldown Reduction at high Paragon) Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat)
Waist	Goldwrap	Intelligence Vitality Armor Life % Freeze on Hit % (Secondary Stat)
Legs	Blackthorne's Jousting Mail	Intelligence 2 Sockets Physical Damage % Armor Life per Kill (Secondary Stat) Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat)
Feet	Steuart's Greaves	Intelligence Vitality Armor All Resistance Health Globe Healing Bonus (Secondary Stat)
Amulet	The Johnstone	Socket Critical Hit Damage Critical Hit Chance Physical Damage % Cooldown Reduction
Ring #1	Krysbin's Sentence	Socket Critical Hit Damage Critical Hit Chance Area Damage or Cooldown Reduction
Ring #2	Avarice Band (Best in Slot) Briggs' Wrath (Alternative)	Socket Critical Hit Damage Critical Hit Chance Area Damage or Cooldown Reduction
Weapon	In-geom	High Damage Range Intelligence Socket (preferably from Ramaladni's Gift) Area Damage Cooldown Reduction Life per Kill (Secondary Stat)
Off-hand	Lost Time	High Damage Range Intelligence Critical Hit Chance Corpse Explosion % Area Damage 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.

Season 29 introduces a season-specific cap to stat benefits from Paragon levels, all while updating how Paragon point distribution is handled. For the duration of this Season, you can only assign 800 Paragon stat points to your character, removing the long-standing practice of main-stat stacking (with some gearing implications — see below) after you reach Paragon 800.

On top of that, you could only allocate 50 Paragon stat points to each of the four stats in a given Paragon category (Core, Offense, Defense, and Utility). In Season 29, you can allocate up to the full 200 points per category into any attribute, allowing you to more easily reach necessary build breakpoints (as outlined in the Gear page of the guide) for Cooldown Reduction, Resource Cost Reduction, etc.

With the changes to Paragon in mind, we recommend using the following Paragon distribution for this build:

• Core: Movement Speed: 200 points.
• Offense: Cooldown Reduction: 200 points.
• Defense: Life and All Resistance: Allocate points to maximize survivability; for Necromancers, this is usually achieved by evenly splitting 100 points into Life (directly increasing your Health pool) and Armor (to complement the naturally high All Resistance stat of Intelligence-based characters).
• Utility: Area Damage: 200 points.

In terms of gear, keeping the Paragon cap in mind is paramount, as it stymies the traditional endless supply of main stat after Paragon 800. This means re-rolling mainstat off your gear is no longer desirable, and full equipment augmentation with your main stat is even more critical. Additionally, you should take a careful look at your build and consider if you can fit the following changes to strengthen your damage and survivability:

• Guardian's Jeopardy: This is a craftable armor set, and the recipe for its creation drops from Bounty farming. Guardian's 2-piece provides a decent damage reduction bonus, but the true powerhouse of the set is the 3-piece bonus, which nets you an additional 100% of your main stats from equipped items. This is a tremendous benefit in an 800 Paragon capped Season. If the Guardian set can fit into the build with minimal sacrifices (other craftable sets, tertiary damage multipliers, etc.), consider its implementation. The available pieces are Guardian's Aversion (Wrists), Guardian's Case (Waist), and Guardian's Gaze (Head). Of course, you can wear 2 pieces of the set and complete the full 3-piece bonus with a Ring of Royal Grandeur (found from Act I bounty caches).
• Endless Walk:This is a jewelry set consisting of The Traveler's Pledge (Amulet) and The Compass Rose (Ring), and is randomly found through farming, gambling Blood Shards, and/or Kanai's Cube recipes. The Endless Walk set is a nice compromise between damage bonuses (building up while stationary) and defensive bonuses (building up while moving). It can replace glass cannon choices like the Bastions of Will set ( Focus and Restraint) and Squirt's Necklace with acceptable losses to DPS.
• Unity: A character wearing this ring, along with another Unity on their follower plus an immortality relic for them (i.e., Enchanting Favor), will reduce their damage taken by 50%. Unity can roll excellent offense-oriented stats and has an innate Extra Damage to Elites roll, which somewhat offsets losing all-out offense jewelry.

You will maintain Bane of the Trapped and Legacy of Dreams as crucial legendary gems for the build, but should replace Bane of the Stricken for Boon of the Hoarder for the Avarice Band- Goldwrap synergy during farming runs.

Slot	Gems
Jewelry	Boon of the Hoarder Bane of the Trapped Legacy of Dreams
Helm	Flawless Royal Diamond (Cooldown Reduction)
Torso and Pants	Flawless Royal Topaz (Damage)
Weapon	Flawless Royal Emerald

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

For your weapon slot, you should run Messerschmidt's Reaver as your second cooldown reduction powerhouse, paired with your equipped In-geom; both will work exceptionally well with this LotD-dependent build.

To further the speed of your clears, slot Warzechian Armguards in your armor slot for the environment destruction-fueled speed ups — quite easy to achieve with the Corpse Explosion devastation.

In the jewelry slot, you should slot your weakest rolled ring between the ones outlined above: Krysbin's Sentence, Briggs' Wrath, or Avarice Band.

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.

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 for the Cooldown Reduction and Amplification for the elemental damage increase, both of which you can attain by using a 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.

The preferred potions for this build are Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid (allowing you to break down Waller affixes that impede your positioning) and Bottomless Potion of the Tower (whose Armor-increasing properties complement the naturally high All Resistances stat of Necromancers). Pick whichever you feel helps you out the most.