LoD Thorns Skeletons Necromancer BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

As this is a Legacy of Dreams setup, you have considerable freedom in picking out the rest of your gear slots. As a rule of thumb, focus on Thorns, Increased Attack Speed and Cooldown Reduction and remember the setup's requirement for ancient items, as well as its restriction on other set bonuses. You can run individual set pieces with beneficial stats, as long as they do not form any set bonus. Always keep in mind Thorns' inability to crit, and try to avoid or roll off Crit Chance and Crit Damage stats whenever possible.

The Legacy of Dreams power allows you to run any legendary item combination while not losing out on the damage amplification and reduction associated with the traditional 6-piece sets. You can obtain this power in two ways; the older way is equipping the two rings — The Wailing Host and Litany of the Undaunted — as your only active set bonus. The newer (and more powerful, since it also opens your ring slots for legendary jewelry) method is the Legacy of Dreams legendary gem.

In a setup with Legacy of Dreams, you will be wearing your two best rolled rings between Unity, Convention of Elements and Krysbin's Sentence, and cubing the worst rolled one. Convention of Elements will provide a massive damage increase during the Physical cycle of its rotation, with an improved uptime compared to other classes due to the Necromancer's three element rotation. Krysbin's Sentence is a Necromancer-specific item that amplifies damage as long as you apply a hard crowd control — in this case, through Command Golem Bone Golem. Lastly, Unity will cut incoming damage in half when paired with another on the follower, plus an immortality relic for them (i.e. Enchanting Favor). The recommended amulet is The Flavor of Time, whose revised legendary power now doubles the duration of Pylons — an extremely potent power that, with careful timing, can turn the progressively harder fights in Greater Riftsgreatly in your favor.

An ancient Andariel's Visage is your ideal option for the helm, providing an extra source of Physical elemental damage to the build. The helm also naturally rolls with Increased Attack Speed, which greatly benefits the minion-based nature of the build. The build lacks a mandatory synergistic item for the shoulder slot, but you can find minor utility in the cheat-death proc of Pauldrons of the Skeleton King (still, any well-rolled ancient item will do).

The remainder of your equipment can be roughly split into four categories, each featuring two items with a similar purpose: golem items, defensive items, utility items, and your weapon-and-offhand damage items.

• You will be wearing both items that synergize with Command Golem — Moribund Gauntlets and Golemskin Breeches. The gloves are a key item to the build, as they make your minion shed a Corpse every second, providing an infinite source for your Devour Satiated stacks. The Golemskin Breeches are a supplementary item, and provide an additional damage reduction layer while the golem is alive (which is almost guaranteed with a highly leveled Enforcer), as well as reducing the cooldown of its active ability by more than half. Note that you can viably alternate both items to Stone Gauntlets and Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan respectively, and cube Ice Climbers to nullify the Stone Gauntlets downsides. This frees up a skill slot from the Golem, which you can spend on, say, a third curse — i.e. Decrepify Opportunist.
• For your protection, you will be employing the Necromancer-specific Dayntee's Binding, as well as the generic protection of Aquila Cuirass. The belt cuts incoming damage in half, as long as there is an enemy afflicted by a Curse — all but guaranteed with your constant spamming of Frailty (see this build's skills page for more information). The cross-class staple Aquila Cuirass brings another massive source of damage reduction, on the condition that your Essence does not drop below 90% of its reserve — a near-trivial bonus to maintain, considering your minimal spending from curses, their cheaper price (due to Eternal Torment), and your constant Devour usage.
• Your wrists and boots will be dedicated utility slots, sporting Nemesis Bracers and Illusory Boots respectively. Nemesis Bracers assist your constant demand for massive, elite-centric fights by summoning an extra yellow champion at every pylon. Conversely, Illusory Boots help you navigate those massive pulls into an ever-growing chain of monsters by removing collision and allowing you to pass through them unhindered.
• Last, but not certainly not least, Spear of Jairo and Bone Ringer will be key items for your damage output. Spear of Jairo scales your damage for each enemy afflicted by one of your curses, feeding into the Curse-spammy nature of the build. As noted in the Skills page, always keep in mind that curses might be permanent from Eternal Torment, but they still drop off based on distance (roughly a screen and a half away), and so does your damage along with them. Constant re-application to feed the Spear of Jairo is key for this build. The mandatory off-hand and cornerstone legendary in the build is the Bone Ringer Phylactery, acting as a scaling damage multiplier with every successive attack of Command Skeletons.

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.

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).

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

Boyarsky's Chip is a straightforward addition to a Thorns build with its massive, dedicated increase to said stat.

Enforcer is a pet-oriented gem that both increases your summons' damage multiplicatively and lessens the damage they take. This secondary bonus grows in value during Greater Rift progression, where summons start taking considerable amounts of damage and die on a regular basis.

Your final slot is best occupied by the Legacy of Dreams legendary gem, which provides a scaling bonus for each legendary item equipped, as long as you have no set bonuses equipped. This bonus is multiplied for Ancient or Primal quality items, and when the gem is maxed out, it matches the Legacy of Nightmares ( The Wailing Host and Litany of the Undaunted rings) set bonus. This potent bonus allows you to play around with all your gear slots for synergistic legendary powers at the cost of a gem slot.

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

Your weapon slot in Kanai's Cube should be taken by Trag'Oul's Corroded Fang, a one-handed scythe that scales your damage multiplicatively against enemies afflicted by your curses. Considering the curse-heavy nature of the build, this is one of the strongest multipliers you can add to the build. Note that this item is interchangeable with Spear of Jairo, depending on your worse rolled item.

To complement the constant movement of the build, Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan are added to the armor slot of the Cube to provide an extra additive damage increase. Keep in mind its damage decreasing property while stationary, and strive to be on the move at all times. Also, if you opt for a Stone Gauntlets-wearing version of this build,this slot needs to be taken by the CC-removing Ice Climbers effect (or you wear the Ice Climbers, and cube Illusory Boots here.)

Your jewelry Cube slot should be taken by the rotation-based elemental damage multiplier of Convention of Elements. Note that its Physical cycle affects Thorns damage (and thus, you will be aiming for optimal positioning of your pets in the thick of the fight during this cycle), as well as the shortened rotation of CoE on Necromancers overall — since the class only has three sources of elemental damage. These factors combined make it an optimal choice for the slot.

During Season 33, you are able to add a Physical Stone of Jordan in your equipment for some extra Elemental and Elite damage, which necessitates that you move Unity to the 4th Cube slot.

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 solo GR progression is the Enchantress, due to her cooldown reduction- and increased attack speed bonuses, both of which are helpful to the needs of an attack speed- and CDR-heavy build such as this one.

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.

Your recommended potion is Bottomless Potion of the Tower, whose Armor-increasing properties complement the naturally high All Resistances stat of Necromancers (due to Intelligence scaling Resistances) for optimal survivability.