Masquerade Bone Spear Necromancer Key Farming Variation

Last updated on Sep 13, 2023 at 09:00 by Deadset 51 comments
Build Variations Updated for Season 29, Patch 2.7.6 Main Build Solo Greater Rift Progression Nephalem Rift Farming
1.

Regular Rift Key Farming

The Masquerade Bone Spear Necromancer deals with Normal Rift quite well, making the build well suited for the purposes of key farming. 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.

2.

Adapting Skills

Active Skills
Left Mouse Button Grim Scythe Icon Grim Scythe Frost Scythe Frost Scythe Right Mouse Button Bone Spear Icon Bone Spear Teeth Teeth 1 Devour Icon Devour Devouring Aura Devouring Aura 2 Bone Armor Icon Bone Armor Harvest of Anguish Harvest of Anguish 3 Blood Rush Icon Blood Rush Metabolism Metabolism 4 Simulacrum Icon Simulacrum Reservoir Reservoir
Passive Skills
  • Bone Spear Bone Spear will still be the main damage dealer, but you should swap the precise, progression-oriented Blighted Marrow Blighted Marrow rune for the AoE convenience of Teeth Teeth, and adjust elemental rolls on gear to Physical accordingly.
  • Simulacrum Simulacrum is still an integral part of the build, and all of its runes will be provided by the Masquerade set bonus.
  • For maximum convenience, you should add Devour Devour to the build along with Devouring Aura Devouring Aura, which automates the consumption effect and synergizes nicely with the worn Avarice Band Avarice Band.
  • As a backup whenever you run out of Corpses to Devour Devour, you should still keep Grim Scythe Grim Scythe around — along with the IAS-oriented Frost Scythe Frost Scythe rune to speed up the resource restoration process.
  • Bone Armor Bone Armor will be taken with the farming-oriented Harvest of Anguish Harvest of Anguish due to the movement speed buff.
  • For maximum mobility, Blood Rush Blood Rush will be taken with the doubled charges of Metabolism Metabolism.

Some of your passive selection from the GR specs will be retained, with Stand Alone Stand Alone (massive armor bonus for non- and low-summoning builds) and Bone Prison Bone Prison (crowd control for Bone Spear Bone Spear) still providing tremendous value. Add to them Final Service Final Service (for the cheat death preventing the occasional mishap) and Fueled by Death Fueled by Death (to further your mobility during standard rift farming.)

3.

Adapting Gear

You will keep most of the items from the progression-oriented setup, with the majority of the Masquerade set remaining in place, but run a 5-piece setup with a Ring of Royal Grandeur Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube to attain the 6-piece bonus. You should make the following gear alterations:

Slot Pieces Stat Priority
Head
  1. Intelligence
  2. Socket
  3. Critical Hit Chance
  4. Bone Spear Damage %
  5. Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat)
  6. Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat)
Shoulders
  1. Intelligence
  2. Area Damage
  3. Resource Cost Reduction
  4. Vitality
  5. Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat)
Torso
  1. Intelligence
  2. 3 Sockets
  3. Vitality
  4. Armor
  5. Melee or Missile Damage Reduction (Secondary Stat)
Wrists
  1. Intelligence
  2. Critical Hit Chance
  3. Physical Damage %
  4. Vitality
  5. Melee or Missile Damage Reduction (Secondary Stat)
Hands
  1. Intelligence (replaced by Attack Speed at High Paragons)
  2. Critical Hit Damage
  3. Critical Hit Chance
  4. Area Damage
  5. Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat)
Waist
  1. Intelligence
  2. Vitality
  3. Armor
  4. Life %
  5. Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat)
  6. Life per Kill (Secondary Stat)
Legs
  1. Intelligence
  2. 2 Sockets
  3. Vitality
  4. Armor
  5. Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat)
Feet
  1. Intelligence
  2. Bone Spear Damage %
  3. Vitality
  4. Armor
  5. Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat)
Amulet
  1. Socket
  2. Critical Hit Damage
  3. Critical Hit Chance
  4. Physical Damage %
  5. Melee or Missile Damage Reduction (Secondary Stat)
Ring #1
  1. Socket
  2. Critical Hit Damage
  3. Critical Hit Chance
  4. Area Damage or Attack Speed
  5. Life per Kill (Secondary Stat)
Ring #2
  1. Socket
  2. Critical Hit Damage
  3. Critical Hit Chance
  4. Area Damage or Attack Speed
  5. Life per Kill (Secondary Stat)
Weapon
  1. High Weapon Damage
  2. Intelligence
  3. Socket (preferably from Ramaladni's Gift Ramaladni's Gift)
  4. Attack Speed
  5. Damage %
Off-hand
  1. Intelligence
  2. Critical Hit Chance
  3. Area Damage
  4. Bone Spear %

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.

Season 29: Paragon Cap

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: Critical Hit Chance and Critical Hit Damage: Allocate points so they are as close to the desirable 1:10 ratio between the two stats, as displayed in your Character Details sheet. For weapon-and-offhand builds, this is usually achieved with the full 200 points spent into Critical Hit Damage.
  • 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.
3.1.1.

Season 29: Gearing Considerations

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 Guardian's Aversion (Wrists), Guardian's Case Guardian's Case (Waist), and Guardian's Gaze 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 Ring of Royal Grandeur (found from Act I bounty caches).
  • Endless Walk:This is a jewelry set consisting of The Traveler's Pledge The Traveler's Pledge (Amulet) and The Compass Rose 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 Focus and Restraint Restraint) and Squirt's Necklace Squirt's Necklace with acceptable losses to DPS.
  • Unity Unity: A character wearing this ring, along with another Unity Unity on their follower plus an immortality relic for them (i.e., Enchanting Favor Enchanting Favor), will reduce their damage taken by 50%. Unity Unity can roll excellent offense-oriented stats and has an innate Extra Damage to Elites roll, which somewhat offsets losing all-out offense jewelry.
4.

Adapting Gems

You will maintain Zei's Stone of Vengeance Zei's Stone of Vengeance as a universally useful damage multiplication gem in the build, but should replace Bane of the Trapped Bane of the Trapped for Boon of the Hoarder Boon of the Hoarder for the Avarice Band Avarice Band-Goldwrap Goldwrap synergy during farming runs, and drop the Greater Rift Guardian-oriented Bane of the Stricken Bane of the Stricken for the generic damage increase of Bane of the Powerful Bane of the Powerful.

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.

Tucked away in the Cube, Krelm's Buff Belt Krelm's Buff Belt will provide you with a considerable and consistent speed boost throughout your runs.

In the base suggested setup above, you will have to slot the Ring of Royal Grandeur Ring of Royal Grandeur in order to maintain the 6-piece Masquerade bonus while enjoying extra utility legendary powers.

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

  • 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: Minor build revision and added follower recommendation.
  • 25 Nov. 2020: Adjustment to the 4th Cube slot recommendation in Season 22.
  • 19 Nov. 2020: Revision of item, skill, and passive recommendations, alongside advice for Season 22 changes.
  • 01 Jul. 2020: Page added.
Show more
Show less