Necromancer Corpse Lance Build with Pestilence or Trag'Oul's set
Introduction
The Corpse Lance Necromancer is a powerful elite hunting build, capable of the whole spectrum of content difficulty with minor adjustments. This daredevil, burst damage spec is meant for Greater Rift solo progression. The present build is using the Pestilence set. We also have variations of this build: a Trag'Oul variation, a group progression variation, and speed farming variation; all accessible by using the links below.
Quick Reference
Skill Setup
The basic skill setup of the Corpse Lance Necromancer is displayed below. Read the dedicated Skills page for detailed information on choices, alternatives and build customization.
Active Skills |
---|
Corpse Lance Brittle Touch Blood Rush Molting 1 Devour Voracious 2 Command Skeletons Dark Mending 3 Simulacrum Reservoir 4 Land of the Dead Frozen Lands |
Passive Skills |
Gear Setup
The required gear setup for the Corpse Lance Necromancer is listed below. Check the Gear page for detailed information on choices, alternatives, gemming, Kanai's Cube and Paragon distribution.
- Helm: Pestilence Mask
- Shoulders: Pestilence Defense
- Gloves: Pestilence Gloves
- Chest: Pestilence Robe
- Belt: Captain Crimson's Silk Girdle
- Pants: Captain Crimson's Thrust
- Boots: Pestilence Battle Boots
- Bracers: Strongarm Bracers
- Amulet: Squirt's Necklace
- Ring 1: Krysbin's Sentence
- Ring 2: Convention of Elements
- Weapon: Jesseth Skullscythe
- Offhand: Jesseth Skullshield
Season 32 Theme — Ethereal Weapons
With this Season's addition of Ethereal Weapons as a theme, your ideal weapon and off-hand combo during Greater Rift solo pushing will be:
- Weapon: Blackbog's Sharp
- Off-Hand: Lost Time
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).
You can read more on the Altar of Rites, Seals and Legendary Potion Powers in our dedicated Altar of Rites Mechanics guide.
Legendary Gems
- Legendary Gem 1: Gogok of Swiftness
- Legendary Gem 2: Bane of the Trapped
- Legendary Gem 3: Zei's Stone of Vengeance
Kanai's Cube
- Weapon Slot: Reilena's Shadowhook
- Armor Slot: Corpsewhisper Pauldrons
- Jewelry Slot: Ring of Royal Grandeur
How to Get This Build Going?
In this section, we will briefly go over how to kickstart this build into reality; which items you should aim for with priority when farming and gambling, and what is their relative priority for the functioning of this spec. Note that these suggestions are exclusively aimed at getting you up and running into endgame farming, and might not reflect the gear you need to wear for high-end Greater Rift solo or group pushing. This section also assumes a fresh Season's start, which usually is the point where most players work on assembling their first build with a particular set.
If the Pestilence set is part of the Haedrig's Gift for the Season, your simplest and most straightforward path to assembling the build is to complete the Seasonal Journey chapters up to Chapter IV. The Seasonal Journey chapters will gradually give you a complete class-specific set, giving 2-3 pieces for Chapters II, III and IV.
From the pre-game menu, choose and do this week's Challenge Rift. When successfully completed, this weekly event will grant you 5,1 million Gold, 475 Blood Shards, 370 Reusable Parts, 350 Arcane Dust, 125 Veiled Crystals, 35 Death's Breaths, and 15 of each Bounty cache material: Khanduran Rune, Caldeum Nightshade, Arreat War Tapestry, Corrupted Angel Flesh, and Westmarch Holy Water. This will allow you some early Seasonal leeway to extract and reforge items in Kanai's Cube, speeding up the assembly of this build with the items recommended below.
Having some materials at your disposal, either from farming or the Challenge Rift, is particularly important when you get duplicate pieces of your desired set. When you do, you can use Kanai's Cube Skill of Nilfur recipe (10x Forgotten Souls, 10x Death's Breaths, 1x Set item) to convert into another item from the same set. You should never salvage duplicate pieces of a desired set before you have it assembled.
In order to assemble an Pestilence Corpse Lance Necromancer, you should do the following.
- Gather the full 6-piece Pestilence set using the advice above, or by spending Blood Shards at Kadala. In order of gamble chance, you should spend for: Shoulders, Boots, Pants, Gloves, Helm, and Chest. A trick you can also use is to gamble for duplicate pieces with an easier gamble chance (i.e., Shoulders) and convert them into another piece from the same set using the Skill of Nilfur recipe in Kanai's Cube.
- Gamble or upgrade rare (Hope of Cain recipe in Kanai's Cube) Shoulders for Corpsewhisper Pauldrons. They are a build-defining piece for Corpse Lance Necromancers, and tie directly into the Corpse consumption mechanic of the Pestilence set.
- Upgrade rare One-handed Swords to get In-geom; doing this on a level 1 Demon Hunter alt will improve your chances due to their lowest loot pool of legendary swords. Then, upgrade rare Two-handed Axes for Messerschmidt's Reaver. Both these items are a massive boost to your farming due to the massive Land of the Dead cooldown.
- Upgrade rare One-handed Scythes for Trag'Oul's Corroded Fang and rare Two-handed Scythes for Reilena's Shadowhook and/or Nayr's Black Death. These are damage-scaling items that will take the build into GRs and allow you to progress the build on the leaderboards.
- Gamble Belts to get Dayntee's Binding and Goldwrap; both are cornerstone protective pieces that will keep you safe in GRs (the former) and standard rifts (the latter).
- Gamble Boots to get Steuart's Greaves for a massive speed boost during farming.
- Do Act I bounties to attain the act-specific Ring of Royal Grandeur from Bounty caches. This will be helpful either in completing the basic set bonus, or mixing other helpful sets in (Cpt. Crimson) as described in the Pestilence Corpse Lance Gear page. Bounties will net you the craftable set recipes to begin with, so you will be killing two birds with one stone. Bounties will also net you Avarice Band (Act III), another farming-oriented staple for most builds and classes, this one included.
- While largely undesirable due to high costs, gambling or upgrading rare Jewelry is also possible; Krysbin's Sentence, Convention of Elements, Squirt's Necklace and The Johnstone will all bring massive damage bumps to the build, with other standout pieces that can also substitute or be temporarily helpful in the face of Briggs' Wrath, Unity, or Oculus Ring and The Flavor of Time for your Follower.
Changelog
- 10 Jul. 2024 (gear page): Added Season 32 advice for ethereal weapons.
- 10 Jul. 2024 (skills page): Added Season 32 advice for ethereal weapons.
- 10 Jul. 2024 (this page): Added Season 32 advice for ethereal weapons.
- 10 Apr. 2024 (gear page): Added Season 31 advice for the unbound Kanai's Cube slots.
- 10 Apr. 2024 (skills page): Skills and passives reviewed for Season 31.
- 10 Apr. 2024 (this page): Added Season 31 advice for the unbound Kanai's Cube slots.
- 10 Jan. 2024 (gear page): Revised guide for the permanent addition of the Altar of Rites, and added Season-specific Soul Shard recommendations.
- 10 Jan. 2024 (skills page): Skills and passives reviewed for Season 30.
- 10 Jan. 2024 (this page): Revised guide for the permanent addition of the Altar of Rites, and added Season-specific Soul Shard recommendations.
- 13 Sep. 2023 (gear page): Added Season 29 Paragon Cap and Gearing recommendations.
- 13 Sep. 2023 (skills page): Skills and passives reviewed for Season 29.
- 13 Sep. 2023 (this page): Added Season 29 Paragon Cap and Gearing recommendations.
- 22 Feb. 2023 (gear page): Added Season 28 Altar of Rites recommendations.
- 22 Feb. 2023 (skills page): Skills and passives reviewed for Season 28.
- 22 Feb. 2023 (this page): Added Season 28 Altar of Rites recommendations.
- 26 Aug. 2022 (gear page): Added Season 27 Angelic Crucible recommendations.
- 26 Aug. 2022 (skills page): Skills and passives reviewed for Season 27.
- 26 Aug. 2022 (this page): Added Season 27 Angelic Crucible recommendations.
- 14 Apr. 2022 (gear page): Guide reviewed for Season 26.
- 14 Apr. 2022 (skills page): Guide reviewed for Season 26.
- 14 Apr. 2022 (this page): Guide reviewed for Season 26.
- 08 Dec. 2021 (gear page): Added Season 25 Soul Shard recommendations.
- 08 Dec. 2021 (skills page): Minor revision for S25.
- 08 Dec. 2021 (this page): Added Season 25 Soul Shard recommendations.
- 22 Jul. 2021 (gear page): Added S24 Ethereal recommendation.
- 22 Jul. 2021 (skills page): No changes required for Season 24.
- 22 Jul. 2021 (this page): Added S24 Ethereal recommendation.
- 20 Apr. 2021 (skills page): Minor fix to the skill and passive selection.
- 20 Apr. 2021 (this page): Minor fix to the skill and passive selection.
- 01 Apr. 2021 (gear page): Added follower recommendation.
- 01 Apr. 2021 (skills page): No changes required for Season 23.
- 01 Apr. 2021 (this page): Added follower recommendation.
- 19 Nov. 2020 (gear page): Added 4th Cube slot recommendation for Season 22.
- 19 Nov. 2020 (skills page): Adapted skill recommendations for the 4th Cube slot in Season 22.
- 19 Nov. 2020 (this page): Revision of item and skill recommendations, alongside advice for Season 22 changes.
- 02 Jul. 2020 (gear page): Guide was revised with respect to the changes to the Jesseth set in Season 21.
- 02 Jul. 2020 (this page): Guide was revised with respect to the changes to the Jesseth set in Season 21.
- 12 Mar. 2020 (gear page): No changes necessary for Season 20.
- 12 Mar. 2020 (skills page): No changes necessary for Season 20.
- 12 Mar. 2020 (this page): No changes necessary for Season 20.
- 22 Nov. 2019 (gear page): Reviewed for Season 19.
- 22 Nov. 2019 (skills page): Reviewed for Season 19.
- 22 Nov. 2019 (this page): Reviewed for Season 19.
- 23 Aug. 2019 (gear page): Reviewed and approved for Season 18.
- 23 Aug. 2019 (skills page): Reviewed and approved for Season 18.
- 23 Aug. 2019 (this page): Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 18.
- 12 May 2019 (gear page): Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 17.
- 12 May 2019 (skills page): Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 17.
- 12 May 2019 (this page): Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 17.
- 18 Jan. 2019 (gear page): Added suggestions for the baseline Ring of Royal Grandeur for Seasonal characters.
- 18 Jan. 2019 (skills page): Information was reviewed and approved for Season 16 with no changes required.
- 18 Jan. 2019 (this page): Guide was revised with additional recommendations for Season 16.
- 20 Sep. 2018 (this page): Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 15.
- 14 Jun. 2018 (this page): Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 14.
- 26 Nov. 2017 (gear page): Expanded the gearing explanations to clarify proper item rolls.
- 26 Nov. 2017 (skills page): Spreading Malediction is now a default choice and Decrepify its alternative.
- 26 Nov. 2017 (this page): Added the Pestilence group variation, adjusted Passive selection.
- 12 Nov. 2017 (skills page): Added a passive alteration for an endgame optimized character.
- 27 Oct. 2017 (gear page): The Pestilence set is now the main setup (and Trag'Oul is a variation).
- 27 Oct. 2017 (skills page): Guide shifted to suggest Pestilence set as the main setup, and Trag'Oul as a variation.
- 27 Oct. 2017 (this page): Guide shifted to suggest Pestilence set as the main setup, and Trag'Oul as a variation.
- 12 Jul. 2017 (gear page): Guide updated to reflect the meta shift to Simulacrum.
- 12 Jul. 2017 (skills page): Guide updated to reflect the meta shift to Simulacrum.
- 12 Jul. 2017 (this page): Guide updated to reflect the meta shift to Simulacrum.
- 07 Jul. 2017 (gear page): Gear recommendations updated.
- 07 Jul. 2017 (skills page): Skill recommendations updated.
- 26 Jun. 2017 (this page): Guide added.
More Necromancer Guides
Builds from Other Classes
Farming Guides
This build is presented to you by Deadset, one of the very few professional Diablo 3 players. Deadset regularly publishes video guides on Youtube and streams on Twitch, where you can see how this and other builds play out in practice.
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