Necromancer Corpse Lance Build with Pestilence or Trag'Oul's set

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

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.

2.

Quick Reference

2.1.

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
Left Mouse Button Corpse Lance Icon Corpse Lance Brittle Touch Brittle Touch Right Mouse Button Blood Rush Icon Blood Rush Molting Molting 1 Devour Icon Devour Voracious Voracious 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
2.2.

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.

2.2.1.

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.

2.3.

Soul Shards (Season 30 Specific)

Check details on the specific rolls of the Soul Shards required for this build in the Gear page of this guide. Read more about Season 30 in our dedicated Season 30 Compendium, and about Soul Shards specifically our Soul Shard Mechanics Guide.

2.4.

Legendary Gems

2.5.

Kanai's Cube

3.

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 Reusable Parts, 350 Arcane Dust Arcane Dust, 125 Veiled Crystal Veiled Crystals, 35 Death's Breath Death's Breaths, and 15 of each Bounty cache material: Khanduran Rune Khanduran Rune, Caldeum Nightshade Caldeum Nightshade, Arreat War Tapestry Arreat War Tapestry, Corrupted Angel Flesh Corrupted Angel Flesh, and Westmarch Holy Water 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 Soul Forgotten Souls, 10x Death's Breath 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 Corpsewhisper Pauldrons. They are a build-defining piece for Corpse Lance Corpse Lance Necromancers, and tie directly into the Corpse consumption mechanic of the Pestilence set.
  • Upgrade rare One-handed Swords to get In-geom 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 Messerschmidt's Reaver. Both these items are a massive boost to your farming due to the massive Land of the Dead Land of the Dead cooldown.
  • Upgrade rare One-handed Scythes for Trag'Oul's Corroded Fang Trag'Oul's Corroded Fang and rare Two-handed Scythes for Reilena's Shadowhook Reilena's Shadowhook and/or Nayr's Black Death 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 Dayntee's Binding and Goldwrap 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 Steuart's Greaves for a massive speed boost during farming.
  • Do Act I bounties to attain the act-specific Ring of Royal Grandeur 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 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 Krysbin's Sentence, Convention of Elements Convention of Elements, Squirt's Necklace Squirt's Necklace and The Johnstone 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 Briggs' Wrath, Unity Unity, or Oculus Ring Oculus Ring and The Flavor of Time The Flavor of Time for your Follower.
4.

Changelog

  • 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.
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