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

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.

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
Fueled by Death Overwhelming Essence Blood is Power Final Service

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

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 Gem 1: Gogok of Swiftness
• Legendary Gem 2: Bane of the Trapped
• Legendary Gem 3: Zei's Stone of Vengeance

• Weapon Slot: Reilena's Shadowhook
• Armor Slot: Corpsewhisper Pauldrons
• Jewelry Slot: Ring of Royal Grandeur

This Season revives the Pandemonium Kill Streak buff from Season 19. Each stack grants a bonus to movement speed and damage, capping at +50% movement speed and +100% damage at 1000 kills. Hitting specific kill thresholds unleashes powerful effects. Read more in our dedicated Season of the Eternal Conflict Mechanics Guide!

While speedfarming sees limited use from this theme, Greater Rift pushing benefits significantly. Effects like Geysers (150), Meteors (400), and Angels (500) can clear elites and Rift Guardians instantly. Players may reset streaks after 150 kills to repeatedly trigger Geysers or push for 500+ kills near boss fights, often using Nemesis Bracers to spawn extra enemies.

Because the most potent effects (Geysers, Meteors, Angels) can obliterate Rift Guardians instantly up to GR150, players can retool builds for efficiency and comfort. Here’s how:

Since you can rely on killstreak procs to clear the Rift Guardian, Bane of the Stricken can be safely omitted in favor of:

• Another generic damage-scaling legendary gem ( Bane of the Trapped for builds with any form of crowd control and/or melee range, Zei's Stone of Vengeance for far ranged builds, Taeguk for channeling builds, Simplicity's Strength for primary attack-focused builds, Enforcer for pet-oriented builds, etc.)
• A survivability-oriented legendary gem ( Esoteric Alteration, Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard), or additional utility ( Gogok of Swiftness for CDR-reliant builds, Pain Enhancer for attack speed-heavy builds, or Wreath of Lightning for extra movement speed).

Adjust your equipment to items that favor durability, health sustain, and ease of movement. Consider adjusting non-essential skills for the build to ones that pull, reposition, or otherwise displace enemies to facilitate large pulls of enemy packs. In more concrete terms, this means:

• For class-specific items, Necromancers should consider Dayntee's Binding if it's absent from the build; this is a powerful damage reduction item that incentivizes you to be mindful of utility skills by spreading curses on as large of an enemy pull as possible (especially in conjunction with popular Necro passives such as Spreading Malediction). This synergizes well with the killstreak theme.
• For additional options that balance between defense and offense, the class-specific amulet Wisdom of Kalan extends the Bone Armor stack maximum and can fit into several builds, while other helpful cross-class jewelry includes Unity (combined with the same ring on the follower plus a follower immortality token), and the Endless Walk set ( The Traveler's Pledge and The Compass Rose).
• Situational items that can bolster your defenses include Stone Gauntlets, the drawbacks of which are negated via CC-immunity effects like Ice Climbers, or the Altar of Rites CC-immunity node. The class-specific Razeth's Volition and the class-agnostic Aquila Cuirass are powerful and popular choices for low Essence-spending builds, especially ones built around generators like LoD Poison Scythe. A final niche consideration is Mantle of Channeling, which balances between defense and offense for channeling builds, often built around Iron Rose.
• Utility items like Nemesis Bracers are essential as more elites mean more killstreak maintenance and faster progression. When soloing, they should be equipped by your follower; in groups, at least one party member should commit to wearing them. When focusing strictly on speed, Steuart's Greaves can be a powerful inclusion for scouting, but builds that are locked into other items for the slot can turn to niche options like Warzechian Armguards or Krelm's Buff Belt. To facilitate large pulls, consider using a Follower equipped with The Ess of Johan, a proc-based analogue to an enemy-pulling skill (albeit outside your control).
• Skill-wise, make sure to include at least one movement skill tool like Blood Rush. While Necromancers lack an easily available enemy-pulling tool (Rathma Necros build around Army of the Dead Death Valley, but are an exception), a stunning skill like Bone Armor Dislocation can help manage large packs of enemies and doubles as a Krysbin's Sentence proc. Take a look if you can include passives like Final Service (for a cheat-death) or Fueled by Death (for extra movement speed).

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.