Support Necromancer BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points
Below, we detail the items and gems that you should use for your Support Necromancer in Diablo 3 and why. We also list your paragon points and Kanai's Cube items. Updated for Patch 2.7.5 and Season 28.
Best in Slot Gear and Alternatives
In a typical support build fashion, the Support Necromancer adopts a
mixture of sets and utility legendaries to maximize Toughness and ability
uptime. Your stat goals for items across the board are high Cooldown Reduction
and Attack Speed, along with a healthy dose of Pickup Radius to assist your
Frailty range. With high CDR rolls on every piece that can get it
(shoulders, gloves, belt, weapon, offhand, all jewelry pieces), your
Flawless Royal Diamond in the helm,
Gogok of Swiftness, the Cain
and Captain Crimson sets and Paragon points, it should not be much trouble to
reach the 70-75% + CDR range, which trivializes all downtimes in the build.
Increasing Attack Speed is a trickier subject, considering breakpoints of
Corpse consumption for
Corpse Lance. To put it in simpler terms,
reaching the easily attainable 1.75 attacks per second breakpoint means you
will shoot out 5
Corpse Lances per click, for a total of 25% crit
chance on your target. Two clicks up that value to 50%, which should be the
reasonable baseline for permanent crits by your DPS teammates.
In terms of actual pieces worn, it is recommended that you mix two pieces
of the Pestilence Master's
Shroud set ( Pestilence Gloves and
Pestilence Defense) with
two pieces of the craftable Captain Crimson's Trimmings set
(
Captain Crimson's Thrust and
Captain Crimson's Silk Girdle). This
will ensure you get the valuable automatic
Corpse Lance per
consumption, as well as a slew of support-synergistic CDR and toughness
bonuses from the craftable set.
Not responsible for damage dealing in any way, the Support Necromancer can
focus on pure utility in the jewelry. Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac is a
powerful tool for this cooldown-heavy build: benefiting greatly from the
Death Nova spam, it allows for permanent uptime of the spec-defining
Land of the Dead. In your remaining slot, you should take the revamped
Oculus Ring — it now provides up to the impressive 85%
multiplicative damage buff in a circular area for your DPS party members to
stand in. While its wording is vague, it does trigger off assists, and will
thus work on support characters.
To complete the jewelry, you have a number of options for the amulet slot.
The default recommendation is the pickup radius-extending
Rondal's Locket, though you have other interesting options — like
Halcyon's Ascent, whose unique crowd control power triggers on enemies
in your large perma-LotD radius and applies the
Strongarm Bracers
damage increase for your allies in return. Other notable options include a
well rolled
Hellfire Amulet of Intelligence (with good passives like
Draw Life,
Rathma's Shield, etc.), or any of the immunity amulets
(
Xephirian Amulet,
Countess Julia's Cameo, etc.)
With Cooldown Reduction as one of the deciding factors in the utility you
bring to the group, Leoric's Crown and
In-geom are unsurprising
inclusions to the build. The unique property of
Leoric's Crown ideally
doubles the effectiveness of the slotted
Flawless Royal Diamond, while
In-geom cuts cooldowns by 10 seconds per slain elite pack, chaining
very effectively in speed farming.
Steuart's Greaves will ensure this positioning and speed-dependent
build stays ahead of the pack, while two final defensive pieces round out your
gear:
Aquila Cuirass will cut incoming damage in half while at high
resources, while
Stormshield will provide a massive bulwark and a stat
stick that can be dedicated almost entirely on toughness stats, plus the
necessary CDR. Its unique melee damage reduction property rolls with up to
30%, almost balancing out the DR deficiencies of the frail Necromancer
class.
Slot | Pieces | Stat Priority |
---|---|---|
Head |
|
|
Shoulders |
|
|
Torso |
|
|
Wrists |
|
|
Hands |
|
|
Waist |
|
|
Legs |
|
|
Feet |
|
|
Amulet |
|
|
Ring #1 |
|
|
Ring #2 |
|
|
Weapon |
|
|
Off-hand |
|
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.
Season 28: Altar of Rites
Season 28 comes with the theme of the Altar of Rites — a powerful new account-wide and Season-specific progression system that brings tremendous offensive and defensive buffs to every seasonal character. 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.
Paragon Points
Slot | Paragon Points |
---|---|
Core |
|
Offense |
|
Defense |
|
Utility |
|
Gems
Iceblink serves a twofold purpose: first, it adds a potent, scaling
slow effect to the cold rune
Brittle Touch; and second, it offers a
reliable source of 10% additional party-wide Crit Chance through its level 25
property.
Gogok of Swiftness synergizes well with the build, indirectly
providing the entire party with more damage by increasing your essential
Cooldown Reduction, as well as substantial personal Toughness from the Dodge
bonuses.
The recommended gem for your third and final jewelry slot is
Gem of Efficacious Toxin, for the party-wide damage increase against
— and reduced damage from — enemies affected by its poisonous
DoT.
Slot | Gems |
---|---|
Jewelry | |
Helm | |
Torso and Pants |
|
Weapon |
|
For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.
Kanai's Cube
Cubing the Messerschmidt's Reaver is arguably one of the strongest
effects you can have in speedruns — reducing cooldowns by 1 second per
slain enemy, and triggering off assists (and thus working with a support
build). Note that once you grow confident in your cooldown management, you can
cube the unusual
Ahavarion, Spear of Lycander in this slot, which grants
helpful Shrine effects to the group even in Greater Rifts; its utility will be
greatly extended by the worn
Gloves of Worship.
Stored in the Cube, Nemesis Bracers will provide the group with an
extra elite spawn at every shrine — an indispensable time saving bonus
during speed farming.
Briggs' Wrath will serve as an excellent monster pulling tool for the
convenience of your DPS teammates.
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.
Changelog
- 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: No changes required for Season 23.
- 19 Nov. 2020: Revision of base item recommendations, alongside advice for Season 22 changes.
- 02 Jul. 2020: Minor fixes and clarifications for Season 21.
- 12 Mar. 2020: Updated gear recommendations to fit the current meta.
- 22 Nov. 2019: Reviewed for Season 19.
- 12 May 2019: Guide was archived for Season 17 to reflect it falling off the meta.
- 18 Jan. 2019: Information was reviewed and approved for Season 16 with no changes required.
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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