Support Necromancer BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

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.

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.

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.

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.

For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.

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.

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).