Trag'Oul Death Nova Necromancer Nephalem Rift Speed Farming Variation

The Trag'Oul Death Nova Necromancer can deal reasonably well with Nephalem Rift Speed Farming, with the ability to drown an entire screen's worth of enemies with the unrelenting tide of Blood Novas. We have solo speed GR rankings and solo speed T16 rankings if you want to know more about which builds are best for speed farming.

Within the limited scope of regular difficulties, the necessary damage and toughness to triumph over the enemy is significantly smaller. Thus, your best course of action is to improve utility and speed.

Active Skills
Siphon Blood No rune chosen Death Nova Blood Nova 1 Devour Devouring Aura 2 Frailty Aura of Frailty 3 Blood Rush No rune chosen 4 Simulacrum Blood and Bone
Passive Skills
Fueled by Death Stand Alone Swift Harvesting Final Service

When you are speed farming regular rifts, parts of your playstyle will adapt to the lowered challenge and focus more on speed and utility.

The T16 key farming build will mimic the GR speed farming rotation, but sped up one step further: with extremely aggressive Blood Rushes on top of enemies and their immediate decimation with Blood Novas. You start out the runs by stacking the 300% Trag'Oul health bonus, and then summon your Simulacrums, as well as activate your two "background" effects: Frailty Aura of Frailty and Devour Devouring Aura. Zip throughout the Rift with Blood Rush in search of packs of enemies. The interaction of Frailty and Briggs' Wrath will conveniently pull them on top of you, and you can one-shot any pack you come across with a short channeling of Siphon Blood: it will produce the signature tide of Blood Novas from both your Iron Rose and Simulacrums.

Parts of the skill and passive selection will overlap with the base Greater Rift progression build, but others will have to change according to the task at hand. Ability to cross over great distances faster and more efficiently take precedence.

• Your main damage dealer is still Death Nova, taken with the Trag'Oul set-appropriate Blood Nova rune. While it can be self-cast, you will mostly inflict it with the channeling of Siphon Blood, which triggers the worn Iron Rose off-hand. Selecting a particular Siphon Blood rune is not necessary, since you get them all via the Trag'Oul 2-piece set bonus. If you find the channeling playstyle too slow for T16 rifts, you can viably alternate this slot to Bone Armor Dislocation and use Scythe of the Cycle, and then manually cast your Blood Novas. In a non-channeling setup like this Mantle of Channeling becomes obsolete, so you can adapt the utility legendary slot to another farming-oriented item, i.e. Krelm's Buff Belt.
• Mobility is just as necessary in T16 farming as it is in Greater Rift progression, so Blood Rush remains in the build. Much like Siphon Blood, selection of a particular rune is not necessary, as you gain the benefits of all of them from the Trag'Oul 2-piece. In T16 speed farming, using Blood Rush will also net you the massive burst of speed from Steuart's Greaves.
• Simulacrums duplicate your Secondary skills (and Death Nova falls in that skill category), and — unlike your own Iron Rose procs — their Blood Nova casts do trigger Area Damage, making their DPS contribution to the build massive. Make them permanent with Haunted Visions.
• Devour Devouring Aura will consume the numerous Corpses you produce from your damage burst, and turn them into a speed boost through its interaction with the Fueled by Death passive.
• Frailty culls enemies at the 15% health point, and brings an easy proc of Dayntee's Binding, if you choose to wear it. Take it with the lazy Aura of Frailty rune for a fire-and-forget beneficial effect throughout your runs.

The Trag'Oul's Avatar set still forms the basis of your setup; you either mix it with a craftable set for maximum early game effectiveness, or with utility legendaries in later character progression. Early on in character progression, consider using the craftable Guardian's Jeopardy set, as its 3-piece bonus doubles your main stats (Intelligence and Vitality, in a Necromancer's case), netting you a massive increase of damage and survivability at a very low cost. Later on in character progression (once you amass 2k+ Paragon levels and get confident with the build), swap Guardian's set out for a combination of Goldwrap and either Warzechian Armguards (solo), or Nemesis Bracers (group play).

While using the Guardian's Jeopardy set, it will likely take up your bracer ( Guardian's Aversion) and belt ( Guardian's Case) slots. This leaves you to adjust the two utility legendaries for this build — Mantle of Channeling and Steuart's Greaves — according to your better rolled pieces and Trag'Oul rolls. Sooner than later, you will outgrow the use of both Guardian set and Mantle of Channeling for T16 farming, and can use the setup displayed in the table below.

Your jewelry should partially match the GR progression setup, as the combination of Krysbin's Sentence and Haunted Visions provides way too much value to be swapped around. Krysbin's Sentence amplifies damage when you crowd control your enemies, encouraging you to time your Bone Armor Dislocation stun to the Physical CoE rotation. Haunted Visions simply makes your mighty Simulacrum summons last forever. The third jewelry slot should be swapped out of Convention of Elements (used in GR progression and speed farm) however, as its cyclical damage bonus is way too slow for the purposes of T16 farming. In its stead, you should use Briggs' Wrath, for the amazing pixel-tight pull it exerts over enemies affected by your Aura of Frailty curse. Note that both Aura of Frailty and Devouring Aura sale with Pickup radius on your gear, so try to obtain this stat wherever possible.

For your weaponry, our default recommendation is that you stick to dedicated Trag'Oul duo of Funerary Pick as your scythe, and Iron Rose as your phylactery. Funerary Pick brings a massive damage multiplier against targets affected by Siphon Blood, while Iron Rose procs guaranteed Blood Novas as you channel, making for a devastating combo. As mentioned in the skill section however, you can alter your weapon to Scythe of the Cycle and use a self-cast Blood Nova playstyle. Try it out and see if you like it better!

Slot	Pieces	Stat Priority
Head	Trag'Oul's Guise	Intelligence Death Nova % Damage Critical Hit Chance Socket Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat)
Shoulders	Trag'Oul's Heart	Intelligence Vitality Area Damage Life % Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Health Globe Healing Bonus (Secondary Stat)
Torso	Trag'Oul's Scales	Intelligence 3 Sockets Vitality Armor Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Melee or Missile Damage Reduction (Secondary Stat)
Wrists	Warzechian Armguards (solo) Nemesis Bracers (group)	Intelligence Critical Hit Chance Physical % Damage Vitality Reduced Damage Melee Attacks (Secondary stat)
Hands	Trag'Oul's Claws	Intelligence (or Area Damage at high Paragon) Critical Hit Chance Critical Hit Damage Attack Speed Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat)
Waist	Goldwrap	Intelligence Vitality Armor Life % Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Life per Kill (Secondary Stat)
Legs	Trag'Oul's Hide	Intelligence 2 Sockets Vitality Armor Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat) Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat)
Feet	Trag'Oul's Stalwart Greaves	Intelligence Death Nova % Damage Vitality Armor Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat) Health Globe Healing Bonus (Secondary Stat)
Amulet	Haunted Visions	Socket Critical Hit Damage Critical Hit Chance Physical % Damage Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Melee or Missile Damage Reduction (Secondary Stat)
Ring #1	Krysbin's Sentence	Socket Critical Hit Chance Critical Hit Damage Attack Speed (Ring 1) and Area Damage (Ring 2) Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Life per Kill (Secondary Stat)
Ring #2	Briggs' Wrath	Socket Critical Hit Chance Critical Hit Damage Attack Speed (Ring 1) and Area Damage (Ring 2) Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Life per Kill (Secondary Stat)
Weapon	Funerary Pick	High Weapon Damage Socket (preferably from Ramaladni's Gift) Intelligence Area Damage Damage %
Off-hand	Iron Rose	High Damage Range Intelligence Critical Hit Chance Death Nova % Damage Area Damage

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 29 introduces a season-specific cap to stat benefits from Paragon levels, all while updating how Paragon point distribution is handled. For the duration of this Season, you can only assign 800 Paragon stat points to your character, removing the long-standing practice of main-stat stacking (with some gearing implications — see below) after you reach Paragon 800.

On top of that, you could only allocate 50 Paragon stat points to each of the four stats in a given Paragon category (Core, Offense, Defense, and Utility). In Season 29, you can allocate up to the full 200 points per category into any attribute, allowing you to more easily reach necessary build breakpoints (as outlined in the Gear page of the guide) for Cooldown Reduction, Resource Cost Reduction, etc.

With the changes to Paragon in mind, we recommend using the following Paragon distribution for this build:

• Core: Movement Speed: 200 points.
• Offense: Critical Hit Chance and Critical Hit Damage: Allocate points so they are as close to the desirable 1:10 ratio between the two stats, as displayed in your Character Details sheet. For weapon-and-offhand builds, this is usually achieved with the full 200 points spent into Critical Hit Damage.
• Defense: Life and All Resistance: Allocate points to maximize survivability; for Necromancers, this is usually achieved by evenly splitting 100 points into Life (directly increasing your Health pool) and Armor (to complement the naturally high All Resistance stat of Intelligence-based characters).
• Utility: Area Damage: 200 points.

In terms of gear, keeping the Paragon cap in mind is paramount, as it stymies the traditional endless supply of main stat after Paragon 800. This means re-rolling mainstat off your gear is no longer desirable, and full equipment augmentation with your main stat is even more critical. Additionally, you should take a careful look at your build and consider if you can fit the following changes to strengthen your damage and survivability:

• Guardian's Jeopardy: This is a craftable armor set, and the recipe for its creation drops from Bounty farming. Guardian's 2-piece provides a decent damage reduction bonus, but the true powerhouse of the set is the 3-piece bonus, which nets you an additional 100% of your main stats from equipped items. This is a tremendous benefit in an 800 Paragon capped Season. If the Guardian set can fit into the build with minimal sacrifices (other craftable sets, tertiary damage multipliers, etc.), consider its implementation. The available pieces are Guardian's Aversion (Wrists), Guardian's Case (Waist), and Guardian's Gaze (Head). Of course, you can wear 2 pieces of the set and complete the full 3-piece bonus with a Ring of Royal Grandeur (found from Act I bounty caches).
• Endless Walk:This is a jewelry set consisting of The Traveler's Pledge (Amulet) and The Compass Rose (Ring), and is randomly found through farming, gambling Blood Shards, and/or Kanai's Cube recipes. The Endless Walk set is a nice compromise between damage bonuses (building up while stationary) and defensive bonuses (building up while moving). It can replace glass cannon choices like the Bastions of Will set ( Focus and Restraint) and Squirt's Necklace with acceptable losses to DPS.
• Unity: A character wearing this ring, along with another Unity on their follower plus an immortality relic for them (i.e., Enchanting Favor), will reduce their damage taken by 50%. Unity can roll excellent offense-oriented stats and has an innate Extra Damage to Elites roll, which somewhat offsets losing all-out offense jewelry.

Bane of the Trapped brings just as valuable of a damage multiplication bonus to T16 keystone farming, as it does for GR solo pushing. Within the standard rifts' limited challenges and rushing playstyle, a positioning-dependent damage multiplier will be overkill — so Zei's Stone of Vengeance should be swapped for Boon of the Hoarder. This gem increases your movement speed through its interaction with Avarice Band (either worn by you during group play, or worn by your follower in solo play), and and provides near-infinite Toughness if you also equip a Goldwrap. Lastly, Bane of the Stricken should be replaced by Bane of the Powerful for a well-rounded damage increase and damage mitigation bonus, with a duration-based (but very generous and manageable) limitation.

Slot	Gems
Jewelry	Bane of the Trapped Boon of the Hoarder Bane of the Powerful
Helm	Flawless Royal Diamond (Cooldown Reduction)
Torso and Pants	Flawless Royal Topaz (Damage and All Resistance)
Weapon	Flawless Royal Emerald

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

Considering its massive, build-defining damage multiplication bonus, Bloodtide Blade is still a mandatory inclusion in T16 speed farming as well.

Steuart's Greaves double your movement speed for a generous, 10-second period after using Blood Rush — a very helpful bonus for the relentless pace of GR speed farming.

Early on in character progression, you will need to use Ring of Royal Grandeur in the jewelry slot of the Cube, in order to maintain the amalgamation of the Trag'Oul and Guardian sets. Later on, you can swap to Squirt's Necklace when soloing for another damage multiplier, or use Avarice Band when grouped up.

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.

The recommended follower for this build during T16 speed farming is the Enchantress, due to her cooldown reduction bonus (cutting down Blood Rush downtime) and elemental damage increase. Note that this requires that you run Hand of the Prophet and optimize her survivability, as per our guide.

For more information regarding followers, we advise you to read our Follower Guide, which contains detailed advice for choosing the skills and the gear of your follower.

The preferred potions for this build are Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid (allowing you to break down Waller affixes that impede your positioning) and Bottomless Potion of the Tower (whose Armor-increasing properties complement the naturally high All Resistances stat of Necromancers). Pick whichever you feel helps you out the most.