Trag'Oul Death Nova Necromancer Nephalem Rift Speed Farming Variation
Nephalem Rift Speed Farming
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 |
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Passive Skills |
Adapting Rotation
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.
Adapting Skills
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.
Adapting Gear
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 |
|
|
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 29: Paragon Cap
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.
Season 29: Gearing Considerations
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.
Adapting Gems
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 | |
Helm |
|
Torso and Pants |
|
Weapon |
For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.
Adapting Kanai's Cube
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.
Follower
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.
Legendary Potion
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.
Changelog
- 13 Sep. 2023: Added Season 29 Paragon Cap and Gearing recommendations.
- 22 Feb. 2023: Added Season 28 Altar of Rites recommendations.
- 26 Aug. 2022: Guide added, as well as Season 27 Angelic Crucible recommendations.
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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