Masquerade Bone Spear Necromancer

[excession 0]

On 11/28/2020 at 12:33 AM, Guest Ozymandias said:

Any reason this set is not allowing the set dungeon to be accessed? I keep getting the "not appropriately garbed" message.

The Masquerade set was recently added and doesn't have a set dungeon.

[Guest TeDe]

I'm not sure if I'm running into a bug or if this is "working as intended" but I wanted to see if anyone else is experiencing this: using the farming variation with Boon of the Hoarder, any kills by the two Simulacrums do not cause an explosion of gold. This kind of negates the usefulness of Boon of the Hoarder as the Simulacrums are doing the mass of the damage - I just have to be lucky enough to get the final blow with Teeth, and if I use Blighted Marrow I almost never get a gold explosion.

[excession 0]

On 11/30/2020 at 10:20 PM, Guest TeDe said:

I'm not sure if I'm running into a bug or if this is "working as intended" but I wanted to see if anyone else is experiencing this: using the farming variation with Boon of the Hoarder, any kills by the two Simulacrums do not cause an explosion of gold. This kind of negates the usefulness of Boon of the Hoarder as the Simulacrums are doing the mass of the damage - I just have to be lucky enough to get the final blow with Teeth, and if I use Blighted Marrow I almost never get a gold explosion.

not been able to reproduce (on switch), I mostly attack with Blighted Marrow and gold keeps popping. I deal enough to kill in T16 without the simulacrums so it might be masking the issue but from what you describe there should be way less gold lying around (I don't see the difference with another build for example).

Is your Boon at level 50 ?

[Guest TeDe]

21 hours ago, excession said:

not been able to reproduce (on switch), I mostly attack with Blighted Marrow and gold keeps popping. I deal enough to kill in T16 without the simulacrums so it might be masking the issue but from what you describe there should be way less gold lying around (I don't see the difference with another build for example).

Is your Boon at level 50 ?

Aye it is indeed maxed out. I'm on PC and my damage isn't quite there for T16 (trash Haunted Visions rolls are my life). I'd swear it's some combination of things causing it between Steuart's Greaves procs and Lost Time procs from Bone Armor and Grim Scythe. Sometimes I'll be cruising along and thinking "man that's a lot of gold" and then the next thing I know I'm only seeing corpses on the ground. I even turned off my active pet to make sure it wasn't getting collected, and swapped out Avarice Band for the same reason. I've seen this work correctly on a non-seasonal WoL monk, and I feel like something has to be up.

[excession 0]

On 12/3/2020 at 6:34 AM, Guest TeDe said:

Aye it is indeed maxed out. I'm on PC and my damage isn't quite there for T16 (trash Haunted Visions rolls are my life). I'd swear it's some combination of things causing it between Steuart's Greaves procs and Lost Time procs from Bone Armor and Grim Scythe. Sometimes I'll be cruising along and thinking "man that's a lot of gold" and then the next thing I know I'm only seeing corpses on the ground. I even turned off my active pet to make sure it wasn't getting collected, and swapped out Avarice Band for the same reason. I've seen this work correctly on a non-seasonal WoL monk, and I feel like something has to be up.

I've changed my setup and I did notice something odd : it's more like the first few kills no gold than it starts falling and sometimes there is none for a few kills. I am not using Bone Armor in my farming setup, just Bone Spear and Steuart's Greaves (I don't use my generator but I am using the cold damage rune for Bone Spear to proc Lost Time).
As I am relying on Goldwrap for toughness it makes me sweat not to see gold but no death so far...

edit:

the more I test this the more I think the Simulacrum kills don't get the Boon of the Hoarder effect. It is most visible when doing a kill from afar, when my missile miss but a Simulacrum's missile hit and no gold follows. From up close my missile always hit I guess.

It might be worth mentioning on the official forum if you can pinpoint the setup that make it happen or confirm that Simulacrums don't benefit from BoH

 

 

Edited December 4, 2020 by excession

[Guest TeDe]

On 12/4/2020 at 9:22 AM, excession said:

I've changed my setup and I did notice something odd : it's more like the first few kills no gold than it starts falling and sometimes there is none for a few kills. I am not using Bone Armor in my farming setup, just Bone Spear and Steuart's Greaves (I don't use my generator but I am using the cold damage rune for Bone Spear to proc Lost Time).
As I am relying on Goldwrap for toughness it makes me sweat not to see gold but no death so far...

edit:

the more I test this the more I think the Simulacrum kills don't get the Boon of the Hoarder effect. It is most visible when doing a kill from afar, when my missile miss but a Simulacrum's missile hit and no gold follows. From up close my missile always hit I guess.

It might be worth mentioning on the official forum if you can pinpoint the setup that make it happen or confirm that Simulacrums don't benefit from BoH

 

 

Thanks for the suggestion - after digging around a bit, it looks like this issue is the same as WD pets, and the workaround is the same...if you've entered a new area, Simulacrums will not proc Boon of the Hoarder, but if you re-cast your Simulacrums in the new area, all kills will proc correctly. I've posted this on the official forums here: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d3/t/simulacrum-kills-dont-proc-boon-of-the-hoarder/25066

[Guest Jaws1965]

Hello,

I'm trying to build my new level 70 bone spear necromancer, and the active skill recommendations aren't all simultaneously available.  Bone Armor, Blood Rush, and Simulacrum are all "Blood and Bone," and I can't select all three.  Is there a way to get around this limitation?

Thanks, Jaws1965

[Guest sfa]

On 12/13/2020 at 10:12 PM, Guest Jaws1965 said:

Hello,

I'm trying to build my new level 70 bone spear necromancer, and the active skill recommendations aren't all simultaneously available.  Bone Armor, Blood Rush, and Simulacrum are all "Blood and Bone," and I can't select all three.  Is there a way to get around this limitation?

Thanks, Jaws1965

https://www.diablowiki.net/Elective_mode

---

in other words,  I just geared a necro from spare shards today, and was lucky to get the amulet from my first  greater rift today.

Scythes were a breeze to find using upgrade rare thanks to the very limited pool, and long story short after 10 rifts or so  @ 70, i hit an easy 100, without ancient items,  2 lvl 25 gems and a level 3 bane of powerful:P.

surely the clones help a lot too, but  getting 100 on day 1, and easily, with average gear was a surprise.

I use the captain crimson variant from leaderboards, since it needed 1 less piece, but it seems like a worthwhile variant.

I even have a leoric's on cube and unity on finger because i haven't found dante's belt yet.

[xJunalx 0]

Thx for this awesome guide!!

In gems for section you said to use Flawless Royal Ruby for toughness, Shouldn't be Flawless Royal Amethyst ? Or am I missing something?

 

[Bubble181 14]

On 12/19/2020 at 11:30 AM, xJunalx said:

Thx for this awesome guide!!

In gems for section you said to use Flawless Royal Ruby for toughness, Shouldn't be Flawless Royal Amethyst ? Or am I missing something?

 

A FR Amethyst gives you 280 Vitality. Five of them are still just 1200 Vit. That's completely irrelevant in the higher GRs (you'll most probably be using Topaz when getting up there as damage is more important than toughness at first).

However, FR Rubies give you 280 strength, which raises your Armor. 1200 extra armor gives you a percentage damage reduction on all incoming damage. Combined with Potency (armor +100%) and some other skills (sorry, I haven't played the Masquerade necro this season so I haven't checked out the guide in detail), this can mean cutting 10% off incoming damage - which is vastly more powerful, defense-wise, than 12.000 extra hitpoints from added Vitality. 

All incoming damage is reduced by a percentage based on Armor, then it's reduced by a percentage based on the relevant resistance, then based on straight damage reduction, then other skills. Dodge and block are in a separate calculation I believe, though I've never played a monk or crusader to actually bother with those. Anyway, it's perfectly possible to see 1 million incoming damage, reduced by 80% armor to 200K, reduced by 80% resistance to 40K, reduced by 50% for a skill to 20K, reduced by 5% for, say, ranged damage reduction, and so on. In the very high GRs you've got somewhere around 300K to 1 million hit points (depending on class and build). Enemies do tens or hundreds of millions of damage per hit. Just tanking them with hit points is completely impossible, so stacking mitigation is key. 

At start, obviously, a barbarian builds up his strenghth (and thus, armor), while a necromancer will build up intelligence (and thus, resistance). Since each type of damage mitigation has diminishing returns (adding another 1000 armor when you've got 15000 will reduce damage by maybe 0.5% while adding 100 resistance when you've only got 700 will maybe reduce received damage by 5%), after a while it becomes far more efficient to try and increase your "less" obvious type of mitigation.

This is also the same reason why, when distributing Defensive paragon points, a barbarian or crusader will first pump resistance, while a necro or WD would first increase armor.

 

 

TL;DR: It's not an error, at very high levels the armor from additional strength is more valuable than the life gained from additional vitality.

[xJunalx 0]

26 minutes ago, Bubble181 said:

A FR Amethyst gives you 280 Vitality. Five of them are still just 1200 Vit. That's completely irrelevant in the higher GRs (you'll most probably be using Topaz when getting up there as damage is more important than toughness at first).

However, FR Rubies give you 280 strength, which raises your Armor. 1200 extra armor gives you a percentage damage reduction on all incoming damage. Combined with Potency (armor +100%) and some other skills (sorry, I haven't played the Masquerade necro this season so I haven't checked out the guide in detail), this can mean cutting 10% off incoming damage - which is vastly more powerful, defense-wise, than 12.000 extra hitpoints from added Vitality. 

All incoming damage is reduced by a percentage based on Armor, then it's reduced by a percentage based on the relevant resistance, then based on straight damage reduction, then other skills. Dodge and block are in a separate calculation I believe, though I've never played a monk or crusader to actually bother with those. Anyway, it's perfectly possible to see 1 million incoming damage, reduced by 80% armor to 200K, reduced by 80% resistance to 40K, reduced by 50% for a skill to 20K, reduced by 5% for, say, ranged damage reduction, and so on. In the very high GRs you've got somewhere around 300K to 1 million hit points (depending on class and build). Enemies do tens or hundreds of millions of damage per hit. Just tanking them with hit points is completely impossible, so stacking mitigation is key. 

At start, obviously, a barbarian builds up his strenghth (and thus, armor), while a necromancer will build up intelligence (and thus, resistance). Since each type of damage mitigation has diminishing returns (adding another 1000 armor when you've got 15000 will reduce damage by maybe 0.5% while adding 100 resistance when you've only got 700 will maybe reduce received damage by 5%), after a while it becomes far more efficient to try and increase your "less" obvious type of mitigation.

This is also the same reason why, when distributing Defensive paragon points, a barbarian or crusader will first pump resistance, while a necro or WD would first increase armor.

 

 

TL;DR: It's not an error, at very high levels the armor from additional strength is more valuable than the life gained from additional vitality.

Awesome! Thank you for clearing that out for me!

[Guest GGCATAM]

7 hours ago, xJunalx said:

TL;DR: It's not an error, at very high levels the armor from additional strength is more valuable than the life gained from additional vitality.

Extra emphasis on VERY HIGH, like probably over GR140 high! Until your paragons are in the thousands and your gear is augmented you will not want to sacrifice the damage bonus of primary stat gems for the 3-5% extra damage reduction of a secondary stat. For example today I beat GR126 with an all Topaz variant of this build and didn't even come close to dying.

[Bubble181 14]

Yes, it's absolutely only for pushing the highest, and it also depends on personal preference. Some people prefer tanks, others glass cannons. 

I'm personally not a fan of the "die 5 times but still manage to scrape by inside the timer" style of successfully finishing a rift - nor of really fishing for just the right one. Other people don't mind.
At a certain point your paragon levels are high enough that you have all the INT and VIT you could ever need, and STR is just the most useful extra stat. 

[Guest JotaEquis]

Hello guys. I have a fully equipped Carnival / Bone Spear, full set with perma  simulacrums, only missing the bracers and the ring in Kanai. I saw many videos and tutorials showing how tanky this build is, yet I seem to be taking quite a bit of damage on T14. I'm not new to D3, have pushed GRs in the 100s with some of my characters, yet I'm struggling with this one. Just wanted to be sure I was not missing something obvious. Thanks for all the help and advices you can provide.

[Deadset 108]

On 2/2/2021 at 4:16 PM, Guest JotaEquis said:

Hello guys. I have a fully equipped Carnival / Bone Spear, full set with perma  simulacrums, only missing the bracers and the ring in Kanai. I saw many videos and tutorials showing how tanky this build is, yet I seem to be taking quite a bit of damage on T14. I'm not new to D3, have pushed GRs in the 100s with some of my characters, yet I'm struggling with this one. Just wanted to be sure I was not missing something obvious. Thanks for all the help and advices you can provide.

Hey there! It's hard to pinpoint the exact issue without looking directly at your character, as it might be related to your currently equipped items, their specific rolls, or simply a playstyle mistake of overlooking part of your rotation.

Since you say you have issues with survivability, let's take a look at what makes you survive:

- The Masquerade 4-piece bonus: 50% damage reduction while Simulacrum is up. You say you have perma-Simulacrums, so I suppose you have your Haunted Visions amulet equipped.

- Bone Armor, which gets depleted by Bone Spear casts through the Scythe of the Cycle mechanic; make sure you recast this one before it depletes!

- Decrepify with its Dayntee's Binding interaction; make sure you curse the enemies you're currently fighting!

- Razeth's Volition in the Cube - as long as you're not at full Essence, you'll be taking advantage of this one. Should not be hard to keep its bonus up.

I think if all of the above is used as it should and you have followed the gear roll recommendations we have on the Gear page, you should be fine toughness-wise! 🙂

[Guest Jota]

On 2/4/2021 at 3:14 PM, Deadset said:

Hey there! It's hard to pinpoint the exact issue without looking directly at your character, as it might be related to your currently equipped items, their specific rolls, or simply a playstyle mistake of overlooking part of your rotation.

Since you say you have issues with survivability, let's take a look at what makes you survive:

- The Masquerade 4-piece bonus: 50% damage reduction while Simulacrum is up. You say you have perma-Simulacrums, so I suppose you have your Haunted Visions amulet equipped.

- Bone Armor, which gets depleted by Bone Spear casts through the Scythe of the Cycle mechanic; make sure you recast this one before it depletes!

- Decrepify with its Dayntee's Binding interaction; make sure you curse the enemies you're currently fighting!

- Razeth's Volition in the Cube - as long as you're not at full Essence, you'll be taking advantage of this one. Should not be hard to keep its bonus up.

I think if all of the above is used as it should and you have followed the gear roll recommendations we have on the Gear page, you should be fine toughness-wise! 🙂

Many many thanks for your recap. When I wrote my post, I had left a Witching Hour on my character and forgotten to equip Dayntee's Binding. Doing that and using aura of frailty helped A LOT. Thanks again for taking the time to help and for your awesome guides.

[Guest From simona]

Please can you tell me how to set this up without seasonal bonus.

I am playing on season.

Also please can someone advise I play 2 players with my boyfriend and I am not sure if unity works with playing a 2 player only game no followers.

 

Thank you.

 

Sim

[Deadset 108]

Hey there! Without the Seasonal bonus, you will simply drop Reilena's Shadowhook from the Cube setup, and keep Maltorius' Petrified Spike as your cubed weapon power.

Unity in multiplayer games will work, but not in the superbly beneficial way that it does in solo play - you will simply share the damage with the other player(s), likely causing each other to die a lot more often than you should. Meticulous avoidance of damage and, ideally, one of you falling into a Support role for the other's DPS role is your best course of action in a 2+ player Greater Rifting. 🙂

[Guest Simona]

Thank you so much for helping me understand.

 

[ab8071919 0]

Changing passive Bone Prison to Dark Reaping. no main resource problem, don't even have to use the scythe to regen. 

Changing Simulacrum to Cursed Form to apply all three curses.

Changing curse to Aura of Frailty, will benefit from the simulacrum described above. 

i also change Grim Scythe rune to Dual Scythe but this is not so important. 

that's my suggestion to this build variant. one less button to click, endless bone spear for GR100 and below (havn't tested above GR100.) 

 

[JBelle 0]

On 5/26/2021 at 5:27 AM, ab8071919 said:

Changing passive Bone Prison to Dark Reaping. no main resource problem, don't even have to use the scythe to regen. 

Changing Simulacrum to Cursed Form to apply all three curses.

Changing curse to Aura of Frailty, will benefit from the simulacrum described above. 

i also change Grim Scythe rune to Dual Scythe but this is not so important. 

that's my suggestion to this build variant. one less button to click, endless bone spear for GR100 and below (havn't tested above GR100.) 

 

with the set bonus, shouldn't it be irrelevant which simulacrum rune you choose?

Something else, just started this char so outfit is sub-par, don't even have the full set yet, so maybe it won't be a problem down the line, still i really miss having an anti-cc tool like vengeance or ice climbers. getting stunned and slowed down way too often. is there something that be be done about it? didn't see any anti-cc when checking out the build. did i just miss it?

edit: also, if you take dual scythe you don't have a cold skill anymore to trigger the lost time effect

edit2: it might be worthwhile to change lost time to leger's disdain then, at least in the sense that dual scythe benefits from that offhand the most and lost time wouldn't be able to proc anyways without cold skill.

Edited July 24, 2021 by JBelle

[makro 0]

I've been playing a bit more D3 in recent times, though never really delved too deep into the late game stuff. My late game would be like lvl 60 greater rifts. I used to play just enough to get the Season rewards.

While looking for this 28th season's  Necro builds, I started testing this one and OMG it's incredibly strong. I've just finished lvl 100 greater rift solo for the first time with like 8min left. What is happening now is I'm constantly dying, even though I can 3 shot elites. I think i need to invest in elemental damage reduction or sth, but again, I'm more a casual player so I never really worried about each individual property of an item. If it gave me Int, that was enough - till now.

So thank you for the guide! The Altar of Rites explanation helped a lot too. Your guide allowed me to see the late game's meta, and see that there's a lot of cool ppl playing on Torment 16. 

[Bubble181 14]

On 3/29/2023 at 7:39 PM, makro said:

I've been playing a bit more D3 in recent times, though never really delved too deep into the late game stuff. My late game would be like lvl 60 greater rifts. I used to play just enough to get the Season rewards.

While looking for this 28th season's  Necro builds, I started testing this one and OMG it's incredibly strong. I've just finished lvl 100 greater rift solo for the first time with like 8min left. What is happening now is I'm constantly dying, even though I can 3 shot elites. I think i need to invest in elemental damage reduction or sth, but again, I'm more a casual player so I never really worried about each individual property of an item. If it gave me Int, that was enough - till now.

So thank you for the guide! The Altar of Rites explanation helped a lot too. Your guide allowed me to see the late game's meta, and see that there's a lot of cool ppl playing on Torment 16. 

If you havezn't already, consider switching all your gems in gear from topaz to rubies. 1200 INT is definitely a big difference damage-wise (but if you're 3-shotting elites you're still good, maybe you'll need to 4-shot them 😉), but 1200 STR will make a huge difference in your armor. INT raises resistances, but due to diminishing gains once you're over, say, 10K, it really won't matter that much anymore. 

[Guest ureru]

Hello. The skills don't make any sense to me. How can you have Bone Armor and Blood Rush equipped at the same time? They are on the same button.

[Guest ureru]

Nevermind. I'm a noob 🙂