Introduction

This build is fairly interesting, and relies on two commonly overlooked aspects of the Necromancer's kit. The first being Maltorius' Petrified Spike, a legendary item that boosts your bone spear by 700%, and Bone SpearTeeth, a skill that sprays half the map in death and shoddy dentistry. The Spike itself has fairly terrible stats, but it's unique ability and enough intelligence make up for this aspect.



Gameplay and Strategy

This is a very easy build to execute and yields extraordinarily high results. It's more of a medium range build, with plenty of variance as it only relies on a small combo. The rest of the build is mostly just to optimize the amount that you can use Bone SpearTeeth and making sure you survive well, with a fair bit of boss killers, such as Command SkeletonsFrenzy and Corpse LanceBrittle Touch. You can alter the range and play style with substitutions, and overall this is a very solid and general build for beginners and experienced players alike.



Your main combo rotation is going to be using SimulacrumReservoir and spamming Bone SpearTeeth. Then follow up with Corpse LanceBrittle Touch to finish off any remaining units. Corpse lance does not consume any essence to cast, and is very resource efficient while still dishing out significant damage. You may ask, why pick these runes. Well, Reservoir provides more resource, Brittle Touch helps with higher health bosses, and Teeth is actually a bit complicated. Now this may be a bug, but it certainly seems like the splinters from Bone SpearTeeth do too much damage, especially when combined with Maltorius' Petrified Spike. Because of this damage, you can easily clear massive waves and bosses alike.

Your other core skill is going to be Blood Rush. Every class ought to have a mobility skill in order to more efficiently clear floors and to speed up your farming. I prefer to use Molting to start a Corpse Lance chain in adventure runs, but the rune you choose is mostly up to preference. Potency is also a powerful rune, especially if you choose the close range variant of this build



Other skills include your essence regain, either Grim ScytheDual Scythes or Siphon BloodPower Shift. I like Dual Scythes simply because its a larger area (and therefor more essence), pulls enemies in front of you, and efficiently lines up the highest damage Bone SpearTeeth. An alternative to Dual Scythes is Grim ScytheExecution or Grim ScytheCursed ScytheSiphon BloodPower Shift is an excellent choice for melting bosses when low on essence. Other options include Siphon BloodSuppress, Siphon BloodBlood Sucker, or Bone SpikesBlood Spikes. Your choice of basic attack will determine your range for this build. Keep in mind that Teeth does more damage close up (like a shotgun) but due to Maltorius' Petrified Spike you can still use it at a range to great effect. For your non-combo damage ability, you want to choose based on your range. If you choose Siphon Blood, pick Command Skeletons with either Frenzy or Kill Command. If you choose Grim Scythe, go with either Bone ArmorDislocation or Death NovaBlight. Death nova does significant AOE damage, while Bone Armor is primarily a defensive skill, especially useful to preserve your Blood Rush cooldown. I personally prefer Frenzy for ranged and Bone ArmorDislocation for a closer range build.



Passives

Your passives will once again depend on your variant of the build. You will want Overwhelming Essence and Blood is Power regardless, but the other two slots will vary. Overwhelming Essence and Blood is Power are both integral skills to any ability and cooldown-based build. You want to minimize your cooldowns, and despite the intimidating requirement of Blood is Power, it triggers rather often. It counts premitigation damage, meaning damage before your armor and resistances. In any high level battle, you will proc this passive often. Overwhelming Essence is rather straightforward, as it simply increases your resource.



For the close range variant, I would recommend Stand Alone and Draw Life. Together, these passives will make you significantly more bulky and make up for a lack of sustain within your skills. An alternative to Draw Life is taking Life from Death and DevourSatiated over Corpse LanceBrittle Touch. This will somewhat lower your damage to bosses, but provide for more spam and sustain overall.

For the range variant, I would Aberrant Animator and Final Service. These both combine nicely with your Command Skeletons, while Final Service helps to improve your general lack of tankiness. Aberrant Animator gives your skeletons double your Thorns damage, while Final Service is your cheat death mechanic.

Skill list

A- Grim ScytheDual Scythes/Siphon BloodPower Shift

B- Bone SpearTeeth

X- Command SkeletonsFrenzy/ Command SkeletonsKill Command/Bone ArmorDislocation/Death NovaBlight

Y- Corpse LanceBrittle Touch

ZL-SimulacrumReservoir

ZR-Blood RushMolting/Blood RushPotency



Passives

Overwhelming Essence Blood is Power Stand Alone / Aberrant Animator Draw Life / Life from Death / Final Service

Now, into the parts that honestly don't matter nearly as much. Most of the build is in your hands, now this is just the nitpicky optimizations that I will honestly spend far too much/little time on. For the next sections I will be discussing gear, gems, Kanai's Cube, and paragon points.

For Gear I recommend going for a Legacy of Dreams build. This is rather standard, gives you an insane damage boost, and overall is versatile and workable. Make sure that you haveMaltorius' Petrified Spike. Another recommendation is your helm. Leoric's Crown is ideal for general battling, but Broken Crown is my preference for base gem farming, for hopefully obvious reasons. Honestly, just use common sense. LoD builds are incredibly player dependent, and you can build them just about however you want. Just prioritize whatever will feed into the general gameplan of spamming SimulacrumReservoir and Bone SpearTeeth.

For Kanai's Cube, you want to slot in Reilena's Shadowhook as your weapon, Krysbin's Sentence for jewlery, and the worse of either Reaper's Wraps or Nemesis Bracers. Shadowhook scales your damage based on your maximum essence, and with Overwhelming Essence and SimulacrumReservoir you're pretty well maxed out on your essence.

For Paragon Points you want to basically use common sense. This build is an ability spam build with limited sustain. Play to that. For example, you want to invest heavily into Essence, Cost Reduction, and Cooldown reduction. As far as defense, I recommend investing in armor so that Blood is Power is easier to proc.

For Gems you should put Bane of the Trapped, Enforcer, and Legacy of Dreams in your ring slots. Zei's Stone of Vengeance is a solid alternative. For your Helm, slot in Flawless Royal Topaz to provide resource cost reduction or Flawless Royal Diamond for CDR. Personally, since this is a teeth build you should go Topaz. For your weapon, you should go Flawless Royal Topaz if going the ranged build, and Flawless Royal Emerald for the close range build. And for your other slots, you should go (you guessed it) Flawless Royal Topaz. In my honest opinion, Topaz is the best base gem for necromancer. It provides Intelligence, thorns, and resource reduction. Sure, the thorns are only especially ridiculous with Aberrant Animator but once again, topaz is a godsend for Necromancer.





Changelog: 10/2/19 Fixed some grammar errors, clarified poor usage, and added more details to the build



