Inarius Corpse Explosion Necromancer BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

The build equips all six available pieces of the Grace of Inarius set, leaving your jewelry slots for pieces that bring more utility and damage to the setup. Rolls-wise, this is a Cooldown Reduction-centric build first and foremost, but it also takes advantage of Skill and Area Damage rolls on gear. Inarius's Will is a particularly roll-heavy piece, with their ability to roll double Crit stats, plus Cooldown Reduction and eventually Area Damage (replacing Intelligence as its fourth main stat). You can focus fully on tankiness on Inarius's Reticence and Inarius's Perseverance, while Inarius's Martyrdom and Inarius's Understanding have to balance offense with their mainstat rolls (Skill Damage on the former, Crit Chance on the latter).

Dayntee's Binding has a simple, but very valuable effect on your build; it reduces incoming damage in half as long as you have an enemy afflicted by your Curses. This is a trivial requirement to fulfill as you use Cursed Scythe plus Trag'Oul's Corroded Fang, guaranteeing Curse application on every swing. Another gear slot will be dedicated to protection with Ancient Parthan Defenders, which trigger off hard crowd control (i.e., the Dislocation stun to provide you with scaling damage reduction for each affected enemy.

In a Corpse Explosion setup, your jewelry will be dedicated to the DPS staples Convention of Elements and Krysbin's Sentence. Convention of Elements will provide a massive damage increase during the Poison cycle of its rotation, with an improved uptime compared to other classes, due to the Necromancer's three element rotation. Krysbin's Sentence is a Necromancer-specific item that amplifies damage as long as your enemies are afflicted by a crowd control effect (ideally hard CC for the maximum damage multiplication).

The Johnstone is a cornerstone piece of the build, since its post- Land of the Dead damage multiplication to your Corpse Explosion enforces the rigid rotation of the build, as described in the Skills page and the Desired stats and Breakpoints section just below. Pair it with Krysbin's Sentence for the damage multiplication against targets affected by Crowd Control (tripled bonus for hard CC, hence the rune Frozen Lands on LotD), and a Convention of Elements for the damage boost during the Poison cycle of its rotation.

Your weapon and offhand best-in-slots are locked down by the necessities of the build. Trag'Oul's Corroded Fang is a dedicated Grim Scythe Cursed Scythe legendary item that guarantees the curse application of your primary attack, and greatly amplifies your damage against afflicted targets. There is no particular offhand that you absolutely need to wear — any high damage range phylactery with the appropriate stats will do.

There is a notable high GR variant for this build that leans even further into damage dealing, but loses on toughness. It replaces Ancient Parthan Defenders and one of the Inarius set pieces (either the Shoulders, Chest, or Helm) for the craftable Aughild's Authority set: Aughild's Search, plus one more piece of your choosing between Aughild's Power, Aughild's Rule and Aughild's Spike. This set increases damage dealt while reducing damage taken, with additional benefits against Elites with its 3-piece bonus. We generally advise you to use Aughild's Power, since the shoulder can roll numerous valuable stats for the build — and crafting it yourself gives you a lot more control over the quality of the rolls of the piece. Naturally, this variation will require that you use Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube, removing Wisdom of Kalan and losing a great deal of damage reduction in the process.

For Offense stats, try to obtain Corpse Explosion % bonus on the shoulders, chest and phylactery (maximum of 45%), Poison elemental damage on the amulet and wrists (maximum of 40%) and Crit Chance and Crit Damage within a 1:10 ratio (ideally over 50% and 500%, respectively). This build invests heavily into Area Damage, prioritizing it in Paragons and obtaining it on pretty much any gear piece that can roll the stat sans the amulet. This should result in at least 130%+ AD with a decently equipped character. Cooldown Reduction is a massive focus in this build, with a breakpoint of 53% CDR for the 48-second cycle of Land of the Dead (burst on every 4th Convention of Elements Poison cycle). At 61%+ CDR (with Gogok of Swiftness), you will be able to reach a 36 second cycle (burst every 3rd Convention of Elements Poison cycle). The former breakpoint gives you more time to form pulls and frees up space for Area Damage stats, while the latter offers more straight burst.

Attack Speed improves the frames per animation spent on Corpse Explosion, allowing you to fit more The Johnstone-empowered detonations while inside the effects of the Poison CoE cycle (240 frames). The highest reasonable breakpoint you can aim for in this build is 1.92 (IAS on weapon and Krysbin, Gogok of Swiftness, Paragons and Enchantress IAS buff). This will get you to ~8 Corpse Explosions empowered by The Johnstone while the Poison cycle is still active.

It should be noted that competitive results are more than achievable without focus on increasing Attack Speed at all. This is simply an endgame consideration to keep in mind.

For Defense stats, aim for a life pool of about 700-800k; dropping as much as you can for offense as you grow accustomed to the build.

All augmentations on gear should be done with your main stat, Intelligence.

Note that the stat suggestions below portray an ideally rolled item with stats listed in relative order of importance. The first four of them are main stats, and the latter two — secondary stats. If your item lacks and is unable to be rerolled into the primary stats outlined below, especially for a stat higher on the list, strongly consider its replacement. Perfecting Secondary stats is mostly a case of hyper-optimization and is not a case for discarding an item, except where noted.

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.

In the Core section, max out Movement Speed to the 25% cap. Normally, this is done by dumping the first 50 Core Paragon points into Movement Speed, but if your boots have an imperfect roll with Movement Speed as a stat that you cannot replace, adjust the necessary point investment accordingly by simply subtracting your roll from the 25% max. After that, dump as much as you comfortably can into Intelligence, but feel free to invest into Vitality if you feel yourself lacking in toughness. Investing points into Maximum Essence is not necessary in this build.

In the Offense section, max out Crit Chance, Crit Damage, CDR and Attack Speed in that order. In Defense, prioritize Armor, then Life %, then All Resistance, and finish off with Life Regeneration. In Utility, build up Area Damage and Life on Hit first, then finish off with Resource Cost Reduction and Globe Radius.

Bane of the Trapped is a potent source of additional damage, as it is its own multiplier in your total damage calculation.

Introduced in Season 4, Bane of the Stricken occupies a firm spot in your jewelry sockets during GR progression. Building up your damage multiplicatively in prolonged fights and with a level 25 bonus specifically targeting Rift Guardians, this gem is tremendously helpful for AoE-oriented builds such as this one.

Two viable gems can be socketed in your third jewelry slot. Gogok of Swiftness will add survivability while scaling both Attack Speed (faster Corpse Explosion breakpoints) and Cooldown Reduction (less Land of the Dead downtime. Alternatively, you can use Zei's Stone of Vengeance — a distance-based multiplicative damage increase which, despite its wording, grants its first stage benefits at 0 yards instead of the listed 10. Despite its counterintuitive application, this is a very competitive and viable bonus.

When it comes to gear gems, you will start out progression by slotting the highest available level of Topazes in the chest and pants sockets. Ideally, these will all be Flawless Royal Topazes as soon as possible. As you grow in Paragon (bulking up Intelligence in the Core section) and aim for higher tier and more dangerous GRs, you will transition those gems into the defensive Flawless Royal Ruby, scaling the lacking Armor of an Intelligence-based character (Intelligence scales Resistances). There is no specific breakpoint where you do that; the rule of thumb is to make the change as soon as you feel the lack of toughness impede your progress. Since this is a highly cooldown-dependent build, slot a Flawless Royal Diamond in your helm. In your weapon, use a Flawless Royal Emerald for the Crit Damage boost.

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

Your weapon Cube slot should be taken by the two-handed scythe Nayr's Black Death, whose power scales your damage multiplicatively based on the number of Poison skills you use. With your entire skillset built around amplifying this bonus, you will be taking full advantage of this boost.

Grasps of Essence is a cornerstone legendary for the build, which provides a 1,000% independent damage multiplier to Corpse Explosion.

Wisdom of Kalan will increase your maximum Bone Armor stacks to 5, quadrupling your toughness to the whopping 90% at the maximum 15.

In your 4th Kanai's Cube slot in Season 33, use Scythe of the Cycle for an additional damage multiplier, easily maintained with a frequent refresh of the Bone Armor duration.

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 solo GR progression is the Enchantress due to her cooldown reduction buff from Prophetic Harmony, as well as the Focused Mind attack speed buff.

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.