Nemesis Bracers: Drop / Farming / Explanations

Nemesis Bracers spawn one complete Rare (yellow) monster pack, consisting of an elite monster and its minions, upon using a Shrine or a Pylon. This effect is applicable in every game mode and content — Campaign, Bounties, Normal and Greater Rifts. The spawned pack will behave under every applicable rule for the game mode, dropping the loot, materials and progression orbs associated with the standard, randomly generated Rare packs. Note that the pack will spawn right next to the Shrine or Pylon, and as a consequence — right on top of you.

How to farm Nemesis Bracers?

Like most Diablo 3 items, Nemesis Bracers cannot be targeted from specific enemies or events; it is found by random chance as you farm normally: killing monsters and looting chests, corpses and other containers. Nevertheless, you can vastly improve your chances of finding Nemesis Bracers with the following steps:

Increase difficulty — Increasing in-game difficulty also improves your chances of obtaining legendary and set items. Make a point to only bump up the difficulty to the highest you can handle while still being efficient — killing elites in less than 10 seconds is a good metric.
Farm in a party — Grouping up is universally considered the best way to farm in Diablo 3, due to the scaling Magic Find bonus for every additional player in the game. With monster health not scaling proportionally to player number and player's ability to share drops when partied up, the result is a significantly faster and efficient way to attain and divide loot.
Farm rifts — While campaign mode is fun to experience the story and bounties are important for materials and certain bounty-exclusive legendaries, the best content to do when your goal is strictly to obtain the item discussed in this article are regular Nephalem Rifts. These normal rifts offer a higher legendary drop rate than bounties, scaling with your selected difficulty. If you are looking to strike a balance between experience (for Paragon levels) and item gain, the second best content are Greater Rifts.
Spend shards at Kadala — Gambling the blood shard currency (obtained from the Rift Guardians in normal Nephalem Rifts and Greater Rifts) at the Kadala NPC in town gives you an exclusive chance to target a specific equipment slot. With realistically about a dozen legendary items per slot, this reduces the RNG pool significantly, and is regarded as an excellent way to target class-specific Offhand items (shields, quivers, orbs, mojos) due to their low price. Gambling offers a 10% chance to roll a legendary, regardless of Magic Find stats or difficulty settings. Note however the difference in Blood Shard price between slots, as it affects the efficiency of gambling for that slot: 25 for Armor pieces and Offhand items, 50 for Rings, 75 for Weapons, and 100 for Amulets. Nemesis Bracers are a wrist armor piece gambled at the lowest price of 25 Blood Shards, marking it as an efficient item to gamble for.
Upgrade rares — You can transform Rare (yellow) items to random legendary or set items of the same slot with the Upgrade Rare recipe in Kanai's Cube. The Hope of Cain recipe (1 rare item, 25 Death's Breaths, 50 of white, blue and yellow crafting materials) will chew through your crafting materials, and is generally used for build-defining, class-specific weapons. Nemesis Bracers are a cross-class common legendary item, marking them inefficient as a legendary to Upgrade Rares for. Nevertheless, Nemesis Bracers can be obtained through this method and it can be considered for endgame, if your particular build requires this item perfected with specific, uncommon stats.
Gamble with a low level alt — While a good number of legendary items will not drop before level 70, the majority are gradually introduced to the loot table prior to max level in order to spice up the leveling process. You can look up the level at which a certain legendary starts to drop by visiting its battle.net page and looking in the upper right corner (the Requires level: X field). You can then utilize a strategy of leveling an alt up to, or to a minimum of 7 levels below, the listed required level. Since Blood Shards are shared between characters, you can farm up Blood Shards on your main, and spend them on the low level alt to further minimize the gambling item pool. Note that this strategy will yield an item with stats appropriate to the low level alt, making them extremely subpar for endgame. This strategy is mostly used for low level requirement, build-defining items whose powers are extracted in Kanai's Cube, since item stats are disregarded by cubing. Nemesis Bracers are a cross-class common legendary item that starts dropping mid-leveling, marking them inefficient as a legendary to make a gambling alt for.

Where and when to use Nemesis Bracers?

Nemesis Bracers are generally considered a speed farming item; a legendary that occupies the wrist slot when you do not feel the need for additional protection or DPS. In practice, this means they are the dominant choice for Normal Rifts, are also taken during low-to-mid Greater Rifts, and are decent for Bounties (mostly ones concerning killing a large number of enemies in open maps). Note that during Normal Rifts and Bounties you can also carry Nemesis Bracers in your inventory and quickly swap in and out of them when taking a Shrine; Greater Rifts however lock in your gear setup, and you cannot use the same tactic.

While its speed farming reputation is well deserved, note that Nemesis Bracers can also be taken for Greater Rift pushing builds; they are a universally useful item to fall back to whenever the particular build does not require a specific bracer. This is due to the fact that they cut the time spent searching for packs, diversify the elites you get on the map (chance for a spawn with less threatening affixes), and their use generally results in more time for the Rift Guardian fight. Still, do not neglect the item mechanics (spawning elites right on top of you), and carefully consider your options on squishier builds.

With a legendary power that presents you with elites at an accelerated rate, Nemesis Bracers are frequently used in conjunction with speed farming oriented items. When using Nemesis Bracers, you can refer to our synergistic items list to find other related items that enhance or work well with it.

In-geom — The cooldown-resetting powers of In-geom are reliant on finishing off elites at an accelerated pace, which is the exact purpose of Nemesis Bracers. This duo is extremely potent when you overpower the content and speed farm the selected difficulty.
The Furnace — This two handed mace greatly enhances your damage against elites, allowing you to finish off the Nemesis Bracers spawns quicker.
Stone of Jordan — This ring provides the second highest elite damage roll on gear, and is frequently part of speed farming setups if jewelry sets are not taking up the slots.
Unity — This is the second ring that provides damage against elites, and halves your incoming damage if matched with a Unity on the follower, plus an immortality item for him (i.e. Enchanting Favor). This is a very popular soloing combo.
Bane of the Powerful — This legendary gem both increases your damage against, and reduces damage from, elites (including ones spawned from Nemesis Bracers). Not only that, but it also increases your damage multiplicatively by 20% for a limited amount of time after killing an elite, synergizing with Nemesis Bracers that help refresh its bonus. They are often taken together in speed farming builds.