LoD Blood Nova Necromancer BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

This Blood Nova Necromancer build is based on the Legacy of Dreams power, which offers significant flexibility when it comes to item choice. Stat-wise, focus on pieces that have Death Nova skill damage increase, as well as Cooldown Reduction and Increased Attack Speed. A final consideration would be to pay attention to Pickup Radius in your secondary stats — while not mandatory, it will greatly help to extend the radius of Aura of Frailty to more closely match the wider Blood Nova radius (see this build's skills page for more information).

The Legacy of Dreams power allows you to run any legendary item combination while not losing out on the damage amplification and reduction associated with the traditional 6-piece sets. You can obtain this power in two ways; the older way is equipping the two rings — The Wailing Host and Litany of the Undaunted — as your only active set bonus. The newer (and more powerful, since it also opens your ring slots for legendary jewelry) method is the Legacy of Dreams legendary gem.

In a setup with Legacy of Dreams, you will be wearing Convention of Elements and Krysbin's Sentence as your rings, as well as your better roll between Haunted Visions and Wisdom of Kalan as your amulet. Convention of Elements will provide a massive damage increase during the Physical 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 you have a hard crowd control active; it is a major driving force behind the inclusion of Land of the Dead Frozen Lands. Rounding out the jewelry, your best-in-slot amulets are class-specific ones: Wisdom of Kalan, whose unique property increases the defensive capabilities of Bone Armor, and Haunted Visions, which offers a build-defining legendary power that makes your Simulacrum summons last forever at the cost of a negligible life drain effect. Simply wear your better roll between the two amulets, and cube the other.

You have two major options in your helm slot — either to boost your damage directly with a worn Physical damage Andariel's Visage, or reduce your vital cooldowns with a Leoric's Crown (socketed with a Flawless Royal Diamond for CDR). Our general recommendation is Leoric's Crown, as its general reduction of skill downtime reduces the reliance on Rift composition and particular timing with your cooldowns. Nevertheless, both are seen as viable choices for the slot.

For your shoulders, Mantle of Channeling has been updated to include Siphon Blood, which ties nicely into the base mechanics of the build and provides you with a hefty damage increasing and damage reducing bonuses while channeling.

The remainder of your armor pieces can be roughly split into three categories: protective, offensive and utility pieces.

• Three of your major armor slots will be dedicated to protecting this all-in, dive into the fray build. Aquila Cuirass is a staple defensive piece, which reduces incoming damage by half, as long as you remain near your resource cap; this requirement is effectively guaranteed, since you trigger Blood Nova with a non-spending primary skill, Siphon Blood, and its interaction with Iron Rose. Stone Gauntlets are one of the most effective protective pieces in the game, bumping your armor by 50% at a significant (and stacking) mobility penalty — one which you will completely negate with the immobilization immunity of Ice Climbers. Note that Stone Gauntlets only drop on Strength-based classes (Barbarian, Crusader) — this means you will have to farm or gamble for them on a Strength class alt.
• Your belt and leg slots will be filled with damage boosting legendaries. The Witching Hour compensates its lack of unique bonuses with its innate Crit Damage and Attack Speed rolls, making for a glassy, but DPS-efficient piece. Blackthorne's Jousting Mail provide an elemental damage increase, which is fairly unique for the slot — as long as it does not form its set bonus with another Blackthorne item, thus breaking the LoD bonus, this will be your best-in-slot item.
• Finally, we have a utility item in the face of Krelm's Buff Bracers, which protect you from Knockbacks and Stuns — a deadly form of crowd control for the generally squishy Necromancer. If you intend to push this build to its limits, you can also consider altering this slot to Ancient Parthan Defenders to take advantage of the extra protection during your stuns and freezes.

Lastly, your weapon and offhand duo will be Funerary Pick and Iron Rose. Funerary Pick skyrockets the viability of Siphon Blood as an Essence generator, providing a massive 300% damage multiplier against affected targets, and double that against singular foes. It also amplifies the effects of the Power Shift rune and spreads its buff to all of your skills, resulting in a near-omnipotent Primary skill. Iron Rose is a cornerstone piece of the build, allowing you and your Simulacrums to "cast" Blood Novas for free from channeling Siphon Blood with a guaranteed proc.

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.

This Season comes with the theme of Angelic Crucibles — consumable items that empower Legendary items with perfected Ancient-level stats, as well as infuse them with one of three unique, powerful, class-specific abilities at random. For this build, we recommend aiming for the Death Nova Sanctification, which adds the following power to your build:

• Death Nova Sanctification: Hitting enemies with Death Nova five consecutive times adds a spirit that afflicts an enemy every fifth cast of Death Nova. Up to three spirits can be sent at a time.

Use Angelic Crucibles on an item that crosses over most (if not all) variants of a build, and is also an item that is relatively harder to perfect than other slots (since sanctifying an item maximizes its stats). In the case of this build, good candidates for Sanctification are your weapon, Funerary Pick, or a jewelry piece like Krysbin's Sentence.

You can read more on Angelic Crucibles and the sanctification process in our dedicated Angelic Crucible Mechanics guide.

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.

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

Bane of the Stricken occupies a guaranteed spot in your jewelry sockets during high end progression. Building up your damage multiplicatively in prolonged fights and with a level 25 bonus specifically targeting Rift Guardians, this gem is designed to assist AoE heavy builds in 1v1 combat. This Blood Nova-based build falls firmly in that category. In lower tier runs, you can freely substitute this gem with Bane of the Powerful.

Your final slot is best occupied by the Legacy of Dreams legendary gem, which provides a scaling bonus for each legendary item equipped, as long as you have no set bonuses equipped. This bonus is multiplied for Ancient or Primal quality items, and when the gem is maxed out, it matches the Legacy of Nightmares ( The Wailing Host and Litany of the Undaunted rings) set bonus. This potent bonus allows you to play around with all your gear slots for synergistic legendary powers at the cost of a gem slot; in the older LoN setup, this socket would be occupied by Gogok of Swiftness.

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

The Weapon slot in the Cube will be occupied by Bloodtide Blade, a key legendary power for the build; it scales your damage multiplicatively for each enemy within a 25-yard radius, matching the Blood Nova circle.

Tucked away in your armor Cube slot, Dayntee's Binding will reduce incoming damage in half as long as there is an enemy afflicted by one of your Curses, which is all but guaranteed with your constantly active Aura of Frailty.

As previously mentioned, you will cube your worse rolled amulet between Haunted Visions and Wisdom of Kalan, and wear the other.

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 Scoundrel due to his powerful crit buff, allowing you brief windows of extra damage that are well suited to the strengths of this build.

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.

Your recommended potion is Bottomless Potion of the Tower, whose Armor-increasing properties complement the naturally high All Resistances stat of Necromancers (due to Intelligence scaling Resistances) for optimal survivability.