LoD Singularity Necromancer Skills and Runes

Active Skills
Simulacrum Reservoir Skeletal Mage Life Support 1 Frailty Scent of Blood 2 Land of the Dead Frozen Lands 3 Bone Armor Dislocation 4 Devour Cannibalize
Passive Skills
Overwhelming Essence Blood is Power Life from Death Final Service

The build begins its runs by activating Bone Armor, both for its protective value as well as the damage buff from Scythe of the Cycle. Note its duration consumption from your regular summons, and recast it as needed. Keep up the Devour casts throughout the rift to replenish Essence consistently, and fuel its Corpse needs with Land of the Dead on cooldown. Ideally, you will be casting Simulacrum in sync with your Land of the Dead resource spikes, since the Reservoir rune will greatly empower the following summons. To that end, make sure to summon your Skeletal Mage Life Support at or as close to full Essence as you can, since the spell depletes your entire current reserve (due to the free Singularity from the worn Razeth's Volition), and scales its damage based off the consumption accordingly. Depending on your purpose (high end GR pushing or lower tier speeds) you will either be cursing the enemy packs ahead with Frailty Scent of Blood, or Blood Rushing to reposition throughout the Rift.

Your main damage-dealing skill is Skeletal Mage, greatly empowered by synergistic items such as Scythe of the Cycle, Circle of Nailuj's Evol and Razeth's Volition. The latter will provide the strongest damage dealing rune Singularity for free; its unique property consumes your entire resource reserve for 3% extra damage per Essence spent. This results in 1860% extra damage per full resource dump on a reasonably equipped character. With the strongest rune added for free, we recommend taking Life Support as the rune on your bar, since it is more forgiving with its extra duration. Note that your Skeletal Mages will match your target (whatever you are currently attacking or mousing over), so make sure to position and pick priority targets accordingly.

When starting out with this build — or depending on your preferences for mobility in general — our basic recommendation is to take Blood Rush. The solitary movement skill of the Necromancer gains some extra resource generation utility with the rune Molting, which grants an extra Corpse at your original location — but still well enough into the range of Devour. You have other viable options for the slot; you can alternate the rune (either to the safer Potency or the all-out double charges of Metabolism), or switch the skill entirely to a curse in high-end GR progression, i.e. Frailty Scent of Blood. Taking a curse into the build will allow you the safety of Dayntee's Binding, at the expense of greater mobility options (see this build's gear page for more information).

In order to take advantage of the massive Scythe of the Cycle bonuses, you will need to take Bone Armor into the build. Besides its base damage reduction bonuses, we recommend that you take the rune Dislocation for its two-second stun, which provides an additional, consistent way to proc Krysbin's Sentence in every battle. You can viably alternate this rune to Harvest of Anguish to improve mobility throughout the Rift.

In order to fuel the constant Essence demand of your main damage dealer, you will construct the majority of your remaining skillset to replenish resources and empower your build.

Your Essence restoration hinges on a core Necromancer mechanic: consuming Corpses, which are a unique Necromancer resource that is generated largely through combat. You will be using Devour with the Cannibalize rune to double dip on bonuses, Essence restoration and Health restoration, and their interaction with the Requiem Cereplate bonus will result in an even greater, snowballing effect. Note that due to the skill's lack of casting animation, you are free to spam as much as you need.

A major source of Essence generation depends on Devour, but empowers it greatly. Land of the Dead supplies you with an infinite amount of Corpses throughout its short duration, allowing you to replenish Health and Essence almost instantaneously. During its uptime, you will be able to get the maximum number of Skeletal Mages, all at their maximum power, for a great boost of damage. Note Land of the Dead's massive cooldown and try to time it with advantageous situations, like engagements with multiple Elites or the Rift Guardian. The rune Frozen Lands will ensure the powerful Krysbin's Sentence proc on all enemies on the screen for an even better damage output.

Your final skill slot will be used for Simulacrum Reservoir, another one of the Necromancer's longest cooldowns — thankfully now made permanent with the revised powers of Haunted Visions. The Simulacrum summon will mimic your secondary skill ( Skeletal Mage, in this case), and will double your Essence reserve through the Reservoir rune—an immensely powerful effect with the Singularity rune in mind.

Similarly to the reasoning behind Simulacrum Reservoir, you will be taking the flat Essence increase of Overwhelming Essence—all to empower the Singularity mages.

To play to the strengths of your equipped Reaper's Wraps and the constant spam of Devour, Life from Death will provide you with a consistent supply of Health Globes. This will greatly improve both the rate and the average power of your Singularity summons.

Blood is Power is the Necromancer's take on passives such as Evocation and Beacon of Ytar—along with the significant drawback of needing to lose your health reserve equivalent to trigger it. Since it counts off pre-mitigation values however, this passive will trigger from the very flow of gameplay (constant, high damage hits) in any meaningful Greater Rift progression difficulty. With an overarching goal of reducing Land of the Dead and Simulacrum downtimes, Blood is Power finds a deserving place in your passive selection.

You have some freedom in your final passive slot. Our basic recommendation is Final Service, the Necromancer's cheat death, a chance to evade a lethal outcome once every 60 seconds, along with a 10% healing proc per minion currently active. If you prefer utility over excessive safety, you can also try Fueled by Death in the same slot, or if you went with a curse in your active skill selection, you can increase damage via Spreading Malediction.