LoD Singularity Necromancer Group Speed Farming Variation

The LoD "Rat" Skeletal Mage Necromancer can be adapted to be a group Greater Rift speed farmer, especially when coupled with an appropriate team composition of Support Necromancer and Support Barbarian. The build deviates in some ways from the base solo progression spec, most notably in weaponry and its approach to fights.

Active Skills
Simulacrum Reservoir Skeletal Mage Life Support 1 Blood Rush Metabolism 2 Devour Devouring Aura 3 Land of the Dead Shallow Graves 4 Bone Armor Harvest of Anguish
Passive Skills
Dark Reaping Extended Servitude Final Service Overwhelming Essence

A large part of your skill selection from the solo build will still make sense during GR XP farming. The basis of your damage still lies in the synergy between the (free) Skeletal Mage Singularity rune and the near-instantaneous Essence refills provided by Devour during Land of the Dead uptime, coupled with the extension of your overall Essence pool reserve via Simulacrum Reservoir and Overwhelming Essence. All the alterations made to skills will be made in service of speed and length of buffs, namely:

• The Devour rune will be changed to the speedrun-appropriate Devouring Aura, whose power snowballs very effectively with the kill speed inside speed GR runs.
• Land of the Dead will be changed to the lengthier effect of Shallow Graves, as the CC necessary for the full effect of Krysbin's Sentence will be applied by your support teammates; you only care for the Corpse generating effect and its length.
• Bone Armor will be taken with the farming-oriented Harvest of Anguish, due to the movement speed buff.
• Cursing will not be required from you, so your final active skill slot should be taken by Blood Rush, with the doubled charges of Metabolism.

Most of your passive selection from progression will be retained, with Final Service (cheat death) and Overwhelming Essence (extra Essence for DPS) still providing tremendous value. Life from Death from the solo spec can be dropped, since you will be fed enough globes by your teammates, and the rate of Reaper's Wraps resource restoration has been tamed by its newfound internal cooldown. Extended Servitude is a good replacement, as additional summon duration is never unwelcome. Blood is Power from the soloing spec should be changed to Dark Reaping to provide you with a steady source of life and Essence from the lightning-fast monster kills during farming.

From the Devour-related items, Requiem Cereplate retains its value for the snowballing effect in a speed run, and Razeth's Volition remains vital with the free Singularity and Gift of Death effects it provides.

From the "generic" legendaries, consider using Andariel's Visage over Leoric's Crown for the damage gain, and keep Reaper's Wraps — they remain a cornerstone item in the build for their resource regeneration.

The damage-increasing legendaries are highly desirable in speeds, so you will maintain Tasker and Theo for the pet attack speed, Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan for the damage and resource generation increase, and take The Witching Hour over Dayntee's Binding for the extra attack speed and crit damage.

Since speed is essential in XP runs, you will be wearing Steuart's Greaves over the progression-oriented Ice Climbers, and will be slotting Blood Rush Metabolism in your active skills accordingly (see above).

You will focus entirely on damage-oriented jewelry over the progression spec, with Circle of Nailuj's Evol making way for Convention of Elements and Krysbin's Sentence still amplifying damage dealt vs. crowd controlled foes, and topping the selection off with Haunted Visions as your amulet.

The weapon and offhand are, as always, Scythe of the Cycle, plus your best rolled phylactery with appropriate stats.

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.

Unfortunately, Skeletal Mage-based builds do not have a great way of utilizing the three Sanctification powers during solo GR progression (though the Golem power can be utilized in group Rat runs and T16 farm). Thus, you should simply 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). The Sanctification power outcome does not matter. In the case of this build, a good candidate for Sanctification are your weapon, Trag'Oul's Corroded Fang, 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.

You will maintain the same legendary gem setup as the solo GR progression build, with Bane of the Trapped, Enforcer, and Legacy of Dreams remaining as your most desirable gems.

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

You will maintain Reilena's Shadowhook as your weapon Cube power, St. Archew's Gage as your armor Cube power for some upfront shielding during engagements, and add Squirt's Necklace as your jewelry Cube power for a consistent damage bonus (the toughness downsides of Squirt's should be negated by your support teammates).

Once you get a feel that you are beginning to overpower the GR difficulty you have selected for farming purposes, you can make a quick swap of the weapon Cube power to Messerschmidt's Reaver to further snowball that effect.

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.

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.