LoD Skeletons Group Necromancer BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

As this is a Legacy of Dreams setup, you have considerable freedom in picking out the rest of your gear slots. As a rule of thumb, focus on Thorns, Increased Attack Speed and Cooldown Reduction and remember the setup's requirement for ancient items, as well as its restriction on other set bonuses. You can run individual set pieces with beneficial stats, as long as they do not form any set bonus. Always keep in mind Thorns' inability to crit, and try to avoid or roll off Crit Chance and Crit Damage stats whenever possible.

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 a Physical damage Stone of Jordan and your better roll between Convention of Elements and Krysbin's Sentence, and cubing the other. 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, which is largely procced by your support teammates. Finally, a Stone of Jordan provides a smattering of both elemental and elite damage, for a decent overall damage increase. The preferred amulet for this build is Squirt's Necklace; rewarding high-range and evasive builds that demolish their enemies from afar, this legendary piece greatly amplifies both damage dealt and damage taken, which should not be a concern when you are covered by your supports.

A long-standing pet staple, Tasker and Theo are used as your gloves for their (up to) 50% multiplicative Attack Speed bonus to your summons. The gloves also roll natural Increased Attack Speed and no guaranteed Crit stats, which is favorable for an optimal roll for the build. In a perfected state, they also feature Thorns damage in the secondary stats.

Two chest pieces — Aquila Cuirass and Heart of Iron — are viable for the slot, but it is advisable to only consider the latter at very high toughness (usually coming from very high Paragons). Our base recommendation is Aquila Cuirass, which will halve incoming damage as long as Essence does not dip below 90% of its reserve, which is easily kept up with your low resource spending and constant generator spam. Once you start reaching into the highest feasible Paragon levels in a Season (or in off-Season), you can consider Heart of Iron — it turns 300% of your Vitality into additional Thorns, offering a unique conversion of toughness into extra damage.

Dayntee's Binding is the solitary Necromancer-specific belt, which compensates its lack of flashy offensive powers with a mighty defensive bulwark — 50% extra damage reduction as long as there is an enemy afflicted by any of your curses. Note that it is very likely to lose this damage reduction during or in between fights as you kill off previously afflicted enemies, and make a point to re-apply the curse on a regular basis.

In order to boost your Thorns damage output with elemental damage bonuses, you should try to farm and equip two strong Physical damage boosting legendaries. Swamp Land Waders are your ideal option for the pants, gambled with the help of a Witch Doctor alt. The WD-specific legendary bonus will be wasted, but the Swamp Land Waders are also able to roll up to 20% extra Physical elemental damage as a fifth stat, making them the strongest possible DPS addition. For your helm, Andariel's Visage will provide another source of Physical elemental damage, as well as a natural Increased Attack Speed roll to benefit the build. A second option for the slot is Leoric's Crown, adapted with a Flawless Royal Diamond instead of the Amethyst for its great boost to cooldown reduction.

You will round out your equipment slots with synergistic legendaries for group Greater Rift pushing. Equipping Nemesis Bracers on the Skeleton Necromancer allows the group's supports to run the additive damage bonuses of Strongarm Bracers. For your feet, your ideal option is to use Illusory Boots to freely maneuver throughout the rift — positioning and freedom of movement are paramount in group GR pushes, and your survival mostly hinges on keeping up with highly mobile supports. Lacking a proper synergistic item, you can find minor utility in the cheat death proc of Pauldrons of the Skeleton King, but in reality any well-rolled ancient item will do for the shoulder slot.

The recommended weapon is Trag'Oul's Corroded Fang, a powerful legendary scythe that triples your damage against cursed enemies; a bonus that is trivial to maintain with a your constant slashing with Grim Scythe Cursed Scythe. Note that since this a Thorns damage build (see this build's skills page for more information), you can (and ideally will) roll off the weapon damage range and replace it with a fifth synergistic stat, as the base weapon damage adds nothing to Thorns DPS output. The mandatory offhand and cornerstone legendary in the build is the Bone Ringer phylactery, acting as a scaling damage multiplier with every successive attack of Command Skeletons. Note the variance of its legendary power (25 to 30%), and strive to maximize it as your foremost concern in the slot. With the focus of the build on Rift Guardian killing, you will also do well to optimize your scythe and phylactery with Increased Damage vs. Elites as their fourth primary roll.

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.

Boyarsky's Chip is a straightforward addition to a Thorns build with its massive, dedicated increase to said stat.

Bane of the Stricken occupies a firm spot in your jewelry sockets. Building up your damage multiplicatively in prolonged fights and with a level 25 bonus specifically targeting Rift Guardians, this gem is designed to assist during the takedown of the biggest bottleneck in GRs, the scaling HP numbers.

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 Enforcer.

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

Your weapon slot in Kanai's Cube 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 (all six active skills are Poison-based), you will be taking full advantage of this boost.

One of the Necromancer-specific legendaries, Bloodsong Mail grants the effects of all remaining Command Skeletons runes aside from your selected Kill Command on top of significant damage amplification, whenever Land of the Dead is active — a good portion of the time in a CDR-heavy Thorns build.

Your jewelry Cube slot is ideally taken by Krysbin's Sentence, whose effect doubles your damage against targets affected by a Slow and triples the bonus if you affect enemies with any other form of CC. This bonus is easily procced with the help of your support teammates and your own frequent Bone Armor Dislocation casts.

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.