LoD Skeletons Group Necromancer Skills and Runes

Active Skills
Grim Scythe Cursed Scythe Command Skeletons Kill Command 1 Land of the Dead Plaguelands 2 Bone Spear Blighted Marrow 3 Death Nova Blight 4 Bone Armor Dislocation
Passive Skills
Aberrant Animator Swift Harvesting Eternal Torment Spreading Malediction

Your entire active skillset is built around adding stacks to Nayr's Black Death by using Poison, while trying to add as many synergistic runes as possible. While it may seem counterintuitive to spec into Poison runes in a Thorns build (as Thorns is classified as Physical damage), keep in mind you are solely choosing those skills to buff up the Command Skeletons Kill Command with the Nayr interaction. The buff to the Poison-based rune increases its overall damage, including Thorns.

Grim Scythe Cursed Scythe is one of the most utility-loaded primary skills in the Necromancer arsenal. By default, it has a chance to apply the base effect of all three curses — Decrepify, Leech and Frailty — without the need to slot them on your bar. This primary gets boosted further by Trag'Oul's Corroded Fang, ensuring the curse application and amplifying damage against affected targets.

In a LoN build, Bone Armor simply acts as a damage reduction buffer, easily maximized in densely packed rifts. Its utility can be further increased by equipping a Wisdom of Kalan, but this is luxury equipment and is not at all necessary. The more important half of the skill comes from the chosen rune, Dislocation — its 2-second stun will provide a moment of respite in the thick of battle, as well as an additional source of Nayr's Black Death and Krysbin's Sentence procs.

Command Skeletons is the primary damage dealing skill of the setup, due to the stacking mechanic of the Bone Ringer phylactery acting as a separate Bane of the Stricken in the build — single-handedly making this a top tier single target spec. You will be using the poisonous rune Kill Command in order to add a stack to Nayr's Black Death.

You will be using a duo of Essence spenders — Bone Spear Blighted Marrow and Death Nova Blight — solely for the stacks added to Nayr's Black Death. As such, only use them to refresh the duration of the Nayr buff — their damage and utility is too limited to matter, and overspending Essence will drop your Aquila Cuirass damage reduction buff.

Your final active skill is the Necromancer mainstay, Land of the Dead. Contrary to its use in most builds, you will not be spamming any Corpse-related skills during its uptime, but it will — like the rest of your skill selection — give you a stack of Nayr via the rune Plaguelands. Note that it will also trigger the effects of the cubed Bloodsong Mail, granting you the effects of all missing Command Skeletons runes and amplifying the skill's damage (see this build's gear page for more information).

This concludes the overview of the Active Skills, now let us look through the Passives.

As a Thorns build that relies on pet application of the effect, you naturally need to include Aberrant Animator as a baseline.

Due to the breakpoint-dependent nature of the build, part of your Attack Speed needs will be fulfilled by taking Swift Harvesting for faster Bane of the Stricken stacking.

Two interconnected passives — Eternal Torment and Spreading Malediction — will work off each other, with the former making curses applied by Cursed Scythe last indefinitely, and the latter — increasing your damage for each afflicted enemy.