Masquerade Bone Spear Necromancer BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

The build incorporates the complete Masquerade of the Burning Carnival set bonuses, taking five of the six Masquerade set pieces and mixing its powers with the craftable Cpt. Crimson set. The BiS roll for Lavishing Gloves includes double Crit stats alongside Intelligence and Area Damage; Area Damage is also desired on the Glamorous Gigot, alongside Resource Cost Reduction, Intelligence and Vitality. Seek out additional Bone Spear % bonus on both Luxurious Bauta and Extravagant Shoes. The craftable Captain Crimson set adds its own angle of damage mitigation and damage amplification to the build via scaling from resource cost and cooldown reduction, respectively. In order to take advantage of the full powers of both sets you will have to, naturally, use a Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube to lower the required amount of worn set pieces by one.

With the vast majority of armor pieces locked away to set items, you find an opening for a powerful offensive combo in the jewelry: Convention of Elements and Krysbin's Sentence. Convention of Elements will provide a massive damage increase during the Poison 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 your enemies are afflicted by a crowd control effect (ideally hard CC for the maximum damage multiplication).

For your amulet, Haunted Visions offers a build-defining legendary power that makes your Simulacrum summons last forever at the cost of a negligible life drain effect. It also allows them to duplicate Grim Scythe as well as Bone Spear, introducing an extra layer of utility and adaptability to the build. Pair this amulet with Gelmindor's Marrow Guards — a mandatory inclusion in a Bone Spear build, as its powers amplify the damage of spears cast by your Simulacrums.

Last but certainly not least, you have your weapon and offhand combo. The mandatory weapon for the build is Scythe of the Cycle, a one-handed scythe that increases the damage of your secondary skills while Bone Armor is active, but reduces the armor's duration with each cast. There is no particular offhand that you need to wear — any high damage range phylactery with the appropriate stats will do. We list Lost Time for the minor crowd control utility spread via your Cold-based generator attack.

For high end solo Greater Rift progression, there is a notable alteration of this build that uses 2 pieces of the craftable Aughild's Authority set, i.e. Aughild's Search and Aughild's Power. This version brings extra elite damage to the table and is able to take down targets with much higher health pools at the upper ends of progression. To accommodate the inclusion of this set, you will have to move Gelmindor's Marrow Guards to the armor slot of the Cube, and take Dayntee's Binding as an equipped item.

For Offense stats, try to obtain Bone Spear % bonus on the helm, boots and phylactery (maximum of 45%), Poison elemental damage on the amulet and wrists (maximum of 40%) and Crit Chance and Crit Damage within a 1:10 ratio (ideally over 50% and 500%, respectively). This build invests heavily into Area Damage, prioritizing it in Paragons and obtaining it on pretty much any gear piece that can roll the stat sans the amulet. This should result in at least 125%+ AD with a decently equipped character.

For Defense stats, aim for a life pool of about 500-600k; dropping as much as you can for offense as you grow accustomed to the build.

All augmentations on gear should be done with your main stat, Intelligence.

Note that the stat suggestions below portray an ideally rolled item with stats listed in relative order of importance. The first four of them are main stats, and the latter two — secondary stats. If your item lacks and is unable to be re-rolled into the primary stats outlined below, especially for a stat higher on the list, strongly consider its replacement. Perfecting Secondary stats is mostly a case of hyper-optimization and is not a case for discarding an item, except where noted.

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.

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.

In the Core section, max out Movement Speed to the 25% cap. Normally this is done by dumping the first 50 Core Paragon points into Movement Speed, but if your boots have an imperfect roll with Movement Speed as a stat that you cannot replace, adjust the necessary point investment accordingly by simply subtracting your roll from the 25% max. After that, dump as much as you comfortably can into Intelligence, but feel free to invest into Vitality if you feel yourself lacking in toughness. Investing points into Maximum Essence is not necessary in this build.

In the Offense section, max out Crit Chance, Crit Damage, Attack Speed and Cooldown Reduction in that order. In Defense, prioritize Armor, then Life %, then All Resistance, and finish off with Life Regeneration. In Utility, build up Area Damage and Resource Cost Reduction first, then finish off with Life on Hit and Globe Radius.

Bane of the Trapped is a potent source of additional damage, as it is its own multiplier in your total damage calculation. The gem will be procced by your Decrepify curse, Bone Prison passive, and even Zei's Stone of Vengeance and the various crowd control secondary stats you might have on your gear (Slow %, Freeze %).

Zei's Stone of Vengeance is another separate damage multiplier, whose range-dependent amplification can be easily maxed out by the long reach of Bone Spear. The level 25 property will add some minor control and safety to the build, as well as another proc for Bane of the Trapped and Krysbin's Sentence. Note that if you struggle with survival, you can viably alternate this gem to the toughness powerhouse Esoteric Alteration.

Introduced in Season 4, Bane of the Stricken occupies a firm spot in your jewelry sockets during GR progression. Building up your damage multiplicatively in prolonged fights and with a level 25 bonus specifically targeting Rift Guardians, this gem is tremendously helpful for AoE-oriented builds such as this one.

When it comes to gear gems, you will start out progression by slotting the highest available level of Topazes in the chest and pants sockets. Ideally, these will all be Flawless Royal Topazes as soon as possible. As you grow in Paragon (bulking up Intelligence in the Core section) and aim for higher tier and more dangerous GRs, you will transition those gems into the defensive Flawless Royal Ruby, scaling the lacking Armor of an Intelligence-based character (Intelligence scales Resistances). There is no specific breakpoint where you do that; the rule of thumb is to make the change as soon as you feel the lack of toughness impede your progress. With the inclusion of Cpt. Crimson, this build generally stacks into cooldown reduction, so you should use a Flawless Royal Diamond in the helm. In your weapon, use a Flawless Royal Emerald for the Crit Damage boost.

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

Your weapon Cube slot should be taken by the two-handed scythe Maltorius' Petrified Spike — a Bone Spear-dedicated legendary, which doubles the cost of that skill but greatly improves its damage output.

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 your curses.

As previously mentioned, you will need to store Ring of Royal Grandeur in the jewelry Cube slot to tie the powers of the Masquerade and Cpt. Crimson sets together.

During Season 33, you are also able to include Reilena's Shadowhook; its power scales your damage multiplicatively based on your maximum Essence. This places a strong emphasis on expanding your resource pool via Overwhelming Essence, maxing resource in Paragons and attaining a high max Essence in the secondary stats of your weapons.

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 Unfettered, which renders you immune to Crowd Control effects for a brief time after consuming it — valuable bonus to a build that lacks means to break away from CC outside of straight up evasion via Blood Rush.