Rathma Bone Spirit Necromancer BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

The build includes the complete set bonuses of the Bones of Rathma set, taking five of the six available pieces and mixing its powers with the craftable Captain Crimson set, which 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.

Rolls-wise, this build is mostly dependent on Cooldown Reduction, with minor consideration for quality of life stats, such as crowd control reduction. Rathma's Ribcage Plate, Captain Crimson's Thrust and Rathma's Ossified Sabatons can be dedicated entirely to Toughness stats. Cooldown Reduction should be present on both Rathma's Spikes (alongside Toughness stats) and Rathma's Macabre Vambraces (alongside Crit stats) to match the steep CDR demands of the build. Rathma's Skull Helm is another immense source of Toughness with its massive Intelligence and Vitality rolls, but as usual — it should also feature Crit Chance.

Another set dedicated to summoner playstyles will occupy your weapon and off-hand slots; the Jesseth Arms armaments, Jesseth Skullscythe and Jesseth Skullshield. Their massive damage multiplier fits squarely with the Command Skeletons-wielding nature of the build, cementing their inclusion in the build. The innate Attack Speed roll on the Jesseth Skullscythe is quite helpful, as it brings half of the required IAS to the build by itself. A nicely rolled Jesseth Skullshield will be much harder to attain however, as a great one will include Crit Chance, Cooldown Reduction AND Resource Cost Reduction, with a potential godly roll coming with Elite Damage increase on top. Note that this build scales its damage off maximum Essence due to the cubed Reilena's Shadowhook, so you should strive to obtain Max Essence in the Secondary stats of both the weapon and offhand.

Your jewelry slots are best split between damage and utility legendaries. Krysbin's Sentence is a Necromancer staple that multiplies damage against soft crowd controlled enemies, and amplifies it even further against hard crowd controls — a multiplier that will be applied constantly through the cubed Defiler Cuisses, power freezing targets of Bone Spirit on impact. Squirt's Necklace adds another massive damage multiplier, albeit with a hefty drawback — its loss when you take a hit, plus a hefty increase in damage taken. This glass cannon favorite necessitates careful play and positioning to minimize potential threats to your Necromancer. To balance the DPS choices, you will add a cooldown reduction staple in the form of Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac; its cooldown-per-Essence-spent powers will be triggered with your constant spam of the Command Skeletons active.

Lastly, Ancient Parthan Defenders will bring some much needed protection to this incredibly squishy Necromancer build. These legendary bracers reduce all damage taken by up to 12% increments per enemy stunned within a reasonable distance of the Necromancer — an effect that is trivial to keep up considering the freezing effect of Defiler Cuisses. Note that despite the wording, freezes also count for the legendary effect, making the item viable for the setup. Look for as high of a percentage reduction as you can; despite the seemingly small range of the bonus (9-12%), the difference is notable and ramps up fast.

In your Offense stats, strive to obtain Cooldown Reduction on all the gear pieces that are able to roll it — certainly on the Weapon, Off-Hand, Shoulders, Gloves and both Rings — and you should even consider the Amulet, despite the loss of a valuable stat like Crit Chance. Attaining Resource Cost Reduction can be considered gravy on top, but a roll on the Off-Hand or Shoulders can be considered beneficial. You should also consider the Crowd Control Reduction secondary stat, as CC of any kind puts you in great danger and can jeopardize your burst cycles. Area Damage will benefit the build, but can be hard to fit due to the already wide spread of beneficial stats.

For Defense stats, aim for a life pool of about 700k, which should be attainable with a traditional spread of Vitality and Life % rolls on gear. Try not to over-invest in Vitality, since you will be trying to proc the cooldown resets of Blood is Power, and a larger health pool will hamper that. This build is relatively squishy (like many Necromancers are) and will benefit from at least a single Life per Hit roll, i.e. on the bracer.

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.

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, max out the Maximum Essence stat to benefit the bonuses from the cubed Reilena's Shadowhook. Past that point, dump as much as you comfortably can into Intelligence, but feel free to make a minor investment into Vitality if you feel yourself lacking in toughness (do not overdo it — you will start hampering the Blood is Power proc instead).

In the Offense section, max out Cooldown Reduction, Attack Speed, Crit Damage and Crit Chance, 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 Life on Hit first, then finish off with Resource Cost Reduction 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. You will attain its benefits mostly via the freezing powers of Defiler Cuisses.

Your second jewelry socket will be taken by Gogok of Swiftness, whose Increased Attack Speed, Cooldown Reduction, and scaling Dodge bonuses all bring massive value to the build.

You face some choices in your third and final jewelry slot; our base recommendation is to go all out on damage with the inclusion of Zei's Stone of Vengeance, which is another separate damage multiplier that scales your DPS based on distance from the enemy. If you decide the build is too glassy to be fun to play, you can swap this slot out for a protective option like Esoteric Alteration or Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard, which should make at least Squirt's Necklace maintenance not that big of a pain.

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

The Weapon slot in the Cube will be occupied by Reilena's Shadowhook, whose power scales your damage multiplicatively based on your maximum Essence. This places a strong gearing 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 Jesseth Skullscythe and Jesseth Skullshield.

Hidden away in the Cube, Defiler Cuisses are a large part of the viability of this build altogether, scaling up your Bone Spirit damage based on your distance from your enemy (or the projectile's travel time, to be more precise, up to 5 seconds). Not only does it dictate the long range playstyle of the build as you try to maximize its bonus, but it also provides a handy freezing effect on Bone Spirit impact, taking care of the Krysbin's Sentence and Ancient Parthan Defenders procs in one fell swoop.

As previously mentioned, in order to take advantage of the amalgamation of the Bones of Rathma and Captain Crimson's Trimmings sets together, you will need to complete their bonuses with a Ring of Royal Grandeur in the jewelry slot of the Cube.

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 Enchantress, due to her cooldown reduction- and increased attack speed bonuses, both of which are helpful to the needs of an attack speed- and CDR-heavy build such as this one.

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 teleporting.