Rathma Bone Spirit Necromancer Greater Rift Speed Farming Variation

The Rathma Bone Spirit Necromancer can deal reasonably well with Greater Rift Speed Farming, with the ability to group up large pulls on enemies and mow them down with AoE nuke barrages. We have solo speed GR rankings and solo speed T16 rankings if you want to know more about which builds are best for speed farming.

During lower tier Greater Rift farming, the balance between defense, damage and utility can be shifted to favor the latter two aspects of character building.

Active Skills
Army of the Dead Death Valley Bone Spirit Unfinished Business 1 Command Skeletons Frenzy 2 Devour Voracious 3 Blood Rush Metabolism 4 Revive Oblation
Passive Skills
Final Service Blood is Power Overwhelming Essence Serration

When you are Speed Farming Greater Rifts, your playstyle should at least partially reflect the circumstances by focusing on massive pulls, generic bonuses against enemies and chaining pylon effects.

Similarly to the base build, you should call upon your summons and maximize their numbers as soon as possible — all 7 Command Skeletons and the 10 Revives — so you get the most out of your Rathma set bonus. You should continue to spam both Devour (once the minions are up!) for Bone Spirit charge resets, as well as Command Skeletons (for Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac procs, Army of the Dead resets and Jesseth set bonus upkeep). You will be using Army of the Dead for monster grouping with the Death Valley rune — and once they are gathered, destroy them with Bone Spirit Unfinished Business. Forward momentum is of utmost importance in this speed farming build, as well as upkeep of your Squirt's Necklace bonus with careful movement and dodging with Blood Rush.

Parts of the skill and passive selection will overlap with the base Greater Rift progression build, but others will have to change according to the task at hand. Ability to burst down enemies quicker takes precedence.

• Bone Spirit is still the main damage dealer of the build, but you should alter the single target-oriented and more measured in its use Astral Projection from the solo progression build to the large AoE effect of Unfinished Business.
• Army of the Dead is taken purely as a crowd control skill in this build, achieved with the pulling effect of Death Valley for some excellent battlefield manipulation and Strongarm Bracers damage bonus application.
• Command Skeletons stays in the build as one half of the summoned army necessary for the Rathma set bonuses. The preferred rune continues to be Frenzy, for the hastened resets of Army of the Dead.
• Revive is also a mandatory inclusion in a Rathma build, and you should maintain the Oblation rune from the progression build in order to trigger the cooldown reset bonus of Blood is Power.
• Devour Voracious stays in the build for the Corpse consumption which resets charges on Bone Spirit, as well as for the damage reduction aspect via its interaction with the worn Cpt. Crimson set.
• Blood Rush Metabolism remains in the build as a vital repositioning and movement tool throughout the Greater Rift, as well as another proc for Blood is Power.
• Your passives lineup should stay the same as the progression build, with Serration (distance-based damage amplification) and Overwhelming Essence (resource-based damage amplification) providing you with baseline damage buffs, Blood is Power feeding into your cooldown resets, and Final Service as a cheat death failsafe.

The build remains firmly rooted in the combination of the Bones of Rathma set (5 pieces) and the craftable Cpt. Crimson set (2 pieces), their full set bonuses attained via a Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube. You will also maintain the weapon and offhand combo from the main build — the Jesseth Arms set, Jesseth Skullscythe and Jesseth Skullshield. Generally, even the jewelry choices will remain the same — all out offensive powers with Squirt's Necklace and Krysbin's Sentence, and Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac for the cooldown resetting powers.

Since Ancient Parthan Defenders from the GR solo progression setup will be overkill in terms of defense during speedruns, you should alter this slot to the displacement-based damage increase of Strongarm Bracers, whose bonus you will trigger with the pulling effect of Army of the Dead Death Valley.

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.

All three legendary gems from the Greater Rift solo progression setup remain valuable during speed GRs as well, with Bane of the Trapped and Zei's Stone of Vengeance providing massive damage amplification and Gogok of Swiftness feeding you valuable CDR for your massive cooldown demands.

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

You will maintain the Cube lineup from your GR solo progression setup, as the cubed items remain just as valuable during speed GRs as well. Reilena's Shadowhook is still the preferred method of damage amplification (increasing your maximum Essence resource pool scales your damage). Defiler Cuisses is a dedicated legendary item that cannot be skipped in any Bone Spirit-dependent build. Of course, Ring of Royal Grandeur remains necessary, as it grants you the full bonuses of the Rathma and Cpt. Crimson sets mixture.

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 GR speed farming 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 Tower, whose Armor-increasing properties complement the naturally high All Resistances stat of Necromancers (due to Intelligence scaling resistances) for optimal survivability.