Support Necromancer Skills and Runes

Active Skills
Death Nova Blight Blood Rush Metabolism 1 Devour Cannibalize 2 Land of the Dead Frozen Lands 3 Corpse Lance Brittle Touch 4 Frailty Aura of Frailty
Passive Skills
Blood is Power Life from Death Eternal Torment Final Service

This build assumes a leader position in the group, scouting ahead of its support and DPS companions and preparing the battlefield for the coming onslaught. Your primary role is to create health globes for the Support Barb to pick up, which is done via the interaction of Land of the Dead (cast on cooldown), Devour (spammed throughout the run) and your Life from Death passive. Due to the Pestilence 2-piece mechanic and the permanence of your LotD, you will also be spreading the Crit buff of Corpse Lance Brittle Touch across the battlefield automatically — however it is vitally important to do 2-3 manual casts on priority targets (elites, champions) to ensure maximum value of the Crit increase ASAP. As you move through the rift with Blood Rush, try to afflict as many enemies as you can with your Frailty Aura of Frailty radius. Last but not least, spam your Essence spender (i.e. Death Nova) in density in order to proc Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac for faster LotD resets.

The most important aspect of your build is the ability to maintain permanent Land of the Dead due to high Cooldown Reduction and Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac. In conjunction with Devour and the Life from Death passive, this will generate a massive amount of health globes across the battlefield. As the Support Barb trails behind you, his high pickup radius will consume those globes and feed them into the Reaper's Wraps of the LoD Singularity Necromancers, helping their Singularity summons and survival. To further help your DPS teammates, you will be using the rune Frozen Lands to proc their Krysbin's Sentence rings. You can alternate your Devour rune between the survival-oriented Cannibalize , and Satiated when overpowering the content.

Corpse Lance brings the other half of your contribution to your DPS teammates; coupled with the Brittle Touch rune and your heavy focus on increasing attack speed right alongside CDR, this skill will guarantee critical hits on affected targets. Note that while Corpse Lances will be spread automatically via the Pestilence set 2-piece, you need to be proactive against elites and manually apply several casts on them (depending on your attack speed optimization — see this build's gear page for more information).

You have a number of viable Essence spenders to fulfill the role of an Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac proc — however keep in mind you are mostly looking for reliable AoE that minimizes aiming in speeds, as well as any extra utility you can glean out of a rune. To that end, Death Nova Blight's damage reduction properties and Bone Spear Crystallization's increase of attack speed are the two preferred options.

With scouting ahead of the pack being a crucial aspect of your playstyle, it should come as no surprise that you will utilize a movement tool in your arsenal. Due to the heavy CDR focus on gear, Blood Rush will have almost no downtime, even less so when you take advantage of the double charge mechanic of the Metabolism rune.

Last but not least, you will be spreading the culling debuff Frailty automatically across the battlefield, courtesy of the Aura of Frailty rune. Notice the rune's pickup radius synergy, and strive to obtain as much of the stat in your gear secondaries as you can.

As previously mentioned, Life from Death is the cornerstone passive of the Support Necromancer playstyle — providing a constant streak of health globes for your DPS' Reaper's Wraps as long as you spam Devour and keep up permanent Land of the Dead.

Far tougher than its DPS compatriots, the Support Necromancer nevertheless lacks the innate 30% Damage Reduction of melee classes. On top of that, LotD uptime and health globe generation hinges on you — so to prevent mishaps, take the Final Service cheat death.

Blood is Power is the Necromancer's take on passives such as Evocation and Beacon of Ytar — along with the significant drawback of needing to lose your health reserve equivalent to trigger it. Since it counts off pre-mitigation values however, this passive will trigger from the very flow of gameplay (constant, high damage hits) in any meaningful Greater Rift difficulty. With an overarching goal of permanent Land of the Dead, Blood is Power finds a deserving place in your passive selection.

Compensating for your scouting role in groups and the distance you create to your party at times, Eternal Torment ensures permanence of the Frailty affliction on enemies you have passed through once.