Trag'Oul Corpse Explosion Necromancer BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

Your base armor equipment will consist of the complete Trag'Oul's Avatar set, taking five of the six available Trag'Oul pieces and mixing it with the craftable Aughild's Authority set. Rolls-wise, this is a Cooldown Reduction-centric build first and foremost, but it also takes advantage of Skill and Area Damage rolls on gear. Trag'Oul's Claws are a particularly roll-heavy piece, with their ability to roll double Crit stats, plus Cooldown Reduction and eventually Area Damage (replacing Intelligence as its fourth main stat). You can focus fully on tankiness on Trag'Oul's Hide and Trag'Oul's Stalwart Greaves, while Trag'Oul's Scales and Trag'Oul's Guise have to balance offense with their mainstat rolls (Skill Damage on the former, Crit Chance on the latter).

As mentioned above, you will be adding two pieces from the craftable Aughild's Authority set: Aughild's Search, plus one more piece of your choosing between Aughild's Power, Aughild's Rule and Aughild's Spike. This set increases damage dealt while reducing damage taken, with additional benefits against Elites with its 3-piece bonus. The example in the gear table below will use Aughild's Power, and we generally advise you to use that particular slot, since the shoulder can roll numerous valuable stats for the build — and crafting it yourself gives you a lot more control over the quality of the rolls of the piece.

You will be taking the Jesseth Arms set — Jesseth Skullscythe and Jesseth Skullshield — for its vital damage multiplication effect when you use the active component of Command Skeletons. It also has the added benefit of automating the skeleton's active attention during a given engagement, removing a bit of the micromanagement aspect from your runs.

Dayntee's Binding has a simple, but very valuable effect on your build; it reduces incoming damage in half as long as you have an enemy afflicted by your Curses. This is a trivial requirement to fulfill as you either use a combination of Cursed Scythe plus Trag'Oul's Corroded Fang, or manually apply Decrepify Borrowed Time.

In a Corpse Explosion setup, your jewelry will be dedicated to the DPS staples Convention of Elements and Krysbin's Sentence. Convention of Elements will provide a massive damage increase during the Physical 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).

The Johnstone is a cornerstone piece of the build, since its post- Land of the Dead damage multiplication to your Corpse Explosion enforces the rigid rotation of the build, as described in the Skills page and the Desired stats and Breakpoints section just below. Pair it with Krysbin's Sentence for the damage multiplication against targets affected by Crowd Control (tripled bonus for hard CC, hence the rune Frozen Lands on LotD), and a Convention of Elements for the damage boost during the Physical cycle of its rotation.

There is a notable gearing variant for this build that leans even further into damage dealing, but loses on toughness. It replaces the craftable Aughild set with the craftable Cpt. Crimson set, and by necessity shifts some of the equipped pieces around. In this variant, you will be equipping Captain Crimson's Silk Girdle, plus one more piece of your choosing — either Captain Crimson's Thrust or Captain Crimson's Waders — to attain the Cpt. Crimson CDR-scaling damage bonuses.

Use Lacuni Prowlers in the freed up bracer slot, as their innate IAS bonus will help you reach the breakpoints outlined below. Note that this variant loses you the toughness from Dayntee's Binding, and only makes up about 33% DR via the Cpt. Crimson RCR-scaling damage reduction.

For Offense stats, try to obtain Corpse Explosion % bonus on the Shoulders and Chest (maximum of 30%), Physical elemental damage on the Amulet and Bracers (maximum of 40%), Crit Chance and Crit Damage within a 1:10 ratio (ideally over 60% and 450%, respectively), and Area Damage of 90% (Paragons, Shoulders and Gloves). Cooldown Reduction is a massive focus in this build, with a breakpoint of 53% CDR for the 48 second cycle of Land of the Dead (burst on every 4th Convention of Elements Physical cycle). At 61%+ CDR (with Gogok of Swiftness), you will be able to reach a 36 second cycle (burst every 3rd Convention of Elements Physical cycle). The former breakpoint gives you more time to form pulls and frees up space for Area Damage stats, while the latter offers more straight burst.

Attack Speed improves the frames per animation spent on Corpse Explosion, allowing you to fit more The Johnstone-empowered detonations while inside the effects of the Physical CoE cycle (240 frames). The highest reasonable breakpoint you can aim for is 2.33+, which requires the replacement of Devour for Skeletal Mage Skeleton Archer, the use of one IAS gear roll (i.e. the innate roll on Krysbin's Sentence), socketing a Gogok of Swiftness, Paragon points, and the use of an Enchantress for her Focused Mind buff. This will get you to 9 Corpse Explosions empowered by The Johnstone while the Physical cycle is still active.

It should be noted that competitive results are more than achievable without focus on increasing Attack Speed at all. This is simply an endgame consideration to keep in mind.

If you opt for a Reilena's Shadowhook-scaling version of this build (outlined in the Skill page) instead of the basic Trag'Oul's Corroded Fang version, you should aim to get Maximum Essence in your weapon's stats. This will not be mandated by the table below.

For Defense stats, aim for a life pool of 800k-900k; dropping as much as you can for offense as you grow accustomed to the build. You will mostly sustain through skills — Blood Rush Transfusion, Dark Mending, the base Leech effect applied by Cursed Scythe, and Devour Cannibalize (if you run it).

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 rerolled 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. Points in Maximum Essence are only necessary if you play the Reilena's Shadowhook-scaling variant, in which case max it out with priority after Movement Speed in your Core section.

In the Offense section, max out Cooldown Reduction, Crit Damage, Crit Chance and Attack Speed 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 be proccing this gem consistently during your burst cycle via Frozen Lands.

Two viable gems can be socketed in your second jewelry slot. Gogok of Swiftness will add survivability while scaling both Attack Speed (faster Corpse Explosion breakpoints) and Cooldown Reduction (less Land of the Dead downtime. Alternatively, you can use Zei's Stone of Vengeance — a distance-based multiplicative damage increase which, despite its wording, grants its first stage benefits at 0 yards instead of the listed 10. Despite its counterintuitive application, this is a very competitive and viable bonus.

Introduced in Season 4, Bane of the Stricken occupies the third and final jewelry socket in Greater Rift progression. Building up your damage multiplicatively in prolonged fights and with a level 25 bonus specifically targeting Rift Guardians, this gem is designed to assist AoE heavy builds in their struggle against single target, high HP enemies. Corpse Explosion Necromancers are no exception.

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

At the cost of including Grim Scythe Cursed Scythe, Trag'Oul's Corroded Fang packs your build with value: it guarantees the application of all three base Curses, and self-sufficiently multiplies damage against Curse-afflicted targets. This slot is interchangeable with Reilena's Shadowhook depending on your choice for damage scaling in the build.

Grasps of Essence is a cornerstone legendary for the build, which provides a 1,000% independent damage multiplier to Corpse Explosion.

In order to use both Trag'Oul's and Aughild's sets (or Cpt. Crimson's, should you choose to alternate the setup) without losing their maximized bonuses, you will have to use the Act I bounty cache legendary Ring of Royal Grandeur. This legendary ring reduces the required number of worn set items for set bonus completion by 1.

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 Enchantress due to her cooldown reduction buff from Prophetic Harmony, as well as the Focused Mind attack speed buff.

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.

The preferred potions for this build are Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid (allowing you to break down Waller affixes that impede your positioning) and Bottomless Potion of the Tower (whose Armor-increasing properties complement the naturally high All Resistances stat of Necromancers). Pick whichever you feel helps you out the most.