Trag'Oul Corpse Explosion Necromancer Solo Progression Variation

The Trag'Oul Necromancer deals with regular Rift farming decently all the way through the highest Torments, making it a viable build for the task. 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.

Within the limited scope of regular difficulties, the necessary damage and toughness to triumph over the enemy is significantly smaller. Thus, your best course of action is to improve utility and speed.

Active Skills
Skeletal Mage Life Support Bone Armor Harvest of Anguish 1 Land of the Dead Shallow Graves 2 Simulacrum Reservoir 3 Blood Rush Metabolism 4 Devour Cannibalize
Passive Skills
Life from Death Extended Servitude Final Service Fueled by Death

When you are speed farming regular rifts, parts of your playstyle will adapt to the lowered challenge and focus more on speed and utility.

At the start of your runs, use Simulacrum to keep you company; this powerful summon will last forever due to the powers of Haunted Visions. Then, spawn Skeletal Mages — doubled by the equipped Circle of Nailuj's Evol and duplicated by your Simulacrum. Scout ahead with Blood Rush, and use Bone Armor on as large of a monster pack as you can to stack up Harvest of Anguish. Either numlock autocast or macro your Devour spam to replenish Essence from nearby Corpses. Keep summoning Skeletal Mages as you restore your reserves (note the cubed Razeth's Volition, which adds the powerful but resource-depleting Singularity rune for free), and reply on your minions to demolish the Rift for you. Refresh Bone Armor as necessary, since you will deplete its duration much faster with the use of Scythe of the Cycle in your hand. When Corpses run out and/or Mages' duration runs out and you have no easy way of stacking up either, pop Land of the Dead for a short burst of infinite Corpses, swelling up your army again in a matter of seconds.

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 cross over great distances faster and more efficiently take precedence.

• The primary damage dealer of this speed farming Trag'Oul spec is Skeletal Mages, taken with the set-proccing Life Support rune. The rune has a helpful duration-extending effect that eases resource management. Note that due to the cubed Razeth's Volition, the skill also attains the Corpse-spawning Gift of Death and, more importantly, the Essence-depleting Singularity runes. The latter will greatly empower your summons at a hefty resource juggling cost, and also incentivizes you to scale your damage via Reilena's Shadowhook.
• Simulacrum will last forever due to Haunted Visions and will duplicate your empowered Mages, all while contributing to their total power with the interaction between the Reservoir rune and Reilena's Shadowhook.
• You will have multiple sources of Essence restoration to counter the full reserve spending of your Mages. One of those powerful sources is found in Devour, with additional health restoration benefits from the rune Cannibalize . Interestingly, Devour's animation is canceled by movement, allowing you to freely spam it on the move or while using other skills. You can take advantage of this quirk and either Num Lock to autocast, or macro its use.
• Blood Rush is an inseperable part of Trag'Oul set builds, and even more so when speed farming is concerned. Attaining all the runes via the 2-piece bonus, you will fly through rifts via Metabolism while maintaining the safety of Potency — among other benefits! — all at no cost due to Hemostasis.
• Another source of damage scaling will be found in the interaction between Bone Armor and Scythe of the Cycle, with the latter eating away at the skill's duration with every empowered Essence spender cast. Make sure to re-cast Bone Armor as it depletes, and to hit as many enemies as you can when you refresh it in order to maximize your Harvest of Anguish benefits.
• Use Land of the Dead as an emergency cooldown whenever Corpses run low, when Mages die off, or a combination of both. With the rune Shallow Graves you get 12 seconds of unrestricted Corpse skill use, allowing you to Devour your way to full Essence multiple times and to resummon a full stack of supremely powerful Skeletal Mages each time.
• In your passives, use Life from Death to synergize with your worn Reaper's Wraps for Essence restoration; Extended Servitude to lengthen the duration of your summons; Fueled by Death to improve your overall speed; and Final Service to prevent lethal mishaps of Goldwrap dropping off.

The basics of your gear setup remain the same; you still run 5 of the 6 Trag'Oul set pieces, but instead of craftable pieces (like you would in a Trag'Oul GR progression build), you will insert utility legendaries. Ring of Royal Grandeur is necessary, once again, to maintain the full 6-piece Trag'Oul set bonus — this time however, it will be worn. This will free up the Kanai's Cube slot for a more valuable jewelry bonus.

Finish off the jewelry with Haunted Visions, which will make your Simulacrum last forever, and a Circle of Nailuj's Evol to double the number of Skeletal Mages raised with each cast, as well as extend their duration by up to 4 seconds.

It should be noted that Avarice Band is a supremely useful legendary item that, in conjunction with Goldwrap and Boon of the Hoarder, will form a gold triumvirate that keeps you safe and showered in gold as you farm up T16s. When you are farming solo however, this ring can be equipped on your Follower, and its power will "Emanate" to you (meaning you gain the benefits of the item as if you wore it yourself). That being said, in group farming you will need to wear the Avarice Band yourself, replacing the cubed Squirt's Necklace power, since you cannot have a Follower in parties.

The GR staple Jesseth set ( Jesseth Skullscythe and Jesseth Skullshield) will be too slow to play with during speed farming, and it should give way to a combination of Scythe of the Cycle, plus any well-rolled legendary phylactery (i.e., Lost Time).

Your remaining gear slots should be filled by utility legendaries. Trag'Oul's Stalwart Greaves should give way to Steuart's Greaves for the massive movement speed provided by these boots. Goldwrap will provide near-invulnerability when its triumvirate effect with Avarice Band and Boon of the Hoarder gets going. The craftable Reaper's Wraps will provide excellent resource restoration value based on consuming Health Globes, which is also greatly expedited with the power of Life from Death and the reach of Avarice Band. The former favorite for the bracer slot, Nemesis Bracers, are still quite valuable to the build; when soloing, they should be equipped on the follower however, since their power can be transferred to you via the Emanate mechanic.

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.

With its transformation into a Mages-centric build, this Trag'Oul variant relies on gems that multiply damage to pets and based on distance. To that end, you will include Enforcer to multiplicatively increase the damage of your summons, as well as Zei's Stone of Vengeance which scales damage according to distance from the enemy. Any additional damage multiplication gems will be overkill for the difficulty, and are vastly overshadowed by the utility of Boon of the Hoarder in conjunction with Avarice Band and Goldwrap.

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 an emphasis on expanding your resource pool via maxing resource in Paragons and attaining a high max Essence in the secondary stats of your Scythe of the Cycle and chosen offhand.

Razeth's Volition grants your mages the Gift of Death and Singularity runes for free, resulting in extra Corpses for your consumption needs and giving you the highest damage potential possible for this skill. It also enforces the resource juggling nature of the build, but is well worth the effort.

You can squeeze in an additional damage multiplier in the Cube in the form of Squirt's Necklace, which doubles your damage dealt while also increasing damage taken. With the near-invulnerability provided by Goldwrap and the naturally long range of summoner builds, the frailty imposed by this item should be a non-issue; if you have trouble maintaining its bonus however, simply exchange Zei's Stone of Vengeance for Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard.

In your 4th Kanai's Cube slot in Season 33, you should add either Krelm's Buff Belt for additional movement speed during farming (and especially bounties), or supplement your upfront burst by using the Act III-specific bounty cache legendary sword Envious Blade.

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 standard T16 rifts farming is the Enchantress due to her vast array of bonuses that complement this build; most notably, Prophetic Harmony for the Cooldown Reduction and Amplification for the elemental damage increase, both of which you can attain by using a Hand of the Prophet.

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.