Trag'Oul Death Nova 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 Skill- and Area Damage-centric build first and foremost, but it also takes advantage of maximized elemental and Critical stat rolls on gear. Trag'Oul's Claws are a particularly roll-heavy piece, with their ability to roll double Crit stats, plus Attack Speed 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 Scales, while Trag'Oul's Stalwart Greaves and Trag'Oul's Guise have to balance offense with their mainstat rolls (Skill Damage on the former, Crit Chance and Skill Damage 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.

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 sport an automated curse, Frailty Aura of Frailty, on your skill bar.

For the remaining armor slots, you will be wearing Convention of Elements and Krysbin's Sentence as your rings, and complete the jewelry with Haunted Visions as your amulet. 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 you have a hard crowd control active; it is a major driving force behind the inclusion of Bone Armor Dislocation.

Haunted Visions offers a build-defining legendary power that makes your Simulacrum summons last forever at the cost of a negligible life drain effect. (You will not be taking advantage of the additional Grim Scythe-related power.) The Simulacrum summons duplicate your Secondary skills — the category which Death Nova falls under — and unlike your own casts, theirs will trigger Area Damage, making them the main damage dealers of the build!

Lastly, your weapon and offhand duo will be Funerary Pick and Iron Rose. Funerary Pick skyrockets the viability of Siphon Blood as an Essence generator, providing a massive 300% damage multiplier against affected targets, and double that against singular foes. It also amplifies the effects of the Power Shift rune and spreads its buff to all of your skills, resulting in a near-omnipotent Primary skill. Iron Rose is a cornerstone piece of the build, allowing you and your Simulacrums to "cast" Blood Novas for free from channeling Siphon Blood with a guaranteed proc.

For Offense stats, try to obtain Death Nova % bonus on the Shoulders, Chest and Off-hand (maximum of 45%), 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 120%+ (Paragons, Shoulders, one of the Rings, Main-hand, and Off-hand). Attack Speed is another consideration for the build, and you will ideally reach the 1.67 Attacks per Second breakpoint with a combination of Paragons, one of your Rings, and your Gloves.

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 sustain health through the excellent healing of the all-runed Siphon Blood, so life regenerative stats do not need to be a consideration on your gear.

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.

This Season comes with the theme of Angelic Crucibles — consumable items that empower Legendary items with perfected Ancient-level stats, as well as infuse them with one of three unique, powerful, class-specific abilities at random. For this build, we recommend aiming for the Death Nova Sanctification, which adds the following power to your build:

• Death Nova Sanctification: Hitting enemies with Death Nova five consecutive times adds a spirit that afflicts an enemy every fifth cast of Death Nova. Up to three spirits can be sent at a time.

Use Angelic Crucibles on an item that crosses over most (if not all) variants of a build, and is also an item that is relatively harder to perfect than other slots (since sanctifying an item maximizes its stats). In the case of this build, good candidates for Sanctification are your weapon, Funerary Pick, or a jewelry piece like Krysbin's Sentence.

You can read more on Angelic Crucibles and the sanctification process in our dedicated Angelic Crucible Mechanics guide.

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 in toughness. Points in Maximum Essence should not be necessary.

In the Offense section, max out Attack Speed, Crit Damage, Crit Chance and Cooldown Reduction 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 Pickup 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 with the free Suppress rune on Siphon Blood, as well as Bone Armor Dislocation.

Zei's Stone of Vengeance is 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 — especially as you learn to keep your distance and maximize its potential.

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. Death Nova Necromancers are a textbook example of such a build.

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

The Weapon slot in the Cube will be occupied by Bloodtide Blade, a key legendary power for the build; it scales Death Nova damage multiplicatively for each enemy within a 25-yard radius, matching the Blood Nova circle.

Mantle of Channeling is a build subtype staple, offering a substantial 25% damage increase, along with an equal amount of damage reduction while channeling. This is virtually a permanent bonus, as you will be using Siphon Blood throughout the run.

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.

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.