Trag'Oul Death Nova Necromancer Greater Rift Speed Farming Variation

The Trag'Oul Death Nova Necromancer can deal reasonably well with Greater Rift Speed Farming, with the ability to drown an entire screen's worth of enemies with the unrelenting tide of Blood Novas. 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
Siphon Blood No rune chosen Death Nova Blood Nova 1 Bone Armor Dislocation 2 Frailty Aura of Frailty 3 Blood Rush No rune chosen 4 Simulacrum Blood and Bone
Passive Skills
Spreading Malediction Stand Alone Swift Harvesting Final Service

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.

The build will maintain the entirety of the GR progression playstyle (stacking Trag'Oul, using Simulacrums for damage as you channel away with Siphon Blood, etc.), but shifts to a faster and more aggressive mindset. You start out the runs by stacking the 300% Trag'Oul health bonus, and then summon your Simulacrums. Activate Bone Armor on a 10-pack of monsters to maximize the damage reduction, and then use this skill mostly for the Dislocation stun, which procs Krysbin's Sentence. Time Krysbin's proc to coincide with the Physical rotation of the worn Convention of Elements to maximize the devastation of your Death Nova Blood Nova. It will be cast via the interaction of Siphon Blood with Iron Rose, and will be mimicked by your Simulacrums because of the worn Haunted Visions. While you are a force to be reckoned with on regular monsters and elites, the build quickly loses steam against single targets — so, for the purposes of speed farming, you do not want to spend over 1-2 Physical Convention of Elements rotations on a Greater Rift Guardian. Adjust your GR farming difficulty accordingly, or swap builds altogether.

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.

• Your main damage dealer is still Death Nova, taken with the Trag'Oul set-appropriate Blood Nova rune. While it can be self-cast, you will mostly inflict it with the channeling of Siphon Blood, which triggers the worn Iron Rose off-hand. Selecting a particular Siphon Blood rune is not necessary, since you get them all via the Trag'Oul 2-piece set bonus.
• Mobility is just as necessary in speed farming as it is in Greater Rift progression, so Blood Rush remains in the build. Much like Siphon Blood, selection of a particular rune is not necessary, as you gain the benefits of all of them from the Trag'Oul 2-piece. In GR speed farming, using Blood Rush will also net you the massive burst of speed from Steuart's Greaves.
• Simulacrums duplicate your Secondary skills (and Death Nova falls in that skill category), and — unlike your own Iron Rose procs — their Blood Nova casts do trigger Area Damage, making their DPS contribution to the build massive. Make them permanent with Haunted Visions.
• Bone Armor brings up to 30% damage reduction when you cast it with 10 enemies inside its radius, and stuns them with the Dislocation rune — giving you the full damage buff of Krysbin's Sentence. Time it with the Physical CoE rotation for a massive damage burst.
• Frailty culls enemies at the 15% health point, and brings an easy proc of Dayntee's Binding, if you choose to wear it. Take it with the lazy Aura of Frailty rune for a fire-and-forget beneficial effect throughout your runs.

The Trag'Oul's Avatar set still forms the basis of your setup; you take five of the available six pieces, and mix it with a craftable set for maximum effectiveness. Early on in character progression, consider using the craftable Guardian's Jeopardy set, as its 3-piece bonus doubles your main stats (Intelligence and Vitality, in a Necromancer's case), netting you a massive increase of damage and survivability at a very low cost. Later on in character progression (once you amass 2k+ Paragon levels and get confident with the build), swap Guardian's set out for the more traditional Aughild setup, outlined on this build's main Gear page.

While using the Guardian's Jeopardy set, it will likely take up your bracer ( Guardian's Aversion) and belt ( Guardian's Case) slots. This leaves you to adjust the two utility legendaries for this build — Mantle of Channeling and Steuart's Greaves — according to your better rolled pieces and Trag'Oul rolls (see the table below for a sample gear setup). Once you transition to the Aughild version of the build, re-introduce Dayntee's Binding to the build, and bump up the GR difficulty accordingly.

Your jewelry should match the GR progression setup, as the combination of Krysbin's Sentence, Convention of Elements and Haunted Visions provides way too much value to be swapped around. Convention of Elements provides a cyclical elemental damage bonus, skyrocketing your damage at the Physical cycle. Krysbin's Sentence amplifies damage when you crowd control your enemies, encouraging you to time your Bone Armor Dislocation stun to the Physical CoE rotation. Haunted Visions simply makes your mighty Simulacrum summons last forever.

For your weaponry, you should stick to dedicated Trag'Oul duo of Funerary Pick as your scythe, and Iron Rose as your phylactery. Funerary Pick brings a massive damage multiplier against targets affected by Siphon Blood, while Iron Rose procs guaranteed Blood Novas as you channel, making for a devastating combo.

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.

Both Zei's Stone of Vengeance and Bane of the Trapped bring just as valuable damage multiplication bonuses to GR speed farming, as they do for solo pushing. Within the limited challenges of Speed Greater Rifts, Bane of the Stricken should be replaced by Bane of the Powerful for a well-rounded damage increase and damage mitigation bonus, with a duration-based (but very generous and manageable) limitation.

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

Considering its massive, build-defining damage multiplication bonus, Bloodtide Blade is still a mandatory inclusion in Greater Rift speed farming as well.

Steuart's Greaves double your movement speed for a generous, 10-second period after using Blood Rush — a very helpful bonus for the relentless pace of GR speed farming.

In order to maintain the amalgamation of the Trag'Oul and Guardian (or Aughild) sets, as well as a slew of synergistic legendary items, you need to keep the Ring of Royal Grandeur in the jewelry slot of the Cube.

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 T16 speed farming is the Enchantress, due to her cooldown reduction bonus (cutting down Blood Rush downtime) and elemental damage increase. Note that this requires that you run Hand of the Prophet and optimize her survivability, as per our guide.

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.