When Necromancers got released in Season 11, they instantly became the top dog on the leaderboards using Corpse Lance with the Trag'Oul's Avatar Set, overshadowing pretty much every other skill the class had at its disposal. However, Necromancers have many skills with a strong identity, including the iconic Corpse Explosion!
When Season 21 introduced the new Masquerade of the Burning Carnival Set and buffed Grasps of Essence, players finally got a chance to play this skill at a competitive level. But it was only with the introduction of set leaderboards that Inarius really got a chance to shine!
Due to Diablo III corpse mechanics (16 corpse limitation), this build revolves around Land of the Dead rotations to unleash devastating chain reactions on its opponents!
This build is an Area Damage (AD) build, since Corpse Explosion can proc it. This is further enhanced by The Johnstone in conjunction with other cooldown and rotation based damage multipliers, allowing for a disgusting damage burst under specific circumstances (see Mechanics). If you like powerful all-around builds, massive explosions and seeing monsters' HP instantly drop from 100 to 0, you're in the right place. Let's go through how it works and show those demons who's boss!
❌ Low mobility ❌ Rotation playstyle ❌ Low single target damage ❌ Heavy cooldown dependency
Core Setup
Core Item Build
Items
Grace of Inariusgrants us a 19,000% separate damage multiplier as well as up to 90% damage reduction through Bone Armor and Wisdom of Kalan.
Grasps of Essence is our core item providing us with a 800% separate damage multiplier to Corpse Explosion.
The Johnstone makes our next 50 Corpse Explosions do 200% more damage after our Land of the Dead ends.
Nayr's Black Death provides us with an amazing 100% separate damage multiplier for every Poison skill we use.
Krysbin's Sentence for the 300% damage increase against enemies under a Hard Crowd Control effect.
Convention of Elements for 200% damage during our Poison cycle.
Trag'Oul's Corroded Fang provides us with a 200% separate damage multiplier to Cursed enemies and procs our Dayntee's Binding.
Season 30 Soul Shards
Soul Shards are powerful socketable items that initially dropped during Season 25 but they are returning for Season 30! There are 4 available for Weapons based on the Lesser Evils, with another 3 for Helmets based on the Prime Evils. They drop at Rank 0 and be upgraded three times with the brand new Hellforge Embers to unlock additional powers, or be used in the Kanai's Cube as Augments. Here's how they progress:
Rank 0: Soul Shards begin with a unique static Legendary Power. Creates a Rank 50 Augment.
Rank 1: Gives all powers from the normal gems. Creates a Rank 75 Augment.
Rank 2: Grants one additional powerful stat. Creates a Rank 100 Augment.
Rank 3: Unlocks 1 of 3 bonus Legendary Powers unique to that Soul Shard. Creates a Rank 125 Augment.
Warning: Leoric's Crown and Broken Crown do not work with Soul Shards!
Read our Soul Shards Guide written by Chewingnom for full details on how they work. What you should prioritize on them for Solo Pushing is the following:
The Correct Soul Shard& Rank 3 Power The best shards for Solo Pushing are:
Helmets: We want to use Sliver of Terror for the massive damage buff from our abilities on cooldown. For the Rank 3 power take the Ring of Fire to unleash a devastating AoE blast for big leaderboard pushes!
On the higher end when time-attacking GR150, you can use Shard of Hatred for the massive 50% damage buff when surrounded by a lot of monsters. For the Rank 3 power, take the additional damage per stack for a tremendous 100% damage buff in density!
Weapons: We want to use Remnant of Pain for the 100% Critical Hit Chance to incapacitated enemies. For the Rank 3 power take the additional Attack Speed to further power up your character! This allows us to run with much less Critical Hit Chance on gear because all of our damage is done during the Land of the Dead window where enemies are frozen.
The Rank 2 Stat The stats that come from the second upgrade are not equal. Here's what we're looking for on them:
Helmets: We want either Main Stat for damage or Melee/Ranged Damage Reduction to survive. Avoid Armor and All Resistance as their stat ranges are far too low compared to the others options.
Weapons: We want either % Damage or Poison Damage to boost our character's power the furthest. Avoid Attack Speed and Critical Hit Chance as their stat ranges are too low compared to the others.
The Stat Ranges on the Rank 1 and 2 Powers This is just icing on the cake because the ranges will not make or break your build. Still, look for the Soul Shards with the best stat ranges, especially on the offensive stats.
For the other game modes, other Soul Shards can be used. Check the Variants below to see what's used there.
What about extra Soul Shards? Either salvage them for gems, or upgrade and use them in Kanai's Cube for Augments.
Global Stat Priorities
You want to stack damage stats wherever possible, especially Cooldown Reduction, Attack Speed, Critical Hit Chance and Damage, Poison Damage along with as much Area Damage and Corpse Explosion Damage as possible.
Our first priority is to aim for at least 53% Cooldown Reduction which allows us in conjunction with Blood is Power and Gogok of Swiftness to reach the 48 second Breakpoint on Land of the Dead. This way we can detonate every fourth Convention of ElementsPoison cycle.
Attack Speed is very important in order to maximize The Johnstone stacks efficiency by reaching an appropriate Corpse Explosion Breakpoint (see Mechanics). We focus on 1.88 Attack Speed to reach the 32 frames Breakpoint, allowing us to cast up to 7 Corpse Explosions during our Convention of ElementsPoison cycle. We get that Attack Speed from 7% Attack Speed on the Weapon, Gogok of Swiftness, the guaranteed Krysbin's Sentence roll and the Enchantress' Focused Mind.
Assembling the Build
1. Do the Challenge Rift for the materials to cubeLegendary Powers. You can complete this once a week for additional resources and we always update the guide for you!
2. Gather the full Grace of Inarius set. Each piece can be gambled from Kadala for Bloodshards. Do not salvage any duplicate pieces you find! Instead convert them to another part of the set with Recipe 4 in Kanai's Cube. If you have extra materials you can use Recipe 3 to craft the remaining pieces, but this is expensive and not recommended for new players.
Create a level 1 Demon Hunter and upgrade Swords to get In-geom
Two-Handed Axes to get Messerschmidt's Reaver
Scythes to get Trag'Oul's Corroded Fang
Two-Handed Scythes to get Nayr's Black Death
Amulets to get The Johnstone and Wisdom of Kalan
Anything from the Gamble list in Step 3 that you haven't already acquired
5. Do Bounties to acquire several important items for this build:
Act 1: Ring of Royal Grandeur
Act 2: Gloves of Worship (for your follower)
Act 3: Avarice Band
Act 4: Can drop any bounty item from any act
Bounty Turn In: Recipes for Aughild's Authority, Sage's Journey and Cain's Destiny (for your follower)
6. At this point you can somewhat comfortably farm Nephalem or Speed Greater Rifts where you can find all the remaining items you need for different variants of the build. Spend your materials getting items with better rolls and/or ancient quality.
7. Use Primordial Ashes in Kanai's Cube with the new Curiosity of Lorath Nahr recipe to obtain a free Crafted Primal Ancient. Since you can only equip one of them, choosing the right item to focus matters! Great candidates are Weapons, Offhands, Jewelry or any item with an important multiplier. With that in mind, we recommend getting one of the following items:
Trag'Oul's Corroded Fang
Krysbin's Sentence
The Johnstone
Item Stat Priorities
SLOT
ITEM
STAT PRIORITY
Main-Hand
In-geom Trag'Ouls Corroded Fang Nayr's Black Death (Cubed) Messerschmidt's Reaver (Cubed)
1. Damage Range 2. Socket Ramaladni's Gift 3. Damage % 4. Cooldown Reduction 5. Area Damage 6. Attack Speed
Off-Hand
Lost Time Any Legendary Phylactery
1. Cooldown Reduction 2. Corpse Explosion Damage 3. Area Damage 4. Elite Damage 5. Intelligence
1. Socket 2. Critical Hit Damage 3. Poison Damage 4. Critical Hit Chance 5. Intelligence
Belt
Dayntee's Binding Goldwrap
1. Intelligence 2. Vitality 3. Life % 4. Armor
Potion
Bottomless Potion of the Unfettered
To avoid Crowd Control effects during your DPS phases
Gems
Bane of the Trapped is a staple that grants us a 60% separate damage multiplier.
Bane of the Stricken helps us kill the Rift Guardian. As long as you don't need more than 2 minutes to kill it you can equip Bane of the Powerful instead.
Gogok of Swiftness allows us to easily reach the 48 second Breakpoint on Land of the Dead and a good Breakpoint on Corpse Explosion while granting us a hefty 30% dodge chance.
For Nephalem Rifts, Boon of the Hoarder is always used due to its amazing synergy with Avarice Band and Goldwrap.
Skills
Corpse Explosion Close Quarters is our primary damage dealing skill.
Blood Rush Transfusion is needed for mobility and recovery.
Bone Armor Dislocation is our only source of damage reduction and allows us to get an additional Nayr's Black Death stack.
Land of the Dead Frozen Lands allows us to cast our Corpse Explosion at will while also freezing enemies on our screen to proc Krysbin's Sentence.
Grim Scythe Cursed Scythe applies curses for our Trag'Oul's Corroded Fang and Dayntee's Binding bonuses while helping us to stack Bane of the Stricken.
Bone Spear Blighted Marrow is purely used to get an additional Nayr's Black Death stack.
Passives
Spreading Malediction gives us 1% additive damage for every cursed enemy.
Blood is Power helps reduce our Land of the Dead cooldown by 20% based off damage taken, allowing us to reach the 48 second Breakpoint on Land of the Dead.
Stand Alone is an incredible defensive passive as we have no minions, providing us with a 100% Armor buff.
Eternal Torment makes curses cost 50% less and last forever.
Final Service allows us to cheat death.
For speed content you can drop Eternal Torment for Fueled by Death.
Paragon Points
Core
Offensive
Defensive
Utility
1. Movement Speed
1. Cooldown Reduction
1. Armor
1. Area Damage
2. Intelligence
2. Attack Speed
2. Life %
2. Life per Hit
3. Vitality1
3. Critical Hit Chance
3. All Resistance
3. Resource Cost Reduction
4. Maximum Essence
4. Critical Hit Damage
4. Life Regeneration
4. Pickup Radius
1 Add a bit of Vitality if you feel too squishy (a total of 900,000 Life is recommended).
Altar of Rites
The Altar of Rites is a tree that grants tremendous powers to your entire account in exchange for sacrifices. It requires you to farm Bounties, kill the Ubers, craft the Staff of Herding, and more. Completing all 26 of these tasks, along with sacrificing 6 Primal Ancients grants you extra Damage, Defense, Quality of Life, Increased Drops and 3 Potion Super Powers. Read the full guides on Unlocking the Altar and the Altar Mechanics by Raxxanterax and Chewingnom to learn everything about this fantastic mechanic!
Note: The suggested path assumes you are playing Solo and used the Challenge Rift Cache to help you level up.
Optimal Path
Node 2: Choose Anointed to gain a full set of 70 yellows from level 18-70!
Node 6: Rush to gain double Bounties to help unlock other Nodes in the Altar.
Nodes 7-14: These are the last Nodes you can gain until the Challenge Rift resets. Take at least 1 Node at the bottom of each path to unlock all 3 Potion Super Powers. Pick up the Mirror Node at the top for a colossal 41% extra XP all season. Remember to unlock Father once you clear GR70 solo and have your first Primal!
Nodes 15-26: Pick up the final Quality of Life, Damage, and Defense Nodes (in that order) to finish the Altar.
Potion Super Powers: Take Father first, then Mother, and finally Mortal.
Disclaimer: The Mortal and Mother Potions require you to salvage 2 and 3 Primals respectively. Unlock them as soon as you have those materials as they don't cost a point!
Recommended Altar Path Use the Scroll Bar to see Altar Progression
Notable Build Changes
Compared to the nonseason version of the build, you no longer need Blood Rush and the build can run Frailty instead to finish off low HP elites and bosses.
Follower
Patch 2.7.0 revamped the follower system giving all 3 hirelings new powers and the emanate system. The first thing you should do is read our complete follower guide and remember the key takeaways:
The emanation system allows followers to share certain legendary and set powers with you. The most important ones are: The Flavor of Time, Nemesis Bracers, Avarice Band, Sage’s Journey and Cain’s Destiny. Click the guide above for the full list.
Follower’s powers are based on their main stat (maxed at 25,000, but they have a 2.5x multiplier so you only need 10,000). This means we stack Intelligence on the Enchantress, Dexterity on the Scoundrel and Strength on the Templar.
Guardian's Jeopardy(2) Bonus works for followers by improving their inherent stat multiplier from x2.5 to x3.5, making it slightly easier to hit the 25,000 main stat threshold if needed.
Followers share 20% of their Experience, Magic and Gold Find stats with you.
Legendary gems do not work on followers, except Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard.
Cooldown Reduction does not work for any follower skill except the Templar’s Heal.
Followers never deal significant damage; you’re on your own to clear the content.
Select Follower
T16 Enchantress
T16 Enchantress
For T16 we recommend this Enchantress setup because she is the only follower that gives Cooldown Reduction, allowing you to spam your abilities more. Since this is T16 content, she’ll stay alive with Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard and use Hand of the Prophet to gain all skills. This will give us Cooldown Reduction, Elemental Damage, Reduced Damage from Ranged Attacks, Armor, Attack Speed, and a Cheat Death. Ideally, you want a Cold Damage Range on her Weapon as it procs your Lost Time effect.
Stat Priorities:Since we do not have the immortality focus, we need to stack survivability on our Enchantress.
Intelligence > Vitality > Life % > Armor > All Resistance > Life Per Hit > Attack Speed.
Key Items:
The Flavor of Time: For double duration on Pylons.
Nemesis Bracers: For extra Elites, Death’s Breaths and In-geom procs.
Avarice Band: For the insane pickup radius.
Ring of Royal Grandeur: To complete our sets.
Gloves of Worship: For 10 Minute Shrine Buffs.
Sage’s Journey: For double Death’s Breaths.
Cain’s Destiny: For 25% more Greater Rift Keystones.
GR Pushing Enchantress
For Greater Rift Pushing we recommend this Enchantress setup for the Slow from Temporal Pulse, Cooldown Reduction from Prophetic Harmony, Damage Reduction and Armor from Powered Shield, and the Attack Speed from Focused Mind. Ideally, you want a Cold Damage Range on her Weapon as it procs your Lost Time effect.
Stat Priorities:Since we have the immortality relic, we do not need to stack survivability on our Enchantress.
Intelligence > Attack Speed.
Key Items:
The Flavor of Time: For double duration on Pylons.
Nemesis Bracers: For more progression from Elites.
Oculus Ring: For 85% increased damage.
Unity: For 50% damage reduction if you're also wearing one.
Ice Climbers: To make your follower immune to Freeze and Immobilize effects.
Mempo of Twilight and Cain's Destiny: For more Attack Speed.
Gameplay
While the rotation is fairly easy to perform with practice, it requires you to manage timings properly. You need to use the time between your Land of the Dead rotations (synchronized with Convention of ElementsPoison cycle) to scout, pull and gather as many monsters as you can together. Make sure to always Grim Scythe to curse enemies, heal yourself through Leech and keep Gogok of Swiftness stacks. Similarly, never let your Bone Armor stacks drop.
When you are ready to perform your rotation:
Use Land of the Dead Frozen Lands right before (about a second) your Poison cycle.
Cast 1 Corpse Explosion in order to stack your Grasps of Essence, to proc an Oculus Ring and to jump into it.
At the start of Poison cycle, immediately unleash with Corpse Explosion Close Quarters to blow everything up.
Make sure to stop spammingCorpse Explosion 1 second before Land of the Dead ends to avoid consuming The Johnstone stacks for your next rotation.
Drag the Elites forward and pull as many monsters as you can.
When your Land of the Dead is back up, repeat the rotation.
Hardcore
Grace of Inarius is decently tanky when using Wisdom of Kalan but it lacks life recovery. The stop and go, high-risk high-reward playstyle is also not the best fit for Hardcore. One of the best ways to increase defenses for Hardcore is to put more paragon points into Vitality and never forget the Final Service passive. You can take a look at the Legacy of Dreams variant (see Guide), which is way tankier!
Check out our dedicated Hardcore Survival Guide to learn more about how to succeed in this game mode!
Variants
Nephalem Rifts
Greater Rift Solo Push
Inarius Corpse Explosion Solo T16
Concept Corpse Explosion is not the best skill in T16 Nephalem Rifts but it synergizes very well with Grace of Inarius melee playstyle.
Gameplay Upon entering a Rift, get some Bone Armor stacks before you start to run. Use Land of the Dead as soon as you find an Elite pack to get your In-geom buff and start blasting through the Rift. Try to move quickly with Blood Rush to reset your cooldowns more easily.
Setups In groups, swap Warzechian Armguards with Nemesis Bracers and rotate out Stone of Jordan for Avarice Band.
Inarius Corpse Explosion Solo Push w/ Wisdom of Kalan
Concept This is the standard setup we covered in the sections above.
Gameplay Solo is the most challenging version of this build as we have to pull everything, stay alive, and kill everything all on our own.
Use the 48 second downtime on Land of the Dead to gather up gigantic groups of monsters to burn down. Save your Land of the Dead for when you have a big pack together to get the most from your Area Damage. For a step-by-step gameplay description on how you should sequence your skills, check out the "Gameplay" section above.
Setups At higher Paragon (4,000+) you can go for a setup with more damage, replacing Wisdom of Kalan and Ancient Parthan Defenders with Aughild's Authority and Ring of Royal Grandeur. This is a damage gain equal to around 3 Greater Rift tiers but at the cost of more than half your toughness.
Mechanics
In-Depth Corpse Explosion Explanation
Corpse Explosion is complicated when trying to maximize your damage output, due to The Johnstone mechanics. First of all, here are a few simple key points to be aware of:
Corpse Explosion costs no essence and does not have any sort of internal cooldown. As long as you have corpses at your disposal, you can keep firing it.
Each cast of Corpse Explosion triggers 5 corpses in a quick chain reaction over 45 frames, one corpse every 9 frames. This means a single cast of Corpse Explosion is enough to fully stack Grasps of Essence after 45 frames.
Close Quarters makes corpses explode around your character instead of where your mouse cursor is, so it is important to stand in the middle of the monsters.
As it is not possible to produce enough corpses to sustain Corpse Explosion, Land of the Dead has to be used and creates a rotation-based playstyle. It is easy to understand why Cooldown Reduction becomes an active damage stat for Corpse Explosion: the less you wait your Land of the Dead cooldown, the more rotations you can do. As usual, those rotations are synchronized with Convention of Elements for a maximum damage output.
The Johnstone is where things become interesting. This item grants you 50 stacks of Macabre Knowledge after your Land of the Dead expires that you'll use on your next rotation. Macabre Knowledge buffs the damage of Corpse Explosion by 200%. Each corpse consumed by the skill will consume one stack, and each cast consumes 5 corpses, which means 10 casts of Corpse Explosion are going to consume all our Macabre Knowledge stacks.
Understanding this last point is the key to maximizing your damage, we have a rotation burst playstyle based on Convention of Elements meaning all our damage is concentrated into a 4 second window, or 240 frames. It now becomes obvious that being able to cast all 10 Corpse Explosions buffed by Macabre Knowledge during the Convention of Elements window is going to be a tremendous damage boost.
The answer to that is Attack Speed and Breakpoints. Corpse Explosion has FPA Breakpoints and does not have any Attack Speed Coefficient so that you can get your Breakpoint by rounding up the result of the formula FPA = 60 ÷ APS.
Blackbog's Sharp + Skeleton Archers: 23 FPA Corpse Explosion
For instance with 2.33 Attack Speed, you have a 60 ÷ 1.88 = 32 frames Breakpoint on Corpse Explosion, meaning you can cast 240 ÷ 32 = 7.5Corpse Explosion during the 4 second window of your Convention of Elements cycle. This means you should not cast Land of the Dead more than 1 second before your CoE cycle and not cast Corpse Explosion more than twice. Remember that corpses explode in a quick chain reaction, starting after 9 frames and then every 9 frames over 45 frames, so the higher Breakpoint you reach, the more casts will overlap. In that case the last two corpses of your second cast before Convention of Elements will happen during CoE.
Reaching 2.61 Attack Speed allows you to get the 60 ÷ 2.61 = 23 frames Breakpoint which enables you to perform 10 Corpse Explosion casts within 230 frames or 3.8334 seconds. In that case, you should cast Land of the Dead right when your CoE cycle starts to get 100% efficiency from The Johnstone.
Unfortunately, some corpses from your last casts are always going to be out of the Convention of Elements cycle. In order to get full efficiency on both The Johnstone and Convention of Elements you would need to get 3.16 Attack Speed to reach the 19 frames Breakpoint on Corpse Explosion, allowing you to cast your 10 Corpse Explosions in less than 195 frames (3.25 seconds) so that the very last corpse explodes within the 240 frames window. Unfortunately it is unrealistic and not worth it to get that much Attack Speed especially with Nayr's Black Death giving more value to a 4th Poison skill than Skeleton Archers.
Nayr's Black Death
Grants 100% damage bonus for each Poison skill you've used in the last 15 seconds. Each skill has its own timer, meaning you have to hit each Poison skill once every 15 seconds to keep maximum stacks.
The stacks add up as one combined multiplier (100% per Poison skill used).
Blood Is Power
As you spend life with your skills or take damage from enemies, you stack up a hidden counter towards 100% life spent.
Each skill has a separate counter. The Blood Is Power counter is reset when the skill has fully cooled down or you die.
After you reach the threshold, a skill's cooldown will be cut by 20% flat of its base cooldown (after Cooldown Reduction has been applied).
Summary
Focus on obtaining the Grace of Inarius set and Corpse Explosion items first.
Pull and gather large groups of enemies when Land of the Dead is on cooldown.
When ready, use Land of the Dead to spam Corpse Explosion to flatten enemies!
Enjoy killing enemies with the corpses of their fallen comrades!
