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. Due to Diablo III corpse mechanics (16 corpses limitation), this build revolves around Land of the Dead rotations to unleash devastating chain reactions on its opponents!
These days with the addition of Set leaderboards in Season 23, it is one of the best setup to compete with on the No Set leaderboards, sharing the crown with LoD Scythe.
In Season 24, this build became one of the top dog solo builds due to the Masquerade Bone Spear nerf and the exclusive Ethereals as well as the discovery of a Shi Mizu's Haori setup. During Season 25 & 30, the Soul ShardRemnant of Pain was perfectly synergizing with the build.
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 ❌ Gearing Difficulty ❌ Low Single Target Damage ❌ Heavy Cooldown Dependency
Core Setup
Items
The Johnstone makes our next 50 Corpse Explosion casts do 200% increased damage after Land of the Dead expires.
Grasps of Essence is our core item providing us with 1,000% increased damage to Corpse Explosion.
Nayr's Black Death for up to 500% damage to Corpse Explosion when we use other Poison skills.
Trag'Oul's Corroded Fang for another 200% separate damage multiplier and to apply Curses for Dayntee's Binding.
Krysbin's Sentence grants us a 300% separate damage multiplier against enemies under Hard Crowd Controls like Freezes from Frozen Lands.
Convention of Elements for 200% damage during our Poison cycle.
Stone Gauntlets provide an outrageous amount of mitigation and their negative effect can be fully negated by Ice Climbers.
Aquila Cuirass and Unity for two sources of 50% damage reduction.
Season 32 Ethereals
Ethereals are powerful rare weapons that can only be found during Season 32. They were initially the Season 24 Theme. They have incredible stats, a random Legendary power, and a free passive for your class. Read our Ethereal Mechanics Guide for full details on how they work and our Ethereal Farming Guide to learn how to acquire them. What you should prioritize on them is the following:
TheLegendary Power This build requires Trag'Oul's Corroded Fang and Nayr's Black Death to be functional. We need our Ethereal to roll one of these powers so we can cube the other. We also want a good roll on our Legendary power if it has a range. For speed content it is always helpful to have Ethereals with In-geom or Messerschmidt's Reaver powers, so keep those if you find them.
TheEtherealItself There are 3 different weapons available to us, each with its own benefits:
Blackbog's Sharp - This is the best Ethereal by a long shot for this build due to its Damage Stacking special affix and its high Attack Speed, especially in Greater Rift push. It allows us to reach the 33 frames Breakpoint on Corpse Explosion with 1.87 Attack Speed.
Soul Harvest - This is a decent Ethereal for T16 farming and speed content but also in groups as Trash Killer, where the Damage Stacking mechanic from Blackbog's Sharp is not important.
Blackhand Key - This is not a great Ethereal in most situations due to its Fear special affix which is detrimental in higher Greater Rifts but it is still a good Weapon for T16 farming.
The EtherealStat Rolls Each Ethereal comes with its own fixed set of powerful affixes. While some have a static value, many have a wide stat range. This means the difference between good and bad rolls is significant and something you should look for.
A Useful Passive This is just icing on the cake because a fifth passive is not going to make or break your build. You're better off hunting for the things above. Check out the Passives section down below to see which ones you're looking for.
Global Stat Priorities
Our offensive priorities are: Cooldown Reduction > Poison Damage > Area Damage > Critical Hit Chance & Critical Hit Damage, along with as much Corpse Explosion Damage as possible. We get all the Attack Speed we need to get a decent Corpse Explosion FPA Breakpoint from the guaranteed Krysbin's Sentence roll and the Enchantress' Focused Mind.
We're aiming for at least 53% Cooldown Reduction which allows us in conjunction with Blood is Power to reach the 48 second Breakpoint on Land of the Dead. This way we can detonate every fourth Convention of ElementsPoison cycle.
Crowd Control Reduction is an incredibly valuable secondary Affix to roll on both Rings, Amulet and Helmet as we are very sensitive to Hard Crowd Control effects and mitigating these will ease up our gameplay significantly. Make sure to get the Primary Affixes locked in before attempting to get CCR though.
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. This is a Legacy of Dreams build whose success is heavily dependent on this gem's rank. The first order of business is to equip a Legendary or Set item in every slot to take advantage of its power. Make sure to not have any Set Bonuses equipped or the gem will be nullified and you will deal no damage! Farm speed Greater Rifts (in under 5 minute clears) to find the items and get this gem as high as possible. Above Rank 25 ancient pieces of gear will give you even greater power.
Create a level 1 Demon Hunter and upgrade Swords to get In-Geom
Two-Handed Scythes to get Nayr's Black Death
Scythes to get Trag'Oul's Corroded Fang
Amulets to get The Johnstone, Squirt's Necklace and The Flavor of Time
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 (for your follower)
Act 2: Gloves of Worship
Act 3: Avarice Band
Act 4: Can drop any bounty item from any act
Bounty Turn In: Recipes for 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
The Johnstone
Krysbin's Sentence
Convention of Elements
Item Stat Priorities
SLOT
ITEM
STAT PRIORITY
Main-Hand
Trag'Oul's Corroded Fang In-geom Nayr's Black Death (Cubed) Messerschmidt's Reaver (Cubed)
1. Damage Range 2. Socket Ramaladni's Gift 3. Cooldown Reduction 4. Damage % 5. Attack Speed 6. Area Damage
Off-Hand
Lost Time Any Legendary Phylactery
1. Critical Hit Chance 2. Area Damage 3. Corpse Explosion Damage 4. Cooldown Reduction 5. Intelligence
Helm
Leoric's Crown
1. Socket Flawless Royal Diamond 2. Critical Hit Chance 3. Intelligence 4. Vitality
1. Socket 2. Poison Damage 3. Critical Hit Damage 4. Critical Hit Chance
Belt
Dayntee's Binding Goldwrap Krelm's Buff Belt (Cubed)
1. Intelligence 2. Armor 3. Vitality 4. Life %
Potion
Bottomless Potion of the Unfettered
To avoid Crowd Control effects during your DPS phases
Gems
Legacy of Dreams is the Legacy of NightmaresSet in a gem, which frees up two ring slots at the cost of removing a legendary gem. Due to the rings available to us this is a great trade-off to take.
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.
For Nephalem Rifts, Boon of the Hoarder is always a default include specifically due to its amazing synergy with Avarice Band and Goldwrap.
Pain Enhancer gives us 3% Attack Speed for all bleeding enemies within 20 yards. This is very strong in group play with large monster density. The alternative is Gogok of Swiftness for more consistency and toughness.
Skills
Grim Scythe Cursed Scythe applies curses for our Trag'Oul's Corroded Fang and Dayntee's Binding bonuses as well as counting as a stack for Nayr's Black Death.
Corpse Explosion Close Quarters is our primary damage dealing skill, we will take the Poison rune for even more damage from Nayr's Black Death.
Bone Armor Dislocation provides 30% damage reduction and activates our Krysbin's Sentence on our PoisonConvention of Elements cycle.
Blood Rush Potency can be taken for mobility and increased armor.
Land of the Dead Frozen Lands allows us to cast our Corpse Explosion at will, while also freezing enemies on our screen.
The last skill slot is usually filled with Bone Spear Blighted Marrow for another stack of Nayr's Black Death or a curse depending on the setup.
Passives
Spreading Malediction gives 1% increased damage for every cursed enemy.
Blood is Power helps reduce our Land of the Dead Cooldown by 20% based off damage taken.
Stand Alone gives 100% additive armor with the 250% from Stone Gauntlets and the 25% from Paragon points.
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. Critical Hit Chance
2. Life %
2. Life per Hit
3. Vitality1
3. Critical Hit Damage
3. All Resistance
3. Resource Cost Reduction
4. Maximum Essence
4. Attack Speed
4. Life Regeneration
4. Pickup Radius
1 Add a bit of Vitality if you feel too squishy (a total of 750,000 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!
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(3) 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
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.
For Greater Rift with Legacy of Dreams using Unity 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, The Witching Hour, Tal Rasha's Relentless Pursuit and Cain's Destiny: For more Attack Speed.
Gameplay
While the rotation is fairly easy to perform with practice, it requires you to understand the multipliers in play. First with Nayr's Black Death in the cube we need to rotate our Poison skills before the PoisonConvention of Elements cycle arrives. You'll finish by casting Land of the Dead Frozen Lands and Bone Armor Dislocation at the start of Poison to get infinite corpses and to activate your Krysbin's Sentence before unleashing with Corpse Explosion Close Quarters to blow everything up.
Make sure to stop spamming Corpse Explosion 1 second before Land of the Dead ends to avoid consuming The Johnstone stacks. Drag the Elites forward to another big pack of monsters, and when your Land of the Dead is back up, repeat the rotation.
Hardcore
This build has a lot of toughness which makes it great for Hardcore. To become more tanky, put more Paragon points into Vitality and drop Eternal Torment for Final Service. Check out our dedicated Hardcore Survival Guide to learn more about how to succeed in this game mode!
Variants
Nephalem Rifts
GR Solo Speeds
GR Solo Push
GR Group Trash Killer
Echoing Nightmare
Concept For speed content we're pumping up our Movement Speed with Steuart's Greaves, Warzechian Armguards, Blood Rush Metabolism and Fueled by Death. The combination of Goldwrap, Avarice Band and Boon of the Hoarder will make us invincible once we kill an enemy and pick up some gold.
Gameplay Speed content is easy to play as we don't have to time anything with Convention of Elements. Use Blood Rush Metabolism to quickly teleport on Elite packs and huge packs of monsters, proccing Brigg's Wrath pixelpull. Activating Land of the Dead Frozen Lands will let you use Corpse Explosion infinitely, freeze the whole screen and activate our Krysbin's Sentence.
Setups This setup gives up a lot of damage for more speed but it should work well with how powerful Corpse Explosion is. If you need more damage throw back on the Trag'Oul's Corroded Fang and things should be just fine. If you are running this in groups, cube Nemesis Bracers instead of Krelm's Buff Belt.
Concept For speed content we're pumping up our Movement Speed with Steuart's Greaves, Blood Rush Metabolism and Fueled by Death. We play around Land of the Dead complemented with Messerschmidt's Reaver for maximum uptime.
Gameplay Speed content is easy to play as we kill plenty of monster to reset Land of the Dead. Use Blood Rush Metabolism to quickly teleport on Elite packs and huge packs of monsters, cast Land of the Dead to freeze them and get infinite Corpses then blow them up using Corpse Explosion.
Setups This setup gives up a lot of damage for more speed and Cooldown Reduction but it should work decently with how powerful Corpse Explosion is. Due to Land of the Dead rotations, Final Embrace is the way to go for maximum area coverage.
Select Build Version
Standard Setup
Concept This is the standard setup we covered above. Bane of the Stricken is needed to kill the Rift Guardian and we take Ice Climbers to negate the slow from Stone Gauntlets. This setup aims for a 48 seconds rotation with at least 52-53% Cooldown Reduction. This can be achieved with perfect rolls on Shoulders, Weapon, Helmet, Gloves and Prophetic Harmony.
Gameplay You have to use the 48 second downtime on Land of the Dead wisely to gather up gigantic groups of monsters to burn down. Cast each Poison skill once every 15 seconds for Nayr's Black Death and keep Bone Armor Dislocation stacks or use it to protect yourself with its stun.
Save your Land of the Dead for when you have a big pack together, then pop it to DPS. Try to spawn an Oculus Ring before your Poison rotation by casting Corpse Explosion no more than 4 times, then move into it if it appears in a good spot, else stay in the middle of the pack for maximize your Area Damage.
Setups If you feel too squishy, don't hesitate to add more Vitality as most of your recovery comes from Leech. If you feel comfortable with your toughness, you can replace Ancient Parthan Defenders with Krelm's Buff Bracers to mitigate annoying Crowd Controls.
At higher Paragon (4,000+) you can drop Unity for either Stone of Jordan or Briggs' Wrath for more raw damage or to pixelpull enemies using Decrepify Borrowed Time. This requires to drop one Poison skill (Bone Spear) and reduces your single target damage, but you can replace some Cooldown Reduction with valuable Area Damage. Be aware that cursed enemies cannot be pulled by the ring, so you have to swing your Cursed Scythe carefully. The Templar can be useful to keep you alive with his Heal then.
Concept The other variant you might find on the leaderboards is the Lornelle's Sunstone & Shi Mizu's Haori one taking advantage of the insane damage reduction from the ring to get permanent Shi Mizu uptime and stack other stats on your equipment, mainly Area Damage and Cooldown Reduction to reach the 36 seconds rotation Breakpoint.
Gameplay You are using Frailty Early Grave in order to consume your life at will which means you need to gauge very carefully the balance between your remaining life and your Lornelle damage reduction at all times. You dump all your Life with Early Grave to proc Blood is Power and Shi Mizu's Haori before your Land of the Dead rotation and quickly refill it after the rotation by taking Health Globes lying around.
This setup is also taking advantage of Necromancer crazy Army of the Dead Death Valley pixelpull to maximize Area Damage and incorporate Strongarm Bracers. Nonetheless, it is possible to play this without Shi Mizu's Haori if you prefer.
Please note that this setup is not recommended for casual play at all. The playstyle is similar to the regular version, except you have precise pixelpulling windows and have a much more fast-paced cut-throat playstyle as your damage mitigation is tied to your life being close to 0.
Concept In groups we can be far more offensive with our itemization because we have supports keeping us alive. We drop Ice Climbers and take Illusory Boots, this is possible because the zBarb will give us Ignore Pain which makes us immune to the slow from Stone Gauntlets.
Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac and Pain Enhancer allow us to easily focus on a 36 seconds rotation and greatly improve our damage burst as Attack Speed helps us to use all our The Johnstone stacks during our Convention of ElementsPoison cycle. Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac main benefit is to let you stack more offensive stats like Area Damage in place of Cooldown Reduction.
Gameplay Similar to the solo version, except we don't have to gather the monsters and staying alive is much easier due to our supporters. In a group always move into the zBarb's Ground Stomp Wrenching Smash and Oculus Rings near the pack for 85% increased damage. Make sure to activate all your Poison skills once before a damage rotation to gain the damage buff from Nayr's Black Death.
At the start of a run, pop Land of the Dead immediately to get your The Johnstone stacks, and be ready to hit it 36 seconds later on PoisonConvention of Elements cycle. You also want to stop spamming Corpse Explosion 1 second before Land of the Dead ends so you don't waste any Macabre stacks from The Johnstone on the wrong element of Convention of Elements.
Setups You can go for a hardcap CDR setup by cubing The Flavor of Time instead of Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac if you want to gamble for the right pylons. It is possible to drop a Poison skill in favor of Blood Rush for more mobility or a curse (Frailty Early Grave or Decrepify Borrowed Time) at the cost of some damage. If you can't trust your zBarb to give you consistent Ignore Pain, you can also change your boots to Ice Climbers to prevent the slow from Stone Gauntlets.
Use Final Embrace instead of Close Quarters. As a result, cube Reilena's Shadowhook, get Physical Damage and replace Stand Alone with Overwhelming Essence.
Reroll Area Damage to Cooldown Reduction as we do not need to make huge pulls.
Swap Bane of the Stricken for Gogok of Swiftness since we are fighting hordes of enemies.
Use Strongarm Bracers with Knockback on Hit to proc them. The buff procs even if monsters are immune.
Frozen Lands has no effect so use Shallow Graves instead.
Gameplay
Click Speed Pylon instantly to boost your mobility and dodge Green Meteors.
Around Wave 90, click Channeling Pylon and Power Pylon.
After Wave 100, use Conduit Pylon.
At Wave 122, stop attacking and run to the corner to let the timer run out.
Use Land of the Dead as much as possible and nuke everything around you with Corpse Explosion. Try to make use of the leftover corpses to clean up more while waiting for the cooldown to come back, rinse and repeat.
Video Guide
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.
For instance in a typical group setup using Gogok of Swiftness and no party buffs or Attack Speed rolls on items with 1.63 Attack Speed, you have a 60 ÷ 1.63 = 37 frames Breakpoint on Corpse Explosion, meaning you can cast 240 ÷ 37 = 6.47Corpse Explosion during the 4 second window of your Convention of Elements cycle. 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, so it would be worth to start casting around half a second before CoE already. For the purpose of spawning an Oculus Ring, doing it even earlier is fine as long as you don't waste more than 3 casts before your Poison cycle.
Using Pain Enhancer, reaching much higher APS values is easy in a good rift with high monster density. Reaching 2.61 Attack Speed (28 stacks) 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 (42 stacks) 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
Give 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.
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. Blood Is Power counter is reset when the skill has fully cooled down or when 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
Put together the core items and level up the Legacy of Dreams gem.
Activate your Poison skills in order, stun with Bone Armor Dislocation on your Poison Convention of Elements cycle to activate Krysbin's Sentence and use Land of the Dead to cast Corpse Explosion to flatten enemies.
Gather large groups of enemies and use Area Damage to climb the Leaderboards.
Enjoy killing enemies with the corpses of their fallen comrades!
Town Is Lava!
Credits
Written by Raxxanterax with special help from Chewingnom. Updated by wudijo & Chewingnom.