LoD Poison Scythe Necromancer Guide

1. Do the Challenge Rift for the materials to cube Legendary 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.

3. Gamble from Kadala in this order:

1. Leger's Disdain
2. Depth Diggers
3. Dayntee's Binding, Goldwrap and Krelm's Buff Belt
4. Aquila Cuirass
5. Razeth's Volition and Homing Pads
6. Krysbin's Sentence, Unity, Rechel's Ring of Larceny and Convention of Elements
7. Stone Gauntlets and St. Archew's Gage
8. Ice Climbers and Steuart's Greaves
9. Nemesis Bracers, Warzechian Armguards, Krelm's Buff Bracers and Ancient Parthan Defenders
10. Andariel's Visage

4. Craft using Recipe 3 in Kanai's Cube in this order:

1. Two-Handed Scythes to get Nayr's Black Death
2. Scythes to get Trag'Oul's Corroded Fang
3. Amulets to get Haunted Visions and The Flavor of Time
4. 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: Illusory Boots and Gloves of Worship
• Act 3: Avarice Band
• Act 4: Can drop any bounty item from any act
• Bounty Turn In: Recipes for Captain Crimson's Trimmings, Cain's Destiny and Sage's Journey (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
• Leger's Disdain

• Legacy of Dreams is the Legacy of Nightmares Set in a gem, which frees up two ring slots at the cost of a legendary gem. Due to the rings available to us this is a great trade-off to take.
• Simplicity's Strength provides 100% increased damage and 4% life steal on our primary attacks (Grim Scythe), making it mandatory for all variants of the build.
• Other popular choices are Bane of the Trapped as a Trash Killer for 60% increased damage, Boon of the Hoarder for torment farming and Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard for a shield in combination with Squirt's Necklace for double damage, increased toughness and insane healing.

• Grim Scythe Cursed Scythe is our main damage dealing ability that applies Curses for our Trag'Oul's Corroded Fang and Dayntee's Binding bonuses.
• Simulacrum Blood and Bone summons 2 Simulacrums that duplicate our swings thanks to Haunted Visions.
• Bone Armor Dislocation provides 30% damage reduction and activates our Krysbin's Sentence on our Poison Convention of Elements cycle.
• The last 3 skill slots vary from version to version. For more damage you'll want more Poison skills to activate Nayr's Black Death, like Bone Spear Blighted Marrow and Death Nova Blight.
• Blood Rush Potency can be taken for mobility and increased armor.
• Frailty Early Grave can help kill monsters easier and synergizes with Conduit Pylon.

• Spreading Malediction gives 1% additive damage for every cursed enemy.
• Eternal Torment is useful to keep up the curses indefinitely.
• Swift Harvesting provides a nice attack speed boost to Grim Scythe.
• Stand Alone gives 100% additive armor with the 250% from Stone Gauntlets and the 25% from Paragon points.
• Final Service allows us to cheat death.
• For speed content you can drop Final Service for Fueled by Death.

¹ Add a bit of Vitality if you feel too squishy (a total of 750,000 Life is recommended).
² You do not need Maximum Essence because Simulacrums ignores Essence generated for Leger's Disdain.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. Followers share 20% of their Experience, Magic and Gold Find stats with you.
5. Legendary gems do not work on followers, except Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard.
6. With Enforcer equipped on the player it's much easier to keep followers alive even without an immortality relic. The 90% damage reduction counts for them, too.
7. Cooldown Reduction does not work for any follower skill except the Templar’s Heal.
8. Followers never deal significant damage; you’re on your own to clear the content.

Select Follower

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 Poison Convention of Elements cycle arrives. Finally and most importantly, finish with Bone Armor Dislocation at the start of Poison to activate your Krysbin's Sentence before using Grim Scythe.

When you are not dealing damage, use Bone Spear Blighted Marrow to attract enemies from far away, and use Blood Rush Potency for mobility. When dealing damage in groups, position your Simulacrum in the center of the Barbarian's Ground Stomp for maximum damage. Finally, your Simulacrum can die from things like grotesque explosions, so try to position them away from these attacks to avoid re-summoning them.

This build already takes nearly every major damage reduction item available to it. Make sure to use Blood Rush to get out of bad situation, and have Crowd Control Reduction rolled on your jewelry. You can also put more Paragon points into Vitality.

Check out our dedicated Hardcore Survival Guide to learn more about how to succeed in this game mode!

• Haunted Visions will make this skill drain 1% of your maximum life every second. If you are unable to pay this cost (i.e. you are below 1% HP when the cost is applied), the Simulacrums will despawn. In case you are running Final Service, this means you will very rarely have the event where your cheat death did not proc but you lost your Simulacrum and it will be on cooldown.
• Simulacrums will cast your Secondary Skills and Grim Scythe when you do.
• Simulacrums positioning is critical for this build! They move close to you whenever you are not casting an ability they can cast and warp to you if you are moving too far.
• Simulacrums can proc area Damage but do not benefit from Pet Damage.
• In combination with Leger's Disdain, Simulacrums do not care about your Essence generated, always getting the full benefit of the 12 Essence per enemy hit for the stacking 80% separate damage multiplier.
• Extra curses can be applied from their Cursed Scythe, helping you to get all three of them on all targets.
• When hitting enemies affected by Leech, your Simulacrums will also heal you. This provides insane recovery with some density.
• Your Simulacrums scale with your character's toughness and can die from monster damage when it's too low. Especially large bursts of damage (e.g. Grotesque explosions) can rip them apart easily even when you could survive that damage yourself, so be mindful about such situations as the cooldown to resummon them is very long.

• Simulacrum ignore how much current and maximum Essence you have. This is fantastic news because they will always get the full benefit of Leger's Disdain. That's why it's better to simply swing again at full essence (having 2 Simulacrums attacking at full power) than to waste time trying to dump essence to increase your own damage.
• All three swings happen at the same time and deal full damage even if one swing is enough to kill some of the monsters.

• Each stack of this item has its own duration (15 seconds).
• As this is just slightly longer than the Necromancer's Convention of Elements rotation of 12 seconds, you want to make sure to activate all of your Poison skills at least once every cycle.
• The stacks add up as one combined multiplier (100% per Poison skill used).