Masquerade Bone Spear 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. Gather the full Masquerade of the Burning Carnival 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.

3. Gamble from Kadala in this order:

1. The full Masquerade of the Burning Carnival set
2. Gelmindor's Marrow Guards
3. Goldwrap and Dayntee's Binding
4. Any Legendary Phylactery, preferably Lost Time
5. Steuart's Greaves
6. Nemesis Bracers
7. Convention of Elements and Krysbin's Sentence

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

1. 2-Handed Scythes to get Maltorius' Petrified Spike and Reilena's Shadowhook
2. 1-Handed Scythes to get Scythe of the Cycle
3. Rings to get Convention of Elements and Krysbin's Sentence
4. Amulets to get Haunted Visions and Squirt's Necklace
   

5. Do Bounties to acquire several important items for this build:

• Act 1: Ring of Royal Grandeur
• Act 2: 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, Aughild's Authority, Guardian's Jeopardy, Sage's Journey and Cain's Destiny
  

6. There is one final required piece that is difficult to acquire, Haunted Visions. With amulets being so expensive to gamble and craft, we'll have to search for it to drop in Nephalem and Greater Rifts. While you can craft it via Upgrade Rare in the Cube, the best way to acquire one is to party up with other Necromancers and kindly ask them to drop any duplicates they find.

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:

• Scythe of the Cycle
• Krysbin's Sentence
• Convention of Elements

• Zei's Stone of Vengeance provides up to 80% increased damage when we are 40 yards away from enemies (which is about half a screen away).
• Bane of the Trapped gives 60% increased damage to slowed enemies.
• Bane of the Stricken increases each attack made on the same enemy. This is used for killing Rift Guardians in solo pushes.
• Esoteric Alteration provides 60% non-physical damage reduction if you're taking too much damage.
• Bane of the Powerful is useful for 15% bonus against elites and 20% overall damage increase along with some damage reduction when either Bane of the Stricken or Esoteric Alteration are unnecessary.
• Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard is used in Squirt's Necklace setups in combination with Draw Life for a massive shield.

• Bone Spear is our main source of damage in this build and gains massive buffs from our Masquerade of the Burning Carnival (6) Bonus, Simulacrum, Maltorius' Petrified Spike and Gelmindor's Marrow Guards.
• Simulacrum can use any rune since we have all of them from our Masquerade of the Burning Carnival (2) Bonus. From this we gain Cursed Form, Blood Debt, Blood and Bone, Reservoir and Self Sacrifice.
• Grim Scythe Frost Scythe is our essence generator and increases our Attack Speed, which greatly helps out with Bane of the Stricken on the Rift Guardian and allows us to cast more Bone Spears in our Poison Convention of Elements cycle.
• Bone Armor Dislocation provides 30% damage reduction and activates our Scythe of the Cycle and Krysbin's Sentence on our Poison Convention of Elements cycle.
• Blood Rush Metabolism is used for mobility as well as its defensive buff.
• Your last skill is a curse. Since Simulacrum Cursed Form always gives you the base effect of all of them, you can choose which one to give a special effect to. The best option here is typically Decrepify with the following runes: Wither for the Aughild's Authority version, Enfeeblement for the Briggs' Wrath version and Borrowed Time for Captain Crimson's Trimmings. In groups, you generally want to go with Frailty Early Grave unless you are running Captain Crimson's Trimmings.

• Bone Prison gives you extra stuns to proc Krysbin's Sentence.
• Serration synergizes with Zei's Stone of Vengeance to give us even more ranged damage.
• Stand Alone doubles our Armor, which is very beneficial for Intelligence classes.
• Spreading Malediction is another great DPS passive that can be used especially in groups when we apply curses to big groups of enemies. Alternatively, Overwhelming Essence can be chosen to synergize with Reilena's Shadowhook for higher single target damage.
• Final Service allows us to cheat death and is a good substitution for Serration when playing solo.

¹ Add a bit of Vitality if you feel too squishy (a total of 750,000 Life is recommended).

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!

Optimal Path

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 mainstat (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. Followers share 20% of their Experience, Magic and Gold Find stats with you.
4. Legendary gems do not work on followers, except Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard.
5. 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.
6. Cooldown Reduction does not work for any follower skill except the Templar’s Heal.
7. Followers never deal significant damage; you’re on your own to clear the content.
8. Our Follower also benefits from our War Cry that is further increased by Horde of the Ninety Savages (2) Bonus for decent survivability even without damage immunity follower items

Select Follower

The first thing to do is cast your Simulacrum. They will last forever (unless you die) and cannot take damage. The entire concept of this build revolves around three things:

1. Stay mobile and try to group up as many enemies as possible before your Poison cycle on your Convention of Elements is ready. Try to gather them up in a thing line so you can maximize the amount of targets hit.
2. Position yourself and your Simulacrum to damage as many enemies as possible in a straight line. Keep in mind that when you cast Bone Spear or Grim Scythe your Simulacrums will mimic that attack, and unlike yourself they must always complete the entire animation. Due to this your Simulacrums can sometimes fail to follow you after you teleport with Blood Rush and start attacking immediately. To fix that you just need to spend half a second doing nothing and then your Simulacrums will catch up or teleport to you.
3. Cast Bone Armor right at the start of your Poison cycle to maximize your damage bonus from Krysbin's Sentence. Then unleash a barrage of Bone Spears to tear down your enemies! To maximize your DPS, you can run/stutter-step/teleport away right as you cast your stun to increase the damage bonuses from Zei's Stone of Vengeance and Serration.

When you are not dealing damage, use Bone Spear Blighted Marrow to attract enemies from far away, and use Blood Rush for mobility.

This build already holds up well defensively. Flawless Royal Topaz are often used in softcore, changing these out to Flawless Royal Amethyst will provide a noticeable toughness boost. Another great way to get more defensive without changing the core build is to put more Paragon points into Vitality. Despite being relatively tanky we can find other ways to increase our defenses. Using the legendary gem Esoteric Alteration would be highly recommended for hardcore play.

Important: When fighting Dune Dervishes (spinners) or Sand Dwellers you can easily oneshot and kill yourself from your own projectiles. There is absolutely no way to survive an incoming reflected hit from your own attacks when these monster types use their abilities, so always keep an eye out for them. The first type can spawn as minions from Nemesis Bracers, so you will encounter them very frequently.

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, the Simulacrums will despawn. If that happens, you will die immediately after, because you have less than 1% health and also lose 83% damage reduction. This can sometimes make it seem like your Self Sacrifice doesn't work.
• Simulacrums will move with you after you've traveled a short distance.
• If you're using Blood Rush the sims will follow you to your location.
• Simulacrum cast their Bone Spear in the direction of your mouse cursor, so positioning is critical!
• When Simulacrums mimic one of your attacks, they must always complete the entire animation before they can run after you or teleport on you. If you keep constantly casting Bone Spear while stutter stepping and teleporting forward, your Simulacrums may stay far behind!

• This pixelpull completely ignores monster hitboxes and can also pulls Elites.
• Will pixel the monsters together where we cast Frailty. It's critical we choose the right place and time to cast this so we're ready to deal maximum damage.
• Pixelpulling allows for crazy Area Damage scaling.
• Enemies will lose all curses if they leave combat (even with Eternal Torment equipped). This will always happen if you go to town, and depending on monster type and rarity can also happen if you go to a different floor or just move far enough away (2-3 screens for most enemies). This can be used to repixel the mobs without waiting 30 seconds for the curse to time out.

• Gives you up to 50% Movement Speed above the 25% Movement Speed cap from Paragon and Gear.
• Some Necromancer builds do not require a specific Off-Hand and can use this one instead of a random one.
• If your build has no source of Cold damage, you can give a Weapon with a Cold damage roll to your follower which will then proc it for you.

• This rune increases Bone Spear damage by 15% for each target hit. The bonus is additive with itself and multiplicative with all other damage bonuses.
• The increased damage is calculated for each enemy separately, meaning that the furthest away from you enemies take the most damage.

• Draw Life increases your Life Per Second (LPS) by 10% for each enemy within 20 yards.
• This bonus is capped to 50 enemies for a total of 500% increased LPS.
• This bonus stacks additively with Bone Armor Thy Flesh Sustained which can provide another 100% LPS.
• Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard gives you a shield equal to double your LPS.
• The LPS is snapshotted at the moment your shield is refreshed.
• The shield is only refreshed if you haven't taken any hits in the last 4 second. Absorbing hits with a shield (even a different shield, say from Mantra of Healing) still counts as taking a hit. This makes it quite tricky to maximize the shielding with Draw Life passive, because you need to dodge all attacks while still staying close to enemies.