Pestilence Corpse Lance 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 Pestilence Master's Shroud 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 Pestilence Master's Shroud set
2. Corpsewhisper Pauldrons
3. Jesseth Skullshield
4. Goldwrap and Dayntee's Binding
5. Krysbin's Sentence, Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac and Convention of Elements
6. Nemesis Bracers, Strongarm Bracers and Warzechian Armguards

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

1. Scythes to get Jesseth Skullscythe
2. 2-Handed Axes to get Messerschmidt's Reaver
3. 2-Handed Scythes to get Reilena's Shadowhook
4. Amulets to get Squirt's Necklace
5. Make a level 1 Demon Hunter and upgrade Swords to get In-Geom
6. 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
• Act 3: Avarice Band
• Act 4: Can drop any bounty item from any act
• Bounty Turn In: Recipes for Captain Crimson's Trimmings, Sage's Journey and Cain's Destiny

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. It's better to spend your materials improving your set pieces, getting ancient weapon etc.

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:

• Jesseth Skullscythe
• Krysbin's Sentence
• Convention of Elements

• Bane of the Trapped provides 60% increased damage and is used in most damage-dealing builds in Diablo 3.
• Zei's Stone of Vengeance provides up to 80% increased damage for every 10 yards we are away from the monsters, up to a 50 yard maximum (about half a screen away).
• Gogok of Swiftness gives us as 15% Cooldown Reduction and Attack Speed to reach the 2.0 breakpoint for Corpse Lance.
• Bane of the Stricken provides up to 2.3% increased damage on successive attacks to the same monster. This is needed to kill Rift Guardians in the RGK setup.
• Boon of the Hoarder can be taken in place of Gogok of Swiftness for increased movement speed in T16 content.
• Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard gives us a shield to protect our Squirt's Necklace buff.

• Corpse Lance Brittle Touch is our main source of damage in this build and gains massive buffs from Pestilence (6) piece, Simulacrum, Corpsewhisper Pauldrons, The Johnstone and Reilena's Shadowhook.
• Devour Voracious is a fundamental skill used in the Pestilence build as it allows us to shoot our Corpse Lance every time a corpse is consumed. This synergizes with Corpsewhisper Pauldrons for the 20 stack damage boost and Land of the Dead Frozen Lands and gives extra damage reduction from Captain Crimson's Trimmings.
• Simulacrum Reservoir is used in conjunction with Reilena's Shadowhook to double our Maximum Essence, giving a significant damage buff.
• Command Skeletons Dark Mending is another essential skill for this build as it taps into the 400% damage buff provided by Jesseth Arms. Make sure your skeletons are commanded onto an enemy to get the buff!
• Land of the Dead Frozen Lands gives us the ability to use our Corpse Skills infinitely for 10 seconds after casting it. It also freezes all the enemies around you making them unable to attack during that time. This skill is the backbone of our build which is why Cooldown Reduction is so vital to this build.
• Blood Rush is used for mobility. Three runes are useful depending on the content you're running: Potency for extra toughness, Molting for extra corpses and Metabolism for extra mobility.

• Blood Is Power is helpful for it's Cooldown Reduction since we can spend our life using Blood Rush and Simulacrum Reservoir.
• Final Service allows us to cheat death which is very important on a build where timing is everything. Dying right when you activate Land of the Dead can be very hard to recover from so having a safety net is recommended for this build.
• Overwhelming Essence feeds us 40 more essence for our Reilena's Shadowhook giving us a significant damage increase.
• Stand Alone doubles our armor which we are in need of as an intelligence class.
• Swift Harvesting increases the Attack Speed of Grim Scythe so we can stack Bane of the Stricken faster.
• Eternal Torment makes our curses last forever.
• Spreading Malediction gives us 1% extra damage for every enemy cursed.
• Fueled By Death makes us run faster after we've consumed a corpse.

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 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

The most important thing to remember is that we can only do damage when we have our Land of the Dead going, and that this window lasts for 10 seconds at a time. So it's important to use it wisely in conjunction with your Convention of Elements Cold cycle and gather as many elites as possible before you unleash.

1. Hunt for elites and gather enemies around them.
2. Keep up Corpsewhisper Pauldrons and Gogok of Elements the best you can while dodging all incoming attacks. You spawn corpses with Blood Rush Molting for this purpose.
3. Use Command Skeletons on a target to gain the damage buff from Jesseth Arms.
4. Between mid-Physical to mid-Poison cycle of Convention of Elements, cast Simulacrum and Land of the Dead.
5. Begin to spam Devour as fast as possible, kill a small target first to spawn an Oculus Ring then jump in and target Elites with your Corpse Lance skill.
6. Once your Land of the Dead is over go find as many elites as you can before the next cycle is ready!

Certain Elite packs can be troublesome for this build such Elites with Illusionist and Shielding or blue packs with 5 mobs. Generally try to skip packs like this and focus on the Elites that can be blasted away quickly!

If you keep up Gogok of Swiftness well and have perfect Cooldown Reduction rolls, you will be able to alternate damage rotations with either 2 and then 3 cycles of Convention of Elements.

This build is not the most friendly Hardcore build because being caught with Land of the Dead down can get you into trouble fast. It can still be a great speed farming build as long as you have the proper Cooldown and position yourself well. A good way to get more defense without changing the core build is to put more Paragon points into Vitality and use Esoteric Alteration in place of Zei's Stone of Vengeance.

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

• Reilena's Shadowhook provides a very significant damage increase based off our Maximum Essence. Make sure your weapon and off hand both have Maximum Essence as secondary rolls and that you're using Simulacrum Reservoir and Overwhelming Essence to get it even higher.

• Attack Speed only affects your manual manual lances, at 6 frames you cast 100, at 5 frames you cast 120 (+20%) and at 4 frames you cast 150 (another +25%) during Land of the Dead. But you have 200 lances from Devour so your total damage is only increased by 6.67% on 2.0 APS and by 16,67% on 2.4 APS.

• Consumes 20 corpses a second, giving us 200 uses of Corpse Lance during Land of the Dead.

• The bonus is dynamic and Corpse Lance has a lengthy travel time, meaning by the time the first lance hits you'll already have 13+ stacks from Devour + Corpse Lance spam.