While the Bones of Rathma set gave the name to the famous 'Rat Runs' (and the 'Rat Necro') that have been dominating the XP META almost entirely since the introduction of the class in Season 11, it was reworked for Army of the Dead in Season 23.
The build revolves around summoning a bunch of minions that reset your Army of the Dead cooldown very quickly through the Bones of Rathma (2) Bonus, which you use to mow down enemies. Instead of the 120 seconds cooldown this ability usually has, you are able to cast it once every few seconds to keep up a near continuous stream of damage.
This build is relatively slow, extremely Cooldown-hungry and has little toughness, all of which makes it difficult to play. On the other hand it rewards you with massive damage and works as a formidable Rift Guardian Killer (RGK). This role was further enhanced by the Season 27 update that reworked Funerary Pick, which consolidated the many different variants into pretty straightforward, similar playstyles around Siphon Blood. The core guide describes the solo push variant but you can find all of the variants further below.
Flavorful ✔ Impactful nuke ✔ An army of minions ✔ Good AoE & single target ✔
❌ Very squishy ❌ Pet dependent ❌ Lack of mobility ❌ Cooldown dependent
Core Setup
Core Item Build
Items
The Bones of Rathma set adds a total of 29,750% damage bonus to Army of the Dead when you have 17 minions active. 7 come from Command Skeletons and 10 from Revive. Theoretically this can be boosted to 31,500% with Command Golem, although that's impractical. Skeletal Mages don't work for this set bonus.
Jesseth Arms gives you a massive 400% damage bonus that synergizes well with the Command Skeletons you're already using.
Fate's Vow is the core Army of the Dead item, giving a 250% additive damage bonus to that skill and enabling the Unconventional Warfare rune for all setups, improving single target damage.
Bonds of C'Lena give another 100% damage increase and allow Army of the Dead to deal 50% extra damage to a single target.
Funerary Pick gives us a 200% bonus multiplier with Siphon Blood Power Shift and another 300% or 600% multiplicative bonus against 1-3 targets.
Krysbin's Sentence is a staple in every Necromancer build, adding either 100% when the enemy is slowed or 300% damage when stunned (activated by Bone Armor Dislocation).
Captain Crimson's Trimmings give more Cooldown Reduction, toughness and provide extra damage. Ring of Royal Grandeur is required to make the two sets work together, but these are replaced by more weapons in the cube during the Archives season.
Squirt's Necklace provides up to 100% damage bonus if you haven't taken damage recently.
Convention of Elements is a great DPS boost, giving up to 200% damage bonus when abilities are timed correctly (in some variants).
Season 31 Forbidden Archives
For the duration of Season 31, the slots in Kanai’s Cube that allow you to equip three additional Legendary Powers will not be restricted to their usual categories. While normally a player can equip one power each from the Weapon, Armor, and Jewelry categories, Season 31 players can mix and match between all three! This might allow you to run two Weapon powers with one Armor power. Or perhaps you might choose to run three Amulet powers instead.
This build benefits greatly from this Season Theme because because Necromancers have access to multiple powerful weapon options such as Funerary Pick, Reilena's Shadowhook and Trag'Oul's Corroded Fang, making the Necromancer incredibly powerful.
Global Stat Priorities
Our offensive priorities are: Cooldown Reduction > Physical Damage > Critical Hit Chance/Critical Hit Damage > Area Damage > Intelligence > Attack Speed. Attack Speed doesn't have a high priority as it doesn't increase the damage output of Army of the Dead, but it does give faster swings to Command Skeletons, allowing you to reset the cooldown faster. Make sure to reach at least 1.60 Attacks per Second (usually 1-2 rolls, which naturally come on Jesseth Skullscythe and Krysbin's Sentence).
Defensively you want to stack Vitality > Life % > Life per Hit > Armor > Elite Damage Reduction > All Resistance. Getting at least two Crowd Control Resistance rolls really helps when fighting Frozen, Nightmarish or Jailer elites, so keep an eye out for them.
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 Bones of Rathma 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.
Scythes to get Jesseth Skullscythe, Trag'Oul's Corroded Fang and Funerary Pick
Two-Handed Scythes to get Reilena's Shadowhook
Two-Handed Axes to get Messerschmidt's Reaver
Amulets to get Squirt's Necklace and The Flavor of Time
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 Captain Crimson's Trimmings, Sage's Journey and Cain's Destiny (for your follower)
6. 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:
For breaking walls to pull enemies and increase DPS
Gems
Bane of the Trapped gives 60% increased damage against slowed and crowd-controlled enemies.
Esoteric Alteration gives a massive amount of damage reduction against non-physical hits, which this build dearly needs.
The third gem changes depending on the setup:
Zei's Stone of Vengeance adds a lot of damage in GRs.
Boon of the Hoarder for the extra Gold and Movement Speed in T16.
Bane of the Powerful can be used in speedfarming.
Bane of the Stricken in groups to kill the boss.
Skills
Army of the Dead Death Valley is our main source of damage. It has a base cooldown of 120 seconds and is reduced by 0.5 seconds every time one of your permanent minions hits and enemy. With both Command Skeletons and 10 Revives out and enough Cooldown Reduction, you are able to every seconds. Additionally, it has a powerful pulling effect to stack up enemies for Area Damage while protecting us from their attacks.
Command Skeletons adds 7 out of 17 required minions for the Bones of Rathma set and activates the Jesseth Arms bonus. The Frenzy rune allows faster cooldown resets.
Revive grant another 10 minions for the Bones of Rathma bonus and a bit of damage reduction.
Siphon Blood Power Shift enables the bonuses from Funerary Pick and heals us.
Decripify Borrowed Time adds extra damage and cooldown reduction. Alternatively, Blood Rush Potency can be used for mobility and provides valuable toughness (in that case replace Spreading Malediction with Rigor Mortis).
Bone Armor Dislocation gives damage reduction and activates the double bonus from Krysbin's Sentence to improve your nuke.
Passives
Grisly Tribute is great for healing and survivability. You have lots of minions that passively heal you with this.
Final Service is a great tool for better survivability.
Spreading Malediction adds extra damage whenever we curse enemies.
Rigor Mortis is useful to apply a slow debuff for Krysbin's Sentence.
Rathma's Shield sometimes allows us to dive in without worry while protecting Squirt's Necklace.
Swift Harvesting is used in for RGK variants to stack Bane of the Stricken faster.
Fueled by Death, Dark Reaping and Blood is Power make a great combo for farming T16.
Paragon Points
Core
Offensive
Defensive
Utility
1. Movement Speed
1. Cooldown Reduction
1. Armor
1. Area Damage
2. Maximum Essence
2. Attack Speed
2. Life %
2. Life per Hit
3. Vitality1
3. Critical Hit Damage
3. All Resistance
3. Resource Cost Reduction
4. Intelligence
4. Critical Hit Chance
4. Life Regeneration
4. Pickup Radius
1 Add Vitality if you feel too squishy (a total of 800-1000k 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, we don't need Blood Rush to avoid getting stuck, allowing us to run with a curse like Decrepify instead.
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.
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.
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
Speed GR 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. 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.
Speed GR Enchantress
For speed Greater Rifts 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 speed 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. 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 more progression from Elites.
Oculus Ring: For 85% increased damage.
Ice Climbers: To make your follower immune to Freeze and Immobilize effects.
Hellfire Ring, Leoric's Crown and Cain's Destiny: For more Experience and Attack Speed.
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. 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.
Gloves of Worship: For 10 Minute Shrine Buffs.
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
At the start of a run, carefully approach the first pack of enemies and cast Bone Armor to get the damage reduction buff and stack your Bones of Rathma(4) Bonus.
Keep up Command Skeletons at all times, preferably on big targets like elites. Typically they will auto target after you have activated them once as long as there are nearby enemies. Cast it again when you run out of enemies to re-activate the 400% damage bonus.
If you engage elites right at the beginning of a run, skip them and look for weak enemies. Without your Revive minions active you do way less damage than usual. Gather 10 enemies and use their corpses to summon minions. Alternatively, you can also open the GR, get back out and teleport to an Adventure Mode zone to get your Revives up quickly. The best minions to revive are small, fast melee monsters such as Accursed or Vile Swarms from Act 2 Desolate Sands.
Use Army of the Dead to mow down your enemies. Before (to stack up Power Shift) and right after you cast it, channel Siphon Blood on the biggest targets in the pull. If you have Convention of Elements, use the Physical cycle to improve your damage whenever possible. Try to spawn Oculus Rings by finishing off a low HP target before your main nuke.
Activate Bone Armor Dislocation after casting Army of the Dead to apply a stun to all surrounding enemies that boosts your from Krysbin's Sentence.
Use Blood Rush to move between fights and into Oculus Rings. In dangerous fights, use it often for Potency uptime.
Hardcore
This build is not very well suited for Hardcore and it's very difficult to stack additional toughness aside from Paragons without making huge concessions in DPS. Make sure to take the Final Service passive and stack extra Vitality to take some hits reliably without proccing.
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 RGK
Army of the Dead T16 Rifts
Concept This setup uses Dead Storm to automatically deal damage around you after casting it. The idea is to run very fast keeping it up all the time to vaporize everything in your path. To achieve this, Messerschmidt's Reaver is included because we have more than enough damage. Stack up extra Pickup Radius where possible to increase the radius of Briggs' Wrath with Aura of Frailty.
Gameplay Summon all your minions, keep up Command Skeletons at all times and use Army of the Dead Dead Storm to kill all enemies around you. Move quickly from pull to pull to ensure smooth cooldown resets.
Setups If you are overkilling everything easily and feel comfortable without the extra Cooldown Reduction, replace Captain Crimson's Trimmings with Goldwrap and Steuart's Greaves for invincibility and more speed.
In groups, run the same setup but cube Nemesis Bracers instead of the Boots and wear Avarice Band instead of Briggs' Wrath. Without the Ring you can also replace Frailty with Devour Devouring Aura combined with Fueled by Death for more speed.
Army of the Dead GR Solo Speeds
Concept This variation is very close to the solo push setup described in the main sections of the guide. The main difference is that we prioritize Area Damage less and Cooldown Reduction more and try to play around Squirt's Necklace as much as possible. Farm GR tiers that you can complete in around 3 minutes and where the Rift Guardian dies in 1-2 casts.
Gameplay Activate Bone Armor right at the start and carefully kill the first 10 enemies for Revive. Keep up Jesseth Arms at all times. Stack up Power Shift and target the biggest enemies in a pull after you released Army of the Dead.
Stay at a safe distance and let your minions tank for you. Right before you pull enemies together with Death Valley, move in for Bone Armor Dislocation to boost your Krysbin's Sentence effect as you start your nuke.
Setups If you cannot survive at all, replace Zei's Stone of Vengeance with Gogok of Swiftness, Bane of the Powerful or Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard.
At low Paragon (1500 or less) you can consider replacing Captain Crimson's Trimmings with Guardian's Jeopardy. This gives you roughly similar damage, less recovery but more raw toughness to survive oneshots. In that case, put an even bigger focus on Cooldown Reduction rolls on your items to make up for the loss from Crimson.
Army of the Dead GR Solo Push
Concept This is the setup described in the main sections of the guide. We stack large amounts of Cooldown Reduction and Area Damage to nuke as often as possible. For more information on how to optimize your push attempts, check the Revive entry in the mechanics section further below.
Gameplay Activate Bone Armor right at the start and carefully kill the first 10 enemies for Revive. Alternatively, you can also open the GR, get back out and teleport to an Adventure Mode zone to get your Revives up quickly. The best minions to revive are small, fast melee monsters such as Accursed or Vile Swarms from Act 2 Desolate Sands.
Keep up Jesseth Arms at all times. Stack up Power Shift and target the biggest targets in a pull after you released Army of the Dead. Try to spawn Oculus Rings right before Physical to boost your damage.
Stay at a safe distance from the enemies and let your minions tank for you. Right before you pull enemies together with Death Valley, move in for Bone Armor Dislocation to boost your Krysbin's Sentence effect as you start your nuke.
Try to use Rathma's Shield to your advantage whenever it's ready. You can rush in and do a way more powerful nuke while keeping up Squirt's Necklace.
Setups For a more mobile version, replace Decrepify and Spreading Malediction with Blood Rush Potency and Overwhelming Essence.
If you cannot survive at all, replace Zei's Stone of Vengeance with Gogok of Swiftness or Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard.
Army of the Dead RGK
Concept This setup works similar to the solo push version, but you don't contribute much until the boss spawns. Instead, you assist the team by trying to pull enemies from all directions and using Frailty Early Grave instead of Bone Armor. As a Rift Guardian Killer we run without Area Damage.
Gameplay Wait for your team to defeat the first enemies, then summon your Revives. Help them out as much as you can by aggroing monsters from around the area and applying your Curse on everything.
When it's your time to DPS, activate Jesseth Arms with Command Skeletons. Stack up Power Shift and target the biggest targets in a pull after you released Army of the Dead. Coordinate with your team so that they can apply a stun for your Krysbin's Sentence. On bosses, try to dodge incoming attacks to keep up Squirt's Necklace.
Setups If you cannot survive at all, stay closer to your team to better profit from their party buffs until the boss spawns. If toughness is a problem for the whole party, replace Frailty with Decrepify Wither.
At low Paragon (1500 or less) you can consider replacing Captain Crimson's Trimmings with Guardian's Jeopardy. This gives you roughly similar damage, less recovery but more raw toughness to survive oneshots. In that case, put an even bigger focus on Cooldown Reduction rolls on your items to make up for the loss from Crimson.
Video Guide
Mechanics
Fate's Vow
The 250% damage bonus from Fate's Vow is an additive bonus rather than a separate damage multiplier to Army of the Dead. This means most personal or group buffs (such as Spreading Malediction) have a rather small effect on this skill.
With another rune on your skillbar and Fate's Vow equipped, you will receive both effects at the same time. The Unconventional Warfare effect lasts 4 seconds, so casting your main nuke at the start of your Convention of Elements cycle is crucial to getting the most out of it.
Unconventional Warfare will deal the same elemental damage type as the chosen rune.
Unconventional Warfare + Blighted Grasp
Army of the Dead
The amount of hits done by this skill depends on the chosen rune. Unconventional Warfare's 50,000% weapon damage is the total of all hitscombined, meaning it's especially strong on single target and very weak in AoE pulls. All other runes deal their total damage to all enemies in the area.
The total amount of hits and damage done per rune is:
As you spend life from your skills (from Blood Rush and Dead Storm casts) or take damage from enemies, you will stack up a hidden counter towards 100% life spent. After you reach the threshold, a skill's cooldown will be cut by 20% flat of the total (after Cooldown Reduction).
This counter is reset when the skill has fully cooled down or you die.
Each skill is counted separately.
Spending life on skills doesn't scale with damage reduction, so you will still lose life in the invincible variations of the build.
Revive
Revive minions greatly vary in their quality when it comes to resetting the cooldown of Army of the Dead through Bones of Rathma(2) Bonus.
Fast, small and melee-based monsters are generally preferable, for example Accursed or Vile Swarms. These monsters get to attack more often for the resets.
Revive minions vanish when you open a new Greater Rift. However, it's possible to open a GR, then step outside and gather minions from anywhere in Adventure Mode and return. This allows to greatly speed up the start of a push attempt because without the 10 extra minions you deal ~60% less damage than normal until you produce some corpses.
For optimal results, it's best to prepare a pull of small monsters e.g. in Desolate Sands before you open/close GRs to find a suitable push attempt. Like this you don't have to waste time running around to gather monsters while the clock is ticking and can jump back in right away.
Summary
Put together the core items and acquire the full Bones of Rathma set.
Keep Jesseth Arms up at all times using Command Skeletons.
Tread carefully at the start of a run when you don't have Bone Armor and the damage reduction from the 4-piece bonus.
Use Army of the Dead to mow down enemies during the Physical Convention of Elements cycle.
Summon 10 Revive minions as soon as possible when you first produce corpses.
Use the power of Funerary Pick for more damage and an even bigger boost on single targets.
The Bones of Rathma has a unique playstyle and can be a great change of pace from other builds if you overcome it's main weakness of being very squishy. Just don't get hit, good luck!