Support zNecromancer 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 support build, meaning we deal zero damage and need to farm the pieces/materials with a different build/character. We'll use BloodShards and Crafting Materials to acquire the remaining pieces outlined in the steps below.

3. Gamble from Kadala in this order:

1. Pestilence Defense and Pestilence Gloves
2. Steuart's Greaves
3. Nemesis Bracers and Strongarm Bracers
4. Leoric's Crown
5. Dayntee's Binding
6. Aquila Cuirass
7. Oculus Ring, Briggs' Wrath and Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac
8. Stormshield

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

1. Create a level 1 Demon Hunter and upgrade Swords to get In-Geom
2. Two-Handed Axes to get Messerschmidt's Reaver
3. Amulets to get Rondal's Locket
4. Rings to get Convention of Elements and Krysbin's Sentence
5. 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: Illusory Boots
• Act 4: Can drop any bounty item from any act
• Bounty Turn In: Recipes for Captain Crimson's Trimmings

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:

• Oculus Ring
• Steuart's Greaves
• Rondal's Locket

• Iceblink makes the enemies 10% more likely to be critically hit. Only 1 Iceblink should be used in groups as they do not stack.
• Gem of Efficacious Toxin poisons enemies hit for 10% additive damage. Other supports can also wear this gem because their damage bonus does stack (damage reduction doesn't stack, however).
• Gogok of Swiftness gives 15% Attack Speed, 15% Cooldown Reduction, and up to 30% Dodge based on the amount of stacks you have. You gain a stack with each hit up to a maximum of 15, and all stacks are refreshed if you hit an enemy at least once every 4 seconds.

• Land of the Dead Frozen Lands freezes all enemies for 10 seconds as long as they haven't been hit with a hard crowd control (like a stun or knockback) before hand. This will allow your damage dealers free reign when attacking. It will also allow you to cast Devour Cannibalize infinitely.
• Devour Cannibalize can and should be spammed when Land of the Dead Frozen Lands is up, it heals us, and automatically fires our Corpse Lance Brittle Touch at enemies from our Pestilence Master's Shroud (2) Bonus.
• Corpse Lance Brittle Touch increases a monsters chance to be critically hit by 5% for each lance you hit them with for 5 seconds. Besides the lances that are automatically fired from the Pestilence Master's Shroud (2) Bonus, you should also manually fire them on yellow elites and Rift Guardians to bring their chance to be critically hit as high as possible.
• Command Skeletons Enforcer should be spammed and aimed at enemies to reset your Land of the Dead Frozen Lands via your Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac. We use this spender because it doesn't have any cast animation and we can move or cast Corpse Lance while resetting our cooldowns at the same time.
• Blood Rush Metabolism is taken for mobility as you will be in front of the group. It also activates your Steuart's Greaves.
• Frailty Aura of Frailty curses all enemies around you and its size is increased by your Pickup Radius on items. After being cursing, monsters will be pulled to you by Briggs' Wrath, which will also proc your Strongarm Bracers.

• Blood Is Power gives us a flat reduction equals to 20% of the skill Cooldown after losing 100% of our life.
• Eternal Torment makes our curses last forever, which is useful as we rely on Aura of Frailty to apply them.
• Life from Death spawns health globes when you use Devour Cannibalize which will give your damage dealers resource since they're wearing Reaper's Wraps.
• Final Service allows us to cheat death.
• Rigor Mortis is used in high GRs to slow enemies movement and attack speed by 30% from our Poison skills.
• Stand Alone gives 100% additional armor and can sometimes be used in builds that don't run Command Skeletons.

¹ Put all points into Vitality until you reach 3 million HP, then put the rest into Intelligence for All Resistance.
² Do not take Area Damage in this build as we deal no damage and it could contribute to lag out the game in some situations.

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

Notable Build Changes

Compared to the nonseason version of the build, you no longer have to worry about getting stuck or crowd controled. This allows you to freely support the team at any moment and for the High GR version to run Stone Gauntlets for lots of extra toughness.

The rotation for the zNecro is as follows:

1. Always activate Land of the Dead Frozen Lands when it's up.
2. Continuously spam Devour Cannibalize and Command Skeletons Enforcer to fire corpse lances and reset your Cooldowns as explained above.
3. Cast Blood Rush at least once every 10 seconds to keep your 100% movement speed buff from Steuart's Greaves.
4. Stop to manually fire Corpse Lance Brittle Touch on elites and Rift Guardians to give them a higher chance to be critically hit.
5. Click the pylons to spawns elites with your Nemesis Bracers.

Remember that you want to be pulling and cursing every monster with Frailty Aura of Frailty, so spend a good amount of time weaving around hitting every monster. Unlike other supports, the zNecro is not immortal and can die to things like Molten explosions, Shock Towers, and Grotesques. Make sure when you stop on an elite to fire Corpse Lance Brittle Touch you're dodging major attacks to stay alive. Finally, pacing is important for the zNecro, so it's something you'll have to practice to master. As a general rule, try to stay about 1 screen ahead of your damage dealers, and leave when an elite is about 1 second away from dying.

One important map you need to pay extra attention on is Pandemonium Fortress. There you can find Shock Towers that will fire a chaining lightning at any approaching enemies, which is capable of oneshotting your DPS necros. When you see one of these, you should stop outside its range (25 yards) and wait for the Skeletal Mages to kill the tower. Also make sure to keep you skeletons away from it!

Finally note that any knockback attempt with Brigg's Wrath will trigger the damage buff from Strongarm Bracers, even if the target is not displaced, including on Rift Guardians and Juggernaut Rares. But you cannot refresh the debuff as long as the target is cursed. If several players use Strongarm Bracers, their effect will stack additively. Check out our Crowd Control post by Chewingnom for more details!

Consider the following changes to become tankier when playing in hardcore:

1. Drop Gem of Efficacious Toxin for Esoteric Alteration for 60% non-physical damage reduction
2. Change the rune on Blood Rush to Potency for 100% more armor.

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

• Corpse Lances fired by the (2) Bonus have the same proc coefficent as the base skill and can apply all kinds of on-hit effects, including Iceblink, Knockback on Hit, Gogok of Swiftness.
• Devour can consume up to 10 corpses per cast up to 2 times per second, firing 20 Corpse Lances at nearby enemies every second.
• Using Devour more often than 2 times a second has absolutely no effect.

• Pulses twice a second, applying a 10 second freeze to all enemies in line of sight within 60 yards range. This means that when you teleport forward, monsters can have up to 0.5 seconds to attack or use an ability which is why you should always stay ahead of the group!
• Because Frozen Lands applies a 10 seconds freeze, frozen enemies instantly cap out at 95% crowd control resistance and become completely immune to all other form of Crowd Control, making it impossible to pull them after they have already been frozen.

• Consuming a corpse has a 20% chance to spawn a Health Globe.
• The Health Globe can only spawn if the consumed corpse was on the pathable surface.
• After spawning 10 Health Globes, Life from Death goes on a 5 second internal cooldown (ICD).
• Activating Land of the Dead will reset this cooldown, even if Land of the Dead is already running. This means that you should always recast it whenever it is available instead of waiting for it to run out.

• Gives a 1% chance on slaying a demon to grant a random shrine buff which are listed below. This works only for killing blows which you do with Frailty.
• The buff lasts 2 minutes for the entire group, but 10 minutes if we're wearing Gloves of Worship.
• Buffs are given to everyone in the same zone.
• When entering a new Greater Rift the buff is removed.
• These are the shrine buffs you can get:
  • Enlightened: +25% Experience from monster kills
  • Frenzied: +25% Attack Speed
  • Blessed: -25% incoming damage
  • Empowered: +100% resource generation and 50% Cooldown Reduction
  • Fleeting: +25% Movement Speed and +20 Pickup Radius
• The uptime on this buff depends on mobsets you are getting and on how fast your runs are. The overall effect is quite small and in cases where you have trouble playing the setup properly to the point where your runs are suffering it might be better to just drop it entirely.