Last Updated:October 7, 2024|Changelog
Introduction
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The zNecromancer (usually called the zNecro because they do "zero" damage) is one of the strongest supports in the game. Flying through rifts while freezing entire screens of enemies is their specialty, all while providing incredible offensive buffs for your party members. It’s most commonly used in “Rat Run” groups, which one of the predominant ways to grind experience consisting of 2x LoD Rat Necromancers and one zBarb.
The main culprit of zNec is its significant investment into Cooldown Reduction due to its requirement to keep up Land of the Dead Frozen Lands at all times. While In-geom as well as Messerschmidt’s Reaver help out significantly on this end, it’s still not easy to gear from the get-go and it takes a decent amount of time and resource investment to build.
Additionally, while support classes generally speaking are tanky, zNec in its final iteration just isn’t. Shock Towers, the Fire Chains as well as Electrified Affixes will hurt you throughout any stage; playing a more tanky setup might increase your Quality of Life, which, however, comes at the cost of overall group efficiency. That trade-off shouldn’t be taken lightly, since a lot of public party players will disagree and call you out on your “comfort choices”.
In summary, zNec is not easy to execute. It’s not tanky. And it’s choices in gearing heavily influence the overall group efficiency. Making the appropriate choices for the tier you are aiming to play is a key aspect of mastering zNec. The guide at hand will provide you a general overview, but be prepared to make certain adjustments if a specific group asks for them.
Unique playstyle ✔
Extremely fast paced ✔
Rewards excellent gameplay ✔
Many variants increasing in difficulty ✔
❌ Requires spamming
❌ Squishy on high end
❌ Positioning is very important
❌ Works best in specific groups
Core Setup
Items
- Pestilence Master's Shroud (2) Bonus fires a Corpse Lance Brittle Touch every time we consume a corpse, allowing us to increase the monsters chance to be critically hit by 5% for each lance.
- Leoric's Crown, Messerschmidt's Reaver and Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac provide massive Cooldown Reduction necessary to achieve 100% Frozen Lands uptime.
- Oculus Ring gives 85% damage to your party.
- Brigg's Wrath pulls monsters together and applies Strongarm Bracers.
- Nemesis Bracers spawn and extra elite pack from each pylon, which helps you get to 100% progression faster.
- Rondal's Locket possesses a secondary affix of up to +6 Yards to Pickup Radius which increases the size of Frailty Aura of Frailty and helps a lot for picking up Health Globes.
Global Stat Priorities
Since we are a support class, we don't need any offensive stats like Critical Hit Chance, Critical Hit Damage, Area Damage, or Elemental Damage. We especially need to avoid Area Damage as it will lag the game for no benefit. Instead we will gather as much Cooldown Reduction, Attack Speed and Defensive Stats as possible. Cooldown is needed to keep Land of the Dead Frozen Lands up all the time, which will keep the monsters perpetually frozen and allow us to spam Devour Cannibalize which heals us.
Attack Speed lets you Blood Rush Metabolism and fire Corpse Lance faster, allowing you to your job better. For defense prioritize % Life > Vitality > All Resistance > Armor. Finally, try to get as much Pickup Radius on your gear as possible as it will increase the radius of your Frailty Aura of Frailty which will let you pull monsters further with Briggs' Wrath.
Assembling the Build
Item Stat Priorities
Gems
Skills
Passives
Paragon Points
Gameplay
Hardcore
Variants
Concept
This is the support build for the infamous "Rat Runs", which also involve 2x LoD Skeletal Mage Necros and a Support zBarb. It's designed to be fast, tanky, and have insane cooldown so you can lead the way for your team. This is setup has a lot of extra toughness necessary to survive at low paragon, which is later phased out to pickup more utility items. It also includes In-Geom, which makes it much easier to have 100% uptime on Land of the Dead.
Gameplay
The gameplay is exactly the same as we discussed above. When playing this tanky setup, you shouldn't die to anything but a massive attack. Remember that if you die it leaves your teammates vulnerable as the monsters won't be frozen from Land of the Dead Frozen Lands.
Setups
If you don't like having to constantly hover mobs and spam Command Skeletons button, you can use another spender (Death Nova Blight or Bone Spear Crystallization) in its place. While you have to stop to cast these two skills, it's still possible to reset your cooldowns and be fast enough. The advantage here is the ability to quickly break doors and less headache with the Shock Towers.
Concept
This is the support build for the infamous "Rat Runs", which also involve 2x LoD Skeletal Mage Necros and a Support zBarb. It's designed to be fast, tanky, and have insane cooldown so you can lead the way for your team. This is the maximum efficiency setup that ditches all the toughness for maximum Cooldown Reduction and Movement Speed. High Paragon and/or augments become necessary to survive.
Gameplay
The gameplay is exactly the same as we discussed above. At high enough Paragon, you still shouldn't die to anything but a massive attack. Remember that if you die it leaves your teammates vulnerable as the monsters won't be frozen from Land of the Dead Frozen Lands.
Setups
If your runs are going very smoothly and you never have downtime on your Land of the Dead, you can switch Blood is Power for Fueled by Death to get that extra bit of Movement Speed.
You can freely choose between Steuart's Greaves and Illusory Boots in your feet slot. The latter make it easier to click pylons but you need to be on point with your Blood Rushes as you no longer have the Movement Speed.
If you don't like having to constantly hover mobs and spam Command Skeletons button, you can use another spender (Death Nova Blight or Bone Spear Crystallization) in its place. While you have to stop to cast these two skills, it's still possible to reset your cooldowns and be fast enough. The advantage here is the ability to quickly break doors and less headache with the Shock Towers.
Concept
In the highest greater rifts we can drop permafreeze and Shrine buffs to maximize our contribution to the group in terms of DPS and toughness
Gameplay
In general you should always spam Death Nova to reset the cooldown on Land of the Dead, and Devour to apply the crit debuff of Corpse Lance Brittle Touch to everything via the Pestilence Master's Shroud (2) Bonus. When the DPS rotation of your Trash Killer is coming up, you need to make a pixel pull for them with your Frailty. Keep in mind that Briggs Wrath will only pull monsters if there's space for them to be pulled into. If you just use it in the middle of everything, the monsters will jump in place and there will be no pixel! Alternatively you can let the zBarb make the pixel with Ground Stomp and then use the curse to apply the Strongarm Bracers debuff.
Setups
The above build is intended for end season time attack or speedfarming, where extra mobility from Blood Rush and Steuart's Greaves is paramount. If you are going for more slow-paced runs, replace Blood Rush with Simulacrum Cursed Form to get extra healing and damage reduction from Leech and Decrepify. With this change you want to curse the mobs as soon as possible, so you need to drop Briggs Wrath and Strongarm Bracers. Equip Nemesis Bracers and cube Haunted Visions.
Concept
For Echoing Nightmares we are using an exact copy exact copy of the Low GR build. Even though monsters are immune to knockback, we can still apply Strongarm Bracers by attempting to move them with Briggs' Wrath. Since monsters are freeze-immune, we switch to Land of the Dead Shallow Graves. Nemesis Bracers is useless here, so we can run Steuart's Greaves.
For more information check out our full Echoing Nightmare Guide and take a look at our Echoing Nightmare Build Tier List and META post for the best builds and strategies!
Gameplay
Click Speed Pylon as soon as the challenge starts and all the other Pylons at around wave 90. At wave 122 you can stop attacking and run to the corner to let the timer run out.
Keep up Land of the Dead up as much as possible to spam Corpse Lance everywhere via Devour and supply your team with Health Globes.
Video Guide
Mechanics
Pestilence Master's Shroud + Devour
Land of the Dead Frozen Lands
Life from Death
Ahavarion, Spear of Lycander
Summary
- Put together the low paragon build first and focus on Cooldown, Attack Speed, and Defense rolls on your gear.
- Keep your Land of the Dead up at all times while spamming Devour and Command Skeletons.
- Practice staying 1 screen ahead of your party at all times, unless you are stopping to kill an elite.
- Manually fire Corpse Lance Brittle Touch on yellows and Rift Guardians.
- Dodge major attacks and stay alive so your teammates survive as well.
- Credits to Kikaha for pointing out several issues with an earlier version of this guide.
Credits
Written by Northwar
Contributions from Raxxanterax, sVr & Rob
Updates by wudijo