Trag’Oul Death Nova 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 Trag'Oul's Avatar 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 Trag'Oul's Avatar set
2. Iron Rose
3. Dayntee's Binding
4. Steuart's Greaves
5. Mantle of Channeling
6. Convention of Elements, Briggs' Wrath and Krysbin's Sentence
7. Nemesis Bracers

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

1. 2-Handed Scythes to get Bloodtide Blade
2. Scythes to get Funerary Pick and Scythe of the Cycle
3. Amulets to get Haunted Visions
4. Anything from the Gamble list in Step 3 that you haven't already acquired

5. Do Bounties to acquire the following 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 Aughild's Authority, Guardian's Jeopardy, 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:

• Funerary Pick
• Iron Rose
• Krysbin's Sentence

• Bane of the Trapped provides up to 60% multiplicative damage increase.
• The other two gems vary depending on activity:
  • Bane of the Stricken is required to kill the boss in solo Greater Rifts.
  • Zei's Stone of Vengeance adds extra DPS in pushes.
  • Bane of the Powerful is used for farming and groups.
  • Boon of the Hoarder is great in Nephalem Rifts.
  • Invigorating Gemstone is an option for pushing at low Paragon.

• Death Nova is the core of the build and our main nuke. With the power of Bloodtide Blade's density scaling, we are able to decimate large hordes of enemies in a matter of seconds. We use the Physical rune Blood Nova for increased DPS. This skill is not used manually, we just have it on the bar for the rune because without it Simulacrum uses the unruned skill.
• Siphon Blood triggers our Blood Nova and stacks up the bonus damage from Funerary Pick. This is how we do damage. Be aware that these automatic Novas do not proc Area Damage and the damage buff falls off after a few seconds, requiring constant channeling.
• Simulacrum Blood and Bone paired with Haunted Visions gives us two friends that mimic our casts for extra damage. These have to be positioned through smart movement so that they can hit most enemies. In large pulls, they are the main source of damage because only their casts proc Area Damage.
• Frailty Early Grave finishes off enemies and gives us the damage reduction from Dayntee's Binding.
• Bone Armor Dislocation gives us damage reduction and activates the extra Krysbin's Sentence effect.
• Blood Rush adds extra mobility and helps with positioning. It also heals us and adds extra Armor for 2 seconds.

• Swift Harvesting is used to hit the right breakpoint for Siphon Blood.
• Stand Alone is a very strong toughness choice.
• Spreading Malediction provides 1% additive damage bonus for every cursed enemy. In large pulls this can easily give you upwards of 50% extra additive damage.
• Final Service prevents untimely deaths.
• Fueled by Death can be used to increase speed in certain setups.

¹ Add a bit of Vitality if you feel too squishy (a total of 800,000 Life is recommended).

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 (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.
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 followers stay alive easily 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.

With these in mind, let’s get into our recommendation for this build.

Select Follower

The overall idea is to make large pulls and blow them up with a few very strong Death Nova explosions through overlapping the effects of Area Damage, Krysbin's Sentence, Convention of Elements and all your other multipliers. The main mechanic to play around is Bloodtide Blade, which is responsible for the huge AoE potential and weak single target damage of the build.

1. Gather a full 300 stacks of Trag'Oul's Avatar (4) Bonus, then summon your Simulacrums. They are buffed by your increased maximum Life. Make sure you position them well before a nuke, their damage is more important than yours.
2. Cast Bone Armor once in a big pull to gain the damage reduction bonus (up to 30% from 10 stacks). Other than that, only use it during your nuke cycles (during Physical Convention of Elements (CoE)) to get your Krysbin's Sentence bonus for Death Nova.
3. Make sure to curse all enemies for synergy with Dayntee's Binding, Spreading Malediction. For a more strategic application, you can also delay the curse to more easily finish off elites when they're low.
4. Between your cycles, either run or kite enemies towards the next pull.
5. Stack up Funerary Pick with Siphon Blood before a nuke phase. Try to kill a very small enemy/low HP leftovers to spawn an Oculus Ring.
6. During your Physical CoE cycle, cast Bone Armor to refresh the duration and apply a stun for Krysbin's Sentence, then hold down Siphon Blood to release Death Novas. Prioritize elites to deal more damage to them. Repeat if there are still enough enemies around, else kite them further. It's fine to skip a cycle here and there to prepare a better pull.
7. Don't hesitate to skip large trash or elite enemies even when they have rather low hit points. Your ability to finish off single enemies is extremely weak.
8. In solo push: Towards the end of a run, try to save up 1-2 Pylons (no Conduits) on the map where you will spawn the Rift Guardian. Adding additional enemies to the fight using Nemesis Bracers after you have spent some time stacking Bane of the Stricken greatly reduces the time needed to kill it, especially on single target fights. Especially Horde or Illusionist packs are what you are looking for, as more enemies means more damage from your Bloodtide Blade.

This build is very tanky as long as you keep up your buffs and use Siphon Blood to heal. Place more paragon points into Vitality and double-check that you have Final Service equipped.

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

• (2) Bonus grants Blood Rush and Siphon Blood every rune. Choosing any rune or no rune has no effect.
• (4) Bonus lets you stack a bonus granting you up to 300% Maximum Life, as a separate multiplier to Life %.
• (6) Bonus provides 6,250% increased damage (x63.5) to Life-spending abilities and doubles your healing from skills.

• While channeling Siphon Blood, you automatically cast Death Nova periodically.
• These Death Novas will also consume Bone Armor duration (through Scythe of the Cycle) and only then get the damage benefit the same way.
• As these free casts are considered procs, they do not benefit from Area Damage at all. Simulacrums will proc Area Damage, however!
• Siphon Blood ticks every 21 / (Attacks per Second * Swift Harvesting) frames.
• To calculate the APS needed for a specific breakpoint, the formula goes: 21 / (FPA * 1.15) = APS
• Iron Rose has an internal cooldown of 18 frames, making the optimal breakpoints with Swift Harvesting either 1.67 APS (11 frames) or 1.83 APS (10 frames).
• Typical one-handed setups will range between 10-11 frames tick rate, meaning you can get a Blood Nova on every other tick (20 or 22 frames // 3.0 or 2.72 times per second).

• Siphon Blood Power Shift lasts 3 seconds. Stacks are additive with each other, stacking up to a 200% bonus damage multiplier. One tick refreshes the duration of all stacks.
• The bonus damage against drained enemies is another multiplier for a total of x12 damage against 2-3 targets or x21 against a single target.
• The bonus damage against drained enemies does not work for damage done by pets or Simulacrum.
• With Simulacrum Blood and Bone the total damage done against a single target is triple of the usual.

• Haunted Visions makes this skill drain 1% of your Life every second. If you are unable to pay this cost (i.e. you are below 1% HP when the cost is applied), the Simulacrums despawn.
• Simulacrums cast your Secondary Skills (Death Nova) and Grim Scythe when you do.
• They don't cast Siphon Blood themselves but still proc Death Nova from Iron Rose when you do (with your chosen rune, unruned otherwise).
• Your Simulacrums scale with your character's toughness (Life, Armor, Resistances) and can die from monster damage when it's too low. Especially large bursts of damage (e.g. Grotesque explosions) can rip them apart easily even when you could survive that damage yourself, so be mindful about such situations as the cooldown to resummon them is very long.
• You can snapshot the extra Life gained from Trag'Oul's Avatar to make them a lot tankier.