Necromancer Class Overview

• Jesseth Arms grants you a 400% global separate damage multiplier as long as your Skeletons from Command Skeletons are commanded to attack a target.
• As long as enemies are nearby when the target dies, the skeletons will switch to another and keep up the buff.
• Especially in speed runs it's very likely to drop the buff so it may have to be reapplied periodically.
• Using the Kill Command rune is a bad idea.

• Pulls monsters to the center of the curse as long as there is enough empty space. Each individual affected monster checks for available space independently, which lets you pull multiple monsters into the same space achieving pixelpull.
• When there is not enough space in the center of the curse for the monsters to land, they are instead knocked up in place.
• Enemies lose all curses if they leave combat (even with Eternal Torment equipped). This always happens if you go to town, and depending on monster type and rarity can also happen if you go to a different floor or just move far enough away (2-3 screens for most enemies). This can be used to repixel the mobs without waiting 30 seconds for the curse to time out.

• When used in groups, this item only works with your own Curses.
• Since an enemy cannot be affected by the same Curse twice, it is possible to steal the Damage Reduction from your ally by re-cursing the enemies they already cursed.

• 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 skill bar and Fate's Vow equipped, you 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 deals the same elemental damage type as the chosen rune.

• This item is bugged and contrary to what the tooltip says Simulacrum actually keeps the ability to replicate Skeletal Mage as long as you don't have Grim Scythe on your bar.
• Skills used by Simulacrum can proc Area Damage.
• Essence generated through their Grim Scythe also transfers to the Necromancer.

• While channeling Siphon Blood, you automatically cast Death Nova regularly.
• These Death Novas 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. This doesn't matter on single targets and very small pulls, but in high density manual casts could provide a lot more value. Simulacrums procs Area Damage, however!
• Siphon Blood ticks every 21 / (Attacks per Second * Swift Harvesting) frames.
• Iron Rose has an internal cooldown of 18 frames.
• Typical one-handed setups 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).

• With a perfect roll (100%), this item exactly doubles your damage done (100% base + 100% ring = 200%) if the enemy is at least slowed or chilled.
• The triple damage effect doubles your damage again from that point of view (100% + 300% ring = 400%) only during the effect of a Hard Crowd Control.
• Because any serious Necromancer build relies on this ring, fighting Juggernaut Elites is almost always a no-go for Necromancers.

• Simulacrum ignores how much current and maximum Essence you have. This means they always get the full benefit of Leger's Disdain. That's why it's better to simply swing again at full essence (having 2 Simulacrums attacking at full power) than to waste time trying to dump essence to increase your own damage.
• All three swings happen at the same time and deal full damage even if one swing is enough to kill some of the monsters.

• The minimum bonus is 0% damage reduction at full health all the way up to 95% damage reduction when on the brink of death.
• Due to the item's toughness scaling it becomes extremely potent in builds that are already tanky enough to survive some hits and stay in the fray without escaping to heal up. As your health drops lower your recovery (from Life per Second / Life per Hit) becomes more effective, making it easier to outheal incoming damage as long as no large hits are taken that could kill you.

• Gives you up to 50% Movement Speed above the 25% Movement Speed cap from Paragon and Gear.
• Some Necromancer builds do not require a specific Off-Hand and can use this one instead of a random one.
• If your build has no source of Cold damage, you can give a Weapon with a Cold damage roll to your follower which will then proc it for you.

• Each stack of this item has its own duration (15 seconds).
• As this is just slightly longer than the Necromancer's Convention of Elements rotation of 12 seconds, you want to make sure to activate all of your Poison skills at least once every cycle.
• The stacks add up as one combined multiplier (100% per Poison skill used).

• This item is bugged and gives you way more essence back than it should when you consume corpses with Devouring Aura.
• The exact mechanic is unclear, but it starts slowly and then gives you more and more to the point where you fill your entire resource bar instantaneously as long as you keep devouring corpses regularly.

Mechanics
Your Skeletal Mage, Command Golem and Command Skeletons gain 200% of your Thorns. This bonus is a straight 3x multiplier.

Best use
This passive is only used when playing the Thorns Rift Guardian Killer to give your Command Skeletons Thorns to kill the bosses.

Mechanics
Picking up a Health Globes removes the health cost of the next Blood spell. This effect lasts forever and stacks up to 10 times.

Best use
This passive is rarely used as blood builds are not popular in Diablo III, and for the builds that do exist there are better methods of staying alive besides taking this passive. A niche use for this passive is with Mask of Scarlet Death and Oblation to prevent "self-oneshot".

Mechanics
After losing 100% of your maximum Life, all ability cooldowns are reduced by 20% multiplicatively. This effect cannot reduce an ability's cooldown more than once for each time that ability is used. The already spent amount of Life is remembered until the next cast and is tracked separately for each ability.

Best use
This passive is incredible for all Necromancer builds that use giant cooldowns like Land of the Dead. We can take damage from enemies as well as life-spending skills like Blood Rush and Death Nova Blood Nova to reset our abilities.

Mechanics
Bone Spear, Bone Spikes, and Bone Spirit have a 30% chance to trap enemies in a Bone Prison for 3 seconds. Monsters will be Stunned and unable to attack or move.

Best uses
This passive is taken with the Masquerade Bone Spear build to trap enemies at range and activate Krysbin's Sentence.

Mechanics
The Essence cost of Command Skeletons and the cooldown of Command Golem are reduced by 30% multiplicatively.

Best use
This passive is rarely taken as the cost of Command Skeletons is never an issue. This passive has been used in solo pushing in conjunction with Command Golem Bone Golem to gather monsters better / more often.

Mechanics
While using a scythe, gain 2% of your total maximum Essence and 2% of your maximum Life per kill. This has nothing to do with the Life per Kill in your character stats, nor with the secondary stat Life after Kill on items.

Best use
This passive is useful in builds that kill a lot of monsters and are resource starved, like the LoD Skeletal Mage "Rat" Necromancer.

Mechanics
Increases your life regeneration by 10% for each enemy within 20 yards. This effect is capped to 50 and hugely benefits Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard in combination with Squirt's Necklace. It also increases the physical damage done by the Death's Bargain aura.

Best use
If you stack Life Regeneration and toughness, this passive can sustain you through heavy damage. Not used often but can be very powerful when combined with effects such as Leech Cursed Ground or Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard.

Mechanics
Your curses cost 50% less Essence multiplicatively and last forever. Enemies still lose the curses if they leave combat.

Best use
This passive is mostly useful for the "last forever" portion. It's especially useful on builds using Aura of Frailty, as it lets you walk away from mobs without having your curse drop.

Mechanics
Increases the duration of your Skeletal Mage and Revive minions by 25%. This effect only scales with the skill's base duration and does not increase the additional duration that is granted by items like Circle of Nailuj's Evol.

Best use
This passive is useful for mage builds like the LoD Skeletal Mage "Rat" Necromancer. It allows us more time to max our essence to release fully powered Singularity mages.

Mechanics
When you take lethal damage, you are sustained, preventing all damage for 4 seconds. In addition, you heal for 10% of your Life per minion. This effect cannot occur more than once every 60 seconds.

Best use
This is one of the best passives for the Necromancer as it allows you to cheat death and stay alive. In Patch 2.6.9 it was changed to no longer consume pets, and it activates before Simulacrum Self Sacrifice.

Mechanics
Consuming a corpse increases your Movement Speed by 3% for 5 seconds. This effect can stack up to 10 times and exceeds the 25% Movement Speed cap.

Best use
This is an extremely popular passive for any Necromancer speed build as it provides 30% Movement Speed after you consume 10 corpses (commonly done by spamming Devour).

Mechanics
You are healed for 10% of your Life on Hit when one of your minions hits an enemy. This passive takes the Life on Hit displayed in your character stats.

Best use
Sometimes used for recovery in pet-heavy builds such as Rathma AotD Necromancer.

Mechanics

• 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 the passive goes on a 5 second internal cooldown.
• Activating Land of the Dead resets this cooldown, even if Land of the Dead is already running.

Best use
This passive is very useful on a support Necromancer to spawn health globes for our party. Besides the healing, Health Globes can give other bonuses like increased resource generation from Reaper's Wraps, or increase a Witch Doctor's damage from Gruesome Feast.

Mechanics
Increases your maximum Essence by 40.

Best use
This passive is incredible for any build needing more Essence and/or using Reilena's Shadowhook. This passive provides a total of 8.2% damage increase to builds with Shadowhook, 10.3% to ones with Shadowhook and Reservoir, and about 25.6% to Rats using Singularity.

Mechanics
You cannot lose Life for 4 seconds after using Land of the Dead, Army of the Dead, or Simulacrum.

Best use
Completely useless due to 60 second cooldown.

Mechanics
Poison abilities also slow enemies by 30% and reduce their attack speed by 30% for 5 seconds.

Best use
This defensive passive is not taken often, but it can be used in groups by the zNec in higher Greater Rifts to reduce incoming damage. Some ranged builds can use the slow to activate Bane of the Trapped and Krysbin's Sentence.

Mechanics
Bone Spikes, Bone Spear, and Bone Spirit deal 1% increased damage for every 1.5 yards from you, up to a maximum of 20%. This damage increase is a multiplier to other sources and behaves similar to Zei's Stone of Vengeance.

Best use
This passive has found a use with the new Masquerade Bone Spear Necromancer. Since we're trying to attack at range, we can usually get the full 20% value at 30 yards (which is roughly 1/3rd of a screen away).

Mechanics
Receive a 1% additive damage bonus for each enemy afflicted by one of your curses. The effect is gone if you go to another floor.

Best use
This is one of the best offensive passives for most Necromancer builds, as long as the build takes a curse and relies on gathering up large groups of enemies... which is essentially every build in the game.

Mechanics
Increase armor by 100% additively, reduced by 10% for each active minion. Simulacrum and your Follower are not considered as minions for this passive.

Best use
This is the best defensive passive the Necromancer has as long as you aren't using a skill with a lot of minions like Command Skeletons. Since Necromancers are an Intelligence class who naturally gain All Resistance from Paragon levels, this Armor boost is a tremendous (about 60%) toughness increase.

Mechanics
Increase the attack speed of Bone Spikes, Siphon Blood, and Grim Scythe by 15% multiplicatively.

Best use
This is a nice offensive passive for any build using these 3 skills, like the Poison Scythe Necromancer and for Rift Guardian Killer builds to stack Bane of the Stricken faster.

• 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 hits combined, meaning it's especially strong on single targets 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:
  • Blighted Grasp: 10x 1,400% weapon damage (per target)
  • Death Valley: 7x 1,714% weapon damage (per target)
  • Unconventional Warfare: 40x 1,250% weapon damage (total)
  • Frozen Army: 5x 2,400% weapon damage (per target)
  • Dead Storm: 10x 1,550% weapon damage (per target)

• This rune increases Bone Spear damage by 15% for each target hit. The bonus is additive with itself and multiplicative with all other damage bonuses.
• The increased damage is calculated for each enemy separately, meaning that the furthest away from you enemies take the most damage.
• The damage bonus is applied before the damage, meaning you get the 15% bonus when fighting a single enemy.

• Corpse Explosion costs no essence and does not have any sort of internal cooldown. As long as you have corpses at your disposal, you can keep firing it.
• Each cast of Corpse Explosion triggers 5 corpses in a quick chain reaction over 45 frames, one corpse every 9 frames. This means a single cast of Corpse Explosion is enough to fully stack Grasps of Essence after 45 frames.

• 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.
• Since Frozen Lands applies a 10 seconds freeze, frozen enemies instantly cap out at 95% crowd control resistance and become completely immune to all other forms of Crowd Control, making it impossible to pull them after they have already been frozen.

• Simulacrums can proc area Damage but do not benefit from Pet Damage.
• Haunted Visions makes this skill drain 1% of your maximum life every second. If you are unable to pay this cost, the Simulacrums will despawn.
• Simulacrums move with you after you've traveled a short distance.
• If you're using Blood Rush the sims follow you to your location.
• Simulacrum cast their Bone Spear and Grim Scythe in the direction of your mouse cursor, so positioning is critical!
• Skeletal Mages cast by Simulacrum are affected by Circle of Nailuj's Evol.
• You gain Essence for enemies hit by Simulacrum's Grim Scythe.
• Casting Simulacrum Reservoir doubles your current as well as maximum Essence.
• When Simulacrums mimic one of your attacks, they must always complete the entire animation before they can run after you or teleport on you. If you keep constantly casting Bone Spear while stutter-stepping and teleporting forward, your Simulacrums may stay very far behind!
• Your Simulacrums scale with your character's toughness 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.