Blood Wave Necromancer Endgame Guide

Begin here if you just made it into Torment 1 or are coming from our Leveling Guide! Since only some Aspects can be guaranteed from Dungeon unlocks for the Codex of Power, focus on acquiring the additional aspects via gambling with Murmuring Obols.

Gear & Skills

• Early on in your progression, focus on Armor & Resistances to survive. Each Torment difficulty adds a penalty of -250 Armor and -25% all Res and it's recommended to keep both capped (1000 Armor, 70+ Res) at all times. As you unlock higher power gear, masterworking levels and more Paragon points, you naturally scale your character into the higher difficulties and can start replacing some of these rolls with offensive or utility stats. Disobedience helps with this.
• If you can't find a good 2-Handed Mace, you can use any other 2-Handed Weapon (Axe, Scythe, or Sword) with good affixes for the time being. You can also use any 1-Handed weapon and Focus, but the damage output is significantly lower.
• Reaching 100% Critical Strike Chance is your number one priority before other stats. Always reliably critting means you can expect a certain damage output, and for monsters to consistently die in the same number of skill uses.
• Starter version, build utilizes Skeletal Warriors - Skirmishers sacrifice to reach 100% Critical Strike Chance. This will later be swapped for Skeletal Warriors - Reapers sacrifice for extra shadow damage.
• Finding a high rolled Fastblood is very important to reduce the cooldown of Blood Wave.
• Cooldown Reduction on your Helmet helps with shorter cooldown of Blood Wave and better uptime of Grasping Veins. Tempering ultimate cooldown reduction on your jewelry also helps with this significantly.
• Once you get Kessime's Legacy, the true power of the build will be revealed!

The goal here is to progress through the Torment difficulties as you unlock Ancestral Legendaries, Paragon points, Legendary Aspects, Temper mods and the most important Uniques to pilot this build. Some Legendary Aspects are used temporarily to fill slots that may be replaced with more Unique items later on.

Gear & Skills

• As you upgrade your gear to Ancestrals with more masterworking levels and reach higher paragon, you can focus more and more on replacing Armor & Resistance rolls with better stats, but make sure to stay capped at 1000 Armor and 70%+ Resistances for the difficulty you're currently in.
• Kessime's Legacy is an obvious power spike for the build totally changing the gameplay and significantly boosting build's playability with high cooldown reduction and chance to do double damage.
• Hopefully by this point, you acquired a good rolled Fastblood so that you can swap that out from your necklace and replace it with Grasping Veins to ensure that you reach 100% critical strike chance. If your Fastblood is not over 2 seconds, do not swap it out of your amulet yet.
• Via masterworking your gear, you also now have a lot higher cooldown reduction which should significantly help with Blood Wave cooldown management.
• You begin tempering Damage While Fortified on your gear pieces. While this may initially seem like an odd choice, given there are larger additive damage tempering options, the most recent changes make Damage While Fortified function as a separate multiplier bucket thanks to the Rank 5 bonus of Blood Wave.
• During this stage, most players do not have access to Piranhado. Hence why this variant utilizes Corpse Tendrils. Combined with size tempers, it is the best pull in the game.

The Speedfarming variant optimizes the build for easy activities like Helltides, Whispers, Nightmare Dungeons and lower Pit Tiers after you have finished the Mythic variant and reached a plateau in your progression.

Gear & Skills

• To speedfarm effectively, reprioritize movement speed and attack speed.
• This setup utilizes Metamorphosis on boots to maintain unstoppable and pseudo teleport from pack to pack.
• Runeword changes:
  • Since this version of the build is all about moving fast, this setup utilizes Bac + Jah runeword combo. The faster you run, the faster you get access to teleport turning one of the slowest classes in the game to lightning fast!
  • Another key element of speed farming is the action economy. Zan + Wat - This rune combination makes the gameplay very efficient as we auto curse targets by just casting Blood Wave.

• Skill Changes
  • Corpse Tendrils is no longer used in this variant. At this stage Blood Wave itself is a great grouping resource, even more so when combined with Piranhado.
  • BUG ALERT: There currently is a bug with Tidal. If you group too many monsters together, your Blood Wave stops doing any damage. This makes use of Corpse Tendrils quite inefficient and it turns its advantages into disadvantages.
  • Reap is slotted on skill bar in place of Corpse Tendrils to get more damage and more movement speed from Reaper's Pursuit. You do not use Reap in anyway, it is simply there to boost your Reaper's Pursuit passive.

This setup optimizes the build to push the highest possible Tiers in The Pit after you have finished the Mythic variant and reached a plateau in your progression.

Gear & Skills

• The pit-pushing variant utilizes slightly different aspects, runewords, and mercenary combinations to ensure the highest damage output, allowing for pushing the absolute maximum pit tier.
• Gear/Aspect changes
  • Pit Variant utilizes Damned instead of Fastblood to have access to another big damage multiplier.
  • DISCLAIMER: If you’re not fully geared for endgame, do not drop Fastblood yet. The idea is to drop Fastblood once your Blood Wave cooldown is between 12 to 15 seconds. This change is intended for pushing Pit Tiers beyond 145. Until then, if your damage feels sufficient, stick with Fastblood for a more user-friendly gameplay experience.
  • Not being able to reduce cooldown by picking up Blood Orbs can be a concern, however due Tidal's animation lock, you can no longer spam waves back-to-back, even if the cooldown is reset immediately by collecting Blood Orbs.
  • With the new unique pants Kessime's Legacy, waves now travel half the distance compared to before and move slightly faster. As a result Tidal animation now takes approximately 3.5 seconds, compared to the previous duration of around 6 seconds.
  • The goal is to align the cooldown of Blood Wave with this exact gap, rather than spamming or immediately resetting it.
  • You achieve this by efficiently benefiting from Decrepify to synchronize the cooldown with the gap. Did you know your mercenaries can proc Decrepify, effectively reducing cooldowns? Pit pushing variant takes advantage of an important mercenary tech to fully benefit from this mechanic!
  • Even if the cooldown doesn’t perfectly align with the animation, prioritize ensuring each Blood Wave is the most buffed version. Achieve this by activating the Qax rune, procing Flesh-eater and Fueled by Death through consuming corpses Corpse Explosion.
  • If you have a GA Cooldown reduction on Kessime's Legacy, you do not need to triple masterwork the ultimate cooldown reduction on your rings, and amulet. You can masterwork maximum life instead.
  • Heir of Perdition also removes the dependency on critical strike chance affixes on rings. In place of that, you can now use attack speed affixes on your rings. Attack speed helps you significantly when casting Blood Wave and Corpse Explosion. Blood Wave has a clunky animation and attack speed helps you have a smoother casting speed.
  • If you're missing some damage, Exploiter's on boots is a great choice.
  • When fighting monsters in high tiers of the Pit, remember that after crowd controlling elites for 5 seconds, they become Unstoppable for 8 seconds. This build consistently crowd control targets since Blood Wave sweeps and pulls enemies constantly. Making targets Unstoppable is actually good for this build because you utilize Exploiter's on boots in this Pit Push variant to gain even more damage.
  • At a certain point, as your gear and masterworking improve, your damage will get very high, causing elites to die much faster. When this happens, Exploiter's becomes less impactful. At that stage, replace Exploiter's on boots with Cursed Aura.
  • If you are running Exploiter's on boots, you are going to run the runeword combo of Zan + Wat. If you are running Cursed Aura, you are going to run Cir + Xal for optimal synergy.
  • Cursed Aura does not benefit from Curse Size tempering. A good utility tempering option for gloves and boots is Lucky Hit Chance to Freeze or Stun, which helps with crowd control and allows you to activate the second part of Terror more frequently.

• Skill Changes
  • Corpse Tendrils is no longer used in this variant.
  • BUG ALERT: There currently is a bug with Tidal. If you group too many monsters together, your Blood Wave stops doing any damage. This makes use of Corpse Tendrils quite inefficient and it turns its advantages into disadvantages.
  • Reap is slotted on skill bar in place of Corpse Tendrils to get more damage and more movement speed from Reaper's Pursuit. You do not use Reap in anyway, it is simply there to boost your Reaper's Pursuit passive.

• Runeword Changes
  • Igni + Qax - When it comes to pushing high tier PITs, you want to add as much damage as possible. Igni is a great generator, it constantly stores offering and you gain that offering when you cast any ability. Utilizing the Qax rune, if timed correctly you can double the damage of Blood Wave damage.
  • When you use Qax, you need to pay attention to your buff bar. This is because when Qax procs, your next cast needs to be Blood Wave since other damaging skills can also eat this proc.
  • Because Qax consumes all your essence when it procs, one of the affixes in our 2-hander mace is "Lucky hit chance to restore essence", so that the build can sustain throughout the fight, generating enough essence at all times.
  • Zan + Wat - This rune combination is very crucial for pit pushing. It executes enemies, significantly increasing clear speed.
  • If you are running the version with cursed aura on boots, you are going to run Cir + Xal for optimal synergy. More maximum life means more damage since this is an overpower build.
• Mercenary Changes
  • As mentioned above, a crucial mercenary tech involves proccing Decrepify using Aldkin as a reinforcement along with the Flame Surge ability using Corpse Explosion. This combination is incredibly impactful, allowing you to reset Blood Wave’s cooldown efficiently, even without relying on Fastblood. Once you try it, you’ll see just how effective this setup can be.

• Seasonal Powers & Occult Gems
  • Pit push variant utilizes The Cycle instead of Piranhado. Similar to listed reasons above with Tidal bug. If too many mobs stacked and pull together, Tidal stops producing additional waves and Blood Wave stops doing damage. Also by running The Cycle you still maintain three Growth & Decay witch powers active so you continue to benefit from Friend of the Bog.
  • Hex of Whispers is replaced with Force of Will. As you quickly kill non-elite mobs, this power continuously adds multipliers to your next two Overpower attacks, stacking up to a massive 100% multiplier. Once it reaches its max value, it resets, and the stacking process starts over.
  • Wicked Pact is slotted instead of Phantom String to boost Purging Touch.

• Consumables
  • This variant utilizes and Soothing Spices to reach an armor and resistance cap. Reddamine Buzz and Elixir of Fortitude II is the main choice of elixir to boost max life which then increases damage as well. Sage's Whisper to increase our main core stat intelligence. All these consumables can be used simultaneously they are all stackable.