Shadowblight Necromancer Endgame Build Guide

Umbral

Each unique Crowd Control effect that you inflict upon enemies triggers this aspect and generates Essence. Corpse Tendrils, Decrepify and Crippling Darkness all apply CC when used or activated. You can layer these abilities as well.

• Corpse Tendrils initially Slows, then it Pulls and Stuns. This is 3 instances of CC on every target. BUT after the Pull, the Slow is removed from the target, so you're able to re-Slow with Decrepify for another free CC proc.

Essence per Second and Resource Cost Reduction

Essence per Second (EPS) affix on the Helm, Chest and Boots helps to passively replace Essence as you cast your damage skills. Resource Cost Reduction reduces the cost of every skill by a percentage equal to the total on your gear. Since the base rolls of EPS add up to 12 and the Necromancer regains 3 EPS, you generate a total of 15 per second. To completely replace the Essence loss of 1 cast per second you need 40% Resource Cost Reduction. This would allow you to go "infinite", meaning you would never run out of Essence. When casting your skills more than once per second, you need more of both stat to achieve this equilibrium.

Exposed Flesh/Lucky Hit: Chance to Restore Primary Resource

The Aspect gives Essence on Lucky Hit for any enemy you hit that is Vulnerable. The Lucky Hit Chance Temper works on a target regardless of Vulnerable Status. This makes the vast majority of your Essence gain automatic.

Grim Harvest

Whenever you consume a corpse via Corpse Explosion, Raise Skeleton or Aspect of Explosive Mist you generate Essence with this passive. You get to recoup resources while applying DPS. It's a great two for one!

Abhorrent Decrepify

With your multiple sources of overlapping Damage Over Time (DoT) effects, Decrepify quickly lowers all active Cooldowns by one second and rewards aggressive gameplay. Get close to a group of CC'ed enemies so your Skills hit as many targets as possible, with as many damage instances as possible.

Shadowblight procs when a target has received eight instances of Shadow Damage, within two seconds of each one. It does not matter if the damage is applied via a skill, a Lucky Hit Proc, a Damage over Time effect or even a Seasonal Power. The amount of damage dealt does not effect the damage that Shadowblight itself deals. Even if the damage instances are very small, the more the better.

Shadowblight gains 70% of your total Shadow Damage and Corrupting Damage, as an additional damage multiplier. This value caps at 450% which is a 5.5 times total damage multiplier. This value is reach by getting your Character Stat Screen value for Shadow Damage and Corrupting Damage to total at least 643.

Generally hardcore and softcore share the same builds. Other than going slower and paying more attention to threats around you, there are some imporant things to consider:

• Focus more on Armor & Resists, making sure that they are always capped especially as you transition into higher torment difficulties.
• Focus more on maximum life rolls, for example replacing DPS stats like main attributes, attack speed and additive increased damage rolls. Also masterwork life more than normal if no other crucial stats have priority.
• Sacrifice Golems - Blood for more Maximum Life. Sacrifice Skeletal Warriors - Defenders for Resistances.
• Play on a slightly lower difficulty than the build normally would until you've adjusted to the increase in danger, or got better gear.
• Use defensive elixirs and incenses instead of offensive ones.

• While the mechanics are significantly more nuanced than this, and many things in game slightly obfuscate the truth, understanding Lucky Hit Chance is fairly simple.
  • With Advanced Tooltips activated in your Gameplay Settings, you can see a Skill's innate LHC.
  • Not every Skill has a LHC even though things may cause those Skills to deal damage.
  • A Skill must apply damage to a target to have a chance to trigger LHC.
  • LHC effects do not have LHC and can't trigger other LHC effects.
  • Skills check for LHC EVERY time they deal damage to ANY targets. There's no limit or "one per cast" mechanics.
• To calculate the chance of triggering something, you take your Skill's LHC, multiply that by (1 + (Total Bonus Lucky Hit Chance / 100)) and then multiply that by the Effect's LHC.
  • Blight has an innate LHC of 40%.
    • HUGE CAVEAT HERE: Damage over Time effects show an expected chance of applying Lucky Hit Chance over the total length of the Skill's duration, at least once, to a single target. So Blight is "lying" a little bit. Its chance of applying Lucky Hit with the initial damage is 22.54% and each damage tic has a 2.11% chance.
  • The Mythic Variant gets 52.1% LHC Bonus, and Decrepify has a 15% chance to trigger Cooldown Reduction on your skills.
  • So the equation is 22.54% * (1 + (52.1/100)) * 15% = 5.14% chance to trigger for the initial damage, and 2.11% * (1 + (52.1/100)) * 15% = .481%. But it hits the target a total of twelve times with its tic, so the total chance to trigger it once per cast is (100% - (100% - 5.14%)) + (100% - (100% - .481%)^12) = 6.13%.
    • This seems low but you can stacks pools, which can all deal their damage simultaneously and drastically increase your chance of proccing something once per second.
    • With the ability to bast Blight 2.6 times per second, by the end of the first six seconds you have stacked 14.6 effects, bringing your chance of triggering Decrepify once per second up to 89.5%.

Read up more on Attack Speed in our dedicated guide by Ava.

• While all the exact mechanics are much more nuanced, there are two separate Attack Speed Bonus caps of +100% that apply to all builds for a total potential of +200%. For Necromancers, these two caps include:

Cap 1

• Attack Speed on Gear
• Attack Speed from Paragon Nodes
• Elixirs
• Kalan's Edict for Minions
• Golems - Bone Sacrifice
• Moonrise
• Artillery Shrine

Cap 2

• Accelerating
• Rapid
• Rathma's Chosen
• Reap
• Blood Lance
• Hemorrhage
• Howl from Below for Corpse Skills
• Blood Attack Speed Temper

Read up more on Attack Speed in our dedicated guide by Ava.

Bosses are immune to Crowd Control (CC) effects and instead take Stagger Damage when hit by one. The amount of stagger damage dealt depends on the type of CC and is proportional to its duration. After being hit by a CC effect, the Boss will temporarily take less Stagger Damage from a CC of the same type.

Effectively, this means that when you're just spamming one type of CC you don't need to spam any more of it than what you need to keep a normal enemy permanently CC-d. To stagger the Boss quickly you need to use as many different types of CC as possible. After the Boss is staggered it gains a certain amount of stacking Stagger Damage Reduction for the rest of the fight:

• After 1st Stagger: 20%
• After 2nd Stagger: 40%
• After 3rd Stagger: 60%
• After 4th Stagger: 90%

Bosses naturally regain 1% of their Stagger HP every second and when that regen is combined with 90% Stagger Damage Reduction it becomes borderline impossible to Stagger the Boss again unless you bring a serious amount of crowd controls.