Soulrift Necromancer Endgame Build Guide

Season 6 is the Season of Hatred Rising. It features the Zakarum Remnants faction which hunts Realmwalkers, massive behemoths that roam outdoor zones and beckon Mephisto's hellspawn. Participate in these zone events and take down the Realmwalkers to spawn a portal to a Seething Realm. There you can acquire Seething Opals, new consumables that stack with Elixirs for a XP buff and the chance to gather extra rewards when defeating enemies. The types of Opals are:

Use these Opals at all times to earn reputation with the Zakarum Remnants faction and unlock further rewards.

Skill Rotation

• Cast Soulrift to gain the benefits of its Barrier and Essence generation.
• Once the first Corpse is formed from killing a monster or from Hewed Flesh, immediately cast Corpse Tendrils to gain the Critical Strike Chance bonus of Grasping Veins needed to hit 100% Crit Chance.
• Begin spamming Bone Spirit into packs of monsters. You must always Critically Strike to reset its Cooldown, this means you need to hit a target with it as well. Don't spam if there's nothing to hit.
  • Remember: The damage of Bone Spirit does not matter, it's just a resource management engine for the build to function.
• After casting Bone Spirit 9 times Xan procs and the next skill you cast automatically Overpowers. You need to line this up with Soulrift's cooldown, which resets quickly due to procs from Decrepify. This is automatically applied to enemies within range of Cursed Aura.
• When you proc this Overpower on Soulrift it snapshots (applies to the entire duration and any damage it deals) which allows every proc of The Unmaker to Critically Overpower.
• Reapply Corpse Tendrils whenever it comes off cooldown to maintain its Crit Chance bonus, and keep enemies grouped up.
• Recast Soulrift whenever it lines up with your Xan proc, even if has a lot of duration left. You get a feel for when you need to do this early, or can wait for later on in the cycle.
• Cast Corpse Explosion once every 5 seconds to maintain the buffs it grants.
• Use Sever + Inexorable Reaper's to move between packs and engage onto monsters quickly, to make the most out of your Soulrift duration.
• When in doubt Blood Mist out! Reposition and end the Mist early by clicking the Skill again, once you're ready to re-engage. A great tactic is to generate a Corpse during this time then immediately cast Corpse Tendrils on it for more safety.

Book of the Dead

Use the slider to see the progression steps. At around Paragon 200, leveling slows down significantly and all important Rare clusters, Legendary nodes and Glyph sockets should be unlocked. Afterwards, you can min/max your build with minor tweaks and by picking up additional smaller nodes.

Glyph Leveling Priorities

You can have up to two Runewords in your setup, each consisting of one Ritual and one Invocation Rune. Socket them in Two-Handed Weapons if your build calls for them, otherwise place them into your Armor pieces to replace normal gems. The Soulrift Necromancer focuses on the following combos:

Best in Slot

• Poc + Xan = This is required for the build to function, since it activates the Overpower proc which you scale from multiple sources.
• Tam + Xal = This adds more survivability to the build as well as further empowering your Overpower damage.

Alternative choices

If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top runes, you can also benefit from these options:

• Yom can be used in place of Xal to help stagger bosses quickly and add a measure of extra control over the battlefield.
• Mot for damage reduction, Zec for better Soulrift uptime, and Qua for movement speed are all great options to fit your particular playstyle.

Mercenaries are unlocked during the Vessel of Hatred campaign and assist you in battle. There are 4 separate Mercenaries to choose from, each with their own skill trees. You can have one Hired Mercenary that accompanies you into battle, and one Reinforcement Mercenary that triggers a selected Skill from their Tree based on your Skill use or other conditional event:

Hired: Raheir

Raheir offers a ton of survivability from Valiance, and Bastion, as well as CC'ing enemies nearly continuously. They also increase your damage through Inspiration.

Reinforcement: Varyana

Varyana adds another layer of CC on demand for the build, which helps with staggering Bosses via Earth Breaker.

To enable the Soulrift Necromancer to perform optimally, hunt for these stats on your gear with good rolls and aim to Temper ⚒️ & Masterwork Crit ↑ them accordingly. Keep in mind that certain stats, such as Armor, Resistances, Extra Size Tempers, Attack Speed and more, have caps that may affect your priorities according to the items and Paragon points available at that moment.

Recommended Endgame Stat Thresholds

Item Progression Goals

Before you dive into the Endgame with the Soulrift Necromancer, take a look at this overview of the items used in the build. See below for further details about the different progression steps and variants. Some of your Skill Tree choices depend on what Legendary Aspects and Unique items are available to you. Keep in mind that while we can guarantee that everyone has access to the same Codex of Power Aspects, the exact progression is different for everyone.

This section is designed to guide your Soulrift Necromancer from a fresh level 60 into the very late endgame using the three variants Starter, Ancestral and Mythic. At the final step, you should be fully decked out with a great all-rounder build. From there, follow the other min/max variants if you want to optimize around certain activities such as Pit Pushing, Speedfarming and more.

Once a guide is released, many players have questions on why and how we are approaching certain choices. In this section you can find the answers to the questions that have been asked the most.

I Keep Running out of Essence!

Essence per Second

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.

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!

How do I Reset my Cooldowns Faster?

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.

• Shattered Spirit's fires a large amount of Bone Splinters which can each proc LHC and reduce your cooldowns.

Which adjustments should I make on Hardcore?

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.

Mechanics

Lucky Hit Chance (LHC)

• While the mechanics are signifantly 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.
  • Bone Spirit has an innate LHC of 33%.
  • The Mythic Variant gets 38.3% LHC Bonus, and Decrepify has a 15% chance to trigger Cooldown Reduction on your skills.
  • The equation is 33% * (1 + (38.3/100)) * 15% = 6.845%.

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

Attack Speed Caps

• 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.

Stagger

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.

The Soulrift Necromancer blends together incredible amounts of survivability, utility and raw damage output. By activating the The Unmaker at high rates, while simulataneously emptying and refilling your Essence globe with every cast, the damage procs from this Helmet apply impressive amounts of Critical Overpower DPS.

In Bocca al Lupo!

Written by MacroBioBoi