Progress is uber slow. Haven’t even completed chapter 3 or 4 yet and I’m out of forgotten souls too 
But with the Siphon Blood/Blood Nova items and Corroded Fang in the cube, I should be able to do GR20 easily.
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The first thing you should be focused on, just getting 25 Death’s Breath to get some form of 2 Handed Scythe. Or, if you have blood shards to spend, Grasps of Essence in your cube. Any of the above should be able to carry you through a GR20 alone. Adding an LoD gem should make it easier, as you can easily throw in Reaper’s Wraps and one piece of Sage Gear for 3 Legendaries.
Now, in terms of clear speed and farming speed, yeah, the Necro is slow.
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I actually decided not to play this season… but then I did the challenge rift and meant to keep it and wait to see if the one on Tuesday would be doable too, so that I could start with opening the first CR cache and then have the next for the Altar in case I decided to play season anyway.
I couldn’t help starting a SSF necro anyway and leveled up without the cache. I also got super lucky with the drops for the staff (haven’t gotten that far in the Altar completion yet though…).
The key to have a good start with necro is corpse explosion and golem. And then go for a Legacy of Dreams setup. Later on I have put in death nova plus corpse explosion with Funerary Pick and Iron Rose. With the theme you can combine different scythes equipped and cubed, and other items equipped or cubed depending on what gear you happen to find. I’m a slow starter too. I believe this strategy is suggested by Behindtimes and other great players.
In fact he just posted right before me 
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Make sure you use Blood Rush, the Necro’s teleport skill. I prefer Potency rune, so you can use it to teleport into density if needed without getting one-tapped. I don’t care what the guides say, I’ll never willingly play a toon of my own making without a mobility skill on right click 
As others have said, the secret to Necro leveling is Corpse Explosion (Golem can help too, as it creates corpses on demand). Funerary Pick (one handed scythe) is a HUGE boost in power for virtually all specs, as it turns Syphon Blood into a viable end-game skill despite being a normally mediocre generator. But it sounds like you might already have it
I forget exactly what the boots are called, possibly Steuart’s Greaves? But they give a decent movement speed boost after using Blood Rush. Be on the lookout for those. Necros are “clunky” when first getting used to them but they pay off big time once you do.
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So, for Necro No-Cache, I have the full demonstration in my reddit guide, but Level 70 can be accomplished fairly quickly zero legendaries.
This is my typical approach, but I tend to focus LoD, skipping the journey, as I typically will save the set for HC.
1-70 No Cache Approach
- I take a 2 Necro approach. The first Necro gets to 18 by grabbing the Cache.
- Transfer the gear to your second necro, run a T3 Bounty,
- Hopefully a Vision appeared during the T3 Bounty, and after collecting the bounty, run the Vision to get enough materials to craft a full set of Level 70 gear. Just kill everything, and with the second Death’s Breath you got from the bounties, you should hopefully have collected enough reusable parts to convert into Veiled Crystals. 3-4 piece Sage if possible.
- Afterwards, just level up until about 56-58 on T6 difficulty.
- At that point, run Fields of Misery, trying to get a 400+ Massacre Bonus to hit Level 70 in one go.
Necro 1-70, No Cache Demonstration, No Skill Boosting Legendaries, 49 minutes
Post 70
- Let’s assume an absolute worst-case scenario that you get Maltorius’ Petrified Spike.
- Run Malthael on Normal Difficulty to get the Reaper’s Wrap recipe.
- Run a T1 Rift, and by now you should have 2 Greater Rift keys. Skeletal Mages with Gift of Death/Death Nova, Corpse Golem with Flesh Golem, Land of the Dead for Elites are all useful skills here. It’s T1, so you won’t need defensive gear or skills yet.
- Run 2 low level Greater Rift keys. You don’t need to go any higher than GR14. Speed is the key here, not trying to unlock further Greater Rifts. We just want an LoD gem. GR14 should guarantee 5 upgrades (if you have the gold to empower the Greater Rift).
- You’ll have some people claim that a T3 bounty is slower overall than a T1 snapshotted bounty. First, you have to run to the cube anyway, but they’ll state if you do that later, you’ll have faster movement speed and powers to help get there faster. But, here’s where having another Necro at 18 makes up for any lost time. Get that Necro now to 23-30. (you can transfer some of your yellows to make T6 super easy). Gamble Chest Pieces, as there are only 2 Legendary Chest Pieces, one of them being an Aquila Cuirass. This gets you crucial defensive stats fairly early.
- After you have the Aquilla Cuirass, level up to 35-44. This should also only take you a few minutes. This is where you’re going to gamble for an Iron Rose if you haven’t found one.
- After you gamble, you should have an LoD gem at 4-5, one piece Sage, Reaper’s Wraps, and a Legendary Two-Handed Scythe, which can carry you through T6.
- While I do go an LoD route, you can start on the other bounties now incase you want to complete your Season Journey. Now, this is slower to Haedrig’s, but whereas you’d level up with Bounties if you were going after Haedrig’s, this will be a bit faster to GR70, as you’ll need 15 Bounty Caches to acquire all the recipes, and each Cache gives fewer recipes than before. And if you run low level bounties, you cannot get Level 70 recipes, whereas this will.
- Anyway, the point of the bounties is to not only knock them out of the way, but to also get Visions, which will have the highest chance for legendaries. If a Vision becomes too difficult, start knocking the difficulty down.
- Now, worst case scenario, you still don’t have a Bloodtide Blade, Funery Pick, nor Iron Rose. A full set of Legendaries + Aquilla Cuirass + Level 4/5 Legacy of Dreams will make you T10 viable. But for speed, probably T8 difficulty.
- At this point, Farm Act 1 on T8, over and over until you get a Ring of Royal Grandeur.
- You should have the Iron Rose by now, even if low level as well as an Aquilla Cuirass. Any post gambling goes towards shoulders & pants for Trag’Ouls.
- Hopefully you’ll have successfully upgraded a Bloodtide Blade, or at least found one by now, as the Death’s Breaths should be coming in. And with Guardian’s Belt + Gloves + Bloodtide + Aquilla Cuirass + Royal Ring of Grandeur, T16 is now viable.
- Gambling now will be towards getting Steuart’s Greaves for speed and upgrading for the Funery Pick.
- At this point, keep upgrading for items you’ll need for your LoD set, and switch to that when it becomes more powerful than Trag’Ouls.
For me, I would say, on average, this all can be accomplished within 5 hours if done for speed, so take that into account, and it might be slower. But remember, this is a worst-case scenario. You find drops and it will be faster. I typically play for consistency rather than expecting to find Goblin Floors in Visions and acquiring the items I want right off the bat. As I’ve had times in the past where it took 20+ upgrades to get a Bloodtide Blade.
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Yeah I am at the point where I need to do A3-5 bounties to finish chp3…. I just hate bounties and need to find the will to do them 
Then it’s ubers for the parts for the altar to unlock double caches. Pity I couldn’t do this first.
Need to craft one more piece of sages for my follower for double DBs at the very least.
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I feel your pain when progress is so slow 
With my LoD without ideal gear (but some ancient for sure) and two gems in use (LoD and Powerful) I could slog through T13. With finally getting a Haunted Visions amulet in order to have Simulacrums (and a Krysbins) I could shoot up to a GR 90… being quite squishy though.
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Did A3 and A4 bounties… then got bored and did all of chapter 4’s objectives with only 2pc Inarius and a few legendaries - lol
Just need to go do A5 bounties and I’ll have my 6pc set. Should hopefully be able to jump directly to T16.
Hopefully the Fissures don’t keep spawning until I finish the bounties.
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Silly question… what’s going to add more damage?… krysbins or another weapon power in the cube?
I’m trying to keep Steurts in my spec for the speed. Trying to decide if I should wear RORG or cube it.
I usually do chapter 4 with Necro, then open the gifts with my main char and equip 6 piece set at lvl1, never gets old 
Depends. Any buff that rely on a specific situation will be hardly beneficial for the overall, so you have to look for something generic. As Krysbin’s require target to be under hard crowd control, I wouldn’t consider aiming for gambling rings at Kadala unless I have a way of inflicting and sustaining hard crowd control from long range or wide area of effect, I’d go with another weapon in Cube.
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While that might be overall easier, any class can hit Level 70 in 10-20 minutes with just all Level 70 yellows. The Necro is just better in terms of early power. But they severely lack speed compared to any other class. If you want efficiency, once you have done a Vision(s) to get enough materials to fully craft 70, that’s when you’d switch over.
(Mind you, Necromancer, Witch Doctor, and Wizard are all roughly the same speed to 70 if saving your cache, so no need to main a Necro outside of the 1-18 process.)
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I hope you have the Bloodtide blade, and Scythe of the Cycle also in cube? If you don’t have them Reilena’s Shadowhook can also boost damage somewhat.
What really made a difference for me was getting the Haunted Visions amulet. I upgraded a good deal of crafted amulets over some time and finally got one. A huge difference! … Shortly after getting one they started to drop in the game… typical!
Getting sockets for gems in rings and amulets also helps… this also requires luck.
Oh and Krysbin’s ring is a crazy power boost too!
Boots can roll Death Nova damage also… you have an affix available. (Helmet too but you lose vitality).
Krysbin’s is an auto-include somewhere in literally every single Necro build that I can think of, because Bone Armor is an auto-include and the Dislocation rune allows you to proc Krysbin’s triple bonus on demand. That being said, in normal seasons I would recommend cubing Krysbin until you find a decent ancient one with near or at perfect 100% roll on its leggo power. In this season though, wearing an imperfect Krysbin is preferable to cubing it in most cases because necro weapons are just that stupid in terms of the amount of damage they bring to the table. Plus, if your goal is to transition into an LoD build, they’ll want to run Krysbin’s worn because they don’t need RoRG. So your other worn ring can either be Unity (for defense) or CoE (for even more damage).
Even if you plan to stick with sets though, I really like Steuart’s for utility, and Necros generally aren’t hurting for dps regardless but do often suffer from mobility and speed issues. So it may be worth your QoL to wear Krysbin, cube RoRG, and keep Steuart’s in there anyway. Depends on if it hampers your GR’s too much to slot RoRG just for Steuart’s instead of a secondary set or just running CoE/Unity in 2nd worn ring slot.
EDIT: For reference in case you or anyone else is curious “how much do Necro weapons actually boost them in unrestricted cube season?” To answer that, let’s look at a gold-standard for dps, the CoE ring. Basically a 200% damage bonus within a 4 second window. Krysbin by comparison is 100% all the time, or 300% when using hard CC on demand (Bone Armor, Land of the Dead - Frozen Lands, etc). So we figure Krysbin is good if it’s essentially 1.5x a CoE whenever it counts. Now how do their cubed weapons stack up?
Well, Trag’s Fang is equal to CoE (200%) but with presumably 100% uptime as long as you run a curse. Frailty Aura will do the job nicely and automatically. Reilena’s with a high max essence is roughly 250% or thereabouts, so slightly better than CoE if paragon’d for essence and again with 100% uptime. Scythe of the Cycle is a whopping 400% bonus, double CoE and still with 100% uptime, but with the catch that you need to slot and spam Bone Armor (oh noes, anything but that! /sarcasm).
So basically, Cycle + (Trag’s or Reilena’s) = 3 or 4 extra CoE’s worth of damage, with full uptime and trivial drawbacks. That’s why you’re seeing so many early GR150’s with Necros this season.
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I’ve ended up dropping my SOJ for krysbins and am still wearing my RORG. I can get 3x weapons this way.
Have also dropped Guardians for Dayntees and APDs.
Maxroll shows Wisdom of Kalan in the cube… I got one of those. Might try cubing it to see if it makes me less squishy.
Did my GR70… got an amulet! Kymbo’s Gold… imagine if it had been Haunted Vision.
Did my GR70… got an amulet! Kymbo’s Gold… imagine if it had been Haunted Vision.
I imagine it having the wrong rolls!
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More than likely… but as long as it has a socket on it, I can roll 100% CHD and my simulacrums will also last forever. Better than the rare ammy with double crit I am currently wearing.
So I replace Rileenas with Wisdom of Kalan in the cube… I can run T16 so much better now.
I need to find another RORG to sacrifice to the Altar… hope I get two so I can cube one so I have the option to wear or use in cube.
That’s always a big relief in season start. Maxroll is good, but also look on the solo leaderboards. I found that my Trag’Oul was getting quite squishy in GR 110s and a bit lower. After seing that everybody is using Guardian’s, and switching to that, survival and damage is so much better.
I should try Guardians with Wisdom of Kalan in cube. See if it’s better than Dayntees and APDs.
Anyway, I’m up to the 250 souls sacrifice now. Having auto salvage, double Kadala chance, double DBs, passability and perma xp boost is really helping speed things up.
Still no haunted vision.
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Did another round of A1 bounties before bed… got 3 RORGs… why couldn’t that have happened earlier?
At least now I have the option to use RORG in cube, wear it (got variations with CHC or CHD) and each follower has one
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