Seasonal Necro, level 70. A bit stuck

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1

I generally play the seasons up through Chapter IV in order to get the easy unlocks, then retire that character. This time, with the altar mechanic, I decided to try and push further, so I started a necromancer (after years of hearing how powerful they were.) I powered up to 70 in a day in Adventure Mode, then knocked off the remaining chapter content to unlock my set, mostly playing at Torment IV.

It looks like I picked the wrong season to try a necromancer. From what I’ve read, the set that they give you this season is powerful, but is almost useless without a couple of very specific, very rare items (Haunted Visions and Gelmindor’s Marrow Guards). Without those, I’m going into the end game without a starting set bonus, which has been particularly painful, as it means that I’m having to use builds without set bonuses, and most of what I need to do to advance requires more oomph than you can get without a set.

Getting those items (or unlocking things in the altar) requires obscene amounts of resources (Blood Shards, Forgotten Souls, Veiled Crystal, etc) for crafting and upgrading, hoping to get a lucky roll. So, how do you get those? Apparently (according to the research I’ve done), you get them by speed-farming rifts, going for those that take 3 minutes or less.

Without a set bonus, none of them are even close to that. I can do a Torment IV rift in about 15 minutes. I just tried a regular rift at Torment VI. 28 minutes, 17 deaths. None of them are dropping much of anything in terms of crafting materials - I haven’t gotten a single Forgotten Soul in several hours, and not enough Legendaries to break down for them.

I’m running a ‘fresh 70’ build from Icy Veins, using the best gear I’ve been able to find.

I’m not sure what to try to advance this character at this point - it takes hours for a single shot at the RNG of the items I need.

2

You have set bonuses. You aren’t using them. That is the issue.

3

This. ^^

Please don’t run rifts in 15 minutes, it’s a waste of time. Run them in 3 minutes, whatever difficulty that is. Drops are sparse at low levels and it’s a bit slow to get going, but once you get some items you can increase difficulty (while staying at 3min clears), and you get more drops and you can increase faster. You should be speeding T16s in a few hours.

If you have your 6-piece set, then you should be able to run way higher though, like T10 or something at least, even without any supporting legendaries.

From your profile you don’t even have your 6-piece masquerade equipped? So get the 6-piece bonus active, equip simulacrums and bone spear, and you get 27000% damage bone spears from your sims, and 9000% from you! I see you have scythe of the cycle as well, so I think that should be enough to run at least T10, probably higher, even without haunted vision. But whatever you can do in 3 mins.

Oh, and don’t do icy veins. maxroll is the place to go for guides.
maxroll.gg/d3/guides/masquerade-bone-spear-necromancer-guide
Scroll down and look at the T16 and GR solo speed variants. Those are the ones your going for.

As you play you’ll find other sets as well, and you can play whatever build you want, but as you got the masquerade set as haedrigs gift, that’s what you should use for now. Only swap into other builds once they are somewhat complete and can speed T16.

4

Craft some rare 2H scythes, upgrade them to legendary until you get Maltorius’ Petrified Spike and then extract the power. With that power in the cube and by switching Bone Spear rune to Teeth you should easily be able to do T10 and up, even without permanent Sims.

Also have use Devour to quickly replenish Essence.

For speed content you need to modify your build, deviate from the guides. Don’t try to follow the guides to the letter until you have everything the guide tells you need.

5

I’ll send you a friend request and help ya out.

6

This was the answer, by the way. Thank you.

I’ve been going to Icy Veins for WoW for a long, long time now, and have used them for Diablo in past seasons. This time? They were absolutely the source of the problem.

Their guides were very clear that until you have the amulet and bracers, the set and associated builds were unusable.

I need to do more experimenting to find my sweet spot, but switching away from the Icy Veins ‘Fresh 70’ build (what they suggest to run until you get the missing items) to the in-progress build linked above, I went from dying repeatedly to finish a T6 run in 30 minutes to doing a T10 run in 10 minutes without ever going in to the red.

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