I think Pestilence should be dedicated to Corpse lances only just as the new set is dedicated to Bone Spear and hopefully Corpse Explosion. Reason of this is that in the balance patch 2.7.0 maybe Blizzard can buff CL further to be in equal footing as crus. Even with the new 3300% damage bonus to 6 pieces pestilence, its still no where close to Crusader single target dps as a RGK and I’m not talking about 2-3 GR difference either.
Because of the 10000% damage bonus to Bone Spear from the new set, Pestilence set should focus on Corpse Lance only. It’s bonus to Bone Spear is irrelevant at this point.
Huh? The Masquerade set is ONLY about Bone Spear and Simulacrum.
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Hence I suggest moving CE to the new set instead of Pestilence
I think it makes more sense to make the Pestilence set focused on corpses. With the changes to Corpse Explosion and its gloves, it seems like it might actually stand a chance of being useful for that set, finally. A little build diversity never hurt anyone. If anything, I’d argue for adding Revive to the Pestilence set, making it something that can potentially use all of the offensive corpse consuming skills.
If I were to add anything to this new set, I’d argue it should be Bone Spirit (added to Bone Spear, not instead of it), to form a set that is centered around the skills that can trigger Bone Prison and Serration. Perhaps also Bone Nova and the Bone Golem, to make it all things “Bone”, but I think that would end up being a bit overly complicated.
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i dont like the idea either.
And JorMox is right, the damage that lance and ce are based off are now equal:
Lance: 1750% wep dmg x 600% from shoulders = 1.050.000%
CE: 1050% wep dmg x 1000% from gloves = 1.050.000% too.
The rest of the bonuses benefits both skills too afaik.
And the new set probably needs its corpses for essence generation anyways. And i would have the fear that once again, the set is played in speeds with CE only and scraps the spear alltogether. Then the new set would be obsolet or better said: make the pestilence set obsolet alltogether.
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Your math is a bit off. Lance does 1750% weapon damage (17.5x) and CP shoulders is 600% additional (7x effective) which is 122.5x the base damage of your weapon. CE does 1050% (10.5x) and the gloves do 1000% additional (11x) which is 115.5x your base weapon damage. They are close but not exact. Your lances do approximately 6% more damage each and fire off way more frequently than CE does.
oh okay. both came up to 1.050.000% for me, so ive seen the coincidence 
Still, ce does have a rune to get it up to 525% weapon damage (+50%). Assuming the percentage stays we get a rune with 1575% base lol.
Im hyped for the ptr. Still a bit mad that my beloved autolancer got no toughness buff 
Corpse Explosion, used properly, is going to hit more targets per cast than Corpse Lance will, at least most of the time, so while you are outside of Land of the Dead, Corpse Explosion should be doing significantly more total DPS on average. Corpse Explosion also consumes multiple corpses per cast if they are present, which will again lend itself towards higher DPS than Corpse Lance. Granted, while in Land of the Dead, it will have to compete with the auto-lances from Devour, but between the multiple explosions per cast and being able to direct where the damage is going, I don’t think it is necessarily out of the running overall, and it will definitely be a better choice while people are trying to get all of the CDR that is necessary for the existing Corpse Lance builds to really work.
With Pestilence, you cast a Lance for each Corpse you consume via Corpse Explosion. Unfortunately you need to pick Corpsewhisper Pauldrons or Grasps of Essence if you plan to use Captain Crimson to maximize your CDR.
Right. Obviously you will either be relying on Corpse Explosion or Corpse Lance, not both at once. The question I was pondering was how all the auto-Lance casts you can get with Devour while in Land of the Dead would stack up against manually casting Corpse Explosion during the same window, assuming optimal gear for each version, especially in a target rich environment. Having a smaller number of Corpse Explosions that all hit the targets you care about may or may not be more powerful ultimately than the larger number of auto-Lances that are targeted randomly. We will have to wait and see once we get our hands on it.
Nah. Having Simulacrums cast spells that require a corpse is weird and confusing. The most I would look for is to make the set benefit Bone Spirit as well.
and if it sums up to either lance or CE, youd probably already want to go with LoD CE instead of the set.
And it is basically already that far. As soon as you consider using CE youre already in the LoD segment. Free lances only affect if you have the shoulders equipped which equals in either no CE gloves or no CC3 which leads to non Lotd variants which are crappy for GR speeds at least. Maybe useful in t16 where you just need a golem to start the domino effect of lances creating corpses creating lances.
i wonder if anything really changes… The builds all feel like set in stone already. There will be alot of LoD builds showing up that were not seen yet but i doubt that the set section of the class will have much difference after 2.6.9…
Having CE be a viable path with this set would at least be useful if this ends up being the free set you get with the journey. Even if you can do better with LoD, everyone has to start somewhere.
If you’ve never tried it before, I actually do recommend starting a Necromancer as LoD right from the beginning of a season. Even with 0 ancients and a low level gem you scale pretty quickly. I tried it this season because Trag’Oul’s Avatar is a garbage set right now, and was pretty impressed with the results.
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