Build Guide
This build was inspired by Masterbob96's build here, and svr who showcased it on his stream. A few hours later I had a Reddit discussion involving the Sage's set and it dawned on me that finally this build would allow for the possibility of adding the Sage's set!
As opposed to the original build I'm sacrificing Hexing Pants, Leoric's Crown, and Steaurt's Greaves. Leoric's is not too much of a loss (since we want to kill elites only and have a 100% In-Geom uptime), and for the same reason the boots don't hurt either as we're basically just Blood Rushing around. Hexing Pants hurt - but the 25% damage loss is less than giving up any of the rings. You might argue that keeping Hexing Pants is better than Moribund Gauntlets though - your choice!
I also toyed around with the idea of dropping the Golem and Commander of the Risen Dead passive, instead taking the Frailty Aura with Spreading Malediction; but after trying it out I figured that the occasional Golem is really nice when you're "out of enemies", such as in cave maps.
In general it is very important that with this guide you "don't go too high" - basically your kills translate into corpses which are transformed into Corpse Lances which kill more stuff. Don't rely too much on the corpses from Golem/Blood Rush, and keep Land of the Dead for the RG or the beginning of the rift.
The original guide used a Zei's Stone instead of Bane of the Powerful, but I preferred the more brain-dead variant of the BotP which lets me go anywhere and not focusing too much on distance. Credit for this idea to svr again! And also one last time credit to masterbob96 for this build. Check out both of them on Twitch!
How important is CDR? Where should it be at? Can we get some itemized stat priorities for those of us who don't have that stuff memorized? Thanks!
Edit: Also, why does this build feel so squishy?
CDR is good, but you don't have to go crazy - since you have In-Geom and you want to kill elites anyways (since it's a DB farming build) you want elites anyways. I'll see if I have time at some point later and add priorities; too busy playing myself atm ;-)
And yeah, the build is super squishy - like almost every necro build - the key is to get a quick kill for getting gold and Goldwrap up asap and maintaining it all the time.
Since it's a Sage's build I would not recommend to go above T11. It's simply not effective due to how Sage's works. For more info about that see Q&A in this thread. In general, people just always go too high. Remember that T9 with Sage's yields as many DB as T13 without Sage's.
I like this build, better than any other pestilence build I've seen.
Pestilence is underpowered for GR pushing, but this allows you to make quick work of lower torment Rifts for quick death's breath farming. It fills a niche and makes Pestilence fun to play.
Only adjustment I made was I stuck with Leoric's crown in the cube.
Hi, thanks for this - looks like a lot of fun and will definitely try this out tonite
Really good build, liking it a lot.
I have no idea how builds like this even get this many likes. First of all, using 2 pieces of Pestilence does really make it a Pestilence build. This really should be named a "Sage" build. Second of all, the 2 pieces of Pestilence is irrelevant. You can run the build without those pieces and the build will function exactly the same. Thirdly, you can mix Sages with any set and run T10 or T9 since all your damage is raw damage and not coming from any set.
Most of the damage however comes from the shoulders - the point is exactly that you can't just take "anything" and run T10. Maybe with paragon 2000... but people have been running this build with paragon 600 on Torment X on some streams lately.
It is, I've found 3 so far this season on necro only.
Thought it was just the rune, but still couldn't get this build to work.
I could be wrong, but doesnt the Corpse Lance rune stun the target, proccing the 3X damage from Krysbin's?
I have terrible gear, and im running it pretty well in T10, so maybe you should give it another go.
Thanks Bagstone! Love this build. Doubted sages could be nice and fast - but this surprised me.
I put together a T10 video to actually show people what it can do: https://youtu.be/323pYaVR3Wo
I just swapped simulacrum for a passive frailty aura cause I didn't need the damage
I just came from testing it on T10 and I don't think this is viable for anyone with low paragon. Maybe around 700 paragon and it works.
But, what's the point of using this build if you have 700 paragon? By that time you have full class sets that do 10x more damage. Just slap Ingeom in the cube and you'll be farming up to T13.
I was trying to consider this build for low paragon and fresh 70's but it doesn't work. You need ancients and decent paragon.
Hi Bagstone, could you add the stat priorities to the build? I would appreciate it very much if you do. Thanks!
Thank you so much!
The build isn't bad for under T10. It works just fine. My point was that anyone with 700 paragon has a full set of something and won't need a sage set. You're going to tell me that you farmed 700 paragon doing rifts and greater rifts and don't have one viable Necro set? By the time I hit 500 paragon I had every single Necro set completed.
I understand that you get the same amount of DB's using this set in T9 as in T13. I never argued that. I'm arguing why high paragon players with full Necro sets would use this instead of just going straight to T13. Everyone IN T13 does rifts in 4 min max. Plus, you actually benefit more because of the ton of legendaries that drop.
Let's say I just hit 70. I have 50 paragon. I see this build and try to gear for it. Will I be killing stuff with it in T9? Hell no I won't lol. So why is this build working for others? Because they have ancients, high paragon, and/or high gems, which leads to my other point. This build isn't really that viable for low paragon players that are "gearing".
Anyway, not saying it's a "bad" build but players get the wrong idea about builds when it's not being portrayed correctly. I tried this build in T10 with no ancients and just got rekt. Probably, because I don't have 800 paragon or something. Not that it matters to me because I have class sets that clear T10 in 2-3 min which can be easily done with 300-400 paragon.
This build is indeed very fun and convenient for farming DBs, thanks for making this guide!
At first it didn't work well for me at T10 (around ~p600, can run GR70 in < 10 Min), but then I enchanted all items properly (which ironically cost 200+ DB) and now it works excellently (T8) to fine (T10).