Source
r/diablo3•
Tehbreadfish

LOD Poison Scythe struggles

GEAR-CHECK

Hello, had a few questions about this build and was hoping someone could help out. This season I have played WW barb, GOD DH, and now LOD scythe necro. The first two were both extremely quick to get results, with my DH clearing GR 120 at about paragon ~875 before her untimely death. My necro however, has been a huge pain in the ass, any push rift (95+) is taking about 10 mins to slog through. Build here:

https://maxroll.gg/d3planner/189576545

I have now gotten every item but one to ancient, and am able to clear about GR 105 without doing any fishing. I have heard so much about this build being able to do high rifts, but I am not sure where the extra 45 grifts worth of damage is supposed to come from. I still have no ethereal thats useable, would that really make that much of a difference? Is there anything that stands out as seriously wrong with my character? Not too many HC necros on the leaderboard to compare to unfortunately.

Posted Nov 10, 2021, 5:24 AM UTC

323
ros-botbattletag#1234•

Scythe is just not a very speedy build overall. I’d recommend LoD mages for speed farm. And corpse explosion for push.

5
taway451•

Ethereal would be the biggest upgrade even if it doesn't have the power you want and getting chd on rings

2
TehbreadfishOP•

Gotcha, I'll be hoping for one. The rolls on my items are definitely below average, so I'll look into getting some better rings for sure. Thank you for the advice

1
PotatoBuspotatobus#1897•

Have you considered dropping Bone Spear for Contamination Mages? With the shoulders you have, you can still use them for the Nayr's stack and also dump essence with them so that your swings do damage too (2 simulacra hitting vs 2 simulacra + you hitting = 50% damage increase when you dump essence).

You're also missing a ton of CHD and crit chance.

2
Reply_or_Not•

You don’t have to be missing essence to trigger the extra damage on scythe any more.

EDIT: it turns out this only applies to simulcrums, you need to be missing essence for your own grim scythe to get it

2
PotatoBuspotatobus#1897•

I've heard that's true for the simulacra, did blizz change that for the player-character as well? Haven't been keeping too close of an eye on patch notes for the last few seasons.

2
Azaias•

No, thats still just for simulacrum. On PC its not worth running an essence dump since Skeletal Mage and Grim Scythe have to be cast separately. On console its worth it, since the casting animation for Skeletal Mage doesn't interrupt any other skills being cast, letting you cast them simultaneously.

2
PotatoBuspotatobus#1897•

Even considering lining up the dump with CoE and Krysbin's damage window? I can understand not dumping constantly, but I would think it is probably worthwhile to maximize damage during that window...

1
Reply_or_Not•

I just tested on switch and it looks like you do need to be missing essence for your own scythes to do the extra damage.

1
_that___guy•

+1 to this idea. When I played a couple of seasons of this build, I basically had the poison mages on numlock (was actually on a trigger that I held down constantly since I play on xbox). Because essence regenerates so quickly with each swipe, it made life easy to just have mages popping out any time I built up essence.

1
EglinAfarce•

I basically had the poison mages on numlock (was actually on a trigger that I held down constantly since I play on xbox).

Because his d3planner shows which stats he's rerolled, he's almost certainly imported it from PC. And on PC, you can't properly numlock skills that can be targeted (such as skeletal mages).

1
_that___guy•

Yes, I wanted to make sure that I stated that this was on console in my other comment, because you get the benefit of the fact that casting mages does not interrupt other skills, and the trigger can just be held down indefinitely.

I recall having a debate in this subreddit with someone who was convinced that you should not dump essence at all and just rely on the simulacrum damage (which apparently always ignores your essence level for leger's desdain, giving the full benefit to sims all the time). The main argument was that it takes time to dump essence, which could be better used with more scythe swipes. However, on xbox, it did not take any more time to dump essence (no attacks were sacrificed while dumping with mages). The difference? I was on console and he was on PC. Several youtubers/streamers advised not to waste time dumping essence in this build, so he was sure he was right, but almost all of them play on PC. In the end I think he assumed I was just wrong, lol. But I played 2 whole seasons with that as one of my main builds, and it worked for me!

1
Azaias•

Essence dumping only works on console, and is actually required. The console build suffers from a bug where Grim Scythe cast by Simulacrum doesn't benefit from Nephalem Glory. Dumping Essence ironically gives you just enough damage to make up for the NG bug.

1
_that___guy•

It's a slower build - strong, but slow. For more movement speed swap out your Aquila's Cuirass in the cube for some Stuart's Greaves. Look for large groups but skip single mobs. Density is your friend.

Finding a good ethereal would make a ton of difference.

2
Azaias•

These are the setups I recommend: LoD Scythe Builds

The best guide for the build is Cratic's Video Guide

Also if you're on console, there's a Nephalem Glory bug that affects this build, but I came up with a workaround that should make up for the damage loss, for the most part: Console Scythe Build Mechanics

If you want, you should join the discord server https://discord.gg/soulstone there's many knowledgeable people there that play on all platforms

2
uhdog81•

Work on getting everything augmented. Level gems on one of your other characters if you want. If not, drop your GR to farm some up faster.

1
EglinAfarce•

Necro has pretty much always been trash in terms of offering good general-purpose builds. Scythe is great for very high GRs (I wouldn't even bother trying prior to over gr100) and very trash for speeds. The playstyle changes substantially once you hit a certain GR difficulty, as with all builds.

Not too many HC necros on the leaderboard to compare to unfortunately.

No reason you can't compare against softcore.

I am not sure where the extra 45 grifts worth of damage is supposed to come from

I haven't been following the leaderboards closely. Do you have some reason to believe Scythe should be able to clear gr150 with your paragon, gem, and augment levels?

Is there anything that stands out as seriously wrong with my character?

It's a LoD toon and you don't even have 10k Int. Gem levels are crap - don't even have LoD gem maxed out. You're inexplicably using a cubed Aquilla instead of wearing one, leaving room in the cube for Illusionary or Golemskin or such. You're missing all kinds of crit including on your CoE that you evidently haven't even bothered to adjust at the mystic. I don't understand why the shoulders aren't ancient despite being easy-to-get garbage while many of the other slots are ancient despite being garbage that's worse than non-ancients (even in a LoD build). Honestly surprised you're getting through gr95.

There could also well be playstyle issues that aren't obvious because of the relatively easy difficulty.

1
Azaias•

Also, after looking at your build, I think alot of the issues is from your gear.

You need both Crit. Chance(CHC) and Crit. Damage(CHD) on your rings, amulet and gloves(CHD should especially be prioritized on amulet). If you can get both of these on your gloves, then its nice to also get 7%AS and/or 20%AD on them too. Get CHC on bracers and offhand, try to find an offhand with a higher Legendary Power affix. If you manage to get CHC on all pieces then I would roll it off of your helm for a socket and use Amethyst.

I recommend this Stat Priority for weapon: 10%Dmg > 7%AS > 24%AD

Equip Aquilla, even if you have one that's non-ancient, and cube Steuarts Greaves. Best stats to get on Aquilla is Int. > Life% > Vit.. Change all Rubies to Amethysts and reroll Vit. on your pants to Armor if possible.

Use Enchantress with Amplification and Focused Mind.

1
TehbreadfishOP•

Thank you for the response. I think a lot of my struggle comes from misunderstanding the value of LOD. I expected to jump up considerably after getting 3 non-ancients to ancient, but it was only about 5 grifts. I see that the actual gear rolls are much more impactful than I gave them credit for. Thank you for the response, I appreciate it very much

1
Azaias•

Anytime! I worked on this build for all of S23, I started using D3Planner and manually figured out how everything gets calculated, it helps alot with comparing stats. Honestly that's how I learned most about the game.

I overlooked your legendary gem levels. You should get LoD to 99 and other gems to at least 100

1
Weirdodin•

What platform are you playing on? If it's anything other than PC unfortunately console gets royally screwed on this build essentially halving the builds damage. Simulcrams aren't programmed to benefit from Nephelem Globe damage boost in our GR's....Blizzard can't be bothered to fix that for us. Been broken for several seasons now. Our Necros are terribad as result.

1