Edit Guide

Non Crit Drain Life Necrotic Lich Build Guide

Posted by darklothar on January 14, 2025
Last updated on January 14, 2025

Overview

?

This build focuses on turning Drain Life from a channeled skill, to a cast skill. The play style is to cast Wandering Spirits at the start of a run, transform using Reaper Form, and maintain both for the entire map by casting Drain Life every 4 seconds.

The gear requirements are low to start the build and the only thing required is the offhand Stygian Coal. If you already have one (or find one early) you can start the build starting at level 36 when you can use this item.

You may enjoy this build if you are tired of building for Crit/ Crit Damage. This is a zero crit DoT build focused on all necrotic damage. It's focused on increasing the speed that the offhand pukes out beams by stacking PrefixIntelligence and increasing the damage with PrefixMana/ PrefixDamage Over Time/ PrefixNecrotic Damage.

The shown gearing is end game gear that you should be aiming for. See Build Variants for low playtime gear.

As I'm not pushing corruption with this build yet, I don't exactly know what the spec tops out at, but it should be able to do 300 pretty easily as I can currently do 200 at level 92 with the gear shown in the variants section. The most important part of this build is to keep moving and keeping Drain Life going. Constant movement/ positioning is a crucial damage mitigation layer as you'll get hit less and can avoid most enemies attacks simply by not standing still. As you are mostly only focusing on activating drain life and teleporting on cooldown, you can direct more attention to proper positioning.

Pros & Cons

Pros

Low barrier to entry – you can start playing this build with only Stygian Coal.

Low gear requirements – the only thing the items listed do are improve the build. It functions the same without them (except the coal).

Lazy playstyle when not pushing corruption.

Can handle all the content in the game.

Cons

Poor group clear.

Mana management.

Doesn't erase bosses instantly.

Constant timing required to keep reaper form up.

Gameplay / Mechanics

To play this build correctly, you will need to maintain your Reaper Form and Wandering Spirits by casting Drain Life roughly every 4 seconds and ensuring you are attacking enemies to heal the life that is being drained by Reaper Form using either Drain Life or Reap.

Most content can be cleared while simply moving around while recasting Drain Life to target the mobs around you. Occasionally you will need to pop Death Seal for minibosses/ elites/ mages, as it's a DPS burst on a short cooldown.

Due to the nature of the build, we are stacking lots of health leach in our passive tree with the nodes Survival of the Cruel and Soul Maw and with our main attack Drain Life. This build is very tanky using Reaper Form as it gives us a second life bar that we can expend before we can be killed. Also, Death Seal is a damage boost as well as a damage reduction ability on a cooldown.

When you get into your last gear piece, your wand Wrongwarp at level 83, you'll need to incorporate Transplant into your rotation to maintain the damage buff it gives you as well as maintaining your defensive layer from the Time Lock, Bone Armor, and the fear you get from Squeamish and Thanatophobia. Before Wrongwarp, you will be wanting to use either Transplant or Reap every 12 seconds to proc Julra's Stardial or refrain from using either until you need the DPS boost. You are usually moving fast enough around the map without using either of these so you can save them for high priority targets that need to die quickly like loot lizards/ minibosses.

Skills

Passives

Stat Priorities

Equipment

The gear listed is END GAME gearing. For leveling/ prior to finding the Unique item listed, you would prioritize gear with the below stats.

PrefixIntelligence is our first priority as it boosts the speed of the Stygian Beams that we have per cast.

PrefixNecrotic Damage/ PrefixDamage Over Time is our next item as it can be applied to most item pieces in various iterations.

PrefixMana and Mana Regen is needed to ensure that you can properly keep your mana full while running monoliths at the same time as keeping up with the cadence of casting Drain Life to maintain uptime.

SuffixAll Resistances - Specific resists to fill in the gaps to hit all your caps. What I have is shown is best case, but resists can be capped using idols until you can get it from gear.

Slot
Item
Stats
Helmet

Decayed Skull

for 2LP, T7 PrefixIntelligence and needed resists are priority.

For LP:

PrefixIntelligence

PrefixMana

SuffixPhysical Resistance

Body Armor

Woven Flesh

Priority is T7 PrefixIntelligence and T5 PrefixLevel of Reaper Form.

Gloves

Swaddling of the Erased

T7 PrefixIntelligence is the priority. Everything after that is best case on what you get.

Boots

Blood of the Exile

If you are using the Wrongwarp, T7 movement is the priority for 1LP.

For LP:

PrefixIntelligence

PrefixMovement Speed

Relic

Ambitions of an Erased Acolyte

T7 PrefixIntelligence is the priority. Everything after that is best case on what you get.

Main-Hand

Wrongwarp

You'll probably only get a 2 LP version, so prioritize the first 2 on the slam.

Off-Hand

Stygian Coal

You'll probably only get a 2 LP version, so prioritize the first 2 if you don't need the resists.

Ring 1

Flames of Midnight

IPrefixIntelligence is the priority for 1LP.

For LP:

PrefixIntelligence

PrefixNecrotic Damage

Ring 2

Julra's Stardial

for 1LP, T7 PrefixIntelligence is the priority.

For LP:

PrefixIntelligence

PrefixNecrotic Damage

Amulet

Omnis

Alternate is any amulet with needed resists. As we don't care about the implicit, this is a resist slot.

Idols

These are best case idols. If you don't have these, or need to fill in your resists, you can swap out as necessary. If your resists are fine, you can fill in any empty slots with a small idol with Damage over Time/ Necrotic Damage regardless of whatever secondary is on it.

Blessings

Try to cap your Endurance with this blessing unless you have a spot on gear. You can make up any resist shortfalls using blessing, otherwise shred is a good choice as well.

Timeline
Blessings
Ending the Storm
Fall of the Outcasts
Blood, Frost, and Death
Fall of the Empire

Build Variants

Leveling

For leveling, you can start with using basically whatever you want, but you don't want to start using Drain Life until you have a Stygian Coal. The movement playstyle doesn't mesh with a stationary channeled ability.

If you don't want to have to respec, you can start with skellies, then switch to bone golem and use spirit plague without needing to alter your passives skills.

Endgame

Endgame for this build is a very fast, very mobile playstyle. You will be casting Drain Life every 4 seconds while quickly moving around the zone. You can play one handed (hold down mouse one for movement, and click mouse 2 for Drain Life every 4 seconds) while doing farming. Once you start Wandering Spirits and Reaper Form at the start of the monolith, you should have no problems keeping them both active as long as you're moving from pack to pack and not messing up your rotation. Movement skills can be used if you need to chase a loot lizard down, and Transplant can be woven into the playstyle to keep damage to a maximum and movement speed maxed out. I usually pop it on cooldown when running monoliths to help with clearing large packs/ tough mini-bosses. I save Death Seal for lizards or annoying high HP mobs.

Bossing is the same, but you use Transplant right after you active Wandering Spirits and Reaper Form to proc your Wrongwarp and Julra's Stardial. Movement speed is also factored into our DPS for this build as each 1% in movement speed is a 3% increase in Spell Damage due to Wrongwarp, so we have extra on our boots and belt, as well as a movement and cast speed buff of 35% when we use Transplant thanks to Wrongwarp.

When bossing you'll want to cast Drain Life as fast as possible, as they can overlap, to kill the boss quickly, assuming that you're not in for a prolonged fight. This is something you need to work on as you improve your gear if you are pushing corruption.

Loot Filter

No loot filter is provided for this guide. You can generate a loot filter for this build in the Build Planner or create one using Filter Wizard in the Loot Filters section.

FAQ

Video

Changelog

  • Build Guide was published

Discussion

Continue on Forum