Throwing Shade - Limitless Damage Ramp Infernal Shade Necromancer Build Guide

Grow your DPS until the sun dies a heat death!

Finally kill those self-righteous Training Dummies!

No set/unique requirements

Tanky, with high armor, HP and ward

Damage over time: ignores armor, dodge chance and crit avoidance

"Fire and forget": no precise targeting needed

Kill enemies off-screen (or in different timelines *cough* Julra)

1-Button build friendly!

Sustained fights require Dread Shade recasts every 2s

Low DPS/lifesteal before first Sacrifice

Dropping a buffed Infernal Shade feels terrible

Off-screen kills mean off-screen loot drops

First, Some Math

• The Infernal Shade specialization tree is full of damage multipliers and we will want all of them
• Infernal Shade gets 4% increased damage per Intelligence
• We also have many sources of flat damage to explore, with a 200% increased damage effectiveness

To approximate the DPS of your Infernal Shade, without accounting for different damage types, use the formula:

(40 + 2A) * (1 + B/100) * (1 + 0.18C) * (1 + 0.2D) * (1 + 0.08E) * (1 + 2.5x)

A = total flat damage from all sources

B = total increased % damage from all sources (include 4 * your int here!)

C = points in Wildfires

D = points in Heart of Fire

E = points in Fanning the Flames

x = times Sacrifice has been cast since Infernal Shade started

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Why am I doing this to you? Well, I wrote out this equation because I wanted to show that it contains something unusual: a little variable named "x". We don't care about the exact value of x; let's just agree that as time passes it's going to increase.

If I break out some calculus from 20 years ago (I'm old) I can say that as time progresses (or goes to infinity), x goes to infinity as well. Thus, the limit of this equation as x goes to infinity is also infinity.

You might say "But any build can do infinite damage in infinite time!" - but, dear reader, this is not an equation for damage: this is the equation for Damage Per Second. (<-- mic drop)

The Combo

OK sorry for the math, let's kill things.

1. Cast Infernal Shade on things
2. Sacrifice your Skeleton(s) to increase Shade damage with Flickering Shadows 1/1 and refill your mana via Mind Catcher 3/3
3. Rebuild your ranks with Summon Skeleton (Cast 2x if you have enough PrefixCast Speed)
4. Refresh your Shade duration with Infernal Dread 1/1
5. Repeat from step 2

Each time you sacrifice a minion your Infernal Shade damage will go up by 250%. This is a multiplicative increase, although additive with itself. Once you start chaining sacrifices with Catalyst of Horror 1/1 and Sanguine Libation 5/5, a single cast could be adding 2000% more damage.

The Even Better Combo

Dread Shade is one of the best skills out there. That's my opinion but I think there are some very strong arguments for it right now:

• Beyond Death 4/4 creates a Volatile Zombie when the host minion dies. It always makes one zombie, but it is free
• Final Grasp casts Sacrifice for us when the host dies, again for free. Even Grand Sacrifice has a 50% mana cost
• Summon Volatile Zombie wants to be sacrificed so bad. Vile Force 2/2 and Shepherd of Thralls turn your zombie into a corpse pinata, bursting with 3 new minions

So as you are doing "The Combo" you are also getting free zombies, 2x Corpse Parasites, and a Skeleton Vanguard. Directly casting this skill would cost 100+ mana and have a 5s cooldown, but Dread Shade gives us one for free every time an affected minion dies... and then sacrifices them for us! Clearly I find this very exciting.

Furthermore, zombies blow themselves up automatically and Dread Shade drains minions health rapidly. So we can actually get our "combo" down to:

1. Cast Infernal Shade on something
2. Cast Dread Shade on a zombie
3. Repeat from step 2

Note: Flickering Shadows buffs (and any other Infernal Shade buffs) are attached to particular active shades. If you re-cast Infernal Shade (or an effect re-casts it indirectly) you can overwrite buffed shades with unbuffed shades. This is very sad for your DPS if that happens.

Staying Alive

Because Flickering Shadows is so powerful, much of the rest of our build will focus on defense. There are several fronts here:

• Martyrdom 1/1 and Symbiotic Apparition 1/1 give us 25 armor per vitality and cements my opinion of Dread Shade as the best skill ever. This should easily be 1250+ flat armor by level 100 and getting to 2000+ is very doable with endgame gear. It also means we prioritize increased SuffixArmour over added SuffixArmour. Please remember this if you ever see someone say "Necros are squishy" in global chat
• As our zombies die, Necromantic Fervor 2/2 + Giant Zombie give us a steady stream of healing (or ward via Vital Ward) that scales with PrefixMinion Health and (if healing) PrefixHealing Effectiveness
• As we're stacking vitality, a bit of SuffixHealth can push our life totals very high
• Because we're doing so much damage with Infernal Shade, lifesteal is put to great use on this build
• Stacking Intelligence when we can helps us with damage, minion health, ward retention and improves Dread Shade mana efficiency. Is good
• Life Drinker 5/5 turns our potions into full heals

This is really not a leveling build. It requires many skills to be at high levels of specialization.

The way I leveled, personally, was to spam DoTs through, e.g.:

• Spirit Plague - Toxic Transmission, Perpetuity, Hemorrhage and Exsanguination
• Aura Of Decay - Plague Bearers and Poison Bolt
• Infernal Shade - Torment Beacon and Baneful
• Wandering Spirits - Song of the Lost Chantry, Spectral Putrescence

Just load up on PrefixIntelligence and PrefixDamage Over Time and have fun.

If you're interested in build mechanics, leveling is also a great time to just try everything. Who knows what you will discover!

Farming

The first item you should farm is a Lich's Envy. It starts dropping in T2, and the "Damage per dread shade" will make future boss farming much easier. When comparing multiple Envies, I would prioritize:

• Mana cost for Dread Shade
• Damage per Active Dread Shade
• Damage for Damage Over Time Spells
• Cast Speed

Next, push to the highest Reign of Dragons corruption that you can clear safely and quickly and get a Twisted Heart of Uhkeiros. Most of the videos for this build include Emperor of Corpses kills. In my 1k corruption journey I did not find any good hearts with LP. Just prioritize:

• % Increased Health
• Cast Speed
• % Health converted to Ward
• Strength

Finally, focus on finding 2x Cycle of Putrescence. All you need to prioritize here is the Ward Retention and LP. This is an excellent item to chase with Rune of Ascendance.

With these items you can get into the advanced variant builds and truly obliterate monos and dungeons.

Bosses

Basic preparation for any boss fight is pretty much the same:

1. Apply 6x Dread Shade
2. Cast Sacrifice to trigger Infernal Vindication 3/3 and convert your shades to Volatile Zombie
3. Re-summon Skeletons to cap
4. Apply 6x Dread Shade
5. Engage boss by casting Infernal Shade
6. Spam Sacrifice 2-4 times, depending on cast speed (practice this with Training Dummies so you get a feel for how many casts you can get in before Infernal Shade drops)
7. Hit Dread Shade again and proceed with ramping up "the combo"

If you have a The Ghost Maker, you can also summon 6x Wraiths before applying your Dread Shades for an extra 400% damage vs bosses. Just note that this does not work well if the boss summons additional minions, which can trigger the chance to cast Infernal Shade and overwrite your buffed shade.

Monoliths

This is not the fastest monolith farmer, but it can go high corruption and it doesn't care about most modifiers. Just be careful when stacking multiple + damage mods.

A few guidelines when moving through echoes:

• Always have at least one active Dread Shade. Ideally 2-3. Dread Shades don't require precise targeting - just press the button and it should hit your closest minion, wherever they may be
• Getting an Infernal Shade up is essential, especially before you get reliable healing sources since you're probably just using lifesteal. I often will cast "probing" Infernal Shades at the edge of the screen to see if I can get any bites

Personally, I only really cast Sacrifice directly if there's something that needs to die right now, when fighting high health enemies.

Arena

So far, my personal best has been with the Endgame Skeletons variant.

• Find a spot along the bottom edge of the map, ideally between spawn points. This will give you the most visibility to see incoming enemies
• Keep Dread Shades up, and obsessively cast Infernal Shade at the screen edges
• Always try to summon your skeletons between you and the enemy
• Don't rush. Use the arena layout and Transplant to put space between you and the enemy
• Remember that you can amplify your Infernal Shade from anywhere

Pastebin link to my current filter. You'll want to tailor it to your particular needs.

My general philosophy is to make these rules:

• One for idols
• One for each equipment slot
• One for shards I'm low on
• Show all Unique/Set/Exalted
• Hide all Normal/Magic/Rare

I start greedy with each equipment slot's rule and refine as I get new gear, as follows:

• If my current item is garbage, I'll take any item with 1 or more of my target affixes
• Then I restrict to the specific base type(s) I want
• Next, restrict to 2 or more target affixes
• Once I have a solid rare (or a Unique) I restrict rarity to Exalted
• If I have an exalted, I further restrict to just my highest priority affixes at level 6+

Have you tried Pact Severance?

I did an un-scientific comparison with equal gear, swapping between a Dragonhorn Wand and non-legendary Pact Severance and seeing how long it took me to kill a training dummy. The wand was ~40 seconds and the Pact ~70 seconds. From a theorycrafting perspective, the Pact is worse because:

• You miss out on our best weapon damage mod:PrefixElemental Damage Over Time
• We miss out on all our adaptive spell damage (and the Pact's spell physical damage only applies to Sacrifice, which isn't where our damage comes from)
• We get a max of 1 cast of Sacrifice per second, but with Final Grasp 3/3 we're already getting 3 Sacrifices per Dread Shade (which is probably 1.5-2x per second)

In reality, Pact Severance could range from doing nothing, if your Final Grasp procs already chain to all your minions, or it could help keep things more consistent, since sometimes when spamming Dread Shade you end up overwriting existing shades, or you hit skeletons/worms instead of your zombies and it takes a second for them to die. But I am highly skeptical even a solid legendary will out-damage T7 Elemental DoT.

In theory, I think it could be nice for getting faster sacrifices when running monos.. reducing the potential delay between Infernal Shade and the start of ramp. However my timing example was with a max'd 6-shade bonus from Lich's Envy! Outside of boss fights you usually will only get bonuses from 1-2 shades, which means spell damage from gear is much more impactful. If you do try it out and like it, I personally would want a solid legendary Rotmind and The Confluence of Fate to make up for the missing spell damage.

Is this build exploiting a bug?

Unfortunately, I don't know. I have received differing answers from LE mods/devs when I asked about this. They have said they do not want feedback loops that create infinite damage, but they are also adding items that heavily play into infinite scaling (Cycle of Putrescence also works great with Assemble Abomination and PrefixExperimental Volatile Zombie on Potion Use and PrefixExperimental Ward Gained on Traversal are broken to the point of absurdity at time of writing... not to mention Subjugation is a 1-point infinite scaler that is now trivial to maintain with Cycle). My hope is that they simply put a cap on Flickering Shadows so that it matches Engorgement. Practically, that would have almost no influence on this build, as even bosses die in seconds at 1000+ corruption.

So how much DPS does this build actually do?

It depends. There is theoretically no limit to how high you can get, since you can endlessly add more 250% damage increases through Flickering Shadows, as long as you keep casting Dread Shade every 2 seconds. Practically, because each Sacrifice adds a constant amount of damage, your relative DPS growth will plateau.

The two primary factors that determine your DPS growth rate are:

• The base damage of your Infernal Shade
• Your Sacrifice casts per second

In practice, your damage per tick will grow until it overwhelms the HP of the enemy your fighting, and how long this takes depends on your DPS growth rate and the target's HP. Personally, I've reached ticks over 10M before a Training Dummy died. If you do better, let me know!

What about Ferebor's Persistence?

A fantastic ring for Intelligence-based classes. However, a Coral Ring grants up to 150 Martyrdom armor, plus the life for more ward generation. It's also an essential source of PrefixIncreased Healing Effectiveness, and with PrefixStrength will effectively give around 30% SuffixArmour. But Ferebor's is a nice stopgap until you find good rings.

And Isadora's Tomb Binding?

This is a tougher call. An exalted belt is probably our biggest single source of SuffixHealth, especially combined with SuffixHybrid Health, and it allows us to prioritize other things on our Helm and Body armor. But if I didn't have a high health belt yet, or if I had Helm/Body pieces with T6-T7 SuffixHealth, I would give Isadora's a try. If you're using Necromantic Fervor, note that you're giving up one of the few uncontested PrefixMinion Health slots (which can affect healing/ward generation) and PrefixElemental Damage Over Time.