[3.16 updated] BRO, DO YOU EVEN SUMMON? Life/ES Dark Pact Skeleton Caster League Starter

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Eathb wrote:

Discipline on hit is very important for this build to feel smooth I think as I cannot consistently self cast DP and need to use Skeles.

Haven't started as Assassin myself, but even on Occu I was casting on skelies in Red Maps until Void Batteries (used Apep + Lunaris Shield). Apep doubles your base damage early and Lunaris multiplies it on top. But you are in dire need of increased spell damage at the moment. Grab a Zeel Amp for now.

Katarinas flask is a great spike in sustain and also I recommend Enfeeble + Blood and Sand (need a bit of mana reserved to run) to supplement Elusive's evasion.

Granite Flask and Vaal Molten Shell early on until your damage is high enough to clear everything smoothly. CWDT helps too.

Soul Tether is cool when your base life is already quite high but inefficient early. Upgrade to enduring mana flask, drop you ring for more stats/life/es and resistances.

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zoNiklv wrote:

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Eathb wrote:

Discipline on hit is very important for this build to feel smooth I think as I cannot consistently self cast DP and need to use Skeles.

Haven't started as Assassin myself, but even on Occu I was casting on skelies in Red Maps until Void Batteries (used Apep + Lunaris Shield). Apep doubles your base damage early and Lunaris multiplies it on top. But you are in dire need of increased spell damage at the moment. Grab a Zeel Amp for now.

Katarinas flask is a great spike in sustain and also I recommend Enfeeble + Blood and Sand (need a bit of mana reserved to run) to supplement Elusive's evasion.

Granite Flask and Vaal Molten Shell early on until your damage is high enough to clear everything smoothly. CWDT helps too.

Soul Tether is cool when your base life is already quite high but inefficient early. Upgrade to enduring mana flask, drop you ring for more stats/life/es and resistances.

Thx, made some changes where I have stooped dying for now in the White Maps.

Turns out that my Skeletons kept getting killed by the Delirium after death explosions.

Bought a Cluster jewel with Blessed Rebirth (minions can't be damaged when summoned recently + Life from Death (Minions have 15% increased maximum Life, Regenerate 2% of Life per second if a Minion has Died Recently, Minions Recover 4% of Life on Minion Death) for 10c. Ultiamtely, I think the goal is a Blessed Rebirth + Intesity jewel.

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Eathb wrote:

Bought a Cluster jewel with Blessed Rebirth (minions can't be damaged when summoned recently + Life from Death (Minions have 15% increased maximum Life, Regenerate 2% of Life per second if a Minion has Died Recently, Minions Recover 4% of Life on Minion Death). Ultiamtely, I think the goal is a Blessed Rebirth + Intesity jewel.

Might also look into grabbing explode on kill Jewel, if not mistaken its a part of chaos damage cluster.

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Eathb wrote:

Thx, made some changes where I have stooped dying for now in the White Maps.

Just noticed I wrote "Blood and Sand", but meant "Flesh and Stone" for blind and reduced damage. That takes 25% of mana so you need some mana reservation to mana to cast DP at least twice. If not, then just run Precision/Clarity/Aspect.

Also your boots have % ES with no base ES and still running no anointment on the ammy. Freedom of Movement is cheap and useful, or any other to your liking.

Thx again.

Is a crafted rare Vaal just straight up better than the Bloodbond chest?

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Eathb wrote:

Thx again.

Is a crafted rare Vaal just straight up better than the Bloodbond chest?

It can roll up to total 150% resistances, 100 life, 350 es and a 10% life as ES mod. Plus all the new Conqueror mods instead of any above ones. So yes, definitely better if rolled correctly. Plus 6L blue base is copied via Beast crafts in trade Leagues so they are not expensive without rolls. Can essence craft on top (spam essences for +any res) or just straight up chaos spammed.

@zoNiklv been watching your old 3.8 videos.

So playing this build got a redic alt regal ring and loving it so far. Rest of the gear is pretty basic. Gonna roll another chest with open prefix for life as es. Then grab a timeless jewel for another 50% life as es.



Went with occult cuz i've done 3 assassin characters past 2 leagues so wanted to do something different.

Also for a layer of defense i noticed your build has like 600es on hit where i can only get like 150 atm. 200 of yours from your watchers eye but still way higher than mine.

I'm having a hard time determining how minion life scales my damage. Is there a way to see how much life a node would give my skele's and have it update pob automatically instead of checking calcs and updating myself. Im trying to determine if the new minion life notables are really worth it. I see crazy numbers in this thread of like 15k hp skeles. With +2 minions, 21, and empower 3 I top out at like 9k. As far as i can tell scaling crit multi or something is better for dmg. Just trying to figure out the fine tune settings for the build

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labelbuddy wrote:

@zoNiklv been watching your old 3.8 videos.

So playing this build got a redic alt regal ring and loving it so far. Rest of the gear is pretty basic. Gonna roll another chest with open prefix for life as es. Then grab a timeless jewel for another 50% life as es.

Also for a layer of defense i noticed your build has like 600es on hit where i can only get like 150 atm. 200 of yours from your watchers eye but still way higher than mine.

I'm having a hard time determining how minion life scales my damage. Is there a way to see how much life a node would give my skele's and have it update pob automatically instead of checking calcs and updating myself. Im trying to determine if the new minion life notables are really worth it. I see crazy numbers in this thread of like 15k hp skeles. With +2 minions, 21, and empower 3 I top out at like 9k. As far as i can tell scaling crit multi or something is better for dmg. Just trying to figure out the fine tune settings for the build

Life as ES is a 20% mod, not 50%. And while it's strong, you will be missing out on the Minion HP jewel. If you get an Elegant Hubris with 160% Minion HP or more that will make sure you don't need minion Life elsewhere.

As for damage scaling, per say you have max 10k HP on your skelies. If you cast 8 times per Second, you drain their HP down to 6k. So the effective life for DPS calculation is 80% of skelie Maximum Life.

10k HP skelies will equal to 480 base chaos damage added to Dark Pact.
20k HP skelies will equal to 960 base chaos damage added to Dark Pact.
30k HP skelies will equal to 1440 base chaos damage added to Dark Pact.

Lvl 21 DP has 340 avg. base chaos damage. So 340 + added from skelies we divide by 340 to get the increased damage value.

Result looks like:

10k HP skelies = 241% damage (141% more)
20k HP skelies = 382% damage (282% more)
30k HP skelies = 494% damage (394% more)

And so on, but you see diminishing kicks in somewhere after 20k HP. That's a sweet spot and for that you need Lvl 27 Skelies and about 300% increased Life more or less, just remembering numbers out of my head.

It's not hard to get, but a little time consuming sorting Hubrises to find 160%+ one. But after that you're good to investin everything else.

Before Legion you had to put Minion Life on every gear peace pretty much, so it's much easier now.

Unfortunately, POB does not interact with DP well ;(

Hey guys, anyone tried utilizing spellslinger for Dark Pact? I might try, but I have heard that because two skills we use should have different use frequency (essentially you cast skeletons sometimes and DP all the time), it is not great with trigger mechanisms.

I am leveling an Occultist, my other character is carrying me very well financially, so I have a helmet with +2 minion gems and level 20 minion life, one Void Battery, recommended rings all waiting for me. I think I will completely abandon the left side of the tree and instead invest in cluster jewels, they are pretty sweet.

What is the consensus on movement skills? I used just Flame Dash for now, in the guild it says Phase Run and many people here are using Withering Step. WS shares a cooldown with FD, should I put them both on Second Wind Support and not use Phase Run? It seems kinda unnecessary.

Looking at poe.ninja I can tell there is very little consensus on how to best use Dark Pact. All skill trees and setups are different. For some other builds, eg Whispering Ice, everybody does exactly the same thing.

Any idea of a good seed to hubris? Or how to go about finding one?