[3.22] 💀 CRIT DARK PACT NECROMANCER 💀 - ALL CONTENT - LEAGUE START VIABLE - 100M DPS - 225k eHP

It's a self cast dark pact build, scaling the damage of the skill via skeletons' gem level and maximum life. Except the optional jewels, the only unique that is needed for the build is prism guardian and it's easy to get the build going at a league start scenario, as the shield is not mandatory until end game.

I will update the guide further as I complete my character, the build is not final.

Altar farming (preferably exarch, because eater altars have pdr related mods), 100% delirium, simulacrum, solo 5 way, expedition/logbook, delve, boss farming. The clear speed is pretty decent once you get tailwind/elusive/onslaught boots. If you want to exclusively kill bosses, you can turn this build into a glass cannon version with much more dps (i.e., 200 mil dps on mid budget).

The build uses a plurality of reservation skills including petrified blood, utility spectres, animate guardian, curses and dark pact.

The build aims to reach at least 70/70 block without glancing blows, and that is definitely possible as necromancers are able to utilize divergent bone offering in addition to divergent tempest shield, with basically nothing for block on the tree.

I also use corrupted soul glorious vanity and petrified blood, as I have both life leech and es leech, with a massive amount of life regeneration and some recoup. Petrified blood allows the build to always have overleech and use pain attunement for 30% more damage. The pob has progenesis, which I don't have right now, but it's not mandatory at all as I'm comfortably clearing everything.

Rational doctrine is one of the key items of the build, because profane ground's damage boost is pretty noticeable and it's very useful to have permanent consecrated ground with petrified blood. The build has to have equal strength and intelligence to benefit from both mods of the jewel. Rational doctrine also has a synergy with bottled faith, as bottled faith applies to all consecrated grounds created during the flask effect.

The build also utilizes a large amount of physical damage reduction, via bone barrier, aspect of the crab, watchers eye, anomalous chaos golem, determination, soul of gruthkul and endurance charges. Without ANY armour and without determination, the build has about 55% physical damage reduction, which is not possible on other builds. This is scaled even further with determination and armour from the gear. I killed kosis+omni at wave 30 and they weren't even able to deal any damage to me.

Divergent dark pact heals all minions on hit, so you never need to worry about any of your minions dying. As we scale maximum minion life, they already have very high amounts of hp.

I use a pair of forbidden jewels for withering presence, it's free 15% more damage, 60% chaos resistance, an additional layer of wither and reduced damage over time taken. Profane bloom is better if you prefer clear speed.

Finally, we scale minion life as much as possible on our gear, but only up to the point where it starts producing diminished returns. Most people use two medium cluster jewels for minion life and darkness enthroned, but these are far from optimal and will not give you the most dps, in the end you'll end up with less eHP and less dmg.

Bandits/pantheon etc. are available on the pob.

I use Prism Guardian over Aegis Aurora or generic spell shields, because Aegis Aurora makes pretty much no sense in a corrupted soul build, as we're taking half of the damage to our life and we already have es leech. Prism Guardian allows me to skip arrogance in gear, and this is very important as the build is already socket-starved since it's a minion build, and allows me to run more reservation skills. Most people skip determination/tempest shield, but I wouldn't even want to play this build without these two, as it's significantly squishier without them.

I use bone offering additional block chance enchant, because it allows me to have 75% attack block without rumi's.

I don't use Darkness Enthroned and I think it's a severely overrated item, a well-crafted hunter stygian with minion life mod (fear essence) is much better in almost all cases.

I use Hands of the High Templar over rare gloves, because you can get your skeletons up to level 35 with decent implicits on it, which is normally not possible with rare gloves. It's also an armour/es base, and that works with the armour/es mastery that doubles the ES from our chest.

Most people use feeding frenzy, but after testing how the build works with and without it, I can safely say that it's a dead support for the build, so I don't use it.

Rational Doctrine is one of the best items for the build, because profane ground also lowers chaos res by 10%, which is massive in addition to the additional crit and free permanent consecrated ground it provides. I have no clue why people don't use it on crit chaos builds, and especially on this build.

I don't use ANY medium cluster notable, because they're completely useless. A medium cluster jewel with 35% effect mod is much stronger than a cluster with notables, because we get all the other benefits at the cost of an insignificant dps loss. 12% increased minion life is about 2% more dps for the current version of my build, so a medium cluster with hulking corpses and blessed rebirth gives about 10% more damage in total. However, other clusters such as the crit cluster with pressure points and precise retaliation mods provide more damage than this, so there's no reason to run a medium cluster with notables. This, again, is due to diminishing returns when we have minion life on other gear and the other parts of the passive tree. The second medium is also unnecessary for the same reason. This might be different for other builds that don't have a lot of minion life on the gear/tree.

I don't use the curse trigger on my wand, and instead use frost shield, because using despair in the wand is horrendous for mapping due to its high cooldown.

Finally, I use aspect of the crab, because it's very good for non-gb block based armour builds, it doesn't require a socket, and works well with our naturally high physical damage reduction.

kingmaker
garb of the ephemeral
hunter helmet with chaos resistance and nearby enemies have -9%/-12% chaos resistance mod
boots with chaos resistance, life regen and movement speed
we don't need any curse on AG

2 carnage chieftains for frenzy charges
arena master
other options like bristle matron, they of tul are possible

Frost shield, desecrate and bone offering in a wand with trigger mod

Summon skeletons, empower and minion life in gloves with +2 to level of socketed minion gems mod. You can use hands of the high templar with +1/+2 or vaal caress as budget options. Skitterbots also go in gloves for free levels. I've played with feeding frenzy for quite a while and decided that it's not needed in the build.

DIVERGENT dark pact, arcane surge, spell echo, intensify, void manipulation and chain in body armour.

Vitality, clarity and determination in prism guardian.

Flame dash, summon chaos golem, animate guardian, meat shield support in helmet or boots.

Shield charge, petrified blood, assassin's mark, raise spectre in helmet or boots.

Tempest shield in unset ring with +3 to level of socketed gems. If your unset ring doesn't have this mod, it doesn't really matter what you put in here.

Wand with +1 to all minion skill gems, +1 to all spell skill gems, cast speed and trigger craft

Prism guardian

Armour/es base helmet with +2 to all minion skill gems, life and mana reservation efficiency. Implicits are mana reservation efficiency and cast speed/minion life

Armour/es base glove with +2 to level of socketed minion gems, life, resists and open prefix for damage while leeching. Implicits depend on your glorious vanity seed, but I use unnerve on hit and chaos leech. Hands of the high templar with relevant +1/+2 mods, despair/temporal chain and spell crit is BiS, but there aren't many on the market.

Armour/es base boots with life, movement speed, tailwind on crit, elusive on crit, onslaught on kill.

Vaal regalia with a decent amount of es, additional curse, power charge on crit and spell crit chance.

Unset ring with str, dex, life, open prefix for elreon mana cost.

Bone ring with minion life, life, minion damage and open prefix for elreon mana cost. Despair on hit is needed if you don't have it on glove implicit or on the other ring.

Amulet with +1 to all skill gems, life, crit multi. +2 amulets are useless for this build because it doesn't do anything for skeletons. Dark pact's level doesn't really matter.

Stygian vise with minion life (essence of fear), life, resists. Open prefix can be used for a hunter slam.