[3.11] Assassin Dark Pact (Poet's Pen, CoC, Spellslinger)

Dark Pact is a clunky spell that requires pre-summoning skeletons, or sacrificing your own life to cast. This is intended, however, and is the overall drawback for such immense power, that is provided by this spell. It’s a chaos skill that once cast, goes through a series of checks, and changes behavior depending on these checks which are as follows:

* Are there any Skeletons nearby?

- Yes: Cast on Skeletons.
- No: Cast on Player.

*How much life does the player have?

- 1 Life: Does nothing special.
- More than 1 life: It removes 8% of the player’s maximum life, deals that much as extra damage, and adds 77% more damage multiplier.

* Do you have only one skeleton?

- Yes: It removes 8% of skeleton maximum life, and deals that much as extra damage.
- No, I have more: It removes 8% of skeleton maximum life, deals that much as extra damage and chains to additional two skeletons, and does the same damage.

You can already see the different ways this single spell can be built, but for this guide, we only cast Dark Pact on skeletons. We will use a Chain support gem to increase the chain target by two more. So each cast makes Dark Pact proc 5 times, effectively gaining 400% “More Damage Multiplier”. Then we can invest in Minion Life to increase the damage output of every single Dark Pact. To avoid a clunky build, we will automate both the casting of skeletons, and the cast of Dark Pact. Which takes us to the actual mechanics of the build and how this all works:

You can use an Attack Skill, and link that with a Cast On Critical Strike Support inventory icon.pngCast on Critical Strikes support, and link them with a spell. Once this is done you can use your Attack Skill, and every time your attacks perform a critical hit, you will proc the linked spell. So if you do more than one critical per second, you proc your spell more than once per second, making your attack speed, and critical chance an effective way to increase your spell damage.

The default cooldown of Cast on Critical is 0.15 seconds, allowing effectively 6.06 procs per second. In order to achieve this, we need to increase Accuracy to gain 100% hit chance, so every attack hits, and therefor has a chance to Crit. Then after Accuracy we need to increase Critical Strike Chance, and Attack Speed to proc as close as possible to 6 times per second, for maximum damage.

Our attack, Kinetic Blast has two damage components, initial projectile, and explosions with a delay. So even if we don’t hit 6 attacks per second, we can still deal critical hits from combining primary and secondary hits. This is more likely to happen with a Chain support gem, because a single attack can hit up to five targets, and do 4 explosions, 5 additional times. You can now see just how many hits we emit with one attack to make this work.

Damage Calc

The Poet’s Pen is even more simple than Cast on Critical. You attack once with The Poet’s Pen wand, and and the gems socketed in this particular wand proc. It alternates between spells in your main hand and off hand. So we put skeletons in one wand, and another Dark Pact on the other. This will keep summoning skeletons, and proc an additional 3 Dark Pact spells at half of our Attack Speed.

Note this doesn’t need our attacks to Hit or Critically Hit. You just attack in any direction, or empty space and your spells socketed in your wands will proc. This has a 0.15 second Cooldown, or an effective 6.06 procs per second.

Spellslinger reserves mana to proc linked spells every time you attack, with a 0.429 second cooldown, or an effective 2.33 procs per second. Be aware that going over this attack rate can make some of your spells miss the cast, because every second attack you will find spells on cooldown, so it doesn’t proc but instead waits until the third attack. Therefore, if you plan to go over 2.33 attacks per second, try to reach almost double that number to not lose damage from the missed proc.

If you don’t make this build as your first character in league, make sure to get two of The Poet’s Pen wands before starting. Use them from level 12 and never look back.

Get 6 Link Body Armour, no matter what is it, because Links for main skills are more important. Use Tabula Rasa, Skin of the Loyal, or any corrupted body armor with (3B/3G) sockets, and get resistances on it if possible.

The typical unique armor pieces that helps any build level up faster are: Goldrim Helmet (for resistances), and Wanderlust Boots (for movement speed, mana regeneration, and freeze immunity).

The Oskarm unique gloves goes well with Hinekora’s Sight, as it turns the additional accuracy into much needed critical chance. Doedre’s Tenure gloves gives huge spell damage buff, but penalizes cast speed. However, we don’t cast spells, we proc them so there is no downside here. If you can get Maligaro’s Virtuosity gloves for early leveling it can be a good contender up until your critical strike Multiplier goes over 300% in endgame.

Hinekora’s Sight amulet can solve all your Accuracy problems right up until endgame, and gives some nice Dodge Chance as well. An alternative amulet you could use though is Atziri’s Foible, to solve mana problems, and allows you to reserve a higher level Precision buff early on. The best way to regenerate life and mana is using the Thief’s Torment ring (which takes two ring slots). And, if you are like me and use unique items in every slot while leveling this build, your resistances will be lacking. I solved this by using String of Servitude belt with +% to all elemental resistances.

Again you want two of The Poet’s Pen. Keep using the ones you leveled up with until you can get corrupted ones with “(14-18)% increased Critical Strike Chance”. This is the best single modifier to get your critical strike chance higher. Don’t worry about buying the right socket colors with the corrupted wands. You can change sockets colors with the crafting bench even on corrupted items.

Crafted body Armor is best suited for this build. Try Fossil crafting on level +84 Shaper influenced Body Armour, and aim to get two of these three modifiers:

- Minions have (20–30)% increased maximum Life (Delve Suffix)
- Spells have +(1.1–1.5)% to Critical Strike Chance (Shaper suffix)
- +1 to Level of Socketed Active Skill Gems (Shaper Prefix)

You can also craft with “Deafening Essence of Fear” on any level +82 Body Armour. This gives you an easy “Minions have (27–30)% increased maximum Life” modifier, which equals an average of 8-10% more damage. Try a few times with a few Essences until you get some good life, resistances, and/or empty modifiers. You can further improve the Armour with Harvest craft, like adding critical modifier on Shaper influenced. And you can bench craft % increased Maximum life, or % chance to Dodge Spell Hits.

If you want Unique Body Armour, you can use either Cherrubim’s Maleficence for good damage and life, or Carcass Jack. Both will be very easy to get the right socket colors.

Scold’s Bridle is cheap and a great DPS boost helmet if you can sustain/recover the physical damage taken with each skill you use. If you want to push your DPS with Scold’s Bridle even further, use 5L Dark Pact on The Hungry Loop with Cast When Damage Taken– Chain– Concentrated Effect–Void Manipulation. You can also buy as many Scold’s Bridle helmets as you can for 1 Chaos Orb each. Keep corrupting them until you get “+1 Maximum Power Charge”.

Crafted Elder Helmet is also not a bad choice with two of the following modifiers (and some resistances and/or life):

- Minions have #% increased maximum Life/Socketed Gems are Supported by Level # Minion Life
- Minions deal #% increased Damage/Socketed Gems are Supported by Level # Minion Damage
- #% increased Area Damage/Socketed Gems are Supported by Level # Concentrated Effect

If you place your Spellslinger on a Helmet with Concentrated Effect support, you can use an extra damage support gem like Chain. You can buy any corrupted rare with the “+1 Maximum Power Charge” modifier and some life and resistances and it will do the job. The Bone Helmet for example, is a perfect base for any crafting you want done.

Doedre’s Malevolence provides the best DPS in the Gloves slot, but no defense. Oskarm is another option, even at this stage, and it’s the easiest way to get Accuracy and Critical Chance. Shadows and Dust are also fun Gloves that emphasize the super fast clear speed playstyle with rampage. For better functionality, get any of these unique gloves corrupted with one of these modifiers:

- Curse Enemies with Level # Despair on Hit
- +1 to Level of Socketed Gems
- +2 to Level of Socketed AoE Gems
- Attacks have +(0.5–0.8)% to Critical Strike Chance
- Spells have +(0.5–0.8)% to Critical Strike Chance

Crafted Fingerless Silk Gloves is another option that you can go with as well, and you want to try to get them with high Accuracy rating, Resistances, and life. Bench craft “Minions deal #% increased Damage” or “% increased Damage during any Flask Effect” or alternatively, craft “% increased Area of Effect/+1 to Level of Socketed AoE Gems” and place your Spellslinger on your gloves.

Crafted Two Toned Boots work well here with maximum movement speed, life, and resistances, or you can use crafted Shaper boots with “% increased Cooldown Recovery Speed”, or crafted Redeemer boots with both % chance to Dodge Attack Hits/% chance to Dodge spell Hits. The choice is up to you.

For amulets, you can keep Hinekora’s Sight amulet even at endgame. Get one with additional curse corruption, % All elemental resistances, or Zealotry has (15-20)% increased Aura Effect.

Zerphi’s Heart is a strong all around offense item. Soul Eater will raise your attack speed greatly, and you suddenly can shock, ignite, and chill at same time. Impresence (with Despair preserve no mana) is the more expensive choice to turn your curse into an aura, but we are tight on links, so it’s a tough choice.

Finally, Aul’s Uprising with Zealotry Aura modifier saves us 50% mana reserved, and it’s a sweet addition with some critical chance, life, and attributes. It allows us to get an additional aura, like Vitality, Haste, or put your curses on Spellslinger, all depending on your preferences. On the other hand, a crafted Hunter Amulet with +1 to Level of all Chaos Skill Gems/+1 to Level of all Intelligence Skill Gems can be superior.

The Thief’s Torment ring is still good way to recover both life and mana in endgame (which takes two ring slots), and you can use 20x Fertile Catalyst on Thief’s Torment to further increase mana and life gained on hit.

A more flexible alternative is a couple Shaper rings with “+(13–15) Life gained for each Enemy hit by your Spells” and “+(2–3) Mana gained for each Enemy Hit by your Spells”.

The Hungry Loop can be used for another 5 Link setup, if you have the patience to feed the supports to it. Put Dark Pact on The Hungry Loop with Cast When Damage Taken– Chain– Concentrated Effect–Void Manipulation.

Use Mark of the Shaper on one slot, and an Elder Ring on the other for a massive damage buff. Elder rings can roll “+# Life/mana gained for each Enemy hit by your Attacks” , which is less effective than life/mana gained on spell hits, but may pass. Elder rings can also roll “% to Global Critical Strike Multiplier” , and/or % increased Global Accuracy Rating.

Vermillion, and Diamond rings are good bases to craft, but you can also craft two stones rings for better resistances.

Darkness Enthroned with two Ghastly Eye Jewels can easily be the highest damage belt. You can get Minions have up to 42% increased maximum Life (12% on both jewels multiplied by 1.75) You can get Increased Attack Speed up to 21% (Minions have (4–6)% increased Attack Speed, on both jewels, multiplied by 1.75) , and Attack Speed can be even better if you used “Minions have (6–8)% increased Attack and Cast Speed if you or your Minions have Killed Recently”.

Darkness Enthroned with two Hypnotic Eye Jewel is another great contender with the following possible suffixes. Pick up whichever two suffixes you prefer from below, and round up the jewels with high a Maximum life roll on both slots.

- Up to 42% increased Global Critical Strike Chance (12% on both jewels multiplied by 1.75)
- Up to 42% to Global Critical Strike Multiplier.
- Around 48% to Critical Strike Multiplier if you’ve Killed Recently
- Up to 28% increased Attack Speed if you’ve dealt a Critical Strike Recently
- 6% chance to Dodge Attack and Spell Hits if you’ve been Hit Recently (2% on each, multiplied by 1.75 and rounded down)
- Up to 70% increased Damage if you’ve Killed Recently (20% on each, multiplied by 1.75)

Because of the Harvest Craft, you can get really good Stygian Vise with all resistances and life, then place one good jewel in it and you’re set as well.