Please consider adding Divergent Dark Pact back into the game.

With 3.25 around the corner, this marks the third expansion without a transfigured version of Dark Pact.On its own this is not really a problem, since multiple skills do not have a transfigured version and Dark Pact
is an extremely niche spell without a large fan base (it doesnt even have a single mtx), so that other skills take precedence makes somewhat sense.
In addition, dark pact itself can be divided into two distinct playstyles, which makes finding cool transfigured gems an additional challenge.

However, since the changes to the base effect of quality, and especially the removal of alt quality gems, Dark Pact's cast on skeleton version has become much more awkward to play than ever before.

Dark Pact works by sacrificing x% life of a skeleton. The sacrificed life is added as additional flat chaos damage to the explosion, which allows dmg scaling via minion hp.
Additionally, Dark Pact chains y times. The default value is 3, which can be increased with additional sources of chain, adding another scaling axis.
In fact, chain support is one of the strongest support gems available for Dark Pact (which is also due to the lack of support gems available for non projetile non dot chaos spells), with awakened chain support being the strongest bar none (80-100% more damage).
This results in a skeleton loss of life of x * y per cast and 2 * x * y with spell echo (i.e. always).

Now, the problem arises at high values of cast speed. A single cast of summon skeletons summons 4 skeletons, which have in total 400% hp for us to sacrifice.
Dark Pact is a fast spell (base cast time of 0.5 seconds), which also scales really well with cast speed. As such, having 10 casts per second is not especially difficult to achieve.
After the buff to Dark Pact's sacrifice amount and the new Dark Pact's quality, x is equal to 10%, up from the original 6%.

In this case, with spell echo and awakened chain, we sacrifice 2 * 10% * 6 = 120% skeleton life per cast.
At 10 (5 "real" casts due to spell echo) casts per second, we kill all our skeletons in 0.8 seconds and wasting 80/120=0.66 => 66% of the damage of the last cast.
As such, it is required to recast summon skeletons every 3rd dark pact cast, or every 0.6 seconds. This feels extremely clunky to play, especially if you consider four facts:

* If no skeletons are alive, Dark Pact will sacrifice your own life at a rate of 2*10% per cast. I.e. you basically kill yourself in half a second.
* Dark Pact will not kill your skeletons evenly and requires at least 3 skeletons to bounce. This causes the skill to fizzle and deal less damage even before all skeletons are dead. This is made even worse by Dark Pact not sacrificing the whole amount of life at once, rather it takes 1-2 seconds for each Dark Pact cast to resolve. This means you have multiple Dark Pact casts that will fizzle with multiple chains remaining.
* Dark Pact used to sacrifice 6% minion hp, which results in 72% skeleton life per cast, which allows for 6 total casts rather than 4 to sacrifice all 400% hp, i.e. you could get 50% more casts than right now.
This also felt somewhat clunky, but not nearly as bad as now and was fixed with the next point.
* All these problems were fixed by using Divergent Dark Pact instead, which healed ALL minions by 6% hp for every hit of Dark Pact (i.e. 2 * 6 * 6 = 72% heal per cast),
which allowed you to sacrifice a single set of skeletons infinitely, since you healed them to full with every cast. This also enabled the player to forgo blessed rebirth, since you healed the skeletons faster than they received damage in nearly all situations.
In addition, this allowed Dark Pact builds to use AG and utility Spectres more easily, as they could be healed by the player.
Finally, Divergent Dark Pact makes the early game infinitely more enjoyable (where you dont have blessed rebirth, max level skeleton gem, +gem level gear, +minion hp gear),
because the skeletons in early progression lack the hp to tank mobs at all.
This was to the point where i personally only started to switch to Dark Pact upon receiving the divergent version; the difference is like playing an entirely different skill.

All in all, the loss of Divergent Dark Pact is heavily felt, and i have multiple Dark Pact chars in standard that feel much worse to play up to the point of being completely bricked (Zerphis Heart version has so much cast speed its impossible to play)

So i ask to add Divergent Dark Pact back into the game as a transfigured version. Just copy paste it back please, so i can finally be one of the two players again that enjoys this spell.

Alternative:

If you dont want to add in Divergent Dark Pact for some reason (just do please), consider changing the quality to something like:
"increases the effectiveness of sacrificed life by (0-100%)" and change the baseline sacrifice amount to 5%.
In this case, we have the same amount of added damage as right now (5%*(1+1)=10%), but sacrifice half the amount of hp, doubling the amount of spells we can cast before all skeletons are dead.
This has the advantage of also affecting the cast on self version, lowering the pressure of self damage by half.

Further QoL changes i want to mention since we are already here:

* As described above, you basically kill yourself in half a second if no skeleton is present. This is actually if no skeleton is in range and the range is smaller than one would expect. This often leads to situations where you have skeletons on screen but dont cast on them and use your own life instead. Really unpleasant, especially in boss fights. Please consider doubling the skeleton detection range of Dark Pact.
* Dark Pact chains between skeletons. Each chain has a travel time and it seems a small downtime upon hitting a skeleton. Basically, it takes somewhere around 1-2 seconds until a single Dark Pact cast is "finished".
This makes the skill feel less responsive during mapping, where you only need a single cast to kill a trash pack. Consider decreasing the time the bouncing takes to make the skill feel more responsive.
* Adding to 2). Dark Pact cast on skeleton is somewhat visually underwhelming, since the bouncing is just a small orb. My absolute dream would be to change this to a purple/black version of Arc, where you chain lightning your own minions.
This would also fix 2), since Arc is more or less instant. I think this would make the skill feel and look absolutely incredible.

TL/DR: Please add Divergent Dark Pact back into the game as transfigured version.

+1 and Hi, I’m the other player that likes dark pact. Nice to meet you. :)

+1 from me too. I am eagerly awaiting a Transfigured Version of Dark Pact since the announcement of Transfigured Gems. Sadly we are only 3 people enjoying this spell with skeletons right now :)
I wish it was playable like it was with the Divergent Gem again.

+1, It was one of the first builds I've tried, and really liked the different approach to scaling through minion HP, sadly I cant now play it in some league properly without transfigured DP

+1 Make Dark Pact Viable Again!!!

Just put the gem back. It's not even a meta build

Never played it but wanted to play it for a while. But only as a selfcast version. Well lets wait.