[3.0] Beginners Friendly: Dark Pact Skeleton Necromancer [Build in Progress]

Prologue

Since Dark Pact is a very recent skill that been introduced with the new expansion Fall of Oriath, I decided to give it a try. I began with the thought that since the new skill is chaos damage plus the use of minions I am going to avoid the Physical/Elemental reflect obstacle; If this was combined with a possible high damage output from the unknown yet Dark Pact then we would have a new powerful beginner's friendly skill.

The gameplay is very simple, you pop-up a spell totem that constantly raises skeletons and then you apply upon then the dark pact, doing even with a low quality gear, descent damage with a huge area of effect, mainly result of the combination of skeletons that scatter around the place right upon your enemies and the AOE effect of the dark pact that covers almost all the screen clearing the mob-packs quickly. The bosses are melting fairly quick considering, and the main problem exist when you lose all of your zombies thus losing your decoying meat shields and the ability to cast your Dark Pact unhampered.

Right now, I am at level 71, still playing as SSF with four linked low-quality items, I just entered the maps unlocking step by step the Atlas [level 73 white maps]. I had totally 7 deaths mainly because I am below the average players, the total life/energy shield still sucks, 2K life & 1K energy shield and the only defenses are the meat shield provided by the zombies and the two curses, Temporal chains & Enfeeble casted by the CWDT gem. Four of those deaths was at Kitava act 10, one in the act 9 - Garukhan fight, one stupidly enough in a trap in lab cruel, all of them with the elemental resistances uncapped. The last and most recent death happened at a double boss fight in a level 73 blue map this time with the ele/res capped – one charge shotted from Voll.

Update 0.1


Skill Gems


[Passive Tree Level 73]

Bandits: Kill them all for the +2 passive skill points.

[Ascendancy Nodes]:


[My current gear]


Useful Unique Gear


[Stat Priorities]


[Leveling]


[Video Content]


Epilogue
I will appreciate any useful tip, suggestion for how can I transmute the build from the SSF to the end game with e.g. useful unique items, different skill gems etc.

Thanks for reading; have a nice time,
until next time .... "What in God's name is that SMELL?"

what do you mean by your dark pact does more damage with more skeleton life?
Dark pact will take away a flat 6% life away from your skeletons to do the listed chaos damage. I don't think the amount of life your skeleton is relevent.

If you are using skeletons' life to cast dark pact, try this setup.
Dark pact - spell echo - faster casting - arcane surge support (low level)

Spell totem is slow. It casts at 30% less speed. If you are just placing skeletons at the mobs that you are tagetting so you can cast dark pact at them, it would be much faster this way.
Also you need to have more than 3 skeletons out to have that +2 chain from dark pact. Less than 3 skeletons, it won't chain +2 times. So with this setup you will have 4 skeletons out faster than your spell totem can cast 1 skeleton. Also you can cast skeletons whereever you want but spell totem casts skeletons right in front of the totem.
Also keep arcane surge support at low level so that it kicks in right after you cast skeletons at the target and you can get that extra damage for sure.

Try this and if you like it we can talk more.
Cheers

"

NymphQueen написал:

what do you mean by your dark pact does more damage with more skeleton life?

How can you miss that 6% of (100) is just half than 6% of (200)?
(Sorry, I also thought that the 6% would also determine the dealed damage, as with RF)

"

Also you can cast skeletons whereever you want but spell totem casts skeletons right in front of the totem.

A spell totem casts its spells always directly to where it's aggro came from (in front/on top of the enemy). And as long as its in range of the monster you 'curse' with DP, it doesnt matter much where the skeletons are (best would be, out of trouble from getting hit)

You other suggestions: what hinders us to have the totem up some time before the 'battle'? Just one second to have 3 skellies before casting DP, or just cast it again if the interaction between skellies and DP 'needs' it? Echoing DP doesnt give you more skellies per time. (not sure if it still works to give double totem output) - so only use there is to trigger Arcane Surge?

Ok, so this is what I am doing.
It's a 2 separate cast setup. First, you cast skeletons to place them near the mobs. Second, cast DP to get AoE damage burst ouf of the skeletons.
These two skills are on separate link. Skeletons are supported with faster casting and spell echo so you can have more than 3 of them asap. I am not a totem kind of guy but I tried this with spell totem and it was so slow I almost killed myself.
Echoing DP won't give you more skeletons but echoing skeletons does. The point in echoing skeletons is to have more skeletons fast so you don't waste the +2 chain from DP. Speed is a key in this setup. Waiting around the totem for skeletons to pop is just too slow or at least not my style.
Cheers,

This is my new favorite build :P

I have to agree with self casting the skeletons it gets more out faster and I feel awesome summoning my minions :D Necro for life boyz

"

NymphQueen написал:

what do you mean by your dark pact does more damage with more skeleton life?

The 6% removed life is added to the base damage so the skill does scale with minion life.

Life has been busy this league so I only have a few hours of play time in and level 37, but this is similar to build I'm slowly working on. Will be life based summoner focusing on grabbing all the minion nodes on tree. Thought about stacking spell damage to increase dark pact damage, but decided to try minion route instead. Wife and kids away this weekend so should be mapping Saturday night.

Playing a similar build (dual totem DP with self cast skeletons with spell echo and the unique jewell adding +2 skeletons/cast) and I think when it comes to support gems faster casting and spell echo is better than added chaos damage even those the tooltip says added chaos is better as it does not include the damage from skeletons life.

Hi Exiles and thanks all for the replies!

"

NymphQueen написал:

what do you mean by your dark pact does more damage with more skeleton life?
Dark pact will take away a flat 6% life away from your skeletons to do the listed chaos damage. I don't think the amount of life your skeleton is relevent.

As already has been mentioned Dark Pact takes away a 6% of targets life to deal that much chaos damage plus the listed chaos damage. The above link is an additional prof of that
http://imgur.com/a/Yj8h4

One more clarification is that, indeed the Spell Totem summons the Skeletons upon the mobs, which with the addition of faster casting it doesn't feel slow and with what I have experienced even with out the Faster Casting Support gem it isn't so slow to negatively impact on your gameplay and your viability.

The self casting Skeletons is a great variation, that I am going to test it further for to have more info to compare. I have upload a comparing video just for to showcase the differences of gameplay since I am at very early maps and therefore I can't compare them with more substantial criteria.

I hope to find time the weekend to proceed a bit more into the Atlas.
as always have all a nice time,
until next time ....
"What in God's name is that SMELL?"

Oh.. intresting..

Almost the same build Im running except I went the road of dual totems.
One for DP and one for skeletons. Lots of freedom to run one each or two of one kind.