Ведьма - [3.26] CheapBunny's Skeleton Dark Pact Summoner Occultist | Pragmatism

Introduction
Unlike the normal life stacking dark pact (with dissolution of flesh), this dark pact build cast dark pact on skeleton and focus on stacking skeleton's life instead. The idea is to push skeleton's level as high as possible using Pragmatism and scale off alot minion life on items/passive tree.

I am able to stack the skeleton's life up to 62k+, which is much more than any ordinary life stacking build could achieve. Because of this, I actually think that this is a more superior way to play dark pact than the ordinary life stacking, as it is able to achieve higher dps without the dissolution of flesh clunkier playstyle.

This build also utilize spectres and animate guardian to gain aura/buff bonuses. In the end, this build has very high dps and decent defense with rather reasonable budget, definitely recommend to anyone who want to push to endgame content with medium budget.

Build Thought

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The build idea started with Pragmatism unique body armour.

I was thinking what skill could have good use of this body armour, it needs to be scaling very well with gem level, and possibly a secondary skill that could buff the other main skill because we couldn't have a 6L on this body armour.

Why Dark Pact? Why Cane of Kulemak?

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Dark Pact is the skill I could think of that scales very well of gem level on a secondary skill (Summon Skeleton).

Dark Pact damage can scale off Summon Skeleton while cast on Skeleton minion, so we can put the Summon Skeleton gem in the body armour, and have another 6L on weapon for pseudo 10+ link.

As we need a 6L on weapon, staves would be an obvious choice because this is a spell caster build. Cane of Kulemak has most of the stats needed for dark pact, cast speed/minion life/minion damage.

Why Occultist?

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As a Chaos Theme/Minion related build, this build can be either played as Occultist and Necromancer, but the forbidden jewel on Occultist is much more expensive, so I chose to play as Occultist and use forbidden jewel to grab the juiciest Necromancer node for this build.

Why Spectres and Animate Guardian

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This build scales a lot of minion life, making Spectres and Animate Guardian very tanky, they persist when we need them the most in high end content, so this build uses Spectres and Animate Guardian to gain buff/auras, they seldom die even in T17/uber bosses fight.

Build Mechanic

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Minion Damage/Life Scaling

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This build is scaling a lot of Minion Life, many sources of Minion Life also comes with Minion Damage, for example the minion hybrid mod on Cane of Kulemak and bone ring.

Because of this, this build is taking Spiritual Aid notable, which enable increased in Minion Damage multiplier also apply to your spell damage, increasing Dark Pack damage.

Therefore making minion's Life/Damage gears/passives are very valuable to the build, as they both scaling Dark Pact damage multiplicatively to each other.

Supreme Ostentation, Tattoos and Runegraft Shenanigans

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There is a tattoo that increases minion life.

To fully ultilizing this tattoo, this build uses a timeless jewel Keystone Supreme Ostentation, which makes the build ignore all attributes requirement from gears and skill gems, allowing us to tattoo all the small attribute nodes on passive tree.

https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Supreme_Ostentation

There are another 2 useful tattoo we can use.

The tattoo priority sequence should be:
Tattoo as many mana regen as needed to cast Dark Pact smoothly -> Tattoo chaos resistance until 75% -> Tattoo minion life for all remaining small int passives.

This build further capitalize on Supreme Ostentation keystone by using Runegraft of the Fotress

We gain 40% defense with no downside at all.

Withering Step and Brittle Ground

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Withered is a big layer of damage source that every chaos build must get, normally I will use Wither totem to apply Wither, but it requires at least 3 link to be efficient, hence not usable in this already socket starving build (just like other minion build). So instead we use Withering step to apply Wither in this build.

Withering step also has great synergy with Brittle ground boots, it grants the character phasing that allows the build to drop brittle ground right on top of the target. The travel skill cooldown implicit also allows the build to cast Withering step more often.

Defenses used in this build

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1. Decent Ehp - 6.6k+

2. 75%+ chaos res (with tattoos)

3. 100% Spell Suppression

4. 300 Life Regen

5. 2000/6500+ AR/EV before flask

6. 10 Fortifications (from Animate Guardian's Kingmaker)

7. 22% attack block

8. Elemental Ailments Immunity (Purity of Element)

9. 3 Endurance charges (from Spectre)

10. Phys damage taken as Ele (helmet implicit)

11. Ghost Dance (keystone)

Videos

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Mercenaries of Trarthus League

T16 Hydra
https://youtu.be/2soAAc_AtdQ

T16 + Baran
https://youtu.be/qnrdMzfh4bI

T17 Citadel
https://youtu.be/D5Y1ePXkmm4

Originator's Memory Bosses
https://youtu.be/jrbUNuzWHPg

Uber Shaper
https://youtu.be/xA3kDzd6QRA

Skill Tree (POB)

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Kill all bandits.

12 Jul 2025 - [POE 3.26] 98 lvl skill tree (Latest)
https://pobb.in/XMcSsvFEnsPl

Leveling

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Leveling as any spell caster build, you might start using Dark Pact in act 3 when you reach lv 28, Summon Skeleton can be obtained from Act 1 gem vendor.

This is my level 70 setup
https://pobb.in/s3xAF2OQ_-o8

Ascendancy

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Void Beacon -> Withering Presence -> Profane Bloom -> Forbidden Power

Gears

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Weapon

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Early/Mid Game
Spell Damage/Cast Speed Rare Wand

End Game

Body Armour

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Early/Mid Game
Life/Resis Rare Body Armour

End Game

(Corrupted Implicit : +1 level of socketed gem)

Helmet

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Early/Mid Game
Life/Resis Rare Helmet

End Game
Minion Skill Gem Level/Life/Spell Suppress/Resis Rare Helmet

(Eldritch Implicit : Phys taken as Ele/Damager per power charge)

Gloves

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Early/Mid Game
Life/Resis Rare Gloves

End Game
Life/Spell Suppress/Resis Rare Gloves

(Eldritch Implicit : Spell Suppress/Chance to Unnerve on hit)

Boots

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Early/Mid Game
Movespeed/Life/Resis Rare Boots

End Game
Movespeed/Spell Suppress/Life/Resis Rare Boots

(Eldritch Implicit : Travel skill cooldown/Brittle ground)

Belt

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Early/Mid Game
Life/Resis Rare Belt

End Game

Amulet

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Early/Mid Game
Life/Resis Rare Amulet

End Game

(Anointment : Force of Darkness)
(Look for % Spell Suppress that can cap your chance to suppress spell, and as high cast speed as possible depends on your budget)
(Maximum Ele Resistance is good to have but not necessary, Ele Penetration does not affect anything of this build, can be ignored)

Rings

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Early/Mid Game
Life/Resis Rare Rings

End Game
Rare Bone Rings with Minion Damage/Minion Life

Rare Unset Rings with Life/Resis

Jewels

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Unique Jewels

(Caspiro Variant, Slot in specific jewel socket, refer to POB)
(Look for Minion Life/Minion Damage)

(The Agnostic variant)

(Chaos Resistance while affected by Purity of Elements)
(Increased Cast Speed while affected by Zealotry)

Spectres and Animate Guardian Gears

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