Dark Pact

Dark Pact Berserker 78, haste and temporal chains on blasphemy. Vaal Pact. 4 Linked in a The Covenant.

Skill is very strong in every map I've done I don't really notice any difference in mob hp between tier 1 maps and tier 8. All mobs are leech tank with cloaked in savagery ascendancy node while spamming Dark Pact until they're dead then move on.
Single Target is very poor because you kill yourself and don't do enough to leech it back. This is an acceptable downside because of how absurdly good the skill is for AOE clear.

I think a 10-20% reduction in power would be warranted for the next league.

Tried this gem (in more than one sense) out today and have had an absolute blast with it ever since I picked it up in act 3 (just finished act 5). I've been using it together with skeletons and it feels incredibly fun and engaging to use. The fact that it scales so differently also makes even building the tree satisfying. Give whoever designed this a raise.

I'll probably give more feedback once I've really got the build going, take this as a first impression.

Question on the gem itself in general not character specific. Can it proc of shrine skeletons?

Hey !

Level 79 Dark Pact Scion here, half casting through skellies, half casting with my own HPs.
That skill is powerful, fun to play, pretty unique, and have 2 gameplays in one skill ; that's great !

There's only one issue with that build, it's that it's pretty rigid, and it drives me crazy. Little exemple to tell you what I mean by rigid.
You're playing Dark Pact, with some skeletons for tough monsters, like rares or bosses, but cast on yourself for packs of smaller monsters. You CAN'T cast on yourself if there's a skeleton at the border of your screen, even if the skeleton is out of the sceen at the bottom and you were heading up to kill some monsters, and even if you clic at top of the screen, Dark Pact will auto-target the skeleton.
That's frustrating, and in top of that, it makes me ask some questions. Is that because of the chaining system ? (Like Arc that auto-aim, but the issue isn't one since you don't have any other use of that skill). Or is that because of Xbox version, so players can rely on the chaining part of Dark Pact without activating the cursor ? (That would be REALLY bad for the future of PoE).

Otherwise, a great skill, maybe too powerful (100% damage effectiveness is damn good).

it's a somewhat clunky spell with alot of power. You need to build around it with leech or regen to reach maximum power (cast on self). Cast on skellies is good, but a bit unreliable and slower than some other skills (cough frostballs cough), since you need to pop some skeletons to proc on.

All in all a very interesting and nice looking spell. I like how you can use it on totems, cast on self/skeletons. Alot of choices.

I like this skill so far. I don't think it's OP, it's totally fine.

I would adjust the description of the skill itself since it pops up some questions in its current form:

"Deals x-y chaos damage"
- Does it deal BASE x-y chaos damage?

"Sacrifies 6% of skeleton's life to deal that much chaos damage"
"Uses your life if no sekeletons in range"
- Does it deal EXTRA chaos damage based on the removed life?
- Does it deal EXTRA chaos damage based on the removed life if casted on yourself?

Also, I'm not sure if it should remove the life twice if it's linked with Spell Echo but I can live with it (mainly because I'm not using echo, lol)

And I agree with @Hell_Noki - the autotargeting is a bit awkward. IMHO the system should check the targeted position only (and not the character position). I mean if the player is not targeting (near) a skeleton, it should cast on self.

Great skill, a lot of fun to use it. I use it with the selfdmg option with 1,1k-1,5k Lifereg.

I really like the skill. Fast clean with my own live, fast boss kills with skeletons. With my next char i will try it without skeletons.